Sleeping Beauty Reworked

There was once a very wealthy man by the unlikely name of Xavier Svensen, a dual-national of Finland and the UK, who had made his fortune on the London Stock Exchange by the time he was thirty-five and invested it in a mixture of concerns throughout Europe and North America. By the time he was forty, he was well on the way to making his first billion Euros and not far behind in Sterling and US dollars. At this point, he began to look at raising a family as more than a semi-serious pipe dream.

Despite three hundred and forty two attempts in one calendar year, which is more than some people manage in a lifetime, he and the lovely Mrs Svensen met with no success. At length, she convinced him to enlist the aid of her brother, an embryologist at one of the major teaching hospitals in London.

Now this gentleman -one Thomas Parks, MD- was very good at what he did for a living, but he had the tragic flaw demanded of dramatic convention. To be specific, this gentleman had an unfortunate tendency to bet heavily and lose. On anything. Poker, dogs, horses... the works. This made Dr Parks rather short of money.

So Thomas, who had never got along with his sister, devised a cunning plan.

The IVF treatment went without the slightest hitch, until a scan allegedly revealed a variety of serious genetic defects, including a heart problem. "Don't worry, Leanne," Tom said. "A bit of pre-implantation tuning-up and she'll scarcely ail a thing." This much was true, as the worst the as-yet unborn girl would have grown up with was hay fever.

Dr Parks then made a hasty telephone to former classmate Professor David Miller, lecturer in Gynaecological Science at Cambridge and one of the pioneers of the genetic modification process that cured an unborn child of Down's Syndrome in 2012..

"Dave, I have a plan that will make us both very rich men. Listen up..."

The plan was an elegant one from a technological standpoint. Parks wanted to implant genetic markers in the baby's DNA, so that if she was injected with a certain combination of chemicals her heart would stop. In exchange for a sizeable monthly stipend -split between the two of them, of course- Parks would make certain that she didn't come into contact with said chemical. Since before he had become an embryologist he had been a medical officer in the SAS, Parks was more than capable of doing just that.

Miller gave this due consideration. "Well thought out, I'm sure. Now piss off and die before I call the police, you avaricious little shitemark!"

"Now, Now, Dave. Remember those photographs I bought off Jimmy Fletcher before he could send them to your mum? I still have them, you know..."

"Go fuck yourself, Tom." Parks fought down the urge to giggle as the thought crossed his mind that a pediatrician as senior as Miller really ought to know better than to use insults like that. "Anybody whose opinion of my choice of lifestyle actually matters is dead anyway."

"Including the University paper?"

Miller winced. He'd just failed the Editor in a key module. "All right, you bastard, you win."

Nine months later, Leanne Svensen gave birth to a healthy baby girl, who they named Christine. Whilst mother and daughter were getting acquainted, Xavier leafed through the file handed to him by the midwife. In it, he found a letter from Parks.

Dear Xavier,

I'm afraid I've been somewhat disingenuous about how much this is going to cost you. You see, you've only really leased the child from me, and there'll be a substantial monthly fee payable to the accounts below.

If you don't, Christine will die. I can do it in a way that is completely undetectable; Dr Miller took quite a bit of persuading, but he was quite helpful eventually. I also implanted a microscopic transmitter into her bloodstream, so wherever in the world she is, I will find her. It's booby-trapped, by the way.

I expect the first 50k by midnight.

Yours,

Tom.

Xavier cast fearful aspersions upon his brother-in-law's ancestry, choice of lifestyle and nocturnal habits for a full fifteen minutes, using his native language in deference to young ears. Then he went and telephoned his investment broker.

The day after Christine Svensen and her mother returned home, Xavier made an appointment to speak to Professor Miller.

"Mr Svensen, good day. How can I help you?" he said guardedly.

"You can undo whatever that maniac Parks talked you into doing to my daughter, for a start!" Xavier suggested with some heat.

