Survival (2 page)

Jimmy Coates had been chased, kicked, shot at and
throttled. He’d been blown up, nearly drowned in oil and
set on fire. But it was the lies that had done the damage.

He shivered violently. Several hours at 10,000 metres
was taking its toll. Without the climate control systems of
a commercial jet, it was almost as cold as the Arctic. The
Falcon wasn’t designed for it and Jimmy certainly wasn’t
dressed for it. His jeans were ragged and torn, and his
hoodie was too thin to provide any real insulation.

Keeping control of the plane was even more difficult
now. He had to shift the flightstick with the weight of his
shoulders because he couldn’t rely on the delicate touch
of his fingers any more – he couldn’t even feel his
fingers. Not only that, but soon his chest was straining
for every breath. It felt as if each rib was barbed wire.

Despite the pain, all Jimmy could think about were
the lies that had brought him here. First, the head of
the CIA had tricked him into blowing up a British oil
rig. He knew the British were blaming the French and
were ready to strike back. Any second a war could
start between France and Britain.
It’s partly my fault
,
Jimmy thought. His stomach lurched and it wasn’t
because of the turbulence.

His whole life had become a network of lies and
secrets. Secrets like the fact that he was even alive.
The British Secret Service thought they’d killed Jimmy
in New York, but he’d tricked them and survived.

Lies like the ones his so-called father had told for
twelve years, before revealing that Jimmy wasn’t really
his son. Then Ian Coates had taken over as Prime
Minister and issued the order to have Jimmy hunted
down and killed.

Lies suit him
, thought Jimmy.
He’s a professional
at it now
.

Even I’m a lie
, he thought.

38 per cent human
. He could remember with cruel
clarity the exact moment when he’d first heard those
words. The intense dread rushed back to him. He’d
discovered he was genetically designed by the Secret
Service to grow as a seemingly normal child, but to
develop the skills of the perfect assassin by the time
he turned eighteen. He was to remain unnoticed by
the rest of the world, while his true nature was kept
secret even from himself.

But instead of waiting for Jimmy to grow up, the
Government had sent him on a mission early.
They
didn’t even care that I’m a child, but they wanted me to
kill
. He couldn’t help imagining the terror he would have
experienced if he’d gone through with the mission,
instead of rejecting it at the last moment. That’s when
NJ7 had turned on him.

Ever since, Jimmy’s assassin skills had been growing
and causing nothing but distress.
Now they might cause
a war
, he thought with horror.

Jimmy had been searching desperately for ways to
prevent it. The simplest way seemed to be for him to
reveal that
he
had blown up the oil rig – not the French.
But to turn up in Britain now, alive, would bring all the
heat from the Secret Service back on to him.
I can take
that
, he thought.
If it stops a war it must be worth it
.

But he knew it wasn’t that simple. His mother, his sister
and his best friend were in London. British agents watched
over them every second. As soon as Jimmy revealed that
he was still alive, the people he loved would be under threat
again. At best they would be taken into custody. At worst…
Jimmy didn’t dare imagine what nightmares NJ7 would put
them through to extract information.

He shuddered and tried to focus all his energy on
balancing the plane. But still his dilemma tore at him. It
was simple: either he prevented a war, but left his family
at the mercy of the Secret Service, or he could stay in
hiding, protecting his family, but potentially destroying
the fragile peace in Europe.

By now, Jimmy knew he was somewhere near the
French-Spanish border, over the mountains. He had
tuned the Falcon’s radio into the airbus’s communication
system. On the seat next to him and across the floor of
the cockpit, he had spread out all of the aeronautical
charts he could find. Every signal to the airbus came
with an automated verbal repetition – standard safety
set-up on commercial flights. So Jimmy had picked up
enough clues to work out the flight path. It was almost
like Jimmy was listening to the plane’s thoughts.

And in his own head came the beginnings of an
idea.
France
, he thought.
Maybe that’s the answer
…
Could there be a way to keep his family safe
and
prevent war?
Keep going
, he told himself. The voice in
his head was insistent, but his thoughts were muffled
by the oxygen deprivation.

Jimmy was slowly suffocating. He realised he had
to reduce his altitude, regardless of where he was. He
flicked his eyes between the charts next to him and
the nose of his plane, always watching and feeling for
the constant adjustments in the airflow that was
keeping him in the sky.

Time to dive
, he told himself, and thrust the
flightstick to the side.

