World War Moo (20 page)

The view across the valley was spectacular. The rippling loch reflected the sun that had chosen to make an appearance, while off in the far distance heavy clouds unloaded slanting sheets of rain on the rolling hills and peaks. It was typical Scotland: brooding yet beautiful, sparse yet inspiring. Momentarily entranced, he forgot the tragedy that had befallen the nation until the wind carried a shout of alarm up the slope. He looked back at the paddock and saw a figure running down toward the village. He tugged Scholzy's shoulder.

“I think they've spotted us,” he said.

“Then we'd better get a move on,” Scholzy said.

He pulled the throttle back further and Geldof's pelvic bone suffered a severe pummeling as the heaving, lurching bike threw him up and down. After half an hour of having his internal organs jarred, they rounded the top of the loch and began to nose toward the road, traveling down a narrow track hemmed in on both sides by tall trees. He kept expecting some large animal to come bursting out. The only thing they encountered was a weasel chewing at something on the ground. It lifted its head at their approach and bounded straight toward them. Geldof could swear it bore a predatory look. As they came together, it tensed its back legs to leap. It didn't get the chance, disappearing under the heavy tread of the front right tire as James swerved to squash it.

“Another kill!” James shouted.

“Doesn't count unless it's armed,” Mick shouted back.

“It had sharp teeth. That's a weapon.”

They emerged from the track and swung onto the road, where they came to a halt. Geldof looked across the water. Halfway up the hill where they'd been, a small group of men was trekking upward.

“Do you think they're going to come after us?” he said.

“Doubt it,” Scholzy said. “They probably thought we were bandits. When they see we've moved on they'll go back home.”

Geldof wasn't so sure. They were perilously close to the village, separated just by the water. While he was pretty sure that the residents of Arrochar wouldn't be able to tell that the riders were uninfected from sniffing their tracks, he couldn't rule it out. He'd seen just how tenacious an infected animal or human could be. All he wanted to do was get in, sweep his mum off her feet, and get out again. They could find somewhere farther away from inhuman society to hole up until Sergei came back for them. Before he could express his concerns and make his suggestion, Scholzy pointed up the road. “GPS says the camp is just over there.”

Geldof put his fears aside. His reunion with his mum was only minutes away. They inched along the road, searching for a gap in the trees. Peter whistled and pointed toward where undergrowth partially obscured a track running off the main road.

“Weapons up, nice and slow,” Scholzy said. “They're going to be jumpy.”

They pushed through the undergrowth and trundled along, waiting for the moment they would be challenged. It didn't take long.

“That's far enough,” a female voice shouted from somewhere in the trees. “This place is taken.”

All four bikes halted and Scholzy held up his hands. “We're not looking for any trouble. We're just here to talk to Fanny Peters.”

A long, tense silence followed, before the invisible watcher spoke again. “Why do you want to talk to Fanny?”

“I think this is your cue,” Scholzy said in a low voice.

Geldof swung his legs off the back of the bike and, with his hands spread wide in a gesture of peace, peered into the trees. “Her son's here to see her.”

“Geldof? Good Lord, is that really you?”

A tree branch almost directly overhead rustled and something dropped to the ground. A woman, her face smeared with camouflage paint and curly hair tied back, emerged from the greenery. It took Geldof a moment to realize it was one of his mum's friends, a woman called Eva who came over to stay whenever there was a protest rally on in Glasgow. They were definitely in the right place.

Eva was normally one of those people who felt you weren't connecting unless her palm was resting on your forearm or her hip was pressed against yours on the sofa. He expected her to come charging forward and give him an inappropriately lingering hug, but she stayed back and muttered something under her breath. After an appraising look at the mercenaries, she gave Geldof a sad smile. “Your mum is going to freak out.”

