Survival

by Joe Craig

  Inside were two huge soldiers in desert camouflage. But she took them by surprise. She punched the base of her palm into the nose of the passenger. Blood exploded all over the cab. Now she had a firm footing on the running board and she grabbed the blood-spattered man by the shoulders. He was unconscious, which made him all the more useful as a battering ram.

  She forced the soldier’s head into the face of the driver. He scrabbled for a sidearm, but the girl stabbed her elbow into his shoulder with perfect aim. She struck the sternoclavicular ligament with such power she heard the bone beneath it shatter. The man cried out in pain and the gun dropped from his hand, while the jeep veered across the sand, out of control.

  She was desperate to grab the wheel, but first she had to reach for the door handle and push the soldiers out of the jeep one by one. She couldn’t believe the adrenaline inside her. Her hands were shaking.

  At last she took control of the jeep. She could feel tears itching to come out, but she swallowed the fright and steered the vehicle round to point straight back at Mutam-ul-it.

  Through the thick smog she could make out everything she needed to know. Her teams had sent a shockwave through the French retreat. Their soldiers were reduced to escaping on foot. Some lay down, defeated; others tried to sprint away, flailing and staggering over the sands. Their jeeps were now hers. And every one of them was hurtling back towards Mutam-ul-it.

  With a smile, she slammed her foot down on the accelerator.

  HMS Enforcer was suddenly frantic. Crew scurried in and out of the command centre, handing print-outs to each other, poring over charts and conducting muttered conversations. Dr Giesel couldn’t keep track of what was going on. His breath was suddenly short and he had to sit down.

  “We think it’s the local rebel force, sir,” came the voice through the intercom, much less assured that it had been only minutes before.

  “You think?” Lieutenant-Commander Love’s face had turned red with fury. He strode up and down in front of the window. “Who trained them?” he bellowed. “How can they do this?”

  He removed his cap to reveal a head of brown hair shaved aggressively short. He furiously massaged his scalp, then ordered, “Arm two more missiles.”

  Dr Giesel sprang up from his seat at the back of the command centre and rushed towards the Lieutenant-Commander.

  “Sir,” he panted, “we can’t do that.” Love spun round and glared with the look of the devil. Despite that, Dr Giesel insisted, “We don’t have another safe target.”

  “We can’t have these people going in and occupying the place,” Love replied, his voice resounding about the command centre. Giesel’s response was less decisive, but immediate.

  “We don’t know which other buildings—”

  “So we’ll hit the same places again.”

  “But the heat from the explosions…” The two men faced off against each other, but Dr Giesel knew his subject. He wasn’t going to be shouted down. “It’s already risky. Another blast could—”

  “What is this – a negotiation?”

  Love slammed his cap back on his head and rushed back to his control desk. He jammed his thumb into the keypad with such anger it threatened to split the plastic cover.

  “No!” Giesel shouted. Love ignored him. Giesel took a deep breath and threw himself at the control desk. Love swatted him away without even looking up and pressed the final digit.

  Giesel heaved himself to his feet and stared out of the control centre window, aghast. A second later, two missiles soared into the air.

  “Right,” announced Lt Cdr Love, mopping his face with a handkerchief. “Get your team on board the chopper. We’re sending you in.”

  “We can’t.”

  “What?” Love scowled as if he was trying to shoot lasers out of his eyes straight into Dr Giesel’s forehead.

  “I tried to warn you,” Giesel said quietly. “Sir.” He deliberately emphasised the word. “My report recommended that Mutam-ul-it would remain stable if you hit those two specific targets.”

  “We did hit those targets!” roared Love. “And we’ll hit them again!”

  “But my calculations were based on a single strike. The heat from two explosions will throw everything off.”

  Love froze. Giesel waited for his message to sink in, but it didn’t look like the man was listening any more.

  “Do you understand now?” Giesel asked, as gently as he could. “After those missiles hit, the whole place could be unstable. There’s no way we can go in.”