It was like tumbling off the back of a rodeo bull. The
huge body of the airbus ploughed onwards, while
Jimmy watched the distance between them growing.
Soon the commercial flight was a smudged shadow
soaring far above him.

Jimmy was in freefall. With hands blue from the
cold, he punched two buttons and flicked two switches.
The Falcon’s engines sputtered into life.

I’ll make it to France
, he thought, triumphant, as his
head began to clear.
I’ll warn them about a British attack
and I’ll ask to see Uno Stovorsky
. He remembered Uno
Stovorsky from his last trip to France – the agent of the
French Secret Service. The man had been gruff, but
he had helped Jimmy and his family. Jimmy was sure he
would help again.

Then the engines died.

Jimmy felt a violent explosion of panic in his chest. It
was immediately dampened by a huge inner wave of
strength. Jimmy tried the ignition switches again.
Nothing happened. Again and again he tried restarting
the Falcon’s engines, but they wouldn’t even splutter. He
watched his hands moving calmly around the controls,
while inside he was frantic.

No fuel. No engines
. He heard the words repeating
like a drumbeat in his head.

Jimmy’s genetic programming had already changed
tactics. It felt like someone else was routing messages
through his brain, but so quickly he couldn’t understand
what was being said. Then the knowledge came to him
fully formed, as if he had always known it.

He manoeuvred the flaps on the wing and the ailerons
until the plane was gliding through the air, not plunging
downwards. The design of the Falcon was on his side here
– in case of engine failure it wasn’t meant to just fall out of
the sky. But Jimmy knew it couldn’t stay up forever either.
He looked around for a parachute and the ejector
mechanism. Then he remembered: every passenger
and member of the crew had taken their parachute with
them when Jimmy had taken over the plane in mid-air.
He’d made sure of it – he didn’t want to be throwing
anybody to his death. Jimmy knew that decision might
now condemn him. He was gliding in a tiny plane,
several thousand metres up, without any power and
without a parachute.

Suddenly the left side of the plane dipped.
This is it
,
thought Jimmy. A vertical draft sucked the aircraft
downwards. Jimmy felt his whole body reeling. He
plunged through the clouds and saw the stark, white
snowscape below. The plane was nose-diving towards
the side of a mountain somewhere in the Pyrenees.

Every one of Jimmy’s muscles tensed. The scream of
the air rushing past the plane seemed to pierce straight
to the centre of his brain, doubling his terror. But he
didn’t freeze. In fact he moved so fast he could hardly
keep track of where he was.

He rolled out of his seat and climbed up, towards the
back of the plane, digging his nails into the carpet. The
friction forced some feeling back into his fingers. When
he reached the cabin he grabbed hold of the passenger
seatbelts and heaved his legs at the emergency exit. It
flew open with such force that the door snapped off its
hinges and hurtled into the sky. The wind blasted into
Jimmy, knocking him back against the seats.

He crunched his stomach muscles to swing his
entire body out of the door. He tensed his arms to rip
the seatbelts from the seats. He slammed against the
wing of the plane and slid along it, the back of his head
knocking against the metal.

Jimmy’s body strained against the wind and the
G-force while his hands worked to save his life. He
wasn’t even sure what he was trying to do and after a
second he could hardly see because water was
streaming from his eyes. He just had to trust that
something inside him knew how to survive. He had to
force his programming to take over from the terror.

He swung the two seatbelts over the lip of the wing,
catching it with the buckles, then shifted into a
crouching position, facing directly downwards, holding
himself in place by gripping the straps at his sides. The
wind in his face was so strong he thought the lining of
his cheeks was going to tear.

Then he flexed his knees, rocking the wing. Over the
roar of the wind in his ears, Jimmy heard a definite creak.
The joint where the wing met the body of the plane was
weakening. With the friction from the fall it wouldn’t take
much more to snap the wing off completely. Jimmy rocked
harder. He bounced on his haunches, listening to the creak
growing louder. Then there was a massive splintering
noise, like gunfire, then another. Jimmy kept rocking.

The ground charged towards him. He was close
enough now to pick out the rocks and bare patches in
the snow. He drove all his energy to his legs, frantically
pushing against the end of the wing. Then, at last:

CRACK!

The wing lurched away from the rest of the plane.
Jimmy was almost thrown off, but he squeezed hold of
the straps and kept his footing. Then he threw his head
and shoulders backwards, forcing his heels into the
metal. The shift of his bodyweight pushed the wing
underneath him. Now he was standing on a horizontal
platform – and using the wind resistance of the wing to
slow his fall.

