by Joe Craig
“That many bullets in him? We’re sure.”
Lee absorbed the information, nodded, then marched out without another word. Miss Bennett waved Mitchell out of the room as well. He gave her an awkward salute before he left and dropped a nervous glance at Eva.
Before Eva could follow the others, Miss Bennett held up a hand. She leaned to the centre of the table and tapped the stop button on the digital recorder. Concentration furrowed her brow.
“Find out about that man,” she whispered, without looking up.
“William Lee?” Eva frowned. “Find out what?”
“Everything. Where he’s come from, who he is and what he wants.”
“What he wants? What do you mean?”
“Everybody wants something.” Miss Bennett slowly tapped her finger on the table and raised her eyes to Eva. “If you find out what it is, you find their weakness.”
03 A WING AND A PRAYER
Jimmy Coates had been chased, kicked, shot at and throttled. He’d been blown up, nearly drowned in oil and set on fire. But it was the lies that had done the damage.
He shivered violently. Several hours at 10,000 metres was taking its toll. Without the climate control systems of a commercial jet, it was almost as cold as the Arctic. The Falcon wasn’t designed for it and Jimmy certainly wasn’t dressed for it. His jeans were ragged and torn, and his hoodie was too thin to provide any real insulation.
Keeping control of the plane was even more difficult now. He had to shift the flightstick with the weight of his shoulders because he couldn’t rely on the delicate touch of his fingers any more – he couldn’t even feel his fingers. Not only that, but soon his chest was straining for every breath. It felt as if each rib was barbed wire.
Despite the pain, all Jimmy could think about were the lies that had brought him here. First, the head of the CIA had tricked him into blowing up a British oil rig. He knew the British were blaming the French and were ready to strike back. Any second a war could start between France and Britain. It’s partly my fault, Jimmy thought. His stomach lurched and it wasn’t because of the turbulence.
His whole life had become a network of lies and secrets. Secrets like the fact that he was even alive. The British Secret Service thought they’d killed Jimmy in New York, but he’d tricked them and survived.
Lies like the ones his so-called father had told for twelve years, before revealing that Jimmy wasn’t really his son. Then Ian Coates had taken over as Prime Minister and issued the order to have Jimmy hunted down and killed.
Lies suit him, thought Jimmy. He’s a professional at it now.
Even I’m a lie, he thought.
38 per cent human. He could remember with cruel clarity the exact moment when he’d first heard those words. The intense dread rushed back to him. He’d discovered he was genetically designed by the Secret Service to grow as a seemingly normal child, but to develop the skills of the perfect assassin by the time he turned eighteen. He was to remain unnoticed by the rest of the world, while his true nature was kept secret even from himself.
But instead of waiting for Jimmy to grow up, the Government had sent him on a mission early. They didn’t even care that I’m a child, but they wanted me to kill. He couldn’t help imagining the terror he would have experienced if he’d gone through with the mission, instead of rejecting it at the last moment. That’s when NJ7 had turned on him.
Ever since, Jimmy’s assassin skills had been growing and causing nothing but distress. Now they might cause a war, he thought with horror.
Jimmy had been searching desperately for ways to prevent it. The simplest way seemed to be for him to reveal that he had blown up the oil rig – not the French. But to turn up in Britain now, alive, would bring all the heat from the Secret Service back on to him. I can take that, he thought. If it stops a war it must be worth it.
But he knew it wasn’t that simple. His mother, his sister and his best friend were in London. British agents watched over them every second. As soon as Jimmy revealed that he was still alive, the people he loved would be under threat again. At best they would be taken into custody. At worst… Jimmy didn’t dare imagine what nightmares NJ7 would put them through to extract information.
He shuddered and tried to focus all his energy on balancing the plane. But still his dilemma tore at him. It was simple: either he prevented a war, but left his family at the mercy of the Secret Service, or he could stay in hiding, protecting his family, but potentially destroying the fragile peace in Europe.
