Department 19: The Rising

by Will Hill

  I can’t believe I got to see that, he thought. I can’t believe Talbot let me. It’s amazing.

  Jamie had turned off the beeper during the Zero Hour Task Force meeting, left it off during the unbelievable, mind-bending twenty minutes that followed it, twenty minutes that he knew he could never tell anyone about, not even Larissa, and had only just switched it back on. He pulled it free of its loop, swearing loudly in the empty corridor, and read the short line of text that had appeared on the screen.

  G-17/OP_EXT_L2/LIVE_BRIEFING/BR2/1130

  The Department 19 shorthand had become second nature.

  The first set of letters and numbers was the designation of his squad, G-17, and the second told him that they had been given an external operation with a Level 2 priority. The third was self-explanatory, that there would be a live briefing rather than data supplied to them once they were already on the move, the fourth was the location of the briefing, in this case Briefing Room 2, and the final set of numbers were the time that the briefing would begin. Jamie checked his watch, and saw that it was 11:28. He swore, then ran back down the corridor towards the silver doors of the Level B lift.

  On Level 0 he piled out of the lift and ran along the corridor that served as the level’s central thoroughfare. On one side, accessible by the heavy yellow and black striped doors that stood at regular intervals, was the huge hangar that served as the embarkation point for all Blacklight operations. On the opposite side of the corridor, filling the other half of the huge circular level, were the suites of offices and rooms that comprised the Department’s Communications and Surveillance Divisions.

  The Ops Room, where Jamie had just been, sat in the middle of the corridor, and therefore at the centre of Level 0. Beyond it, along a series of semi-circular corridors, like the layers of an onion, stood offices, server farms and inventories, accessible by security-coded doors set into the long wall.

  Jamie pressed his ID against the sensor beside one of the doors marked BRIEFING ROOMS, pulled it open and raced down the corridor. He skidded to a halt outside the door to Briefing Room 2 and walked through it, as calmly as he was able.

  The room was a curved box, much like a classroom. At one end, to the right as Jamie entered, beneath a high-definition screen that filled most of the wall, stood a lectern, from where the briefings were given. Jamie looked immediately in its direction, and felt his heart sink.

  Standing behind the lectern was Major Paul Turner.

  Great, thought Jamie. That’s just great. He knows I was in the Zero Hour meeting, and he knows I can’t say so in front of the rest of them. Then a smile threatened to rise on his face. He doesn’t know where I went afterwards, though.

  “Good of you to join us, Mr Carpenter,” said Turner, staring at him. “I hope we haven’t interrupted whatever you were doing. I’ve no doubt it was extremely important.”

  You’ve no idea, thought Jamie. No idea at all.

  There was a giggle from his left, and he felt his face flush with heat. He turned to see who had laughed; it had not been Kate or Larissa, and they were the only other people he was expecting to see in the room. But he immediately saw that he had assumed wrongly; five faces were staring at him, not two.

  Sitting at one desk were Kate and Larissa, the former regarding him with a stern look, the latter with a mischievous little smile. Two desks away, a distance that was clearly deliberate, sat three more Operators, two of whom Jamie recognised immediately; the third was a girl in her early twenties whom he had heard a lot about, but had never met. She was smiling widely at him; it had clearly been her who had laughed.

  The three Operators made up Operational Squad F-7, commanded by Lieutenant Jack Williams. Jamie’s friend smiled at him from across the room, and Jamie returned it with an uncertain one of his own.

  What the hell are you three doing here? he wondered.

  Sitting beside Jack, Shaun Turner’s face regarded Jamie with wide grey eyes that were as expressionless as his father’s. He was tall, taller than Jamie or Jack, and broad, the naturally powerful figure of a rugby player. He sat easily in his chair, waiting for Jamie to say something.

