World War Moo (35 page)

He again told himself it wouldn't come to that. Now the missile was on board, all that remained were final checks and provisioning. Soon the sub would be ready to slip under water and head out into the open sea. Then he could call Piers and they would all be safe. He could only hope the bombers weren't already on their way. The next meeting of the UN Security Council, directly after which the attack had been due to take place, was set for four days from now. With luck, they weren't ready yet. They'd only had one day to react to Lesley's story and would have to rethink as well as accelerate their plan.

He left the submariners to their final preparations and returned to his quarters, where he picked up the satphone and called Margot.

“Where are you?” she said.

“I can't tell you. How's Vanessa?”

“Terrified. She overheard some of the security guys talking about that journalist's story. She thinks we're all going to die.”

“Put her on.”

Vanessa's voice came on the line, small and trembling. He could almost see her, clutching her Peppa Pig doll with one hand and the phone with other.

“Mummy says you're scared.”

“The men said they're going to drop big bombs on us.”

The abject terror in her voice made him want to cry and beat the living shit out of Piers, the embodiment of the cause of her fear, at the same time. Nonetheless, he faked his best cheery, confident voice. “Those men are silly big fibbers.”

“They are?”

“Yes. They work for the government. Everyone who works for the government has to pass a lying test to get the job. If they're caught telling the truth, they get fired into space to go live on the moon.”

“Why do they have to be good at lying, Daddy?”

Realizing he'd opened a can of worms and that Vanessa, now at least distracted, would keep asking him questions he didn't want to answer, he changed tack. “Just because. Anyway, are you sure they said ‘big bombs'? I think they must have said ‘big bums.' Now wouldn't that be funny?”

Vanessa giggled. “Yes.” She paused for a minute, and he could almost hear her little brain whirring. “Who would clean up all the poo poo?”

Tony laughed. “I don't know, darling. Just know that Daddy won't let anything bad happen to you. Ever.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die. Can you give the phone back to Mummy, please?”

“Okay,” she said, back to being a carefree four-year-old just like that. God, how he envied that ability to bounce back.

Margot came back on the phone. “What were you telling our child? She's run off to get a brush and pan to ‘clean up the poo poo from the big bums'.”

“I may have got a bit carried away. But she's fine now, isn't she?”

“Yes, she is. Thank you. I'm not, though.”

“You don't need to worry, love. It isn't going to happen.”

“Don't soft-soap me, Tony. It's real, isn't it?”

“Yes. But in a few hours it won't matter how many bombs and guns they assemble. They won't be able to touch us.”

“Why? What are you up to?”

“I can't tell you. You just have to believe me when I say all this fear ends tonight. Tomorrow I'll be home, and we'll be able to start building a future. A real future.”

Margot's breathing grew thick and heavy. He thought she didn't believe him and expected her to begin sobbing. What she said next came as something of a surprise. “Thank God. Because I'm bloody horny. We haven't had S-E-X in days.”

“What's sex, Mummy?” he heard Vanessa shout.

“Bloody precocious child,” Margot muttered, before saying, “Go watch television, love. I need to talk to Daddy privately.” He heard footsteps, the brief blare of cartoons, and finally the click of a lock. “I'm in the toilet. We're having phone sex.”

“Seriously?” Tony said. “You do know I'm trying to save Britain right now, right?”

“Oooh, a hero. That just makes me wetter.”

Tony looked out of window. Dozens of men were ferrying boxes and crates onto the submarine under the floodlights. In a few hours he would be able to keep the promise he'd made to his wife and daughter. Until then, all he could do was wait and worry. There was still a chance he could die. If the bombers were coming and got here before the missile was ready, Faslane would be the first to go. With that possibility in mind, he knew he should be saying a poignant farewell just in case, although Margot clearly was not in the right frame of mind. He gave it a go anyway.

“You and Vanessa mean more to me than life itself,” he said. “I love you so much that it hurts deep down in my bones when I think of anything happening to you.”

