Survival

by Joe Craig

  JIMMY COATES SURVIVAL

  When Jimmy Coates goes rogue, only one thing can ensure his survival. Destruction.

  JOE CRAIG

  JIMMY COATES SURVIVAL

  To Mary-Ann Ochota, bessway.

  Thank you to Sarah Manson, Ann Tobias,

  Nicola Solomon, Sophie Birshan,

  Miriam Craig, Oli Rockberger and

  everyone at HarperCollins, particularly

  Stella Paskins, Geraldine Stroud,

  Emma Bradshaw, Catherine Holmes

  and Gillie Russell.

  THE BIG BAMG

  One minute it was a man-made wonder of the world: Neptune’s Shadow, the second largest oil rig in the world. Its lights glowed in the black fog of the North Sea, like an alien space ship. Towers craned out in all directions, metal arms trying to grab a piece of the night, while the pistons and pumps worked ceaselessly, dragging up the liquor from the belly of the world.

  The next minute, it was a raging mountain of fire that lit up the whole of the night, a beacon visible as far away as Denmark. The noise of the blast shook birds from their nests in Northern Scotland. The source of billions of pounds for the British Government erupted with more rage than Mount Vesuvius.

  In the morning it blew up again a million times, flashing across TV screens in digital reconstructions and vivid newspaper reports, each one exaggerating the size of the explosion a little more, and on the Internet, where people discussed why and how it had happened – and what the Prime Minister was going to do about it.

  And it exploded over and over again in the mind of the one person who had survived actually being there

  – Jimmy Coates.

  01 SLIPSTREAM

  First it was a light on the dashboard, then a clunk in the engine. Jimmy had been expecting this for the last three hours. I could ditch the plane in the water, he thought. At that moment he was somewhere over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and a part of his brain was already working out the best angle for the Falcon 20 to hit the waves. He could even feel the muscles in his shoulders warming, preparing for the longest swim of his life.

  He gritted his teeth and stared straight ahead out of the cockpit. He knew ditching wasn’t an option. He had to reach Europe. Then came the answer.

  The plane rocked slightly. A roar drowned out the sound of the Falcon’s engines. Jimmy peered upwards, squinting at the brightness of the sky. There it was – the shadow of a commercial jet looming above him.

  “Time to catch a ride,” Jimmy whispered under his breath. He glanced one more time at the fuel gauges. They were deep in the red zone. He powered the Falcon higher, his fingers gliding over the plane’s controls. Blood covered his palms – black, coagulated blood that left sticky marks on every switch and button. But they were healing already. He could feel it. The pain was far away, buried by his senses. He stared at his hands, but saw past the shredded streaks of red and black skin to the dull grey layer underneath.

  Next to the Airbus A490, Jimmy’s Falcon was like a fly around the back end of a hippopotamus. Jimmy was stunned at the enormousness of the plane. He guessed it must have been nearly a hundred metres long, with an even larger wingspan. Its deep rumble vibrated in Jimmy’s chest.

  Sooner than he eXpected, Jimmy was flying just a few metres beneath it. Please work, Jimmy begged, searching inside himself. He knew it was the force inside him that had put this plan into action. Jimmy could never have dreamed up anything so outrageous without it.

  He let the world fall into a blur, focusing all his energy on a point deep inside, somewhere between his stomach and the base of his spine. His inner power was coming. It had to be. It was destined to take over.

  Then came the familiar buzz. His muscles flooded with energy. His neck fizzed and his brain throbbed. Jimmy was full of hatred and eXhilaration simultaneously. This would save him, but there was a tiny voice inside that knew this power would also eventually destroy him.

  Jimmy jerked on the sidestick controller and the nose of his plane hurtled towards the airbus. Just as he thought he was going to burn to death in a mid-air collision, the Falcon was lifted back and upwards, wafted away on a cushion of air – the slipstream from the airbus engine.

