Harry drove for ten minutes, then turned into a supermarket parking lot and drove around it, shifting his whole body from the waist up as he peered through the windshield. Like most shops in London, the recent panics had caused such a run on food that it had very little actually left to buy. Consequentially, the parking lot wasn’t full, and it didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for.
He parked his car, but not too close to the battered Land Rover in the corner. Harry was looking at the picture of a green dragon taped to the top of the windshield as he walked to the vehicle with his peculiar stiff-backed gait. The driver’s door opened the moment he arrived, and a woman of around the same age as his stuck her head out.
“Good to see you again, Hoss,” she said. She didn’t smile, but her strong gray eyes were friendly.
“You, too, Anne,” he replied as they shook hands. “You know, I often think of Ian. I miss him.”
She nodded. “He was very fond of you, too. After you had your accident, he used to joke that you’d been trying your best to save your family the expense of a funeral by hitting the ground so hard you buried yourself.”
“One thing I don’t miss about the old sod is his sense of humor.” Harry laughed, then turned serious. “How was he at the end?”
“He came to terms with the illness. He told me he’d reconciled himself to it because he’d got what he wanted — to die at home rather than in some godforsaken jungle, like so many of you three decades ago. But enough of this maudlin nonsense. . . . How’s the arthritis?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Not bad, considering. Takes me longer and longer to get going in the morn —”
He fell silent as two police cars raced into the parking lot. Harry slipped his hand in his jacket pocket, closing it around his Browning Hi-Power. But as he and Anne watched, the cars drew up beside the supermarket. Police officers jumped out and then hurried inside the building.
“Probably just more fisticuffs at the counters,” Anne muttered. She was staring at the police cars. “But you don’t know who you can trust these days, do you? Except us old folks, because everybody’s written us off already. We’re invisible.” She chuckled as she laid her sawn-off shotgun by her feet again.
“We live in uncertain times,” Harry agreed. “I still find it preposterous that they’ve called on the army to patrol the streets.” While he’d been talking, Anne had retrieved an object wrapped in khaki cloth from behind her seat. “That’s for me, I presume?”
“Yes, with love and kisses from the Commander,” she replied. “Parry told you the drill?”
“Yes, he briefed me,” Harry confirmed.
She handed him the converted Geiger counter. “Happy hunting, Hoss,” she bade him. Before she closed the door, he glimpsed numerous other khaki bundles stacked in the rear of the Land Rover.
Back in his car, Harry placed the mobile detector carefully on the passenger seat beside his GPS unit and Browning Hi-Power, then covered them with a newspaper.
“It’s going to be a long day,” he said to himself. He checked the fuel gauge as he drove off. He’d need to find a gas station that actually had stocks so he could fill up his car. He had some way to go yet before he hit the motorway that would take him out of London and to the quadrant he’d been assigned by Parry.
“A long day for the Old Guard,” Harry said.
Back in the Hub, Danforth was coordinating operations while Drake controlled the parabolic dishes on the BT Tower using his laptop. Drake had a map up on his screen, and each time a report of Dark Light activity came in from any of the Old Guard or Eddie’s men with their mobile detectors, it was relayed to him from Danforth. Then Drake would concentrate on the area, using the dishes mounted on the tower, and the exact location could be triangulated.
The operation wasn’t helped by the several power outages that shut down Drake’s dishes. Each time, he had to wait for the electricity supply to be restored, and also allow the system to reboot before he could start over again.
It was several hours before he called out to Parry. “I think we might have something here,” he said, inclining his head toward the map on the screen. “We’re finding signals all over, but there’s a location in the west where the level is spiking off the scale. We’ve got ourselves a major Dark Light hot spot there.”
“Near Slough,” Parry noted as he peered at the cluster of red dots pulsing on the map. “Should we mobilize and get over there?”
Drake shook his head. “Not yet. We don’t want to waste our time if it’s nothing to do with the Phase. Danforth’s sent some teams in for a recce.”
After he’d exited the motorway, Harry passed through two roundabouts and was on his way to the industrial estate when he spotted the army roadblock up ahead. He quickly scanned around; there were grass shoulders on either side of him and not a building in sight. It was too late to consider turning back, so he made sure the mobile detector was turned off and out of view as he approached the barrier.
An armored vehicle was parked at the side of the road, which he recognized as a Viking, and in it a soldier was manning a .50 caliber machine gun. It was aimed directly at Harry, who immediately knew that something wasn’t right. Even with the current levels of civil unrest and heightened security, this was rather excessive for an elderly man out for a drive.
The soldier at the barrier waved him down and came over. “Can I ask what your business is, sir?” he demanded brusquely.
“I’m on my way to fetch my granddaughter from a party,” Harry lied.
“Your granddaughter. Really. Would you mind stepping from your vehicle, sir, and keep your hands where I can see them,” the soldier ordered.
“Is there a problem up ahead?” Harry asked, trying to see the road past the barrier.
The soldier’s voice grated with impatience. “Get out of your car.” He brought his assault rifle to bear on Harry. “Now!”