  Lt Cdr Love turned away and rested his hands on the control desk. His head hung between his shoulders, hiding his face. Then he coughed and scratched at his collar.

  “Signal Command,” he whispered to nobody in particular. “Tell them we have a problem.”

  09 FRENCH WELCOME

  Opening his eyes felt like lifting up a building. Every part of Jimmy’s body was either totally numb or in excruciating pain.

  Pain means I’m alive, he told himself again, but it wasn’t reassuring. Then he felt a sudden heat in his chest. Within seconds it washed through his body, melting to a soft warmth. It was like diving into a pool of warm honey. It didn’t soothe his pain completely, but it made it bearable.

  Slowly Jimmy became aware of his surroundings. The first thing he saw was soft beige light all around him and a huge ceiling fan whipping round above his head. His nostrils tingled with a bitter smell. It made him think of school on the first day of term. Then he remembered the same smell when he’d lightened his hair as a disguise. Bleach. Jimmy thought. I’m in a hospital.

  There was something soft behind his head which he assumed was a pillow, but when he tried to feel around to check whether he was in bed, he found that he had no sensation in his hands.

  Then he heard the squeak of soft shoes on lino and a shadow fell across his face. Jimmy felt the kick of a strong force inside his gut. His programming wasn’t only working to dull the pain. It was on full alert. Have they examined me? Jimmy wondered. What have they found? Maybe whoever had examined him had simply followed the usual procedure for victims of extreme cold and not noticed any unusual results yet.

  “Uno Stovorsky?” came a high-pitched male voice.

  “Yes,” Jimmy tried to cry out, but his throat felt like it had been slashed from the inside. He didn’t care. Somehow whoever was looking after him had found out that he needed to see Uno Stovorsky.

  “Hello, Uno,” the man said in a thick French accent. “You are English?”

  Jimmy’s heart crumpled. Why would anyone think he was Uno Stovorsky? He strained his neck to get a better look at the doctor. He was a short, middle-aged man with scars on his cheeks and a tidy goatee beard. A line of biros stood to attention in the top pocket of his immaculate white coat.

  “I’m not Uno,” Jimmy said. His voice came out deeper than he was expecting and with a rough tone. He repeated himself, but this time relaxed his lips and tongue, letting his programming take control. His words came out in perfect French. “Je ne suis pas Uno Stovorsky.”

  The doctor apologised, obviously shocked that his patient spoke the language like a native. He continued in French. “It’s the name you were muttering when they brought you in. You said it over and over. You have no identification on you, so we assumed it was your own name. Tell me—”

  “When who brought me?” Jimmy didn’t have time to make a fuss about introductions and he certainly didn’t want to explain what he was doing in the Pyrenees in the first place.

  “You set off the alarm when you touched the border fence.” The doctor’s face turned sour at Jimmy’s interruption. “That is only about five kilometres from here. We don’t get many who have survived a journey over the mountains. And children travelling alone…” He tailed off as if he expected Jimmy to give an explanation.

  It didn’t happen. The man shrugged. “The patrol picked you up immediately. ”

  In the past, the French-Spanish border had been left virtually unmanned, with travellers
free to cross one way or the other as they pleased. But that wasn’t the case any more. Despite the relatively civil relations between the two countries, there were still security concerns. Now the border was clearly marked out by fences, patrols and checkpoints.

  Jimmy remembered the silver glimmer he’d seen before he collapsed. It gave him a thrill of achievement. He’d made it to the border.

  “Uno Stovorsky is an agent of the DGSE,” Jimmy explained. “Your Secret Service. Can you contact him for me? It’s urgent.”

  Very slowly he flexed his elbows to force his upper body off the bed.

  “You can’t get up,” the doctor protested. He tried to push Jimmy down, kindly but firmly. “It might not seem like it because you’re on powerful painkillers, but you’re very ill.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Jimmy insisted. “I take vitamin tablets.”

