by A M Kirk
General Locke began. “I’m sorry to call you two out of your beds at this goddam time in the morning, but it’s ten thirty British time and people have been up and doing for some time over there.”
Locke was a grim faced man at the best of times, a veteran of many conflicts. He was overall Commander–in-Chief of the Cheyenne facility and Bruce reported directly to him. Locke was now even more grim faced than usual as he held up Bruce’s report on the recent satellite “behavioural anomalies”. “Give this to me in words of one syllable that a backwoods bumpkin like myself can understand, Major.”
Bruce smiled faintly. Locke liked to assume the backwoods bumpkin persona, but Bruce knew damn well that Locke had graduated top of his class at West Point, had lectured at several military academies in the States and abroad, and possessed two (non-honorary) degrees, one in physics, the other in languages. No, this was no racoon-hatted yokel.
“And – “ Locke continued, “ – we’re linking up with Stirling. They need to hear this. General Miller, good morning.”
The viewscreen came on right on cue. “Morning, Herb. Good to see you again. I’m routing this to some others as well, if you don’t mind. Lucas here is an experienced analyst, as well as my aide, and I thought it essential to keep the General Officer Commanding Scotland in the loop. You know Andrew Talbot, of course.”
“Of course – how are you Andrew?” The screen divided into different sections so that the faces of all concerned could be seen.
“Now, what’s this about, Herb?” asked Miller.
“I’m going to turn this over to Major Jack Bruce, Aaron. He’s produced a report on the recent Nordik IV business. I think you ought to hear it from him. Major? The floor is yours.”
“Gentlemen,” Bruce began, in his apparently confident unflappable style – but in fact he was more than a little apprehensive about reporting to this assembly of big names and ranks. “Three times in the last fifteen days, our control of the Nordik IV satellite has been compromised. The first time its attitude was altered a fraction of a degree so that, if the weapon were to fire, it would strike several miles to the west of the original target.”
“In other words,” said Locke, “it was no longer targeted on the Soros ship.”
“That’s right sir. We ran systems checks, and everything came up five by five. There was no signal received by the satellite that could have ousted our control and established another control. We verified that with all civilian and military radio frequency monitoring stations. No radio signal of any kind was sent to the satellite.”
“So what caused it to move?” asked Miller.
“We don’t know, sir. But the other two anomalies were, as you know, more serious, for on those occasions the weapon was actually fired. At first we thought human error, then we checked the system for glitches. Everything checked out fine, sir. It was like the satellite suddenly developed a mind of its own.”
“But we all know that cannot happen,” said Locke. “There is no way the comparatively simple systems in the satellite can become independent. It’s not a thinking machine, it does as we tell it.”
“So we began to look for another kind of interference.”
“What do you mean? Some physical presence up there?” asked Miller.
“We even checked for that, too, sir.”
“How?” asked Miller.
“We trained Hubble on the Nordik IV. The imaging was as clear as your holiday snaps, sir. There was nothing unusual. But then we scanned for radiation traces. We were doing that yesterday, sir, when the last anomaly occurred.”
“And what did you find?” asked Locke.
“Some sort of electro-magnetic beam was directed at the satellite.”
Silence fell heavily in conference room four. All were thinking the same thing – not a radio wave; an electro-magnetic beam: we do not have the technology for that.
It was General Talbot who asked the next question: “And what was the source of this beam?”
Bruce opened his hands in a gesture that echoed his words. “We don’t know, sir. We think it came roughly from the arctic region, but we can’t be sure. If it happens again, we may be able to find out more.”
Locke then phrased the question in everyone’s minds. “Could this have come from the Soros?”
“No one on earth has the technology to create such beam, yet. To my mind there can be no other explanation.”
Miller now looked uncomfortable. “Gentlemen,” he said, “yesterday I had an interview with their Number One. During that interview he suggested that terrorists were responsible for the explosions. He even produced pictures of two suspects. Their faces should be appearing on your viewscreens now.” The same images that had been seen by the policeman on the train were now transmitted across the Atlantic, as well notes on the biographical information analysts had managed to collate so far. “The police are looking for them as we speak. But from what I have heard now, there seems to be only one conclusion: the Soros have been lying to us.”
“But what the hell are they up to?” asked Locke. “It just doesn’t make any sense for the Soros to be trying to kill this… doctor and her son.”
“There may be some connection with the organisation called the ‘Human Freedom League’,” said Miller. “Our Criminal Intelligence people have been looking into them for some time; so have MI5. They are a highly organised group, and their resources are simply not known to us. They have rallies from time to time and they indulge in a lot of talk, and they’ve made various threats about ridding the planet of what they see as ‘the alien menace’, but they’ve also been implicated in some raids on high level security bases where some weapons and explosives have gone missing. And what is more, we have a report from MI5 that the League is suspected of – how shall I say this? – obtaining some weapons grade uranium from the old decommissioned Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria.”
“So these guys are more than just grumbling fanatics?” said Locke.
