“Thank you, Sir. I won’t let you down.”
Rose didn’t wait any longer. She’d heard enough. She fought back her tears and hurried away from Colonel Richards’ office. They were going to sacrifice her – sacrifice everyone not already redeployed from the facility – to wipe the werewolves off the face of the earth. She had to do something, but for the life of her, had no idea what. She was utterly alone here, with no one she could enlist for help. Then a thought occurred to her. There was one person she might be able to turn to. One potential ally. Rose straightened her clothes, wiped the moisture from her eyes, and headed towards the room where Phil Fletcher was being held.
9th January 2009. Newcastle International Airport. 21:55
Marie stepped out of the KLM twin prop aircraft and made her way towards the waiting shuttle bus. The frigid air stung her cheeks and hurt her throat when she inhaled it, but it was still considerably warmer than Moscow had been. Her wolf was forced as far down as she could and it lay quiet in the depths of her subconscious, making her more susceptible to the cold. It may have been warmer than Moscow, but she felt the chill much more keenly than she ordinarily would. The journey had been considerably less fraught than she’d imagined. While there had been increased security at the airport in Moscow, there had not been, as far as she could tell, any special measures put in place. Not yet, anyway. The Russian’s experience with werewolves was limited and, for the moment, it didn’t look like the British had shared much intelligence on them. Certainly not the countermeasures they’d had from Steven Wilkinson. They’d boarded the Aeroflot flight to Amsterdam without incident and the transfer to the KLM flight had been similarly straightforward. It was only here that they were in any real danger. She remembered the video footage of Dmitri, Kasha and Adam trying to flee from Exeter and suppressed a shudder. Silver bullets would not affect the other field operatives, but the scars on her wrists left her under no illusion that she wouldn’t be so lucky if things went wrong.
The flight had been almost empty. Only around a dozen passengers had boarded in Amsterdam in addition to herself and her strike team. Most of them were dazed-looking young men, clearly returning from the Dutch capital. There were not many flights in or out of Newcastle at this time of night and she hoped the police officers present would be more interested in the other passengers and any souvenirs they may have brought back from the coffee shops than in a well-groomed woman wearing a business suit. If not… well, at least if things got bloody there would be limited civilian casualties.
The bus lurched into motion and headed towards the terminal building. Marie made a show of checking her telephone and avoided eye contact with the others. She’d been in dangerous situations before, but this was different. There had never been so much at stake. Fifteen field operatives, plus those with Daniel, against an army who were as prepared for the enemy they faced as they could be. She’d made contingency plans, of course, but even those were as dependent on luck as sound strategy. Steffan had put things in motion at his end, and she’d done her best to cover as many angles as she could, but in the end, she’d simply run out of time. The full moon was less than thirty hours away. Whatever actions she took needed to happen by then.
The bus came to a stop and the passengers filed off, hurrying to get into the warmth of the terminal building. The airport was almost empty now. Most of the shops had closed, or were in the process of closing, and bored staff members looked at their watches, hoping they would not have to deal with any more passengers for one day. She stopped at a coffee shop and ordered an espresso, to the dismay of the girl behind the counter, then followed the rest of the passengers towards baggage collection and passport control. The other wolves had also held back, allowing the returning stag party to get ahead of them. How the customs officials treated those new arrivals should at least give some indication as to how closely they were monitoring things. If they were lucky, the border control staff would be as tired and ready to go home as the people in the shops and cafés.
It only took a few minutes for their luggage to appear on the carousel. Some of the stag party seemed content to wait for the rest of their friends, while others grabbed rucksacks and began making their way towards the exit. When the first few made it through without opposition, she followed, trying to control the racing of her heartbeat and fixing her face in a mask of irritation to hide the nervousness she was sure must be radiating from her.
She need not have worried. The customs official at the desk barely glanced at her passport and she made it out into the empty foyer without incident. She almost felt like crying out in relief. Instead she took her phone out of her pockets and sent a single text message, then made her way out of the airport towards the car park, with the other members of her team following behind her. Once out of the terminal building, she removed the earplugs she’d been wearing. A white minibus waited for them at the entrance, with a young blonde woman in the driver’s seat. Marie opened the side door. “Melissa?”
The girl grinned. “Welcome back to the UK. No problems on your flight, I hope?”
Marie climbed into one of the empty seats and fastened her seatbelt. “No, plain sailing. The security measures don’t seem to be in place for inbound passengers. Not yet anyway. Is everything ready?”
Melissa nodded. “Everything is set. The others are ready and Daniel… well, he’s got a surprise for you. Apparently he ran into an old friend of yours.”
Marie’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Old friend?”
