by Ru Pringle
‘Don’t know. Didn’t ask.’
‘Why? And why did you help her?’
‘She needed help.’
‘What is this, a fucking monastery?’
‘We had no idea who she was, and when we found out we asked her to leave. She did, without protest.’
‘Why did you not try to detain her?’
The man laughed. ‘You’re joking, right? We’re farmers. We’d no idea how dangerous she might be. All we want is to avoid trouble. Either from her, or from you.’
Something made you believe him, although you’re pretty sure there are things he hasn’t told you. You make a mental note to request a follow-up visit, but that’s not your job. Your job now is negotiating the seven kilometres of sea and one kilometre of road between you and Tayvallich as quickly as possible, because for some reason the satellite link is down and, again, for no reason you can fathom, the Luddites in the hippy armpit you’ve just left don’t have a boat with an engine.
Also, because you’ve finally realised where she’s headed.
There’s no single bit of proof. Just a nebulous pattern emerging. Combined with a feel for the available options, and a sense you’re starting to get of Coira Keir as a person. It’s little more than a hunch, if you’re honest. But the more you think about it, the more right it feels.
What was your goal here, all along? You weren’t flying in desperation. You had a rendezvous pre-arranged. With someone who was going to spirit you away – quite literally under the state’s radar.
By powerboat. Linking with either a plane – a floatplane maybe? – or a seagoing vessel of some kind. Perhaps even with a submarine.
Could it be the Russians?
Her rendezvous would have to be somewhere someone could loiter in plain view, near – or on – a boat, without attracting attention. Ideally somewhere close enough to the war zone to distract the local authorities, but not too close, and with a maze of nearby islands to use as cover. Somewhere off major roads, and not near a town. Where you wouldn’t go if you didn’t already know it was there.
An isolated marina.
Craobh Haven.
As you donk-donk-donk into the bay, you don’t bother slowing: you just run the boat straight on to the gravel beach. Its miserable speed doesn’t take it far, and you jump from the bow into water up to your knees. There’s a road nearby. A lone car, a good thirty years old, with holes eaten into the metalwork along the edges of the doors and wings, is parked on the verge. A Dacia Sandero: a basic, analogue model that’s immune to your universal key, but which you know how to hot-wire.
It’s locked, so you break the glass. As you pop the bonnet to bypass the key circuit, an irate man approaches, but runs off when you squeeze off a couple of rounds at his feet from your rapid-fire Walther P99 pistol.
The fucking battery is dead.
It’s less than a kilometre to the car. You sigh heavily and start to run.
By the time you radio it in ten minutes later, you’re sufficiently anxious and out of breath for the operator to ask for you to repeat the message.
IN THE OPS ROOM, for the first time since the finding of Keir’s car, the mood is quietly jubilant. Ultimately, it’s a single officer’s glorified hunch, but it feels like a result.
And it makes perfect sense. This Craobh Haven marina – bizarrely pronounced Kroov Haven, according to James Fields – is somewhere few people would visit without knowing where and what it was. The marina is sheltered. And almost deserted. The perfect place for someone to wait quietly with a powerboat. Presumably before heading out west for a rendezvous with a bigger boat offshore.
Sebastian kicks himself for not ensuring he was better informed.
As luck would have it, there’s an MI5 officer already under cover at the marina, compiling a dossier on arms smugglers. Lorna ’phones the man’s handler. After a tense ten minutes the handler comes back saying that while his agent isn’t happy at the prospect of blowing his cover, he’ll do what he has to.
‘How d’you want to play this, chief?’ Fields is asking. ‘Should we get a tactical squad up there? Block off the roads?’
Sebastian hesitates before shaking his head. ‘We already know a smuggling ring uses the marina. They’ll know the area, and they’ll have lookouts. We have to do this quietly. We can’t do anything that risks spooking anyone.’
He faces Soo-Ling Campbell.
‘Any night-capable drones we can get there?’
‘Timescale?’
‘ASAFP.’
