Attack at Dead Man's Bay

by Paul Adam

  ‘Can’t I?’

  Penhall took another step towards him. Max held his ground. In one sense he was right: Penhall didn’t scare him physically; he wasn’t a big man and he was clearly overweight and unfit. But his power – the things he could make happen – was terrifying.

  Penhall laughed. ‘I don’t like waging war on children, but you’ve left me no choice, Max. I gave you the chance to make peace once and you turned me down. Now you have to face the consequences of that decision.’

  ‘So do you,’ Max retorted. ‘It works both ways. I’m closing in on you and Julius Clark, and killing me will make no difference. There are others who know what you’ve been doing, who will continue the fight after I’m gone.’

  ‘Others? You mean your friend Moncrieffe?’ Penhall looked around the street. ‘Where is he, by the way? Slunk away, leaving you to clear up the mess, I see. And what a mess it is. Where will you live now, Max? A hostel for the homeless? Are you going to start selling copies of the Big Issue on street corners?’

  ‘You’ll pay for what you did today,’ Max said.

  ‘Oh, will I?’ Penhall fired back mockingly. ‘And how will I do that?’

  Max didn’t reply.

  Penhall’s lip curled. ‘You’re all mouth, Max. A foolish little boy tilting at windmills. Incidentally, don’t bother making allegations about bombs, because you’ll just look like a crackpot. There’ll be an investigation into this fire, of course. But the forensic evidence will show conclusively that it was caused by a leak from a faulty gas cooker.’

  ‘How convenient,’ Max said sourly. ‘And the police and fire brigade are going to go along with that?’

  ‘They’ll do as they’re told. Their political masters will make sure of that.’

  Penhall turned and went back to the Mercedes, but paused before he got in, fixing Max with a chilling glare. ‘You lead a charmed life at the moment, Max. I wonder how much longer you can keep it up.’ He ducked into the back of the car and closed the door. The Mercedes reversed up the street, backed into an empty drive, then came out forward and purred away towards the main road.

  Max watched it go. His legs had started shaking again and he felt slightly sick. He knew his life was in danger, but it was alarming to have it spelled out to him by a man who had both the power and the means to kill him.

  He stumbled over to the wall of the nearest house and slumped down onto it, leaning forwards with his elbows on his knees and inhaling deeply to try to alleviate his feeling of nausea.

  ‘Max! Max!’

  He lifted his head and saw Consuela running along the pavement, Rusty and Zip following close behind. She came to a stop beside him, her eyes flickering across to the house.

  ‘Oh, my God! It’s a burned-out wreck! Max, are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re not hurt?’

  ‘No.’

  She sat down on the wall next to him and gave him a long, hard hug. Then she broke away and looked around, a sudden flash of panic crossing her face.

  ‘Chris! Where’s Chris?’

  ‘Relax, I’m here,’ a voice said behind them.

  Consuela spun round and saw Chris just a few metres away. She stood up and threw her arms around him.

  ‘I was just keeping out of the way of the police,’ Chris explained.

  Consuela glanced across at the house again. ‘You were in there? And you survived? I don’t believe it.’

  ‘We got out just in time,’ Max said.

  He told her what had happened, from the moment he and Chris had come home to his confrontation with Rupert Penhall. Rusty and Zip moved in close to listen, automatically shielding Max and Consuela with their bodies.

  At the end, Consuela gave a deep sigh and grasped Max’s hands in her own. ‘You’re both safe, that’s all that matters,’ she said, her voice husky, tears in her eyes.

  ‘But for how long?’ Max said grimly.

  ‘For as long as we’re here,’ Rusty said. ‘No one’s going to get near you while Zip and I are around.’

  It was reassuring to hear, but Max knew it wasn’t true. Rusty and Zip were terrific bodyguards, but even they couldn’t protect him all the time. They hadn’t protected him from the bomb. They probably couldn’t shield him from an assassin’s bullet. It was a cold, sobering thought.

  ‘We have nowhere to live,’ Consuela said despondently. ‘Where do we go?’

