She turned her head to lock eyes with Mann. Her face was unreadable; no triumph, no fury. He was still staring at her when the door behind him crashed open, a shot rang out and the force of the bullet tearing through Lou's chest lifted her lifeless body backwards across the room. The rest of the women screamed in unison. Mann turned to see five armed men duck, one at a time, swiftly into the room skirting the first gunman still on his haunches, rifle raised and smoking from the shot he'd just fired. They stood now in a phalanx, stock still, all guns raised, keeping everything in the room contained. They were uniformed in black with armoured plates at their chests and full masks hiding their faces.
Mann took in the line of soldiers without either fear or much surprise. Their arrival seemed somehow inevitable. The soldier, front and centre of the group, the one who had killed Lou, stood slowly, cocked his head back towards the door and called, 'Sir. Secured Sir.' His voice muffled by his mask.
Mann flicked his eyes to his coat, lying in a tangle beside the bloodied woman on the floor. His thoughts ran to the darts snagged behind the lapels, the box of them still in the pocket. He calculated the distance from where he stood to the coat and from there to the soldiers and his will to fight left him all at once, like storm water pouring down an open drain. He had only strength enough to shuffle a few paces forward, to put himself between Gunnar's fallen body and this new danger.
There was a slight disturbance behind the soldiers, like a wall of air advancing into the room, parting the soldiers, leaving a clear path between them. Mann watched a figure stride on that path into the centre of the room. He was tall and lean, and fully masked. He was suited for combat though clearly not trained for it. Too tidy, too groomed, Mann decided.
The man craned forward to study Chenko's body, and then his attention was caught by Uri's last convulsions and he took a cautious pace backwards. It was only then he seemed to notice John Mann, swaying uncertainly in the centre of the room. Mann felt the heat of his stare even though he couldn't see his eyes. He felt probed and dissected, appraised and considered. He felt coveted.
'Take him Corporal.'
Mann heard the click of a weapon being primed and before he could even react he felt the punch of a dart hitting his chest. He was momentarily surprised. He had expected a rush of men to secure him, not a tranquilizer. He must not black out. His webbing undershirt had baffled the dart and it hadn't pierced his skin beneath, but before he could reach to remove it a second dart slammed into his chest beside the first. This time he felt a pinprick on his skin beneath his vest and his anger flared in a burst of heat that seared through him, sweeping away his weariness and pain. He snarled like a baited bear and as he took a step towards the line of soldiers a dart thumped into his thigh and his step faltered. He felt a numbing wave of coldness spread from his leg up through his groin. His anger still burned hot in his chest but icy tendrils of the numbness snaked swiftly up his body, encircling his waist and racing up beneath the skin on his back, up and over his shoulders. The cold, cold numbing blackness devoured the heat in his chest, swamped it like ice water dousing a flame. His final thought was of Keen, her pale face and wild red hair flared clearly in his mind, before his legs gave way and he pitched forwards, head first into a deep dark river where the midnight waters swallowed him and swept him away.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Keen's head still rung like a Matins bell from the blow Russell had dealt her. Her stomach cramped as her baby protested her ill use. She sat on the narrow bunk and tried to order her thoughts. The smell of stale air tinged with disinfectant was evocative and brought back an image of the first time she'd found John a prisoner here.
The clatter of the outer lab door opening brought her thoughts back to the present. A soldier, tall and ungainly, entered the lab and pulled up short when he saw her in the glass tank. He hadn't been expecting her there and he eyed her nervously for a moment before it dawned to him that she was captive and presented no threat but even so his step was hesitant as he moved towards her. He stopped at the wall of the tank, close enough for his breath to mist the glass so that he had to step sideways to keep a clear view of her. She felt like an exhibit as he continued to study her with crafty eyes behind wire rimmed spectacles.
The lab door clattered suddenly open again and Vincent strode into the room, stopping dead in his tracks at the sight of the soldier before the tank. 'Andrews.' He said.
'Vincent? You're AWOL.' Andrews replied, lowering his hand to the pistol at his belt. Keen watched Vincent mark the movement and struggle for a moment with some uncertainty before he managed to find his voice.
'Undercover Ops.' Vincent said.
'Word is you left with Russell and the alert out on her covers your arse too.'
Another flicker of confusion crossed Vincent's face. 'All squared with Captain Miller,' he said slowly, 'since we returned with John Mann's whore.' He gestured at Keen in the tank.
'She's proof The Cobra exists then?' Andrews said.
Vincent shrugged. 'All I know is she's here, and I need her to talk.' He held up the key to the tank and jangled it for the benefit of Andrews. 'She'll need persuading of course, and I'll need a hand.' He grinned at Andrews and Andrews gave Keen an appraising look. Despite herself, Keen took a step backwards.
'Is there time for a full confession before the evac deadline?' Andrews laughed.
'I hope so.' Vincent said as he crossed the lab to stand beside Andrews.
