Of course, they woke her right after she got to sleep, that being somewhat after three. How much tossing one body could do: she'd done her research that night, she had the stats. Annie had just managed to drift into a racing-pulse kind of nervous doze when that gangly fella Montgomery's voice said in her ear: "Ma'am, Major McCloud wants to see you."
This time, he put his hand on her. She swatted it, and not just in a friendly shoo-fly kind of way. She sat up, feeling like someone had lifted her brain out and replaced it with dryer lint. "Right, I'm up, damn it."
She followed him not to McCloud's office but to the base's command center. The major was standing behind a young guy in fatigues sitting in front of a radar scope talking into a headset. Aviation-speak to parties elsewhere, far off.
McCloud patted him on the shoulder. "Tell 'em to sit tight and hold their fire. I'll be right back." He stepped away, came over to Annie, extended his hand. "Dr. Main, sorry for the wait."
She took his hand. He had big hands, a good solid grip. "You better be. What'n the hell's goin' on?"
McCloud smiled wearily. He was short, but she could tell he didn't know it. Middle-aged, lean. Big head, dark hair combed back. Brown eyes that'd seen way too much. "You like this with all the brass?"
"You been around rig pigs much as I have, you tend t' forget your manners around anyone who don't sign your paychecks."
"Noted, Dr. Main. Apologies. We've got a situation here; maybe you know something. Russian pilot we had over at Infinity, he's stolen a Western Star chopper, and he's flying north. Says he has three civilians with him. Which'd be fine, except for the fact he's stolen the chopper, only--"
"Only--? Them three civvies, they're not two gals and a skinny Irish guy, are they?"
"Can't square you on him being Irish, but two women, one man, yeah. They're heading for the Scottish border. Make a long story short: Infinity calls us. Says they're infected."
"That is horse hockey. I checked 'em last-- night before last. Blood's clean as a whistle. Anyway, how'n the hell could they get off the ground if they were infected?"
"Infinity says they had a latent."
"The hell--"
"Guy who's flying the chopper, his co-pilot turns up dead of the virus late last night. Infinity's saying those pilots checked out clean; they're saying that it must've incubated in him--"
"Bullshit. Major--" Annie looked over at the kid at the radar post. On the round black screen in front of him there were three glowing blips. Her gut went tight. "Major, you ain't planning on shootin' 'em down, are yuh?"
"Yes, I am, Dr. Main. Can't let infection cross the border."
"Hell, Major, you know the plague's already hit up there--"
"I know."
"And you know, and I know, there ain't no such thing as a latent."
"Dr. Main, I have a duty--"
"Major, you have a duty not to stick your big dumb head into business you know nothin' about. Them kids are clean."
"My 'big dumb head'--"
"You want me t' put a 'sir' after it? That make you feel better--?"
"No." He called over to the kid at the radar: "Billy--!"
"Sir?"
Annie braced herself, shored up all her bones. She thought of the gals, Hannah and Selena, shy and tough; she thought of Jim, his goofy quiet smile; she thought she'd like about die if they died right now. Top of Red and Wally, it'd be too much for one tired old shack doc, five dead all in the space of one rainy day.
Major McCloud said, "The Lynxes, call 'em off. Tell 'em to come home."
"Yes, sir."
Annie nearly fainted, letting out her breath. She nearly planted a kiss on Major McCloud.
He said to her, much as to anyone else in the room, ""Far as I can tell, we've got a Danish Navy pilot flying a civilian chopper with three civilian passengers. We are not shooting that down. Far as I'm concerned, it's not even our jurisdiction. We've got no beef with the Danes, and we're not the police. Western Star wants that chopper back, they can go get it themselves."
Miles away, in the rainy dark early morning sky, in a Bell 212 painted white and royal blue--
"They are breaking off," said Piotr, incredulously. He glanced at Hannah, at Jim and Selena. He smiled. "They are returning to Leeds."
Hannah grinned back at him. "Yeah--!"
Piotr caught her hand, squeezed it, just for a moment, there in the air between his seat and hers. Selena hugged Jim's shoulders, planted a kiss on his cheek.
"I'm still knockin' wood," he said, smiling.
"Here, I'll do it for you." Selena rapped his temple playfully with her knuckles.