Campbell extends a bud-like bottom lip. Her doll-like appearance is deceptive: from his files on her, she’s one of the most field-hardened officers here. ‘Nothing military-grade. I’ve been holding a team in Oban just in case – they’ve a couple of light four-rotor jobs in the car. Day-vision only, designed for proximity, but the marina’s well-lit and they’re quiet. Images would be grainy, but …’
‘How soon can they be there?’
‘With the state of the roads, probably … fifty minutes?’
‘Tell them to hurry.’
Sebastian tells everyone he’s going for a coffee. Instead, he takes himself to an empty room and makes a ’phone call.
The briefing he gives is a little counter-intuitive, but he knows the recipient and his team are up to the task.
‘She could appear any minute, so get your men in position, fast as you can. Be advised, the barman is one of ours. Repeat: the barman is ours. Contain him if you have to; otherwise avoid engaging. There’ll be lookouts, so come overland. Maintain stealth until you go hot. When you do, stay in character at all costs – and if she doesn’t show, I want no evidence you were ever there.
‘Do what you have to. Just remember, she’s no use to us dead.’
CHAPTER 19
______________
Craobh Haven
‘WHAT DO YOU THINK?’
The two women are lying prone at the crest of a wind-whipped heathery knoll. In the distance, beyond the islands guarding the entrance to the marina, the lights of Craobh Haven are twinkling. To their right, too close for comfort, is a grandiose, slightly fake-looking castle. According to the map, this is Shuna House. Amazingly, given the state of things, it’s floodlit. Just visible in the water to the left are the circular cages of an abandoned fish-farm.
Through the binoculars donated by Hedge Trimmer, Coira can see just half a dozen boats at the floodlit marina. Three are burly-looking liveaboard power boats of the type she’d have expected, in her previous life, to investigate for illegal drugs shipments. The other three are all serious-looking sailing catamarans that billionaires might own. Lights are on in every boat. She suspects their owners are hedging their bets. Ready either to jump ashore or set sail at the drop of a hat, should prospects in either medium become too “interesting”.
She wonders if one of the powerboats belongs to her contact. She hopes so. The attraction of leaving this whole fucked-up scenario as fast as humanly possible is overwhelming. She searches the hulls for Scandinavian-looking names, but they’re too distant to make anything out.
Several vehicles are in the car park. Behind the marina is a cluster of white-painted buildings. Their lights are also on. She knows one of them is a hotel (at least, it used to be), and another’s one of those places that sells sailing equipment. A chandlery? The rest she isn’t sure about – houses, maybe?
She gnaws her lip.
‘Maybe we could try a reconnaissance run.’
THEY PUSH OFF FROM THE SHORE, setting the engine at its quietest burble. Karen has rallied, displaying a fierce resolve the girl didn’t have before. Coira finds this amazing. Had she been through what Karen has, she’s fairly certain she’d be deep in shock and incapable of anything.
Having time to kill, she quietly asks where the girl is from.
‘Derbyshire. A farm near Matlock. They offered my family land on Luing, as part of the North Britain Resettlement Project. We’ve been there thr
ee years.’
Coira stiffens. Tries to be charitable. Not her fault.
‘How long were … were you …? That shed?’
Karen shudders. ‘Six days.’ Spittle sprays through her teeth as she says this. ‘They got me early. Mummy and Daddy and most of the others barricaded themselves in the farmhouse with rifles and shotguns and stuff. They held out for a few days, I think. But today the farm was on fire, and now, I … I don’t know …’
The girl’s knuckles are white around the steering wheel. Coira slides her hand over one of Karen’s. Squeezes. ‘I grew up on a farm too,’ she says lamely, trying to veer the conversation back to lighter things. ‘Not far from here, actually.’
‘I guess you probably won’t be going back to it any time soon, then.’
There seems little to say after that, so there’s silence until they reach the back of three uninhabited islands halfway across the bay. In the distance, they can see headlights approaching Craobh Haven from the north.
