Survival

by Joe Craig

  …Twenty-one thousand, six hundred and ninety-seven, twenty-one thousand, six hundred and ninety-eight, twenty-one thousand, six hundred and ninety-nine…

  Jimmy had been marching for over three hours. The protection of the smoke had long since disappeared. Instead there were now vultures over his head. The landscape had changed gradually from the patchy tufts of low grass near the mine, to arid wasteland, and now he was deep in the rolling sand dunes, constantly shifting in the wind. Jimmy felt as if the sun had built a cocoon of fire around him and he was condemned to walk through it until he was a flame himself. His skin was screaming for relief. His mouth was totally desiccated.

  Every injury he had suffered in his short life was coming back to remind him of the original torture – his left leg, where it had once been through an industrial shredder; his neck where he’d once plunged his own tooth into his flesh to escape from a strangling; his hands and feet, where the extreme cold of the Pyrenees had frozen him; his ribs, his back, his shoulders… and the physical memory of every blow Mitchell and Zafi had ever planted on his body.

  But at the same time he never lost that feeling that there was something inside him driving him on. It was like an engine fuelled by the heat, not damaged by it. He didn’t realise it, but his DNA responded to the desert conditions by controlling the dilation of his blood capillaries, the angle of the hairs on his skin, the flow of sweat from his pores… all to lessen the impact of dehydration.

  Every five hundred strides he swapped the suitcase to his other hand, in case the weight imbalance made one leg stronger than the other. He didn’t want to end up walking in a huge circle. And now he calculated he was almost fourteen kilometres from the mine. It would have to be enough.

  He stopped dead on twenty-two thousand strides and marked the sand with his heel. This was the spot. He dropped the suitcase to the ground and fell to his knees. Then he started to dig.

  He burrowed into the sand as if he was swimming a furious front crawl directly downwards. His skin was raw and the sand was hotter than he could have imagined, but he didn’t slow down. His programming and his human mind were working in perfect unison, formulating a plan and accelerating the operating system within his body to carry it out.

  His arms whirled like fans, opening up a gaping hole beneath him. The sand shifted so quickly it fell back into the space as soon as Jimmy had created it, so he worked even faster to stay ahead of it.

  Eventually Jimmy stopped – he was more than a metre below the surface. The heat was still incredibly strong, but he could feel the air changing quickly. Soon the sun would go down and the temperature would plummet.

  He jumped out of the hole and threw the suitcase in. The wind would do most of the filling in work for him, but he helped it along without even pausing to catch his breath.

  Then he turned around to start the twenty-two thousand strides back.

  19 THE FIFTH PIER

  Georgie twisted past two defenders, sprinted to the top of the box and chipped the ball over the keeper’s head. It glided into the back of the net.

  “Goal of the century,” she declared, throwing the console controller on to the sofa in triumph and dancing round the room. “Surely there’s no way back now for poor old Felix Muzbeke.”

  She pouted and ruffled his hair, mussing it even further out of control than usual. She didn’t bother picking up the controller again. In the final thirty seconds of injury time Felix just tried to get his players to run into each other, without success.

  At the final whistle he couldn’t stop himself beaming, even though he’d lost 4–1. He could hardly believe that he was enjoying himself so much. His parents might be missing and his best friend Jimmy was probably in mortal danger somewhere, but for one evening he remembered what it was like to relax and have a laugh. Maybe Zafi turning up had given him hope that things were going to change.

  He didn’t even mind that his only company was two girls. Zafi and Georgie sat on either side of him on the sofa, taking it in turns to beat him at FIFA Soccer. Felix always put more effort into getting his players to do tricks than score goals. He judged who won based on the teams’ styles, not the score line.

  “Don’t you have any other games?” Zafi asked. She’d won her last match 9–3.

  Felix and Georgie looked at each other, both knowing that the only decent ones they had were other football games. Everything else was just a British imitation of a banned American or Japanese game. They could both remember the time Felix had found what he thought was a real American game at a stall in Hackney Wick Market. But when he got it home, everything was in Dutch and one half of the screen froze up every five seconds.