"Are they away?" asked Thomas West.
John Isaacs pushed the phone back toward the center of the conference table. "They sure are, Tom."
"Well, that is good. More coffee, anyone?" West gestured around the table with a silver pot. He always handled coffee duty at meetings. Not that the owner of Western Star Oil and Gas was paranoid, no: he just made coffee better than anyone else around, anywhere. He was a tall man, rangy, bald across the top, aged somewhere just past or short of fifty but young in the face, fine-featured. He had a careful, controlled mouth, hazel eyes that could be either shy or agate-cold.
"I'll take some." Isaacs held out his cup.
"Me, too," said Burns.
West smiled, moving around the table, pouring. "You, Charles?"
Charles McKeown shook his head. "Thanks, Tom, no. I'll never get to sleep as it is."
"I envy your discipline, Charles." West topped off his own cup, seated himself in an office chair like any other at the table, on casters, covered in mottled gray cloth. "So our three young people are safely away from American protection."
"That they are, Tom," said Isaacs.
"Do we have a trace on that chopper?"
"Yep. Not that I think we'll be needing one. Shouldn't be too hard to track 'em. Their pilot, that Russian kid, he'll be trying to rendezvous with the Danish fleet. We just need to figure out where he'll set down to wait."
"You're thinking he'll head for a rig?" Burns asked.
"I'm knowing he will. He'll have to. Danes are running supplies to the platforms; makes it all the more obvious."
McKeown looked over at him. "Who do we have up there?"
Isaacs smiled. "Who don't we have? The North Sea is ours." He glanced at West. "Any restrictions on my budget here, Tom?"
West, sipping his coffee, shook his head. "None whatsoever, John. Use your imagination." He set his cup down, rotated it slowly by the handle. He pursed his precise lips, watching his coffee benevolently, thoughtfully, as though he were reading tea leaves.
Isaacs waited, knowing Tom's pauses and not minding them. He knew also that Burns and McKeown were too afraid of West ever to speak through one of his silences. Finally, West said, quietly, "You know, when they found Henry's journal, it was like a sign from God. Young woman of color, young Irishman, a teenage girl, they walk into a mansion-- Almost like the start of a bad joke, isn't it? I just wanted to hear them say it, how Major West-- how Henry-- died. I could forgive it, if the virus took him. An act of God. But the acts of men-- omissions-- those I can't forgive. Either they killed him or they left him to die. I wanted to be certain of that." He looked up, looked at the three men seated around him, smiled slightly, shyly. "That's the problem, isn't it, with loving someone else's children: you don't become acquainted with their flaws. You don't develop those tiny pockets of loathing. Henry was my brother's boy-- you knew that already, of course-- and I was his doting uncle. If you would, please, John--"
"Yes, Tom?"
"Kill my nephew's killers for me, please."
The rain had stopped. The Bell flew on. The sky was a velvety blackish purple, strung with wisps of mist. The ground below was absolutely dark, a rolling black mass seeming only slightly more solid than the air. The cabin lighting was very low, so as not to interfere with Piotr's navigation up front. Selena had gone aft, in search of food.
"Hooah!" she said.
Jim called back to her: "What's that, then?"
She tossed him a silver foil packet. "It's what's for breakfast." She closed off the rations box, came forward, leaned in between Hannah and Piotr, offered them silver packets of their own. Jim looked at his. A Hooah! energy bar, as produced for the U.S. military. Peanut-butter flavored.
"Unless you'd rather have the apple crisp." Selena settled back in next to him, offered him her own Hooah!
"No, thanks." Jim shook his head, smiled. "Could eat apple-tree-flavored, I'm that hungry."
"Thought you might be."
She tore open her packet; Jim opened his. He bit without caution into the bar and didn't have to force himself to chew slowly: the Hooah! demanded it. It was like a brick made of peanut putty. And it was heavenly. He leaned back against the cabin wall, closed his eyes, gnawed. Selena gnawed next to him.
He was becoming accustomed to the sound of the rotors, was becoming increasingly able to place sounds above or below their chopping pitch. From the cockpit, he was hearing pieces of conversation between Piotr and Hannah.
"There. Squeeze, and gently. No sudden changes."