Karen steers the boat into the gap between the tiny northernmost island and its larger neighbour. On request, she cuts the engine.
‘Oars from here, I think.’
As Karen seats the oars in the rowlocks, Coira turns her attention back to the marina. Breakwaters of heaped concrete cubes hide all but the tops of the boats, but through a gap between them she can clearly make out the gangway descending to the marina pontoons.
As she watches, the car they spotted earlier brakes to a halt in the car park, amidst a cloud of dust. The driver’s door is flung open, and a figure comes running out of it towards a man now walking into her field of view from the right. The man is tall, dapper, and somehow Scandinavian-looking. He’s wearing a hat with a brim.
Some gland squirts something into Coira’s bloodstream. She has a feeling about the man in the hat. For some reason, she’s almost certain she has found her contact.
Something about what’s going on, however, is making her uneasy.
They’re still too distant for her to see much detail, but the two men are clearly having an animated conversation. Her excitement begins to morph into a feeling not just of nervousness, but of dread.
The man in the hat raises his arm. Five men and a woman come running from one of the buildings. Hat-man begins gesticulating.
‘What’s happening?’
‘I don't know,’ Coira hisses. ‘Something’s not right. Give me a moment.’
The first man leaps beck into the car, then the man in the hat begins sprinting as though his life depended on it – although he still manages to keep hold of his hat, she notices – down the gangway. The five others seem frozen. They’re just standing there, looking at each other.
She becomes aware of a noise. A weird, loud buzz. A crescendo, too rapid for her to tell its direction.
Then it’s like someone has turned on the sun.
TOO LATE, Coira clamps hands to smarting eyes. Blinding patterns are racing over her vision. She realises she’s screaming. She can hear Karen doing the same as – bless her – the girl rugby-tackles her down into the hull of the boat. Spray whips over the RIB with a weird zipping noise, drenching them, shortly before a shockwave hits the boat like a pile-driver, almost flipping it over.
Scant seconds later, the sound of the detonation rolls over them. It’s like nothing Coira’s ever heard. By now she has her hands over her ears, but it doesn’t help. There’s another ear-shredding percussion, and another, then another, in quick succession. They go on and on. She can feel the heat singe the side of her wetsuit and the back of her head. It’s like someone’s opened the door to a blast furnace.
‘We need to go!’ Karen is tugging at her. The English girl is standing now, demoniacally backlit by seething masses of light.
‘No!’ Seizing the younger woman by the arm, Coira yanks her away from the inferno so roughly she almost falls over the side. ‘In the water!’ she shrieks. ‘Shelter behind the boat.’
Karen obeys without hesitation. The cold shock as they go under makes both of them yell as they resurface. The boat is drifting. Above it, explosions are lighting up the clouds. They aren’t like the ones in Hollywood films. They look more like excessive fireworks.
‘Someone’s doing this from the air,’ Coira shouts, hanging grimly to the rope round the RIB’s perimeter. Debris begins peppering the water around them, clanging and clattering off rocks nearby. The air’s alive with feathery whirring sounds made by spinning shrapnel. ‘Drones probably, using remote targeting systems – probably infrared. The colder we are, the less visible we’ll be.’ Can’t do much about the hot engine though. ‘Hopefully their target was the marina, and they’re not looking for outliers.’
‘Who did this?’ Karen demands, through teeth which are already chattering. Coira had forgotten the girl had only a T-shirt on under the jacket she’d given her. The girl’s pupils are dark points in circles of flickering orange. ‘Why would someone do this?’
Good question. Some of the pieces now coming down are quite large. As well as metal and bits of fibreglass, masonry is splashing down. She hopes none of it hits the boat.
‘Is this the government?’ Karen asks in a small voice. As though reluctant to believe the government which sent her and her family here would do such a thing. An entire boat hull, burning brightly, smashes into the water fifty yards away, a fuel tank or something inside detonating shortly after contact, kicking up a soaking curtain of shrapnel-laden spray and a wave which washes over them and swamps the RIB.
