Spylark

by Danny Rurlander

  CHAPTER 32

  Tom’s feet barely touched the floor as Mike half-dragged, half-carried him back to the cell. They came to the top of the steps. This was the moment, now, before he was slammed back into the cell. He lifted a leg high and strode out into nothingness. He felt his centre of gravity shift violently and allowed his body to slam on to the steps, pulling the other man down with him, the stick clattering after. They landed in a tangled heap at the bottom. Mike was stunned, kneeling, eyes closed. Tom didn’t take his eyes off Mike’s face as he put a hand in his pocket and gently placed Gnat on the floor next to the doorsill, then inched away from it so that his body would shield the drone from the rage when it came.

  And then suddenly, with a canine shake of his head, Mike was on his feet, spitting curses and yanking Tom up by the hair.

  ‘You stupid cripple,’ he growled, and shoved him back into the cell.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I missed a step.’

  ‘Shut up, you moron.’ He was rubbing his elbow. ‘I’ll break your other leg for you, if you do that again.’

  When his footsteps had receded, Tom touched his forehead and there was blood on his fingers. He wiped them on his T-shirt and took a moment to steady his breathing. Then he pulled the top of the stick away and twisted the metal sheath to expose the control panel and screen of the miniature drone. He peered through the bars of the door, pressed the start button and heard the rotor blades stir to life. In the few seconds before Mike recovered from the fall, Tom had placed the machine with just enough clearance from the door, but if it swayed during take-off, the rotors would hit the step and the drone would fling itself over and that would be that.

  Gingerly, he thumbed the lever, tilting the blades slightly away from the door, then up it went, until it was level with the bars and he could feel the breeze on his face.

  The staircase was unlit and in shadow, so he was glad he had built a tiny LED searchlight into the base of the drone. He activated this with a switch and could now see the staircase, grey and pixelated, on the screen. As he piloted the drone steadily upwards, the waspish buzz echoed around the stairwell. It seemed deafeningly loud, as if it were the only sound in the whole world, screaming to be heard.

  It reached the top, and the key came into view on the screen. The nail needed to be long enough to make it possible to grab the key without the rotor blades hitting the wall. He did a visual check through the grille and the distance looked OK. Tom knew he only had one chance. Very slowly he inched the machine towards the key until the magnetic hook at its base made contact. Then, thumbing the controls, he edged it away from the wall and the key slid off the nail. Judging by the drone’s sudden dip, it must have been a heavy key, perhaps thirty grams, and he had to almost apply full power to compensate. He held his breath as he brought it back down the stairwell until it was hovering outside the bars of the door. Here was the next opportunity for disaster. With one hand on the controls he kept the drone hovering perfectly still, just close enough to the bars, but not so close it would strike them. With the other hand he reached two fingers through the bars, touched the key with a fingertip, but couldn’t fully reach it.

  He had to fly the drone closer, but there were only a matter of millimetres now between the blades and the door. He edged it closer, jammed his fingers through the bars, and took hold of the key as tenderly as life itself. It was when he had felt the cold metal in his hand and landed the drone on the floor on the other side of the door again that he realized he had been holding his breath. He thought he was going to vomit. His hands were shaking violently as he put the key in the lock.

  The sound of the lock turning was like an explosion in the silence and he imagined it reverberating throughout the building, causing the people in Rufus Clay’s meeting to exchange puzzled glances. He listened, half-expecting to hear heavy boots running down the corridor. But the only sound was of his own breathing.

  Before leaving the room, he unscrewed the light bulb from the middle of the ceiling and smashed it on the floor. Then he locked the door of the cell behind him and put the key in his pocket. The delay might buy him a few precious seconds. Unless he was discovered first. He stowed Gnat back into his walking stick and heaved himself noiselessly up the steps.

