Tom swung his feet down to the floor and released his hold on the hatch. The strip lights along the sub–floor had switched off automatically and they were in total darkness, except for the sliver of light coming up through the wedged hatch at their feet.
“What the hell happened there?” Tom’s voice was shaking with anger. Rico lifted the hatch open, flooding the area above it with light and showing Jason looking wide-eyed in disbelief at Tom.
“Accident,” Kade said. “Hatch fell shut and the bolt jammed. Inquest later. Let’s go.”
“Mr Brown.” Jason hadn’t moved since Tom spoke except to open his eyes even wider.
“That’s for later, too,” Kade said. “Right now, Jason, you need to concentrate really hard. Jules!”
He turned to the Senegalese who took a leather belt and an extra pair of the rubberised gloves from the rucksack and handed them to Jason.
“Put on these and use karabiner clip on the belt when you take a rest on the way down. We stay at your pace, so no need to go faster than you can with safety.”
Jason took the belt and gloves.
“Thanks. Where now?”
“Down there,” Kade said, pointing through the hatch to the landing eighty feet below. “Let’s go, Colonel.”
Tom led the way down, Kade second, then Jason and Rico with Jules last, collecting the wedges on the way. With three stages behind them, they stopped on the lowest landing.
“Team to Archers One, Two and Cassie. One stage to go. Will reach outer door in five minutes. Cassie, are you ready to receive?”
“Ready and waiting to welcome you aboard, sir.”
“Thanks, Major. Archer-One, estimated time until they discover problem with target’s data.”
“Earliest eight minutes from now at fifteen-twenty.”
“Assume you copy that, Lochshore,” Kade said. “Confirm when you can and keep all informed. Archers One and Two, disengage; Archer–One rendezvous with Cassie in approx one hour. All out.”
Kade reached for the final hatch. “Let’s go catch our ride.”
*
The four police officers sat round a table in the new cafeteria annexe to the police station, the floor to ceiling windows around three sides letting in the low afternoon sun, which cast a whole new pattern of shadows on the heights beyond the loch and on the town itself.
Four mugs of coffee steamed in front of them. Rob Cameron had returned to Inverness after they had carried out a further examination of the Audi R8.
“I’m not sure what the Super expects us to do with this information – if anything,” Harry said. “You really do wonder about Mr Brown’s state of mind when he tries something as lunatic as that. But surely he must have abandoned any idea of saving Jason now he’s on the platform. So what can we do?”
Charlie shrugged. “Apart from checking the area around the platform.”
“Which we’ve done,” Harry put in.
“Which we’re doing,” Charlie corrected. His mobile sounded. “This could be it.” He remained seated to take the call. “Right… Right… all cleared with Lochshore? … Good… Did she now?” he smiled. “Right… But nothing out of the ordinary? … I mean nothing else out of the ordinary? … Okay, thanks, Colin.” He ended the call and pocketed the mobile. “Nothing except a couple of boats from the British Oceanographic Society, taking water samples around St Kilda and the platform. Trying to save the planet, no doubt.”
“And the smile, sir,” Isabel said. “What was that about?”
“Apparently a woman on one of the boats did a striptease for the lads. Perhaps we should bring her in for questioning.”
“Or an encore,” Harry suggested.
Natalie shook her head and sighed. “Can’t take you anywhere.” She turned to Charlie. “And what wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Oh, just a bit of excitement on Alpha – other than the stripper, I mean. People charging about. They think a fight or something. All calmed down now, he said.”
They sat in silence for a while, sipping their coffee.
“Pretty weird behaviour for someone who’s part of a scientific study, don’t you think?” Natalie said. “Doing a striptease in the middle of the Atlantic in November. Without dropping this young lady in it, would it be worth a phone-call to the BOS to check the survey was legit.”
“Lochshore confirmed it was when my guy asked just now. They’d okayed all the clearances and such.”
Natalie shrugged.
“Right. I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes. I just thought, in the absence of anything else we can do right now…”
*
They pulled open the door at the base of the column and looked out onto a different world from the one they had left two hours ago. A weather front was driving in from the west and a significant swell was heaving Cassie up and down twenty or so yards away, with Shirley-Ann working hard to keep her in position. A fine rain was blowing across the water, reducing visibility to around half a mile, poor enough to make Tom wonder about the link-up with the chopper.
They pulled on the life jackets and Tom, Jason, Rico and Jules dropped into the water, striking out hard for the submersible. Shirley-Ann edged it towards them, opening the dome just enough for them to squeeze aboard but avoiding the wind catching it and destabilising them further.
Kade backed half-out of the opening until he was standing on the threshold, with the door partly closed. In a single movement, he grabbed the handle and jumped up and out, placing his feet at either side of the opening and leaning back, almost horizontally. The door slammed close and he twisted the handle to secure it before dropping into the water. He scrambled aboard, where the others had removed their life-jackets and over-clothes and were pulling on the wetsuits. Five minutes later they were ready to leave.