  “Let’s stick to this one,” Georgie suggested. “But we have to beat Felix by ten goals and he has to score with a bicycle kick.”

  “Bring it on,” said Felix, gripping the controller with even more concentration.

  They played on for a while, but the console itself was also a British copy of a foreign brand. It soon crashed.

  “How about a board game?” Felix suggested. He jumped over to the cupboard and pulled out a pile of old boxes, balanced precariously on top of each other. Georgie and Zafi groaned.

  Just then, Zafi drew her phone out of her pocket and read a new message.

  “What is it?” asked Felix, his whole body electrified with excitement. “New instructions? Is it the moustache man?”

  “Nothing,” Zafi shrugged. She placed the phone on the coffee table in front of them, then announced brightly, “Let’s play Monopoly.”

  “Is that what your message said?” Georgie asked, sarcastically.

  “It said I should kill you, but it can wait until after a board game.” There was a second of silence before Zafi burst out laughing. “What happened to your sense of humour?” she roared.

  “Hilarious,” said Georgie, not smiling. She grabbed the Monopoly set. “Right,” she announced, tearing off the lid. “I’ll be the little dog.”

  By the time Helen Coates arrived home a couple of hours later, she found three people engrossed in a very loud game of Monopoly. She waited in the doorway to the living room, watching.

  “Your go, Felix,” said Zafi. “I landed safe.”

  “You’re not safe!” Felix roared. “I own that. And I have a house on it. You owe me gazillions of pounds.”

  “Can’t I stay for free?” asked Zafi, fluttering her eyelashes.

  “You might be playing some weird French rule,” Georgie cut in, “but we’re doing fine with the English version.” She counted out the money from Zafi’s pile and handed it over to Felix.

  “Thanks, mate,” said Felix, waving the notes in Zafi’s face.

  “Don’t you have homework to do?” Helen interrupted.

  Felix and Georgie looked up at her, then to Zafi, then back to Helen. Nobody needed to explain anything. The hoodie hiding Zafi from surveillance told almost the whole story. She must be here to protect us, Helen thought, studying what she could see of Zafi’s face. But from what?

  At the same time, Helen’s sombre expression told Felix and Georgie that she still hadn’t been able to find Christopher Viggo. She spent every day looking for him. While she pretended to be looking for a job, she tracked down old contacts and followed the trail of the ex-NJ7 agent, the man they needed to help find Felix’s parents, or make the country safe for Jimmy to come home to, or change anything about Britain.

  “Don’t worry,” Helen whispered. “I’ll find something very soon.”

  Mutam-ul-it blended into the black of the desert. Boosted by his night-vision, Jimmy saw it as a mass of obscure blue shapes on the horizon. He staggered towards it, trying to maintain the regular beat of his steps, but fighting the stiffness in his legs and the dryness in his throat.

  His teeth chattered and his skin felt like it was on fire, despite the sharp cold of the wind. At last Jimmy reached the perimeter fence. He climbed over it at the same spot he’d used before and lurched between the burnt-out buildings of the
compound.

  After another minute he’d found Marla’s abandoned jeep and begun his rehydration with water from the engine, filtering it through a fist of sand. Now a little strength oozed back into his limbs. He was surprised at how quickly he felt the benefit of just a little water. Yet again, he was thankful for the incredible design of his body.

  With new optimism he marched all the way through the compound to the other side, well over a kilometre away. Here the buildings were unaffected by the blasts from the British missiles. The rush of the sea grew louder as he approached and at last he reached the line of piers.

  For a second he imagined how refreshing it would be to carry on walking, all the way to the end of the first pier and straight into the water. The only thing that stopped him was not knowing whether the water would soothe or irritate his ravaged skin.

  His muscles interrupted his thoughts, clenching tighter. His programming was telling him to focus again. He couldn’t stop now. His job was just beginning.

