In an instant, Ernest, Juanita and Jonas were in the lead police car as the car prepared to drive out from behind the CHC warehouses and into full view of the docking cargo ship. The police band radio was ordering all patrol cars and officers to return to base. The voice coming over the radio was Helena interspersed with Charles’s rich baritone.
Ernest looked confused as the police began to follow their instructions.
“Why are they obeying strange voices they’ve not heard before?”
Juanita ignored his question while she stared at the police cars focusing on the aerials on their roofs. After a moment, the aerials began to blacken and then spark and smoulder before bursting into flames and then extinguishing. All radio transmissions stopped at once and the police officers stayed where they were, sitting in their cars unsure whether they had heard anything or not.
“Ernest talk to William. Tiny needs to rally the police before Helena regroups.”
Ernest spoke to William in his head as he had the first time he had contacted him.
“William it has begun. Juanita has just stopped Helena and Charles from causing the police to hallucinate and leave. Tiny needs to get them moving before Helena can begin another assault on them.”
William nodded and moved across to Tiny and began speaking to him. After only a few moments, William clutched his chest, his face contorted in pain. Annabel rushed over to him and supported him as he began to collapse.
Juanita seeing William collapse knew his pain was psychological, the next distraction by Helena or Charles. She spun around scanning the sky and the area around the warehouse. She was sure that Helena wouldn’t be able to project her power over more than a few hundred meters and Charles would be a lot less. Where was she?
Juanita and Ernest both saw a flicker of movement high above them on the roof of the warehouse to the rear of an air-conditioning unit. As Juanita streaked upwards to the roofline of the warehouse she shouted to Ernest,
“Look after William, tell Annabel it will be over in a few moments. Jonas, find Charles while I deal with Helena.”
Ernest projected his voice into Annabel mind.
“Annabel listen to me. This is not a heart attack. This is Helena and Charles playing mind games, reassure William that he is still well and soon, very soon the pain will disappear.”
Annabel nodded as Ernest followed Juanita and Jonas to the roof. He rounded the air conditioning unit and found Juanita and Helena whirling around each other locked together in combat and Jonas searching for Charles. Opting to stay with Jonas he soared upwards hundreds of feet so that he could get an overview and spot Charles. Looking down, he saw him floating behind a ventilation exhaust duct. Ernest descended to twenty feet above him and watched what he was doing. Charles was staring at William. His face was a mask of concentration; complete focus on the scene below. He twitched his hand upwards by a few centimetres and William convulsed in fresh agony. Annabel, Jemima, and Ben as well as an SAS bodyguard who was trained as a medic now surrounded him. Ernest moved without making a noise across to Charles positioning himself behind him. He shot a quick glance at Juanita; she was whirling around Helena, twisting and turning to gain advantage. Jonas was swooping towards Charles, which would keep his focus away from Ernest and give him the precious seconds he needed. As Jonas raced towards him, Charles looked saw it was Jonas and ignored him. Not intimidated by his approaching figure.
Ernest tapped Charles on the shoulder causing him to whirl around in alarm. No one was there, nothing.
William was recovering from Charles’s attention and had begun to sit up, smiling at Annabel, relief suffusing his face. Annabel’s face mirrored William’s relief written all over it. Happy that Ernest had been right and William would survive.
Charles looked down, seeing William recovering he shrugged, his window of opportunity had vanished. Who next? Helena was focusing on the ships and needed thirty uninterrupted seconds to hide and disguise the cocaine and lay a false trail. He needed something, something serious. Something so bad that it would need Juanita to save the day, but what?
Charles looked around, scanning the disparate groups of people. Police, customs, bodyguards and Team Bacchus. Who was key? Charles grinned, malicious, vengeful.
Ben was sitting in the back of the Range Rover working on his MacBook. The cocaine wasn’t in the timber; Pablo had admitted that to Jemima. His clumsy attempt at a play on words revolved around pure water. He had hacked into the computer system on the container ship and was laboriously searching the manifests for each container. He had searched thirty manifests when he conceded the futility of this approach. The manifests were stored on the cargo database. He needed a way to search all of the manifests concurrently or he would still be hunting through the remaining five thousand manifests when the drugs were unloaded and had disappeared.
Ben began typing, writing a program that would be able to interrogate the database allowing him to search all of the manifests at the same time. He needed to decide what he was searching for. Pablo, when he had attempted his clumsy play on words, had spoken of the pure water. Ben entered the words 'pure' and ‘water' as the search terms and hit return. Staring at the screen, waiting for the results to appear, he found his vision blurring around the edges. This progressed until everything he was looking at appeared to be through feet of water. Shaking his head to try and clear his vision was like moving his head from side to side in thick syrup. It felt as if his movements were in slow motion and sounds had begun to distort. His final coherent thought before the pain struck was wondering if this was how migraines started. He began turning to ask Jemima if she knew, when he was hit with pain of such intensity it rendered him speechless and incapable of movement. All he could do when his senses recovered from their temporary paralysis was scream. Ben’s roar of pain was primal in its ferocity and brought everyone running to the Range Rover he was in.
