Spiral (31 page)

In another part of London, Harry trundled downstairs, his head raked awkwardly forward on his shoulders as he negotiated the steps. But that day his posture was nothing unusual. He’d been that way for some twenty years, after a High-Altitude Low-Opening, or HALO, parachute drop had gone badly wrong, leaving him with mostly titanium for an upper spine. “Janey, I’m going out. And I’m taking the car,” he called. “OK?”

“Sure, Dad,” his daughter replied, tearing her eyes from the book she was reading to catch a glimpse of her sixty-five-year-old father as he rotated his whole body to locate the keys — he had no option with the limited articulation in his neck.

He appeared at the sitting-room door. “You don’t remember where I put those spare Hi-Power mags, do you?”

“Yes, on the mantelpiece,” she replied. “In Mr. Clowny.”

“Thanks,” her father said, and she watched him go over to the garishly colored ceramic clown and lift up its bowler-hatted head. Dipping his hand in, he took out two magazines for his handgun. He paused before replacing the lid, then also retrieved the long dagger he’d hidden in the clown.

“The Sykes-Fairbairn, too? You will take care out there, won’t you, Dad?” Janey said, concern on her face.

“I’m not about to let a few idiots kicking in shop windows spoil my day,” Harry replied defiantly.

“What’s going on is a bit more serious than that,” she replied. “Anyway, I wasn’t talking about the riots — I meant the weather. It must be several degrees below zero out there.”

In a woolly hat and scarf and a thick green jacket, he was dressed in what he usually wore when he went fishing. But he didn’t appear to have his fishing rod or tackle with him. In any case, it certainly wasn’t the time of year for fishing, so she assumed it must be the other activity with which he occupied his days. “You off to the allotment?” she asked as an afterthought as he left the room. The only response was the front door slamming shut.

Putting the book down, Janey rose from her chair and went to the window, where she lifted the net curtain aside. There had been a couple of showers of new snow at first light, and everything outside was white and crisp with the cold. “He can’t be working on the allotment? Not in this?” she wondered out loud. As she continued to watch, former lieutenant Harry “Hoss” Handscombe energetically cleared the snow and ice from the car windshield with a scraper. “So where’s the silly old stick off to?” Janey asked affectionately to herself. She shrugged, then went over to the television to try a few channels. They were all still off air, so she settled back in her chair, immersing herself in her book again.

Harry drove for ten minutes, then turned into a supermarket parking lot and drove around it, shifting his whole body from the waist up as he peered through the windshield. Like most shops in London, the recent panics had caused such a run on food that it had very little actually left to buy. Consequentially, the parking lot wasn’t full, and it didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for.

He parked his car, but not too close to the battered Land Rover in the corner. Harry was looking at the picture of a green dragon taped to the top of the windshield as he walked to the vehicle with his peculiar stiff-backed gait. The driver’s door opened the moment he arrived, and a woman of around the same age as his stuck her head out.

“Good to see you again, Hoss,” she said. She didn’t smile, but her strong gray eyes were friendly.

“You, too, Anne,” he replied as they shook hands. “You know, I often think of Ian. I miss him.”

She nodded. “He was very fond of you, too. After you had your accident, he used to joke that you’d been trying your best to save your family the expense of a funeral by hitting the ground so hard you buried yourself.”

“One thing I don’t miss about the old sod is his sense of humor.” Harry laughed, then turned serious. “How was he at the end?”

“He came to terms with the illness. He told me he’d reconciled himself to it because he’d got what he wanted — to die at home rather than in some godforsaken jungle, like so many of you three decades ago. But enough of this maudlin nonsense. . . . How’s the arthritis?” she asked, changing the subject.

“Not bad, considering. Takes me longer and longer to get going in the morn —”

He fell silent as two police cars raced into the parking lot. Harry slipped his hand in his jacket pocket, closing it around his Browning Hi-Power. But as he and Anne watched, the cars drew up beside the supermarket. Police officers jumped out and then hurried inside the building.

“Probably just more fisticuffs at the counters,” Anne muttered. She was staring at the police cars. “But you don’t know who you can trust these days, do you? Except us old folks, because everybody’s written us off already. We’re invisible.” She chuckled as she laid her sawn-off shotgun by her feet again.

“We live in uncertain times,” Harry agreed. “I still find it preposterous that they’ve called on the army to patrol the streets.” While he’d been talking, Anne had retrieved an object wrapped in khaki cloth from behind her seat. “That’s for me, I presume?”

“Yes, with love and kisses from the Commander,” she replied. “Parry told you the drill?”

“Yes, he briefed me,” Harry confirmed.

She handed him the converted Geiger counter. “Happy hunting, Hoss,” she bade him. Before she closed the door, he glimpsed numerous other khaki bundles stacked in the rear of the Land Rover.

Back in his car, Harry placed the mobile detector carefully on the passenger seat beside his GPS unit and Browning Hi-Power, then covered them with a newspaper.

“It’s going to be a long day,” he said to himself. He checked the fuel gauge as he drove off. He’d need to find a gas station that actually had stocks so he could fill up his car. He had some way to go yet before he hit the motorway that would take him out of London and to the quadrant he’d been assigned by Parry.