By now, Jimmy knew he was somewhere near the French-Spanish border, over the mountains. He had tuned the Falcon’s radio into the airbus’s communication system. On the seat next to him and across the floor of the cockpit, he had spread out all of the aeronautical charts he could find. Every signal to the airbus came with an automated verbal repetition – standard safety set-up on commercial flights. So Jimmy had picked up enough clues to work out the flight path. It was almost like Jimmy was listening to the plane’s thoughts.
And in his own head came the beginnings of an idea. France, he thought. Maybe that’s the answer… Could there be a way to keep his family safe and prevent war? Keep going, he told himself. The voice in his head was insistent, but his thoughts were muffled by the oxygen deprivation.
Jimmy was slowly suffocating. He realised he had to reduce his altitude, regardless of where he was. He flicked his eyes between the charts next to him and the nose of his plane, always watching and feeling for the constant adjustments in the airflow that was keeping him in the sky.
Time to dive, he told himself, and thrust the flightstick to the side.
It was like tumbling off the back of a rodeo bull. The huge body of the airbus ploughed onwards, while Jimmy watched the distance between them growing. Soon the commercial flight was a smudged shadow soaring far above him.
Jimmy was in freefall. With hands blue from the cold, he punched two buttons and flicked two switches. The Falcon’s engines sputtered into life.
I’ll make it to France, he thought, triumphant, as his head began to clear. I’ll warn them about a British attack and I’ll ask to see Uno Stovorsky. He remembered Uno Stovorsky from his last trip to France – the agent of the French Secret Service. The man had been gruff, but he had helped Jimmy and his family. Jimmy was sure he would help again.
Then the engines died.
Jimmy felt a violent explosion of panic in his chest. It was immediately dampened by a huge inner wave of strength. Jimmy tried the ignition switches again. Nothing happened. Again and again he tried restarting the Falcon’s engines, but they wouldn’t even splutter. He watched his hands moving calmly around the controls, while inside he was frantic.
No fuel. No engines. He heard the words repeating like a drumbeat in his head.
Jimmy’s genetic programming had already changed tactics. It felt like someone else was routing messages through his brain, but so quickly he couldn’t understand what was being said. Then the knowledge came to him fully formed, as if he had always known it.
He manoeuvred the flaps on the wing and the ailerons until the plane was gliding through the air, not plunging downwards. The design of the Falcon was on his side here – in case of engine failure it wasn’t meant to just fall out of the sky. But Jimmy knew it couldn’t stay up forever either. He looked around for a parachute and the ejector mechanism. Then he remembered: every passenger and member of the crew had taken their parachute with them when Jimmy had taken over the plane in mid-air. He’d made sure of it – he didn’t want to be throwing anybody to his death. Jimmy knew that decision might now condemn him. He was gliding in a tiny plane, several thousand metres up, without any power and without a parachute.
Suddenly the left side of the plane dipped. This is it, thought Jimmy. A vertical draft sucked the aircraft downwards. Jimmy felt his whole body reeling. He plunged through the clouds and saw the stark, white snowscape below. The plane was nose-diving towards the side of a mountain somewhere in the Pyrenees.
Ev
ery one of Jimmy’s muscles tensed. The scream of the air rushing past the plane seemed to pierce straight to the centre of his brain, doubling his terror. But he didn’t freeze. In fact he moved so fast he could hardly keep track of where he was.
He rolled out of his seat and climbed up, towards the back of the plane, digging his nails into the carpet. The friction forced some feeling back into his fingers. When he reached the cabin he grabbed hold of the passenger seatbelts and heaved his legs at the emergency exit. It flew open with such force that the door snapped off its hinges and hurtled into the sky. The wind blasted into Jimmy, knocking him back against the seats.
He crunched his stomach muscles to swing his entire body out of the door. He tensed his arms to rip the seatbelts from the seats. He slammed against the wing of the plane and slid along it, the back of his head knocking against the metal.
