Down: Trilogy Box Set (107 page)

The ship, El Tiburón, accompanied by a dozen Iberian warships, plowed into the storm-churned waves. In the captain’s stern cabin, the exhausted party of ten wanted to sleep but most of them couldn’t because of galloping nausea.

“Isn’t there anything we can do?” Delia asked Martin.

Martin could hardly answer through his own retching. “No. Nothing. Just. Endure.”

Only the children and John were able to sleep.

Arabel and Trevor sat beside them on the captain’s bed, a bucket at the ready for themselves.

“Thank God they’re out like lights,” Arabel said.

“Angels,” Tracy said, stifling a gag from the captain’s armchair.

Emily was next to John on the cabin floor, propped against a starboard wall, his head on her shoulder. “Let’s hope they stay asleep for most of the crossing,” she said. “Like this one. I don’t know how he can sleep through this.”

The 40mm grenades pounded the farmhouse.

Explosion after explosion tore apart the mud-brick walls. John had to flip up his night-vision goggles to endure the flashes. He moved to his left to check on Tannenbaum but he knew what he’d find. T-baum’s head was half gone. He swore a few times and refocused. There’d be time for a more human reaction later.

“Cease fire! Cease fire!” he radioed.

The desert became quiet again.

John lowered his goggles and radioed, “We’re going in, both squads. Stay sharp.”

He gave a hand signal to his men and they began slowly moving forward, closing on the wrecked farmhouse. Pockets of flames glowed green through his optics.

His headset crackled with the voice of a Black Hawk pilot. “Major Camp, this is your ride home. We’re about three clicks out. We saw your fireworks. Awaiting instructions.”

“Hit the LZ in five mikes. We’ve just got to clean up our mess. One KIA. Repeat one KIA.”

“Roger that. Five mikes.”

They reached the collapsed perimeter wall. Bodies of two Taliban snipers lay among the rubble.

“Mike, you ready to make entry?” John radioed.

“I’m at what’s left of the back door.”

“All right,” John said. “Counting from three, two, one, go.”

The Green Berets flooded in.

There was rubble and debris everywhere in large heaps and small piles. John saw some legs sticking out and an arm with part of a disembodied shoulder against an intact portion of wall.

Then a man’s voice coming from the corner. In good English he called out, “Help me, please! Hostage. Hostage. American interpreter. Don’t shoot!”

Mike Entwistle was closest.

“Careful,” John said, moving in.

“Haji with plastic ties on his hands,” Mike said.

“Please help me. Guys, I am interpreter for American soldiers. Taliban took me. I am injured. I can’t feel my legs.”

John stepped over a mangled body and a mound of collapsed ceiling.

He was ten feet away.

Mike had a switchblade in his hand about to cut off the man’s plastic cuffs.

John yelled, “Mike, don’t!”

Giles looked at the clock in the guest bedroom.

It was 4 a.m.

He’d been up straight through the night finishing and polishing his magnum opus, his get out of jail free article, as he’d taken to calling it. For how else was he going to be able to protect himself from whoever had killed Benny and Derek Hannaford? Putting his article out there was going to insulate him from harm. He poured everything he knew and everything he suspected into it. There’d be no reason to eliminate him without making the story even bigger. Certainly he wished he’d had more than a deductive case. He wished he’d had more data, more interviews but the time had come to go public. The article was titled:
The Mystery of the Massive Anglo-American Collider: Have We Opened a Nasty Door to Another Dimension?
He had re-installed the software onto Ian’s computer to allow it to connect with WiFi and now his finger was literally hovering over the keyboard. The list of addressees included almost every broadsheet and tabloid newspaper, including
The Guardian
which was still grinding away on the bizarre murder of their science editor.

He hit send.

It had been the first night Ben had slept at home in a week and he had come to regret it. He’d be spending the next night in Dartford in preparation for the MAAC restart the following morning and depending on what transpired he might not be home again for a while. His wife had been in no mood to play nice and had pointedly decided to retire for the night, slamming the bedroom door while he was fielding a call from MAAC. It seemed the Heller Alfred had punched a guard and had to be Tasered.

