Department 19: Battle Lines (61 page)

“Get dressed,” she said, barely looking round at him. “Uniforms there.”

Matt nodded, squeezed past her, and pulled down a uniform in his size. He held it in his hands for a long moment, then began to undress.

Oh Christ
, she thought.
He’s never worn this stuff outside the Playground. I shouldn’t be taking him. It isn’t fair.

“Matt—” she began, but he cut her off.

“Save it,” he said. “I know what you’re thinking. I’m coming.”

She nodded and returned her attention to the task at hand. When her equipment was in place, she helped Matt attach his: Glock 17, Heckler & Koch MP5, T-Bone, ultraviolet grenades, ultraviolet beam gun, torch, radio, console.

“You know what you’re doing, right?” she asked. “You can use all this stuff?”

“Don’t worry about me, Kate,” he replied.

She was suddenly full of fierce, fiery love for her friend; he was scared, it was clear in the pallid colour of his face, the wideness of his eyes, but he was here. And he was refusing to let her go alone.

“OK,” said Matt, standing up and patting himself down. “I think I’m good.”

“Grab one of those,” said Kate, pointing at a row of gleaming black and purple helmets. “Pass me one too.”

Matt nodded, then did as he was told. Kate took a helmet from him and slipped it over her head. She opened a panel on its underside, pulling out the black cable concealed behind it. It went into a port in her uniform, at the back of her neck; this connected up her uniform’s control system, meaning she was able to change the visual and aural modes of her helmet using the buttons and pad on the side of her belt.

Matt watched carefully, then copied her. The two young Operators looked at each other for a brief moment, their visors raised, and Kate fought back the absurd urge to give her friend a hug. It was not the time for such things; they had a job to do.

“Let’s go,” said Matt, firmly. “I’m ready.”

“One last thing,” said Kate. “We have to go to the Ops Room. Just for a minute.”

Matt frowned. “Why?”

“I promised Paul I would.”

“Kate, there isn’t time,” said Matt. “We need to go.”

“I promised,” she said. “Wait here if you want. But I have to go.”

Matt stared for a moment. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s make it quick.”

“Agreed,” said Kate.

She pushed open the armoury door and ran back across the hangar, Matt close behind her. They burst through the double doors, sprinted down the corridor, and stopped outside the door to the Ops Room, the oval space that was the tactical and strategic heart of the Department. Kate pulled it open; they stepped inside, then stopped dead in their tracks.

She had not wasted a moment wondering why Paul Turner had made her promise to go to the Ops Room before she left; there was too much else to think about. But even if she had, she doubted she would ever have guessed the truth.

In the middle of the wide room, leaning on one of the tables, was Colonel Victor Frankenstein.

The huge, misshapen man was wearing an Operator’s uniform and casually holding the biggest shotgun Kate had ever seen; it dwarfed the T-Bone that hung from his belt. Frankenstein smiled at them as they skidded to a halt, their eyes widening; a narrow smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Paul told me what’s happening,” he said, his voice like rolling thunder. “I’d like to help. If you’ll let me.”

Kate glanced over at Matt; her friend was still staring at the monster, his eyes wide with surprise. She looked back at Frankenstein, her heart filling with desperate gratitude.

“I thought you only protected Jamie’s family?” she said, smiling round the lump that had risen in her throat.

“Isn’t that what you are?” replied Frankenstein.

The black van screeched to a halt outside the warehouse where Alastair Dempsey had been located.

Rain was pouring from the skies above London, bouncing up from the empty pavements and causing the gutters to run like rapids. The deluge had forced the majority of the pedestrians off the streets, sending them running for refuge in bars and restaurants, or the tube stations that would take them home.

Jamie Carpenter sat in the back of the van, watching the feeds from the external cameras. He stared at the crisp HD images, waiting for the right moment for them to make their move.

