by Andy Lucas
But that was not going to work with these people for long. They would simply wait to see if another young woman turned up at the flat. When she didn’t, because Baker already knew Charlene lived there alone from his own surveillance, they would realise they had been tricked. Then they would find a way inside and murder her.
Naturally, he had no intention of allowing that to happen. Still smarting from the recent loss of Pace and Hammond, seemingly drowned in a frigid, unforgiving sea, he was doubly determined to prevent another death.
The game play had unfolded before his eyes and he was already in his car; an unassuming Ford Focus, by the time Charlene’s car emerged from the rear alley and turned onto the road.
He followed her tail lights into the hotel car park, where he watched her go inside to book herself a room. Once clear, he presented his fake police credentials to a wide-eyed receptionist, noted down the phone number for Charlene’s room, swore the frightened woman to secrecy with threats of the Official Secrets Act, and quickly returned to his car to await the arrival of the killers, which didn’t take very long.
The rest was history. He couldn’t justify taking them out in a public area; it would be too messy and you never knew who was watching in these days of camera phones and tablets that recorded the slightest oddity for uploading to a multitude of social media sites. Although McEntire’s security operatives had no traceable links to the Corporation, they were still under standing orders to avoid all public action unless there was no alternative.
Sadly, this meant that sometimes they had to stand back and watch innocent people becoming victims, like the poor receptionist.
Hardened, from years of fighting, killing and, sometimes, losing people, Baker did not even pause in his stride as he passed by the empty front desk and followed the killers up to Charlene’s room. Once inside, their fate was sealed and he had dispatched them cleanly, each with a single, silenced bullet to the head.
Getting Charlene out by the back door, Baker used a small, handheld jamming device to blur the hotel’s bank of CCTV cameras and erase all existing footage, bundling her into his car and driving away quickly into the wet night.
Several hours later, surprised that she had managed to fall asleep on the long drive, possibly lulled by the warmth of the heater and the rhythm of the flashing street lamps, Charlene sat up and watched intently as the car swept into the underground car park of the impressive McEntire Headquarters in Liverpool Street.
A ride in a plush elevator took them both straight up to the secure floor at the very top, where they were greeted by the ever-watchful Rachel, who ushered them quickly inside McEntire’s office, where he was waiting for them.
Charlene had no idea where she was, or who the short, portly, balding man was who suddenly thrust his firm, warm hand into her own. She was an astute reader of faces, however, and clearly read genuine concern and compassion in the man’s eyes. She was stunned when he introduced himself as Doyle McEntire.
Although she hadn’t recognised his face, she knew the name well enough, which made his involvement impossible to understand. Given her recent near-death experience and subsequent car drive with her strange new guardian, it was at least a surprise that she managed to swallow without bursting into tears.
Leading her over to one of the conference table seats, McEntire allowed her to sit down before sliding a cup of fresh tea over to her. Instinctively, Charlene reached for the cup and sipped the hot, slightly too milky, liquid. Her shoulders slumped, sensing that she was finally safe.
As McEntire and Baker withdraw a few feet to have a hurriedly muttered conversation, the missing tears welled up and fell from her eyes, silently and without any theatrical wracking.
After a few minutes, the tears ran dry and she dabbed her swollen eyes with tissue from a hastily-produced box. Doyle McEntire and Baker then sat down either side of her.
McEntire smiled at her with the eyes of a father. She was younger than Sarah and he pitied her because he knew the horrendous situation she was now in, even if she did not.
‘Miss Pringle,’ he began softly, ‘I am so sorry that you have had to go through such an ordeal but I assure you that you are safe now, here, with us.’
‘But why am I here?’ she asked. ‘You are Doyle McEntire. Your company is huge, everywhere. I hear your name all the time on the news, or read about you in the newspapers. Why am I meeting you,’ she checked her watch briefly, ‘at three in the morning, in your private office, together with someone who just saved me from being killed?’