  Tom peered through the windows overlooking the yard, where floodlights illuminated the spiralling curl of the razor wire fence that surrounded the farm. Somewhere out there were wide open spaces, brown soil soaking up soft rain, swelling the river that ran past his home and his family and friends, Aunt Emily, Jim, Maggie and Joel. And somewhere in an airbase many miles away, pilots in red jumpsuits were preparing for their next display, poring over a chart in a route-planning meeting, real people with names and faces and friends and families. Somewhere out there was life. In here was only death.

  The right-hand passage led to Rufus Clay’s office, so he turned left through a set of double doors, which opened into a corridor that was so bright after his cell that he found himself cowering against the lights, like a woodlouse exposed under a stone, his heart thumping. At the end, where the corridor turned a corner, was an illuminated green arrow sign, presumably pointing to an exit of some kind. If he could get out of the building, he would have a chance. Perhaps he could hide somewhere until the gates opened, but – he reminded himself grimly – at the speed he walked, everyone in the building would have died of old age before he’d had a chance to escape. Or maybe he could hide in the back of one of the vehicles in the yard? But then he remembered that they belonged to some of the most dangerous people in the world, so that wasn’t so appealing either.

  Before the corner he would have to pass an open door. The light was on in the room. He stood still and listened. There was a whirring sound coming from somewhere. He peered into the room and saw that the room was a laboratory, full of humming machines and flickering screens. There were tubes and wires everywhere. A woman in a white coat was working on a machine with her back to him. A strand of her red hair was blown out behind her as she worked on the machine, and he knew it was Victoria Juniper. Tom could see it was a wind tunnel, and as she moved he caught a glimpse of a brown-feathered wing in a glass tube.

  He crept past the open door and cautiously rounded the corner. The green arrow seemed to be pointing further inside the building. There were several doors on the next corridor, two of them wide open, and another green arrow at the end.

  Tom peered into the first room. It was a small, square, windowless room, and seemed to be empty apart from a rubber mat in the centre. He was about to leave when he noticed a faint patch of light in the middle of the mat. He went over to it and looked up. Above his head was a stainless-steel chute coming straight down from the ceiling, like a chimney without a fireplace, and at the top was a perfect square of sky. A launch chute for vertical take-off and landing UAVs! He stood under it, numbed by the sudden longing to lift off into that moist grey sky.

  He checked the corridor was clear and continued to the next room. This one was dimly lit and deserted, and he pushed the door and crept in. It was full of bird drones in various states of assembly. Some were bare skeletons, their electronics exposed like the giblets of a Christmas turkey, others were feathered and beautiful. Some were perched on stands, wings outstretched like exhibits in a museum, others suspended by wires from the ceiling. A tawny owl was standing in a corner, surveying the room. Tom shivered. The room was silent and still, and the lifeless birds gave him a feeling of doom, as if some spark of life had been suddenly snuffed out halfway through an act of creation.

  Stretched across a wall, cables leading off from the feathered belly, was the stately form of a peregrine falcon. Tom knew he should leave, but he found himself mesmerized by the perfection of the thing, its yellow eyes looking right at him. He reached out to touch the delicately flecked leg feathers.

  Voices jolted him into action. They were in the corridor. He looked around for somewhere to hide, the panic rising inside.

  He squeezed under a laboratory bench
as the lights came on and some people stepped into the room. Rufus Clay was speaking.

  ‘This is Falcon 03, our fastest self-propelled remote attack vehicle. As we speak, Dr Juniper is making some minor aerodynamic adjustments in the lab, in preparation for our demonstration on Sunday.’ He paused for someone to translate it into a throaty language Tom didn’t recognize.

  A dozen legs encircled the bench and faced the peregrine falcon. Tom could not move a muscle. From under the bench he could see several pairs of shoes inches away from his face.

  ‘As you will know, the peregrine falcon is the fastest bird in existence, so nature has already given us the design we needed. The difficulty is getting propulsion without spoiling the natural aerodynamics, which obviously propellers would do. This is why, ladies and gentlemen, you will see a small rocket engine behind each foot. Once deployed, the feet fold up into the natural flying position, pointing towards the back of the bird, and the rocket engines come into play for the remainder of the mission.’ Someone asked a question, but Tom did not catch the words.

