Bett cut the engine and let the yacht drift silently as far as its momentum would take it. It was the cue for one final weapons and equipment check, as well as for a sharp tightening in Jane’s gut. There was no stopping this now, no going back, but it wasn’t what she might be facing that was making her apprehensive: it was what was at stake.
She’d heard Tom’s voice, old Margaret’s on the checkout, asking who she thought she was, what she thought she was doing, but they were mere echoes, addressed to some other woman.
The rest of the team were getting nervous too, but its manifestation was also its therapy. They talked nonsense, wound each other up.
‘Do you think I look fat in this?’ Alexis asked, indicating the bullet-proof armour she had on under her T-shirt.
‘Kevlar is very slimming,’ Armand assured her, kneeling down by the gunwale and making some final preparation to his kit. ‘Trouble is, how are they going to recognise you if they can’t see your nipples? I mean, you don’t think those guys with binoculars were looking at your face, do you?’
‘Maybe if I stick two bullets in front, here, I can …’
Bett held up a hand and cut her off. ‘A-fag, everybody. A-fag. Armand, it’s time.’
‘A-fag?’ Jane asked. ‘What is that, like “smoke ‘em if you got ‘em”?’
‘No, it means cut the bullshit, it’s time to get serious. It’s an abbreviated acronym.’
‘For what?’
‘All fun and games until somebody loses an eye.’
Jane nodded. ‘I hear you.’
Alexis turned to Bett.
‘Hey, you guys do know this boat is on fire, right?’
‘I said A-fag,’ he told her.
‘You still got that wee tube stashed somewhere safe?’ Ross asked.
‘Aye. The sea air chapping your lips?’
‘No, just checking.’
‘I was afraid they’d take it off me seeing as they must have seen it on camera.’
‘Maybe they weren’t watching at the time, or maybe they didn’t consider it a threat. Which it isn’t, not to them. If I’d palmed you a flick knife, maybe …’
‘Do you want it back?’
‘No, just thinking aloud. I’m not so sure it’s going to matter. When I gave you it, I was thinking there’d come a time when I’d get taken off to … wherever, and they’d let you go, but I think we’re in this together for the duration. The bad news is the duration might not be very long.’
‘You going to tell me what it is, then?’
‘No. That part hasn’t changed. It’s still best for both of us that you don’t know, even if we do get sold as a job lot. Maybe especially if we get sold as a job lot.’
‘Can’t see it happening any other way,’ Dad said gloomily. ‘For one thing, they cannae just let me walk away if I can identify them, or if I can raise the alarm about whoever’s bought you.’
‘You’re also needed to ensure my cooperation,’ Ross added, unable to prevent himself glancing at his dad’s bandaged fingers. The pain had kept them both up half the night, Dad unable to sleep for the discomfort, Ross for the storms in his head.
The atmosphere on board today had been very tense, particularly in the morning, the first time they’d faced their tormentors since. Gilbert and Guillaume had mostly kept out of their way, though this was unlikely to be out of any sensitivity or regret. Every time Ross did lay eyes on either of them, his mind filled instantly with hatred and thoughts of retribution, and both of them knew that. They also knew they could take him in a second, but it was a situation their professionalism warned them to avoid: Ross was potentially irrational, and the last thing they could afford was some livid and desperate gambit on his part that ended with him dead.
‘So how would that work?’ Dad asked. ‘I mean, once the gavel’s down and the winner gets his purchase.’
‘Basically, they’ll lean on me by leaning on you until I tell them everything I can about the Gravity Well, enough for their own developers to begin work.’
‘But that can’t go on forever, can it? You and me locked up in a secret cell feeding out technical titbits in exchange for staying alive.’
‘No. The developers would be guys like me – they’d never be allowed to know the source of the information. This would give them two choices. One is to buy me out: buy my expertise, buy my silence and yours, make me a legitimate employee. But that’s a lot more risky, a lot more expensive and a lot less convenient than just shooting us both in the head once I’ve given up the goods.’
‘Cheery thought.’
