The Armageddon Conspiracy (28 page)

‘
Leave it,’ Kruger
shouted.
‘There’s no time left.
Lucy’s all that
matters.’

All of the dinghies moved out to sea,
their outboard engines roaring, trying to force a way through the
choppy sea.
Lucy sat near the engine, shivering.
Soldiers were
talking excitedly, but she was concentrating only on her fear.
The
wind had risen again and waves were lashing over the sides.
Her
parka was saturated with water.
She imagined that the sea was
deliberately forcing them back to the beach.
They’d capsize before
they got near any ship out there at sea.

They had travelled only about twenty
metres from the beach when a huge wave crashed over the dinghy.
With her hood covering her face, Lucy didn’t see a thing.
The wave
smashed into her and she toppled backwards into the icy waves.

Instantly, choking
water engulfed her.
In the
blue
.
It had actually happened.
She kicked
frantically with her legs, but the motion soon began to
slow.
Drowning
.
Need air.
Desperately, she tried to remember how she used to swim.
Did she once cut through the water with efficient, powerful
strokes?
It seemed impossible.
Her arms flapped ineffectually.
Can’t swim.
Can’t live.
Can’t do anything.
She just hung in the
water, incapable of resisting.
Soon what little breath she had left
would run out, and it would all end.
All she could see was blue, an
infinity of it.
I’m
dying
.

Someone gripped her collar and began
pulling her to the surface.
Her father?
Can a ghost save you?
The
blue in her mind started to fragment, breaking into a trillion tiny
dots, then blew away like dust.

When her eyes opened again, she was
lying on the beach on her back, gasping, water dribbling from the
corners of her mouth.
Her parka had been washed away.
She gazed at
the sky.
Was death as black as that?
Was that what greeted mum and
dad?
Turning her head, she saw the cardinal beside her.
It
astonished her that he was such a strong swimmer.
And he’d managed
to find the sword he was forced to leave behind.
He was clutching
it as if he’d never let go, as though it were the most precious
object on earth.

She tried to raise her head to see what
had happened to the dinghies, but pains shot through her neck and
her head flopped back.
She hoped Kruger’s brother and his men would
forget about her.
Go back to where they came from, out of
danger.

‘
Don’t shoot,’ Sinclair
shouted, getting to his feet and wildly waving his arms at the
dinghies.
‘You can’t kill her.
She’s innocent.’

Lucy tried to process
the words.
What did they mean?
Christ
.
Her heart thudded.
Kruger had
orders to kill her if she was captured, didn’t he?
His brother was
bound to follow through.
She tried to move, but
couldn’t.

‘
Mortars!’
someone
barked in an American accent.

Several torchlights shone into Lucy’s
face.
Rifles were pointing at her.
The sea began to explode as
mortar shells rained down on the dinghies.

‘
Get up,’ the American
voice said.

He was quickly drowned out.
A
helicopter had appeared overhead, its searchlight pointing straight
down on the beach.

34

T
he Chinook’s
spotlight had picked out a group of soldiers in a tight cluster
heading away from the beach, but Vernon couldn’t see any sign of
Lucy.
Maybe she was in their midst, but he couldn’t be sure.
Some
soldiers were shooting up at the helicopter, but he didn’t want to
return fire for fear of hitting Lucy.
They had to get an exact fix
on her.

‘
Take us down,’ Vernon
ordered the pilot.
The SAS squad were checking their weapons and
getting ready to disembark from the rear ramp.
For them it was just
a standard hostage rescue operation with a few complicating factors
– they’d be up against elite forces, either Delta Force or Swiss
Guards, the precise location of the hostage was unknown and the
success of the mission was entirely dependent on extracting her
alive.

Vernon was appalled when Gresnick said
earlier that Lucy might have to be killed.
He couldn’t believe how
callous the American was.
Lucy was an innocent victim in all of
this.
She might not even be in a fit state to understand what was
happening to her.
He’d given the colonel strict instructions that
Lucy mustn’t be harmed under any circumstances.

