Even with the obvious brevet rank and field promotion to lieutenant-colonel, Kelly still wore no badge of rank, just as Downes or any of the Special Air Service personnel didn’t, but something in him, so far as Downes could see, had changed.
“Downes,” he acknowledged almost abruptly with a rapid gesture of one hand to a seat opposite his desk. “How are you feeling now?”
“Much better, Kelly, thank you.”
“Heard about the old hypothermia…” Kelly said in a tone that needled Downes for a reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
“Touch of exposure is all,” Downes told him dismissively, internally bridling at the unintended implication of weakness. “The doctor assured me it was a combination of exhaustion and lack of food that made me susceptible. Been rather pushing it on too little food and sleep recently.”
Kelly smiled. It was a companionable smile and one that harked back to the start of their acquaintance, if not friendship. The two young parachute regiment lieutenants hadn’t known each other before both arrived at Stirling Lines for their first crack at selection. Downes, eager to drink in the full experience, carried his own heavy bags and stepped down onto the platform at Hereford train station to join the milling group of fit-looking young men, reluctant to speak to the other candidates from the off. Kelly, in contrast, bore no shame in his family’s wealth and arrived at the gates in a Rolls Royce driven by an employee of his father. He dressed and acted the same as the other men, was just as fit and tough as many and indeed more so than quite a few, but his underlying hint of arrogance put some people on edge.
Both men had performed well in those early days of no sleep and seemingly permanent physical training, often finishing each forced march or run at very close intervals. Where they were pushed harder than the other ranks were before or after the day’s physical work was done. It could be anything from having to get up an hour before the men and plan the route for the day, to being pulled aside at a checkpoint to be asked to solve random mathematical equations. All of these additional pressures were designed to ensure the officers’ minds were as sharp as their bodies and fit for the task of commanding Her Majesty’s Special Forces.
Their physical and mental abilities marked them out in the first two weeks of gruelling, constant competition, as both had shown the unmeasurable quantity which made a man perfect for such endeavours. There was an attitude to each of them, a hidden layer of resilience, which made them both push through barriers and even ignore pain, which allowed them to achieve goals that would be otherwise impossible.
Of the commissioned ranks in their intake, only two men survived until the vaunted escape and evasion phase. This part of their training, at the final stages of their initial selection, was where their mental resolve and strength of character was truly tested. It didn’t matter if they’d successfully evaded capture, as at the final checkpoint in the exercise they would be taken, hooded, and subjected to the same treatment that any man taken in the first few days would be. Trying to maintain a watch on the number of hours and days they had been held, deprived of their senses and forced to maintain painful stress positions, both men emerged unscathed to be told that the exercise was over. They weren’t told if they had passed it, that torture at least hadn’t ended, but both men eventually earned their sand-coloured berets and both performed so well that they were invited to return years later at the rank of major.
“No Guinness and sausage sandwiches this time, eh?” Kelly joked, earning an unforced chuckle as the two men shared a memory from so long ago. The cans of Guinness, poured into tin cups to settle out and be drinkable, had been smuggled into camp illicitly to accompany the fried sausages crammed into the thick slices of bread. Both the sandwiches and the Guinness provided the two young men with their much-needed additional calories.
“No,” Downes admitted with a smile which faded when their current business reasserted itself into the forefront of their minds. “My chaps told me a few things that have caused concern, Kelly…” he said, hoping the man would still be in the mindset of their shared past and be forthcoming.
The look on Kelly’s face darkened. He leaned back and surveyed the man before him, before taking a sharp breath in and speaking fast as he leaned forwards.
“I’ve got over four hundred miles of coast to patrol, and I have fewer than two hundred men to do it. Granted, most of that coastline is impassable but that’s beside the point. Men need to sleep, men need to eat, civilians need to be kept in check, and quarantine procedures for you ragtag bunch sapped more of my reserves than you could imagine.” Downes sat forwards slightly, as if planning to interrupt, but he kept silent, watching the colonel closely as he poured excuses over him.
“I have people making demands of me every day—not least of all the few members of parliament who still believe they are somehow relevant to the current situation—and I still have to keep this island safe from the ever-present threat of an outbreak. So tell me, Major, what concerns do you have?”
Downes sat back and kept his face neutral. Although he hadn’t worked alongside Kelly for years, he knew the man well enough to recognise the stress behind his words. This was a man who came from wealth and privilege; a man accustomed to success. He chose to engage in a life of hardship to prove himself worthy above all others, and yet…
“And I can see you’re doing an admirable job, given the circumstances, Colonel,” Downes said carefully. “I doubt many officers I’ve worked with in my time would have conducted operations so effectively.” Kelly gave a small but gracious nod in acceptance of the praise.
“But I have to ask,” Downes went on, “who is truly in charge of things here?”
Kelly regarded him with a flash of cold fury for a fleeting moment before he controlled his expression. As much as he tried to mask his anger, his nostrils still flared as he fought to keep his breathing slow and measured.
“Speak your mind, Major,” he told Downes.