“Great. I love you, too,” Margot said. “Hear that? That's the sound of my hand running up my stockinged thigh. Guess where it's going? Now come on, unzip that fly. It'll only take a few minutes. Then you can go back to saving us.”

Then again
, he thought as the whisper of his cock stirring against his boxers answered the whisper of fingers on silk,
nothing says “I love you” like filthy phone sex
.

“I have no idea,” he said. “Why don't you tell me? In great detail.”

He forgot that he held the lives of millions in his hands, for those hands were soon full of something else. Margot was right. It did only take a few minutes.

 

DAY TO EXCISION

 

31

The world was awash in flickering green light as Geldof lay on the damp grass, peering through night-vision binoculars at Scholzy and James snipping the fence at the far north corner of Faslane. Beside him lay Mick, patched up but unable to walk without assistance, which meant Geldof was still knackered from bearing half his weight on the slog up the hill. The Irishman was positioned over a long sniper rifle fitted with a night-vision scope, which he'd already used to dispatch two guards at the north gate. Geldof swept the binoculars across the base, looking for any patrols. At the moment, all was still.

Mick nudged him. He lowered the binoculars. “What?”

“I'm not really a sociopath, so. I just say that to seem harder. I'm actually perfectly well adjusted and a nice bloke. When I'm not killing people.”

“Why're you telling me this?”

“Well, you know. Now that me and your mum are an item…”

“You and my mum are temporary fuck buddies.”

“Ah, come on. I like your mum more than that. There's something special about her.”

“Are you looking for my blessing?”

“I suppose I am.”

“Now's not really the best time.”

“When would be the best time? When we're all dead?”

“Fine,” Geldof said. “If it'll shut you up, you've got my blessing. Just try not to let her shag you to death.”

“Now that,” Mick said in a dreamy voice, “would be a grand way to go.”

Geldof shook his head and looked through the binoculars again. The fence now had a large semicircular hole in it, wide enough to accommodate the cows that would shortly be let out the nearby truck. They would then chase a remote-controlled spy car, fitted with a video camera and a microphone. Strapped around the neck of each of the ten cows like a deadly bell was an explosive charge. These bombs would be set off once the car, to which they'd fastened a rag rubbed in the pits of every uninfected member of their party, had led the animals down to the dock to plunge into the water. Individually, the explosives wouldn't cause significant damage to the sub: collectively, they would be powerful enough to send it bubbling to the bottom of the loch. At least, that's what Peter said. If it all went to plan, they would melt away into the night with their lives intact.

Geldof had three jobs: help guide the car, which had a narrow field of vision, to its target; spot for Mick, pointing out the location of any guards he didn't see through the equally narrow focus of his scope; and, if they failed, call the number Lesley had given him, tell the person who picked up what was in those missiles, and get the hell out of there before bombers rumbled overhead.

Scholzy and James retreated to the bushes while Fanny and Scott unlatched the door and lowered the ramp. A few cows poked their heads out but didn't venture down until the little car scooted past. The cows clattered down the ramp, in hot pursuit of the car as it skittered toward the gap in the fence. Even from up on the hill, Geldof could hear their moos and bellows. The soldiers would hear them, too, but that was the insane beauty of the plan. They would think a stray herd had got in somehow rather than make the gigantic mental leap necessary to realize they were facing a cowmakaze squad.

The car had to stop briefly on the other side of the fence as the cows all tried to squeeze through the hole at once. For a moment, Geldof thought they were going to get stuck, but once the first two squirmed free the clog cleared. They stampeded across the empty car park, heading toward the massive white rectangle of a hangar by the water's edge. Beyond the hangar were squat buildings of various shapes and sizes, and still farther Geldof could make out the outline of the moored sub. They had a long way to go across the sprawling base. Just as the cows reached the first hangar, two small figures emerged from a guard post.

“Soldiers,” Geldof said.

“Where? Mick said, his eye glued to the scope.

“Left a bit.”

“Give me it in time!”

“Twenty-four-hour or normal?”

“Just tell me!”

“Eleven o'clock.”

Mick shifted the rifle. “Got them.”