 

17

In the predawn gloom, lights burned on the top floor of Fraser House, the twenty-three-story tower block on Brentford Estate that Blood of Christ had made its home. Tony stood beside the mobile command center and peered at the six identical gray blocks through the night-vision goggles Glen had handed him. Soldiers and police were fanning out across the football field butting on to the back of the estate, keeping low as they scuttled toward the building. Similar movements were taking place all around the estate, creating an impenetrable circle.

They'd finally caught a break in their hunt for Archangel the previous day when a policeman witnessed three members of the group corner a frail old imam out for a stroll along the side of the Thames in Brentford. As the blows began to rain down, the officer followed his instructions to shoot on sight when confronted with members of the extremist group. He killed two of the attackers and the surviving member took off running. In his blind panic he sprinted back to Fraser House. Fortunately, the copper had been smart enough to follow at a distance rather than go rushing in and had noted the armed men guarding the entrance to the building. He then lurked behind a bush for half an hour until Archangel himself emerged, surrounded by bodyguards.

Tony had wasted no time getting Glen and Frank to pull together an assault force. Sections of the city had been unprotected for the night as a result, but whatever chaos took place was a price worth paying to be rid of these maniacs. Tony shouldn't really have been there since he did have a country to run, but he needed to see Archangel brought low, and he would be back in the office by 8:00 a.m. if all went well. As he watched the soldiers take up their positions, he felt confident they were about to bring the extremist rabble to heel. As fervent as the madmen were, they would be no match for a well-drilled fighting force. And stopping their cross-channel jaunts would surely buy him enough time to get the missile ready.

“They could've picked somewhere a bit nicer to hole up,” said Frank, who'd stuck his head out of the command center.

It was a good point. Decades of rocketing house prices had seen people scrimp and save to get their feet on the property ladder only to find the gap between the first and higher rungs impossible to bridge. Even a pokey flat in one of the tower blocks they were looking at had been going for around 150,000, a sum that would have purchased a mansion, with enough change to buy a sports car and maintain a few floozies to drape over it, when Tony was a young man. The virus turned the property ladder into a trampoline. When the initial wave of violence faded and survivors emerged from the camps, they at first returned to their own homes. The mass upgrading started when looters realized the deserted homes they were ransacking could be taken over wholesale. With so many empty properties, those who jumped earliest and hardest got whatever they wanted. A mass exodus to the largely empty posh districts took place. Knightsbridge, Belgravia, Chelsea, Kensington, Mayfair, and all the other areas once reserved for those with bulging wallets were now thoroughly degentrified—stuffed with the kind of plebs the previous residents would have called the police on if they so much as stopped to tie a shoelace outside their houses. A group of particularly ambitious travelers had even taken up residence in Buckingham Palace, replacing the corgis with Alsatians. Tony had taken the decision to let everyone get on with it. If they ever extricated themselves from the mess they were in and people started returning home, they could sort it all out then.

“It's more defensible. Archangel is probably at the top, so our boys are going to have to fight their way up floor by floor,” said Glen, who'd been in a splendid mood since being given the okay to prepare the missile.

Tony hadn't revealed his true intentions to anyone, not even Amira, who kept bending his ear. He was worried that if he told her what he was really planning she would let it slip to Glen just to get one over on him. It was better to let Glen focus on getting this ultimate deterrent ready. Once the sub was at sea and the international community was suitably cowed, he would inform Glen that the missile wouldn't be fired and deal with the fallout.

“Well, it has to be done,” Tony said. “If these nutters get caught trying to get over to France again this country is toast.”

The radio crackled into life with the mission commander's voice. “All units in place.”

“Operation is go,” Glen said.

Tony looked through his binoculars again. Soldiers sprang up from their crouched positions and ran toward the entrance of the tower block. They kicked in the doors and poured inside, guns at the ready.

“Come on, Tony,” Frank said. “You're going to miss the show.”

He clambered into the cramped interior of the vehicle and peered at the monitors relaying the view from the helmet-cam of each unit leader. One of the screens showed a boot splintering a doorframe. The others displayed jiggling views of a dimly lit staircase.