“Very well. Naval blockades off the coast. The CIA presence on the island. What exactly are we here? Is this a foothold for Britain to regain our home or a foothold for the Americans?” Kelly held his stare for a few seconds before deflating as he released his breath.
“If I’m completely honest with you, I don’t know. I’m assured that the remnants of our civilian government have done some form of deal with the US, which is evidently either ‘above my pay grade’ as they say, or else they believe the finer points are beyond my limited capability of understanding as a mere soldier.”
“So they aren’t here to evacuate us, and we can’t leave of our own accord?”
“Oh, we’re entirely free to go back to the mainland and do as we please, just not free to cross the Atlantic and risk infecting their continent.” Downes’ lips set in a tight line as his fears were confirmed. They were trapped there, totally at the mercy of a foreign superpower, regardless of their allegiance, and the decisions were being made at a level far above them.
“And the CIA involvement?”
“Ah,” Kelly said awkwardly as he leaned back and folded his arms, “there we find ourselves at a technical impasse.” Downes took the implication and the information in his stride, reverting to an out-loud train of theoretical monologue.
“So, the CIA are here and seem to be calling the shots. Aircraft have been seen coming in, and they’ve brought in personnel and equipment which aren’t overtly military, according to my information…” He paused to look more closely at Kelly, who kept his features still and listened. “Which could imply to someone that they’re conducting tests and require a secure base of operations as near as possible to a steady supply of infected people.” Still Kelly stayed silent and motionless.
“Are they conducting tests here, Colonel?”
“Yes,” Kelly admitted without hesitation. He seemed to want to say more, as though the force of keeping the information bottled up inside him was causing pain.
“Are there Screechers on this rock right now?”
&n
bsp; “Yes,” Kelly said again, this time with only a moment of hesitation. “At least I believe so. A team of scientists came in over a week ago with a few CIA agents, a small team of Navy SEALs and a detachment of Army personnel specialising in infectious diseases. They’re on the furthest west spit of land possible, and any outbreak faces the Atlantic to the west and a line of guns to the east.” Downes nodded slowly, imagining the placement to be Kelly’s idea.
“So what do we do?”
“Not much we can do,” Kelly answered. “I’m having the others in your little convoy reallocated to patrol sections of coast and replace my boys covering quarantine and guard on the civilians, obviously focusing on the easterly sections of our perimeter.” A knock at the door interrupted their discussion. “I’ll keep you and your chaps in reserve, if you don’t mind?” Downes stood, hearing the tone of dismissal in the colonel’s words, to agree and take his leave. Opening the door, he was faced with three people, two men and a woman, who stirred some vague recognition in him, and he crossed their path awkwardly in the confines of the small landing. Fighting the urge to loiter and listen through the door, he returned to the waiting Land Rover and was driven back to his allocated billet in thoughtful silence.
Kelly kept his face neutral behind the false smile as the three civilians filed into the room. They all had another person with them; a sort of entourage of one each to ensure than none of them believed themselves superior to the others.
Playing backstop at a meeting with the Under Secretary of State for Agriculture, the Minister for the Arts and the Minister of State for Housing, all very much former titles and positions in his opinion, even though they seemed to cling to them in an attempt to validate their importance, was not a prospect he had been looking forward to.
He smiled to put them at ease, listened and nodded along with their ridiculous ideas for regrowth and repopulation of the British Isles when all the nasty business was over. Just in time before the boredom and annoyance could get to him, before he erupted and told them the truth—that they weren’t cowering off the coast with a view to moving back in when the pest control problem magically sorted itself out—Captain Barton knocked politely but urgently on the door before opening it.
Peering around the edge of the door, he smiled and cleared his throat.
“My sincere apologies, Colonel,” he lied smoothly as he played his part in the planned interruption. “Urgent military matter, I’m afraid. Can’t wait.” He flashed his best smile from his strong jawline as Kelly stood and smoothed down his camouflaged shirt, mirroring the smile in falsity, if not quite matching the dazzling charisma of the younger man.
“Duty calls,” he told the politicians solemnly, hoping the sheer cheesiness of the line wouldn’t betray their deception to end the meeting. “I do hope you’ll forgive me. See yourselves out, if you please.” He swept from the room to leave the echoing sounds of both officers’ boots thundering down the stairs to be followed by the rising pitch of an accelerating engine. Those sounds rose before falling away suddenly, only to rise again as the volume faded away with the next gear, taking the vehicle further away. The politicians, unable to have any kind of meaningful conversation without a referee, lapsed into an awkward silence until they were carried back to the town of Portree.
EIGHTEEN
Strictly speaking, Barton wasn’t entirely telling tales about there being a military matter requiring Kelly’s attention. The colonel sat in the passenger seat of their vehicle and endured the rough, bumpy roads being negotiated too fast by the captain instead of one of the men under their command.
“I think this will be far enough, Barton,” he said, having banged his head once too often on the door frame, forcing him to hang heavily from the handle above the window.