As the helicopter searched for a
landing spot, Vernon glanced at Gresnick.
The American was fitting
a magazine into his Ruger P85 pistol.

‘
No stray shots,
colonel.’

Gresnick stared at him.
‘I’m a crack
shot.’

Vernon wondered if he should ask
Gresnick for his firearm.
It was hard to believe how things had
changed.
One moment he thought Gresnick was attracted to Lucy.
Next
thing, the American was talking about killing her.
Was it just an
act, all front?
He feared Gresnick was for real.

The helicopter started
to vibrate, gently at first, then with increasing force.
The pilot
struggled with the controls, while the co-pilot shouted information
at him.
The Chinook swung backwards and forwards then plunged up
and down.
Something was wrong,
catastrophically
wrong.

Vernon stared at the
pilot, willing him to say that everything was OK.
Instead, the
pilot removed his hands from the controls and sat back.
Jesus
.

‘
Fly the goddamn
thing,’ Gresnick barked.

For a second, Vernon thought the
American was about to point his pistol, but the pilot just sat
there, doing nothing.

‘
Brace for crash
landing,’ the co-pilot yelled.

Everyone sat, belted up and bent over,
protecting their heads.

Vernon couldn’t figure out what was
wrong with the pilot.
This was the famous former Night Stalker.
Nerves of steel, ability to remain calm in the tightest situations
and so on.
Not now.
He’d totally lost it.

The shell of the
helicopter started to fold in on itself, like a tin can crumpling.
Vernon realised why the pilot was doing nothing – the helicopter
wasn’t in his control.
Something else was
moving it
.

The helicopter lurched forward.
The
pilot sprang back to the controls and tried to pull it out of
freefall, but it was too late.

‘
We’re going down!’
he
shouted.

****

V
ernon opened
his eyes.
He tried to move, but couldn’t.
Something was pressing
down on his chest.
Everything was dark.
He wondered if he’d gone
blind, but then he saw scores of burning fragments around him.
When
he pushed against the thing on his chest, he realised it was a
body.
By the light of the blazing cockpit, he saw who it
was…McGregor, the religious nut, his Bible still clasped in one
hand.
Nauseated, he pushed the corpse off, then collapsed back,
exhausted.
All his energy was gone.
He closed his eyes again.
Gunfire?
He was sure he could hear automatic fire, not far away.
Then he heard breathing.
Someone was crouching over him.

‘
James?’

That
voice.
It couldn’t be.
Must be hallucinating.
His
eyes flicked open once more.

Lucy.

Exactly as he remembered her.
That dark
hair falling over her face.
Her eyes, so tender, so full of
compassion.

Someone else was
looking down at him.
Startled, he tried to turn away.
It was a man
with a dog collar – a priest.
God, last rites.
A third face
appeared, one he recognised immediately: Sergeant Morson, one of
the missing prisoners from Thames House.
How could he have
got
here
?

‘
So, who’s the prisoner
now?’
Morson said then turned to a soldier standing at his side.
‘Finish him off.’

Vernon heard the soldier pulling back
the slide of his pistol and releasing it.
Bullet loaded.
Any second
now.

He wanted to say
something to Lucy.
To ask for forgiveness?
To forgive her?
To ask
her
why
?
To…

Then he heard the shot.

35

L
ucy felt sick.
The Americans had made her change out of her wet clothes and given
her a padded white winter uniform.
It was much too big for her.
She
kept putting her hands in the pockets, trying to find her medicine.
Kruger had thrown the bottle into the sea, but she was convinced it
would come back if she concentrated hard enough.
That ought to be
how things worked.
The dead should return to life if you miss them
enough.

She needed her medication more than
ever.
In Greek mythology, the dead souls drank from the Lethe, one
of the rivers of the underworld.
It made them forget their previous
lives and prepared them for being born again.
She longed to have
medicine made from the Lethe’s water.
If she forgot everything, she
might be able to start again too.