“Cassie to Archers One and Two.” Shirley-Ann spoke into the on-board radio, “Leaving Alpha. Changed back to main communications from tactical radios.”
“Archer-One here.” Mike’s voice. “System has just flagged Jason’s data as anomaly. Await further details from Lochshore.”
“This is Archer-Two.” Lydia’s voice. “Copy all that.”
“Kade here; we can rendezvous closer with poor visibility. Same heading, two miles instead of five. On borrowed time now. All copy?”
Archers One and Two responded.
Shirley-Ann again. “New ETA with Archer-One, eighteen minutes. Please advise exact co-ordinates. Flooding cabin now. Out.”
*
The shift supervisor at Lochshore screwed up his eyes at the screen on the wall.
“What’s the meddling little bastard done now?” He moved the curser on his PC monitor and clicked on the highlighted number, bringing up the last three readings from Jason’s chip.
“Well we don’t know for certain that he’s done anything. Could be a malfunction,” one of the other men said.
“If it was anyone else but Wangari…”
“What has he done, exactly?”
The question came from the fifth man in the room. To this point he’d been a silent observer.
“I’m not sure exactly what he’s done this time, sir, but he’s a bloody pain in the ass, hacking into programs and files. And he’s built himself a transmitter and been talking with God knows who in the past few weeks. You’d know more about that than us, I guess, sir. We just get to hear rumours, but one is that he’s made contact with terrorists colonising disused rigs in the North Sea. Don’t know if it’s true. They jam his broadcasts whenever they intercept them but he manages to jam the jamming somehow.”
“Well, you’re right,” the man said. “He has been in touch with some dodgy characters recently, and it is a concern of ours what his end objectives are. But what’s happened right now?”
&n
bsp; The supervisor moved the cursor to one of the pin-pricks of light on the screen.
“That’s the signal from Wangari’s chip – or supposed to be. It’s showing him to be in the lower corridor just outside the radio room. He’s been there, in that position, for over half an hour – according to the signal. That in itself would be unusual, though not significant. But the system scans the medical data for every Exile every fifteen minutes; it’s designed to pick up incidents such as death and heart failure, but it also highlights other anomalies; and it’s just flagged that Wangari’s readings have been exactly the same for the last three scans.”
“And that is significant? I mean, is he unconscious or what?”
“It’s significant in that it shows there’s something wrong with the signal – not necessarily with Wangari. All his indicator levels are normal.”
“So, couldn’t it mean he’s just stable – you know, relaxed?”
“Even in its most static condition – say, a deep sleep – the human body experiences slight changes in heart rate, breathing patterns and blood pressure. Two identical sets of readings, fifteen minutes apart, could just possibly be a coincidence; three is definitely a system anomaly. You can see on the live monitor, there…” he pointed to a panel at the bottom of the screen, “… there’s no movement, no fluctuations in the data lines at all.”
“So how could that happen?”
“Well, someone’s got to make it happen. We can do it…” he waved his arm to include his colleagues, “… but no-one else should be able to – other than the techies, of course. But our friend Wangari is always screwing with stuff.”
“And what does it mean, exactly?”
“It means he’s not where it says he is and his health readings are not what they are showing. Put simply, his signal is frozen for the time being.”
“Couldn’t you just unfreeze it?”
“Not us; we’re not allowed to touch it. There might be a knock-on effect if we do the wrong thing. It’s a form of sabotage, in effect, and we need the really clever boys and girls to unpick it.”
“But what would he have to gain by freezing his own signal?”
“My guess is he’s just messing about – making a nuisance of himself for the sake of it.”
“So what happens now?” the man asked.
The supervisor considered before answering. He checked the time on the screen in front of him. “Three-thirty-four. We’ll give it until four o’clock to see what happens. He’s nothing to gain by disconnecting with us, other than a bit of recreation. It’s his health we’re monitoring, for his benefit, so I’m sure he’ll come back on-line at some point.”
“And if nothing’s happened by then?”
“Then we’ll get the techies in. I’ll alert them now.”
He reached for one of the phones on the table in front of them.
“Okay, twenty-five minutes,” the man said, turning to leave the room. “I’ll be back in time to see. Please excuse me for now.”
As he entered the small office he had been allocated further down the corridor, he slipped the miniature microphone out from behind his silk tie and checked that the carbon fibre in his ear was still in position.
*
The weather had closed in further and visibility was down to a few hundred yards. The rain was heavier and the wind and sea more hostile. Mike breathed a sigh of relief as Cassie rose out of the water behind Archer-One. He checked his watch. The new ETA had been spot on; 3.44 pm.
Archer-One was holding her position facing due west into the wind and Shirley-Ann manoeuvred the submersible under the relative shelter of her stern. After a few anxious moments as the wind whipped at the open dome, Jules and Rico attached the chains from the winch, the dome was closed again and the craft lifted onto its station at the rear of the bridge. As the pilot and her five passengers went below to change out of their wetsuits, Mike’s radio sounded.
