Titch glanced at his watch. It was probably about time to turn around and head back to the base. His walk had killed a couple of hours of an otherwise empty Sunday afternoon—he would have preferred to go for a run, but his stitches had stopped that—and his only plan for the evening was to brush up on some of George’s on-line lectures. There was one that he particularly wanted to watch again about the hidden dangers of mixed bloodlines. If he did in fact have a biological father who wasn’t British, what did that actually mean for him? His initial thoughts were that if it was true, all it really did was make him an example of what was wrong.
In turn, and this was what he wanted to think through properly before his next conversation with George, it made Titch the perfect person to start the Fifth Wave.
40
Adams looked around his flat, which was now almost as clean as it was the day he had moved in. He’d tried to distract himself from Lizzie’s departure by spring cleaning, which he’d been threatening to do for ages. By the door of his lounge were three large black containers with wheels on one end and a handle on the other. They were known as Gorilla boxes after the firm that made them, and were a staple of military forces the world over. Two of Adams’s were full of clothes, mostly uniforms, that he would need during the first few weeks of his posting, although that was still a few months away. The other was empty, but Adams was planning on filling it with personal effects nearer the time. He wasn’t thrilled about the thought of going back into mess accommodation, but as his secondment to the NHS would end eventually, he didn’t have a choice. Besides, he thought as he made his way back into his bedroom, hopefully Lizzie would be on the same base in a few months’ time.
With a sigh, Adams started stripping the bedding from his bed to throw into the wash. He could just use a sleeping bag while it dried on the clothes horse in his bathroom. When he picked up his pillow to remove the pillowcase, he saw a flash of gold on the material underneath it. When he picked it up, he realised it was one of Lizzie’s earrings.
A sudden wave of sadness came over Adams as he looked at the small gold pear drop shaped jewellery, and he wondered how Lizzie was getting on. From the pictures she’d sent him that morning before their flight had departed, she was enjoying herself so far. The last photograph had been a selfie of her with a plush aircraft in the background, along with a caption.
When I do join the mile high club, it’ll be in one of these! xxx
Adams went to the bathroom to collect the towels to go into the washing machine and wrapped the earring up in a small piece of tissue paper before putting it in a pocket in his wash bag. Once the washing machine was on, he returned to the lounge and sat down on the sofa with a deep sigh. He felt lost, which was ridiculous seeing as Lizzie had only been gone for a few hours, and besides that, they’d not been together for that long. He’d never minded his own company before, so why should he feel so lonely now?
He turned the television on to see if there was a football match or something on. Anything to keep his mind occupied.
“This is ridiculous,” Adams muttered under his breath as he flicked through the channels. He picked up his phone instead and started scrolling through his contacts, trying to work out if any of them would fancy a pint or two that afternoon. That would probably be a better way to spend the day—getting slowly pissed in a pub garden somewhere. But as he looked through his contacts, he realised that apart from a few members of staff at the hospital, they all lived on military bases across the country. That would be one advantage of moving back into a mess when the time came. At least then, there would always be someone around. He texted a few of the people at the hospital anyway, just on the off chance.
Adams finally settled on the news channel, but it seemed there was nothing exciting happening anywhere. Even when they got to the sport section, the commentators had nothing complementary to say about Norwich’s one-nil defeat to struggling Brighton and Hove Albion. He’d not missed much by not going to the game yesterday, by all accounts.
He was starting to get seriously bored, even to the point of considering an afternoon nap on the sofa, when his phone buzzed. Hoping for a second it was Lizzie, even though he knew it couldn’t be, he grabbed it from the coffee table.
Hey loser, the message read. It was from Hannah. See you in the Murderers in an hour.
Adams grinned. If he could have chosen someone to get pissed with that afternoon, it would have been her.