"I have good news and bad news, Mr Svensen. The bad news is that the modifications will take me a very long time to reverse, especially without Parks finding out and A: attacking Christine and B: destroying my career." He took a few moments to explain about the photographs. "The good news, however, is that I wasn't quite true to my word. I couldn't make the chemicals totally harmless, Tom's not so bad a geneticist that he couldn't spot that a mile off. However, the chemicals will cause Christine to fall into a coma basically indistinguishable from death to the unpracticed eye. She'll remain that way until given a second injection, at which point she'll wake up with no worse side effect than an almighty headache."

"Thank Christ!" Svensen exclaimed. "Then we can go to the police?"

"Sadly not. This would be the very devil of a thing to prove; those markers aren't easy to locate. I don't suppose your staff includes anybody dedicated to the removal of inconvenient persons?"

Svensen laughed. "You read too much pulp fiction. No, I have a number of experienced bodyguards but that's about it."

"Not to worry. I'll cheerfully garotte the bugger myself!"

Unfortunately, Parks went to ground before they could get hold of him. Much as they complained about it, the victims of his blackmail reluctantly continued to pay up regularly until such time as the private detective agencies they'd employed on both sides of the Atlantic came up with the goods.

Christine grew up healthy and happy, accompanied by three younger brothers. She was a competent if far from outstanding student, and an accomplished gymnast.

Her parents decided against telling her, despite Miller's advice to the contrary. By the time she turned eighteen, they'd half-forgotten themselves; after all, fifty grand a month was small change to a billionaire. In fact, Christine might well have never known about any of this if not for the disastrous computer crash that prevented the stipend reaching the bank account in Lichtenstein that Parks had specified for three months. A few years before, Parks might have written it off as an Act of God, and not very important in the scheme of things anyway. However, long years of substance abuse had overwhelmed his tenuous grip on reason long ago, and he interpreted the whole thing as some personal attack by Svensen.

In a doubly unfortunate quirk of fate, this crash took place whilst Christine was on a school skiing trip in Switzerland, a mere hour's helicopter flight from the château Parks had bought with one of his few big wins. Frothing with rage, Parks and five of his best bodyguards piled into his Eurocopter Panther and made for the ski resort.

His technique was rather more melodramatic than strictly necessary; after establishing where Christine was staying with the aid of some judicious computer hacking, and verifying it to within a metre with the aid of GALILEO and the micro-transmitter, they put the Panther in a hover above the cabin and rappelled down. Dressed all in black and carrying suppressed firearms, they forced their way into the cabin and injected the still-sleeping Christine with the allegedly lethal chemical.

"She's still bloody breathing!" Parks groused after ten minutes. "Comatose, but still breathing. Miller, you're dead... Change of plan, boys!" As they dragged the unconscious girl from the cabin to the helicopter, Parks was already plotting ways to turn this to his financial advantage.

Word got back to the Svensens fairly quickly. Xavier received the ransom note by email the better part of an hour before the police contacted him. "Two hundred million," he growled.

"Would you even notice?" Leanne countered. "I wouldn't, and even if I did, I'd pay ten times that to get her back safely!"

"Let's not be hasty," he replied calmly. "If the police can track him down first it'll save a great deal of awkwardness later. Oh, and one of us ought to telephone Michael." Michael was Christine's boyfriend, a recently commissioned officer in the Royal Marines and a member of their elite Mountain and Arctic Warfare Cadre. Leanne sniffed in distaste; she wasn't terribly keen on Michael. "So I'd better do it, then. Oh, come on! How would you feel in his position if the first you knew of your lover's kidnapping was when it came up on News at Ten?"

"Whatever. And what the fuck do you mean 'let's not be hasty', you maniac! If we don't pay up he'll kill her!"

"He might just as easily do that anyway," Xavier said firmly. "Making snap decisions plays into that bastard's hands. We need to hear what the police have to say first."

"Bullshit! You're just too tight-fisted-"

"Leanne! Think about it!" Xavier yelled. "Even if he keeps his word, we'll be right back to square one. I'm not standing for that unscrupulous bastard threatening my daughter's life any longer. If there's no other option then of course I'll pay, but if we use our heads, we can put an end to the threat hanging over Christine's head once and for all. And hopefully put Parks behind bars as well!"