“Lochshore to Archer-One.”
“Receiving. Go ahead, Lochshore.”
“They’ve established what you did with the signal, though they believe the target was responsible. On that assumption, they’re waiting until four o’clock to see if he reverses what he did, then they plan to refer it to technical support. I’ll suggest they might want to leave it longer, but we should assume this timeframe. Will advise going forward. Is target on board yet?”
“Target just on board. Thanks for the information. Out.”
Mike wiped a hand over his face, working out the time. Fifteen minutes before they call the techies; ten more for them to get there and start looking; fifteen max to find what’s wrong and switch to NTS to check where he is.
At best they had forty minutes.
*
For the first time, Tom and Jason were alone – relatively – on deck in the bows of Archer-One. Jason was still as wide-eyed with astonishment as in that first moment of realisation and Tom gave a little laugh as he waited for him to find the words.
“Why is this happening, Mr Brown? What have I done? Why me?”
“This isn’t official, Jason. It’s you because I’m doing it. I decided to get you back.”
“Yes but why? And who are these guys? They look official enough.”
“They’re a professional hostage rescue outfit, hired privately by me to take you back to Katey – eventually. I don’t know when – I haven’t thought that far ahead. In the meantime, you and I will be holidaying in the Highlands.”
“But how will you do that – I mean, take me back? Surely you can’t go back yourself.”
They had been standing shoulder to shoulder, looking ahead. Tom took a step to one side and turned to face Jason.
“What do you mean, can’t go back? What’s to stop me? Not straight away, I admit – not with you, anyway. Stuff needs sorting first. New evidence has come to light in your case. Mickey Kadawe …”
“But he’s dead.” Jason interrupted. “He was shot, wasn’t he?”
“How did you know that?”
“It was on the news. We’ve got TV, radio, Internet.”
“Yes, of course you have. But what you don’t know…”
“That’s how I know about you – why you can’t go back.”
Tom furrowed his bow and shrugged.
“Sorry, Jason, you’ve lost me. Why can’t I go back? Can’t go back where?”
“Well, the whole country is looking for you. They say you’ve killed eight people.”
Tom staggered and clutched the rail.
“You must know that, surely,” Jason went on. “It’s been the number one story on the news for the past five days.”
Tom was unable to speak, his eyes glazing over.
“Mr Brown, are you okay?”
“I haven’t seen the news,” Tom said. “Not for ages. Who am I supposed to have killed?”
“You mean you really don’t know?”
“Who am I supposed to have killed?” Tom shouted the question this time.
Before Jason could respond they heard the sound of engines coming across the water at surface level; the deep sound of large engines; much larger than a helicopter’s. They could see nothing yet; the engines seemed far off, but getting closer. After a few minutes, a second sound competed for their attention; a higher pitched noise, the source of which lifted into the air. After a couple of minutes, an intense beam of light penetrated the haze. A Sea King helicopter took shape behind the glare, descending diagonally towards the boat, losing height as it approached out of the east.
The rest of the team were suddenly all around them, shaking their hands and wishing them luck. Shirley-Ann gave Tom a brief hug and he found himself wishing that Lydia was there to do the same. But what was missing, he realised, was the sense of triumph and euphoria which traditionally – automatically – com
es with success. They seemed tense and wary; uncomfortable.
The chopper was hovering overhead now and the winch-man was descending towards the boat. Jules was guiding him down. He called across.
“Jason first. Allons-y!”
They fastened him into the spare harness and lifted him, swaying in the wind, into the Sea King, returning for Tom in less than two minutes.
Kade was the last to speak to him. His eyes were full of sadness and he held on to the handshake for a long time.
“It’s been a privilege, Tom. After this, while there’s time, please try to think of me as someone who doesn’t always blindly follow orders; not when I’m sure they’re wrong.”
The harness tightened against Tom as it took the weight of his body, and his feet lifted from the deck. A thought came to him from nowhere and he shouted down to Kade.
“How did you know they’d changed Jason’s name?”
*
Within a few minutes, they began to lose height, and Tom peered through the mist at the shape below them, which became clearer as they descended. He recognised a River-class patrol boat, 250-plus feet long with a displacement of 2,000 tonnes – many times larger than the Archers.
The Sea King came to rest on the flight deck at the rear of the vessel and the rotors slowed as the boat crew secured the wheels to the heavy metal rings set in the deck panels. The door was opened and two of the air crew dropped down, turning to signal for Tom and Jason to follow.
They were taken, single file, through a door and down a few steps – one man leading, the other bringing up the rear – to a comfortable, carpeted cabin and waved to a pair of armchairs at one side. The men took up what Tom assumed were pre-arranged positions, one standing behind each chair. Tom half-turned to look at them and saw they were both staring at a second door leading from the room.
Lost Souls Page 40