‘I’m just giving it to you straight, Dad. And what’s worse is that’s only the scenario if the buyer wants to develop the technology. If they just want to stop it …’
‘Then the duration, as you said, won’t be very long.’
They both found themselves staring out of the cabin’s small window, it being an easier place to look than at each other. They were sharing his dad’s quarters, Ross’s own now out of bounds, presumably in case he took the desperate option to swim for it, or perhaps, in still greater desperation, to throw a seven. There were other cabins free, but not, he guessed, with in-built surveillance.
It was dark outside; not as black as it would get, but the last of the sun was failing. However, there was something to look at for a change: a small flickering light, its distance impossible to gauge. Some small vessel, tantalising proof that they weren’t so far from the coast. It was the third sign of the outside world since daybreak. The first had been a helicopter, flying high overhead early this morning. The sight of it caused a heaving in Ross’s chest, a surge of optimism like the old sailors must have felt at the sight of the first bird heralding landfall. Then it had passed indifferently, about its own business, leaving him feeling like a marooned wretch on a desert island, unable to signal to a passing ship.
The second sign had been another boat, initially only glimpsed on the horizon. Ross and Dad were ushered below decks before it came fully into sight, sent to Dad’s cabin and watched over there by one of the guards in case they made any lame attempt to signal for help. The cabin being portside, however, they did at least get to see it: a pleasure cruiser not exactly crewed by hardy mariners and thus evidently not far out of port. It was a good couple of hundred yards away, maybe more, but he’d been able to make out two women sunbathing on deck: a blonde and a brunette. It looked like they were topless, but that might have been his mind wishfully filling in details unverifiable at that distance. What was verifiable, what was utterly certain, was that they were oblivious to what was happening aboard the bigger vessel. He had fantasies of telepathy, wished they had X-ray vision to see inside the hull, see the men with guns and their prisoners, but what were two spoiled bimbos going to do about that anyway?
After a while, he had decided resentfully that he hated them, and that was before they started waving to the guards like self-satisfied prick-teases. Shortly after that they had sailed away again, blithely leaving the scene of a crime-in-progress. It seemed to emphasise the hopelessness, the insurmountable barriers preventing even contact with the outside world, never mind escape.
‘We’re on borrowed time,’ he admitted gravely.
‘We’ve been on that since Barcelona,’ his dad reasoned.
‘Aye, but I mean the ref’s looking at his watch, Dad. The heid bummer went ashore yesterday morning, and that bastard Gilbert’s mobile was going off all day today, far more often than normal.’
‘With his bloody Marseillaise ringtone.’
‘Aye. The words, “love, love, love,” keep popping into my head afterwards. Couldnae think of anything less appropriate.’
They both tried to laugh, but it was dry and bitter. They were running on empty and they both knew it. The flickering light across the waves kept drawing their eyes, a place for their gazes to retreat. It seemed to be getting larger, which couldn’t be right, unless it was getting closer. The flickering was more pronounced, too, less like the blinking of distant lights than like fire, which definitely couldn’t be right.
‘Look, don’t lose heart, son,’ Dad said. It sounded a lot like, ‘there, there,’ with as much intrinsic value as an offer to kiss something better. There was some buried part of Ross that it soothed a little, ancient memories of a time when that voice alone, even saying, ‘there, there,’ could make him feel better. But that same part of him, in responding to this tiny droplet of balm, awakened his greater need for another source of healing. He tried to swallow it back, tried to spare his dad the hurt, tried to stem the tears, but lost the self-control to prevent any of it.
‘I want my mum,’ he said, sobbing.
He looked at his father, who was nodding gently, his eyes filling too. Unable to take it, Ross stared out of the window again, where the flickering light was now leaping and dancing, now something unmistakably aflame.
‘Here, is that something on fire?’ Dad asked curiously.
About a second and a half later, it exploded.