He and Ellison had said little to one another on their flight from the Loop. As soon as they were in the air, Jamie had requested permission to make an emergency landing in Central London, on the grounds that an Operator’s life might depend on it. The Communications Operator on the other end of the line had sounded incredulous, and had instantly refused the request, ordering them instead to London City Airport; it was the closest location where they could set down the helicopter without attracting unnecessary attention. Jamie held his tongue, resisting the urge to tell the Communications Operator exactly what he thought of him, and cut the connection as the dark vehicle thundered through the sky towards the capital. As they touched down in a secluded section of the airport, he asked their driver how long it would take to get into Soho.

“Thirty minutes,” he replied. “Maybe thirty-five, allowing for traffic.”

“Do it in fifteen,” said Jamie.

The driver attacked his task with admirable commitment, sending the vehicle hurtling into Central London, weaving between the black cabs and crowds of tourists, the deafening siren and blinding blue light screaming on the van’s roof.

They covered the distance from the Loop to Soho in less than half the time it had taken Morton, but it had not been fast enough; Jamie had called up the location of their squad mate’s chip on the flat screen as they roared along the Embankment, and he and Ellison had watched it with a sense of utter helplessness, hoping for a miracle. It had been close, closer than Jamie had dared to hope, but in the end, it had been futile. Fifteen minutes before they had arrived on this dirty London backstreet, Morton’s chip had stopped moving.

It doesn’t mean anything
, Jamie told himself, staring at the screen.
There’s been no sign of Dempsey either. Surely he would have run.

Ellison stared at him with professional calm on her face. The woman who had come to find him in the dining hall, who appeared on the verge of tears, was gone, replaced by the Operator that Jamie had told his friends about. She was waiting for him to tell her what to do.

As Jamie watched, a man who had been vomiting enthusiastically into the gutter behind the van staggered away into the night, and suddenly the screen was clear in both directions.

“Go,” he said, throwing open the rear doors of the van. “Ready One as soon as we’re inside.”

Ellison nodded, and leapt out of the vehicle. Jamie followed, the rain and steam rising from the pavement instantly clouding his visor. He wiped it with the back of his gloved hand, slammed the van doors shut, and turned to face the warehouse.

The building loomed over them like some squat, hulking animal. It was made of the same pale stone as the rest of the old buildings in Soho, but had been stained dark grey by years of hard work and neglect. Its lower walls were plastered with posters for gigs, art installations, political rallies and pop-up shops, pasted over and over each other until they were millimetres thick in places. The entrance was set back from the street, up two wide stone steps, and covered with a steel security gate, the kind that is installed in the hope of keeping squatters at bay.

The gate and the door beyond it were standing open.

“Take point,” said Jamie. “Carefully.”

Ellison nodded, then ran up the steps and disappeared into the building. Jamie cast a final glance up and down the rain-sodden street, then followed her.

He pushed the door shut behind him and surveyed the area inside. A wall stood before them, covered in drawing pins and scraps of paper. It ran away to their left and disappeared in the darkness.

“Torches,” said Jamie. “Thermo on your helmet, regular view on mine. Silent comms. If Alastair Dempsey is still here, he doesn’t get out. I don’t care if we have to blow this building to rubble with him inside it.”

“What about Morton?” asked Ellison.

Jamie didn’t respond. He pulled his torch from his belt and shone it along the wall; it ran for perhaps ten metres, before ending in a dark corner.

“This way,” he said, drawing his T-Bone and holding his torch against its barrel. “Follow me.”

He walked silently down the dark corridor, with Ellison close behind him. As they approached the corner, he spoke into his helmet’s microphone. “Give me a thermal of whatever’s on the other side of this wall.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Ellison. She stepped silently past him and slowly leant out beyond the end of the wall. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing warm, nothing moving.”

“Understood,” said Jamie, and stepped round the corner.

What had once been the main warehouse space was now a vast stone box. His torch picked out grooves in the floor that had presumably once held the foundations of shelving, and a pair of metal shutter doors at the far end. The floor in front of them was marked with a series of yellow lines.

“Loading bay,” said Ellison, then flicked her torch to illuminate a door on the right-hand wall. “Stairs.”

“OK,” said Jamie. “Stay on point.”

Ellison nodded and headed across the empty space, her boots thudding softly on the concrete floor. Jamie followed, his torch scanning the ground and the bare, peeling walls as she reached the door and pushed it silently open. His squad mate crouched down and peered through, her T-Bone raised.