After reading a bedtime story to his girls he crept to his bedroom where his wife was either asleep or pretending to be—it didn’t matter which. Soon he had fallen asleep with his arms folded in anger.

His mobile phone went off on full volume and his wife reacted furiously. He slithered out his side and answered.

Trotter was on the line. It was 4:30 in the morning.

“What’s going on?” Ben asked moving to the hall.

“A negative development. Very negative. I’ve sent you an email with the file. It seems a science blogger named Giles Farmer has connected a series of dots and come to a more-or-less correct conclusion on what’s been happening.”

Ben was outside the girls’ room. He peeked in while Trotter was talking. By the glow of a night-light they looked achingly beautiful.

“I see. Can we contain it?” Ben asked.

“No we can’t. It’s gone out to every newspaper in the country.”

“Jesus, that is bad.”

“Yes, quite. Look, I’m on my way into the office. You ought to head to Dartford, control the situation there. There’s likely to be a press melee before long. I’ve got a long list of people to get to, high and low, but I wanted you to be among the first. Look, Wellington, I know it’s not a popular view, but I think this article should cause us to cancel the restart. We should mothball the collider now. Any further problems and we won’t be able to contain the story.”

“Above my pay grade, Tony.”

“Understood. Just looking for all the support I can get.”

John woke in the dark. He felt for Emily but she wasn’t next to him. By the light of a single candle in a hurricane glass he saw the sleeping figures of all of his people camped out around the cabin. Emily was beside Arabel. Trevor had given his spot to her and taken the floor, next to Martin and Tony.

He had no idea how long he’d been out but judging by the pressure on his bladder it had been a long time.

Outside the cabin was the captain’s privy and he spent a while standing there, the ship gently rolling beneath him.

He came back to the cabin.

“Hi.”

Emily stirred and came to him.

“It’s calm,” John said.

“Thank God. The storm broke a few hours ago. We can all finally sleep.”

“Sorry to wake you.”

“Don’t be. How are you so immune to sea sickness?”

He kissed her. “Just am. How long was I out?”

“Almost a full day.”

“Christ! About what time is it?”

“I’d be guessing. One? Two?”

“This is it then.”

“This is it.”

“Where are we?”

“I saw land off to that side before it got dark.”

“Portside is England. I’m going to find the captain.”

“Okay.”

“If it’s two we’ve got eight hours to get to Dartford.”

“I know,” she said.

Captain Ignacius was high on the stern, looking down on the helmsman on the deck below.

He waved John up and greeted him in English. “Did you have a good rest, my friend?” He was a handsome, middle-aged man with long hair tied with a ribbon.

“Too good. I’ve lost my bearings,” John said.

“We are almost at the estuary. Southend will be somewhere off the starboard bow.”

“What time is it?”

“It is time the wind increased, my friend,” Ignacius said, pointing at the slack sails. “We’re dead calm. First too much wind, now not enough. I am aware of your appointment. I no longer pray but perhaps you should.”

Heath bragged he could see as well in the dark as the light, and though it was one of his typical exaggerations, there was some truth to it. His night vision was hyper-acute, a trait that served a rover well.

He remembered his youth and how, as a shepherd, he was the one designated to find a lost lamb in the blackness of a moonless night. He remembered when he was a young man, a runaway from the farm to seventeenth-century London, how he was the member of the gang who had the easiest time tracking a mark along the dark and foggy banks of the Thames and sneaking up for a bashing. And now in Hell, his nocturnal prowess had served him very well indeed for two and a half centuries. He reckoned he was the strongest, smartest rover he’d ever encountered and he traded on his reputation by expanding his territory.

Heath had grown tired of limiting his raids to the small hamlets and villages that lacked enough men to band together and fight back. He had dreams of amassing a huge band of rovers, hundreds of scum to terrorize entire towns like Crawley and Guildford. But why stop there? Why not dream even bigger and take on the crown itself? Why not take London one day? After all, he had plenty of time. All he had to do was keep from getting crashed on a raid or by one of his own.