In a small semi-detached house in an anonymous London suburb, a young man with red-brown hair and deep green eyes crawled out from beneath his duvet, blew his nose and grabbed the ringing telephone. "Hello? Oh, Hi Mr Svenson. Is something the... What? Okay, I'll be right over." Flu forgotten, he dragged on whatever clothes he could find and ran out to his car, then roared off in a spray of gravel that crazed the kitchen window and provoked angry yells from his parents.

Michael arrived at their house ten minutes later, alternating between panic and murderous rage. "If I get my hands on that son of a bitch I will personally disembowel him!" he avowed. "Where does he live, anyway?"

"Last I heard, the Swiss police had tracked the helicopter to a château in the Alps. They say it's a bloody fortress; electric fence, guards with machine guns, the works. The hostage rescue team won't touch it with a bargepole."

"One man might have a chance to get in alone," Michael remarked. "Did they give you the address?"

"You aren't going to do anything rash, are you?" Leanne pleaded.

"No, I'm just going to rescue Christine and kick that mad scientist's arse clear across the equator!"

Some hasty enquiries presented the Svensens with a complete architectural schematic of the château, a minminiature fairytale castle that wouldn't have looked out of place in Disneyland. "Only one road," Xavier pointed out, "and it's built into the side of a mountain."

Michael grinned. "Who needs a road?"

"What?"

"I just came off a six-month skills exchange programme with the SAS; I'm fully parachute qualified. This is going to involve some specialist kit, but most of it's obtainable legally. Weapons are going to be a bit harder though."

"I'll manage."

Two nights later, he was aboard a light plane piloted by Xavier, five miles from the château "We've got a thirty knot tailwind," Xavier remarked. "How much closer do you need to be?"

"Another mile," Mike replied. "Much closer and we'll be in Stinger range. Ready when you are!"

The plane banked sharply, and Michael offered a brief prayer that he'd remember everything he'd been taught by the Paras, then leapt out of the aircraft.

He quickly stabilised himself and angled his body so that he was heading towards the summit of the mountain, equipment pack trailing behind him. At forty feet above the ground, he triggered his canopy and jerked sharply to a near-halt in midair. Rolling in the approved fashion as he hit the ground, he hastily gathered up his parachute and buried it in the snow, then threw away his oxygen mask and yanked open the inflated rubber cylinder carrying his gear.

The 'beltkit' was smaller and lighter than standard Army kit, and contained six pouches and a holster. He put it on, clipped four fragmentation grenades and four tear gas cannisters to the chest webbing and ensured the antidote to Christine's coma was in place and undamaged, then checked his firearms.

The Steyr TMP submachine-gun was a mere ten inches in length without the silencer he carefully screwed into place over the muzzle, but more accurate than it looked and sufficiently well balanced that it could be fired one-handed if necessary He slotted a 25-round magazine into place and chambered a round, then slung it under one arm before making sure the Glock 17 sidearm was secure in its holster and fastening on his skis. That done, he slipped a pair of lightweight night-vision goggles down over his eyes and took up his ski poles.

"Here goes nothing!"

He headed downhill as fast as he dared, knowing full well that there was scant hope of rescue if he was injured. A broken leg would be bad enough on a normal ski run, but right now the only thing he could hope for if he activated the radio distress beacon in his beltkit would be a bullet through the head from that maniac's goons. A marginal improvement on death from exposure maybe, he allowed, but definitely not on tonight's agenda if I can help it!

He reached the treeline ten minutes later, and stopped to strip off the outer cover of his Arctic camouflage suit, exchanging the pure white scheme for white with random splotches of black and brown; in snowy areas with vegetation on the ground, plain white stands out as badly as matte black. That achieved, he moved quickly through increasingly dense forest until he reached the outer perimeter, then divested himself of his skis and began advancing on foot.