'Well I'd say she warrants close questioning wouldn't you?' Andrews turned to leer at him and Vincent swung his fist in a vicious upper cut that lifted Andrews off his feet and slammed him back against the glass wall. He fell to the ground out cold and his glasses skittered across the shiny lab floor. Keen watched them come to a halt against a chair leg on the far side of the room. She tried to hide her surprise as she looked at Vincent. 'He a friend of yours?' She asked.
'He's a prick.' Vincent replied.
Keen could see Vincent was angry, but whether riled by Andrews' presence or something else she didn't know. Not that it mattered, his anger meant that he would make mistakes, she would see to that. She opened her mouth to speak but he spoke first.
'I'm getting you out of here.' He said.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
It was with distaste that Private Archer considered the task before him. The Government Agent and the rest of his squad had departed the house with the target, leaving him and Gormley to clean up.
Their orders were simple. He steeled himself, cocked his pistol and, after a moment's pause, fired a bullet into the skull of the man lying on the floor at his feet. Archer swallowed back the bile that rose in his throat as the gunshot echoed off the walls. He couldn't see the worth in this task at all, it was an ungodly thing to do to corpses. He didn't understand the ways of the military and its brutish behaviour, wished he'd signed up instead to five years on a city farm. Still, he had the easier task here, as a muted burst of gunfire and a squall of screams from the basement proved. Gormley was despatching the women.
He drank down half a flask of water to calm his queasiness and cast about the room to count the number of corpses still awaiting him. The soft click of the door lock told him that someone had entered the room. He hoped it was Gormley come to shore up his nerve. He turned to see a bent, old woman propped against a white stick, surveying the wreckage of the room. He shook his pistol at her, 'You have no business here Grandma.'
She turned small black eyes on him. 'I've been sent to squire the souls of these dead.'
'At whose order?'
'Government chief.' She replied.
Archer was surprised, perhaps he'd read Secretary Hunt wrong, he appeared to have some respect for these victims after all. He waved the old woman away with his pistol hand. 'Then stay behind me, I've a job to do and you might not like what you see.'
He turned his attention to a body propped against the wall, a leaner man than the others, with very fair hair. He took a step towards the body and aimed his pis
tol at the man's head, then cried out in alarm as the man's eyes cracked open. Archer stepped back and cried out again as Ma May's rapier blade entered his back and the fine point of it showed through his chest, glinting in the lamp light before his dying eyes.
Ma May withdrew the blade quickly and re-sheathed it in her cane, as the young soldier dropped to the floor. She then moved forward rapidly to crouch at Gunner's side, he was deadly cold and now shivering badly. She put two fingers to the pulse at his wrist, to feel its faint throb. She cast about for a blanket or covering for him. She saw a crumpled coat on the floor nearby and retrieved it, placing it over Gunnar to warm him.
'I knew you'd be a trouble to me.' She told him.
'Remind me never to turn my back on you.' He rasped through clenched teeth.
'John is gone.' She said, 'You know where?'
She couldn't be sure but a faint smile may have played across Gunnar's lips as he sank back in a dead faint.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
'What's your name soldier? I'm Rosie, this is a mistake you know, I shouldn't be here at all. Please, you're hurting my arm.' The soldier eased his grip on her but still said nothing in reply. He pulled her to a stop and she heard a heavy bolt being drawn back and a door being swung open.
She didn't need to be able to see around her blindfold to sense the change in light or the drop in temperature. The soldier urged her forward and they stepped out into a yard of some sort, they were walking across gravel, she could hear the crunch of it and feel the bite of it through the soft soles of her slippers. She stored all the information away, telling herself she'd need to remember it when she gulled a soldier boy into helping her run.
The cold wind blew hard and Rosie started to shiver. She was glad now of the soldier's firm hand on her arm leading her forward. She had decided to revert to playing the weeping young mother. This had gotten her out of many a scrape in times past and she chided herself now for not trying it sooner. Batting her eyes and playing the tease had gotten her nowhere, not with Smith and certainly not with the suited man who came later. He had questioned her closely, and threatened her with hard use if she didn't spill the rest of what she knew of the preacher's plans. She had hoped to trade that information for a golden prize but had hurriedly given it up just to keep sure ground beneath her feet.
She caught the sound of shuffling on the gravel. There were others in the yard around, a good few. Her soldier escort came to a halt again and with firm hands steered her around and backwards, hard up against a rough wood wall. He now re-cuffed her hands to a metal ring set in the wall at her back. As he did this he began to mutter quietly to himself, a prayer that she also knew. What now? she thought.
Suddenly a voice sounded from barely three feet to her right. An angry old man's cracked voice began berating someone, just a stream of threats and no useful news, and the moment this voice sounded out she heard a quiet, hopeless sobbing from close by on her left. She turned her head from side to side in an effort to store all these sounds and build up a mental picture of the scene around. She was amongst others in the same boat for sure. She supposed they'd all be made to stand blindfold out in the cold all morning and then questioned hard again later. She wondered how much longer this frightening game would last, wondered what tale she could invent that might win her favour and stave off more threats. She felt a sudden and urgent need to pee.