  Rusty and Zip exchanged glances.

  ‘You can use my flat,’ Rusty said. ‘I don’t live there much – I’m always away. We can go there now, if you’re ready.’

  Consuela nodded. ‘Thank you. Just let me go and talk to the police and firemen for a minute. See how bad the damage is. There’ll be paperwork to fill in, reports to make. I’ll have to contact the insurance company.’

  She walked away towards the cordoned-off area of the street. Max watched her talking to a senior police officer and a fireman. He wondered if there was anything salvageable left in the house, any of his belongings, perhaps some family photos. Maybe he’d be allowed into the ruins later to look around.

  After ten minutes, Consuela returned and they walked away to the Audi parked at the far end of the street. Chris went off to fetch Consuela’s Nissan, then followed them south towards the centre of London, Zip carrying out his usual evasive manoeuvres to shake off any tails before turning east. Twenty minutes later, they drove down into an underground car park beneath an apartment block in the Docklands and took the lift up to the fifth floor: a two-bedroom flat, minimally furnished and with the blank, sterile feel of a bachelor crash-pad – a place that was used only occasionally and that no one had bothered to make into a proper home.

  Max sat down at the table in the living room. He was no longer feeling sick, but he had a hollow sensation in his stomach. He was thinking about his conversation with Penhall. The clear threat to his life had frightened him, but in some strange way it had also been a relief. Everything was out in the open now. Since his return to London from Borneo, Max had been continually on edge, waiting for another attack, wondering when it was going to come and what form it would take. Now it had finally happened and he had survived it, he was feeling less nervous. Penhall and Clark had shown their hands, shown what they were capable of, but had failed. That gave Max hope. They would try again, he knew that. He just had to keep one step ahead of them.

  Chris put a hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s late, Max. You should get some rest. You and Consuela can have a bedroom each. The guys and I will sleep on the floor in here. You feeling OK?’

  Max nodded. ‘Just angry. Really angry. They’ve nearly killed us, destroyed my home. Everything I possess was in that house.’

  ‘They’re only objects. They can be replaced.’

  ‘Can they?’ Max said doubtfully. They were more than just objects to him. Each one had had its own particular history, its own link with his life. Birthday presents from his mum and dad, Christmas gifts from Consuela, they all had something unique about them – they all encapsulated memories that were precious to him, memories that might now have been reduced to ashes. That was immensely distressing.

  ‘You’re alive,’ Chris said. ‘So am I. So are Consuela and Rusty and Zip. We could all have been inside the house when the bomb went off.’

  Max looked at Chris, his anger firing him up, making him determined to get even. ‘I want to hit back at them as soon as possible.’

  ‘And you will.’

  ‘Tomorrow. I want to go to that lab in Wiltshire tomorrow. Can we do that?’

  ‘Yes, we can do that,’ Chris said.

  FIVE

  THEY WENT THE following evening, after dark, just Max and Chris, leaving Rusty and Zip in the apartment guarding Consuela, who was also a potential target for their enemies. It was unlikely that anyone was on their tail, but Chris was taking nothing for granted. He drove away from the immediate area along the main road, then turned off into a housing estate and went slowly round the streets, watching his
rear-view mirror all the time. Only when he was absolutely certain they weren’t being followed did he go back out onto the main road and head west across London.

  They took the M3 towards Southampton, branching off onto the A303 after Basingstoke. Max navigated, a road map open on his knees, a more detailed Ordnance Survey map of Wiltshire on the floor by his feet. They knew exactly where Phobos Pharmaceuticals was located – they’d looked up the address on the internet that morning. It was a few miles northeast of Salisbury, significantly, not all that far from Porton Down, the top-secret government chemical and biological warfare establishment where Max knew that Episuderon – a mind-altering drug originally invented by the Nazis – had been developed and tested by British scientists.