All the time he felt the wing swaying violently beneath
his feet. It wanted to flip on to its side again, but Jimmy
wouldn’t let it. Now Jimmy was surfing again. But this
time there was no slipstream to help him – just a
vertical drop.

The side of the mountain loomed towards him. Then
the rest of the plane crashed into the rocks. What little
fuel was left in the tanks sent up a huge black and
orange cloud. Jimmy felt the heat of it before he heard
it. But he knew instantly that heat could save him.

The rush of hot air was like a cushion under Jimmy’s
wing, but the updraft threw him off-balance. His feet
slipped from under him and he pitched on to his front,
smacking his chin against the front edge of the wing.

Then it was over. The wing slammed on to the snow
with a cruel bounce. Jimmy clung to it as it raced down
the slope. It was so steep Jimmy felt like he was still
falling, but he could hear the fierce
swoosh
of solid
snow and ice under him.

His surfboard had become a snowboard. Jimmy
crunched his elbows straight, throwing his body upright
again. He couldn’t see anything but a huge fountain of
slush thrown up all around him. He shifted his weight from
foot to foot, reading the undulations in the mountainside.

The wingtip cut through the ice, firing chips of it into
Jimmy’s face and chest. But he didn’t care. He could
feel himself gradually slowing down.

Then he hit a rock. The wing leapt into the air,
catapulting Jimmy with it. He was thrown up with such
force that he thought his bones would be ripped free
from their joints. He heard his own voice crying out,
distant and unfamiliar. The cold bit at his skin and all he
could see was intense whiteness.

Then:
THUD
!

He hit something – and the total white turned to
total black.

Eva watched the shadows shift across the turrets of the
Tower of London to distract herself from the stifling air
inside the car and the awkward silence. She and Mitchell
had been parked there for at least half an hour, she
guessed, with specific instructions not to get out. In that
time, they had barely spoken. She was quite happy to keep
it that way, but eventually Mitchell broke the silence.

“So your parents think you’re dead?” he blurted.

Nice conversation starter
, thought Eva. She shrugged
and turned to look out of the other window, across Trinity
Square, to the sombre crowd around the Mercantile
Marine Memorial. She couldn’t see anything that was going
on, just a neat row of people’s backs about twenty metres
away. She noted how unusual it was for so many people at
a memorial service to be wearing bright colours. That was
because a lot of them were military personnel in finest
dress uniform. The civil servants and journalists were all in
black though, making the overall effect like a mingling of
peacocks and ravens.

“Don’t you mind that they think you’re dead?” Mitchell
pressed. “They might, like, miss you or something.”

Eva sighed. “We didn’t get on that well, OK?”
she explained. “My brothers know I’m fine. That’s all
I care about.”

“You’re lucky you even know your parents,” Mitchell
mumbled.

For a second, Eva felt a pang of sympathy. Mitchell
never spoke about his own family. She felt the urge to
explain that she knew all about what had happened to him:
that his parents were killed in a car crash when he was a
baby… that he’d escaped from his foster home… that his
brother had beaten him… But she also knew what lay at
the root of it all: Mitchell was the first child to have been
genetically programmed to grow into the perfect
Government assassin.

Eva shuddered and deliberately pushed away her
sympathy. The boy next to her was the enemy. She
had to remember that. Already he’d been sent several
times to kill Jimmy Coates. The thought of it made her
catch her breath. Jimmy’s sister was her best friend.
It was for Jimmy and Georgie Coates that she risked
her life every day, undercover at NJ7.

She reached forwards to the driver’s seat and turned
the ignition one click so she could open her window.

“Hey,” Mitchell objected. “The windows are tinted for a
reason, you know.”

Instinctively he tried to lean across her for the button.
When he realised how close that brought them to each
other, he froze. Eva glared.

“It’s just a couple of centimetres, OK?” she protested
softly.

Mitchell pulled back.

“If anyone finds out the British Secret Service
is employing two thirteen-year-olds Miss Bennett will go
mental.”

“Who’s going to find out?” Eva asked. “Even if the press
see us they can’t print anything about it, can they?
Everything has to be approved by the Government press
office.”

