The Suicide Exhibition
Page 36
“Two two-fifty pound bombs,” Jimmy pointed out.
“Cannon or machine guns?” she asked.
“On this one, twelve .303 machine guns in the wings.”
“Very impressive.”
“We keep them fueled and armed ready, like all the planes.”
It took Sarah a few moments to persuade Jimmy that she should be allowed to check out the controls. Just to see if they were like a conventional Hurricane, even though he assured her they were.
“Just be quick,” Jimmy warned, making the most of giving Sarah a leg-up into the cockpit. “If anyone sees you, I’ll be in real trouble.”
“No,” she said. “Real trouble is what you’ll be in if I steal the plane.”
He gave a nervous laugh, shielding his eyes from the sun as he looked up at her. “You seen enough yet?”
“Nothing like enough. Sorry, Jimmy. Tell them I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Whatever reply Jimmy had was lost in the burst of power from the Merlin engine as the aircraft stuttered into life.
* * *
The two Chevrolets shot out of the tunnel. A wave of flame exploded out behind them, the blast punching the vehicles forward, across the sand—straight at the sea of advancing Vril.
The back tires of the second vehicle were burning, black smoke pouring from them as it bounced along. It crunched over one of the creatures, shattering it and spreading glutinous debris mixed with burned rubber in a trail behind. Most of the Vril were still ahead.
The SAS men in the front vehicle fired at the creatures swarming toward them, converging on the two trucks bouncing across the undulating sand.
“We’re never going to make it through that lot,” Guy realized.
“Can’t we go round?” Davenport shouted.
“They’re too quick.”
One of the burning tires ruptured with a dull popping sound. The Chevrolet slewed sideways and skidded to a halt. Guy waved to Henderson in the front vehicle to keep going, to save himself and his men. But Henderson was having none of it, and the vehicle turned in a wide arc. A dozen Vril scuttled after it.
The radio truck drew up beside Guy’s crippled vehicle. The driver and other soldiers leaped across, Guy shoving Davenport ahead of him. As soon as they were all crammed into the vehicle, the driver gunned the engine. Sand spewed up from the back tires. The vehicle lurched and juddered. But it didn’t move.
“We’re too heavy,” Davenport realized. “We’re stuck in the sand!”
The Vril were fifty feet away, scuttling across the sand like enormous, malevolent spiders. Behind the stranded vehicles, fire roared from the mouth of the tunnel. Even if they could outrun the creatures, Guy realized, there was nowhere to go.
The sound of the straining engine seemed to deepen to a throaty roar. The Vril were so close now that Guy could see the dark glistening pits of their eyes. Then as he watched, the nearest Vril exploded into fragments. The body was a sudden visceral mess, the tentacles blasted clear.
The roar of engines was coming from above them. A dark shape blotted out the sun, silhouetted against the pale sky—a Hurricane. The plane swept round, charging back across the landscape. Emerging from the dark smoke gathering above the tunnel mouth. The forward edges of the wings spat fire as the machine guns opened up again.
“Down!” Henderson yelled above the noise as a dark shape detached from the underside of one wing.
Guy leaped out of the vehicle, Davenport beside him. As he ducked down, he saw the bomb slam into the ground, right in the middle of the mass of swarming Vril. There was a massive “crump.” The ground shook beneath them, and sand showered down from the sky.
“Choose your targets,” Henderson shouted.
Together with the few surviving soldiers, he was aiming his rifle over the top of the vehicle, bracing it on the side struts. A rattle of rifle and submachine gunfire split the air, counterpointing the distant sound of the Hurricane as it banked and turned.
Several Vril exploded. One got close enough to leap up on to the radio truck before a soldier jammed the end of his submachine gun into the glistening body and blasted it to pieces.
They all ducked again as the second bomb crashed down into the last remaining Vril. The explosion was even closer, even larger. Shrapnel hammered into the sides of the vehicles. One of the soldiers cried out as hot metal grazed his leg.
A single Vril staggered from the wreckage of the crater, one tentacle-leg snapped off, another quivering ineffectually. Then a burst of fire from the Hurricane sent it skidding and rolling across the sand, ripping it to pieces.