  He shook his chest to get the doctor off him, which sent a harsh stabbing pain through his ribs. Jimmy winced, but kept moving. In a second he was sitting upright. The ward housed five other beds, but they were all empty.

  “You don’t understand,” said the doctor. “Even if you can get up, you can’t leave.”

  Jimmy stared the doctor down, trying to read what he really meant. Then the details of his surroundings flashed up in his brain – details he didn’t even realise he’d noticed.

  “Bars on the windows,” Jimmy muttered. “Doors of double thickness with reinforced glass. What sort of hospital is this?”

  The doctor didn’t say anything, but glanced over his shoulder towards the thick double doors. Meanwhile, Jimmy rolled his shoulders, without knowing why. Then he realised. His programming was testing his mobility.

  He had to know which movements were impossible and which were just painful.

  He raised his hands to look at what damage the cold had done and for the first time saw that they were completely wrapped in bandages. He looked down. So were his feet. The balls of bandaging looked like four large portions of candyfloss, one stuck on the end of each limb. Now Jimmy also noticed the tube inserted into his arm, attached to a saline drip next to his bed.

  “I don’t need this,” Jimmy announced, surprised at his own confidence. It increased as his programming fuelled his strength. Jimmy was feeling the effects of several weeks’ recovery condensed into a few minutes. It was thrilling. He hooked one bandaged hand under the tube and yanked it out of his skin. “Thanks for your help, doctor. I’m leaving.”

  “Stay where you are,” the doctor ordered. “This isn’t a hospital. It’s the medical wing of a border control detention centre.”

  “Detention centre?” said Jimmy, testing how far he could flex his knees.

  “It’s where we keep people who try to cross the border illegally until they can be identified and—”

  “Are you going to help me or not?”

  “We are helping you. That’s why I can’t let you—”

  Before he could finish, Jimmy swivelled in the bed and stuck a leg out. He hooked his bandaged foot round the bottom of the metal stand his drip was hanging on and flicked it upwards. The base of it smacked the doctor in the knee. The man stumbled forwards.

  Jimmy grabbed the pole between his forearms and stamped down on the wheel lock on one leg of his bed. Then he kicked against the wall to send himself rolling across the lino on the bed.

  The doctor scrabbled for a whistle that was round his neck and gave it a huge blast. The echo had barely died when the double doors burst open. Two armed security guards charged towards Jimmy, one reaching for the baton on his belt, the other going for his gun. Jimmy kept rolling, using the metal pole as a paddle.

  He crouched low on the bed and waited until the very last second. His programming was thrusting power into every corner of his being, as if it was grateful to be let off the leash at last. At the same time it gripped Jimmy’s mind, controlling his actions.

  Just as the guards descended on him, Jimmy steered himself round in a sharp twist. He twirled the pole over his arm and smacked it into one guard’s face. The momentum spun the bed all the way round so Jimmy was facing the wrong way. Jimmy brought the pole under control and jabbed it backwards, under his arm. The foot of the stand connected with the other guard’s chest, then Jimmy snapped it upwards into his face.

  When both guards hit the floor they stayed down.

  But two more were hurtling towards the ward. Jimmy stayed calm. He rubbed his feet together to loosen the bandaging, then twisted his right hand into it and pulled. Within seconds it had unravelled, exposing his blackened and twisted left foot. Jimmy stared, relieved that the power of his programming combined with the painkillers meant he could hardly feel it.

  The new guards were through the ward doors. Using his wrists and forearms, Jimmy wrapped the length of loose bandage round the metal pole. Then he kicked the pole directly upwards. The foot of it caught on a strut of the ceiling fan above Jimmy’s head.

  Jimmy twisted his arms into the other end of the bandage and swung into the air, leaning back to control his direction. He slammed his knees into the guards’ faces and they toppled like skittles.

  By now the first two guards were rolling over, trying to get up, but they were too late. Jimmy was through the doors. He hurtled down the corridor, half running and half sliding, with one foot still cocooned in bandage.