  At that moment, Jimmy cut the power to the Falcon’s engines. The dull whine disappeared and Jimmy was deafened by the thundering of the airbus and the roar of the air blasting past. Violent turbulence rocked him in his seat. He gripped the flightstick more tightly, desperate to control the shifting of the plane’s weight. He was surfing on air.

  “Hey, look at this, Pritchie,” said the airbus pilot, sitting forward in his seat. A fragment of lettuce fell from his sandwich. His co-pilot had his cap down over his eyes and didn’t bother to move.

  “What is it?” His voice was gruff.

  “Message,” replied the pilot, taking another bite of his sandwich. “En-route controller. Something about a ghost on the radar.”

  “Ghost?” Pritchie reluctantly heaved himself into an upright position and set his cap back on his head. “That’s, like, two blips where there should be one, no?”

  “Well, it’s not some dude in a white sheet, is it?”

  They both peered at the data link system. Then they checked their panel displays, both suddenly very alert.

  “Found anything?” asked the pilot. Pritchie shook his head.

  “Hey, what’s this?” he said. “Another message.”

  Together they studied the communications system again. The pilot shrugged.

  “Huh,” he started. “Funny. Must have been a glitch.”

  “A glitch?”

  “Well, we’ve found nothing and now they’re saying things are back to normal.”

  “Guess that’s why they call them ghosts.”

  They looked at each other for a second, each trying to work out if the other was going to make a big deal out of this or just get on with the flight. Eventually Pritchie broke into a smile.

  “Let’s hope it wasn’t a flock of birds heading for an engine,” he said with a rough laugh, reclining in his seat and putting his cap back over his eyes.

  “No worries,” the pilot snorted. “I don’t smell any roast chicken.”

  Jimmy was riding the slipstream expertly. The slightest twitch of his muscles made tiny adjustments in the balance of the plane. Gradually he manoeuvred down and to the centre, where the airflow was strongest. If he was going to get away with this, he knew he needed to stay as close as possible to the airbus so the air-traffic control radar system would read the two planes as a single entity.

  Now all he had to do was stay there until they reached Europe. Then he’d have to work out a way to land. He just hoped he wasn’t too late.

  02 WILLIAM LEE

  “Shall we get started then?” Miss Bennett announced brightly.

  Eva Doren felt like a schoolgirl. But unlike most thirteen-year-olds, she wasn’t at school. She was at an operations room deep under the streets of Central London, in the bunkers of NJ7, the most technologically advanced and well-funded Secret Service organisation in the world.

  She didn’t think there were many girls who came to work every day at a place like this: three breeze block walls, bare grey except for the multicoloured horizontal stripes of the electrical circuitry, and a fourth, newly installed glass partition which allowed extra light in from the corridor.

  The doorway was an empty arch – there were hardly any doors at NJ7 Headquarters. The place was designed so that if it was ever evacuated it could be completely flooded by the Thames within two minutes, to protect all of the secrets it held.

  “I thought we were waiting for someone?” said Eva.

  “We are,” replied Miss Bennett. “But he’s late. So we’ll start without him.”

  Eva pulled her ponytail tighter to st
op her reddish-brown hair falling about her neck, and brought out a notepad and pencil from the top pocket of her shirt. She was sitting at a glass conference table big enough for twelve, but for now there were only three.

  Miss Bennett was to her immediate right, sitting totally upright. Her hair was also pulled back in a tight ponytail, but it was longer than Eva’s and, Eva thought, glossier. At times Eva almost wondered whether Miss Bennett became more beautiful with every cruel act.

  Miss Bennett sifted through a pile of folders, all of them plain brown apart from the NJ7 emblem on the front – a short, vertical green stripe. Then she produced a tiny digital recorder and placed it at the centre of the table. She pressed a button, cleared her throat and began, in a business-like tone:

  “Present is NJ7 Field Agent Mitchell Glenthorne and Support Staff Eva Doren…”

  She continued with some of the details of the meeting, while Eva watched Mitchell, sitting directly opposite her. His eyes were downcast, as they often were, but his shoulders seemed to grow broader, pumped with pride at hearing himself described as a ‘field agent’.