Jimmy’s body strained against the wind and the G-force while his hands worked to save his life. He wasn’t even sure what he was trying to do and after a second he could hardly see because water was streaming from his eyes. He just had to trust that something inside him knew how to survive. He had to force his programming to take over from the terror.
He swung the two seatbelts over the lip of the wing, catching it with the buckles, then shifted into a crouching position, facing directly downwards, holding himself in place by gripping the straps at his sides. The wind in his face was so strong he thought the lining of his cheeks was going to tear.
Then he flexed his knees, rocking the wing. Over the roar of the wind in his ears, Jimmy heard a definite creak. The joint where the wing met the body of the plane was weakening. With the friction from the fall it wouldn’t take much more to snap the wing off completely. Jimmy rocked harder. He bounced on his haunches, listening to the creak growing louder. Then there was a massive splintering noise, like gunfire, then another. Jimmy kept rocking.
The ground charged towards him. He was close enough now to pick out the rocks and bare patches in the snow. He drove all his energy to his legs, frantically pushing against the end of the wing. Then, at last:
CRACK!
The wing lurched away from the rest of the plane. Jimmy was almost thrown off, but he squeezed hold of the straps and kept his footing. Then he threw his head and shoulders backwards, forcing his heels into the metal. The shift of his bodyweight pushed the wing underneath him. Now he was standing on a horizontal platform – and using the wind resistance of the wing to slow his fall.
All the time he felt the wing swaying violently beneath his feet. It wanted to flip on to its side again, but Jimmy wouldn’t let it. Now Jimmy was surfing again. But this time there was no slipstream to help him – just a vertical drop.
The side of the mountain loomed towards him. Then the rest of the plane crashed into the rocks. What little fuel was left in the tanks sent up a huge black and orange cloud. Jimmy felt the heat of it before he heard it. But he knew instantly that heat could save him.
The rush of hot air was like a cushion under Jimmy’s wing, but the updraft threw him off-balance. His feet slipped from under him and he pitched on to his front, smacking his chin against the front edge of the wing.
Then it was over. The wing slammed on to the snow with a cruel bounce. Jimmy clung to it as it raced down the slope. It was so steep Jimmy felt like he was still falling, but he could hear the fierce swoosh of solid snow and ice under him.
His surfboard had become a snowboard. Jimmy crunched his elbows straight, throwing his body upright again. He couldn’t see anything but a huge fountain of slush thrown up all around him. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, reading the undulations in the mountainside.
The wingtip cut through the ice, firing chips of it into Jimmy’s face and chest. But he didn’t care. He could feel himself gradually slowing down.
Then he hit a rock. The wing leapt into the air, catapulting Jimmy with it. He was thrown up with such force that he thought his bones would be ripped free from their joints. He heard his own voice crying out, distant and unfamiliar. The cold bit at his skin and all he could see was intense whiteness.
Then: THUD!
He hit something – and the total white turned to total black.
04 SEND THE ENFORCER
Eva watched the shadows shift across the turrets of the Tower of London to distract herself from the stifling air inside the car and the awkward silence. She and Mitchell had been parked there for at least half an hour, she guessed, with specific instructions not to get out. In that time, they had barely spoken. She was quite happy to keep it that way, but eventually Mitchell broke the silence.
“So your parents think you’re dead?” he blurted.
Nice conversation starter, thought Eva. She shrugged and turned to look out of the other window, across Trinity Square, to the sombre crowd around the Mercantile Marine Memorial. She couldn’t see anything that was going on, just a neat row of people’s backs about twenty metres away. She noted how unusual it was for so many people at a memorial service to be wearing bright colours. That was because a lot of them were military personnel in finest dress uniform. The civil servants and journalists were all in black though, making the overall effect like a mingling of peacocks and ravens.
“Don’t you mind that they think you’re dead?” Mitchell pressed. “They might, like, miss you or something.”
Eva sighed. “We didn’t get on that well, OK?” she explained. “My brothers know I’m fine. That’s all I care about.”