Jane felt the dinghy rock and a wave pulse through the sea as the blast ripped into the night somewhere above the surface. She heard a boom too, but it was muted by the water and the sound of her own breathing. She had her left hand on the keel of the fibreglass vessel, gripping a cord that dangled from the bow, while her right hauled her forward, her legs kicking for further propulsion. She saw by infrared, the Corsair a smudge of light green against enveloping darker shades, tiny streaks of white moving within it, getting larger as the dinghy progressed. She was clad from ankles to neck in a black wetsuit, a single air tank strapped to her back, the regulator clamped as snugly to her mouth and nose as the airtight goggles were sealed around her eyes. A Kevlar vest was strapped to her trunk, negating the need for diving weights to keep her below the surface. She did have a belt, but the only lead it contained was in the automatic pistol and spare clips zipped securely inside various pockets along its circumference. Flanking her on either side, Bett and Armand were swimming a few yards clear of the vessel, out of range of the oar strokes. And topside, charcoal-smeared, soaked black T-shirt over her armour, was Alexis, rowing her lifeboat away from the burning wreck of her pleasure cruiser – recently and expertly destroyed by Armand – towards the only succour to be found upon these waves.
‘Isn’t there some kind of moral taboo, something really low about killing people by taking advantage of the fact that they’re coming to your rescue?’ Alexis had asked, when Bett outlined his new plan, adapted in response to the day’s previous success.
‘They won’t be coming to your rescue,’ he assured her. ‘They’ll be salvaging some T&A they can abuse with impunity because they can burn the body after they’ve had their fun and nobody will ever know. They can’t afford to let any strangers on board; or rather, they can’t allow any to ever get off again, which means that if they’re too disciplined to indulge themselves in the distraction of gang-rape, when they come down to the stern platform, it might simply be to shoot you.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind. And I’d ask you and Armand to keep it pretty prominent in your thoughts too.’
A digital gauge on the night-sight told Jane what distance they were from the Corsair, her pulse quickening more from the ever-diminishing numbers on the read-out than from the exertion of her strokes. Her job would be to stay with Alexis and keep the platform secured while Bett and Armand took on the more dangerous point-work of proceeding inside in search of Ross and Tom. However, she was under no illusions about what she was involved in tonight, even without Bett repeatedly restressing it. It was an assault, approaching from below, against a team of armed professionals. Real guns, real bullets, and with the enemy enjoying an elevated angle of fire. The element of surprise was crucial, though it wasn’t the only thing giving them an edge.
They were twenty metres out when the waters above became suddenly illuminated: a searchlight from above. Bett and Armand immediately dived deeper and drifted wider in response. Jane, out of sight beneath the dinghy, remained close to the surface, close enough to make out shouting and Alexis calling back in response. Stretching her head forward, Jane could see upwards to the platform, which remained unoccupied, but not for long. As the range-finder read twelve metres, Jane saw two white shapes appear on the transom-deck platform. They were slightly distorted by the water, but as she got used to how the infrared rendered them, she could make out more and more detail. They appeared to be conferring, one of them holding an object to his mouth: some kind of walkie-talkie.
Eight metres.
‘Help me,’ Alexis was calling. ‘Please. There was a fire. My friend … Oh God.’
Walkie-talkie down. More conferring. A nod.
Four metres.
Any second now Jane’s view upward would be eclipsed as the dinghy reached the Corsair‘s stern.
Two metres.
Just before it was, she saw one figure reach into his jacket, the other taking a step back. Jane looked to her side, saw Bett break the water, pistol held in two hands. She heard the shots ring out as she let go of the cord and lunged with her left hand to grip the short ladder descending from the platform. The dinghy was kicked backwards and clear of her head by the force of Alexis climbing off and aboard the Corsair.
She felt Alexis’s hands grip her arm and yank her quickly forwards, yelling ‘Get down!’ as the searchlight swept across the platform from the flydeck high above, a heartbeat before a hail of bullets did the same thing. Jane dived headlong across the floor and joined Alexis in crouching against the bulkhead, far enough in to be out of sight from the decks above.
A few feet away, two bodies were lying flat on their backs and twitching. At this range, the infrared goggles made facial features distinguishable, and what most distinguished this pair was that they were missing many of theirs.