Chapter 21
Earlier that day…
9th January 2009. Finningley, Doncaster. 17:10
Rose sat in her car and drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. The village of Finningley was quiet. A few cars were parked outside the public house; people unwinding after a long week at work, or stopping off for a meal. She herself had gone there several times when off duty, preferring the food and the company to that served up by the army chefs at the detention facility. She’d found it relaxing to sit and watch the other customers, appreciating the interactions between them. It reminded her that outside of the confines of the prison and the horrors it contained, real people were happily living their lives. Normal lives, with no monsters and no imminent threat of death. That was the pretence she’d used when she’d driven out of Lindholme earlier. She was just sticking to a routine that she’d established and she hoped that no one would consider it in any way out of the ordinary. Not that she was planning to eat at the pub today, despite the protests from her stomach. There was another reason she’d come here. Finningley was right next to Doncaster Airport.
There were not many flights in or out of such a small place at this time of year. Most of them were to skiing resorts in France or to popular destinations like Dublin. Those destinations were not the ones she had in mind, however. She needed to disappear. The shit was going to hit the fan in two days’ time, and when that happened, she wanted to be as far away from it as she could be. Somewhere she could hide out relatively inexpensively until the dust settled. Of course, there was a damned good chance that they would hunt her down, especially when she released what evidence she’d been able to gather to the media. It wasn’t much, but if she couldn’t prevent the tragedy, she was at least going to make certain the bastards who orchestrated it were held accountable for their actions.
She checked her watch again. There was a flight to Wroclaw in three hours’ time. Poland was not the most glamorous destination on the planet, but it was part of the European Union so she hoped she’d be able to pass through customs relatively easily. Once she was there, she’d find a way to cross over into the Czech Republic or Romania. She didn’t have a lot of money on her – a couple of thousand pounds that she’d exchanged into euros over the past twenty four hours – but it was a start. The last thing she wanted to do was draw attention to unusual activity on her bank account. She would simply hit Eastern Europe and fade away. They’d be able to track her flight of course, but hopefully, by the time the shit hit the
fan, they would be too concerned with other things to come straight after her. She would have a few days, and you could travel pretty far in that time.
She looked out across the village. It was like a picture postcard. The snow was still falling and the icy air formed glowing nimbuses around the streetlights. She was parked on a residential street, where hopefully it would take some time for them to find her car. She’d considered using one of the car parks at the airport, but with the CCTV coverage and the increasing unpaid parking charges, sooner or later someone would work out where she’d gone. Here at least, there was a chance of her vehicle going unnoticed for longer. She did her best to quieten the butterflies in her stomach, then got out of the car and retrieved her suitcase from the boot. There were no personal belongings. Everything she owned was either still in her rented flat in Crickhowell or in her room at Lindholme. She hoped her parents would understand why she’d done this. Grief welled up inside her, but she steeled herself. She needed to be strong and not act in any way that would draw attention. She’d simply go into the pub and call a taxi from the payphone near the toilets to take her the rest of the way.
Rose made her way across the road, cursing as the wet slush oozed through her shoes. It wouldn’t matter soon. She’d get to the departure lounge and reward herself with a large gin and tonic to calm her nerves. Not too many, though. She needed to be alert. But one wouldn’t hurt. Or two. Three at the absolute most.
The warmth of the pub hit her like a wall as she opened the door. The place was busy. It always was on a Friday. Good. People were not likely to notice a woman sitting in the corner for a few minutes until her taxi arrived. She made her way to the bar and ordered herself a drink, then walked towards the rear of the establishment where the payphone hung on the wall in a small alcove. She paused as she reached it. This was it. The point of no return. As soon as she made this call, she was committed. In all honesty, though, she’d been committed from the time she’d told Phil Fletcher of her plans and given him her key card. She hoped that he’d at least be able to find a way to get Steven clear. She’d given them both a fighting chance. That was really all she could do. At the end of the day, she needed to get the hell away from this place, and the monsters – both human and werewolf – could take care of themselves. She’d seen what a fuel-air bomb could do when she’d been stationed in Iraq and had no intention of being within a thousand miles of Lindholme when it hit.
“Here goes nothing…” she said, and reached for the handset.
A large hand grabbed hers before she could pick it up. She stood, frozen in place, expecting Colonel Richards or one of the base security team to be standing there. She turned to face her captor, but discovered that it was worse than that. So very much worse.
Standing beside her was the large German man who had broken into her flat on Christmas Eve with John Simpson and Marie Williams. The big werewolf bastard whose wrist she’d broken.
He smiled at her and tightened his grip on her arm. “Rose. It’s so very nice to see you again. I’d like you to come with me, if you don’t mind. We need to have a little chat.”
10th January 2009. Moorends Business Park, Doncaster. 01:20
Marie was on edge. She’d been unable to relax on the trip down from Newcastle. That the heaters in the minibus were broken and Melissa had insisted on tuning the radio to some godawful dance station hadn’t helped. Her heartbeat seemed to synchronise with the pulsating bassline of the music, heightening her state of anxiety. At least it had been better than Melissa’s relentless chattering for the first hour. The other members of the assault team had taken their seats and promptly fallen asleep, leaving her as the only person for the young werewolf to talk to. And some of the things she’d been saying disturbed Marie quite a lot. Melissa seemed far more concerned with vengeance against the people stationed in Lindholme than rescuing the captives. Well, she would get her wish. Marie had already decided to send the young woman in on the first attack wave. She could not afford to have another bloodthirsty rogue werewolf on her hands. In many respects, she seemed even more unbalanced than Connie had been. It was hard to believe that less than a month ago, Melissa had just been living with her family somewhere in Oxfordshire.