Now a man was talking loudly at her and the other prisoners from a short distance away in front of them. He spoke quickly and she didn't catch most of what he said, though she did catch the words 'Guilty as charged.' And this wasn't news because they'd already told her they thought her guilty of the theft of the car she'd arrived in. Which was rich as it actually belonged to Todd, though she couldn't now recall where he had lifted it.
'Jasper Smith, Rosie Mullen, Hugh Evans, have you any last words?'
Smith? She marvelled. Was the moaning old goat beside her Colonel Smith? The voice could be his. How had he come to be here with her now? He began shouting again, the same things he had shouted before and it rubbed her the wrong way that he filled the yard with his bleating when she still had her piece to say. The young man on her other flank took up his sobbing again too and she wished for one man in her company to have a man's balls and step forward to put an end to all this. If only her brother Will were here.
Smith must then have shouted himself empty because a sudden silence fell around her and she decided she should take her turn to fill it.
'Sir, my name is Rosie. I'm seventeen. A mother to Pad.' She thought to put a sob into her voice and found one escaped without effort.
'Soldiers Ready.' A voice called over her.
'This is a sorry mistake. I'm no thief, it's my baby was stolen from me.'
'Take aim.'
'Sir, please Sir, won't you help me?'
Chapter Forty
Ma May was calculating the odds of getting Gunnar out of the house undetected. She had no doubt she could drag him part way, even down the stairs, but all the way through the streets? She doubted that.
Earlier she had followed the trail of the armoured car and the Birdman from the churchyard to this house and had hidden herself in shadows outside, watching the drama unfold. Soldiers stood guard at the entrance to the house, while volleys of gunfire sounded from within, then silence. She had waited, tense and anxious for long minutes to pass before finally a stream of masked, uniformed men had appeared two of them dragging a body between them that they manhandled into the back of the armoured car. The soldiers loaded themselves into that vehicle too and then it sat, engine purring as if in wait. Then out of the house strode a dark civilian figure, with a soldier at his side, he radiated authority. Ma May felt a deep unease as she watched the soldier and the civilian climb into the Birdman's car and then watched it pull away followed by the armoured vehicle.
Once she thought the coast was clear she had warily entered the house. She had been surprised in the hallway downstairs by a lad of a soldier appearing suddenly up through a basement doorway. He looked sick and disoriented, and he was easy to surprise in turn.
She had found this room and the carnage in it almost as a last try. She was beginning to wish she had called a halt to her searching before she had found it, and the wounded Gunnar within. A slight creak of stair reached her ears and she tensed as the door swung slowly open. A large, shadowy figure stepped into the room, nimble on his feet but solid like a tree, he moved quickly to the windows to check the streets below. Ma May momentarily feared the intruder but then recognised the bulky figure as that of the hog roast butcher. He turned back to survey the room, taking stock. His eyes were sharp above his muffler, they flicked over her and then moved on. A child suddenly appeared at his side, a dishevelled, urchin of a boy. The butcher tried to shoo the boy back out through the door with the stern mention of his name, 'Nicholas.' But the boy clung to the big man's leather apron.
The butcher made a quick move to recover a pistol from under a table beside the body of a pockmarked man. Suddenly the child left the butcher's side and ran to where Gunnar lay beside Ma May. He studied Gunnar's pale face for a moment and then looked back to the butcher. Ma May did the same.
'Help us.' She said softly.
The butcher assessed the old woman in the corner, and briefly studied Gunnar's prone body. Finally he looked to the boy, a searching look. Nicholas nodded back.
Chapter Forty-One
The sound of booted feet running in the corridor outside Russell's office, and then some voices raised in alarm, unsettled her enough to draw her towards the office door. As she reached it the door flew inwards and Keen and Vincent pushed into the room.
'Surprise,' said Keen as she took another step forward and Russell retreated behind her desk.
Russell looked to Vincent as he closed the door behind him, 'Why is she out of her cage?'
Vincent turned a black look on Russell, 'The Facility is being abandoned and an order has gone out to destroy it.'
'Whos
e order?' Russell gasped.
'Who cares,' said Keen, 'so long as it burns this time.'
Ignoring Keen, Russell rounded her desk and hurried to grab at Vincent's arm. 'What was the order exactly?'
Vincent winced and pulled his arm out of the Doctor's grasp. 'Perhaps first we can unpick the order that has me listed as AWOL in your company?'
Russell frowned with impatience, 'There is more at stake here than your reputation soldier.'
Vincent saw the urgency in the older woman's eyes. 'We are ordered to evacuate by 19:00. The order came by radio, a string of code that resolved itself to an order.'
'What order?' Russell hissed.
'Operation Hothouse.'
Russell gasped loudly and Keen laughed. Russell rounded on her, 'Mock while you can. Whatever hand you had hoped to play will soon be turned to ash.' She turned to Vincent, 'We still have use of a car?' He nodded. 'Then let's go.' Russell moved to a small hatch door at the back of her office, swinging it open she stopped at the threshold and looked back at Keen and Vincent. 'Hothouse triggers an order that has been primed for years, I'd almost forgotten it existed, someone high in command must have given it. What had Smith to say when the order came in?'