  “Oh, and also present is myself, of course,” Miss Bennett added. “Miss Bennett, Director of NJ7.”

  As she finished, a shadow fell across the table. Standing in the doorway was an incredibly tall man. Eva thought he was the tallest man she had ever seen, but he didn’t look strong or muscly. He was so thin Eva wondered whether someone had stretched him out when he was a teenager. He had to stoop to enter the room.

  “Ah,” Miss Bennett said, leaning back and giving a dry smile. “It looks like our guest has decided to join us.”

  The tall man didn’t respond, but took the seat directly opposite Miss Bennett. His features looked vaguely Indian, with a nose that was the same shape as the rest of him – long and thin. His hair was dark black and shaved on the sides of his head, which made him look even taller.

  “Do we have to have a kid at every meeting?” the man asked, even before he had pushed his legs under the table. He stared at Eva. She felt her heart pounding, but didn’t flinch. She’d learned to hide her emotions. “I can understand the need for Mitchell to be here, but, erm…”

  “Eva,” said Eva. She felt the urge to stand up, but resisted. It would only have made her feel even more tiny opposite this giant. Instead she dropped her eyes to her notepad and started scribbling.

  “Eva plays a vital part in the running of NJ7,” Miss Bennett explained, “and in particular my office.”

  “Isn’t it time we sent her home?” the man protested.

  “From what I understand her parents think she’s dead.” Only now did Eva look up. Look homesick, she told herself. She was surprised at how easily the fake emotion came to her. Was it fake? Play the part. Be the loyal little girl. She could almost feel Mitchell’s examining gaze, but kept her own fixed on this new man’s face.

  “How long are you going to maintain that… situation?” he asked.

  “Indefinitely,” Miss Bennett snapped back. “Someone of your background must know how useful it is for the world to think you’re dead. By the way, what is your background?”

  Eva relaxed a little. Miss Bennett was an expert at manipulating the conversation. It was a thrill to have someone so powerful on her side. The man had no answer. He just gave a reluctant smile, lips pressed together.

  It was Mitchell who filled the silence.

  “Without Eva,” he explained, “we would never have been able to kill Jimmy Coates in New York.”

  Now Eva’s heart rate leapt again, but this time with elation. Mitchell was still watching her. She made sure that her face revealed nothing. You serve your country, she repeated in her head, telling herself lies to fool her body. Jimmy was a traitor. At the same time every sinew buzzed with joy that her friend had escaped New York in secret – and alive.

  At last the man gave a small shrug and pulled out his files.

  “This is William Lee,” Miss Bennett announced to Eva and Mitchell. “The new Director of Special Security. He replaces Paduk.”

  The tall man offered his hand to them with an over-the-top grin, revealing a shiny regiment of teeth. Eva shook his hand, but Mitchell refused it. They had no choice about the grin.

  “You’ve been appointed already?” Mitchell asked, confused. “Paduk’s body is still warm. Probably. Wherever it is.”

  “It’s highly unlikely that his body is still warm,” Lee replied calmly, “now that he’s scattered in tiny pieces around ten square kilometres of the North Sea. Not to mention all of the bits of him that were probably consumed by fish…”

  “Thanks for the graphic sketch,” Miss Bennett interrupted. “I think we get the picture.”

  “Which picture is that exactly?” asked Lee sarcastically. “The one in which our largest oil rig explodes? The one where my predecessor bumbles into a rescue job and gets himself blown up? Or the one where our economy and energy infrastructure will struggle to recover?”

  There was silence and they all avoided each other’s eyeline.

  “That’s one of the things we need to discuss, isn’t it?” Miss Bennett muttered, gesturing at her files.

  “Go ahead,” said Lee.

  Miss Bennett pulled out several sheets of paper and spread them around the table. Eva leaned forward to have a look, but she’d seen them already. Some were photographs of the remains of the oil rig, but most were closely-typed pages – the report from the SAS. They all bore the same bold green stripe.