  Giant storehouses loomed over him. This was where, normally, the minerals from the mine would have waited to be loaded on to ships and carried around the world. But the ships were missing. The whole of Mutam-ul-it had been evacuated – even this end. Now the whole dock was deserted.

  Jimmy scurried along the seafront, counting off the piers, until he came to the fifth. The spray of the sea formed a thin mist across the dock. Up ahead, the soft light of a solitary security light filtered through the haze. In it, Jimmy saw a girl’s silhouette, leaning against the pier’s handrail and hugging herself to keep warm. He jogged towards her.

  “Is that you?” Marla whispered, startled by the knocking of Jimmy’s boots on the wooden slats. He was very close before she was able to make him out for sure. “What have you done with the suitcase?”

  Jimmy wasn’t in the mood to explain. “Did you bring what I told you to?” he asked.

  Marla ignored him. “Where is the actinium?” she insisted.

  “It’s safe,” said Jimmy, growing impatient. “Now, did you bring what I asked you?”

  Marla reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of paper clips. “I did not find baklava,” she said sheepishly.

  “Not baklava,” Jimmy sighed. “That’s a Turkish dessert. I said balaclava!”

  Marla’s face fell. “What is balaclava?” she asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jimmy reassured her. “And the—”

  Before he could finish, Marla pointed across the pier, at a slim, matt-black motorbike leaning against the opposite handrail. French colours were just visible on the fuel tank.

  Jimmy nodded, the specifications of the bike flashing through his mind automatically: MZ 125 SX… 125cc… 4-stroke… He had to shut his eyes to stop it.

  “Can you walk back to town?” he asked, opening them after a few seconds.

  Marla nodded. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Why did you need these things?”

  “I’m going to make sure the French do exactly what I tell them to do.”

  Jimmy sounded so confident, but inside was a creeping uncertainty. He only had the vaguest idea of what his inner assassin was planning.

  In short, sharp movements, he twisted the paper clips one at a time into bizarre shapes. Watching his hands was like watching a puppet show. Something else was in control – but he knew that the ‘some will not obey you just because you threaten them. People have tried that before, you know?”

  Jimmy ignored her and twisted the next paper clip with a vicious wrench. “Where’s the radio?” he asked.

  “I left it in town,” Marla replied. “With a friend who is listening. You said you didn’t want them tracking you.”

  “Good.” Jimmy hesitated for a moment and Marla seemed to read his mind.

  “There is no message,” she whispered. “I am sorry.”

  Jimmy’s face didn’t flicker, but his heart gave a twist of distress. He had hoped so hard that his intuition was wrong and that the French were actually going to help his family.

  “But my friend will listen more, in case,” Marla added brightly.

  Jimmy avoided making eye contact. He placed a paper clip over each ear, twisting his earlobes up and tucking the tops of his ears down. It made his eyes water, but he didn’t stop.

  “This is for the security cameras,” he explained as he worked. “Face recognition software reads your features even through a mask.”

  “Security cameras where?” asked Marla.

  “On the destroyer,” said Jimmy, as if it was obvious. “I can’t let the British Government see that I’m still alive. Without a balaclava, I’ll have to stay out of sight of the crew. But I’ll be safe from the cameras.”

  “The British?” said Marla, confused. “What?”

  “I’m going to deal with the British and the French at the same time.” Jimmy stabbed the points of the paper clips into his skin and bent his ears to hold them in place. More paper clips went on his forehead – one over each eyebrow, distorting his face. With his skin already so damaged from his march in the desert, it hurt even more than it would have normally. But even with the damage they’d suffered, his hands moved with precision and confidence.

  “The British destroyer is still anchored 16 kilometres in that direction,” he explained, pointing out to sea, into the deep blackness of the night. “Everyone wants to trick me into doing some mission. But this time it’s going to be different. This time they’ll have to take me seriously.”