He didn't pull the trigger immediately. The soldiers were clearly bemused by what they saw, just staring at the cows stampeding toward them. However, as the toy car zipped past one of them gave it a long, hard look. The cows were close behind, and one of them lost its footing and thumped into the guard post. It paused, just a few feet from the soldiers, before rejoining the tail end of the pursuit like a racer after a pit stop. The soldiers ditched their confused stance. One of them hauled up his weapon and ran out after the herd.

“They must have seen the explosives,” Mick said, pulling the trigger before he'd even finished speaking.

The first soldier went down. Before Mick could let loose another round, the other soldier dived back inside the building. Klaxons began to sound.

“Bollocks,” Mick said. “This is going to get messy.”

The cows disappeared behind the hangar for a few seconds and then reappeared, heading down the narrow road that hugged the water's edge. Tiny figures came running out of a low house a few hundred meters ahead.

“More soldiers ahead,” Geldof said into the radio. “Can you see them on the camera?”

“I see them,” said Tom, who'd been handed control of the vehicle thanks to his professed proficiency at Scalextric. “Is there another way around?”

Geldof panned the binoculars across the base. The soldiers were blocking the road and there were no turnoffs before them. “No.”

“What do you suggest I do, run over their toes with my tiny little tires?”

“Let me try to clear a path,” Mick said.

He began to pull the trigger methodically. Three of the soldiers dropped before the rest ran for the cover of another hangar, opening up the road for the car and its wake of cows. The car whizzed past the corner of the hangar. For a moment Geldof thought it was going to make it, particularly since Mick was pinging shots off the side of the building to keep the soldiers hemmed in. Then he saw sparks fly off the concrete around the car as the soldiers fired at it. The car tumbled and came to rest. The cows swiftly caught up and clustered around to rip at the rag.

“There goes plan A,” Mick said.

*   *   *

Lesley peered over Tom's shoulder, feeling nauseated in equal parts by the bouncing ground-level view on the video screen and the possibility that they may have to enter the heavily guarded base themselves if the cow plan failed, which she fully expected it to do. She'd seen a lot of crazy shit since the onset of the virus, but exploding cows? That was just ludicrous. Given half a chance, she would have sneaked into the computer room and sent an e-mail to the UN. However, James, who clearly didn't trust her, wouldn't let her near the building. That meant she'd been unable to check for a response from Terry. If she survived, she could pick up the conversation. If she died, at least she'd said what she had to say.

As she watched, the display stopped moving. Hooves appeared. The display veered upward, and she got a close-up of a cow's long tongue. The screen cut to static.

Tom tossed the controller aside. “The car's down.”

“What happened?” Scholzy said into the radio.

“Somebody shot the car,” Geldof said. “The cows have stopped to munch on the rag.”

“One of us poor uninfected sods is going to have to go in and lead them down,” Peter said.

“That's not going to fly,” Scholzy said. “We'd have to get all the way to the cows, avoid getting shot by that large group of gun-toting soldiers, and outpace those big fuckers down to the dock. Fat chance.”

“Then what?”

“We make the best of it. Are they close to the soldiers?” Scholzy asked Geldof.

“Maybe ten meters away.”

“That'll have to do.”

Scholzy nodded at Peter, who was holding the remote detonator.

“Are you ready for a big cow-boom?” Peter said. “You get it, right? Explosions normally go kaboom but I said…”

“I think I preferred you with the mask on,” Scholzy said. “Just press the bloody button.”

“Fine,” Peter said, and did so.

A massive fireball bloomed in the middle of the base. As the shockwave reached them, everybody save the mercenaries ducked instinctively. A whole cow, still unexploded for some reason, soared into the air above the expanding flames like a lump of rock spewed up by an erupting volcano. The flames died out, sucked into a roiling black cloud of smoke that obscured the cow just as it reached the zenith of its climb. Lesley, her ears ringing and heart pounding, came out of her crouch. The sheer force of the blast must have killed a good number of the soldiers, but the submarine remained undamaged. That meant only one thing: they were going in, God help them.