Tonight, running through the forest, his lungs full of damp night air, he was feeling good. A week before he’d raided the camp of a large rival band of rovers, scum who’d been competing with his lot for a long time. First he personally crashed the band’s chief taking his head right off his shoulders, “right easy,” as he put it, and then he held it high during his little speech to the other members of the rival gang.

“You lot fall in with me and you won’t get crashed. You know who I am. I’m Heath, the one who can see in the dark. I’ve got big plans. Are you in, or are you out like Cock Robin here?”

He stopped at the edge of the woods and whistled like a bird, halting the eighty rovers behind him.

Eighty!

Most scum he’d ever led by far.

Biggest band of rovers he’d ever heard of.

Across the meadow was the village of Leatherhead. It wasn’t a very large village but it was big enough to have a nighttime guard, some with muskets the story went. There was talk of good grub and barrels of beer. There was even talk of some molls who still had their looks. Leatherhead was big enough that he’d given it a miss until now.

But with eighty scum, tonight he was taking Leatherhead. Tonight he was going to do some serious crashing and raping.

Dawn came to Dartford.

In their cottage Dirk and Duck automatically awoke to the first light filtering through the gaps in their shutters.

It wasn’t cold but Dirk always liked a bit of a fire, for the coziness, he’d say.

His head was aching from too much beer the night before. He’d kept his promise to John Camp and brewed up a barrel but it had been sitting there calling his name. Two weeks ago he began sampling it and a week ago he began drinking it in earnest. There was still enough for Camp but not enough for the entire village. When Duck’s back was turned he unplugged the barrel and tipped some beer into his mug and added a few splashes of water. Best headache cure around, he reckoned, chugging it down.

He and Duck heard it the same time and ran to open a shutter.

They both poked their heads out and looked up the road toward the direction of the noise.

“Would you look at that, Dirk?” Duck said. “I think we’re fucked.”

The Earthers were on the deck of El Tiburón giving the Iberian sailors a spectacle. The sailors knew they had a special cargo and now they were marveling how special it was.

The winds had freshened, whether through prayer or luck, and they had entered the estuary at dawn.

John had been trying to visualize a clock in his head since first light. Two hours later he announced, “It’s about eight o’clock. Two hours to go.”

The river was narrowing, the estuary receding to the east. John was looking for the hairpin turn that would herald their near arrival.

Captain Ignacius joined them at the bow.

“Will you know the location?” the captain asked.

“I’ve made this trip before,” John said.

The captain nodded then looked upriver and said, “Ha! Will you look at that?”

There was a small fishing boat ahead with two men casting nets. At the sight of twelve Iberian warships approaching, the fishermen capsized the boat and began to swim ashore.

“I wish I had another two hundred ships,” Ignacius said. “We caught the English sleeping on this day. With a full armada, we could have been planting the Iberian flag in London.” Then he found something else amusing, little Belle following the gulls with her eyes. “Do you like these birds, my dear child?” he asked.

“Yes! Look at the birdies, mummy!” Belle said, waving the hand Arabel wasn’t holding.

“They’re seagulls, darling,” Arabel said.

“I like them too,” Sam declared. “We’re following them, aren’t we? Why are we following them, Trevor?”

Trevor gently squeezed the little boy’s hand and said, “’Cause that’s the way home.”

“There!” John said, pointing. The river was making a turn to the north.

“Yes, that’s it,” Emily agreed.

“You sure?” Trevor asked.

John nodded. “A jog to the north, a jog to the south, Dartford will be along the first straightaway.”

“Thank God,” Tony said, “but if you ask me we’re cutting it too damn close.”

“I can’t believe I’m actually going to see my kids soon,” Tracy sobbed.

“We’re not home free yet,” John said. “Captain, anything you can do to get your longboat ready to deploy, that would be helpful.”

“Very good, Señor. I will make the boat ready.”

Emily came to John’s side and whispered, “Do you really think we can make it?”

He sported a very tired smile. “Seems to me we’re going to have to row like hell and run like hell if we’re going to get our asses out of Hell.”

Trotter had been right about the press scrum.