  “According to my forensic team,” Miss Bennett began, “all the evidence suggests it was a botched sabotage job carried out by a single agent.”

  “One agent?” Lee confirmed. “An agent who didn’t intend to blow himself up as well as the rig, yes?”

  “It was a girl,” Mitchell cut in. Everybody turned to him.

  “Mitchell was there,” Miss Bennett explained. “Part of the SAS team.”

  “I see,” mumbled Lee. “And you saw the agent?” Mitchell nodded.

  “She was masked and covered in oil, but from her size and capabilities, it was definitely Zafi.”

  “Zafi is…” William Lee took a moment to consult one of the pages in his own files. “…the French child assassin, correct? Mitchell’s counterpart? Another genetically modified humanoid assassin?” He grunted a dry laugh.

  “Humanoid?” Mitchell exclaimed in horror. “What do you—”

  “Yes.” Miss Bennett cut him off sharply. “Zafi is the French child assassin.”

  “Was,” Mitchell corrected. “She was blown up with the rig, remember?”

  “Do we have her body?” Lee asked brightly.

  “I said she was blown up. You know – kaboom!” Mitchell gestured an explosion with his hands. “As in ‘scattered in tiny pieces around ten square kilometres of the North Sea’. Do you want me to hunt down all those fish you were talking about and make them give excrement samples?”

  “OK, fine. So the French blew up the oil rig, but now at least their operative is dead. The question is, how do we strike back?”

  “The PM has my dossier on that,” said Miss Bennett.

  “The PM has read your dossier. But I’m afraid he’s been unwell. Everything goes through me for the time being.”

  “You?” Miss Bennett was taken aback, but quickly hid it. Lee perused his files, then carried on as if Miss Bennett weren’t even there.

  “Mutam-ul-it,” he announced. The strange word seemed to linger on his tongue and in the air. “I have a strong suspicion we’ll be going with that option. Have everybody on standby.”

  He got up to leave and Eva was shocked at his height all over again. It was almost as if he’d grown during the meeting.

  While he gathered his papers a thought struck him.

  “By the way, did you see the memo about my predecessor’s memorial service tomorrow?”

  “I see every memo,” Miss Bennett hissed.

  “It’s at the Mercantile Marine Memorial,” he continued. “The PM is expecting everyb
ody to be there. Paduk was his friend.”

  “Of course we’ll be there,” said Mitchell. “Paduk was our friend too.”

  “And one more thing,” Lee added, ignoring Mitchell’s annoyance. “What about this Jimmy Coates? Anything to worry about there?”

  “The file is closed.” Miss Bennett pulled a slim brown folder from the middle of her pile and threw it across the table. One page slid out. In the top right corner was a grainy image of Jimmy’s face, next to yet another green stripe. Large red letters were stamped across his forehead. They read ‘TERMINATED’. Under that was typed ‘New York, USA’.

  “I know all of this,” Lee snarled, looking down his nose at the file. “But do we have a body yet?”

  “Another tasty meal for the fish,” Mitchell cut in with a smirk.

  “There are no fish in the East River,” Lee said, reading the details more closely. “Too much pollution.” There was a moment’s pause, then he tossed the file back on to the table and shot an expectant look at the others. “Well?”

  “We had divers trawl the river,” Miss Bennett explained with a sigh.

  “No bodies?” asked Lee.

  “Too many bodies actually.”

  “Children?” Lee was shocked.

  “This is New York we’re talking about.” Miss Bennett shrugged. “We’re not the only organisation to use children as operatives. There’s the Mafia, the Triads, the Capita…”

  The thought made Eva’s skin crawl. Could there really be that many people in the world prepared to kill children, and to use children as killers?

  “In any case, Jimmy could breathe underwater,” Mitchell put in. “He could have drifted miles before finally dying.”

  Miss Bennett agreed. “The search area is far too big for us to cover,” she said with another shrug. “And without jurisdiction…”

  “But we’re sure he’s dead,” Lee asked, stooping to lean one hand on the table. He and Miss Bennett stared at each other. She slowly nodded.