‘Unfortunately, there are things that I cannot tell you,’ explained McEntire slowly. ‘My involvement has been requested on the grounds of national security, by the government. Your involvement, before you ask, links purely to your heritage.’
‘My heritage?’
‘More specifically, your surname and its relation to a missing First World War submariner.’
‘Paul Pringle?’ She was incredulous. ‘People are trying to kill me because I’m related to someone who vanished a hundred years ago? That’s ridiculous!’
‘Ridiculous, but nonetheless true,’ Baker interjected. ‘Please listen carefully.’
‘You’re right to say that this all happened nearly a century ago, Miss Pringle.’
‘Call me Charlene, please.’
‘Charlene,’ McEntire corrected himself. ‘When Paul Pringle’s submarine disappeared, it was carrying a valuable cargo.’ He raised a hand up towards her, palm facing. ‘Please don’t ask what it was because I cannot tell you.’
‘Okay, I wasn’t going to ask though,’ she lied convincingly.
‘Until very recently, nothing was known about his fate, or that of the submarine, until his body was uncovered in the sands of a desert in Africa. A diary was with his body and it gave clues to what happened, and more importantly, where the submarine could be found.’
‘Including the mysterious cargo?’ she guessed.
McEntire nodded gravely. ‘The cargo belongs to the British Government and, naturally they want it back. They asked me to use my resources, which are considerable, as you pointed out, to help them. As a patriot, Charlene, I was happy to help.’ He failed to explain the full remit of the McEntire Corporation.
‘Oh, okay,’ she muttered, simply accepting the explanation at face value. ‘That doesn’t explain why those men were planning to kill me.’
McEntire himself had no idea why ARC would want her dead. She posed no threat to them and the K-19 was now firmly being stripped of her gold by one of his leased salvage vessels, guarded night and day by a British warship. He had known about her existence but hadn’t spared a thought that any of Pringle’s surviving relatives might be harmed.
‘I have no idea,’ he responded truthfully. ‘But there are other people out there who fancy getting their hands on his old submarine. Maybe they think you know something about where to find it.’
Charlene snorted. ‘Fat chance. I was never able to find out anything about Paul, other than the real basics. It’s as if his records vanished when the submarine did.’
‘They wouldn’t know that,’ said Baker, eyeing her thoughtfully. ‘It’s common for family heirlooms to be passed down the line. They probably think you have some records, or maybe even another diary, that will clue them in to the whereabouts of the K-19.’ Like McEntire, he left out the key fact that the submarine had been found a few weeks earlier, by a couple of good men who were now lost at sea.
Suddenly, Charlene was overcome by a tangible wave of fatigue and the colour drained from her cheeks, spurring Baker to step outside and give Rachel some orders. McEntire gave her a drink of water to sip, watching her closely. He had planned to send her to one of their impregnable safe-houses with Baker, and a small team, but he knew he would need his best man at his side as the threat from ARC appeared to be ramping up fast.
So he made a decision, then a quick call.
Baker returned with a blanket, quickly followed by Rachel, who carried a bowl of hot chicken soup
and some fresh bread rolls. The smell snapped Charlene from her nausea and she suddenly realised how hungry she was.
Baker carefully draped the blanket around her shoulders while she gratefully tucked into the food. Her immediate job done, Rachel withdrew back to her sentinel’s post outside the door.
McEntire beckoned him over to his desk, away from the conference table where Charlene was eating.
‘I’ve rung Sarah. She did not answer but I left a message. She has just text to say she is on her way here. She has been beside herself since James was lost and I think looking after our guest might be exactly what the doctor ordered.’
‘Where?’
‘James’s place,’ he replied.
That made sense. Baker already had one of his best security operatives watching over the little woodland and the floating base was invisible to anyone who didn’t know where to look. Worst case scenario, he thought, the tethers and rope bridge could be cut and the base flown away to safety. He nodded his approval.
