Survival (21 page)

The other men in the control tower spun round to
look at him. “Sir?” one of them muttered, using English
even though he hardly spoke a word. Whatever
language his boss addressed them in, that’s what he
would use, if he could.

Stovorsky shook his head, embarrassed at his
outburst. Then came a crackle through the radio.

“This is Hawk 7,” came the voice of one of the pilots
in French. “We have a clear shot on the target and are
ready to deploy again.”

Stovorsky jumped to his feet. It could end now. But
the pilot knew his orders – why didn’t he just fire? At the
same time, Stovorsky could hear words pounding
through his head –
two more children
.

The pilot continued his transmission: “Target is
implanting something into his second rocket. It appears
to be a number of glowing rocks. Possibly a radioactive
substance. Please advise.”

The radio crackle stopped and left silence in the
control tower. The three controllers looked to Stovorsky
for a response. Stovorsky was motionless.

“How did he…” he muttered. “He must have…
somehow…”

“What is it, sir?” asked one of the engineers. “Should
they shoot him down?”

Stovorsky was shocked out of his thoughts. “
Non!
”
he shouted. “
Non!
” He pushed the engineers aside and
bellowed into a microphone in French: “Pull back! Do not
fire!” Sweat dribbled down his neck. “Repeat: abort
operation! Return immediately and DO NOT FIRE!”

“Understood,” came the response.

Stovorsky slumped back into his seat.

“But he’ll make it to England,” protested one of the
flight controllers.

“The boy is loading radioactive material into a rocket,”
Stovorsky explained.

There was a slight pause, but then the controller
pressed his point. “It might still be safer to shoot him
down. It takes very precise equipment and delicate
engineering to cause any kind of nuclear reaction. Even
with highly unstable materials…”

Stovorsky cut him off. “This boy isn’t… normal!” He
clutched his head in his hands. “Who knows what he
can or can’t do?”

“But what about Zafi? The Brits will work out she’s
still alive. She’ll—”

“So be it.” Stovorsky stormed to the door. “I’m not
NJ7,” he announced, his head hanging low. “I’m done
killing for today.” He was about to leave, but paused in
the doorway. He glanced back over his shoulder at the
portrait above the computers. “Better tell Zafi to get
herself into hiding.”

He left without waiting for a response.

Helen, Felix and Georgie hurried up St Pancras Road.
The street was packed with people, some rushing
towards the commotion to see what was going on,
others running away.

That’s when they heard the shot.

Georgie and Felix stopped dead.

“What was that?” Georgie gasped.

“Come on,” Helen urged them. “We’ve got to move.”

“Was that a gun?” asked Felix.

The three of them looked at each other, the fear
bouncing between them. Then they heard shouts from
the station. At first they were hard to make out, but a
woman rushed past them and her scream was clear:
“They shot him!”

“NO!” Felix yelled.

His senses swirled and seemed to swallow each
other. He was hardly aware of anything happening
around him, except Georgie crying, his feet running
on the pavement and Helen pulling him up the street.

At last they ducked into the shadows of the railway
bridge behind the terminal building. Through his tears,
Felix saw Georgie slump against the wall. Helen knelt
down and held her, reaching out for Felix to join them.

“Don’t worry,” she said, barely holding back her own
tears. “We don’t know for sure.”

“But what if he’s…” Felix was stunned into silence.
A woman’s silhouette appeared in the arch of the
bridge. Felix crept towards it, unable to believe his eyes.

“Saffron!” he gasped.

Helen and Georgie’s heads snapped round to look
and Saffron Walden stepped forward into the light. Her
arm was still in a sling, but otherwise she looked strong
and stood tall, in a long black coat.

“Saffron!” Helen exclaimed. “Are you OK?”

Felix rushed towards Saffron, but froze half a metre
away. Her coat flapped open in the breeze and Felix
caught a glimpse of metal: the long metal neck of a rifle.

“You…” he said, barely able to get the words out.
“You shot Chris?”

Saffron beamed at him. “Don’t worry,” she said
softly. “He might recover.”

“What?” snapped Helen, jumping up to stand with Felix.
“Saffron? It was you?” Before she could even ask why,
there was a footstep behind them. They spun round and
Felix thought his head was going to explode with confusion.

Standing there, rubbing his neck and slightly out of
breath, was Christopher Viggo. When he saw Felix’s
expression, Viggo let out a raw laugh. Felix did too, but
with shock as well as happiness.

