‘We’re going on a short ride,’ he said. ‘I don’t wanna hear a word from you, understood?’
Lou and Kate sat, mute.
‘Understood?’
They both nodded. The driver put the car in gear and pulled back onto the highway followed closely by the cop car, its flashers off.
Kate felt for Lou’s hand across the seat, found it and squeezed tight. He gave her a quick reassuring glance; the bald cop appeared not to notice, just kept the gun
trained on them.
They drove Kate’s car extremely fast down the Interstate, the cop car close behind. They skirted Inglenook Park on the left, then, a little further on to the right, they shot past a sign
to Southern Shopping Center. Kate and Lou knew it well, they had only been there a couple of days before leaving on their trip. A few miles on, they took a left off the highway and joined a
two-lane road heading west. The rain was heavier now, slamming against the windscreen, gushing under the car as they sped along.
They took another left then a hard right onto a country lane, the car bumping along over the uneven surface, slamming through the puddles, muddy water pluming its flanks, tyres struggling to
find purchase. It was dark out here, no street lights, the only illumination coming from the headlights of the two cars and the moon full against the inky black. All they could see were the shapes
of trees and occasionally scuffed and rain-drenched metal barriers either side of the road.
Finally, the car began to slow and drew to a halt. The police car pulled up immediately behind them. Tessellated shadows fell across the face of the bald cop with the gun. He hadn’t
uttered a word since warning them to stay quiet back on the highway.
The lights of the cop car behind flicked. A few moments later Kate’s door was wrenched open and the third man, plain-clothed in jeans and a scruffy leather jacket, cigarette dangling from
his lips, stood on the dark road. He had a gun in his left hand and flicked it to indicate that Kate and Lou should get out.
They had stopped on a driveway, the shape of a large dilapidated building just visible to their right. The rain stung like ice on their faces and soaked through their clothes in a few moments.
Lou felt a hand shove him from behind, and he and Kate were frogmarched towards the old building.
It was a disused warehouse. One of the walls had collapsed completely, a pile of soaked, crumbling bricks was all that remained of it. The other three walls held shattered windows, part of the
roof yawned open to the leaden cloud-heavy sky. The place stank of diesel. There were oily puddles on the cracked concrete floor. One wall of the warehouse was lined with rusting oil drums.
A small section of the building remained relatively intact, with a boxy office at the top of a flight of metal stairs. One of the men stayed back with the cars, the other two guided them to the
foot of the stairs. The blond one took the lead, the other to one side. The door to the office ahead of them swung open and a raw white light spilled out. Kate and Lou were ushered up the
stairs.
‘Welcome,’ said a dark-haired man in a black tracksuit. He ushered them into the office. Lou and Kate stood bedraggled, water pooling on the floor. The bald cop covered them with his
revolver.
‘What exactly is this all about?’ Lou said, surprising himself with how remarkably calm his voice sounded.
The man looked from Lou to Kate and back, then indicated to the cop that he should lower the gun. A little surprised for a second, the man complied.
‘Who are you?’ Kate hissed.
‘Well, to answer the pretty lady’s question first. My name isn’t important. Call me . . . oh, I dunno . . . Pete. Yeah, that’ll do.’ He turned to Lou. ‘This
is all about a certain something you have, and we want, bud. Blank looks . . . oh very good. Your best poker faces! Let me fill you in. The two of you – newlyweds, I hear, how lovely,
I’m a great believer in the institution of marriage – the two of you have just returned from a charter boat anchored close to Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean, yeah? There, you
happened to find Amelia Earhart’s long-lost aircraft. And you discovered something else.’
There was a sound behind them at the door to the office. The man in plain clothes who had driven the cop car kept the door open with his foot and struggled through the opening with Kate and
Lou’s suitcases, one in each hand. The blond guy helped him and they laid them on the floor close to a metal desk.
‘There are two more boxes,’ the plain-clothes guy said. ‘The small one’s a sample box or something. Left them at the foot of the stairs.’ The blond cop headed
through the door. A moment later he was back with Kate’s shoulder bag and camera bag, Lou’s briefcase and the two metal boxes.
The man calling himself Pete leant on the desk, keeping his eyes on Lou and Kate. The bald man levelled his gun.