  A couple of miles outside Andover, they turned off the A303 onto a smaller road and headed southwest across low, undulating countryside, passing through small villages whose streets were deserted at this time of night, the houses and shops in darkness. After twenty minutes, they entered a region that on Max’s map was marked in bold red capitals: DANGER AREA. Chris had told him that indicated Ministry of Defence land – firing ranges and other facilities for the army who had a lot of bases in this part of the country. There were no villages here, only the occasional isolated farm. Walkers and other visitors were warned to keep away for their own safety.

  ‘How far now?’ Chris asked.

  ‘Next left,’ Max replied, checking the map in the dim light from the dashboard. ‘Then it’s about a mile after that.’

  Chris slowed and turned off along a narrow country lane, with a hedge along one side, open downland on the other. There was no other traffic, no lights showing anywhere. They passed a low wire fence, a white board with some words written on it: MINISTRY OF DEFENCE PROPERTY. KEEP OUT. Max felt a prickle on the back of his neck. He didn’t like this area. There was something creepy about it, something sinister.

  They crested a rise in the road and suddenly, in the distance, they saw the glow of lights. A quarter of a mile ahead of them was a building beside the road: an ugly, single-storey, flat-roofed concrete box inside a fenced compound that was illuminated by floodlights.

  ‘That must be it,’ Max said.

  He glanced sideways as they drove past the building, saw a sign reading PHOBOS PHARMACEUTICALS. WOODFORD DOWN LABORATORIES, a barrier across the entrance and a gatehouse beside it in which a uniformed security guard was sitting.

  Chris didn’t slow, just kept going for a further mile until they were out of sight of the building, then he turned off onto a rough track that ran through fields to a patch of woodland. He parked under the trees and cut the engine and headlights. They’d found this spot on the map before they left London, and worked out in advance how they were going to get near the Phobos Pharmaceuticals site.

  ‘You ready?’ Chris asked.

  Max nodded.

  ‘Let’s take a closer look, then.’

  They got out of the car and plunged into the woods. Chris was carrying a pair of heavy-duty bolt-cutters and a torch, Max had one of his professional lock-picks in the pocket of his jeans. They didn’t use the torch – it would destroy their night vision and probably be visible from the Phobos laboratory. They didn’t want anyone to see them approaching.

  At the far side of the wood, they emerged onto open land, the terrain rough and uncultivated, covered with coarse grass, weeds and thickets of bramble and gorse. The lab was half a mile away, a shining beacon on the horizon. They walked in single file in silence, Chris leading the way. Max was nervous, uncertain of what they were going to find.

  Fifty metres from the laboratory, Chris dropped to the ground and snaked forwards on his knees and elbows. Max did the same, drawing alongside him on the slope of a low mound overlooking the site. They peered cautiously over the top of the mound. Below them was a wide, deep ditch and, beyond that, the perimeter fence of the lab. Inside the fence was a tarmac yard about twenty metres wide, then the laboratory itself. Both the building and the yard were bathed in bright light.

  Chris murmured an obscenity under his breath and slid back a little down the slope. ‘I don’t like the look of this,’ he said softly.

  ‘Why, what’s the matter?’ Max asked.

  ‘Did you see the fence? Four metres high, steel mesh, razor wire along the top.’

  ‘We’ve got the bolt-cutters. They’ll cut through it, won’t they?’

  ‘They’ll cut through it all right. That’s not the problem. The problem is the thin alarm wire running through the fence about a metre or so above the ground. You notice it? I’ve seen them before. They’re touch-sensitive. The moment we put any pressure on the fence, the wire will pick up the vibrations and set off an alarm.’

  ‘Can’t we cut through that too?’

  Chris shook his head. ‘Same problem. Cut the wire and the alarm will automatically go off.’

  ‘So what’re you saying? We can’t get through the fence?’

  ‘Not without being detected immediately. And even if we did get through, we’d be easily spotted. There are CCTV cameras all over the outside of the building, no doubt covering every inch of the yard.’

  Max was silent for a moment. This was a depressing discovery, something they hadn’t anticipated, but he wasn’t going to let it defeat them. ‘There must be another way in. What about the main gate? Could we get through there?’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know. Could you drive up and talk to the guard, pretend you’re lost and need directions? Keep him busy while I sneak through behind his back.’

