Down: Trilogy Box Set (128 page)

Many Hellers realized their coarse peasant garb or military uniforms identified them too easily so they stole clothes from victims’ houses. A few heard from victims about their rancid smell and disguised themselves with perfumes and colognes. But when one Heller encountered another, they knew instantly by the look in the other’s eyes, who they were and where they were from. A small smile, a few choice words, and they were on their way in search of the next house to invade, the next desire to be sated.

“How you getting on, then?”

“It’s changed so much but it’s bloody marvelous.”

“I’m never going back.”

“Me neither, at least not by choice.”

“How do you mean?”

“I saw two of our lot dead under the wheels of a motor car.”

“Dead for real?”

“Dead for real.”

“Where do you think they’ve gone to?”

“Back Down I reckon.”

“Then we’d best not wind up dead again.”

One of the government buildings protected by a cordon of soldiers was MI5 headquarters at Millbank. Ben was inside in the basement ops centre. He and his people were trying to get a handle on the movement of Hellers into the hot zones and their dispersal patterns once they arrived. The video feed on a tile-work of screens arrayed on the walls was sourced from drones that crisscrossed the London skies.

An aide told him the PM was on the line.

“Yes, Prime Minister,” Ben said. “How may I help you?”

“I’m on the way to Manchester and when I arrive I will address the nation. I need the latest data. Is there any sign the flow of Hellers has abated?”

“None whatsoever. If anything there are more of them.”

“So might we assume that the SAS has not yet been able to take up their positions?”

Ben’s mobile went off and he fumbled for the mute switch. “I think that is the correct assumption.”

“God help us.”

Ben hung up and saw the missed call was from his wife. He quickly rang her back at his parents’ house in Kent.

“Everything all right? Are the girls okay?” he asked in a burst of concern.

“We’re all fine. The girls are doing coloring with your mum. Here’s the thing. Marjorie’s just rung. She’s deeply regretting not obeying the evacuation orders.”

“Well she should. Stupid woman,” Ben said.

“She didn’t want to leave her dog. Can’t you understand that? Why didn’t they let people take their pets to evacuation centers?”

“Wasn’t my call.”

“She tried calling 999 but there was no reply so she called me.”

“What’s the problem?”

“She heard the sounds of someone breaking in below her. She’s panicked out of her mind. She thinks she’s next.”

“What would you like me to do, divert critical resources and respond to her unsubstantiated anxieties?”

“That’s exactly what I want. You owe me, Ben. You’ve been a real shit to me and the girls and it’s time for you to make it up.”

His first instinct was to let his rising anger boil over into something along the line of, I’ve been a shit? For working nonstop for two months? For not being there for bedtime baths and stories? For doing my bloody job to try to save the country from an existential threat? Instead he bottled it up and said, “All right, I’ll do what I can.”

He took off from the underground car park with a driver and two of his agents. Marjorie was one of his wife’s schoolmates from Roedean, a rather morose woman who worked in publishing. When the two of them talked by phone Ben had to leave the room because he was irritated by even the faint sound of her husky voice leaking from the ear set in a torrent of complaints. The route along the river past the Tate was surreal as they were the only vehicle on the Millbank in what should have been, in the normal course of the affairs, the evening rush hour.

On arrival outside Marjorie’s terraced house in Pimlico, the street was empty. Ben had been at a party there once and knew which of the street-facing windows were hers. There were one or two lights on at her flat but the lights in the first floor dwelling were blazing. Ben rang Marjorie’s bell and waited. There was no response so he tried again and when that failed he tried ringing the flats below and above. Coming up empty, he rang her mobile and got voicemail.

“How do you want to play it?” one of his men asked.

“There’s a small back garden,” Ben replied. “Let’s see if we can get in through the ground floor.”

They had to go down the street to the end of the row of houses to get into the rear-facing gardens, and then, they had to scale several dividing fences until they got to Marjorie’s house. The top half of the ground-flat garden door was glass. One of the agents broke the pane with the butt of his pistol.

“Here, take this,” the agent said, offering his gun. “I’ve got another.”