There was a searchlight sweeping the area every few seconds, which meant that the guards lacked night vision equipment but would be nearly impossible to neutralise without alerting them. Too far to shoot out anyway. Alright, I'll just have to distract them somehow. He moved swiftly along the perimeter fence, noticing the loud buzz of high voltage current emanating from it. Eventually, he found a potential solution. A badly mangled Mercedes was lying on its side near the fence, rusting steadily away. Mike guessed it had gone over the edge of the mountain road he'd passed on the way down; dragging it away to the scrapyard would have been more trouble than it was worth, so the occupants had been removed and the vehicle left to its fate. It hadn't burned, so there was a chance that the tanks still held petrol. Mike cast around, and spotted a fallen sapling some thirty feet long. Using it as a lever and the Merc's own spare wheel as a fulcrum, he pushed the wrecked car straight over onto the electric fence and began running.

The effect was instant and spectacular. First there was a tremendous crackle and shower of sparks, then an almighty BANG as the petrol tank went up. Two or three nearby trees caught alight as burning debris rained down.

"That'll give them something to worry about beside me!" Mike chuckled, extracting a pair of wire cutters from his beltkit. Cutting swiftly through the fence, which had evidently been shorted, he made his way to a nearby door. It was locked, but a three-round burst from the TMP knocked the mechanism clean out of the woodwork, the suppressor cutting the noise down to a dull THWACK similar to a heavy book being dropped onto a hard surface. Mike shoulder-barged the door open, and found himself standing in what he took to be the pantry. The door at the far end was slightly ajar, and he peered cautiously around it. The door opened into a plain stone corridor lit with bare bulbs and generally functional in appearance, presumably adjacent to the kitchens. People could be heard speaking urgently.

"Probably fell over on its own; I've been saying that would happen since the accident!" one voice complained. In English, Mike noted with interest, though he had a strong Swiss accent.

"After two years? And right after the Boss comes back from doing Christ only knows what? A very suspicious coincidence if you ask me."

"I suppose. Well, we'll find out soon enough. Make sure the lads have those potatoes peeled in time for the shift change, will you? I'm going to check the freezers; I swear we had more burgers than that."

Mike dived behind a shelf of tinned goods as a man in an apron and a close-fitting white cap entered the pantry and began rummaging in a chest freezer. After a brief internal debate, Mike seized him from behind and placed the barrel of the TMP against his head.

The cook seemed to take this more or less in his stride. "You do realise I only have to shout...?"

"I only have to shoot, pal. Now, your boss brought somebody home with him from that joyride you were talking about up there. Where is she?"

"Couldn't say for certain, but the North Tower's been off-limits ever since he got back."

"Much obliged." Mike plasti-cuffed the man's wrists and ankles, and gagged him with some electrician's tape he found on a shelf. "Sorry about all this. Good day."

He looked at the plans, and made his way cautiously towards the nearest staircase, ducking hastily into an alcove as a dozen men with assault rifles came running down the stairs. A bell began ringing.

They've found the damn cook! Mike groused. He peered cautiously around the alcove, made sure it was all clear and continued, noting with satisfaction that the decor was getting more expensive as he climbed; carpet had started to appear within one storey, and the bare bulbs surrounded by wire had been replaced with brass light fixtures. Three floors up he reached a wide and sumptuously decorated landing, with expensive tapestries covering the walls and a magnificent chandelier overhead. Mike's boots sank a good half-inch into the dark blue carpet as he ducked behind a marble bust of somebody he didn't recognise, watching the two guards on the staircase at the far end. They were in the more or less standard garb of Kevlar vests over black T-shirts and combat-type trousers in the black-white-grey camo print used for urban warfare. They were both carrying assault rifles of a model that Mike didn't recognise, but were painted dark green for some unfathomable reason. Both men were also carrying pistols of some sort in shoulder holsters, and had earpieces and boom-microphones that Mike was halfway inclined to believe were just there because they looked good. Mercenaries, I'll bet, and probably either the ones who can't think of anything better to do with their lives or just like killing people. Please God don't let me wind up like them in sixteen years. Despite the alarm bell and the excited radio chatter that Mike could hear faintly even from his current position, they were both engrossed in the football game playing on a portable television set.

With no other option, Mike raised his weapon and fired. One man went down without even knowing he'd been hit, and the other just had time to spin around and raise his weapon before he too fell. Mike didn't waste time hiding the bodies; the blood sprayed on the far wall and soaking into the carpet told its own story.