  The girl, who Jamie knew from Jack’s fervent, fluttery descriptions was called Angela Darcy, was still smiling at him, and as he looked at her, actually looked at her, he was struck by how remarkably attractive she was. Her blonde hair was darker than Kate’s, almost a golden colour, and her face was sharp and angular, drawn in straight lines by a hugely talented artist. He knew from Jack that she had been an SIS agent, recruited out of Oxford in her first year, and had served with distinction in some of the most unstable and dangerous backwaters of the globe. She apparently spoke at least six languages, and was an expert in the art of wetwork – assassinations and state-sanctioned murders carried out at such close range that it was impossible to avoid being covered with the blood of the target.

  Jamie was pretty sure that Jack was at least a little bit in love with her; he was absolutely sure that he was scared of her. But her smile was wide, and friendly, and Jamie was glad it was her laughter that had made him blush; he was sure that her smile would have had the same effect, and would have been a lot more difficult to explain to Larissa.

  Behind him, someone cleared their throat, and he realised he hadn’t answered Major Turner. He looked back to the front of the room, and saw the former SAS officer staring at him with an unnervingly patient expression.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” he lied. “Something came up on the lower levels. It won’t happen again, sir.”

  “I find that difficult to believe,” replied Turner. “But I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it. Sit down, Carpenter.”

  Jamie walked sheepishly over to the table where Larissa and Kate were sitting, pulled a chair out and flopped into it between them. As Paul Turner set the pages of his briefing on the lectern, Jamie cast a glance at Angela, who favoured him with a sympathetic smile. He smiled back, then returned his attention to the front of the room, his blood boiling at the unfairness of it all.

  “Operators,” said Major Turner. “This is OPERATION: PROMISED LAND, a two-squad reconnaissance and elimination mission. It’s relatively straightforward, but please try and concentrate. I’d rather not have to keep stopping to answer stupid questions. Clear? Good.”

  Turner pressed a button on the portable console in his hand, and the wall screen above his head burst into life. It showed a satellite image of a large container ship; the tiny swells of white water at her aft showed the Operators that the ship was in motion.

  “This,” continued Turner, “is the Aristeia. She’s a Panamax-class freighter, two hundred and twenty-eight metres long, thirty-two metres wide, able to carry three thousand standard freight containers. She’s Greek-built, flying the Bahamian flag.”

  “If she can carry three thousand containers,” said Angela, “why does it look like she’s carrying about fifty?”

  Turner favoured her with what passed for a smile, and tapped his console. The image magnified until the ship filled the screen.

  “You’re correct,” he said. “She’s carrying sixty-eight containers on a deck built for forty-four times that many. She departed from Shanghai eighteen days ago; those containers would need to be filled with diamonds to cover the cost of the fuel it’s taken to get her where she is now.”

  “Where’s that?” asked Larissa.

  “About eighty miles off the north-east coast,” replied Turner. “Her heading puts her destination as the entrance to the River Tyne, where she’ll arrive in roughly seven hours.”

  “What does this have to do with us?” asked Shaun Turner.

  “There has been only a single radio contact with the Aristeia since she left port,” replied Major Turner. “When she passed through the Suez Canal. Before and since, nothing. She spent the last week making her way through the Mediterranean, and all attempts to contact her, by the Italians, the Spanish and the Portuguese, have failed.”

  “Pirates?” asked Kate.

&nbs
p; Angela snorted, and Larissa fired a stare full of razor blades in her direction.

  “No,” replied Major Turner. “Or at least, we don’t think so. There’s never been an instance of a pirated vessel being taken voluntarily through the Med, or through the Canal. If she’d been boarded, we’d expect the pirates to have taken her to the coast of Somalia, where they could moor her and make their demands. This ship had to go through Somali waters to get to Suez.”

  “Terrorists?” suggested Jack Williams. “Could it be carrying a bomb?”

  “Satellite spectro-analysis says not. Also, why would you use a ship like this to make an attack? They’d know we could sink her in the middle of the ocean. Cargo freighters are not renowned for their manoeuvrability.”

  “So what is it then?” asked Jamie, sharply. He was getting bored with playing guessing games.