Jane looked back as Alexis helped her discard the air tank. Bett and Armand were still in the water, out of sight. The searchbeam swept back and forth across the platform and the waves, its operator now enjoying a clear shot downwards at anyone who tried to climb aboard.
‘The window is closed,’ Alexis put it, pressing the transmit button and speaking into the boom mike of the comms earpiece she had just removed from her belt. Jane heard the voice crackle in her left ear as well as hearing it live through her right, and remembered to lever down her own boom mike now that her regulator had been discarded.
Alexis pulled a gun from a holster strapped to her back, prompting Jane to remove her weapon from inside her utility belt. Alexis shuffled back a few feet and fired up towards the flydeck, holding the pistol with both hands as she unleashed four rounds. One of her shots took out the searchbeam, but a lift of Jane’s goggles revealed there was still plenty of light bathing the platform from other sources. This time, when fire was returned, it was fully automatic. Alexis huddled back against the bulkhead.
‘Motherfucker,’ she spat, aiming a look astern, where Bett and Armand would not be climbing aboard any time soon.
Bett’s voice sounded in their ears, it being safer for him to surface now that the searchlight was dead. She couldn’t see him, probably having swum around to one side of the hull so that no one else could either.
‘Roger that,’ he acknowledged. ‘Window is closed. I’ll see if Nuno can reopen it, but meantime you have point. You can wait for Nuno or you can proceed to locating the prisoners. It’s your call.’
Alexis looked to Jane, who simply nodded.
‘Proceeding, sir,’ she reported.
‘Roger that. Rebekah, you are now Go for approach. Nuno, we are pinned down by suppressing fire from the flydeck. One hostile, automatic weapon. Please deal.’
‘Wilco,’ Nuno replied.
‘Somboon, you are Go too, but keep your boat outside the agreed perimeter until the vessel is secure.’
‘Roger.’
Alexis tapped Jane’s goggles, which she interpreted as a reminder to take them off. Instead, when she went to do so, Alexis restrained her hand and gestured instead to Jane’s belt, where she was carrying Alexis’s pair.
‘But all the lights are on,’ Jane reasoned.
‘Lights don’t let you see through walls.’
They proceeded on quiet feet, taking it in turns to run forward to the next point of refuge – a corner, a doorway – while the other stayed in place, ready to offer covering fire should anyone appear. The view through the goggles was unnervingly dim, turning what Jane knew to be brightly lit corridors and walkways into a low-contrast haze. She felt as though she’d be more aware of her environment and thus safer if she just took them off, but knew that the one thing they rendered sharply distinct was also the one thing she most needed to see coming. In these tight passageways, the slightest moment’s advantage could be decisive.
They knew where they were headed, Som having triangulated roughly where the prisoners had been while the sunbathers and the paparazzi played out their little tableau. However, there was a big difference between seeing a location on a plan and finding it in three dimensions, especially when the guards were used to the layout of the real thing.
They were, by mutual estimation, one deck below where they needed to be. Alexis paused at the foot of a staircase, a tightly raked helix that would bring the climber around to face the opposite direction upon reaching the level above. Somewhere beyond the vessel, the sound of rotor blades approached. Alexis held up a fist, meaning hold. Jane understood what she was waiting for: they both knew that at any moment there’d be a major commotion to say the very least, hopefully enough to provide sufficient distraction to anyone waiting upstairs.
Alexis made her move as the gunfire erupted from somewhere above, Nuno shooting through the open side door of the chopper with a tripod-mounted assault-rifle. If the guard on the flydeck got off any response, Jane didn’t hear it. She ascended gun-first up the stairwell, in front of which Alexis was now crouching, training her pistol back and forth. They were close to the front, at the axis where two corridors curved around to meet near the prow.
‘Hostile is down,’ Nuno reported. ‘Repeat, hostile on the flydeck is down. Clear to board, I am covering the stern platform.’
Jane’s head had barely emerged before she instinctively ducked it under again in response to Alexis opening fire. Alexis discharged short controlled bursts, a few rounds at a time, aiming down the corridor to the right. Keeping the gun trained with one hand, she gestured behind her back to Jane with the other.