“You’re lucky you even know your parents,” Mitchell mumbled.
For a second, Eva felt a pang of sympathy. Mitchell never spoke about his own family. She felt the urge to explain that she knew all about what had happened to him: that his parents were killed in a car crash when he was a baby… that he’d escaped from his foster home… that his brother had beaten him… But she also knew what lay at the root of it all: Mitchell was the first child to have been genetically programmed to grow into the perfect Government assassin.
Eva shuddered and deliberately pushed away her sympathy. The boy next to her was the enemy. She had to remember that. Already he’d been sent several times to kill Jimmy Coates. The thought of it made her catch her breath. Jimmy’s sister was her best friend. It was for Jimmy and Georgie Coates that she risked her life every day, undercover at NJ7.
She reached forwards to the driver’s seat and turned the ignition one click so she could open her window.
“Hey,” Mitchell objected. “The windows are tinted for a reason, you know.”
Instinctively he tried to lean across her for the button. When he realised how close that brought them to each other, he froze. Eva glared.
“It’s just a couple of centimetres, OK?” she protested softly.
Mitchell pulled back.
“If anyone finds out the British Secret Service is employing two thirteen-year-olds Miss Bennett will go mental.”
“Who’s going to find out?” Eva asked. “Even if the press see us they can’t print anything about it, can they? Everything has to be approved by the Government press office.”
“I dunno. Miss Bennett said to stay out of sight. That’s all. Otherwise we’d be standing over there, wouldn’t we?” He nodded his head towards the throng of people. “And I should be out there. You know, paying respects, or whatever. I went on a mission with Paduk. I was partly trained by him.”
“You train yourself,” Eva snapped. “You went for runs with him, that’s all.”
Mitchell didn’t answer. He knew she was right. She was always meticulous about detail and Mitchell wasn’t in the mood to challenge her. He also wasn’t keen to dwell on the sort of training that went on in his body: his muscles developing as he slept, his programming sending thousands of signals through his synapses every second to give him new skills that he’d never guessed could be his. The skills of an assassin.
They were both glad to be distracted by the Prime Minister’s voice floating through the window on a waft of cooler air.
“Paduk died in the service of his country, trying to defend one of our most precious assets from foreign sabotage…”
They had to listen hard. Every time a car drove past it drowned out the words.
“…response will be diplomacy… for a peaceful resolution… but if pressed we are ready…”
Eva didn’t want to hear it. Whatever the man said, she knew he would probably be lying. But it wasn’t the words that upset her. It was the voice – that calm, reassuring, authoritative voice. To her it wasn’t just the voice of the Prime Minister, it was the voice of her best friend’s dad, Ian Coates.
A few minutes later he was marching back in the direction of Mitchell and Eva, flanked on either side by Secret Service agents in plain black suits. The sun glinted off their dark glasses and picked out the green stripes on their lapels. They were big men, but Ian Coates wasn’t much smaller. Eva remembered that all the time she’d thought he was an ordinary businessman, he’d in fact been an NJ7 agent, along with Georgie’s mother, Helen. Since becoming Prime Minister, he’d clearly gone back to a strict regime of physical training. The shoulders of his suit were bulging.
Eva watched him striding towards them, his jaw jutting out in grim determination. But the closer he came, the more she noticed something was wrong. His swagger was slightly off-centre and his face was pale, with patches under his eyes that were almost yellow.
He forcefully raised a hand to wave to the press, before they were escorted away as a pack by more Secret Service staff. No time to pay private tributes to the fallen hero they’d all come to commemorate. Not that they seemed bothered, Eva noticed.
Eva and Mitchell’s car was one of a row of five. Their driver appeared out of nowhere and opened the rear door, motioning Mitchell to shift over to make room, ready for Miss Bennett. As he shuffled towards Eva, the backs of his arms stuck to the leather, making a soft squeak. The Prime Minister’s car was the one directly in front of theirs. He paused with one foot in and one foot out, and raised his head back in the direction of the memorial.