  Paul Turner gave him a look full of warning, then continued.

  “The Surveillance Division monitored the attempts to contact her, and when she entered UK waters, we put a satellite over her. Here’s the infrared.”

  The image on the screen blurred out, then sharpened into a bright rainbow of colours. The frigid water surrounding the ship was a blue so dark it was almost black, the hull and deck of the Aristeia a pale shade of aquamarine. A thick bloom of red glowed at the rear of the ship, where the huge diesel engines were producing the power that pushed the enormous freighter through the water. The rectangular containers on the ship’s cargo deck glowed a pale orange, and were studded with small blobs of yellow which, the watching Operators realised, were moving around inside the boxes.

  “Jesus,” said Jack Williams. “There must be two hundred people in those containers.”

  “Two hundred and twenty-seven,” confirmed Major Turner. “Look at the bridge.”

  The huge crescent-shaped bridge, which towered almost four storeys above the surface of the deck, was pale yellow. The heat was emanating from seven points of light that were almost white, such was the heat they were giving out.

  “Vamps,” said Shaun Turner, matter-of-factly. “Seven vamps, and two hundred humans. What the hell is this ship?”

  “It’s not a ship,” said Angela. “It’s a prison. A floating prison.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Larissa, frowning. “What are they being imprisoned for?”

  “So they can be delivered to whoever paid for them,” said Angela. “I’ve seen it before, but never on this scale. It’s like the snakehead gangs bringing workers out of the Far East. They get them as far as the Med, then use trucks the rest of the way. Someone is waiting for this ship in the north, I can guarantee you. Someone waiting for the cargo they ordered.”

  Larissa looked at Paul Turner, who nodded.

  “Operator Darcy is correct,” he said. “Our understanding is that the men and women on this ship are to be delivered into vampire hands as soon as the ship docks. What is planned for them after that, we don’t know. But given that the oldest vampire in the world, who is currently unaccounted for, is most likely in a condition that requires a regular supply of blood, we thought it might be worth looking into. Don’t you agree?”

  “You think those people are being shipped to wherever Valeri and Dracula are hiding?” asked Kate.

  “We think it’s possible.”

  “What do you want us to do?” asked Jamie, his voice firm.

  Larissa looked over at him, saw the set of his jaw, the calm in his blue eyes, and felt her stomach flip. She was incredibly proud of him, and as attracted to him in that moment as she had ever been. A low growl emerged from her throat, barely audible to anyone except Jamie, who was sitting beside her. He turned to her, and a flicker of red spilled into the corners of her eyes, so quickly that only he could have possibly seen it. He grinned; he knew very well what it meant.

  Maybe we won’t have to leave right away, he thought, hopefully. Maybe we’ll get to wait until after dark.

  The thought of the long hours of remaining daylight, and what they might contain, widened his grin. He dragged his gaze away from Larissa, and tried to focus once more on Paul Turner’s briefing.

  “You leave immediately,” said the Major, and Jamie’s heart sank. “We surveyed the area, and the only place anyone could illegally dock a ship that size is the old Swan Hunter shipyard at Wallsend. We’re having the surrounding yards closed as we speak, and the coastguard has been given orders to allow the ship to enter the river. I want you to take up surveillance positions before nightfall, then intercept the ship when it docks. The first priority is to find out where these people were being taken, and why. The second is the captives themselves. The new SOP does not apply on this operation. Is that understood?”

  We don’t have to capture the vamps, realised Jamie, and felt a savage wave of pleasure flood through him. We can destroy them.

  “Yes, sir,” he answered, and a second later Jack Williams said the same.

  “Good,” said Major Turner. “Now. There are more than two hundred men and women on that ship, all of whom are going to be weak, and probably terrified. So you’re going to need to manage the situation; if they panic, which they probably will, if they start running across your lines of fire, make them get down. The collateral loss limit for this mission is nine. Is that clear?”

  “It’s not clear to me,” said Jamie, although he had a horrible idea that it was.

