“Can we reach America?” asked Joy with her first tinge of hope.
“Depends if you like gambling. With perfect weather, a light prevailing wind, a stopover for fuel, and lottery-winning luck...” Joy looked crestfallen all over again. “But I can get you away from here to somewhere they can’t find you, while we plan a proper escape.”
That night, we ate for the second time that day, and straightened our seven layers of clothes, and added three layers on our heads, including a balaclava (all the outer layers arctic-army white). Max packed a litre flask of hot water on the top of each backpack — Joy’s and mine ‘efficient’ and light, his overflowing with food and kit.
Then the three of us climbed up from our den and emerged into the freezing night. Minus 45 degrees C. Perhaps minus 90 when you factored in the wind-chill.
Max roped us together. Anger at feeling like a dog on a lead almost overwhelmed me. But as my feet slithered on the slippery ice, impotent fury gradually turned to relief.
It was an unforgettable night. Full of confusion, mixed ups, downs and soaring highs all bathed by a full moon that lit up the white landscape while the whistling wind covered our tracks.
Max had promised a short walk to his container. But he hadn’t reckoned on Joy and me. What took him an hour — the minimum time that he deemed to be ‘far enough away for them not to find it’ — took us three.
The pee stop was one of the downs. Never ever had I been so cold and Max had to zip me (and Joy) back up as our frozen hands numbed to uselessness.
On reaching the white container that Max had covered with white netting to keep it hidden, we’d have frozen again had we not helped Max shovel a track to the door and dragged it open just enough for the three of us to clamber in.
The interior of Max’s container, dropped from a plane to end up here, was a cross between a fully stocked yacht and a racing car transporter.
And it was warm — copying Max we loosened our hoods, stripped off our woolly hats and balaclavas. Joy and I just stared at each other as the low lights flickered on automatically and on the far wall, a screen sprang to life.
It filled immediately with an imposing, powerful, regal face.
“Hi Marion.” Max took all this as normal.
“Who is that with you and Lucille?” Marion was clearly the boss and sounded mildly irritated.
CHAPTER SIX
Doc walked out of the Fish Tank’s grand east-facing door, down through the eighteenth-century parkland, past the orchard, where the apple trees shed their blossom, feeding that glorious promise of autumn fruit.
In front of the summerhouse, which now housed a gymnasium, a swimming pond had been built for Doc to exercise in. A winter home to a variety of frogs, toads and newts, the pond blended in seamlessly with Capability Brown’s original concept.
There, and in the gym, Doc could work out, mentally and physically. And he needed to.
In the summer Doc looked forward to diving into the swimming pond naked, like the other creatures that swam amongst the reeds, but today he stripped off his clothes and his left leg, donned a neoprene wet suit and went hop-diving into the water that rippled and sparkled in the early spring sun.
Half an hour sped by while Doc’s body luxuriated in the water’s weightlessness. He decided to stay in until Sofia arrived for her weekly meeting with Marion. Doc pictured her striding across the grass, her long black hair bouncing with every step, her fulsome cleavage held in a tight blouse.
Sofia Forli, who turned heads wherever she went, ran Z5’s Milan HQ, spoke four languages fluently and had a passion for flying. Few knew, however, of her skills in the martial arts.
Sofia had first sent shivers up Doc’s spine when he was in his early teens and she was one of Z5’s youngest agents.
She married an equally fearless colleague, Jack Forli, an American, which had given her two passports. The Forlis had twins. Sofia had been with Jack when he died.
Doc had been too.
It was one of the few experiences that made Doc appreciate how lucky he’d been to lose only a leg.
Jack had also been torn apart by an explosion, and for five long days had fought to survive. His killer, the bastard who squeezed the trigger, turned out to be a fourteen-year-old boy who had been offered $50 to set off the device. Fourteen years old, the same age as the suicide bomber whose terrified eyes had met his own just seconds before he lost consciousness.
Doc’s face creased with anger. Why did their managers, the devil chiefs that encouraged the recruitment of these children, never blow themselves up? Bigots the lot of them.