Slowly, cautiously, Guy and the others peered over and round the vehicles. The landscape was a broken, blackened mess strewn with the shattered carcasses of the Vril creatures. Smoke drifted across the sand. Nothing else moved.
The Hurricane came in low. The pilot raised his hand in a wave of victory. Or rather, Guy realized, her hand. For the briefest moment, his eyes met Sarah’s. Then the plane was turning again, and disappearing into the distance. It gained height as it cleared the ridge, spinning slowly in a victory roll.
CHAPTER 49
Mercifully, the radio truck was relatively undamaged. They managed to dig it out of the sand, which had been softened by the Vril as they dug their way out of the mound. Back on the ridge, the ground was firm enough for the truck to continue with all the survivors on board. Before they left, Henderson and his men buried the dead Germans as well as their fallen comrades in the sand.
It was a strange journey back—the euphoria and adrenalin of victory tempered by the sense of loss. Jammed between Davenport and Henderson, Guy’s mind was numbed—by what they had been through and what they had seen.
The camp by the oasis was a shadow of its former self. Most of the troops and the equipment had been deployed in the desperate battle to stop Rommel’s advance.
But Guy didn’t care. There was only one person he wanted to see at the base, and he was sure she would still be there waiting for him.
They said nothing when they met. Guy enfolded Sarah in a tight embrace, barely feeling Henderson’s pat on the back as he led his men away to recover and prepare for their next mission. Finally, the two of them pulled apart, and walked slowly to Guy’s tent.
Davenport was already inside, tipping sand out of his boots. He glanced up as Guy and Sarah came in. “Funnily enough,” he said, pulling his boots back on, “I was just going for a walk.”
“Thank you, Leo,” Sarah said. “It’s good to see you too.”
“Of course it is.” Davenport put his hand on Guy’s shoulder as he passed. “And this time,” he said quietly, “get it right.”
* * *
“There are sure to be other, smaller centers of Vril operations,” Brinkman said. “Like the burial sites in Suffolk and France.” He looked round at the others—Guy Pentecross, Leo Davenport, Sarah Diamond and Miss Manners. “But it sounds as if we’ve put their main base out of operation.” He nodded and smiled. “Well done.”
One set of the photographs that Davenport had taken inside the Vril base were pinned up on the conference room wall alongside the map of North Africa. A duplicate set was on the table in front of them. Miss Manners had supervised getting them developed by MI5, who had made a pretty good job of clarifying the vague, dark smudges. In some of them, the detail was discernible. A blurred lightshow constituted the only decent shot of the UDT.
“We didn’t learn much,” Guy confessed.
“Except that the Desert Air Force can’t court martial a civilian for borrowing one of their planes, apparently,” Davenport said, grinning at Sarah across the table.
“I’d have named you as an accessory,” she told him.
“At least we got another bracelet,” Guy said.
As he spoke, the door opened to admit Elizabeth Archer and Sergeant Green. Mrs. Archer sat down and tossed something onto the table.
“You mean this?”
The bracelet spun to a halt in front of Guy.
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe it’s damaged. Or maybe it never worked. But it doesn’t react like the other one to radio impulses. In fact, the whole construction is rather less robust.”
“Is that important?” Brinkman asked.
Mrs. Archer shrugged. “Possibly. Who knows.”
“I’ve just taken a call from Dr. Wiles, sir,” Green said to Brinkman. “He’s still receiving UDT transmissions from the Y Stations. And Fighter Command tracked another one this morning.”
“You said there are likely to be other bases,” Sarah pointed out.
“Yes, miss,” Green said. “But according to Wiles, the traffic and sightings haven’t diminished. If anything, they’ve increased.”
“So what was that place?” Guy said. “If we haven’t set them back…”
Davenport cleared his throat. “I do have an observation,” he said. “But you’re not going to like it.”
They all watched as he spread the duplicate set of photographs across the table.
“It struck me at the time that there was something amiss, but we were rather too busy for me to dwell on it. I think Guy was worried too.”