‘Open them.’
Kate found the keys in her pocket and crouched down to unlatch first one case then the other. Lifting back the lids, she stepped away. The guy in the leather jacket and jeans began disgorging
the contents of the cases, tossing clothes aside, searching roughly along the bottom of the cases before yanking open the pockets inside the lids. Finding nothing, he picked up one case, flipped it
over, and shook it before turning his attention to the other.
‘Nothing.’
Pete kicked the large metal box with the toe of his shoe and nodded to the two bags beside it. ‘Get these open.’ He turned to the blond cop. ‘Go check the car. Take it apart, I
want that fucking artefact.’ He glared at Kate and Lou. ‘It would be much easier if you just told me where the fuck it is.’
Lou shrugged. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Pete nodded almost imperceptibly to the bald cop with the gun. He stepped forward, swung his arm and smashed the butt into Lou’s jaw. Lou groaned and collapsed to the floor. Kate screamed
and grasped his hand as Pete grabbed her arm.
‘No!’ He spun Kate round, her face inches from his. ‘Now, where is it?’
They all heard the noise from the floor of the warehouse. It sounded like a muffled yelp followed by the clang of metal.
Lou was getting up, the side of his face reddening, a line of blood running down to the collar of his shirt. ‘Leave her . . .’
The bald cop went to hit Lou again, but Pete stopped him with a wave of the hand. ‘Sssh . . . What’s that?’
They all gave him blank looks.
‘All right, tie them.’
The plain-clothes guy pulled a couple of lengths of cord from the pocket of his leather jacket. Pete crouched down beside the bags and the boxes. Undoing the small bags, he tipped out the
contents, rummaged through the side pockets, found nothing. He tried to unlatch the larger box, but like the cases, it was locked. Reaching into his tracksuit jacket, he pulled out a pistol,
brought it down heavily on the lock. It didn’t give way. He stepped back, fired a single round at the box and the lock gave, the boom of gunfire reverberating around the office.
He eased back the lid. The box was quite empty. He stood, breathing heavily, hands on his hips. Shaking his head, he turned to Kate and Lou, who had been forced to sit with their backs to a wall
furthest from the door of the office, their hands tied behind them. Stepping across the office, Pete stretched his neck; the muscles around his jaw twitched.
The blast shook the office.
Three of the windows shattered, the glass spraying the floor. The light, swinging on its cable, flickered off, then on again.
Pete stumbled and managed to grab the edge of the desk. The plain-clothes guy was not so lucky; flying across the room, his head hit the wall near the door.
Pete glared at the bald guy. ‘What the fuck was—?’
A second explosion ripped through the warehouse and a jet of flame shot past the entrance to the office at the top of the stairs. Pete didn’t wait a moment, darted for the door, surveyed
the warehouse floor and was dashing down the metal stairs. The bald cop spun round and followed him, grabbing the stair railing.
Three heavily armed men in black body armour, faces obscured by balaclavas and night goggles ran across the floor of the warehouse towards the bottom of the stairs.
The area was engulfed by flames. Towards the far end of the warehouse, oil drums were ablaze. The bald cop only made it to the third step.
‘Stop. Drop the gun,’ one of the assault team shouted.
The cop ignored him and peeled off a couple of rounds before he was ripped apart by a shower of machine-gun bullets.
Kate and Lou struggled to pull themselves up, but with their hands tied behind their backs it was almost impossible.
‘Help!’ Kate yelled and struggled to stand. They could see sparks and orange dust in the air beyond the windows and caught a glimpse of the flames. The air hung heavy with the stench
of burning oil. They heard shouts, gunfire, a heavy object tumbling down the metal stairs. Then came the thump of boots on the rungs.
Two men dressed in SWAT gear crashed into the room. The lead figure held a Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine gun at waist level, his partner swung a Remington ACR assault rifle one-eighty.
Kate pulled herself in close to Lou. The unconscious plain-clothes guy begun to stir and get up off the floor. A third member of the assault team stormed through the door into the office, saw
the man staring at him and swung round his gun, the barrel pointed at the middle of the man’s forehead.
‘Down!’ yelled the leading SWAT officer, his voice muffled. The man put up his hands, sprawling on his front like an insect. Lowering his machine gun, the team leader stepped
over.