‘Come on,’ she ordered, her voice an insistent hiss.
Jane resumed her climb but ducked briefly again when she fully cleared the stairhead and saw two white shapes somewhere ahead of her, one far larger than the other. Alexis was firing at the smaller, keeping him crouched somewhere around the curvature of the corridor where he was restricted to loosing off the odd blind shot; with no target to aim at, it was just noise. Each time the blob on the right moved forward, Alexis unleashed another couple of rounds. The blob on the left, thus being ignored, was, Jane realised, behind a wall, and according to her range-finder, twelve metres away to the smaller’s six.
‘Need a clip,’ Alexis warned.
Jane handed Alexis her full pistol in exchange for the empty, then ejected the spent magazine and quickly slid home a replacement. Alexis gave her an okay gesture with her free hand, then stabbed a finger three times in the direction of the left-hand corridor.
Jane got the message: she had this guy pinned down – go go go.
She proceeded slowly. As she followed the curved corridor around, she realised that from the apex at the stairhead she hadn’t been viewing the larger blob through one wall, but three: it was in a cabin abutting the ship’s outer hull. And as she progressed, reducing three walls to one, the target gradually clarified, expanded and changed shape until she could distinguish that it was in fact three people.
She walked as lightly as she could, now only a few metres away from the cabin. Through the wall, the figures were blurred: recognisably human-shaped but indistinguishable from each other. A very simple process of elimination told her who these three people were, but the life-or-death question remained: which was which?
Behind her, Alexis’s suppressing fire continued to ring out. So far she’d fired four rounds from the fresh pistol. That left six more before she’d need to reload, which would require her to fall back and let her opponent make a move. Jane edged forward until she was right outside the cabin, the three figures only feet in front of her through a thin partition wall. Two were standing, one seated, but there was nothing to identify the guard.
She raised her gun in both hands and breathed in deeply.
* * *
Guillaume stood by the wall nearest the door, his Glock clutched to his chest, Dad at the opposite end of the room, sitting on the bed. They were all utterly silent, utterly still. Guillaume had appeared briefly after the explosion, ordering them to remain in the cabin, then returned for keeps shortly after sounds of gunfire broke out: repeat rounds from the stern, full-auto volleys from above. They’d heard a helicopter too, preceding further, higher-calibre ordnance amid panicked radio signals and an increasingly sweaty look of anxiety on Guillaume’s face.
Ross hadn’t yet dared believe it was a rescue. Who could know what enemies these people had, what other nefarious shit they were up to their eyes in? Plus there was always the possibility that some motivated buyer had found out where the goods were stashed and decided to cut out the middle man. Whatever it was, his jailers were getting their arses kicked. They were armed, they were disciplined, they were trained, but they’d been blindsided, and now they were being outgunned. Airborne assault tended to skew the odds that way, and from the ongoing sound of chopper blades, the gunship didn’t have any imminent intention of leaving.
They’d heard Guillaume make his frantic call-outs, requesting check-in responses, getting fewer each time. Then the shooting had started just along the corridor, at which point he’d flipped the safety and put a finger to his lips. Guillaume said nothing, could say nothing, but the message was made clear by him briefly pointing the gun at Dad: either of you do anything to let them know we’re in here, and I’ll have nothing to lose by shooting him.
Outside in the corridor, the firing continued at irregular intervals; mostly nearby, with occasional replies from elsewhere on the same deck. He heard a slider being pulled, a round being chambered after reload, the sounds following almost immediately after the most recent brace of shots from the nearer gun. Ross could see in Guillaume’s face that the guard’s trained ears had made the same deduction as he had: the reload was too soon after the last shot to be the work of the same pair of hands, and they both knew it couldn’t be Guillaume’s colleague who had back-up. There was someone else out there, close by, free of the stand-off, moving, searching: if not for the prisoners then for any remaining guards.
Guillaume repeated the finger-to-lips gesture in the lull after the next exchange of fire.
Dad looked over, an expression of determination setting across his face. Ross read it: he was ready to defy, ready to take a bullet if it might save his son. Ross shook his head, eyes bulging in silent pleading: Don’t do this.