Coira pulls herself back to the surface. Splutters for breath. What smells like petrol in the water is setting her mouth on fire. ‘I don’t know, Karen.’ The truth is, she has no idea what is going on. Why would the government target a marina? Even if they knew this was her destination, it seems ludicrous overkill just for her. Unless they know about her contact, who is perhaps more high-profile than she had realised.
Maybe she and Karen are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Fuck. Fuck!
The wave has propelled the boat back through the channel and slightly behind the island. A few hundred metres away, flames are licking the night air, fanned by the gusting wind. Fearing that the next bomb or missile – or whatever they’ve just witnessed – will be especially for them, the two women wait for what seems longer than the ten minutes suggested by Coira’s watch, by which time both are shivering violently. Having hauled themselves back into the boat as stealthily as they can, they take turns rowing away from the carnage.
Standing with her binoculars as Karen rows, Coira has a good view back to the marina. It’s as though the place had never existed. Buildings are dunes of burning rubble. There is nothing recognisable as ever having been a car or a boat. It’s as though a small nuclear bomb has gone off.
‘I’m sorry,’ she breathes.
‘For what?’ Then, quieter: ‘It was a good plan.’
Now what?
Coira hasn’t the faintest idea. Thoughts of reaching Craobh Haven had been the lifeline she had clung to. Her reason for going on. She had thought she would either make her rendezvous or be captured or shot. She had never imagined the goal itself being taken away. Now she is aimless. Pure survival seems all that’s left – and by itself, she’s not sure that’s something she deserves or even wants. Where can she go? How? The best she can imagine at the moment is heading north to find the separatists and getting shot at. Probably by both sides.
Could she make it to Norway or Sweden? By herself?
It seems impossible. Even if she can find some way of getting there, the North Sea is intensively patrolled by both the coastguard and the Royal Navy, precisely to stop the flow of dissidents and skilled citizens to the Hanseatic League.
What about by aeroplane?
She balls her fists, and cries out to the sky.
When her eyes are open again, Karen is looking at her. The girl’s face is chilling in one so young. She’s seen the look before, in rough areas of Gla
sgow and Edinburgh. The unquestioning acceptance of an utter lack of hope.
‘Plan B,’ Coira croaks. ‘How much fuel have we?’
By fading flickers from the burning marina, Karen checks the meter. ‘Still near full.’
‘Good.’ She expels a staccato breath. ‘We camp at the north end of Shuna and head north for Oban in the morning.’
‘The boat is leaking air. Something sharp hit it, I think.’
Coira hopes that if they ever reach Oban, the town is still there.
CHAPTER 20
______________
Skeleton Crew
THERE HAD BEEN excited chatter in the Ops Room as the team waited either for drama at the marina or anticlimax. Now, as the drones’ final images replay on the big screen, there’s stunned silence.
‘What do you mean, bombed?’
The voice is Lorna’s. She’s standing at the war table in a stance that suggests she’s expecting to fight somebody. Filling the wall above her, a grainy drone video of the marina, showing agitated figures clustered near couple of cars and a lone man running towards the water, dissolves in brilliant static every few seconds before the loop starts again. The effect on the room’s illumination is that of a slow-motion disco.
‘To shit. Erased!’ Carla flings herself back in her chair, hands thrown in the air, staring. ‘Apparently it’s just not there any more.’
‘Who did this?’
‘No information yet. From the reports we have, it looks like … an air strike.’
Lorna’s eyes are like saucers.
‘An air strike?’ Sebastian is raging. For a moment he can’t speak. ‘A fucking air strike? You have to be kidding me! On whose authority?’
Carla’s leaning towards her screen now with a hand over her mouth. ‘We don’t have that information.’ She looks up, face slackening. ‘Are we … Do you mean it’s ours?’
‘Who else would it bloody be?’
‘What about the officer at the marina?’ Lorna asks, tightly. The look she’s giving Sebastian is pregnant with meaning. ‘Was he at station?’