‘I’m here to help you.’ He gripped Lou by the upper arm and pulled him to his feet before turning his attention to Kate. The man’s partner nonchalantly pushed the
Remington across his back, glanced quickly at the third man now covering the door and pulled a black folding knife from a pouch on his belt. Crouching beside Kate, he sliced the cord around her
wrists before turning to Lou.
‘Who are . . .?’ Kate started to ask.
‘Let’s get you out.’ The man turned as his colleague dragged the plain-clothes guy to his feet and pushed him hard through the door.
Down on the warehouse floor, flames flickered along the walls, a sheet of burning oil spread from the stairs to the rear doors. As they reached the bottom of the staircase, a third explosion
thundered through the shattered building, propelling Kate and Lou to the floor. Kate cried as a searing pain shot up her arms.
‘Get up . . .’ the commander of the team said urgently.
The air was being sucked out of the building. Lou and Kate felt the breath squeezed from their lungs, the backs of their throats so raw they couldn’t swallow.
Kate was aware of being pulled to her feet by someone and caught a glimpse of Lou rolling on the floor, his face black with ash. The left leg of his trousers was alight. She went to cry out, but
no sound came from her mouth and Lou disappeared from view.
Lou felt something heavy and rough-edged slamming against his leg and he almost gagged when he saw his clothes were alight. He dragged himself up and stumbled forward, felt his knees give way
and started to fall again. Strong arms caught him just in time, an arm around his shoulders, guiding him to the left then the right, around a stack of rusted oil drums. He glimpsed a patch of
black; the night beyond the warehouse, a place where the air was clear and clean and chill and wet. He felt as though he had to get there at any cost, as quickly as he possibly could. That simple
patch of sky and the cold wet seemed to him like a distant heaven waiting for him. With a final burst of energy, he shoved aside the pain and the terror and stumbled into the open air.
‘Oh my God,’ Kate exclaimed, stumbling over into a patch of grass and weeds. She was shaking, a foul taste in her mouth, and all around – hanging thickly
– the cloying stench of burning oil.
For a moment she couldn’t make out the moving shapes around her. She caught a glimpse of Lou not far away; he was getting to his feet unsteadily. She stood up, took one pace, felt a hand
on her shoulder and spun round.
‘Kate.’
In the dark she couldn’t tell who it was, just an outline of a man. A beam of light from a torch carried by one of the others cut through the night and for a second she saw a large figure
dressed in black. Her eyes adjusted. The man was six-three with broad shoulders. He was pulling off the SWAT balaclava to reveal a head of damp blond curls, a broad face, prominent cheekbones,
large brown eyes. There were black rings of soot around his eye sockets, but Kate recognized him instantly.
‘I don’t believe . . . !’
The man smiled, almost comically, white teeth against the soot and the black uniform.
‘The strangest things happen, Kate Wetherall.’
Kate broke into a smile and fell into the man’s arms, clutching him around the waist. ‘Adam . . . It really is you . . . What the hell . . .?’ She pulled away and held his
forearms. He made her feel tiny.
‘What the hell am I doing here? After what just happened, I wonder about that myself! It’s a long story.’
Kate spun round to Lou. He was standing five yards away. She ran over. He was panting, his face filthy with soot and sweat, his hair matted and clinging to his skin. He looked stunned, like a
wild animal cornered and on the verge of panic. He smelled of burned fabric.
‘Lou! You OK?’ Kate grabbed his shoulder. ‘Lou? Your pants were burning. Is your leg all right?’
He looked up, nodded raggedly and winced. ‘Yeah.’ He ran a hand along the outside of his thigh down to his knee. ‘I think so. I feel like somebody’s hit me all over with
a mallet . . . no, make that two mallets. But aside from that . . .’
The man called Adam had walked up behind Kate. Lou looked up and saw him.
‘You won’t believe this, Lou,’ Kate began. ‘This is Adam Fleming.’
Lou looked blank.
‘We go back a long way,’ Fleming said. He had a deep voice, cut-glass, Eton and Oxbridge.
‘We were . . . friends, at Oxford,’ Kate said.
Fleming raised an eyebrow. ‘I thought we were a bit more than friends, Katie.’