  ‘Of course,’ Rufus Clay answered, ‘it’s a tactical weapon, not a long-range one. But it reaches maximum speed in less than three seconds. That’s why we called it Falcon 03. It can maintain that speed for about ten miles, depending on prevailing conditions. But its accuracy is its primary asset – as you will see on Sunday afternoon!’ This was followed by laughter. ‘Falcon 03 will easily evade the latest military and civil drone detection systems, making it, effectively, an invisible air-to-air missile system. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a game changer.’ The translator translated again to murmurs of approval, and the group moved back into the corridor.

  Tom listened to the footsteps fade and crawled out from under the bench. He checked the way was clear, then crept silently along the passage towards the green arrow. But now there were more footsteps coming from the corner behind him, regular and crisp, and getting closer. He tried another door but it was locked. He tried the next one, twisting the handle hard and leaning into it with his shoulder, but that was locked too. The footsteps were closer still, the steady clicking of heels, about to round the corner. His heart was banging in his chest as he scrambled to the next door. He fumbled at the handle, pushed and found himself falling into a small, windowless room illuminated by a dim emergency light burning above the door.

  He closed the door and looked around. In the middle of the room a machine the size of a small car was humming and vibrating. The door he had come through opened and a figure loomed in the entrance. He slunk behind the machine, crouching low, his heart pounding. He heard the door close and a light was switched on. Through the tangle of quivering ducts and pipes that led from the machine, Tom could see Victoria Juniper in front of a metal locker, putting on a quilted blue suit with a fur-lined hood and some thick gloves. She then went over to the far side of the room where there was a raised metal door set into the wall, with a turn-wheel, like the kind found on a bank vault. Tom guessed it was a walk-in freezer. She spun the wheel to open the door, and stepped inside.

  He was about to make a dash for it while she was in there, when an idea struck him. It was a huge risk, but better than the alternative. He crouched low again and waited. Tom could feel his legs going numb. When the woman came out of the freezer several minutes later she was carrying an ice cream tub in her hands. To Tom’s relief she took off her gloves and suit and placed them back in the locker. Then the light flicked off, and she was gone, taking the ice cream tub with her.

  Tom decided to wait until the blood was flowing in his legs again before putting his idea into action, or he’d barely be able to walk. In the meantime he might as well find out what was in the freezer. He turned the wheel and dragged his deadened limbs over the sill. The freezing air burnt the inside of his lungs and made the skin on his face feel tight. The room was stacked full of ice cream tubs with that familiar colourful writing on the lid: Luscious Lakeland – Real Ice Cream, Fresh from the Farm.

  He pulled a tub labelled Damson out and opened it. Inside was a pale white substance – nothing suggesting damsons. It didn’t smell of much either and his finger met with a surprising resistance when he prodded it. He put the tub back and looked at the other flavours. Running from top to bottom there were Apple Pie, Banoffee, Coconut, Damson and Eton Mess. Tom stared at them. There was something too exotic about the selection of flavours. Why no vanilla, strawberry and raspberry ripple?

  He was about to give up, when it hit him that the tubs were arranged in alphabetical order. Perhaps the flavours formed an alphabetical code, signalling the different forms of the stuff in the tubs, whatever it was. He began to back away with a sickening feeling. The warning signs on the back of the door confirmed it: Extreme Danger: No Naked Flames, and he realized he was standing in a room full of plastic explosives.

  CHAPTER 33

  Tom closed the freezer door, went to the locker and pulled the quilted suit on, threading his walking stick down inside one of the baggy legs, and making sure the fur-lined hood was tightly pulled around his face. It wouldn’t make him invisible, and he would still have his limp, but it might buy him a few seconds if someone saw him.

  Outside the room, all was quiet. He moved silently along the corridor and came to another door on the right. This was wide open, the room brightly lit, and he had to go past it in order to follow the green arrow. As he came near the opening, he could see a large man sitting at a desk in front of a computer screen. The man glanced up, nodded, looked for a second as if he were going to carry on with his work, and then looked straight at Tom. He opened his mouth to speak. Tom stood still, knowing that if he walked his limp would give him away. ‘Bit cold today, Victoria?’ Tom nodded, the man carried on with his work, and Tom hurried on towards the metal door at the end of the corridor.