“As I said,” replied Miller, “they are highly organised, with unknown resources. Their leaders have skilfully eluded our efforts to identify them and they operate a clever cell network very difficult to penetrate, since so much of their communication is over the Supernet.”
“Could they have gained control of Nordik IV on those occasions?” asked Talbot.
“I don’t think that’s likely, but we cannot rule it out.”
If Locke had been grim-faced at the start of the conference he was even more so now. At last he said, “This does not look like a heart-warming situation, gentlemen. What do we propose to do now?”
It was General Talbot who defined the only courses of action open, and concluded, “If you continue to monitor the situation, gentlemen, I can promise you we will make it our top priority to trace those two people and find out why somebody – and I would emphasise we do not yet know who – appears to want them dead.”
16Out of the frying pan…
The massive slope of Ben Dorain reared up dauntingly steep on their left as Janette and Mark made what speed they could down to the body of the man who had tried to kill them a few moments before. The slope was covered in awkward tussocks that made going difficult but after a couple of minutes they had descended to where the body lay. There was no doubt he was dead.
Mark turned away, feeling sick again.
Janette calmly knelt beside the body and examined briefly. “Broken neck,” she muttered. She felt inside the man’s jacket for some identification. “No identification,” she said. “But this is birdwatcher-man. I saw him board the train back at the station.”
Mark forced himself to look at the man’s face. His first sight of a dead human being. He could not help but feel a profound sense of waste and the pity of it all. It does not have to be this way. He turned away.
“A phone… oh, it’s broken. Dark glasses,” said Janette. “A member of the Human Freedom League, perhaps. Why would that lot be after us?”
“The train’s stopped,�
� said Mark. “People will be coming. There might be more like him.”
“Oh, God! What the hell do we do now?”
Mark moved back up the slope a little way and bent down, picking something up. When he turned round Janette saw her son was holding the odd-looking gun. “We run away,” he said. “And we might as well take this with us.” He pointed up the small glen that angled north-east away from the bridge and the road. There was a clearly defined Landrover track. “That way.”
Janette sighed. She looked at her shoes, her skirt, her thin clothing. “Shit,” she said. “Our bags are still on the train. My phone! My purse!”
“Come on, mum,” said Mark, heading down the slope.
Muttering curses to fend off despair she followed her son.
A fairly wide river had to be crossed before they reached the track, and although it was shallow and fordable, their feet got wet. Progress was slow, for they were not equipped for this and Janette’s shoes offered very little protection from sharp stones or support for ankles. But they managed to keep going at a jog-trot pace for a kilometre or so and then they were out of sight of the people from the train who by now had ventured out on to the track.
The sides of the glen loomed to the right and left of them as they ventured further along the track. Sheep viewed their passage with a range of reactions from panic to indifferent detachment. After twenty minutes the track crossed the river by a small plantation of sitka spruce and Janette called a halt.
“Need water,” she said, and cupped her hands to drink from the river. “Not as fit as once was.” She slurped the water noisily.
“Is that safe?” asked Mark.
“Don’t care,” replied Janette. “We don’t have any choice.”
Mark drank too.
“You know, Marky, your dad used to do all this sort of thing – walking, trekking. I made a few trips with him but was never really what you might call an enthusiast. I picked up a few things, though. The first one was that people die in the wild, especially if they don’t have the right gear. Clothes get wet, body heat is lost and next thing you know you’re in big trouble. And the second thing was how easy it is to get lost. Something strange happens to people who are not too used to being out in the open. They get ‘bewildered’. It’s what the word ‘bewildered’ actually means – confused by the wild. Open space confuses the inexperienced. I’m confused now. I don’t know how far we’ve come, I don’t know where this valley leads, I’m frightened, and soon we’ll both be hungry…”
Mark put a comforting arm around Janette as she sank down to sit on a boulder. “It’s all right, mum.”
Janette could not stop the tears. Quietly at first she began to cry, and then huge sobs convulsed her. The events and emotions of the last twenty-four hours were finally taking their toll. She gave in to despair.
**********
Logan rendezvoused with two of his men at the garage in Tyndrum and from there drove them to the wide track that led down to Auch farm, just a kilometre from the horseshoe curve. From this position he could see the train, still unmoving on the track above Auch Glen. They stood by the bonnet of Logan’s Jeep, studying an Ordnance Survey map of the area.
“We’re here,” Logan’s finger jabbed the area indicating the farm, “the train’s there on that curve, see?”
The two men, Henderson and Johns, looked from map to landscape and back to map. They saw.
“The woman and the boy jumped from the train here – “ another jab of the finger, “- and Cameron went with them. I think Cameron’s injured or dead. I want you to find Cameron. If he’s injured, one of you get him out of there, if he’s dead get any identification and get his gun. We don’t want the police finding our weapons.”
“Understood, Logan,” replied Henderson, the taller of the two men.
“However it goes with Cameron, I also want at least one of you to go up this valley here – Auch Glen. I think they’re on the run now, and they’ve headed up that way. There’s no place else for them to go unless the head up the hillsides and I don’t think they’ll try that, the slopes are too steep. Now, this track leads round to Loch Lyon. From there they can make their way to Killin. It’ll take them a day, but they might make it. I don’t want them to make it. They’ve got a half hour start. You should be able to catch them no problem. The orders now are to find them and kill them – simple as that. They’re an important link in the plans for alien invasion and they’ve got to be eliminated. Understood?”