  A quick glance at the emergency evacuation notice told him the layout of the building. As he ran, he tore at his bandages with his teeth, desperate to free his hands. He turned a corner, heading for the nearest fire exit.

  Another guard sat in front of the exit reading a newspaper. When Jimmy tore into view, the guard leapt to his feet and held up a hand to signal “Halt!”.

  Does that ever work? Jimmy wondered. He picked up speed, while the guard scrabbled for his walkie-talkie, then his gun. By then Jimmy was on him. He crashed his shoulder into the man’s midriff and the pair of them tumbled to the floor. Jimmy dived for the exit in a flurry of newspaper pages. He clattered through and an alarm erupted throughout the building.

  Jimmy felt the ice-cold air hit his skin. It brought back the terror of his mountain trek. He looked around to find himself in a fenced courtyard, with a watch tower looming overhead. The guard’s newspaper was fluttering all over the courtyard.

  “Stop immediately,” came a stilted voice, speaking in English, but with a French accent. “Otherwise you will be shot.”

  Jimmy buzzed with the strangest feeling of delight. His programming hummed through him, relishing the battle. His brain whirred with a thousand calculations – the angle of the shot, the velocity of the bullet, the distance between Jimmy and the fence…

  To his shock, a smile twitched in the corners of his mouth. He felt his muscles bracing for the sprint and was actually enjoying it. But then his eyes fixed on a single sheet of newspaper and the delight froze in his heart. Jimmy suddenly knew that there was no point trying to outrun the French shooter. He stopped dead still and raised his hands.

  The newspaper’s front page swooped along the concrete. It was dominated by one image: the skeleton of a burnt-out building, with a huge grey battleship looming on the horizon. The ship was flying the Union Jack.

  Suddenly four guards pounced on Jimmy, pushed him to the ground and cuffed him. He didn’t resist. He knew it was too late for that now.

  10 LIES WORK

  Mitchell jumped out of the shower and grabbed his towel. The red light above the sink had just come on. It reflected around the black tiles and gave the steam an eerie, hellish glow.

  He rushed through to his bedroom, randomly drying bits of his body as he went. Drips ran down his nose and bounced off his brawny chin before hitting the carpet. He leaned over his laptop, careful not to drip on it, and found what he knew would be waiting for him. The red light only came on when there was an email from Miss Bennett.

  He clicked it open and pulled his desk chair closer with his foot. Before his shower, he’d been absorbed in one of the SAS combat simulators. It was i
ntended as part of the training for recruits, but to Mitchell it was just the best console game he’d ever played. The handset was discarded on the floor next to a packet of crisps and the image of a mangled enemy corpse was still paused on his TV.

  His room was quite small, but it had everything he needed. In fact it had everything he had ever wanted: TV, HD-DVD player, and imported luxuries like a Bose sounddock. Even the shower responded to voice commands.

  But he knew there was a price for living in such luxury. Looking around the room, with its smart black and red design, there was one obvious reminder of his situation: the lack of windows. The British Secret Service had taken over his life so much that these days he lived underground, in one of the few residential apartments at the NJ7 network.

  Miss Bennett’s email had no message in it, but a video popped up instead. Mitchell settled back to watch.

  The image was jerky, as if it had been filmed on a hand-held device, like a mobile phone, and at first it was too dark to see anything. Mitchell turned up the contrast on his screen.

  The video appeared to have been filmed in a snooker hall. There was the noise of balls being hit and in the corner Mitchell made out a sliver of green baize. But everything was obscured by the shoulders of people around the camera. The place was packed. Then Mitchell finally realised what the focus of the filming was.

  At the front of the crowd was a tall figure addressing the others. His manner was relaxed, but powerful. Mitchell turned up the volume. He could just make out snippets of the man’s speech above the cracking of the snooker balls and the murmurs of the crowd.

  “The British Government has become a dictatorship,” the man declared. “They invented this system of Neo-democracy to give them power to do whatever they wanted.”