As so often, Doc was tensing up to take on, or take out, the world’s tyrants himself; one by one, single-handed. He thought of the men who had made the world suffer. Like Stalin, that bastard sadist, destroyer of men, a man who effectively murdered his own son…. Something flickered through his brain...
Suddenly, a furtive movement caught his eye.
His brain snapped back to the present. He glimpsed the back of a man in camouflage. Doc ducked under the water and swam; breaststroke arms only, bugger the leg, to the shelter of the reeds.
Through the summerhouse window, he watched the man search through his stuff, rifling through his wallet, chucking aside his mobile and keys.
With the sun right behind him, Doc edged closer. Still well out of hearing he saw the man grab a mobile from his pocket. Listen. Respond. Turn. He rushed out of sight —grabbing Doc’s prosthetic leg as he went. Unknowingly, he sprinted past a Yamaha ATV sheltering by the west wall of the summerhouse, fully fuelled, and covered with a tarpaulin.
Doc tore a length of bamboo from the bankside, a makeshift thumb-stick and hopped towards the summerhouse as the Camouflage Man sprinted in the direction of Brett Hall. Doc ignored his clothes and grabbed his iPhone as his mind rattled through ‘what next’ possibilities.
The man had been ordered to do something specific.
What?
Mother, answer!
Marion didn’t.
“Red Alert.” Doc was shouting but the phone was dead.
Had she been on the other end Marion would have known precisely what to do.
Get in the Fish Tank and lock it down.
Doc saw the intruder heave his stolen prosthetic leg over the fence into an overgrown copse.
Arsehole.
Doc lost vital seconds tugging away the tarpaulin and unlocking the ATV before the engine revved up at the first flick of the starter.
He almost lost more time as the all-terrain vehicle roared into life, sprang forward and mounted the summerhouse steps with its offside wheels. Doc’s instinct was to jump to his feet as if they were firmly planted in the stirrups of a bronco. But his prosthetic leg was missing.
Bloody leg.
He crashed down onto the saddle and threw his weight to his left just in time to stop the teetering ATV from rolling. He tore forward, fighting for control of the vehicle.
As Brett Hall came into view, Doc saw Camouflage Man shoot out the lock and smash his way through the grand East facing doors.
The arsehole’s after my mum.
He crashed the grand doors open with his ATV. What a waste, but this was war.
Camouflage Man was blasting away at Marion’s door with his Scorpion machine pistol when he spun round to find Doc, one leg missing and still in his wet suit, roaring up on the ATV.
The man fled. Doc fought back his desire to give chase.
Checking out Marion and contacting Sofia were the priorities.
As he leapt off the ATV, Doc glanced back at the havoc he’d created in just a few seconds. Andy Barlow, beat him into Marion’s study. Her desk was stained with wet blood.
“Don’t faff about with me,” his mother’s eyes shone like diamonds from a paling face. “Get him.”
Doc’s eyes widened with horror and memories of his own firefight.
Barlow nodded: “Doesn’t need two of us.”
“Sofia nearby?”
“Two min
utes away.”
Doc glanced at the map displayed on the wall touch-screen. A red flashing dot showed Sofia’s position.
“She’s driving fast.”
“She’s Italian.” Marion stabbed at the red dot, her voice as strong and resilient as her eyes.
“Marion, any update?” Sofia’s voice was urgent.
“An armed intruder just shot me.” Matter of fact. No room for emotion. “He’s running towards the copse, two o’clock from the house.”
“Shot you?”
“Barlow’s looking after me. Tom’s coming to you.”
“Doc..” Sofia’s voice gave way to the clamour of squealing tyres, the sound of bullet shots.
Doc’s heart lurched.
“I need back-up,” said Sofia. Doc’s heart started again. She was all right. He and his mother locked eyes, each conscious of the other’s pedigree.
“Scram.”
Doc hesitated, but he knew she was right. He grabbed a pistol from its corner by a filing cabinet, threw himself back onto the ATV and roared out, unconcerned by the damage he again created.