Four storeys to go. Should have taken the damned lift! he groused, peering around another corner. The North Tower itself was only accessible through one door, and it was a safe bet that they'd have at least one guard posted just inside of it, and more inside. This was where he'd have to abandon all thought of stealth and blast his way in.

As he considered his best approach, no less a personage than Dr Parks himself came rushing towards the stairs, cursing mightily. Mike grinned, and made sure he was out of sight, then stuck out his foot as the man hurried past. Tom tumbled forwards, skidded a few yards on the highly polished floor and went tumbling down the stairs. The crashes, thuds and obscenities were still going on when Mike reached the door to the North Tower and peered cautiously around it.

It was a guardroom. Some twenty men were sitting around cleaning weapons, reading magazines, watching television or playing poker. As one, they looked up.

"Oi! You!"

Mike ducked as an assortment of automatic weapons opened up, alerting the half of the château that hadn't heard their employer's abrupt and ignominious descent of the staircase that something was amiss. Mike swore under his breath, and tossed a frag grenade into the guardroom. The blinding flash and violent explosion, accompanied by a gout of dust and smoke from the door and all the windows, alerted everybody in the grounds as well.

Well, the young Marine reflected, the cat's out of the bag now. He sprinted through the wrecked guardroom, and stopped at the first staircase to rig a grenade up on a tripwire with string and tape. Running feet could clearly be heard behind him, along with yelled orders and the sound of weapons being cocked. Mike thought for a moment, and grabbed a Minimi infantry-support machine gun from the weapon rack at the top of the stairs, just in case.

He guessed correctly that Christine's cell would be at the top, and the other rooms in the tower appeared to be mainly used for storing old furniture. There were two guards standing outside the topmost room, both of them carrying USAS-12 automatic shotguns, huge great things that amounted to M16s chambered for 12-gauge buckshot. Both of them let fly as soon as Mike happened to peer around the door, pellets rebounding off the walls in a deadly hail.

"Oh, joy." Mike waited for them to run out of ammunition, and tossed a grenade upwards. It exploded most satisfyingly, killing both assailants and taking the door clean off its hinges. Mike advanced a few paces, and slipped a respirator over his face before following the grenade with a tear gas cannister. Choking and cursing, four men rushed out waving sub-machine guns. Mike raised the TMP -he was saving the Minimi- and hosed them with the last of the magazine, then headed into Christine's cell as a muffled explosion behind him suggested that his pursuers had come across the grenade.

Christine was lying on a small bed, an IV line in her arm. To Mike's quiet amusement, she had begun snoring. He switched on the radio distress beacon, and set it on a window ledge before rummaging in a belt pouch for a syrette containing the antidote Professor Miller had prepared. If this doesn't work we'll be having very serious words, Doc!

As soon as he had fully administered he chemical, Mike shoved the room's only other piece of furniture -a rather battered sofa- in front of the door, and rested the Minimi's bipod on the back. Almost as soon as he'd done so, half a dozen men came running up the stairs with weapons at the ready. "Boo," Mike said drily, and let rip.

Christine awoke with a pounding headache, and sat up in a bed she didn't recognise to see her boyfriend apparently fighting an intense, no-quarter and very narrow infantry action from behind a threadbare sofa.

"What the- Mike? What's going on? Where am I?"

"Long story. Make yourself useful and grab one of those guns, will you? There must be three hundred men trying to rush me over here!"

"Oh." Christine got out of bed, wincing slightly. "Melissa, I'm going to get you for this."

"If you want to blame anybody, blame your barmy uncle!" Mike suggested.

"Why? I doubt it was him who slipped me that LSD!" she pouted, then began giggling shrilly. The large number of beers she'd downed before staggering back to her chalet had evidently not worn off in the time she'd spent in a coma.

Mike groaned, and tossed his last grenade down the stairs. "Nobody told me she'd wake up drunk," he grumbled. "Come on you wankers! Come get me!"

