A hand fell on Peter Schuler’s shoulder, and he jumped. But it was only Franck, his big, gentle face staring at Peter’s, his gun lowered at his side.
“You need to see this, boss,” said the head wrangler, jerking a thumb towards the road.
The four men gathered at the edge of the tarmac, looking down at their feet. The last of the prints were etched neatly into the snow, alongside the tracks of a set of heavy-duty winter tyres.
A truck. Four-wheel drive. Probably a pick-up, like the one in the barn at home.
The tracks formed a shallow semi-circle where the driver had brought his vehicle to a halt at the side of the road, before accelerating back on to the highway. There were no more footprints, in any direction.
“I’ll ring Karl,” said Lars. “He can bring the truck up here. We can follow it.”
Peter shook his head. “No,” he replied. “It’s gone. Whatever it was, it’s gone. Ring Karl, and tell him to come and pick us up. I’ll call Kurt later and tell him what happened. Let’s go home.”
An hour to the south, a battered red pick-up truck chugged steadily along the motorway. The driver, a round, red-faced man in a heavy woollen jacket and an ancient deerstalker hat, watched the road ahead of him, a short cigar clamped between his teeth. On the passenger seat beside him sat a plastic flask of coffee laced with cherry brandy, from which he was taking regular sips.
Behind him, in the truck’s flatbed, shivering beneath the pile of animal hides that the driver was taking south to market, his sleeping face a mask of contorted misery and confusion, lay Frankenstein’s monster.
Jamie was about to open the door to his quarters when he felt the console on his belt beep three times, signalling a message that had been unread for more than thirty minutes.
His mind was reeling with everything he had just seen, everything he had just been told, and he was struggling to understand the implications of it.
I can’t believe I got to see that,
he thought.
I can’t believe Talbot let me. It’s amazing.
Jamie had turned off the beeper during the Zero Hour Task Force meeting, left it off during the unbelievable, mind-bending twenty minutes that followed it, twenty minutes that he knew he could never tell anyone about, not even Larissa, and had only just switched it back on. He pulled it free of its loop, swearing loudly in the empty corridor, and read the short line of text that had appeared on the screen.
G-17/OP_EXT_L2/LIVE_BRIEFING/BR2/1130
The Department 19 shorthand had become second nature.
The first set of letters and numbers was the designation of his squad, G-17, and the second told him that they had been given an
external operation with a Level 2 priority. The third was self-explanatory, that there would be a live briefing rather than data supplied to them once they were already on the move, the fourth was the location of the briefing, in this case Briefing Room 2, and the final set of numbers were the time that the briefing would begin. Jamie checked his watch, and saw that it was 11:28. He swore, then ran back down the corridor towards the silver doors of the Level B lift.
On Level 0 he piled out of the lift and ran along the corridor that served as the level’s central thoroughfare. On one side, accessible by the heavy yellow and black striped doors that stood at regular intervals, was the huge hangar that served as the embarkation point for all Blacklight operations. On the opposite side of the corridor, filling the other half of the huge circular level, were the suites of offices and rooms that comprised the Department’s Communications and Surveillance Divisions.
The Ops Room, where Jamie had just been, sat in the middle of the corridor, and therefore at the centre of Level 0. Beyond it, along a series of semi-circular corridors, like the layers of an onion, stood offices, server farms and inventories, accessible by security-coded doors set into the long wall.
Jamie pressed his ID against the sensor beside one of the doors marked BRIEFING ROOMS, pulled it open and raced down the corridor. He skidded to a halt outside the door to Briefing Room 2 and walked through it, as calmly as he was able.
The room was a curved box, much like a classroom. At one end, to the right as Jamie entered, beneath a high-definition screen that filled most of the wall, stood a lectern, from where the briefings were given. Jamie looked immediately in its direction, and felt his heart sink.
Standing behind the lectern was Major Paul Turner.
Great,
thought Jamie.
That’s just great. He knows I was in the Zero Hour meeting, and he knows I can’t say so in front of the rest of them.
Then a smile threatened to rise on his face.
He doesn’t know where I went afterwards, though.
“Good of you to join us, Mr Carpenter,” said Turner, staring at him. “I hope we haven’t interrupted whatever you were doing. I’ve no doubt it was extremely important.”
You’ve no idea,
thought Jamie.
No idea at all.
There was a giggle from his left, and he felt his face flush with heat. He turned to see who had laughed; it had not been Kate or Larissa, and they were the only other people he was expecting to see in the room. But he immediately saw that he had assumed wrongly; five faces were staring at him, not two.