  The door opened with a squeak on to a carpeted hallway with pot plants, and pictures on the walls. Another passage led off to the left and to the right a stairwell, faintly illuminated by a green arrow, descended into darkness.

  From somewhere down the passage there was a tinkling of glasses. Rufus Clay was speaking. ‘The basic system starts at three million dollars. Now compare that, ladies and gentlemen, for example, to a second-hand late 1990s Rapier, if you can get hold of one, and I’m sure you’ll agree, it makes undeniable economic sense.’

  Tom followed the steps down and came to a landing, and another green arrow pointing down a further flight of steps. A cold dread began to stir inside him as he realized that, far from leading to an exit, the arrows were taking him below ground. He guessed he would now be a full storey lower than the cell he was in before. At the bottom was a metal door with another green arrow.

  When he pushed the door open, he was hit by a cold gust of air. He flicked on a light and almost crumpled in despair when he saw a tiny square chamber, doorless and windowless – a hopeless dead end. The room was empty apart from a metal chest about the size of a fridge, laid lengthways. He pulled his stick from the freezer suit, sat on the chest, and put his head in his hands.

  He remained like this for a long time, overwhelmed with fatigue. There was nowhere else to go now. Once they found his empty cell the alarm would be raised, he would tell Rufus Clay everything, to try and save his friends, and swift retribution would follow.

  He caught a whiff of that familiar scent again. Suddenly he was in the top room at River’s Edge, Aunt Emily pottering about with a duster in her hand, arranging her Grasmere Gingerbread on the table, Saturday afternoon stretching ahead. That was the smell. The earthy, herby scent of lake water wafting up through the floor-boards from the boathouse below. But how was it possible that he could smell it here in this underground room?

  There were voices echoing in the stairwell. Two men.

  Heavily, he hoisted himself up from the chest, flicked off the light and stood behind the door, but he knew it was hopeless. Boots on the hard steps were coming closer. He could see how everything was going to play out. He would probably be pronounced m
issing rather than dead. These people knew how to make someone disappear. He wished he could have said goodbye.

  He was surprised to hear a scrap of cheerful conversation as the door opened.

  ‘Too many pies, mate.’ A southern accent.

  ‘Shut it! It’s a long way down here.’ Panting.

  ‘Well, when you’ve got your breath back, I’ll talk you through the escape plan. It’s pretty cool, even for Mr C.’

  ‘Go on, soldier, I’m all ears.’

  Laughter. Light on. Door pushed back into Tom’s nose, back of his head squashed against the wall. A glimpse of a tattooed arm.

  ‘The gear’s all in the box. If the alarm sounds, we assemble down here. If everywhere is full of smoke, follow the green arrows, which will be flashing. We leave all the doors open behind us.’

  ‘Why leave them open?’

  ‘Spreads the fire quicker. Once the place is burning it’s going to be like a fireball, all that Semtex. And we want nothing left by the time the pigs arrive. When they poke around, it will look like a factory fire caused by a build-up of gas from the ice cream plant. Which means, if you hang about upstairs you’ll be toast.’

  The other man exhaled and swore.

  ‘Nah, don’t worry. This is last-resort stuff, mate. It won’t happen. There’s no way Rufus is going to let this one go wrong. There must be twenty million hanging on it, looking at that lot of customers upstairs.’

  Tom was aware of a bead of sweat forming on his forehead. Tortuously slowly it began to roll over his skin, down between his eyebrows until it was on the ridge of his nose.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘We get the scuba gear out of the chest and put it on. We might not need it in the tunnel itself. The water level varies, see? Sometimes there’s headroom, but sometimes the tunnel’s full, so we’ll be swimming underwater in pitch darkness. Not the easiest thing, if you’re not used to it.’