Charlene was nearly falling asleep in the remnants of her soup when Sarah arrived, looking drawn and tired. She agreed to help her father out but wanted to be as far away from the McEntire Corporation as possible in every other respect. As far as she was concerned, the Corporation had led the man she loved to his death. Anger bubbled beneath the surface and it would come out soon enough, but not just yet. It was unable to push through the heavy film of grief and sorrow that floated above it like a destructive oil slick.
McEntire barely exchanged a dozen words with his daughter before he watched her ease Charlene up out of her chair and guide her out of the door. McEntire had no need to follow her; instead he sat behind his desk and applied his impressive intellect back to the pressing matters at hand.
ARC, Josephine Roche, K-19 and the secrets of Project Scorpion.
Baker escorted the women back to James’s home personally. Sarah had driven herself so he had to content himself with tailing her, keeping close on her rear bumper until he watched her car park up in the little woodland lay-by. Without waiting, they ascended the ladder that was bolted against the huge tree.
A quick comms check with the unseen guard eased any final doubts before he spun his car around and headed back to London. He knew he would soon be on his way to track down the killers of James and Max, whoever they were, and this was one assignment that he planned to relish.
Baker was seething at their loss and even more wounded because he knew, instinctively, that his own security systems had somehow been breached. A traitor, or traitors, needed to be smoked out and dealt with.
3
As the helicopter beat a hasty retreat towards the safety of the nearby ice shelf, it left behind a scene of recent destruction that was already beginning to disperse in the choppy, cold waves. Within a couple of minutes, the collection of floating debris had separated and the individual fragments were lost to the eye.
If the helicopter had hung around, and paid a little more attention to the white caps, the crew might have noticed two tiny yellow hoods floating amongst the flotsam. The majority of the two men’s bright immersion suits hung, concealed, beneath the dark water but their hoods, pulled around their heads and sealed tightly to leave purely their faces exposed to the weather, bobbed clearly amidst the wreckage.
Luckily, the shooters had been more interested in closing the side door and huddling back around the cabin heaters to pay too much attention below. After all, they had stitched the little vessel with bullets until it came apart before their eyes. Nobody could have survived and, even if they were floating in the icy waves, wounded, the cold water would finish the job of killing them within a few minutes.
Supremely confident of a job well done, they had underestimated their victims’ resourcefulness.
Not that this helped Pace and Hammond very much. They were still floating, without hope of rescue, miles from an unseen shoreline in waters so cold that even their immersion suits would not keep them alive forever.
‘Not my idea of a fun time,’ grinned Hammond, just before a wave washed over his head and drowned out anything he was about to say next. Resurfacing, spluttering for breath, face frozen and already growing numb, the adventurous accountant knew they were in serious trouble.
‘I thought you liked the water?’ shot back Pace evenly. ‘You’ve done enough diving all over the world.’
‘Not in the bloody Antarctic,’ Hammond chuckled, despite their predicament. ‘I’m not crazy enough to be any ice diver. I like warm, blue seas, with endless visibility, preferably in the company of several beautiful female divers.’ His teeth began to chatter and he clenched them to regain control.
Pace and Hammond naturally swam together and Pace used some hanging clips on his suit to tether them so they would not be separated by the waves.
‘Any idea how long we have, in these things?’ he asked.
‘Not really,’ replied Hammond. ‘I haven’t kept up to speed on these newer suits. The older ones would keep you alive, in these seas, for about six hours. A little less if the waves are rough and you keep getting your head dunked. Hopefully the newer suits might double that time.’
‘Maybe a day? Okay, that’s not long. What do you want to do?’
Hammond did not respond immediately. His face suddenly took on a puzzled expression and both his arms disappeared below the water, as if he was patting his body down. Then a relieved grin broke across his lips as a glimmer of hope lit up inside him.
‘I think we’ll have longer than that,’ he stated. ‘I kept knocking my hand on a hard attachment by my waist.’ Pace had done the same thing several times since entering the water.