Sitting at one desk were Kate and Larissa, the former regarding him with a stern look, the latter with a mischievous little smile. Two desks away, a distance that was clearly deliberate, sat three more Operators, two of whom Jamie recognised immediately; the third was a girl in her early twenties whom he had heard a lot about, but had never met. She was smiling widely at him; it had clearly been her who had laughed.
The three Operators made up Operational Squad F-7, commanded by Lieutenant Jack Williams. Jamie’s friend smiled at him from across the room, and Jamie returned it with an uncertain one of his own.
What the hell are you three doing here?
he wondered.
Sitting beside Jack, Shaun Turner’s face regarded Jamie with wide grey eyes that were as expressionless as his father’s. He was tall, taller than Jamie or Jack, and broad, the naturally powerful figure of a rugby player. He sat easily in his chair, waiting for Jamie to say something.
The girl, who Jamie knew from Jack’s fervent, fluttery descriptions was called Angela Darcy, was still smiling at him, and as he looked at her, actually
looked
at her, he was struck by how remarkably attractive she was. Her blonde hair was darker than Kate’s, almost a golden colour, and her face was sharp and angular, drawn in straight lines by a hugely talented artist. He knew from Jack that she had been an SIS agent, recruited out of Oxford in her first year, and had served with distinction in some of the most unstable and dangerous backwaters of the globe. She apparently spoke at least six languages, and was an expert in the art of wetwork – assassinations and state-sanctioned murders carried out at such close range that it was impossible to avoid being covered with the blood of the target.
Jamie was pretty sure that Jack was at least a little bit in love with her; he was absolutely sure that he was scared of her. But her smile was wide, and friendly, and Jamie was glad it was her laughter that had made him blush; he was sure that her smile would have had the same effect, and would have been a lot more difficult to explain to Larissa.
Behind him, someone cleared their throat, and he realised he hadn’t answered Major Turner. He looked back to the front of the room, and saw the former SAS officer staring at him with an unnervingly patient expression.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he lied. “Something came up on the lower levels. It won’t happen again, sir.”
“I find that difficult to believe,” replied Turner. “But I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it. Sit down, Carpenter.”
Jamie walked sheepishly over to the table where Larissa and Kate were sitting, pulled a chair out and flopped into it between them. As Paul Turner set the pages of his briefing on the lectern, Jamie
cast a glance at Angela, who favoured him with a sympathetic smile. He smiled back, then returned his attention to the front of the room, his blood boiling at the unfairness of it all.
“Operators,” said Major Turner. “This is OPERATION: PROMISED LAND, a two-squad reconnaissance and elimination mission. It’s relatively straightforward, but please try and concentrate. I’d rather not have to keep stopping to answer stupid questions. Clear? Good.”
Turner pressed a button on the portable console in his hand, and the wall screen above his head burst into life. It showed a satellite image of a large container ship; the tiny swells of white water at her aft showed the Operators that the ship was in motion.
“This,” continued Turner, “is the
Aristeia
. She’s a Panamax-class freighter, two hundred and twenty-eight metres long, thirty-two metres wide, able to carry three thousand standard freight containers. She’s Greek-built, flying the Bahamian flag.”
“If she can carry three thousand containers,” said Angela, “why does it look like she’s carrying about fifty?”
Turner favoured her with what passed for a smile, and tapped his console. The image magnified until the ship filled the screen.
“You’re correct,” he said. “She’s carrying sixty-eight containers on a deck built for forty-four times that many. She departed from Shanghai eighteen days ago; those containers would need to be filled with diamonds to cover the cost of the fuel it’s taken to get her where she is now.”
“Where’s that?” asked Larissa.
“About eighty miles off the north-east coast,” replied Turner. “Her heading puts her destination as the entrance to the River Tyne, where she’ll arrive in roughly seven hours.”
“What does this have to do with us?” asked Shaun Turner.
“There has been only a single radio contact with the
Aristeia
since she left port,” replied Major Turner. “When she passed through the Suez Canal. Before and since, nothing. She spent the last week making her way through the Mediterranean, and all attempts to contact her, by the Italians, the Spanish and the Portuguese, have failed.”
“Pirates?” asked Kate.
Angela snorted, and Larissa fired a stare full of razor blades in her direction.
“No,” replied Major Turner. “Or at least, we don’t think so. There’s never been an instance of a pirated vessel being taken voluntarily through the Med, or through the Canal. If she’d been boarded, we’d expect the pirates to have taken her to the coast of Somalia, where they could moor her and make their demands. This ship had to go
through
Somali waters to get to Suez.”