"No sudden-- like that, yeah?"
"Good. Ease forward-- wait-- wait-- and ease back. Very good."
Jim nudged Selena. She met his eyes, nodded, smiled while she chewed.
"Roll it," Piotr was saying. "Gently. There. No twisting, yes?"
"Yeah. Got it."
Jim chuckled over his peanut brick. Selena said, "By the time we get where we're going, she'll either know how to fly this thing or they'll be engaged."
"Here's hopin' it's the first one. Hate t' be the fella tellin' him no." He thought for a moment, calculated their time in the air. "We must be over the Wall by now."
"What's that, sweetheart?"
"The Wall. Hadrian's Wall. We rode it one summer, me an' a couple a' fellas."
She obviously saw something in his face; she looked at her apple bar and smiled. "You and a couple of fellas and--"
"And--?"
"How much weed did you have with you?"
Jim laughed. "Enough for everyone, I guess."
"Bribing the land marshals, hmm? Here: switch." She offered him her bar, took his.
He had a chew of apple-flavored slab. "Them pensioners with shotguns, they're a tough crowd."
"Don't doubt it for a second. You ought to see them at the chemist's on prescription day." She nipped at the peanut bar. "So, what was she like?"
"Who's that, love--?"
"Miss Hadrian's Wall."
Her expression was both wry and serious. Jim put his free hand over hers. "Fair hair. Green eyes. On holiday from the States. New York State." He paused, weaving his fingers with hers. "She wasn't you, Selena."
She didn't speak bitterly: "Should say not."
"No, that's not what I--" He contemplated, picked his words. "She was for the summer; we both knew that. You-- you're--"
"What, then--?"
"You're for always, aren't yeh--?"
With an incredible thud, something hit the top of the chopper, concussed forward with a sound like bowling balls passing through a giant blender. The Bell jerked in the air, lurched. In the cockpit, Piotr shouted something-- likely a curse in Russian; Jim and Selena toppled, tumbled. A terrible, terrible moment, when the helicopter's motion was all wrong--
But they weren't falling. A wrestling, a shuddering in the chopper's frame, and they righted again. Jim untangled himself from Selena.
"You alright?" he asked; she nodded, pulling herself upright. Jim clambered forward to the cockpit. "What in th' hell happened?"
"It is not your fault," Piotr was saying gently to Hannah, who was nodding, shaken. He said to Jim: "We have ingested something."
"What's that--?"
"Birdstrike. Likely a heron. In the air intake." His eyes swept the gauges. "Pressure is dropping in the starboard engine. I am shutting it down before it flames out."
All three of his passengers went a little wide-eyed; Jim volunteered the question: "Can we fly on one engine--?"
"No, Jim, I am making us crash." Piotr flipped a switch, and the driving muffled roar from the engines halved. The bowling-ball clatter stopped. He glanced back at Jim with an expression that didn't quite say Idiot. He gave Selena and Hannah a slight, reassuring smile. "We will be fine until Kinloss. We will refuel at the air station, clean out the turbine. Do not worry."
Near Findhorn Bay, off the Moray Firth, east and slightly north of Inverness, the Royal Air Force station at Kinloss. Under a lightening morning sky of mottled, broken clouds, landing strips and grayish-tan aprons on the seaward side, laid out on a plain of coarse green grass, olive arched hangars behind, a square of low light reddish brick buildings beyond those. Nothing moving on the ground, as far as they could see, all the way to the strips of conifer forest on the station's southern edge. No traffic in the air, either. Piotr circled the hangars, the refueling area. No evidence of destruction, of fire or explosion.
"The Nimrods are gone," he said. "The core of the squadrons here. Big surveillance planes. Search and rescue. No sign of them."
"What are all those, then?" Selena asked.
Aircraft dotted the area around the fueling station. Choppers, small planes, mostly civilian. All seemingly intact. All seemingly abandoned. No sense to their parking order.
"It's like a graveyard, innit--?" said Hannah.
Piotr frowned. Jim leaned in, looked more closely. "You say their transponder's still up?"
"Yes."
"Could be on automatic, right?"
"Yes."
"I don't like this," said Selena. "How long will it take us to refuel?"