Both men nodded eagerly. This was what they had joined the League for in the first place.
“Right – get to it. I’ll drive round to the other side of Loch Lyon and pick you up from there. That’s your exit point. Don’t come back this way for this place’ll be teeming with police shortly, I’m pretty sure. Here, take the map. Get going.”
He watched as his men picked up their small, light rucksacks. These guys knew the area; they would not let him down; they would not let the League down.
**********
At 11.30, in the Criminal Intelligence Service Headquarters based in the quiet countryside outside Erskine on the south-west fringes of Glasgow, in the office of one of the three Directors of the CIS, the interface on Chief Inspector Chris Roberts’ desk began to display information that aroused his interest. One section of the split screen was constantly updated with data from sources all over the UK. Reports originating from the Central Scotland section had been centring on apparently gas-main-related explosions and one of Roberts’ briefs was the investigation of terrorist activity. Two people, a mother and her son, were being sought in connection with the incidents. More data from the same source was streaming in.
Roberts was more than usually tired this morning, evidenced by the dark half-circles under his eyes. Little Sally, his six-month-old baby daughter, had been up half the night with a sickness bug. His wife Jacqueline’s stamina had lasted until three this morning, at which point Roberts had taken over. Fortunately the baby’s temperature had subsided and visit to the hospital, at the back of his mind as an option, was rendered unnecessary. But a night like that was enough to take the edge off performance at his kind of work. He half wondered if the sickness bug hadn’t been transferred to him, he felt so lousy. But now, as Roberts looked at his terminal viewscreen and read the latest reports, thoughts of fatigue and illness began to recede.
However, apart from two mysterious explosions, the interface screen now revealed that a policeman had been murdered on a train from Fort William on the West Highland Line. The killer – not yet identified - had jumped from the train and been killed himself. It appeared that the killer had been chasing the same two people whose names and faces had cropped up in the explosion reports: Doctor Janette Daniels and her son, Mark.
Chris Roberts never forgot a name. And when metaphorical alarm bells began to sound in his mind it only took him a moment’s thought to recapture the circumstances of his first acquaintance with the name of Janette Daniels.
Roberts had once arrested her husband on suspicion of terrorist involvement. At the time, after investigation, it had turned out that the husband, John, had been no more than a bit of a cranky fool involved in student hot-headedness. Charges had been dropped, eventually. Roberts recalled hearing that a missing person report had been filed for him shortly after that and he finally turned up claiming some alien abduction nonsense.
Strange, though, that the name should crop up again now.
As one of the Directors of the Criminal Intelligence Section, Roberts could mobilise considerable resources. He lost no time in doing so now. Within fifteen minutes a helicopter was ready and waiting for him on the large flat roof of the Headquarters building.
Before boarding, he placed a high-security call to General Aaron Miller, the Museum Military Commanding Officer at Stirling, who seemed to be in flap about this Daniels family’s activities. After a brief conversation, beneficial to both parties, Roberts was seated in the helicopter climbing high over Renfrewshire and tur
ning in a wide sweep to head north over the low Kilpatrick Hills as rapidly as possible.
16 Closing In…
Logan is putting the pedal to the metal. He is hammering back down the road to Tyndrum before he races towards Killin. Other members of the League continue to stand by or are on their way to Loch Lyon already. He has been busy with the G5, mounted now on the dashboard.
Its viewscreen lights up as he takes a sharp bend a little too quickly. But the four-wheel drive holds the road and he relents a little. He recognises the site instantly. It is the Chairman. He listens as the voice tells him of his new instructions. These sound difficult to accomplish, he thinks, but the Chairman has read his thought, it seems, for everything necessary is at hand…
**********
Ten minutes have now elapsed since the two members of the League, Henderson and Johns, set off in pursuit of their targets. They are dressed for the occasion, wearing lightweight trousers and synthetic t-shirts. Their small rucksacks bob without trouble on their backs and the tough trainers on their feet are ideal for this kind of rough track-jogging.
They do no speak much. They have little to say. They had not met until today. The only things that unite them are an unthinking hatred of all things alien, and a complete willingness to do whatever the Chairman, or his representative, tells them.
Train passengers peer through the windows and point at the two running figures as they move towards the bridge of the horseshoe curve. Some speculate that they might be policemen. They are seen to check the other’s lifeless body before moving on, obviously in pursuit of the other two.
There is no ID on Cameron, as Janette had already discovered, but they are concerned that they cannot find the gun. They spend some minutes scouring the sloping, tussocky ground for it, but without success. They reach the same conclusion, that it has been picked up by their targets, and resume their jogging pursuit. They notice the broken mobile phone but fail to pay it any more than a cursory glance. Once out of sight of the gawping passengers they take out their own guns. It is as well to be prepared. It is no good jogging into an ambush.