The Night of the Triffids (26 page)

    I listened to the botanical ovation as I shaved. Beside the sink a mug of coffee steamed. The bathroom was an easy-come, easy-go affair consisting of a row of sinks beneath a corrugated-iron roof. As there were no walls I could see the triffids shaking down their dark green leaves for the start of another day. Which for them would consist of standing pressed tight to the fence in their thousands. On their part this must have been an act of blind faith. That one day, like the walls of Jericho, the barriers would come tumbling down. A little way off was the shower block, which for decency's sake did boast walls that met the roof and from which I could hear the splash of water, accompanied by a deep male voice singing surprisingly melodiously.

    I'd scraped away about half my stubble (with a merciful lack of razor nicks to my chin) when I realized that people were hurrying past the alfresco bathroom, all going in the same direction. The volume of their voices rose to shouting level - whether from alarm or excitement I couldn't tell.

    Grabbing a towel, I wiped away what was left of the soap on my face. Then, with my curiosity straining like an eager dog at its leash, I joined the stream of people hurrying towards the river. I looked around, searching for the focus of this excitement. Then I saw it. Gliding round the bend in the river came the dark, sleek form of the submarine that I'd noticed earlier had left its moorings.

    From the rising shouts I realized that all wasn't well. Even now I could make out that the submarine was listing to one side and the conning tower itself had a frayed appearance. The call went up for medics.

    Limping in like some wounded leviathan, the submarine swung out in an arc across the river. Then, once it had aligned itself with the timber jetty, it came slowly forward.

    Now, in that reddish light of dawn, the damage was all too visible. Shell holes pocked the conning tower: the uppermost part of it had been reduced to shreds of metal. The periscope and radar housing had been blasted to nothing. But the sub's hull seemed to have escaped the worst of the damage. People surged forward as a weary crew clambered out of the hatches onto the deck, then onto the jetty itself to be greeted with hugs.

    The way the crew members hung their heads didn't suggest just weariness alone.

    Confirmation came quickly. 'They'd moved Christina from the hospital,' Sam told me later. 'I'm sorry, David. You must be bitterly disappointed.' He turned back to watch the wounded being stretchered from the sub. 'We lost some good people, too. Only half the commando squad made it back. Then the sub took a pasting from shore batteries before it could submerge. If it hadn't been able to hide in a fog bank offshore it wouldn't be here at all.'

    'What now?'

    'Now?' Sam Dymes looked worried. 'Plan B.'

    'What's Plan B?'

    'You know something, David? I haven't a clue.'

    With that he moved off to offer a few words of comfort to the injured men and women as they were loaded into ambulances.

    

    

    Within a couple of hours of the submarine's arrival calm had returned to the camp. The sub's captain and Sam Dymes began a damage assessment of the vessel. Meanwhile, the more seriously injured of the crew and commandos were airlifted by flying boat to the large settlements to the south where hospital facilities would be better.

    I returned to chopping more firewood. Here I wasn't far from the triffid fence. The plants beyond were silent. Unmoving. I sensed that they were watching events unfolding within the camp with an air of cool detachment. The downbeat mood of the base affected me and I found my thoughts about those bloody plants taking a morbid turn.

    Triffids were evolving. They moved. They heard. They killed. They were carnivorous. They were beginning to develop sight, of a kind. Many scientists also credited them with intelligence. How long before they leapfrogged over humble humanity to add yet more abilities to their repertoire? The power to read our minds? The ability to simply
will
objects to move? I had a feeling we only had to wait long enough. Then we'd experience first-hand what new and diabolical tricks these things could play.

    And so I worked on my pile of logs, chopping them down to manageable pieces for the cooking fires and water-heaters. Meanwhile, the sun climbed higher. However, it had lost some of its recently restored lustre. Today it refused to grow any brighter than a blood orange as it hung there in the sky; while all around the horizon a gory-hued mist settled.

    

    

    Early afternoon, and with enough firewood cut for the day I sluiced my top half down with water from a bucket, then headed off towards the canteen for lunch. Now workmen swarmed across the sub's chewed-up superstructure. Already I could see the blue-white flash of an acetylene welding torch as the difficult job of repairs got under way.