  When he looked up Marla was horrified. “You look like a desert cactus.” She stared at the paper clips sticking out everywhere. Jimmy let out a short huff.

  “Go back to town,” he ordered. “Is there a safe place there I can meet you?”

  “Find Coca-Cola,” said Marla. “You will be safe.” Jimmy bent down to unlace his boots and kicked them off.

  “What are you doing now?” she asked.

  “The swim will be easier without my boots.”

  “What?” Marla was shocked. “Jimmy, you cannot swim 16 kilometres there and 16 kilometres back.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jimmy replied brightly. “I’ll get a lift back.”

  He gave a quick nod to say goodbye and ran to the end of the pier. He gathered pace, the boards resounding with the drumming of his socked feet. Then he leapt into the Atlantic.

  20 JIMMY COATES: DESTROYER

  Lieutenant-Commander Love sat alone in the command centre of HMS Enforcer. His head was in his hands. Then a voice crackled through his intercom.

  “Sir, we’re getting some irregularities on our system. Possible engine failure. Do you see that?”

  Love snapped out of his reverie and studied his control panel. “It’s not on my system,” he said. “Are you sure about this?”

  “We’re sure, sir. We’re going to have to abandon ship.”

  “Abandon ship?” Love scoffed. “That’s ridiculous. It’s probably a technical problem on your console. Or what if it’s a trick? Those rebels could have worked out how to get inside the system and—”

  “Nevertheless, sir, we need to follow protocol on this.”

  Love clenched his fists. “No!” he shouted. “We can’t abandon ship until we’ve found a way out of this… situation. If we leave before I’ve secured the mine, I’ll be discharged, or court-martialled, or… worse.”

  “Sorry, sir,” came the response. “It’s protocol. I’m issuing the alert now.” Suddenly the lights in the command centre cut out and were replaced by a flashing red alarm, accompanied by a siren. “See you at the lifeboats, sir.”

  “I’m not coming!” Love roared. “You can’t make me!” He ran to the door and locked himself in. “Cowards!”

  As soon as he turned back to his console, the door crashed open behind him. Love spun round, but too slowly to catch sight of the intruder.

  “Who’s that?” he hissed, twisting to search the shadows of the room. His hand jumped to the service revolver on his belt. Before his fingers touched the handle, he felt a b
low on the side of his head so strong that he thought one of the ship’s missiles had been aimed at his brain. That was his last thought before he blacked out.

  Love’s limp body slumped to the floor. Standing over it was Jimmy Coates.

  Love wasn’t dead. In fact Jimmy hadn’t even struck him that hard – just a sharp and precise stab with his fingertips into the occipital artery beneath Love’s ear. The split-second surge of blood to Love’s brain intensified the sensations of his nerves, then caused the blackout.

  Jimmy waited a few minutes, until he could see from the control panel that all of the lifeboats had been launched, then quickly dragged Love out of the command centre. Within minutes he had placed three flotation aids on the Lieutenant-Commander, hauled him overboard and returned to the controls. The cold water will bring him round, Jimmy thought.

  Now Jimmy stood alone in the command centre, the thrill of the mission rushing through his veins. The blood pumping in his head drowned out the sea, the wind and the rolling of the ship. His entire body was exhilarated. His eyes flitted over the vast desk of screens, thirsty for information. He was buzzing, but at the same time he felt supremely calm, as if his natural emotions were locked down.

  The French had manipulated him for too long, just like the Americans and the British before them. Now was his chance to make sure nobody ever tried to take advantage of him again. At the same time he could make certain that Stovorsky brought his family to safety.

  But his mother and sister faded further and further from Jimmy’s mind. That thought throbbed in his head again: Destroy. At first he wanted to control it, but then he focused on it. He revelled in it. This is what he was here for.

  His hands moved around the controls as easily as if he was answering an email on a home computer. He didn’t understand how to control a Royal Navy destroyer, but he could feel it. His commands went straight from the deepest part of his subconscious directly into the operating system of the ship’s navigational computer.