“Terrorists?” suggested Jack Williams. “Could it be carrying a bomb?”
“Satellite spectro-analysis says not. Also, why would you use a ship like this to make an attack? They’d know we could sink her in the middle of the ocean. Cargo freighters are not renowned for their manoeuvrability.”
“So what is it then?” asked Jamie, sharply. He was getting bored with playing guessing games.
Paul Turner gave him a look full of warning, then continued.
“The Surveillance Division monitored the attempts to contact her, and when she entered UK waters, we put a satellite over her. Here’s the infrared.”
The image on the screen blurred out, then sharpened into a bright rainbow of colours. The frigid water surrounding the ship was a blue so dark it was almost black, the hull and deck of the
Aristeia
a pale shade of aquamarine. A thick bloom of red glowed at the rear of the ship, where the huge diesel engines were producing the power that pushed the enormous freighter through the water. The rectangular containers on the ship’s cargo deck glowed a pale orange, and were studded with small blobs of yellow which, the watching Operators realised, were moving around inside the boxes.
“Jesus,” said Jack Williams. “There must be two hundred people in those containers.”
“Two hundred and twenty-seven,” confirmed Major Turner. “Look at the bridge.”
The huge crescent-shaped bridge, which towered almost four storeys above the surface of the deck, was pale yellow. The heat was emanating from seven points of light that were almost white, such was the heat they were giving out.
“Vamps,” said Shaun Turner, matter-of-factly. “Seven vamps, and two hundred humans. What the hell is this ship?”
“It’s not a ship,” said Angela. “It’s a prison. A floating prison.”
“What do you mean?” asked Larissa, frowning. “What are they being imprisoned for?”
“So they can be delivered to whoever paid for them,” said Angela. “I’ve seen it before, but never on this scale. It’s like the snakehead gangs bringing workers out of the Far East. They get them as far as the Med, then use trucks the rest of the way. Someone is waiting for this ship in the north, I can guarantee you. Someone waiting for the cargo they ordered.”
Larissa looked at Paul Turner, who nodded.
“Operator Darcy is correct,” he said. “Our understanding is that the men and women on this ship are to be delivered into vampire hands as soon as the ship docks. What is planned for them after
that, we don’t know. But given that the oldest vampire in the world, who is currently unaccounted for, is most likely in a condition that requires a regular supply of blood, we thought it might be worth looking into. Don’t you agree?”
“You think those people are being shipped to wherever Valeri and Dracula are hiding?” asked Kate.
“We think it’s possible.”
“What do you want us to do?” asked Jamie, his voice firm.
Larissa looked over at him, saw the set of his jaw, the calm in his blue eyes, and felt her stomach flip. She was incredibly proud of him, and as attracted to him in that moment as she had ever been. A low growl emerged from her throat, barely audible to anyone except Jamie, who was sitting beside her. He turned to her, and a flicker of red spilled into the corners of her eyes, so quickly that only he could have possibly seen it. He grinned; he knew very well what it meant.
Maybe we won’t have to leave right away
, he thought, hopefully.
Maybe we’ll get to wait until after dark.
The thought of the long hours of remaining daylight, and what they might contain, widened his grin. He dragged his gaze away from Larissa, and tried to focus once more on Paul Turner’s briefing.
“You leave immediately,” said the Major, and Jamie’s heart sank. “We surveyed the area, and the only place anyone could illegally dock a ship that size is the old Swan Hunter shipyard at Wallsend. We’re having the surrounding yards closed as we speak, and the coastguard has been given orders to allow the ship to enter the river. I want you to take up surveillance positions before nightfall, then intercept the ship when it docks. The first priority is to find out where these people were being taken, and why. The second is
the captives themselves. The new SOP does not apply on this operation. Is that understood?”
We don’t have to capture the vamps
, realised Jamie, and felt a savage wave of pleasure flood through him.
We can destroy them.
“Yes, sir,” he answered, and a second later Jack Williams said the same.
“Good,” said Major Turner. “Now. There are more than two hundred men and women on that ship, all of whom are going to be weak, and probably terrified. So you’re going to need to manage the situation; if they panic, which they probably will, if they start running across your lines of fire, make them get down. The collateral loss limit for this mission is nine. Is that clear?”
“It’s not clear to me,” said Jamie, although he had a horrible idea that it was.
I hope I’m wrong,
he thought.
I really do.