Harry climbed out, holding his hands in front of him.
“Up against the vehicle,” the soldier said, twirling a finger to indicate that Harry should face the other way. “And spread your legs.”
Harry complied as another soldier joined the first and began to give him a thorough pat-down.
“I see you’re Parachute Regiment,” Harry said. “You’re a long way from RHQ.”
The soldier searching him had finished checking his legs all the way down to his boots and now quickly straightened up. He grabbed Harry roughly by the shoulder and spun him around. “And what would you know about that, Gramps?”
Harry was unruffled. “Because I was in the Paras, too. I served from 1951 t —”
“Show me some identification,” the soldier snapped.
Harry slowly took out his wallet and handed it over. The soldier found his driver’s license and examined it. “Harold James Handscombe,” he read. He oozed disdain and had a way of looking away immediately after he’d spoken to show how little Harry meant to him.
But then the words came that Harry was dreading.
“Stay there,” the soldier with the assault rifle said. “We’re going to give your vehicle the once-over.”
Alarm bells were ringing like crazy in Harry’s head, and his nerve endings tingled as if raw electricity was passing through his body.
“Of course,” he said, as he glanced at the driver’s seat, calculating how long it would take him to reach the Browning Hi-Power hidden under it. The timing would be tight, and even if he did manage to retrieve his weapon, the odds weren’t stacked in his favor; he’d have to disable the nearest soldier first, then deal with the other two.
It was a long time since he’d shot anyone, but the old instincts were never far away. One thing he knew for certain — the situation was going to turn nasty. For Harry, this was more than just a hunch — he was acting on all his years of being in tight corners.
The soldiers’ eyes were slightly glazed; if Parry hadn’t briefed him about the Styx and their mind-control techniques, Harry would have gue
ssed the men were on drugs. And the way the soldiers were conducting themselves was completely beyond the pale.
The soldier was moving around the front of the car. “The trunk’s open?” he asked.
“It is,” Harry said. But before the soldier even reached the trunk, Harry knew there was no way that he wouldn’t discover the mobile detector, the GPS, and eventually the handgun under the driver’s seat.
The soldier had reached the passenger door and was opening it.
He bent to look under the newspaper in the footwell.
As he registered the modified Geiger counter, he opened his mouth to shout a warning to the other soldier.
Harry knew the game was up.
He moved as fast as his less-than-agile body would allow him.
As he pivoted around on the ball of his foot and reached toward the driver’s seat, in the corner of his eye he saw something curious.
The soldier with the assault rifle simply folded to the ground. And as Harry stooped to peer at the other man through the car, he saw he was sprawled on the road.
Harry stood up. Even the soldier in the Viking was slumped over the heavy machine gun.
Eddie, and three of his men with tranquilizer rifles, stepped down the snow-covered verge toward the incredibly confused Harry.
“Professor Danforth thought you might need some help,” Eddie said.
Half an hour later the call came in. It was Eddie. Parry stood beside Drake as he spoke on the satphone. When the call was over, Drake briefed his father.
“We’re onto something. Eddie found Limiters and teams of compromised soldiers manning checkpoints on the roads into the industrial estate. The area was completely tied up, but he and his men have cleared a way in.”
“Sounds promising,” Parry said.
“It gets better. Eddie’s on the estate with some of the Old Guard. They’ve been surveilling a sizable factory where the Limiters are thick on the ground, and there’s also a high degree of vehicle activity. They’ve seen at least two refrigerated trucks make deliveries of what could have been meat — the last one’s just gone in. So it could be food for the Warrior grubs. I reckon we might have struck the mother lode.”
“What’s Danforth’s take on it?” Parry asked.
“He agrees that the Dark Light usage is exceptionally concentrated at that location. He thinks it’s a go. He’s sending Eddie the schematics for the factory right now.”
Parry took a second to make up his mind. “Everyone!” he yelled across the floor. “We’re in business.”
“THIS IS CUSHY. I COULD get used to the corporate life,” Rebecca One joked as she sipped her Diet Coke through a straw.
“Sure could,” Rebecca Two agreed.
The Styx twins were in the boardroom, lolling around in the upholstered chairs with their feet on the table.
Rebecca One ran her eye over the plates of sandwiches that she and her sister had barely touched. “I’ve had all I want of these.”
“Me, too. Would you please clear the table and bring us a couple of ice creams, Johan?” Rebecca Two asked. She watched Captain Franz as he collected the plates, then headed for the kitchen.
Rebecca One slammed her Coke can down on the table. “Will you stop treating him with kid gloves? You don’t ask him to do things for you — you tell him. And he’s a Topsoiler — don’t use his first name,” she said. “I worry about you, you know. You’ve got to sort your act out.”
Slurping her drink, Rebecca Two made no response.
With a back swipe, Rebecca One sent her Coke can hurtling across the room. “Doesn’t matter anyway. We’ll probably have to dispense with him sooner rather than later.”
Rebecca Two avoided her sister’s gaze.