A storey or so down, Parks had just put on a full set of Kevlar. Picking up a pair of MAC-10 machine pistols, he made ready to lead another charge when suddenly the whole castle seemed to shake as a massive explosion echoed throughout the valley.

"Backup has arrived!" Mike yelled in triumph.

He never found out precisely where Svensen rustled up two secondhand Bell 212 military helicopters, and in all honesty he preferred it that way. Both helicopters circled the castle, firing from their 70mm rocket pods and the miniguns under their fuselages. Their designated role in the proceedings was simply to cause as much death and destruction as humanly possible whilst Xavier piloted his little four-seater MD500 to wherever Mike and Christine were and lifted them to safety. He threw out a rope ladder, and tried to contact Mike on the radio beacon.

"Michael! Christine! Look out of the window!" he urged.

Christine stared foolishly at the little radio, trying to work out how to transmit with it. Mike sighed, and threw his remaining tear gas cannisters in the general direction of the enemy. "Give it here!" he ordered, wishing he'd never got mixed up in all this. "Mr Svenson? It's Mike. I'm going to send Christine out first. Try and get closer to the window, she's in no state to climb!"

"Alright!" He inched the helicopter lower.

"Chris, grab something and smash that window!" Mike yelled, firing a short burst down the stairs.

"Such as what?" she demanded archly.

"The IV tree! Use that!" he suggested, flinching as somebody let go with a shotgun.

Christine took his advice, and swung it two-handed. The heavy metal post just bounced away. "It's not breaking!"

"Get out of the way!" Mike raised the Glock and fired twice, but the bullets weren't much more use. "It must be bulletproof! Damn damn damn!" In desperation, he swung the Minimi around and let off a short burst. The glass crazed but didn't shatter.

"Mike, get a bloody move on!" Xavier yelled. "They're deploying Stinger teams and I'm wide open!"

"Okay. Pull back a bit, we're going out through the roof!" He raised the Minimi and blasted away on full automatic, ripping the aged tiles off the frame and tearing a hole wide enough to admit three people. He threw the now empty machine gun down the stairs, unslung the TMP and pressed 'Transmit' on the radio beacon. "Okay, drop in the ladder!"

Xavier carefully manoeuvred the rope ladder through the hole in the roof, and gestured urgently at Christine. She took the hint, and began climbing for all she was worth. Mike peered carefully around the door frame, and was confronted with the sight of Parks rushing up the stairs with a machine pistol in each hand and a look of murderous rage upon his countenance. "Well, look who it isn't? Have some of this you tosser!" Mike let rip, blasting away on full automatic. Parks was caught out in the open, and took half a dozen rounds in the chest. Body armour absorbing the impact, he tumbled down his second flight of stairs that day and landed heavily on top of several of his henchmen.

Mike laughed, and grabbed the rope ladder. "So long, Parksie!" He hung on tightly as Svensen twisted the collective and lifted away from the tower, then began climbing as fast as he could. A B212 exploded, wreckage spiralling past the little helicopter as Xavier struggled to get above the range of the half dozen Stinger missile launchers deploying along the battlements. Still clinging to the ladder, Mike glanced behind him and saw Parks standing in the wrecked room, waving his arms and bellowing incoherent abuse. Mike gave him the finger and carried on climbing.

By some miracle, they made it home in one piece. By an even greater miracle, the Swiss authorities never got to the bottom of what had transpired, and no charges were ever pressed. Parks sulkily accepted the situation -one of his few genuinely intelligent decisions- and dropped out of sight, eventually washing up in Vegas with a suitcase full of used notes, twelve condoms and a Colt Python. He lost all the cash in a weekend, never got to use the condoms and blew his head off with the revolver.

Mike and Christine married five years after returning to England. Mike saw combat in several theatres with the Royal Marines until completing his term of service and accepting a post as a civilian instructor in Arctic survival techniques. Christine somehow managed to become a gold medallist in the European Rhythmic Gymnastics tournament and a mother of three. Leanne never did reconcile herself to having Mike as a son in law, but has almost learned to live with it.

None of the individuals concerned ever went on a skiing holiday again.