“You cheeky bastard,” Adams heard a familiar female voice say, an hour and twenty minutes later. He was sitting in one of the tiny nooks in the Murderers, a nineteenth century pub in one of the oldest areas of Norwich. The walls of the pub were crisscrossed with exposed wooden beams and, despite the fruit machine flashing and bleeping away to itself in the corner, it had managed to retain its charm. “You started without me!”
Adams looked up to see Hannah standing over him, pointing an accusatory finger at the almost empty pint glass in front of him. Her cheeks were pink, as if she’d been running, and she was wearing tight-fitting jeans and a blue top that showed off her curves very well. Hannah’s blonde hair, which was usually scraped back into a ponytail at work, cascaded down to her shoulders, making her look completely different.
“Well, if you’d been here on time then we could have started together,” Adams replied. “Bloody civilians, always late.”
“Yeah, right,” Hannah replied, grinning at him. “Let me guess, you were here five minutes early?”
“Of course,” Adams said. “What would madam fancy?”
“Can I get an orange juice and lemonade?” Adams raised his eyebrows. Perhaps he wasn’t going to be getting pissed with Hannah after all? “I’m thirsty after having to hurry here when you summoned me.” He picked up his pint and drained the remnants. “Best get me a pint of Stella Artois as well. Actually, make it two.” Hannah’s grin turned impish. “Seeing as I’ve got to catch you up. And a couple of packets of pork scratchings for soakage.”
Adams got to his feet and made his way to the bar. When he had ordered the drinks, he turned to look at Hannah. She was pouting at herself in a small compact mirror and brushing a finger over her nose. He’d always got on very well with the woman, and they’d been through some tough times together at the hospital. She was like Lizzie in some ways, but louder and more outgoing. Adams thought back to the time before he and Lizzie had got together, when he had wondered if perhaps they could have been more than friends.
As if she sensed he was looking at her, Hannah glanced up. She folded her mirror away and put a hand to her throat, miming dehydration by opening her mouth and gasping. Adams grinned as he asked the barman for a tray. This was going to be a fun evening.
41
Charlotte looked up from her laptop as the small aircraft jolted in some turbulence. She saw the steward flash an irritated look toward the cockpit, as if it was the pilot’s fault he’d just spilt some orange juice. Charlotte was still angry with the steward for letting Lizzie see the containers, despite the strict instructions she had given the crew that under no circumstances were any of the passengers to see them. But at least Lizzie had appeared to swallow Charlotte’s explanation of what they were for.
Deciding to take a break from the report she had been reading from Katayama Toshiko, her lead researcher, Charlotte took a few moments to study the cohort on the plane. Even though they had only really met each other that morning, Charlotte could already see allegiances and alliances forming. The little Indian woman, Divya, and Lizzie looked to be forming a fast friendship, and Obi and the vegan kid, Jack, had hit it off instantly as well. Jack was going to have a shock when he realised that being a vegan in Sub-Saharan Africa was going to be challenging. Still, Charlotte thought as she looked at the two men chatting, challenges were why these people were here. They just didn’t know exactly what challenges they were going to face. Charlotte smiled wryly at what she had in store for them.
In a chair on her own was Isobel, her head still stuck in her Kin
dle as it had been since they’d taken off. Charlotte was fairly sure she would turn into the matriarch of the group in time, probably taking over the leadership role from Claire. The younger woman was staring at her own laptop, and Charlotte remembered the fierce look she’d given Lizzie when she had seen Charlotte talking to her. When Charlotte and Claire had started sleeping together, it had been fun. Claire’s initial misgivings had soon disappeared, and she had proven herself to be a very willing and pliable partner. But she was getting needy, and Charlotte hated needy women. Perhaps it was time to draw things to a close and let Claire move on?
