by John McNally
“Get in!” Kelly said. Finn jumped into the cabin and scrambled up beside Delta on the top two seats. Kelly dived into the lower seats next to Stubbs – just as the foam padding in the box caught fire and began to melt, flare and burn.
“GO!” yelled Kelly, slamming the door.
“We’re not there yet!” said Delta, eyes glued to the red-to-green power indicator above her head. Willing it higher.
The supply pallet was being consumed. Bullets crackled around them. Finn could feel his heart beating faster and faster. The fuel truck was next. Foam-fuelled flames swept round it.
“FLY!!” Kelly urged the machine.
“Give me some revs, you hunk of junk!!” Delta instructed the power indicator.
Once settled, and having unwrapped and inserted a boiled sweet to stop his ears from popping, Stubbs simply reached up with an aged, crooked finger, opened a maintenance panel and flipped a switch marked ‘Ex. Override. Vap’.2
BANG!
The whole craft seemed to jolt forward, and the power bar shot from red into green.
“GOOOO!” yelled Finn.
“GONE!” reported Delta, and hauled up the stick.
The Apache roared and pulled away from planet earth, the foam packing releasing the wheels with an uneven jolt – just as the fuel truck EXPLODED…
…so that they were catapulted and shot up and backwards inside the expanding conflagration into hell. Finn screamed. Kelly gritted his teeth. Stubbs sucked his boiled sweet.
Delta, back in her element, rode the aircraft like a rodeo steer as it reeled from the explosion, banking out of both the backflip and expanding fireball and sending the aircraft horizontal out of the flame instead of flipping back over to crash to earth. Finally she restored equilibrium in free air so that they found themselves hovering in the clear five macro-metres or so above the crash site, over the burning wreckage.
Finn allowed himself a mad, strangled laugh.
Delta allowed herself a chewing gum, flicking one out of a pack and catching it in her mouth.
Stubbs started switching things on. Beneath them lay a scene of carnage: a great flaming, formless mess, a huge splash of fire and shattered fuselage strewn over an area the size of a football pitch. They hung above it, barely the size of a baby bird – but still alive.
“Sabotage,” said Kelly, surveying the scene.
And then, above the sound of the rotors, the popping ammo and burning wreckage…
Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep…
THIRTEEN
“It’s still down there,” said Stubbs.
“What is?” said Finn.
“The Beta Scarlatti.”
Delta hit the radio using the agreed call signs Finn had come up with in the briefings: Ronaldo for control, Messi for the mission.
“Come in, Ronaldo! Come in, Ronaldo! This is Messi! Do you read me, Ronaldo? Over!”
Nothing.
“They won’t respond. Unless they’re right on top of us, we’re out of range1,” said Stubbs. “We are alone.”
“Thank you, Happy Smurf,” said Kelly.
Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep…
“We still have the Beta signal!” said Finn, excited.
“Probably dead,” said Stubbs.
“It must be alive if it’s still broadcasting,” said Finn.
“Well, that’s what we’re here for. Find it!” ordered Kelly.
Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep…
Stubbs tutted, put on a pair of spectacles and squinted at the green dot on the tracking screen, guiding Delta on to the signal. “East a few metres – macro-metres not nano-metres – this thing doesn’t know the difference.”
They banked back over the east side of the wreckage and descended. As they did so, the body of the injured airman was revealed through the smoke, parachute half open and trailing behind him.
“He must have tried to jump out with us before we hit the ground,” said Delta.
“The fire’s spreading the other way. They’ll find him. He’ll make it,” said Kelly.
Finn looked away, praying Kelly was right and the flames wouldn’t get that far. In doing so, he spotted a cigar shape.
“There!”
Almost directly below them, free of its shattered transportation trolley but still locked in its muzzle-ended titanium harness – which must have saved it from the blast – was the Beta Scarlatti. Flames licked as it buzzed and fizzed and fought for its terrible life, the attached nano-transmitter – a white stripe across its belly – beeping away, oblivious.