“A long day for the Old Guard,” Harry said.

Back in the Hub, Danforth was coordinating operations while Drake controlled the parabolic dishes on the BT Tower using his laptop. Drake had a map up on his screen, and each time a report of Dark Light activity came in from any of the Old Guard or Eddie’s men with their mobile detectors, it was relayed to him from Danforth. Then Drake would concentrate on the area, using the dishes mounted on the tower, and the exact location could be triangulated.

The operation wasn’t helped by the several power outages that shut down Drake’s dishes. Each time, he had to wait for the electricity supply to be restored, and also allow the system to reboot before he could start over again.

It was several hours before he called out to Parry. “I think we might have something here,” he said, inclining his head toward the map on the screen. “We’re finding signals all over, but there’s a location in the west where the level is spiking off the scale. We’ve got ourselves a major Dark Light hot spot there.”

“Near Slough,” Parry noted as he peered at the cluster of red dots pulsing on the map. “Should we mobilize and get over there?”

Drake shook his head. “Not yet. We don’t want to waste our time if it’s nothing to do with the Phase. Danforth’s sent some teams in for a recce.”

After he’d exited the motorway, Harry passed through two roundabouts and was on his way to the industrial estate when he spotted the army roadblock up ahead. He quickly scanned around; there were grass shoulders on either side of him and not a building in sight. It was too late to consider turning back, so he made sure the mobile detector was turned off and out of view as he approached the barrier.

An armored vehicle was parked at the side of the road, which he recognized as a Viking, and in it a soldier was manning a .50 caliber machine gun. It was aimed directly at Harry, who immediately knew that something wasn’t right. Even with the current levels of civil unrest and heightened security, this was rather excessive for an elderly man out for a drive.

The soldier at the barrier waved him down and came over. “Can I ask what your business is, sir?” he demanded brusquely.

“I’m on my way to fetch my granddaughter from a party,” Harry lied.

“Your granddaughter. Really. Would you mind stepping from your vehicle, sir, and keep your hands where I can see them,” the soldier ordered.

“Is there a problem up ahead?” Harry asked, trying to see the road past the barrier.

The soldier’s voice grated with impatience. “Get out of your car.” He brought his assault rifle to bear on Harry. “Now!”

Harry climbed out, holding his hands in front of him.

“Up against the vehicle,” the soldier said, twirling a finger to indicate that Harry should face the other way. “And spread your legs.”

Harry complied as another soldier joined the first and began to give him a thorough pat-down.

“I see you’re Parachute Regiment,” Harry said. “You’re a long way from RHQ.”

The soldier searching him had finished checking his legs all the way down to his boots and now quickly straightened up. He grabbed Harry roughly by the shoulder and spun him around. “And what would you know about that, Gramps?”

Harry was unruffled. “Because I was in the Paras, too. I served from 1951 t —”

“Show me some identification,” the soldier snapped.

Harry slowly took out his wallet and handed it over. The soldier found his driver’s license and examined it. “Harold James Handscombe,” he read. He oozed disdain and had a way of looking away immediately after he’d spoken to show how little Harry meant to him.

But then the words came that Harry was dreading.

“Stay there,” the soldier with the assault rifle said. “We’re going to give your vehicle the once-over.”

Alarm bells were ringing like crazy in Harry’s head, and his nerve endings tingled as if raw electricity was passing through his body.

“Of course,” he said, as he glanced at the driver’s seat, calculating how long it would take him to reach the Browning Hi-Power hidden under it. The timing would be tight, and even if he did manage to retrieve his weapon, the odds weren’t stacked in his favor; he’d have to disable the nearest soldier first, then deal with the other two.

It was a long time since he’d shot anyone, but the old instincts were never far away. One thing he knew for certain — the situation was going to turn nasty. For Harry, this was more than just a hunch — he was acting on all his years of being in tight corners.

The soldiers’ eyes were slightly glazed; if Parry hadn’t briefed him about the Styx and their mind-control techniques, Harry would have guessed the men were on drugs. And the way the soldiers were conducting themselves was completely beyond the pale.

The soldier was moving around the front of the car. “The trunk’s open?” he asked.

“It is,” Harry said. But before the soldier even reached the trunk, Harry knew there was no way that he wouldn’t discover the mobile detector, the GPS, and eventually the handgun under the driver’s seat.

The soldier had reached the passenger door and was opening it.

He bent to look under the newspaper in the footwell.

As he registered the modified Geiger counter, he opened his mouth to shout a warning to the other soldier.

Harry knew the game was up.

He moved as fast as his less-than-agile body would allow him.

As he pivoted around on the ball of his foot and reached toward the driver’s seat, in the corner of his eye he saw something curious.

The soldier with the assault rifle simply folded to the ground. And as Harry stooped to peer at the other man through the car, he saw he was sprawled on the road.

Harry stood up. Even the soldier in the Viking was slumped over the heavy machine gun.

Eddie, and three of his men with tranquilizer rifles, stepped down the snow-covered verge toward the incredibly confused Harry.

“Professor Danforth thought you might need some help,” Eddie said.