Charlotte returned her attention to the researcher’s report and within a few moments was reading about the problems that Katayama and the team back in Norwich were having with the genetic recombination project she had them working on. According to the researcher, they were almost there, but there was an issue with the enveloping of the two single-strand RNA viruses. Charlotte zoomed in on a photograph in the report and frowned as she tried to decipher the various scientific calculations that her researcher had made. There must be an error in one of the calculations somewhere. All they needed to do was to find it; otherwise, the next phase of the project couldn’t continue, and this might be a wasted trip.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Brown speaking.” Charlotte groaned at the sound of the pilot’s voice coming through the public address system of the small plane. “We’re shortly going to be starting our descent into Lungi International Airport. If you need to use the onboard facilities, then now would be a good time to do so.” Charlotte closed her laptop, resigned to not being able to look into the report anymore. She had to be able to focus, and she couldn’t do that with people thumping around the cabin.
Around her, the other passengers stirred into life. Isobel put her Kindle down and looked around, smiling at Divya, who was stretching in her armchair. In the seat next to Divya, Lizzie was engrossed in her phone, no doubt hoping for a signal at some point. Obi had made a dash for the bathroom at the rear of the cabin, and Jack was staring out of the window.
“Almost there,” Charlotte said, smiling at Claire as the younger woman approached her. Claire had her laptop tucked under one arm, and as she leant across Charlotte to reach for her laptop bag, their hands briefly touched. “Are you nervous?”
“Not at all,” Claire replied with a smile, “but I bet they are.” She nodded at the other passengers. “I remember my first time, and I was bricking myself.”
“Look at you now,” Charlotte said, breaking her own rules and letting her hand linger on Claire’s for a few seconds, safe in the knowledge that no-one else was paying them any attention. “Cohort leader, no less.”
Claire’s smile broadened for a few seconds before her face became serious. She bit her lip, a sure sign of nerves that Charlotte had seen many times.
“Thank you, Charlotte,” Claire said.
“For making you cohort leader?” Charlotte replied. “You deserve it. Besides, this is your second trip. They’re all on their first, so it had to be you.”
“Not just that, thank you for everything.”
Charlotte didn’t reply, but just watched as Claire got into her armchair and secured her seatbelt, pulling it tightly across her trim hips as she did so. Maybe, Charlotte thought, it wasn’t quite time to let the girl go? They were still having fun, after all, and being in bed with a woman almost half her own age wasn’t something to give up lightly. Although Charlotte had never had a problem getting companions like Claire, perhaps it would be more prudent to line up a replacement before doing anything drastic.
“I mean it, Charlotte,” Claire said. “Thank you for everything. It feels like, I don’t know, but before I met you it’s like I was in the dark.” Charlotte looked at the younger woman, who had closed her eyes. “But now, it’s like I can see.”
“That’s a lovely thing to say, Claire,” Charlotte replied, lowering her voice to almost a whisper. “But don’t forget, we must be discreet. If my boss was to find out we were sleeping together, I would probably lose my job.”
Claire opened her eyes and looked at Charlotte, her mouth half open in an O shape as her cheeks coloured. Charlotte had seen a similar expression on her face before, but for very different reasons.
“I won’t say a word,” Claire whispered back before turning to look out of the window. Charlotte looked beyond Claire as the mountains of Sierra Leone started to take shape in the distance.
Claire’s words about being able to see came back into Charlotte’s mind. This woman, this child, hadn’t got a clue what she was talking about, in Charlotte’s opinion. She couldn’t see a thing…far from it. As far as Charlotte was concerned, Claire was still as blind as a bat.
42
The first thing that Lizzie noticed when the door to the plane opened was the heat. It was like a wall of humidity that rolled down the cabin, and she felt herself perspiring almost immediately. Lizzie had been to plenty of hot places before, but never had she experienced a heat like this one. The second thing she noticed was the smell, a mixture of aviation fuel and something more earthy. It was hard to describe, but as she approached the open door, it intensified.
“Bloody hell, that heat’s something, isn’t it?” Isobel said over her shoulder. Lizzie thought they were the first words the woman had spoken since they had left the United Kingdom.