“It’s going to fry,” said Stubbs. “If it hasn’t already.”
“Can we pick it up?” Kelly asked Delta.
“We’re overloaded.”
They watched the flames lick nearer.
“Take her down! I know how to open it!” said Finn.
“Impossible. Unstable air,” said Stubbs.
Kelly looked at Delta. “Salazar?”
“Watch me,” she said.
“Take her down and get ready to run!” ordered Kelly, opening the door.
* * *
The Beta Scarlatti caught the scent of the crew. Getting stronger. Getting closer. In its forebrain the four scents became fused with the agony and confusion of its struggle.
The whole harness throbbed as it tried to vibrate its way out of its metal sarcophagus. It thought one thing.
Kill…
Venom oozed from its abdomen and sizzled against the scalding metal.
* * *
Kelly lashed a line to the weapons hardpoint on the fuselage as Delta, teeth gritted, lowered the Apache into the snarling conflagration, the rotor wash beating back the flames, yet fanning them at the same time.
Stubbs read the instruments and called out guidance as Delta kept the aircraft as steady as a rock in the roasting, turbulent air.
“Three nano-metres! Another two! That’s it!”
The line secure, Kelly ducked back to hook an arm round Finn.
“Kid! Can you do this?”
Any fear Finn felt – and he knew he should – was drowning in excitement. He nodded.
“Remember he’s family!” warned Stubbs.
“I’ll look after him,” said Kelly, and before Finn knew what was happening Kelly had swung them both out on the line to drop the two metres or so on to the harness – right on top of the trapped and furious beast.
Finn felt a shocking heat assail him, drawing the air from his lungs and singeing his skin.
They jumped down off the harness and for a moment Finn found himself face to face with the Scarlatti – eye to thousand-celled eye – and again he realised exactly how small he was now. The beast dwarfed them, twice Finn’s 9mm height on its side and six times his length. Trunk-like antennae flexed out of the muzzle end of the harness to taste him, but shrank back as they hit the heat, furious and confused, burning and dying.
Kelly shouted, “Finn! Where is it?” through the noise and downdraught.
Finn found the release catch halfway down the harness and mimed the action of yanking it up to show Kelly what to do. The flames were nearly upon them. Kelly nodded, and shoved Finn back up on the harness, motioning him back in the chopper.
Delta held it steady as Finn pulled himself back in.
Below, Kelly wrapped the line up to the Apache as many times round his arm as he could, then reached down and hooked the end round the release catch on the harness. He nodded up at Delta.
“THREE, TWO, ONE – GO!”
“Oh, glory…” said Stubbs.
Delta hauled on the stick.
The Apache and Kelly shot upwards…
…the harness sprang open…
…and the furious winged leviathan escaped its tomb like a bat out of hell.
WWKWZZZWZWZWWKZWZWKZWZWKKZWZWZWZWKKZWWWKWZZ!
&nb
sp; The Apache shot out of the flames, centimetres ahead of the beast.
Crazed with anger, in mad flight, the Scarlatti dwarfed them, filling the glass canopy and blotting out the light, massive thwack-a-thwack-a wings creating turbulent air, nearly beating out their rotors. Delta twisted and twirled the Apache to evade. Again Finn clung on as she turned the aircraft on its side and made horizontal.
“Kelly!” shouted Finn.
“What’s his position?” asked Delta.
“He’s still there!” shouted Finn who caught a glimpse of him – hanging on.
“So is that ridiculous organism!” Stubbs added uselessly, as the Scarlatti spun to attack them, bringing its vile abdomen screaming towards them, stings first, bulging with venom.
“Tell him to hang on,” said Delta and hauled again on the stick. She threw the Apache into an about-turn. Kelly, swinging beneath, screamed, his shoulder almost dislocated by the force of the escape.
“Shoot it! We’ll have to destroy it!” shouted Stubbs.