"Twenty minutes-- assuming their tanks are not dry. Possibly forty-five minutes to clear the turbine."
Piotr landed the Bell on an open patch of apron roughly fifty meters from one of the domed hangars and as far as possible from the parked jumble of aircraft. While the port engine faded, went silent, he scanned the surrounding area through the windscreen; he didn't move from his seat until the rotors were still. Then he was up and out the pilot's-side door. Hannah followed from her side. Jim tugged open the sliding door in the passenger cabin, looked out, jumped down. The ground seemed too close; he felt too heavy standing on it. Selena joined him.
"Think we should take one of the rifles?" she asked.
"I'd probably manage t' shoot myself," Jim replied. He squeezed her shoulder. "We'll be done and gone soon enough."
"Sure."
Ahead of them, Piotr was scanning the pavement. "We are looking for a cap marked A, B, JP4, or JP8."
Before Jim had begun to look, Hannah was saying, "Got it. 'A,' right here."
"Good." Piotr looked toward the hangars. "Now we need only the-- There. Jim, come with me, please."
It looked not unlike a giant black-and-yellow garden hose mounted on an old-style milk float. Jim followed Piotr to the truck on legs slightly stiff. He felt averse to approaching the hangar outside which it was parked; the building's bulk seemed to draw off what little light was rising behind them, in the seaward sky.
It didn't help when Piotr said, "Keep a lookout. I need to bypass the ignition."
"Right." Suddenly, taking a rifle seemed like a very good idea. Jim stood away from the fueling truck far enough to have a clear view all around. No movement from the hangar, none from the small-craft graveyard. Nothing approaching from the sea across the coarse-grass fields. Not that he could see the water, not exactly, not in this light; but he caught it, suddenly, in an open cool breeze: the slightest tang, salt. Suddenly he realized: We're in Scotland. We're this far north. And where we're going-- He glanced back at the Bell, at the two not-quite-silhouettes keeping their own watch outside it. The two he loved best in all the world. Where we're going-- who knows?
The truck's ignition fired, and he jumped. Piotr grinned at him. "Boo," he said.
"'Boo' yerself, yeh big bastard, yeh." Jim grinned back, stepped onto the gas-float's passenger-side running board, held on while Piotr drove them back to the Bell.
Fueling, hoses running from the truck to the ground tank, from the truck to the Bell. Piotr fetched a tool kit and a short folding ladder from the passenger compartment, looked up at the chopper's top. "Should be cool enough. We can dismantle the housing."
Said "we" obviously meant Hannah. She joined Piotr, looking up. "Anything wantin' spanners, I'm on it. What do I do?"
Selena chuckled. "Makes us well obsolete, doesn't it?" she said to Jim, drily. She said to Piotr: "We'll look about a bit, keep an eye on things, alright?"
"Yes. But do not go far."
"Don't worry," said Jim. "We know the drill."
He and Selena walked east on the maintenance skirt, away from the Bell, away, farther still, from the flock of abandoned choppers and light planes. They passed the eastern end of the hangar where the fueling truck had been parked; they looked around the hangar's end back into RAF Kinloss's cluster of administrative and personnel buildings. Early morning light reflected metallic-dark off of the windows looking back at them. Everything was very still.
"I'm for keepin' out," Jim said. He shivered, and not only from the lack of meat on his bones, the sunless air navigating the weave of his sweater. "You, darlin'?"
"I'll second that." Selena nodded, turned back. "Let's have a look at a few of those choppers. Maybe there's something we can--"
"Help me--"
A child's voice, thin and high, gender-indefinite. It came from a building ahead and to the right. It sailed out through the air like bird-cry, like the keening of a killdeer.
"Th' fuck--"
Jim knew he had moved toward the building only when Selena caught his arm and stopped him.
"No, Jim," she said. She spoke almost harshly; she shook her head.
"Help meee--"
"But--"
"It's called 'paranoia,' sweetheart, and it's going to keep us alive. Come on."
Just as they turned back, a figure stepped out from the building on the right. It was a little boy, possibly eight or nine, dark-haired, pale, dressed in bedraggled drab trousers, a dark green jacket. He stumbled toward them, stopped. "Help me," he said. "Please help me. It's my mum-- please-- she's sick--"
Jim's breath rattled between his lips. "Selena--"
"No, no, no--" Selena was saying. "Jim, we're going. Now."