Marie felt a pang of guilt. The repercussions of her actions in High Moor had affected so many people – brought her species to the brink of extinction. She didn’t feel fit to lead them. Part of her wished that Krysztof had finished the job and executed her along with Michael. Then, perhaps, she would have been with her brothers and John again instead of existing with the terrible burden of responsibility, not only for her past actions, but for the choices she was about to make. It made her sick to her stomach, but there was no one else to do this. Daniel had seemed a shadow of his former self when she’d spoken to him, and the surviving members of the field teams were little more than soldiers, lacking any sort of vision or imagination. It was all up to her. The only consolation she had was that when all of this was over, she would not have to carry her guilt for long.
The minibus slowed then stopped by the entrance to an industrial estate. Melissa got out and unhooked a chain that ran across the entrance, then returned to the vehicle and drove down the long gravel track, past the dark silhouettes of skeletal trees against the flat white expanse of snow-covered fields. The moon was almost full now – Marie could feel its insistent tug and knew that the others could feel it as well. The newly bitten survivors of High Moor would not know what was happening to them, and tomorrow night they would transform for the first time. The thought made Marie shiver. She didn’t know exactly how many people were held in Lindholme, but chances were most of them would go moonstruck when the change hit them. Most of the moonstruck would slaughter each other or, if they were really lucky, turn on the soldiers guarding the base. Even so, she knew that to reach the pack wolves and mount a rescue they would need to get past not only the British Army, but a horde of ravening monsters. It was their biggest challenge, but also their biggest asset. With any luck, the military personnel would be too busy fighting for their lives to pay her pack of raiders much attention. She hoped, anyway. The worst case scenario really didn’t bear thinking about.
The minibus pulled up in front of a looming building – an empty warehouse on an abandoned industrial park. It was the best option for staging a mission such as this, with so many people involved, but the slaughter in Moscow was still fresh in her mind and it did little to dampen her anxiety. The sooner this was over and they were all out of the country the better. She stepped out into the frigid night air and followed Melissa through a fire door into the cavernous interior of the industrial unit.
The place was a hive of activity. Daniel had evidently been rather busy over the last few days. It looked as if he’d managed to empty every one of the pack’s weapons caches in the country. Everything from 9mm pistols to assault rifles and even a couple of high calibre sniper rifles littered the work benches, while eager conscripts stripped, cleaned and checked them, or catalogued the number of silver rounds available for each. The arsenal was impressive. Marie estimated that there were almost forty individual weapons here. Not enough to take on the might of the British Army head on, but hopefully sufficient for what she had in mind. Besides, it wasn’t as if firearms were their only weapons.
She spotted Daniel explaining how to strip an AK-47 to a small group of young werewolves. He looked up as she approached, smiled, then walked forward to embrace her.
“Marie, it’s good to see you. I’m so sorry about Michael.”
Marie returned the hug and swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. “Thank you, Daniel.” She released him and turned away so he wouldn’t see the moisture dampening her eyes. “You seem to have things under control here. What’s the situation at Lindholme?”
“Not good. Follow me. It’s better if you hear this yourself.”
Daniel walked towards a series of prefabricated offices in one corner of the warehouse with Marie following closely behind. He opened the d
oor and extended his arm, leading her inside. Marie wasn’t sure what she’d expected to find, but Rose Fisher had certainly not been it. The woman was sitting on a plastic chair, nursing a steaming mug of tea. She looked up when Marie stepped inside and managed a weak smile, then stood and extended her hand. “Daniel said you’d be arriving soon. I wish I could say that it was nice to see you again, Miss Williams, but… you know.”
She turned to Daniel. “What the hell is she doing here? If they realise she’s been taken it could put the entire operation at risk. What the fuck were you thinking?”
Daniel raised his hands. “I’d been watching the base, as ordered, when I saw her leave. I followed her on a whim, hoping I might be able to get some more concrete information about what’s going on in Lindholme. Turns out that Doctor Fisher was getting ready to abscond when I caught up to her. The rest… well, you really need to listen to what she has to say.”
She turned back to Rose. “I’m listening?”
Rose took a sip of her tea and sat back down, then looked directly at Marie. “They’re going to kill everyone in that base tomorrow night. They’ve got the essential personnel and research out, with just a skeleton security staff in place to keep things under control. The second the moon rises tomorrow night, they’re going to drop a thermobaric device on Lindholme and vaporise everyone and everything within two hundred meters of the place.” She gave a bitter laugh. “I was, apparently, not considered to be essential personnel. They were going to kill me along with everyone else. Those troops, the people that survived High Moor and your friend, John. All burned to ashes.”
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