Jemima terrified by the extreme pain Ben was exhibiting shouted at Tiny,
“Get the SAS medic over here now! Annabel call an ambulance it sounds like he’s dying.”
Annabel looked skyward and mentally shouted to Ernest,
“ Ernest do something, your son is in excruciating agony. It’s either an exploding brain aneurysm or Charles. My money’s on Charles.” Turning to Jemima, who was stroking Ben’s arm to try and calm him, Annabel said,
“This isn’t what it seems. Ben is in pain, a lot of pain, but it isn’t because there is anything wrong with him. Your grandfather Charles is causing his pain. He’s endeavouring to divert us, or Ernest and Juanita while Helena does something, what I don’t know.”
William touched Annabel’s arm; looking at the screaming, thrashing figure on the backseat of the Range Rover. Two SAS bodyguards where holding him while another was trying to insert a catheter into his arm to administer pain relief.
“Is this the same as my heart attack?” he whispered. Annabel nodded and Jonas answered his question.
“Ernest is dealing with Charles as we speak and will soon have the situation under control. Try to keep Jemima calm. Twenty seconds should do it.”
“Ernest had better be quick.” Annabel looked across at the three ex servicemen and saw that the cannula was being slid into an immobilised Ben.
“William you need to contact him, he needs to hurry otherwise Ben will be full to the brim with morphine and useless to us.” William looked at the scene playing out in the back of the Range Rover and nodded.
“Okay. Stop this from happening. Two minutes.”
Chapter 44
William could see a frantic confrontation between Helena and Juanita unfolding across the rooftops of the warehouse and surrounding buildings. Ernest was to one side of an air conditioning unit, but William couldn’t see Charles. Thinking hard he said,
“Ernest, speak to me now. Ben needs you, so do I.”
He heard Ernest’s voice, scratchy and tense say,
“I can see, give me ten seconds and Ben will be fine.” William continued
to look up and saw Ernest fly across the rooftop followed by an agonising scream from Ben.
“Make that twenty seconds.” Jonas had flown in rage behind the air conditioning unit, causing Charles’s lock on Ben to weaken, but not break. He had smashed his head into Charles’s shoulder, rendering himself unconscious and Charles had hurled him over the side of the building. Ernest dove over the edge of the building caught Jonas and lay him onto the tarmac in front of the warehouse and tore upwards towards Charles.
Annabel thrust herself into the back of the Range Rover and grabbed Ben by his lapels and hauled him backwards across the back seat and out onto the ground. The cannula the SAS medic had almost inserted was left hanging half in and half out of his arm and he was still screaming in agony, holding his head and rocking backwards and forwards.
Ernest flew to the roof top air conditioning unit that Charles was hiding behind. Charles was hurled out from the side of the unit, followed by an enraged Ernest screaming,
“Release my son!” Charles looked confused; this Ernest was fighting back, not lying down and taking it as he had done for the past forty years.
Ernest charged at him again destroying his concentration and his hold on Ben. Laughing like a man possessed, he said to Charles,
“When I was alive, I never felt this alive.”
Without pausing, Ernest swooped up to the roofline and charged at Helena. As he was inches from her, he collided with a solid wall of resistance that bounced him backwards ten feet. Picking himself up he looked down at Ben, who had stopped screaming and was easing himself up into a sitting position. He watched Juanita for a moment, struggling to control Helena and then swirled to his right, sidestepping a low wall. He sensed Charles’s attack before he felt it and this gave him a split second to avoid Charles’s first thrust. Ernest spun around in time to deflect a stream of malignant energy directed at him by Charles. The deflected energy hit the corner of the roof and dislodged bricks and slates that clattered down to the ground below. As Charles let loose with another stream of energy, Juanita dove in front of Ernest and directed the energy back at Charles. He took a glancing blow that sent him tumbling over the edge of the roof and down towards the floor below.
Helena released her focus on the docking cargo freighter and stopped Charles’s fall inches from the tarmac. Throwing him upright she hissed at him,
“Keep them busy, I don’t care how, just do it.”
Charles nodded and slipped through the wall of the warehouse and then accelerated up and through the ceiling and onto the roof. He found Ernest and Jonas, the easier targets, regrouping on the edge of the roof scanning the scene below, trying to spot unusual demonic behaviour. Charles rushed at them pushing them both over the parapet of the building. As they fell he pushed Ernest and Jonas together face to face and wrapped his arms around them, enveloping them in an incapacitating bear hug and began pushing them downwards, harder and faster. The tarmac of the parking area at the front of the building rushed towards them and then enveloped them as they continued downwards through concrete, then soil and then rock. Ernest knew he was in trouble, he hadn’t the strength to break free by himself, he and Jonas needed to work together.
He turned and twisted, fighting against Charles’s grip that had pinioned his arms to his sides. He screamed over the roaring sound of their passage through the rock and soil,
“Jonas, twist, turn, push, anything. We need to break his hold on us and get away from him. Nod, if you heard me and understood.” Jonas nodded and then mouthed,
“One two, three, go.”
Kicking out at the rock as it rushed past them they tried to knock Charles off balance and give themselves a chance to get an arm free.