She pulled his hand, pulled him into a run. They sprinted for the Bell. Ahead of them, Hannah was up the ladder, twisting at something with a wrench; Piotr was just re-capping the chopper's fuel tank. He looked over, saw them, frowned in surprise.
"Piotr--" Selena shouted, "--we have to go--!"
"What is--" Piotr pulled himself to his full height, looking past them. Then he called up the ladder next to the Bell: "Hannah: stop. Put the bolts back, please." He swung into the chopper, emerged with a rifle. Jim felt an acid jolt of fear. He and Selena reached the Bell, stopped, turned, looked back.
A group of figures, human, rounding the eastern end of the hangar. Maybe half a dozen, not running but moving quickly toward them.
"Stand off!" Piotr shouted. He leveled the rifle. "We are armed!"
The group slowed but didn't stop. Hannah came down the ladder. "Back t'gether," she said to Piotr.
"Good, Hannah."
She nodded, packed away the tools, folded the ladder, stowed everything. She met Selena emerging from the side door of the chopper with the other two rifles they'd taken from the soldiers at Infinity. Selena offered one of the guns to Jim.
He took it, reluctantly. "D'yeh have any clue how t' use one of these--?"
She nodded toward the barrel of her own rifle, which was leveled at the dark approaching group. "The bullet comes out that end, I'm figuring. Piotr, start us up--"
Piotr was already opening the cockpit door.
"Wait--"
A man's voice, from the group. Close enough now, in the rising dusky light, and they all had faces, details. Four men, three women, the little boy. All very pale, all with haggard eyes. Young but worn, none of them looking past thirty, their clothing worn-looking, too. The adults wore pieces of RAF uniforms, green wool jackets, drab blouses. Some of them carried pistols; one carried a rifle.
"So much pointing of guns." The man who'd said, "Wait--": he spoke again. He was tall and thin; his eyes were very dark. He wore a wool jacket with a captain's bars. "Welcome to RAF Kinloss."
"We were just leaving, actually," said Selena. "Piotr--"
The cockpit door slammed; Hannah's door, the co-pilot's door on the chopper's other side, slammed as well. Jim heard the clicking of switches. The man in the haggard group, the one with the rifle: he raised the gun, pointed it at the Bell's windscreen.
"Tell 'em no, Bryan--"
He held the gun on Piotr, through the glass; he looked at the man wearing captain's bars. He was shaking, blinking spastically.
"I'm tellin' you no, Terry. Don't be gettin' ahead of yourself." The man named Bryan addressed Selena: "As I was sayin', welcome to Kinloss. We're tradin' for fuel. What'll yeh give us?"
"Pardon--?"
"Yeh've helped yourself t' two hundred gallons of fuel, haven't yeh? What'll yeh give for it?"
"You're not RAF."
"Sorry, lass--?"
"It's not your bloody fuel, is it--?"
They bristled, all of them. Selena bristled, too. Jim eased toward the Bell's side door. Selena, girl, what are you on about--?
She said, suddenly, "You're bloody gearheads. Junkies."
"Aren't you th' wise one, then--"
"You're bartering fuel for drugs--?"
Bryan smiled, showing brownish teeth. "That's just th' half of it, love. We're tradin' for kit, but not wit' you an' yours. Fact is, we'll be tradin' you elsewhere. Parts of yeh, anyway."
Jim's breath caught in his chest. He was right at the chopper's door. Selena was too far out, too near Bryan's gang.
"Parts--?" she asked. The horror of it: she couldn't keep all of it from her voice.
"New markets, new trade, ain't it?" Bryan looked her over. "Hearts, livers, marrow, all sorts. Guys on th' coast, runnin' body parts t' Europe, Scandinavia. Lucky enough t' have one here can do th' harvestin'." He tipped his head toward one of the group's women, a short ash-blonde with a hard face, glassy gray hard-focused eyes. "Tell yeh what, darlin': you give us him--" -- a nod at Jim-- "--an' th' big fella an' th' girl, you walk out of here just one eye an' a kidney short. Deal?"
"Jesus--" Selena swallowed, gripped her rifle more tightly.