‘And?’
‘These aren’t just new immersion suits, they’re inflatable ones. These things only hit the market recently but McEntire must have already kitted out his ships with them. Good old Doyle.’
Less than a minute later, Hammond had worked out how to activate the inflation device. A twisting motion of the activator switch punctured several tiny CO2 bottles and instantly inflated air bladders, effectively turning the suit into an inflatable boat, lifting his body a few inches out of the water, including an inflated pillow beneath his head.
Hammond could not turn over or move very much but he knew he’d just added another twelve hours, or more, to his survival time by taking his body out of the water.
Pace followed his lead and the two men soon floated, barely a foot apart, on their backs. Warm and dry in their watertight suits, though battered by the high swells and regularly doused in the face by icy water, they still needed a plan.
‘Back to my question,’ called Pace, louder now that they were both unable to look at each other properly. ‘As I see it, land can’t be very far away. Do we swim, on our backs and try and get there or do we risk activating the emergency beacons in these suits. If McEntire’s people are close, they might get to us before that helicopter returns.’
‘If Miss Chambers gets back here first, we’re definitely dead,’ replied Hammond. ‘I’d rather take my chances with a long swim. We should be able to get a fair distance now the suits are so buoyant. How far do you figure we’ll need to go?’
Pace thought for a moment. ‘I think we might be able to get there in a day, if the sea is kind.’
‘Better that than a bullet,’ snapped Hammond. ‘Let’s go for it.’ He paused. ‘Which way?’
Pace used a hanging, waterproof compass dangling from his suit to check a southerly course and pointed. ‘That way.’
‘Full steam ahead!’ Hammond barked, almost immediately regretting opening his mouth wide as he swallowed a mouthful of sea water that splashed up over his chin.
Finding himself invigorated at the possibility of cheating death again, Pace turned his head to the south and started kicking. If the sea had been calm, it might even have been fun, like lying on a lilo. Next to him, Hammond mirrored his actions and the unlikely pair steeled themselves for a long, hard paddle.
The weather, for once, became
their friend. The skies cleared and a blanket of twinkling stars lit the heavens in a way that eased some of the fear from the men’s souls.
Kick, kick, paddle, paddle. Repeat.
Talking reduced to a minimum as they conserved their energy. They did not even switch on their flashing, emergency suit lights for fear of attracting unwanted attention. Committed, they fell into a determined silence, where only the splashing of their suited hands and feet could be heard above a low wind that continued to mildly agitate the ocean’s surface.
Minutes turned into hours but they kept on doggedly striking out for the coast, somewhere ahead of them, occasionally marvelling as they swam past small chunks of free-floating ice and gazed, in wonderment, at the moonlight glistening off the icy walls of several impressive icebergs, glittering on the undulating horizon.
Time crept by until, eventually, the sky lightened. Normally, Pace enjoyed sunrise, psychologically preferring daylight to darkness, but with this morning there came a true sense of their desolation.
The main problem was thirst; they were both feeling very dry. Their exit from the lifeboat had been so sudden that there had been no time to take anything with them. They had barely made it into their survival suits.
‘I could kill a coffee,’ said Hammond, his eyes alight with a fierce determination that was not mimicked by his blue, frozen expression. ‘Make mine an espresso.’
‘I’d prefer a mug of tea,’ replied Pace, smiling as best he could with his own face numb and unresponsive. ‘With a chocolate biscuit.’
‘If we were back in the desert, at least we might find a mirage to ease our pains,’ Hammond decided. ‘I’m really not big on this ice and snow malarkey, you know?’
‘I’d never have guessed.’
There was no point hanging around. There was only empty water on the horizon so they got going again. Lying on their backs, in their inflated immersion suits, their only break from the monotony above was an increase in the volume of curious gulls and cormorants, wheeling and squawking above them. Some even plopped down in the water close by, as if checking their eyes had not deceived them.