“Not quite, Sir,” the captain replied, raising his voice over the noise of the engine and howling wind. “Something has actually cropped up. It seems our colonial cousins have been playing with their toys and have caused something of a stir on the mainland.”
Kelly growled low in his throat before asking for an explanation.
“Can’t say I’m one hundred percent up to speed on the subject matter, Sir,” he said apologetically. “Perhaps we should get it straight from the horse’s mouth?”
The horse in question was pacing back and forth as far as the stretched cord of the satellite phone would allow. He was evidently excited as words tumbled from his mouth, barely taking the time to look up and acknowledge the two men as they walked in, other than to raise his eyebrows and smile briefly.
“Yessir,” he said into the phone, “yessir, that’s right. Uh-huh. Coverage like we never expected… No, Sir drives them crazy. Yessir, I will. Thank you.” He replaced the handset into the cradle of the black briefcase and turned to clap his hands together.
“What the bloody hell has you so excited, Fisher?” Kelly demanded.
“Pull up a pew, Colonel, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
The engineer couldn’t get away from the place they called ‘the facility’ quickly enough. Some facility it was, given that it was a farm shed with some hastily welded cages thrown together. What was inside those cages brutalised his senses and would probably stop him sleeping for the rest of the month. Or the rest of his life, he wasn’t sure yet.
With that lasting memory fresh in his thoughts, he rushed back to the small hangar he’d been camping out in to be close to his work and began the modifications to prepare the three devices brought from America.
With the precise frequency, courtesy of the radio he’d been told a soldier was trying to tune when the phenomenon was stumbled upon, he was familiar enough with the device to make short work of reprogramming the interior workings. As soon as the first one was ready, he took a break, waving over the single guard sent from the US Air Force to keep watch over the merchandise. Pulling his last pack of Newports from his pocket, he tapped the base twice to shoot two filters free and offered one to the young man, who slung his rifle over his shoulder and smiled as he took it. Producing a lighter, the engineer lit his own and offered the dancing flame over as he sucked in a long pull and closed his eyes to stretch his back. He glanced down at the cigarettes, seeing that the carton was only half full and regretting giving one away, because he was down to his last pack. He’d been around enough military personnel in his time to know that a whole carton of smokes was easier to come by than most things when enough servicemen gathered in one place, but he hoped he wouldn’t be forced to switch to an inferior brand before he got home. Perhaps a carton of Lucky Strikes would see him back, he mused.
“Go tell your bosses the first one’s ready,” he said as he exhaled. “I’ll prep the other two and then I can get the heck out of here.” He frowned as he took another pull on the cigarette. “Where in the hell are we, anyways?”
“Scotland,” the kid replied, as though the vague geographical information made any difference to either of them. The engineer shrugged, taking back his lighter and feeling the unseasonal breeze tighten his skin as he vowed to finish the work as soon as possible so he could go home.
The helicopter crew for the CH-46 Sea Hawk arrived within the hour in a wash of noise and increased wind. They paid the engineer no attention, seeing just a man in coveralls stooped over what looked like a medium sized aircraft munition in the middle of a hangar, and loaded the device they had been sent for.
The pilot spoke in that relaxed tone they always used which, to the uninitiated, sounded like it must have been part of their basic training.
“Roger, proceeding on bearing one-five-one degrees for four-two-zero miles,” he reported, signing off as he turned the nose of the noisy helicopter just left of south to drop the device in a large city far away from their safe place off the coast.
Those instructions had come via radio, and the crew had no idea they originated from a house only a few miles away and came from the Central Intelligence Agency. If they had known, they probably wouldn’t have cared because, just like the en
gineer, they were eager to get their job done and be back where they were more comfortable. In their case, it was the massive aircraft carrier sitting ten miles off the western edge of the Irish coast as part of the blockade to ensure none of the escaping survivors carried the disease to their home.
Their sedate cruising speed of one hundred and forty miles per hour saw them passing over the centre of what their map told them was a place called Bristol, when the pilot slowed and turned a few long, lazy circles to lower their altitude.
“In position,” he announced over their link, “drop when ready.” In answer, the rear ramp of the helicopter lowered with a mechanical whine to admit a rush of chill air from the abandoned land below them. Unlike a conventional bomb, this one merely had to be ejected into mid-air at a height exceeding one thousand feet for the device to activate on landing. That was as much as they knew—as much as they needed to know—and when the seemingly innocuous missile had been shoved clear over the edge of the ramp, they closed it up and began the three-hour flight back.
“Be advised,” the pilot reported to their command structure, “package is delivered. RTB.”
Bristol, a sprawling city on the banks of the busy River Severn, had been devoid of life for some time. Not all life, just human life. Or more specifically, it was utterly devoid of all living human life.
Trapped inside so many buildings, the thousands of undead woke from their state of hibernation to be whipped into such a frenzy of excitement that many broke free of their prison premises by barging their way through glass windows, and even in some cases breaking down doors in their frenzy to get to the source of whatever it was driving them so animalistically wild with hungry excitement.
Toy Soldiers (Book 5): Adaptation Page 13