Captain Franz returned with two tubs of ice cream. Rebecca One took hers but then threw it straight back in his face. He barely blinked as it struck him. “This is vanilla. I wanted chocolate. Get me a chocolate one right now!”
“You didn’t say what you wanted,” Rebecca Two pointed out as Captain Franz shuffled away.
“Are you for real?” Rebecca One said. “It’s up to us to show the Heathen who’s boss.” She was shaking her head in exasperation, when her cell phone suddenly rang. Taking her feet from the table, she went to her coat to retrieve it.
“I don’t know this number,” she said, as she examined the display. “And who would be calling me right now, anyway?” After a moment’s deliberation, she answered the phone. “How did you get m —?” she snapped, then fell silent.
“So who is it?” Rebecca Two tried to ask as her sister continued to listen to the caller without saying a word.
Captain Franz had returned with the tub of chocolate ice cream, but Rebecca One waved him away. She was frowning. “How do I know you’re on the level?” she asked. A few moments later, she seemed satisfied with the answer. Still listening to the caller, she cupped a hand over the phone’s microphone. “Get your coat,” she whispered to her sister.
“What for?” Rebecca Two demanded, but her sister ignored her, already heading for the door.
Out in the corridor, Rebecca One again cupped her hand over the mouthpiece and spoke rapidly to her sister. “Get Franz to bring the Mercedes around to the back. Tell him to keep the engine running.”
Rebecca Two almost exploded, she was so curious. “Why? What’s going on?” she hissed.
But her sister was moving down the corridor at speed as she wrestled her coat on. “Tell me what you want out of this,” she said into the phone, as they turned a corner. They came face-to-face with the Limiter guarding the doors to the warehouse.
Rebecca One beckoned at him with her free hand. “Your pistol — quick,” she ordered him with that hushed urgency people use when they’re mid–phone conversation.
The Limiter obediently unbuttoned the flap on his holster and passed the gun over.
“Silencer. That’s good,” she said, with a glance at the suppressor on the barrel. “No, sorry . . . nothing,” she replied quickly to the caller. “Just dealing with something here.” Her voice became hard with authority. “All right, I’m convinced, and you’ve got yourself a deal. You have my word on it — scout’s honor ’n’ all that. We’ll see you soon.”
She ended the call. Without missing a beat, she raised the handgun to the Limiter’s chest and discharged it at point-blank range.
“What the . . . ?” Rebecca Two leaped back as, right in front of her, the Limiter sank to the floor. “What did you do that for?”
Rebecca One barely drew breath to reply. “Executive decision . . . no time to explain now,” she said.
Stepping over the Limiter’s body, she threw open the doors. As the humidity and the stench of raw meat from the warehouse enveloped them, Rebecca One was already racing inside. “Find Alex and Vane,” she shouted to her sister. “And fast!”
Parry took the first party down in the elevator. He’d told everyone to change from their Arctic Issue parkas into a variety of other less conspicuous clothes that had been provided to them back in the Complex. But as they entered the BT Tower reception area in their Sherpa jackets and thick corduroy trousers, they resembled a Victorian climbing party about to set out on an expedition.
Terry Finch was beside the revolving door as he kept a careful eye on Mortimer Street outside.
“You dealt with the staff, then?” Parry asked, speaking loudly to the old man as he ran his eyes over the rather drab area and the abandoned reception desk. “The Emergency Order obviously did the trick.”
“Well, . . . they’ve gone to a Starbucks around the corner until I give them the say-so to return,” Terry answered.
Parry frowned. “You don’t sound too sure — was there a problem?” he pressed the old man impatiently.
“One of the security gentlemen wanted to check with head office, so I stuck the official document in front of him.”
“And that worked?” Parry asked.
“No, he wasn’t buying it, so I drew my Webley on him,” T
erry said with a mischievous grin, taking a revolver from the holster in the small of his back. “That worked like magic.”
“Riiiight,” Parry exhaled, his frown growing even more pronounced. He looked from Will to Drake. “Make sure you’ve got your tranquilizer pistols handy,” he said before he addressed Mrs. Burrows. “And, Celia, can you keep a nose out for any trouble heading our way? I need to know what’s waiting for us around the corner,” he told her.
“A very nice Italian restaurant about three hundred yards up on the left. The calzone’s making me feel quite ravenous,” she said, smiling.
“Why doesn’t anyone ever give me a straight answer?” Parry grumbled just as two old minibuses pulled up on the yellow line outside. The rest of the party had descended in the elevator, and one at a time, they exited onto the street and loaded their gear into the backs of the vehicles.
The driver of each minibus didn’t speak as they threaded their way through London. Will saw for the first time just how far things had gone in the capital. Other than the groups of soldiers and policemen stationed around the place, Euston Road itself appeared to be quite normal and the traffic relatively heavy. But as he glanced down side roads, it was a different story. He spotted the odd burned-out car and huge piles of household rubbish that hadn’t been collected in weeks. Fire engines blocked the entrance to Regent’s Park, and beyond its gates whole rows of large white buildings blazed away.