Guillaume read it too. He fixed Dad with a look of direst threat, then extended his arm full length to level the Glock at him.
Ross swallowed, shaking his head faster: Please, Dad, don’t do this.
Guillaume cocked the hammer, sweat trickling down his forehead. Dad’s nostrils flared, an unmistakable Fuck You, then his lips formed.
Please no, Ross wordlessly implored.
‘WE’RE HERE!’ Dad shouted, the words barely out before the first gunshot sounded.
Ross couldn’t close his eyes before the hammer fell. He witnessed Guillaume’s arm rear up as five bullets ripped through the walls and into his chest. Their jailer was knocked back like a reeling boxer, matter exploding from his body with each blow, then he fell backwards to the floor.
Dad was down too, howling ‘Ah, Jesus,’ as he clutched his right forearm, where Guillaume’s single erratic bullet had lodged.
The door flew open from a kick and a black-clad figure filled the frame: some futuristic cyber-soldier; black goggles around the eyes, stick-mike and earpiece wired to the mothership, wet black hair swept behind the night-scope, black Kevlar armour hugging the trunk, black rubber covering the skin from neck to toes. The figure stepped forward into the cabin, both hands extending a nine-mill, advancing to stand over Guillaume. The gun fired twice more, two to the head, end of.
Four more shots reported from the corridor, then ceased.
The figure turned to survey the prisoners, staring for what seemed an age.
‘Who …’ Ross began to ask, but was stopped by the figure – he now thought, surprisingly, that it might even be a woman – holding up a hand and hissing, ‘Shh’. He thought he heard a crackle of transmission in the earpiece, confirmed when she said: ‘All the way around. Roger. On it.’
She knelt rapidly and picked Guillaume’s gun from his dead fingers, then positioned herself in a crouch, looking towards the far end of the room as though there was someone standing there.
‘Get down,’ she told him. ‘Now.’
Ross didn’t argue. He dropped to the floor and watched her cross both weapons at her wrists, her gaze and her guns tracking along the wall like she could see through it. Then she opened fire again and he realised that this was because she was seeing through it. She directed ten or twelve rounds upwards through the partition in a mercilessly rapid syncopation: fingers gripping, hammers alternating, kickback compensated by the crouch and the cross-over. Somewhere amid the final shots of this salvo he heard a thump from beyond the wall. She paused, held her pose, guns still pointed but now silenced.
Ross was in awe. The men who’d held him had been the real deal, not some bunch of minimum-wage security guards with a Mussolini complex; but these guys, whoever they were, were something else entirely; and this woman, this cyber-assassin, was just the baddest of the bad.
‘Hostiles four and five eliminated,’ she reported. ‘Prisoners secure but Tom has been hit. Somboon, we need that boat here soon as.’
Her accent was Scottish, her voice just about the most reassuring sound he’d ever heard; reassuring, in fact, to the point of familiar, unnervingly so when she said Dad’s name. No. Slow down. Knowing names meant nothing. They’d have been briefed. His emotions were running away with him. He didn’t even know yet whether he could trust these people. But there was something about … no. Get it together, man.
She stood up again and turned to face the two of them.
‘It’s okay now, Ross, it’s over,’ she said. ‘Tom, are you all right? Is it just your arm?’
‘I’ll be fine as soon as I get off this …’ Dad’s reply petered out in confusion, perhaps down to his pain and disorientation, as surely he couldn’t be entertaining the same bizarre delusion that he knew that voice.
‘Who are you?’ Ross asked, his register falling to a bewildered whisper. ‘Why are you here?’
She seemed to start at this, as though surprised by what he considered the most natural questions he could possibly have asked at that moment. Then she muttered ‘Oh, the mask,’ and took off her goggles, at which point very little in Ross’s world continued to make much sense. For a horrible moment he thought this meant he was about to wake up in the same cabin and find himself still a prisoner, but the smell of cordite and the thumping in his chest were unmistakably real.
‘You were out playing past your bedtime, son,’ his mum said, tears in her eyes. ‘I had to come and get you.’