Ben didn’t much like guns but he took it and checked the safety.

“There’s a round in the chamber,” the agent said.

“I doubt I’ll need it,” Ben said.

They cautiously made their way through the flat to the front entrance and climbed the first flight of stairs. The door to the flat was open, the door bashed in, the jam shattered.

“We need to check this one first,” Ben said, his heart rate soaring.

Ben followed the other men in, guns at the ready. The hall and sitting room were a shambles with furniture upended and belongings tossed aside. The bedrooms were likewise ransacked. In the kitchen, the refrigerator door was left open showing empty shelves. The cupboards were all open and tins of tuna and soup were on the floor, dented, as if someone had tried to open them without using the tin opener still in a drawer.

“It’s clear,” one of the agents said. “No one here.”

“Upstairs, then,” Ben said.

On the next landing they saw that Marjorie’s door was also bashed in. A small dog barked at them from the landing.

Ben clicked his pistol off safe mode and took a steadying breath.

“Is the layout the same?” an agent whispered.

“I think so. Pretty much. It’s been a while.”

The hall was dark. No one was in the sitting room. From there they could see the kitchen, also empty. The master bedroom door was closed. Ben and one agent stood there while the other checked the guest bedroom. He came back and whispered that it was clear.

“On three,” the other agent whispered, putting his hand on the doorknob.

They heard a woman scream.

“Three!” the agent said swinging the door open.

One man was standing by the bed watching while the other was on it, or more precisely, on Marjorie who was thrashing under his weight. There was a stench in the room. Heller stench.

The agent fired twice at the standing man, felling him efficiently. The rapist rolled off the bed, his filthy trousers around his ankles. He came to rest on the floor between the bed and the closet. Ben stood over him. His gun felt heavy and important in his hands. The man, a scowling giant, had blood on his genitals. He began to swear at Ben. Marjorie was too traumatized to cover herself. Ben glanced at her and saw blood running down her thigh.

He fired once into the man’s forehead and he stopped swearing.

After several seconds, Ben lowered his weapon, clicked the safety back on, and pulled at the corner of the bedspread until it covered a sobbing Marjorie.

“It’s Ben, Marjorie, Ben Wellington. We’re going to take you away from here now to some place safe.”

The first thing she said was, “Can I take my dog?”

He didn’t dare touch her, though he wanted to give her a reassuring pat on the shoulder, a sign to her that in the midst of all this evil there was still some goodness.

“Yes, of course, you can take your dog.”

First they poured melted wax into the openings in each rubber mold. The wax was allowed to harden and when it was solid, the wax casts were removed. Plaster was mixed and poured into an investment mold surrounding the wax cast. Those molds were kiln fired, melting away the wax and leaving a formed chamber within the plaster. They melted steel in the forge crucible and when it was orange and molten they poured it into the plaster casts. When the steel hardened they hammered the plaster away, leaving perfect steel pieces.

The AK-47s materialized piece by piece. Each of the ninety steel components was quenched in water, emitting puffs of steam. Some were large and hefty like the receiver, some small and light like the firing pin and some of the delicate springs. Kyle inspected each part with a practiced eye and when they were cool to the touch he smoothed off any burrs and rough spots using William’s assorted files. The barrels went straight to William’s foot-pedal lathe for rifling. Kyle rejected the first attempts and made some modifications in the drilling bit until the barrels had the desired twist.

A full assemblage of parts for each of the thirty-two rifles were laid out on planks on the grass outside the forge where Kyle and the others could work in the cooler air. Trevor and John took part in the assembly along with a dozen SAS men who self-identified as being especially proficient at the disassembly and assembly of firearms. One of the troopers from C Group was a keen woodworker so he and a bunch of SAS volunteers were tasked with carving rifle stocks, upper hand guards, and fore-end grips from a pile of cured wood stacked outside the forge.

The casting had taken a full day. Kyle hadn’t slept more than an hour but when he was satisfied he had cast all the rifle parts he turned his attention to the bullets.

“You look like a zombie,” John said. “Sure you don’t want a couple of hours of shut-eye?”