“You cut that pretty fine, didn’t you?” Viggo called out
to Saffron, “If I’d climbed any higher I could have broken
my neck in the fall.”

“Sorry.” Saffron replied. “A little warning about what
you were going to do would have been nice. I’m a little
out of shape.” She lifted her sling slightly.

“You don’t look it,” muttered Helen, wiping her
cheeks. “You both look wonderful.” She didn’t know who
to hug first, and in the end Felix got squashed in the
middle of a clinging huddle.

“So good to see you,” Helen whispered.

“Good to see you too,” Saffron and Viggo replied at
the same time.

“You don’t have to shoot so close to me next time,”
Viggo added, pointing a finger at Saffron.

“Next time?” Saffron let out a derisive laugh. “If you
even think about doing anything like that again I’ll aim
right between your eyes.”

“So what happens when they look for your body?”
Georgie asked, brushing the mud from the back of her
trousers.

“I expect they’ve already searched the roof where I
landed,” replied Viggo, wiping a slow trickle of blood
from his nose. “And they’ll know it wasn’t a police
rifleman that shot me.”

“That shot
near
you,” Felix corrected him.

“Come on,” Viggo declared, with a reluctant chuckle. “It
means we can’t stay here.” He led them all up the street.

“Where are we going?” asked Felix

“Don’t worry,” replied Viggo. “I know a place. Now,
what’s all this about you getting blown up?”

“Oh, it was so cool, right. I was sitting there and I felt
a bit hungry…”

Felix’s reply lasted, uninterrupted, until they were well
away from King’s Cross, fading into the London night.

The two French fighter jets seemed to drop out of the
sky. In reality, they dipped and turned, disappearing into
a bank of thick fog, then wheeled round to return to
Paris. Marla and Jimmy exchanged a smile, but Jimmy
didn’t feel any triumph.

“What are you going to do?” Marla asked quietly.

Jimmy couldn’t hear her because he hadn’t put his
helmet back on, but he knew what she was asking.

“We have to deal with it,” she went on, shouting this
time. “We cannot go near any other people until we
have. We have to destroy it or bury it or something…
What are you going to do?”

Jimmy’s breath caught in his throat. He felt like the
black fog outside the chopper was invading his body,
creeping through him and spreading darkness. Destroy
– the word fuelled Jimmy’s anger. He knew the actinium
couldn’t be destroyed and at the same time he pictured
the obliteration it could cause. He could still feel the
heat of the stones… the burning of the explosion at the
oil rig… the thundering annihilation of Mutam-ul-it…

Destroy
.

His arm reached out suddenly for the rocket switches.

“No!” Marla gasped. She caught his hand in hers.

The touch seemed to shimmer through Jimmy’s
body. It felt soft – too soft for the situation. Jimmy could
feel a frost in his chest melting. “It won’t detonate,” he
rasped. “I removed the charge. If we get low enough we
can fire it into the seabed. The rocket will bury itself.”

He heard the words and knew they made sense, but
at the same time he realised that’s not why his fingers
had darted to the rocket switch a second before.

“I will not let you,” Marla insisted. She reached for
the parachute fastened to the back of her seat and
strapped it over her shoulders.

“What are you doing?” Jimmy asked in wonder.

“Go to England, Jimmy. Find your family. I am going
to take those rocks away. Far away.”

“But where? What will you do with them?”

“I do not know.” Marla clambered over Jimmy, to the
side of the chopper which still held the remaining
rocket. The hair that hung below her helmet brushed
against Jimmy’s face. Her closeness took Jimmy by
surprise. He wished it could last longer. Then he caught
sight of raw, red burns on the back of her neck.

“Perhaps I bury it,” she went on, “like you should
have.” She held herself on the edge of the cockpit, then
carefully climbed out, along the missile arm, just as
Jimmy had done. Her legs swung beneath her,
floundering in the wind.

But before she could go very far, Jimmy reached out
and grabbed her shoulder. “They’ve killed you,” he
shouted. “Don’t you want to—”

Marla shook her head. “Not yet, Jimmy,” she smiled.
“They have not killed me yet.”

“But we’re both poisoned. We’re going to…” Fear
hurtled through Jimmy’s bones. He felt the back of his
neck, searching for burns. His body was shaking and his
lip trembled.

“If I die,” said Marla, “I will die for a cause. You did
that for me, Jimmy.” Her huge brown eyes glimmered
in the lights of the helicopter. They seemed to expand to
swallow Jimmy up. He wished he could stare into them
forever. “You made sure that I will not die for nothing,”
Marla went on. “You destroyed Mutam-ul-it and now my
people can rebuild for themselves. France and Britain
will not control us any more.”