The sundial on the south-facing lawn was casting a sharp seven o’clock shadow when Doc spotted Sofia’s bright red Ferrari 360 blistering its way up the long, gravel drive to Brett Hall.
He stuffed a Bluetooth headset into his left ear, grabbed his iPhone, and zapped in Sofia.
“Welcome to the chase. Our man’s in the copse and armed.”
Sofia climbed out of the red Ferrari, rosso corsa ‘racing red’ and clutching her Kimber pistol she broke into a run as she shook her long, black hair off her face.
“We want him alive.”
“Sure do. He’s after something and we want to know what.”
“Someone else is too. I was followed. And they almost caught up with me.”
“What were they travelling in, a ballistic missile?”
Before Sofia could answer he glimpsed Camouflage Man sprint out of the back of the woods into a field.
“He’s breaking cover. Running to the centre of the field. Why?”
“To get to the helicopter that was following me.”
“It’s heading straight for him.”
Sofia jumped on the back of Doc’s ATV and they raced off. Above the ATV’s roar they heard the thwack-thwack-thwack of rotor blades and looked up to see a R22 helicopter circling down towards Camouflage Man, gleaming in the bright evening sun.
The helicopter, the ATV and the running man reached the same spot at the same time.
All armed.
Camouflage Man had his Czech Scorpion machine pistol trained on Doc. Doc had his German HK 45cal trained on the Camouflage Man. Sofia had her Kimble trained on the helicopter pilot, who was buffeting all three with his rotor blades roaring round to keep the R22 in a hovering pattern.
A half-helmet and goggles obscured the pilot’s face. His horseshoe moustache accentuating his pursed lips as he screamed into the roaring noise at Camouflage Man.
The pilot threw open the passenger door, stared straight at Doc.
The intruder sprinted towards the helicopter.
Doc lowered his pistol to Camouflage Man’s knees and fired.
The man fell screaming, well short of the door, and dropped dead as the pilot shot him in the classic triangle fashion. One bullet through the forehead, the second through the heart, the third through the right lung.
“Bad,” said Sofia as, with a roar of the engine, the pilot went from hover to straight line, straight at Doc, who threw himself off the ATV. His head hit a rock and red sparks shot across his retina, before briefly lapsing into blackness.
The pilot swivelled the R22 like a bucking horse, and steered towards the horizon. Sofia slid over to Doc as he snapped back to consciousness, his left hand jumped down to his leg as his brain registered it wasn’t there and a momentary flash of panic seized his eyes.
“You’re fine.” Sofia eyes offered reassurance and Doc sprang back to the present.
For a few moments they sat back to back on the ATV giving time for their thoughts to settle. What had the dead man been after?
What case on Z5’s books warranted murder?
Doc and Sofia heard an ambulance siren. “Got to get back to Mother.”
*
An hour later, after Marion’s doctor had declared her fit enough to stay at home under the care of a nurse, Doc and Sophie were in the Ferrari, whistling east up the A30 from Stockbridge to Sutton Scotney on an old Roman road — straight as a die.
Sofia was stroking the wheel. She loved driving, especially when the traffic was as light as it was now. A car a minute felt crowded on this road. Bliss.
Doc’s voice cut into her thoughts. He’d keyed the encrypted car computer to Z5.
“Any trace on the chopper?”
“Heli Air Flying School reported an R22 missing, presumed stolen, this morning.”
Marion’s image replaced the GPS on the Ferrari’s dashboard screen.
“Marion. What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m fine.” Sofia and Doc shook their heads at the screen and looked at each other. “You two find that helicopter.”
“Any leads for us?” Sofia squeezed the Ferrari’s accelerator pedal to keep the back wheels pressed to the road as she eased into a corner.
“None. No RT contact — I presume they were listening in; no signal from the transponder which suggests it was switched off. No sightings.”
“Like finding a needle in a haystack.” Doc glanced at Sofia; aware it wasn’t his shrewdest quip.
“Get a metal detector.” Marion wasn’t in the mood for quipping.