“I dunno. Miss Bennett said to stay out of sight. That’s
all. Otherwise we’d be standing over there, wouldn’t we?”
He nodded his head towards the throng of people. “And I
should be out there. You know, paying respects, or
whatever. I went on a mission with Paduk. I was partly
trained by him.”

“You train yourself,” Eva snapped. “You went for runs
with him, that’s all.”

Mitchell didn’t answer. He knew she was right. She
was always meticulous about detail and Mitchell wasn’t
in the mood to challenge her. He also wasn’t keen
to dwell on the sort of training that went on in his
body: his muscles developing as he slept, his
programming sending thousands of signals through his
synapses every second to give him new skills that he’d
never guessed could be his. The skills of an assassin.

They were both glad to be distracted by the Prime
Minister’s voice floating through the window on a waft of
cooler air.

“Paduk died in the service of his country, trying to
defend one of our most precious assets from foreign
sabotage…”

They had to listen hard. Every time a car drove past it
drowned out the words.

“…response will be diplomacy… for a peaceful
resolution… but if pressed we are ready…”

Eva didn’t want to hear it. Whatever the man said,
she knew he would probably be lying. But it wasn’t the
words that upset her. It was the voice – that calm,
reassuring, authoritative voice. To her it wasn’t just
the voice of the Prime Minister, it was the voice of her
best friend’s dad, Ian Coates.

A few minutes later he was marching back in the
direction of Mitchell and Eva, flanked on either side by
Secret Service agents in plain black suits. The sun glinted
off their dark glasses and picked out the green stripes on
their lapels. They were big men, but Ian Coates wasn’t much
smaller. Eva remembered that all the time she’d thought he
was an ordinary businessman, he’d in fact been an NJ7
agent, along with Georgie’s mother, Helen. Since becoming
Prime Minister, he’d clearly gone back to a strict regime of
physical training. The shoulders of his suit were bulging.

Eva watched him striding towards them, his jaw jutting
out in grim determination. But the closer he came, the
more she noticed something was wrong. His swagger was
slightly off-centre and his face was pale, with patches under
his eyes that were almost yellow.

He forcefully raised a hand to wave to the press, before
they were escorted away as a pack by more Secret Service
staff. No time to pay private tributes to the fallen hero
they’d all come to commemorate. Not that they seemed
bothered, Eva noticed.

Eva and Mitchell’s car was one of a row of five. Their
driver appeared out of nowhere and opened the rear door,
motioning Mitchell to shift over to make room, ready
for Miss Bennett. As he shuffled towards Eva, the backs of
his arms stuck to the leather, making a soft squeak.
The Prime Minister’s car was the one directly in front of
theirs. He paused with one foot in and one foot out, and
raised his head back in the direction of the memorial.

Eva followed the direction of his stare and saw Miss
Bennett approaching across the grass. She moved
gracefully and with a slight sway in her hips. Eva was
amazed she could walk so effortlessly fast in high heels.
One side of her mouth was curled upwards in a half-smile
and as she came closer a flash of sunshine caught the
subtle green stripe in the weave of her pencil skirt.

As she reached the Prime Minister’s car, they
started talking – quickly and without waiting for each
other to finish their sentences. Eva couldn’t quite
make out their words, but it was obvious they didn’t
agree about something. She opened her window a
little further to catch their conversation.

Mitchell tried to object. “What are you…?”

“Shh!” Eva hissed. “Can’t you use some special skill to tell
me what they’re saying?”

Mitchell snorted a sarcastic laugh, but before he could
reply, a loud click cut him off. The back door on the other
side of the Prime Minister’s car opened. Eva and Mitchell
both sat to attention and leaned forward. Out of the car
stepped William Lee.

His presence stopped Miss Bennett’s conversation
dead. Ian Coates looked from Lee to Miss Bennett and
back again. For a second, nobody said anything. Then the
Prime Minister seemed to glance up at the sky before
issuing an order that Eva could hear perfectly, though it
meant nothing to her.

“Mutam-ul-it. Make it ours.”

Lee’s response cut through all the background noise.

“I’ll send the
Enforcer
.”

Eva turned to Mitchell and read in his expression that he
was as mystified as she was. Within seconds, Miss
Bennett was sliding in next to them.

“What’s Mutam-ul-it?” Eva asked, not caring now that
Miss Bennett would know she’d been eavesdropping. “And
who’s the enforcer – what did he mean?”

“He means we’ve got work to do,” Miss Bennett replied
calmly. Then a darker expression came over her face. “He
means we’re attacking the French.”