Jimmy opened his mouth to protest, but nothing
came out. The cold air blasting into the chopper
seemed to cut through to his heart.
Don’t go
, he
wanted to scream.
Save me
.

Marla pulled herself further out, hand over hand,
then looked back one more time to see the panic in
Jimmy’s eyes. “Do not waste what you have,” she
shouted, her words almost smothered by the constant
storm of noise. “Live or die for a cause, Jimmy.”

Jimmy dropped to the floor of the cockpit. He
searched for some kind of emotion inside him, but there
was nothing. He felt completely hollow and it was
terrifying. He couldn’t even cry.

After a few seconds, Marla was hanging not from
the chopper, but from the missile itself. Jimmy let his
hands move about the controls, hardly aware of what
he was doing. His movements were detached from his
brain. Then, without firing it, the claws of the helicopter
let go of its remaining rocket.

Jimmy looked across in time to see Marla fall with
the missile. She plummeted from the helicopter,
embracing the rocket with her arms crossed over her
chest. Just as the canopy of the parachute burst open,
she disappeared into the fog.

“Good luck, Marla,” Jimmy whispered.

The beach at Hastings was dark and deserted. The
wind ripped across the sand leaving scars that became
rivulets when the sea rushed in up the slope. A hundred
metres away from the water, the beach front parade of
restaurants was also quiet. Only a few elderly couples
braved the evening drizzle, stabbing at soggy fish and
chips with pointed wooden spatulas.

But then a rumble cut through the wail of the wind.
One couple stopped and huddled at a bus stop,
scanning the sky.

“It’s nothing,” grumbled the man, stuffing another
chip into his mouth.

“No,” replied his wife. “Look.”

The husband held his cap down on top of his head
and craned his neck… listening… watching. There was
a steady
chop-
chop
-
chop
and it was growing louder.
Then out of the black clouds came a dot of light. The
noise increased to become an insistent drone. Another
couple joined the first at the bus stop. Then a gaggle of
teenagers appeared and stood nearby, in the rain.

Gradually the light emerged from the fog and took on
a shape. The rotors of a helicopter blasted away the
cloud, sinking closer and closer.

“Let’s go,” growled one of the old men to his wife.
“It’s just a footballer.”

His wife grabbed his arm. Her fish and chips fell to
the pavement with a greasy splat. Everybody clung to
their coats and hats. They squinted against the shower
of sand being blown up by the rotors. The chopper
touched down delicately on the beach.

By now there was a larger crowd – perhaps fifty
people. Certainly more than the restaurant owners had
seen on the street any evening for several months, so
they too came out to see what was going on.

“That’s not a footballer,” gasped the old lady.

A ripple of confusion went through the crowd. They
spilled out from under the shelter now, not caring about
the rain, too absorbed in the sight in front of them.
Marching up the beach, in a ripped tracksuit, his face
partly obscured by grime, was a boy who didn’t look
much older than twelve.

As he approached, a murmur began. His eyes were
fixed on the people in the crowd and his jaw was held
high. Still several metres away, he wiped some of the
grease from his cheeks with the back of his sleeve. The
determination in his eyes seemed to light up the beach.

There was a gasp in the crowd. “It’s that boy off the
news!” shouted the first old lady. “The one who killed the
Prime Minister!”

The people edged back, but the boy kept advancing
up the beach. The murmur of the crowd grew.

“She’s right, it’s him,” said one man.

“That face – I saw it on the TV too,” cried another.
“A killer, they said.”

“But… they said he was dead.”

Suddenly the boy’s face seemed to darken and he
stopped. “Do I look dead to you?” he shouted.

“No, but… but…”

The crowd edged back, terrified but mesmerised at
the same time. The boy took a deep breath and the
people fell silent. “Look at my face,” he ordered. “Phone
everybody you know and tell them you’ve seen me.” His
voice trembled with fire. “Tell everybody you meet. Tell
them I’m alive. And tell them that before I die, there are
going to be changes.”

Now he turned and sprinted back to the helicopter.
The crowd was so stunned they couldn’t move before
the boy was back in the cockpit. The rotors zoomed into
action. The Tiger skimmed across the sand, straight
towards the crowd. It lifted at the last instant, almost
knocking the cap from the old man’s head.

As it sailed past the tops of the people’s heads,
Jimmy Coates leaned out of the cockpit and roared,
“Tell them I’m back.”