Jonas’s flailing leg caught an outcrop of quartz, spinning them onto their sides and then their backs. Charles’s grip slackened in alarm as he spun around onto his back. Ernest had been waiting for this and as soon as he felt Charles’s grip loosen, he smiled at Jonas, nodded and they both relaxed, forcing their bodies to become floppy. Their combined deadweight was too much for Charles and he lost his grip on them letting them spin out of his grasp and slide upward away from the direction of their travel.
Without pausing to see if Charles’s had slowed his rapid descent and was giving chase, Ernest pushed up against the rock and accelerated back up towards the surface, hauling Jonas behind him. Seconds later they broke through the tarmac and shot up to roof level. He looked around orientating himself while Jonas leant against the edge of the building gasping. William was sitting on the back seat of one Range Rover with Annabel beside him and Ben and Jemima were in another. The bodyguards were looking around, unsure who had attacked their principles. Tiny was talking to a police officer, their conversation heated and becoming more so with each passing second. Ernest motioned for Jonas to stay where he was and recover and he moved down to ground level and stood behind Tiny, listening to the exchange.
“The ship will be docking in ten minutes.” He gestured to the ship easing itself towards the mooring point in front of the CHC warehouses.
“Why on earth do you want to arrest the people who will be searching and finding tonnes of pure cocaine for you? We have credible evidence the cocaine is on the ship, that’s why they’re here. That’s why you’re here.”
The policeman looked at Tiny as he would to an errant, slow child and said with care,
“As I have explained sir, the men you claim are customs officers are, in fact, illegal emissaries from the planet Zircon, I have been instructed to apprehend them as they are in contravention of many star command regulations, not least …”
Tiny interrupted, grabbing him by his lapels and spinning him around to look at the customs officers that had been corralled by the police.
“Aliens, do they look like aliens?”
Ernest contacted William, Annabel and Ben simultaneously,
“William, Helena is controlling the police. I think Tiny is about to erupt, can you pour oil on troubled waters for one minute?”
William said,
“Yes but be quick, the ship is about to dock.”
Ernest accelerated to the roof of the warehouse and then one hundred feet above scanning the area for Juanita. Seeing her, he rushed down calling out as he approached,
“Juanita, I need help. The police believe they have to arrest the customs officers.”
“It’s Charles. Ernest you need to deal with him, take Jonas.” Grunting with exertion as she and Helena circled above the approaching cargo ship.
Helen and Juanita were locked together spiralling around each other each trying to break the others hold. Juanita said through teeth, clenched with concentration,
“You have the power, assert yourself. Ernest your sons need you.” The ships horn sounding stopped Juanita as the first of the hawsers were thrown to dock workers who had arrived moments before.
***
Charles crouched behind an air conditioning unit, laughing at the scene that was playing out below. Police were attempting to arrest customs men who believed they were emissaries from Zircon. William was trying to restrain his large friend from assaulting the policeman and the other bodyguards were looking on, unsure what to do. Now for the next part.
With a deft flick of his hand Jemima began screaming in agony, writhing in her wheelchair, but unable to move more than a few centimetres in any direction. Raising his hand, he increased her pain until she was shrieking and thrashing side to side, her wheelchair in danger of toppling over. Nodding with satisfaction, he turned his attention to Annabel.
Helena was right he thought this really was fun. The buzz was incredible. He was controlling the police, who were still trying to arrest the customs officers, his granddaughter was in agony and the irritating vicar was next. All by himself, he thought.
Later, Charles would reflect on what happened from the moment he finished that thought. He would attempt to see what he missed, how he had underestimated Ernest and Jonas and assumed they were irrelevant. He would wonder
, as he languished, where no one wishes to languish, why it had not occurred to either himself or Helena that Team Bacchus would be prepared to risk everything for that oldest of maxims: good must always triumph over evil.
***
William watched Tiny getting nowhere with the police office. He knew this was Charles or Helena’s diversionary tactics and as soon as Ernest and Juanita could gain control of the situation everything would return to normal. Tiny had started shouting at the police officer and was on the verge of being arrested himself. Rushing over William interrupted their argument before it became impossible to defuse the situation. Easing Tiny towards the Range Rovers he said over his shoulder,
“If I can borrow him for just a moment? Thank you.” To Tiny he said under his breath,
“What is happening, what you are seeing, is not what it seems. I can’t begin to explain what is happening I don’t have the time or words to help you to understand. Please trust me. This will all return to normal soon. Are the customs officers ready to go?” Tiny nodded, confused.
“They can’t,” he said nodding at the corralled customs people being held behind the warehouse.
“Ok, we need to get them onto the ship now that it has docked.”
Tiny thought for a moment before he said,
“Are you sure this will return to normal? Will the police remember what they have been saying and any actions that might have been happening or not?”
William shrugged and then remembering his own recent experience he said,
“A short while ago I was having severe chest pain and it was thought I was having another heart attack. When it stopped, all I was aware of was that something had happened to me and now it had stopped. I didn’t know what it had been. That’s all they’ll know. No memories.”
Tiny looked around and gestured to his colleagues to join him and William.
Bacchus and Sanderson (Deceased) Page 36