“Units two through five, secure each floor before moving on. Unit six, guard the exit. Unit one, go straight to the top and secure the principal target,” Glen said.

Tony felt slightly nauseated as one of the cameras continued its crazy wiggle upward. “Why can't they take the lift?”

“They always smell of piss,” Frank said.

“Come on, that's such a clich
é
.”

“Clich
é
s come from somewhere, don't they? Every time we had to nick somebody in a tower block, we held our noses on the way up.”

“So they don't have flushing toilets in their expensive flats and have to take a slash in the lift?”

“No, but little boys like to pee through the crack in the door to hear the noise it makes on the way down. It's worse in the bigger blocks, because there are more of the little toerags and they have more time in the lift to let it rip.”

“It isn't because it smells of piss,” Glen said. “It's too dangerous. When the door opens at the top, it would only take one grenade tossed in, and they'd all be dead.”

As the lead team continued upward, the labored breathing of the soldiers apparent, Tony glanced at the other monitors. Door after door was kicked in to reveal uninhabited homes.

“Where is everybody?” Tony said.

“Maybe there weren't as many of them as we thought,” Glen said. “As long as Archangel's up there, we're all good.”

“They had guards yesterday,” Tony said, beginning to get a bad feeling.

Unit one finally reached the top floor. The camera showed a view of a long, silent corridor. The soldiers edged along the wall, applying boot to wood at each apartment. Again, they were all empty. When they got to the last flat—the one with the lights on—the unit leader panned his camera around.

“Nobody here, sir,” he said.

“Are we sure this is the right tower block?” Tony said.

In answer, the squad leader picked up a piece of paper from the coffee table and held it up to his camera. The Blood of Christ logo was visible at the top, although the resolution of the camera made it difficult to read the handwritten text.

“What's it say?” Frank asked.

“I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity. I will halt the arrogance of the proud. Isaiah 13:11. You cannot stop us, Mr. Campbell. We are tools of the Lord's will. Archangel.”

“They knew we were coming,” Tony said, resisting the urge to punch the screen. “How did they know we were coming?”

“Somebody must have told them,” Glen said.

“You mean we've got a leak?”

“They've got sympathizers everywhere.”

This time Tony did wallop the screen, regretting the decision when it turned out to be hard glass. He communed with Spock briefly and, sucking his knuckles, turned to Frank. “Why didn't we post some lookouts after we found out where they were hiding?”

“We didn't want to take the chance of alerting them,” Frank said.

Tony stood beneath the light and dropped his chin so it shone on the front of his head. An imaginary laser bored a hole between Frank's eyes. Frank, unaware his brain had just been turned into Swiss cheese, pulled at his ear. Tony sighed. Chewing Frank out would accomplish nothing now, so he kept his voice level and said, “Well, they were alerted. Find out who did it. We're going to get these sods. Next time I want them to know nothing until we hit them.”

Frank nodded. “I'll get on it.”

“We should head up there,” Glen said. “Maybe they left something behind that'll help us figure out where they went.”

They went up in the lift, which did indeed smell of piss. The strong stench of urine acted as smelling salts and helped clear Tony's head. This was nothing more than a setback. He only needed to keep Blood of Christ quiet for another week; with luck the disruption of having to move headquarters at such short notice would keep them occupied for that period.

When he entered Archangel's lair, there was nothing to suggest it had been the epicenter of a terrifying movement. Apart from the sheet of paper, everything had been cleared out save the bland Ikea furniture. They would get no leads here. Still, there must have been witnesses to the pullout. They would find these people, locate the new headquarters, and finish it once and for all. Feeling a lot better, he turned to leave. His satphone rang. He wrestled it out from the clip attached to his belt. God, he missed his mobile phone. This beast made him feel like a 1980s stock market trader.

“Hey, love,” he said, expecting to hear Margot's voice. When he left before Vanessa woke, she always called so he could say good morning.