“I know. I’m sweating like a pig already and we’ve not even got off the plane,” Lizzie replied. “I’m sure we’ll get used to it, though.” Isobel turned and smiled at her.
“I hope so.”
Lizzie stepped onto the stairs and made her way down on the tarmac. There were several other planes on the pan, many from airlines that she’d never heard of, and the black asphalt was shining from a recent shower. Grey clouds filled the sky and hovered over the lush, green mountains in the distance. She stood next to Obi and Jack, who were both looking around with wide eyes.
“The transport will be here in a few moments,” Claire called out to them as a familiar sound filtered through the heavy air. It was the rotor blades of a helicopter, and Lizzie looked up to see a white helicopter slowly making its way toward them.
“Is that for us?” Jack asked.
“I doubt it,” Lizzie replied, looking at the markings on the helicopter. Painted on the sides of the upper air inlets were the letters UN. “I can’t see the United Nations giving us a lift anywhere.” The helicopter flew within a couple of hundred metres of them, and Lizzie took in the rust stains on the fuselage. It was a Russian built ‘Hip’ Mi-8, used by many militaries as troop carriers. Lizzie had never flown in one, and looking at the way this one was maintained, she wouldn’t want to fly on it, anyway.
“You’re in the air force, aren’t you?” Obi asked Lizzie. “You must have flown in a few helicopters, right?”
Lizzie paused before replying. She still hadn’t decided how much of her history to share with the group, so she just gave a non-committal reply. “A few, yeah,” she replied. “Not one of them, though.” As the helicopter landed in the distance, Lizzie’s attention was drawn to three white SUVs that were driving over the tarmac towards them.
“Here we are,” Claire said, pointing at the vehicles. “These are for us. Make sure you’ve got everything.”
“Yes, mum,” Lizzie heard Jack mutter under his breath.
A few moments later, Lizzie was sitting in the rear of one of the SUVs, grateful for the air-conditioning. Next to her, Obi was fiddling with a black plastic nozzle, trying to work out how to direct it at his face, while in the driver’s seat a large black man was grinning widely at them both. Jack, who had tried to get into the passenger seat before being shooed away by the driver, was on the other side of Obi.
“Aw di bodi?” the driver asked. Lizzie returned his grin.
“Di bodi nor bad, how usef?” she said, causing the driver to lean his head back and laugh loudly, hissing a high-pitched eee noise as he did so. Obi looked at Lizzie in amazement.
&
nbsp; “Seriously, you speak creole?” he asked her.
“It’s krio, which is a version of creole,” Lizzie replied, “and no, I’m now out of phrases. He asked me how I was, and I told him I was fine.”
“My name is JoJo,” the driver said in English with a lilting accent, still smiling at Lizzie. “I am very pleased to meet you.” As Lizzie leaned forward to shake his hand, she noticed an automatic rifle leaning up against the empty passenger seat. Lizzie recognised it as an AK-47 from the distinctive wooden parts and forward curving magazine. It was supposed to be one of the easiest rifles to use, a crude but effective killing machine with only a few moving parts. So easy that even a child could use it. And in this part of the world, Lizzie was only too aware that many had.
“Are you expecting trouble?” Lizzie said, nodding at the rifle.
“No, miss,” JoJo replied. “Is just for show, nothing more.” He let go of Lizzie’s hand and shook Obi’s. “Where are your people from?”
“Um, Bethnal Green,” Obi replied uncertainly. Lizzie suppressed a smile at his reply as JoJo turned his attention to Jack.
Through the tinted windows of the SUV, Lizzie could see Charlotte standing at the rear of the plane with the steward. They were both staring at the SUVs, and Lizzie noticed that a fourth one had parked near them, but there was no sign of any activity.
“Okay, we go now,” JoJo said, putting the car into drive. As it moved forward, Lizzie craned her neck to watch Charlotte and the steward, but they just stayed where they were.
Enemy Within: A heart-wrenching medical mystery (British Military Thriller Series Book 3) Page 16