“Go on,” Brinkman prompted.
“Well, it just seemed rather neat, that’s all. Everything laid out ready for us to find. A central passageway. No traps or defenses as such, not like in France or at the site in Suffolk.”
“Until we got trapped in that final chamber and the whole place blew up, you mean,” Guy pointed out.
“True. But until then, it wasn’t set out like a military base, was it? The whole place seemed to be arranged for our benefit, not for the Vril. I mean, why was their chamber so far from the main entrance if they wanted to get out? Come to that, why come out at all—why not wait inside for us?”
“That would make more military sense,” Guy agreed.
“They don’t think like we do,” Miss Manners said. “Who knows what purpose they had.”
“Bear with me,” Davenport said. “But think about it, Guy—that whole place seemed to be leading us to the UDT. To the most impressive sight of all, right at the end. Behind a screen of hanging mesh, waiting to be revealed, and with no obvious way for it to be flown out.” He picked up the indistinct photo of the UDT. “I know some of you think I live my life like it’s a film anyway, but this really was like a film set, or a theatrical display. Not practical, but spectacular.”
“But what would be the point?” Sarah asked.
“Ah, now there you have me.”
There was silence for several moments, then Miss Manners said: “Tell us again about when you were locked in, how you opened the door.”
Guy described what had happened and how they had escaped.
“Is it just me, or does that sound rather like some sort of initiative test?” Miss Manners asked.
“As if the Vril were assessing you,” Mrs. Archer agreed. “Yes, that would make sense. In fact…” She and Miss Manners were staring across the table at each other. “It all makes sense then, doesn’t it.”
“Not to me,” Brinkman said.
“They were testing us all along,” Miss Manners told him. “You said that Streicher and his men hadn’t disturbed anything. That’s because it was all ready for you to find. Then they wanted to know if having found it you could solve the puzzle and escape again. Even locating the base in North Africa and getting there was a test.”
Guy leaned forward, suddenly anxious. “Are you suggesting they were assessing their enemy’s strength?”
“Or perhaps just deciding if we are worth fighting,” Sarah said. “If we are intelligent and advanced enough to be worth their efforts.”
“Then the whole place,” Guy said slowly, “even down to the Vril creatures that were there, it was all expendable.” He picked up the bracelet that Elizabeth Archer had brought back. “That’s why this doesn’t work. Maybe the UDT itself was a dummy, a copy, a diversion.”
“Remind you of anything, Elizabeth?” Davenport said.
“Possibly two things,” she replied. “But I think you’re right. It was their version of the Suicide Exhibition.”
“Which means that everything they really value, everything that’s truly irreplaceable is concealed somewhere else,” Brinkman said. “We’ve wasted our time and effort.”
“To say nothing of those soldiers’ lives,” Sarah murmured.
“You said it could be two things,” Miss Manners prompted.
Elizabeth Archer nodded. “They’ve been here a long time,” she said. “Perhaps it was also an alarm clock.”
“In which case we just set it off,” Guy said.
“And in some style, I’m ashamed to say,” Davenport added.
“If you’re right, then this isn’t the end of the Vril,” Brinkman said grimly. “If you’re right, the real war is just about to start.”
THE STORY CONTINUES IN:
THE BLOOD RED CITY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Justin Richards has written more books than he can remember. He has written audio and television scripts, a stage play, edited anthologies of short stories, and founded and edited a media journal. Justin is the author of The Death Collector, The Chaos Code, The Parliament of Blood, the Time Runners series, and the Invisible Detective series. He is also creative director of the BBC’s bestselling range of Doctor Who books, and has written a fair few of them himself. Justin lives in Warwick, England, with his wife and two children. Sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Report
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
THE SUICIDE EXHIBITION. Copyright © 2013, 2015 by Justin Richards. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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Cover photographs:
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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-05920-8 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-6377-4 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781466863774
Originally published in the United Kingdom by Del Rey, an imprint of Ebury Publishing, a Random House Group Company, in 2013
First U.S. Edition: March 2015