They had taken her away
from the helicopter wreckage and put her in the back of a military
truck full of American soldiers.
Now they were travelling along a
dark, deserted road.
At some point, she hoped, she would wake up
and be back in her convent room, staring up at her
paintings.
Safe
.
This nightmare had become much worse.
Somehow, she’d managed to
keep James out of her dreams.
Not anymore.

It appalled her to see him lying there
in all that burning debris.
When the American sergeant told his
colleague to shoot James, she screamed at him to stop.
If she
could, she would have hurled herself in front of the bullet.
But
someone else started firing.
The Swiss Guards, she thought.
She was
dragged away, but when she looked back, the soldier assigned to
kill James was dead.

James
Vernon
.
When she saw his face, the love she
thought she’d destroyed flared again, almost overpowering her.
She
prayed he had survived.
There was so much she wanted to say to
him.

She bowed her head.
The soldier sitting
opposite had never once taken his eyes off her.
It was freaking her
out.
He wore a different uniform from the others, he was the only
black man amongst them…and he was clearly under guard.
Had he come
with James in the helicopter?
What in God’s name happened to that
aircraft?
She’d never seen anything like it; that thing that had
enveloped it, gripping it as though it were a toy.
It tossed it
around then hurled it to the ground.
When nightmares become real,
it means either you’ve gone mad, or the things you fear most are
truly out there.

No one had told her where they were
going.
In fact, all of the Americans, apart from their sergeant,
hung back from her, scarcely looking at her.
They’d put Cardinal
Sinclair in the other truck, so she didn’t have anyone to speak to.
She wanted to thank him for saving her life.
Lying on the beach,
staring up into the night, she had realised how glad she was to
still be alive.
Yet part of her insisted that the best thing for
her was to be dead.
She could hear the old whispers, telling her to
seize any opportunity to kill herself.
But there was no denying the
relief she felt when the cardinal hauled her to safety.
Left to
herself, maybe she would have let the water rush into her lungs.
How can you want life and death simultaneously?

She’d once read about
Schrodinger’s cat, a hypothetical cat in a locked black box
containing a poison capsule that might, or might not, release its
lethal contents.
Scientists pondered whether at any particular
moment the cat was alive or dead.
Their conclusion was that, in
some sense, it was both alive
and
dead, at least until the lid was lifted and its
fate discovered.
She felt she was in the same ghostly,
indeterminate state as the cat.

She should never have doubted the
cardinal.
No one risks their life for you if they wish you ill.
When she watched him bending over James, starting to give him the
last rites, she wondered if he could perform another miracle and
prevent him from dying.
It seemed ridiculous that people were
telling her how special she was.
If she had any powers, she would
have used them to save James.

The truck went over a bump, and the man
opposite her tumbled forwards onto her.

‘
Get back.’
One of the
others pushed the man back to his seat at riflepoint.

During the confusion, the man slipped
something into Lucy’s hand.
She looked across at him and he gave
her an odd stare.
Discreetly, she picked up the towel the sergeant
had given her earlier to dry herself, and covered the note with it.
That gave her a chance to glance at it when no one was looking.

‘
I am Colonel Brad
Gresnick,’ it said.
‘I came with James Vernon.
I’m a
friend.’

She scrunched up the note and put it in
her pocket.
A friend?
She didn’t even know this man, yet he was
telling her he was her friend.
He said he knew James, but there was
no proof.
Maybe he was a plant with a mission to gain her
confidence.

Too much paranoia, or not enough?
She
was so confused.
She didn’t want to look at the man.
Instead, she
stared out of the opening in the back of the truck.
She could
understand why some people were saying the Apocalypse was at hand.
The light was abnormal light and the taste of everything was
indefinably strange.
There was an odd quality in the air, a
peculiar acrid smell.
People seemed to crackle as they moved,
showering the world with tiny blue sparks.
It was as though
everyone had grown faint halos.
A world of saints…of angels?

Then she heard an unearthly scream.
None of the soldiers reacted, except the man opposite her.
He
looked every bit as startled as she was.
There was no question he
shared her thoughts about the piercing howl.

Nothing human could
have made it
.