“Not yet. Got an idea. Going down,” Delta said.
“Back down?” cried Finn.
She plunged the nose of the aircraft towards earth… right back into the flames.
The Apache reached speeds in the dive equivalent to 220mph. Finn watched the Scarlatti track it every millimetre of the way, its great eye filling one of the rear-window panels and glaring at him.
Kill…
They hit the flames. Delta banked sharply through pure fire. Beneath them, Kelly screamed once more.
She held them in the conflagration as long as she dared: one second… two… then banked up and out again – downwind.
The Scarlatti was gone. The flames were too much. They’d lost it.
“Get us clear!” they heard Kelly shout.
Delta took them a few macro-metres across the meadow, as low as she dared above the level of the grasses, swinging round the clumps of nettles, thistles and white-crowned cow parsley twenty storeys high.
Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep…
The tracker showed the Scarlatti still moving – still alive – but getting closer then more distant, closer and more distant.
“It’s going round in circles!” said Stubbs.
“Put us down!” shouted Kelly beneath them.
They landed on, of all things, a dried cowpat, which turned out to be the perfect size, shape and consistency for the job. Delta lowered Kelly on to the surface and landed right beside him.
Kelly – miraculously, thought Finn – was still conscious.
Stubbs clambered down and checked him over, Finn getting out to try and help too. Kelly’s skin was burnt a mottled red and he’d lost most of his hair and eyebrows. Stubbs gave him an injection of some kind. Kelly looked up.
“You OK?” he asked Finn.
Finn couldn’t believe the burnt, bleeding man would be concerned for him. He nodded.
Inside, Delta repeated her communications mantra: “Come in, Ronaldo. Come in, Ronaldo. This is Messi. Do you read me, Ronaldo? Over.”
Nothing.
Finn opened a bottle of water which Kelly gulped back.
“Thanks. You did good. Quite a sight close up, wasn’t it?” Kelly grinned.
Finn grinned back. “Its eye was bigger than me!”
“Were you scared?”
“Nah. There’s a kid at school looks at me just like that.”
Kelly laughed. “Just give me his name when we get out of this mes— WATCH OUT!”
Suddenly Kelly shoved Finn aside and reached for his sidearm.2 Finn spun round.
Through the jungle of grasses – movement.
A black ant popped out of thin air in the grass ahead of them and Finn’s heart all but stopped. It was liquid gloss-black, of indescribable geometric beauty, the size of a wolf and moving at great speed in a series of flicking limbs. The ant stopped maybe ten nano-metres ahead of them and tasted the air with two huge serrated mouthparts, antennae swishing, thinking – What are these new things, threat or food?
Finn was rapt. A black ant, in the wild, in massive form. Totally stunning. Totally crazy. He wanted to walk over to it, to touch it, to ask it questions.
Kelly didn’t wait for answers.
BANG.
Finn jumped out of his skin. The ant’s armour shattered like crockery as the bullet ripped through it. Finn couldn’t believe it. A life, electric and immediate – the most amazing thing he’d ever seen – just gone. Shaking, he stepped forward and picked up a leg section, shiny black, light and strong, like a piece of cycle frame.
He wanted to protest. He wanted to scream, but the shock of it – and the bullet still ringing in his ears – meant that no sound emerged when he opened his mouth.
“Back in the cabin!” said Kelly, getting to his feet and pulling him back, unsentimental.
“But… but…”
“That’s an order.”
Kelly lifted Finn bodily back into the aircraft and he found himself sitting up next to Delta with a souvenir ant shin in his hand. He offered her a look. She just chewed her gum.
Stubbs was already back in the cabin monitoring the Scarlatti’s position.
Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep…
Delta slapped shut the maintenance panel he’d flipped earlier to activate his improvised turbo.
“Nice trick back there, old man.”
“Playing around with these since before you were born, young lady,” grumbled Stubbs.
Kelly hauled himself into the Apache and started to slather his burns with a white goo from one of the medi-pacs.