“No bullets, no boom-boom,” Kyle said, plunging back into the hot forge.

Marsh came over to inspect one of the pallets of parts.

“You really think these things are going to fire?” he asked, full of attitude.

“If the chemist can make the primers then they’ll spit lead. My brother knows what he’s doing,” John said, pointing at the delicate pieces of the trigger assembly. “Look at the quality of this work under these primitive conditions. It’s amazing.”

“We’ll see, won’t we?” Marsh said. “But it wouldn’t shock me if we wind up having to use flintlocks and crossbows. Building AKs in a medieval forge. Daft idea, if you ask me.”

Inside the forge Kyle began mobilizing William and his workers on ammunition production. Lead brass casings and primer caps had to be cast from molds. Bullet presses had to be cast as well, to enable them to make thousands of rounds in a timely fashion. Before long, the forge was spitting out flames and molten lead, brass, and steel were flowing.

In a corner of the forge, far enough from the furnace to be tolerable but close enough to get ingots of hot steel as a heat source, Nightingale and his assistant worked into the night.

The chemist had tramped down to the village with Emily and a few bodyguards and to bargain for glassware. Mrs. Smith was his negotiator, and in exchange for a few copper coins that William provided from the forge coffers, the villagers parted with some cups and glasses.

“Not ideal,” Nightingale had told Emily, “but we’ll make do. Wish I knew how to blow glass. Not many regrets in life but that’s one of them.”

Emily had taken a grand total of one chemistry course at university but that was enough to qualify her to be Nightingale’s assistant. They set up a makeshift bench and prepared for the first step, the production of nitric acid.

The years fell away and the toll of illness all but vanished as Nightingale sat on his wooden stool and worked at his primitive bench.

He seemed happy and light as he guided Emily along. “We are going to make
spiritus nitri
as the ancients called it. Now, without scales we’re going to have to rely on instinct but here goes: about fifty grams of saltpeter, nicely ground fine in a mortar and pestle. Yes, add it to that crucible pot and let’s mix in one hundred and fifty grams of this nice white clay, kaolin it’s also called. Mix it up as thoroughly as you can. Good, very good. Then to the furnace we’ll go.”

He told her they were aiming for a temperature of about one thousand degrees centigrade, and in the absence of a thermometer, instinct was required.

“The ancients didn’t have a thermometer and they did just fine,” he said, pulling the crucible in and out of the fiery furnace with long tongs, watching the color change. “That’s it! Look at that lovely blue-green color. I believe we’ve made nitric acid of the appropriate purity.”

“That’s brilliant,” Emily said. “You’ll make a chemist of me yet.”

“Not so fast, young lady. We’re only in the alchemy stage. Now for the next step. We’ll use hot ingots to heat our water bath and we’ll need to cover our faces from the fumes. Are you ready?”

“Lead styphnate, coming up,” she said cheerfully.

Nightingale called over to William, “We’re ready for the lead, if you will, my good man.”

The next morning came as all mornings came in Down, a creeping lightening of the black sky until it turned a flat, whitish gray. The SAS men who were used to sleeping rough, made fires and reheated the carcass of the deer they had bagged the previous day. John and Emily had found a private spot behind the forge, a soft, grassy patch where they had laid out a blanket donated by one of William’s workers. They awoke in unison. John kissed her; they wanted each other but love was not on the schedule. Nightingale slept closer to the forge entrance wrapped in bedclothes which Mrs. Smith had pulled from her own bed. He was too exhausted and ill to rise. As the camp stirred, people walked around him, careful not to disturb. The four captains found John and Emily by the water trough.

“How’d you get on last night?” Yates asked.

John splashed his face and said, “I packed it in a few hours ago. They were still working.”

Marsh headed for the forge door. “Time’s a wasting. We’ve got to start deploying today with or without the AKs. Personally I think it’ll be without.”

“Ye of little faith,” John said.

Inside, Trevor was sitting at a workbench, his head buried in his arms. Beside him, Kyle was running the hand-lever on the press, pumping out finished bullets that he tossed into a bucket. About ten SAS troopers were asleep on the floor.