    At the entrance of the canteen I walked past a figure, one so familiar it didn't seem out of place.

    'Hey, mister, know any place where a guy can get a game of table tennis round here?'

    I stared. 'Gabriel?'

    'I was beginning to think you didn't recognize me any more, David.'

    'Yes. Of course… but, good grief! I thought you were dead.'

    'An Oscar-winning performance, wasn't it?' Gabriel Deeds beamed broadly, holding out one of his huge muscular hands. I shook it, wincing at the formidable grip.

    'Say. So you two fellers know each other.' Sam was sitting at a table, a hefty portion of apple pie in front of him. His smile, weary but warm, spoke volumes.

    I flexed my tingling fingers. 'OK, Gabe. I guess you're not here by chance?'

    Sam Dymes paused in mid-chew. 'You're not wrong.' He pointed with the spoon. 'David. Meet our man in New York. Now I'm going to finish off this incredibly delicious pie while Gabriel tells you some news you've been waiting to hear… Say, Irene… Irene? You don't have any of that fine apple pie left, do you?'

    

    

    

    OVER lunch Gabriel told me what had happened, beginning with my abduction from New York more than a week ago.

    'I set it all up,' he confessed. 'I knew that General Fielding, the guy you now know is Torrence, planned to return you to the Isle of Wight with a diplomatic envoy. Or what you'd be told was a diplomatic envoy.'

    'But really I'd be giving safe passage to an invasion force. Yes, Sam filled me in on
that
scam.'

    Gabriel continued, 'So it seemed clear to me I either had to get you away from New York - or kill you with my bare hands.'

    I glanced at those massive hands, then back at those soulful brown eyes that were now strikingly grave. He wasn't joking about the second option, I realized.

    'Believe me, David. I went down on bended knees to beg them to spring you from New York.' He sipped his coffee. 'However, you do realize that our motives in bringing you here and so sparing your island an invasion weren't entirely noble or selfless?'

    I nodded. 'If Torrence seizes the Isle of Wight he also gets the Masen-Coker Processor.'

    'Which then gives him high-octane fuel for his aircraft to bomb the stuffing out of the Foresters. Along with any other settlement that is reluctant to accept his - for want of a better word -
protection
.'

    'And Kerris?'

    'She's safe,' Gabriel assured me. 'I made sure she was in the back of the taxi before the snatch squad came close.'

    'How is she?'

    'Distraught that you've gone. But bearing up well, considering.'

    'She doesn't know that you're a…'

    '… a spy? No, she knows nothing about my other role in life. Unfortunately, she doesn't know whether you're alive or dead. Naturally, I had to exercise extreme discretion.'

    'Don't you trust her?'

    Gabriel looked pained at my outburst. 'I'm sorry, David. She
is
Torrence's daughter, after all. I can't take that risk. We have more operatives working in New York. If our cover should be compromised, then-'

    'Yes, yes, I get the picture,' I said. 'But tell me this, Gabriel: did Kerris know about Torrence's intention to invade the Isle of Wight?'

    He looked at me levelly. 'I'm convinced that she did not know. Like you, she was going to be a pawn in Torrence's plan.'

    I sighed with relief. This separation, unpleasant enough as it was, would have become downright bitter if I thought she'd duped me.

    As we ate, Gabriel told us about the recent mission to rescue Christina. Although there was little to say that we didn't know by now. Mainly, we knew that just moments before the snatch squad tore into the hospital, brandishing submachine guns, Christina had been whisked away to a secret location.

    'Bad luck,' Sam said with feeling. 'Dashed bad luck.'