“It’s heading west, 250 macro-metres,” Stubbs reported.
“We got nothing on the radio,” said Delta.
“They’ve got to be right on top of us to receive a signal – and the range on the Scarlatti tracking transmitter is less than 800 macro-metres. If they don’t get here in the next minute, we’ve lost it,” said Stubbs.
“It must have our scent – we can’t get too close. We’ve got to stay downwind,” said Finn.
“Beta now 400 macro-metres west,” reported Stubbs.
“If they don’t find us in the wreckage, they’ll realise what we’ve done. They’ll radio sweep for us, systematically, just like they said in the briefings,” said Kelly.
“How long will it take them to sift the wreckage?” said Delta. “We might be miles away.”
“It’ll take days to cover that much ground,” said Stubbs. “Could we leave the boy here with a radio to make contact?”
“We can’t leave him, he’s a kid,” said Kelly.
“There are no macro-radios anyway, just the one under the Apache,” said Delta.
“Flares?” suggested Stubbs.
Finn butted in, irritated. “I’m going with you! I know the mission. I know the science. I know the insects. And I know my uncle. He’ll find us. They’ll sweep for us. He won’t let us down and I won’t let you down either.”
They looked at him.
“D’you shoot?” asked Delta with American simplicity.
“On Call of Duty,” said Finn.
Beneath her Aviator shades, Finn could tell, she rolled her eyes.
Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep…
“Signal’s getting weaker… 700 metres west-northwest,” said Stubbs.
“Come in, Ronaldo. Come in, Ronaldo. This is Messi. Do you read me, Ronaldo? Over.”
“Is it a straight line 700 metres?” asked Finn.
“More or less.”
“Then it’s probably locked on to the Alpha already.”
“We’re losing the signal,” said Stubbs.
Kelly looked at Finn, weighed him up and winked a lashless eye.
“He’s in. Let’s go.”
Delta hauled on the stick.
FOURTEEN
DAY TWO 06:28 (BST). Hook Hall, Surrey
As soon as they realised what had happened, King gave the order to shut down all digital and
computer systems and switch to analogue procedures. Hook Hall had been seriously compromised. Boldklub had been seriously compromised. The Western world had been seriously compromised. The immediate countryside would soon be crawling with security personnel. All local roads would have to be closed and roadblocks established at major junctions further afield; all ports and airports would be notified. Anybody in a uniform in the south of England would be out searching for Spiro within the hour. At the very least they were dealing with a highly sophisticated criminal network. Who were they? What on earth was their intent?
King felt – briefly – clueless. A terrible feeling only broken when Al headed out of the control gallery, determined on a course of action. Any action. King pursued him on to the gantry down to the CFAC.
“Where do you think you’re going? You’re exhausted and in shock,” he insisted. “You can’t disappear. Whoever’s behind this will target you.”
“Let’s find them first. Worry about that later.”
King grabbed his shoulder to stop him.
“Until we know exactly how far Hook Hall and internal security have been compromised, we have to assume that you’re in grave danger. The likelihood is that everything and everybody was destroyed in the crash, and if your nephew Infinity was onboard…”
“Not yet! We don’t know that yet. The witness thinks he saw a parachute. Now where’s my car?”
Right on cue, the De Tomaso Mangusta rasped round a corner into the CFAC and screeched to a halt in front of them. On Al’s command, one of the technicians had retrieved it from an underground car park.
“If you want to help me find out what the hell’s going on, get in,” Al said, throwing himself into the driver’s seat and revving the Mangusta like a boy racer. Obligingly, it rattled out a high-octane smoker’s cough.
Commander King reluctantly dropped into the passenger seat.
The Mangusta took off.
* * *
DAY TWO 06:32 (BST). Siberia
Kaparis received radio-signal confirmation of the ‘total destruction’ of the transport aircraft shortly before Commander King ordered the complete shutdown of all electronic surveillance and communication systems.