Especially when the edgy relationship between Andy Barlow and his Brett Hall staff, and Inspector Jarod Ford of the Wiltshire Constabulary was being tested again as the search for clues and the clear up was getting started.
Inspector Ford would need his force around for most of the next day, and Barlow would need five times longer to clear up the disarray created by the murdered intruder — and magnified by Doc.
Doc clicked off the car computer.
“How about dropping into Popham Airfield to see if Chris picked up any RT. He often takes his Pitt Special bi-plane for a spin after the club’s closed down. Best time to fly.”
Sofia nodded agreement. Marion’s ‘don’t worry about me’ attitude had already persuaded her to fly the D-Jet back to Milan that night and grab another opportunity to be with the twins.
The giant sun ebbed towards the horizon, creating a warm orange glow all around them, sharp and hard in the Ferrari’s mirrors just at the moment Chris Bradley’s red and white striped Pitt biplane was going downwind. Just in time to get to the wooden radio tower and café to see him squiggle in on the angled approach to Runway 26.
To those who knew Popham like the back of their hand it was a delight. Pilots like Chris made it so.
But Runway 21, restricted because of noise, was his favourite on windless nights like these. It gave him a chance to check all was quiet at the clubhouse before taxiing up to the hangar where his aging Audi was parked.
That’s what he did…. then he saw the Ferrari, recognized Doc, waved and stopped.
This was England at its timeless best — for those who so enjoyed real flying. The winter was all but forgotten, the summer all to come. The cumulonimbus clouds to dance around.
“That was a greaser,” said Doc who, like all pilots, appreciated a good landing. He had bounced the Pitt on his first one-legged landing in her, a couple of weeks back.
Doc and Sofia reached Chris as he took off his leather goggles.
Doc and Chris shook hands.
Chris’s eyes sparkled beneath his sweat-smoothed hair — leather helmets demanded trim haircuts.
“Do you know Sofia?” started Doc.
“We’ve met,” responded Chris. “She helped me out on the London-Calcutta open-cockpit gig, Marion’s suggestion. You fly jets, don’t you?” Sofia nodded as Chris bowed his head and neck to give Sofia a peck
on each cheek.
“What’s up — the Heli Air’s R22?
“What do you know?”
“Just saw one burnt out in a field near Micheldever Railway Station.”
Sofia and Doc just glanced at each other. “No mystery about how the man got away — direct line to London.”
“And no railway staff, just a ticket machine,” said Chris.
“Ah but, a CCTV camera.” Doc had been there many times.
“Would you recognize him?”
“You bet. Stared straight at me before firing three bullets into his colleague. That tends to create an impression.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
If Brett Hall’s sunroom had been turned into a fish tank then Sofia’s workplace was an aquarium.
It was an integral part of a massive state-of-the-art airport hangar, staffed by twenty, full-time technicians, overlooking Milan’s Linate Airport runway, filled with gadgets and gizmos of every conceivable kind.
This was where Doc’s prosthetic legs were designed and fashioned like no others. It was where Max’s container was put together, and where the military paramotor was sourced. It was where Z5’s military spec iPhones were encrypted and survival clothes, kit and food were packed. It was Z5’s technical think-tank, research lab and hi-tech factory.
Sofia’s gaze alighted on a set of large Zener cards, a circle, a plus, three vertical squiggles denoting a river, a square and a star. These were the cards designed by Karl Zener in the early 1930s to test extra-sensory perception with his colleague J.B. Rhine.
Sofia’s Zener cards had been enlarged, glued onto cardboard and taped to a back wall, much more as a game than an experiment, after she sensed that Max was innately telepathic. And every now and then, regardless of where Max might have been, Sofia would text him to ask which card she was staring at.
Almost involuntarily she clicked ‘messages’, clicked ‘Max’ and hit the virtual keys of her encrypted iPhone.
Which Z card?
Circle.
And now?
River.
Now?
Circle again.
No need to tell Max he was right. He knew he was, he always was, one hundred percent accurate.
Eternity's Sunrise (A New Doc Palfrey Thriller) Page 4