  I hope I’m wrong, he thought. I really do.

  “It means we don’t want to see more than nine civilians die on this Operation. That’s the acceptable level of loss.”

  “My squad doesn’t deal in acceptable losses,” said Jack Williams, his voice low and steady.

  “Mine neither,” said Jamie, instantly.

  “Really?” asked Major Turner, his expression glacial. “Because I do. And so does Admiral Seward. And for this mission, yours is nine. Understood?”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Shut up!” shouted Major Turner, and the room immediately fell silent. He glared round at each of the six men and women in turn. “This is a Level 2 mission that Intelligence suggests may be directly related to this Department’s highest priority. You don’t like talking about collateral losses, fine, but you will bear them in mind when you’re out in the field. Because they can be the difference between a medal and six months on the inactive roster, especially on a mission like this, a mission that I expect you to be able to accomplish, even with only two squads.”

  “Why are you sending two squads?” asked Shaun Turner, mildly. “We normally work alone. Sir.”

  The young Operator’s words dripped with insolence, but his father favoured him with a look full of such icy threat that he quickly dropped his gaze. Unseen by anyone else in the room, Kate’s cheeks flushed momentarily as she watched Shaun buckle under his father’s stare.

  “If it was possible to do so,” said Major Turner, “we’d be sending four squads on this operation. If I had three at my disposal, I’d be sending three. But I don’t; I have two. You two. So that’s why you’re both going. Because we’re down to the bare bones here.”

  “Seven vamps, though?” said Jack Williams. “It doesn’t need six of us to handle seven of them.”

  “I don’t care if it’s one newly-turned vampire in the middle of an open field, Lieutenant Williams. You have your orders, you have your briefing, the surveillance data has been transferred to your consoles and your transport, and I am deeply bored of talking to all of you. Dismissed.”

  For a moment, no one moved, then Turner walked swiftly round the podium and took two long strides into the middle of the room.

  “I said, dismissed,” he said, and this time they all moved, quickly.

  Six and a half hours later Operational Squads F-7 and G-17 huddled together in the shadow of a grey factory building on the banks of the River Tyne.

  The towering cranes that had once been such a feature of the skyline of this part of the world were gone, dismantled and sold to an Indian shipyard two years earlier. The h
uge yard, where thousands of men had laboured to build the legendary RMS Mauretania in the first years of the twentieth century, where their grandsons had built the Royal Navy’s flagship, HMS Ark Royal, seven decades later, was silent. The floating dock, with its four wide berths, sat open to the lapping water of the Tyne; it was already becoming overgrown, and was slowly filling up with discarded bottles and cans, left by the teenagers who prowled its wide-open space after dark.

  The factories that had once manufactured engine parts and hull panels were empty, their heavy machines sold to shipyards around the world that were still enjoying better times. They were coated in graffiti, and beginning to rust at their corners. The roads that ran between them, which had once hummed with the accumulated sound of thousands of men’s voices when the evening whistle blew, were covered in a spider’s web of cracks and holes; tangles of weeds emerged from these gaps, as though the earth was already beginning to reclaim land that had once been home to the very best of human ingenuity and innovation.

  A thick fog was rolling down the Tyne from the North Sea; as Jamie looked out across the desolate, creaking yard, he could not see the far bank of the river. The grey tendrils were drifting up to the edges of the concrete dock below them, but were not, as yet, cresting them and moving on to the land.

  “This is going to be no fun at all if that fog breaks over the dock,” he said. “Seven vamps may as well be seventy if we can’t see them.”

  Jack Williams nodded. The six Operators had finished their reconnaissance of the old shipyard, and concluded it was sufficiently isolated for their purposes. It was far from secure, however; there was a main thoroughfare, Hadrian Road, less than two hundred metres to the north, and the fences that surrounded the yard were in significant disrepair. There was no time to plug the holes and tighten the net round the yard; instead, the plan was to never allow the vampires to get more than a few metres from their ship.