"Ah, put it by, darlin'--"
"Wait," said Jim. Bryan looked from Selena to him. Another dozen or so twitching eyes did the same. Jim set his rifle on the ground. "We've morphine on board," he said. "Are yeh wantin' that? Is that of use--?"
The man named Terry looked at Bryan with eager spastic eyes. "Bry, we could--"
"We could, at that." Bryan nodded at Jim. "Fetch it, lad. But mind: we'd just as soon take her all th' way apart."
He nodded toward Selena. Jim couldn't see her face, could see only the terrible tension in her back and shoulders. He turned, hoisted himself into the Bell, scrambled aft to the provisions. No one followed him. He dug through the emergency supplies, shaking, found a black plastic case, opened it.
He was back at the side door seconds later.
"Let's have it then, lad--" said Bryan. Then he went still, staring. They all did.
Jim held the flare gun in both hands, leveled it at the ground tank whose cap had borne an "A," which cap still lay next to the fueling truck. The hose from the fuel truck still ran to the tank. Jim aimed for the point at which the hose entered the ground. As he would be the first to admit, he knew very little of guns and shooting. But this seemed an easy enough shot, even for a grossly pacifistic neophyte. The tank, the truck, the hose, the sharp smell of aviation fuel, wet traces of it on the tarmac where Piotr had re-coiled the fueling hose that had run between the truck and the Bell: all of it was less than six meters away.
He said clearly: "Let her go."
"Ah, shite--" Bryan said. "Fuck it. Lad, yeh wouldn't--"
"Shoot him, Bry--!" Terry, looking over, shouting. "Shoot her--!"
"Yeh shoot me, I'll still have my shot, yeah?" Jim spoke quickly, calmly. "Yeh shoot me an' her, an' you've got nothin'. It all goes. We all go. Nothin' left. No trade. No fuckin' trade."
A long moment. He knew Selena had turned to look at him; he kept his eyes on the yellow-and-black hose, the hole in the paving those twenty feet away. All the guns, even Terry's, were now on him; he knew that, too. He waited, his arms and hands steady.
"Yeh would at that, wouldn't yeh, lad?" Bryan said quietly. He reached to his left, pressed down a hand holding a pistol. "Terry, all yez, put 'em by."
The barrels lowered. Jim kept his aim. He said to Selena, gently, "Come aboard, darlin'." Then he called forward: "Piotr, start 'er up!"
A click, a whine from the port engine. Selena turned from the ragged band, came to the chopper. She climbed in past Jim, her face set. She saw his focus, didn't seek his eyes. The Bell's rotors sliced at the air; the sound of the engine rose from a whine to a low roar. Selena pulled the door nearly closed; Jim held his aim. Terry backed from the front of the chopper, backed clear with Bryan and the others. He raised his rifle, pointed it at Jim. Jim held his aim.
The Bell went light on its skids, lifted free of the ground. In the moment before Piotr increased the throttle, angled the collective up, banked them away, Terry fired.
The slug bit into the doorframe inches from Jim's head. He flinched, re-calmed, fired. The flare shot from the gun in a trail of sparks and smoke. It hit the ground to the right of the hole. It touched a tiny puddle of jet fuel. And that was enough, quite enough. The Bell went away and up; so did the fueling apron at RAF Kinloss.
The fireball rushed at but missed them; the concussion rattled the rising Bell but couldn't knock it from the air. Jim stumbled backward; Selena caught him, steadied him, slid the side door the rest of the way shut. She didn't look down.
Jim sat down, set aside the flare pistol. When Selena joined him, he embraced her. She nestled her head against his shoulder, said nothing.
Piotr called back: "We are alright, yes?"
"Alright: yes," Jim called back. "Hannah, you okay?"
"Yeah!"
All that youthful adrenaline. Jim smiled, feeling suddenly very tired. He nuzzled Selena. "You good, darlin'?"
"Have t' be, with you around."
"We will find a quieter place to set down, finish our repairs," Piotr was saying. "There is a good stretch of beach outside--"
Jim didn't quite catch the name. Pernan? Prenan--? He closed his eyes. The Bell flew north across the Firth of Moray, across water sparkling under a new morning sun.