“Clear,” she said.

Jamie stepped through the door. His torch revealed a metal staircase that doubled back on itself, with a landing halfway up. He climbed it slowly, his T-Bone pointed steadily upwards. When he reached the landing, he trained his weapon on the open door that stood at the top of the stairs and motioned for Ellison to overlap him. As she climbed the stairs towards him, something floated momentarily into his nostrils: a bitter, oily smell that he could taste at the back of his throat. It was gone as quickly as it had arrived, and he refocused his attention as Ellison arrived at the door. She darted her head through it, then spoke into his ear.

“Three doors. Looks like offices. Nothing hot in the corridor.”

“Understood,” said Jamie. The smell came again, sharp and bitter, and he frowned behind his visor. “Can you smell something?”

“No,” said Ellison. “Can you?”

“I thought I could,” said Jamie, slowly. “It’s gone now.”

He stepped out into the empty corridor and felt his heart sink.

They’re gone
, he thought.
Dempsey ran, and Morton chased him, and now they could be anywhere.

He twisted the dial on his belt that controlled the radio in his helmet and pressed the button that triggered a connection to the Loop. “NS303, 67-J signing in,” he said. “Requesting a surveillance update on the locations of Morton, John, NS304, 07-B and Priority Level target Dempsey, Alastair.”

“Processing,” said the voice on the other end. “No update to report.”

“Understood,” replied Jamie, and cut the connection.

“He’s here?” asked Ellison. “They both are?”

“I don’t think so,” replied Jamie. “Something’s gone wrong at Surveillance.” He walked forward and pushed open the first door, revealing an empty office. “I don’t think they have any idea where he is,” he continued. “Maybe he’s lost it completely and cut his chip out. I don’t know.”

He opened the second door, revealing another empty room. The smell came again, floating on the air, but he ignored it. Anger was bubbling through him, alongside something else: a deep sense of helplessness. He had no idea where John Morton was and no way to help him.

He’s gone
, he thought.
They’re gone. They could be anywhere.

He reached the final door and kicked it angrily open. Then the world turned grey, and ceased to turn.

The breath froze in his chest, as his eyes widened behind the purple plastic of his visor. He opened his mouth to scream, but all that emerged was a thin rush of air.

“Jamie?” asked Ellison. Her voice was full of sudden concern, and she ran across the corridor towards him. “What’s the…”

She trailed off as she looked into the office. Then she
did
scream, a deafening, head-splitting howl that pounded directly into Jamie’s ears and shook him from his paralysis; he looked into the office again and tried to process what he was seeing.

Hanging in the centre of the room, suspended from a web of thin white ropes, was John Morton. The ropes were looped round his arms and legs and had been tied to the metal beams that filled the triangular ceiling space, hauling him into the air.

There was a single rope round his neck, pulling his head up and back so he was staring at the door. His face was pale and lifeless, his eyes wide and bulging, his mouth contorted in a gaping scream of eternal pain and terror. In the centre of the floor, in a heaped mass of red and purple, lay Morton’s internal organs; they had spilled out of a wide, jagged incision that ran from his neck to his groin.

The knife that had been used was still lodged in the bone at the base of his throat; it reflected the awful white light cast by his torch. The smell bloomed out of the last office, filling Jamie’s nostrils again, stronger than ever, but he didn’t even notice; he could not take his eyes away from the stricken, mutilated corpse that had been his squad mate.

Jamie stepped slowly into the room. Behind him, Ellison stood in the doorway, seemingly paralysed; she appeared unable to follow him inside. He circled round the hanging body, his heart racing in his chest, the contents of his stomach threatening to rise up and explode from his mouth.

Too much
, he thought.
This is too much. Oh God, nobody deserves this.

The smell intensified as he made his way slowly round the body and his eyes began to water. Still he ignored it; it was probably some gas that Morton’s body had released, some acid that should still have been inside him, rather than pooling on the floor of an abandoned warehouse office. He was almost back at the doorway when movement caught his eye. He looked round, saw a dark shape looming behind Ellison, and opened his mouth to scream her name.