  ‘I can’t see that working,’ Chris said sceptically. ‘And you’d still have to get across the yard without being picked up by the cameras.’

  ‘We can’t just give up,’ Max said. ‘We’ve come all this way.’

  ‘We weren’t expecting this: security guards, CCTV cameras, floodlights, alarm wires. It’s better protected than we thought.’

  ‘Let’s check all round the site,’ Max suggested. ‘See if there are any weak spots.’

  Chris gave a nod. ‘OK. But keep low. The cameras seem to be covering the yard, but they might be sensitive enough to detect movement outside the fence too.’

  They slithered over the mound and down into the ditch, which was deep enough to hide them from view, provided they didn’t stand up. Slowly and carefully, they began to work their way around the perimeter of the lab, crawling some of it, doing the rest flat on their bellies. Max was glad it was summer and dry. After rain, the ditch would probably be swimming with water.

  At intervals, they edged up the far side of the ditch to survey the compound. It was brilliantly lit all the way round – no dark spots where the floodlights failed to penetrate – with CCTV cameras on every side. The fence, too, didn’t change – same height, same razor wire on the top, same alarm filament running through the mesh.

  On reaching the rear of the site, there was a brief glimmer of hope when they saw the opening of a land drain in the side of the ditch, a pipe coming out from under the fence. Chris switched on his torch, shielding the beam with his hand, and shone it into the opening. But it was hopeless. The pipe inside was barely thirty centimetres in diameter. Even Max, lithe and whippy though he was, couldn’t have squeezed through it.

  Twenty minutes later, they’d looped round to the other side of the compound, to within ten metres of the entrance. They had a good view of the security guard in the gatehouse. He was in his twenties, his hair cropped close to the scalp, and was wearing a dark blue uniform with a white logo above the left breast pocket. He was sitting at a desk, reading the newspaper. As they watched, he stood up and stretched, taking a couple of paces around the cramped little cubicle. Max sensed Chris stiffen next to him and turned his head.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘The guard,’ Chris whispered. ‘You see his belt, the holster? He’s carrying a side arm.’

  ‘A gun, you mean?’

  ‘Let’s get back to the car.’ Chris twisted round and began to crawl b
ack the way they’d come.

  Max went after him, trying to get him to stop. ‘Chris … what’s the matter? Chris …’

  Chris came to a halt and waited for Max to catch up.

  ‘What’s the rush?’ Max said. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I didn’t like this place the moment I saw the fence, the cameras,’ Chris replied. ‘I like it even less now I’ve seen the guard.’

  ‘He’s just an ordinary security guard, isn’t he?’

  ‘Ordinary security guards don’t carry weapons. They carry torches and phones, but not guns. But then this isn’t an ordinary laboratory.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It looks like a private business on the surface. With the name, Phobos Pharmaceuticals, it could be just a small drugs company, making a few products to sell over the counter in chemist’s shops. But companies like that don’t employ armed guards – it’s against the law. Only military personnel and certain police officers are allowed to carry guns in this country, Max. This is a government laboratory and that guy over there isn’t a private security guard, he’s a soldier.’

  ‘A soldier? Are you sure?’

  ‘I’ve seen a few in my time. Look at his haircut. You think a civilian would pay for a haircut as bad as that?’

  ‘What’re you saying? The British government is making Episuderon here?’

  ‘That’s how it looks to me. And there’s no way we’re going to get inside. We’re not even going to try. Not unless we want to get shot. ’Chris crawled away along the ditch.

  Max hurried after him. ‘Chris … wait a second. Just stop, will you?’

  Chris paused.

  ‘Let’s think for a moment,’ Max said. ‘There must be a way to get inside.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Max, there isn’t. We can’t get through the fence, we can’t get under it. We can’t get past the guard, or the CCTV cameras. That doesn’t leave many other options.’

  Max gazed away through the darkness. Not at the laboratory, but at something out on the downland, something he’d noticed as they circumnavigated the site. ‘We can’t go through the fence, or under it,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But what about over it?’