    'In the words of the old blues song,' Gabriel commented, 'if it hadn't been for bad luck, real bad luck, we wouldn't have had any luck at all. After I drove the snatch squad back to the Hudson River who should I see but Rory Masterfield staring right at me. I knew he'd recognized me, that my cover was blown. I had no option but to get the hell out of there. So I jumped onto the sub with our guys. That should have been that. Submerge, then slip out down the Hudson and away. But a shore battery caught us with a searchlight. We were sitting ducks. However, the first bit of good luck we had that night was that the big guns on the islands didn't have our range. The shells came down half a mile away. We weren't so lucky with a couple of howitzers on the TriBeCa battery. They were good, I'll give them that. They drilled so many holes through the conning tower that there's more air than metal there now. Then they rounded that off by carving up the periscope and radar pod. That and a few too many punctures in the hull meant we couldn't submerge. All we could do was run hell for leather for the open sea. By sheer chance we dove straight into that fog bank where we gave the gunboats the slip.' He shook his head. 'Believe me, I don't want a repeat of
that
trip, thank you very much.'

    The last word of Gabriel's sentence still hung on the humid air when
it
came. A sound that wasn't a sound. It was more a concrete-hard invisible wave that struck the canteen, sweeping plates from the tables, then the diners from their chairs. Windows shattered one after another. A boom echoed back like thunder from the bluff across the river. Immediately, I heard shouting. A siren sounded its rising wail.

    I picked myself up from the debris of chairs, plates, spilled food. Sam and Gabriel were already running from the canteen. Gabriel stopped at the trackway but Sam continued to make for his office, his long legs pumping like an athlete's.

    'Damn them,' Gabriel hissed, full of fury. '
Damn them
.'

    I looked down to the river. Surging vee patterns of foam spread across the water.

    'Torpedo boats.' Gabriel had seen them, too. 'How the hell did they follow us here?'

    I watched the torpedo boats turn towards shore. They were small, sleek vessels, barely longer than the launch tubes that they carried at either side of a central cabin. Like speedboats they raced towards the camp before spitting out their deadly cargo.

    As the torpedoes raced towards the shore I pulled Gabriel by the arm. 'Get back. We're too close.'

    Those torpedoes were fast. Too fast for us to run back more than a few paces - although Gabriel's rage was such that I half anticipated he would run
forward
and try to deflect them somehow with his bare hands.

    All we could do, however, was sprint a few yards before turning to witness the inevitable. Two torpedoes struck the remaining seaworthy submarine. It exploded in a geyser of white foam. With its back broken, its two distinct halves floated briefly apart before sinking to the river bed.

    The third torpedo slammed into the mud bank, tearing a crater twenty feet wide. Instantly brown river water swirled into it, bubbling and steaming like a witch's brew. Having fired their torpedoes the boats then sprayed us with machine-gun fire.

    Standing there like a fierce dark statue Gabriel Deeds spat his fury. 'How did they find us? On the return trip we played it by the book. We kept a twenty-four-hour watch. We made sure we weren't followed. So how come they're here now?' He seemed oblivious to the tracer bullets zipping past him.

    'Gabriel!' I yelled. 'Keep your head down.'

    He ran to a nearby Jumbo, climbing quickly onto its roof.

    'There!' He pointed. '
That's
how the bastards did it!'

    I joined him, though I didn't like our exposed position. Those bullets were coming awfully close.

    Nevertheless, I looked where he was pointing. Some way downriver, hanging back from the actual battle, its own task now complete, a curious vessel lay in the water. Painted with a mottling of deep marine blues and greens, something that resembled a flatfish barely peeped above the waterline. A pair of glass cockpits bulged upward like gleaming eyes. Clearly the tiny vessel, lying almost flush with the ocean surface, had followed the damaged sub to its base, then radioed back its location to the main strike force.

    'Damn!' Gabriel spat explosively. 'We should have realized what they were doing. That's why the big guns aimed wide when we were getting out of the Hudson. They only wanted to wing us. Then they could follow us back here and…' His voice trailed off into a welter of incoherent curses.

    Although the water was too shallow to bring in big warships with their deep draughts, all too quickly the river filled with a whole fleet of smaller boats. With deck cannon, Oerlikons, machine guns, mortars and multiple rocket launchers blazing away, they came surging forward: a pack of water-borne hyenas closing in for the kill.