‘Six minutes until half past, and the bomb is nowhere to be found. Gwen… better get to work now.’
Gwen Crossland shook her head.
‘I’ve told you before,’ she said with the slow voice of a playschool leader to a three-year-old. ‘Just like I told Nicholas when we had Ginelli. My work is not fast food. It takes time and precision. I can promise results that are accurate and trustworthy. But I cannot produce them at the speed that you and all the other impatient men want me to. If you have six minutes, my methods can’t help you with any reliable accuracy.’
She walked away from Marshall’s office, and her faint footsteps didn’t take long to leave McCormick’s earshot.
‘For the record,’ McCormick said to Marshall, ‘I don’t think six minutes is long enough either.’
‘You’d be amazed what I can do in six minutes,’ Marshall answered. ‘Gwen can spout whatever crap she wants about her precious methods, but I’ve got methods of my own.’
Marshall lowered his handgun just a little, and squeezed the trigger. A horrible bang sounded, and the bullet struck McCormick in the shinbone.
Chapter 26
10:25 p.m.
‘Guys!’ Kate screamed into the radio. ‘Talk to me! Where are you?’
Her eyesight was blurred with tears. The Floor D corridors were a mess of unfamiliar sights and the layout was barely navigable.
‘About half a corridor from the stairwell to Floor C,’ came Ewan’s voice. ‘If a miracle happens we can make it.’
Raj used to believe in miracles. I don’t think I ever did.
Her whole world was racing through her mind. The thought of her grandfather figure, trapped in a mystery location somewhere on the upper floors. Marshall’s computer not far above her. Mum and Dad in New London. The possibility of James still being alive. Her dead boyfriend. But more than anything else, the cigar-shaped detonator in her left hand.
She had dialled in the code the moment McCormick had revealed it, not trusting her panicked memory to remember it later. His secret weapon had been armed for what had felt like several hours, with the top cover closed to prevent her pressing the button by accident.
Kate didn’t know what the world would look like once she pressed the button. She only knew that the closer she was to Floor B when it happened, the easier it would be to reach Marshall’s computer while everyone was distracted.
‘Kate,’ came Alex’s voice, ‘we need a favour.’
‘What is it?’
‘We found the stairwell to Floor C. The security door is humans only, and the keycard we stole has been cancelled already.’
Kate wiped her face, leaned against the nearest wall and let out a moan. She knew what was coming.
‘If you find a human, kill them and take their keycard. Ewan and I didn’t find anybody on the way here.’
10:26 p.m.
Shannon had not been frightened at first. Not until Lorraine had burst into tears. Her cries had been loud enough to hear halfway down the street, but she didn’t seem to care. The attic’s tiny size amplified the volume as the sounds echoed off the walls.
‘Do you want me to be in charge of the phone?’ Shannon asked.
‘Not a chance,’ Lorraine replied.
Shannon knew better than to argue. Perhaps Lorraine blamed herself for McCormick’s capture. And, in all likelihood, his eventual death once Dad was finished with him.
Shannon had vivid memories of Daniel Amopoulos’ torture, which she had kept to herself. Nobody in Spitfire’s Rise needed to know that her father had made her watch. Or how it had ended for Daniel, and what probably lay in store for McCormick too.
Unless, of course, his bomb helped the others rescue him.
‘Lorraine,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what’s happening in four minutes, but if you’re not up to talking then I have to be. Tell me everything I need to know—’
‘Maybe it’ll mean we win the battle, but not the war. Or maybe we won’t win either. But once it goes off, everything changes.’
Lorraine lay her head in her cupped hands, and rested her elbows on the table to support its weight.
‘I told you about Joey Shetland tonight,’ she said, ‘and my twenty years of trying to make the world less ugly.’
‘It was brave of you to tell me. Come to think of it, your whole life’s been an act of bravery.’
Lorraine ignored the compliment.
‘Nursing taught me that sometimes, ugliness can’t be avoided. And combat has taught me that sometimes you have to cause ugliness to make the world better.’
Shannon took a moment to remember Keith Tylor, Grant’s number two assassin, who she had stabbed to death the night she first met the Underdogs. That had been ugly enough, and it had made the world better. But she wasn’t sure it was the type of ugliness Lorraine meant.
‘McCormick’s bomb will make the world ugly?’ asked Shannon.
Lorraine nodded, but offered no details.
‘In a few minutes’ time,’ Shannon continued, ‘you’ll be explaining the whole thing to Ewan. If it’ll make it easier, you can practice with me right now.’
Lorraine gave Shannon a vicious eye, but turned her seat in her direction. Apparently she thought it was a good idea.
‘Lorraine,’ asked Shannon, ‘where did McCormick plant the bomb?’
10:27 p.m.
The return to Spitfire’s Rise should have felt warm and welcome. Instead, Jack felt embarrassed. He had found that replacement home at a speed that had impressed everyone, only for everyone to wonder why they’d bothered once Mark had called them with the good news.
Jack laid his box of weapons on the grass before he opened the trapdoor and leapt inside, and tried his best not to feel ungrateful. They were back in Spitfire’s Rise, a place that had become more of a home to him than any of the houses from his previous life. In fact, his time away from the house had reminded him exactly how much he both loved it and depended on it.
I did my duty and served the others well, he thought to himself, and ultimately it was all for nothing.
Then again, that’s what to expect when you live your life for the sake of others. Unrewarded servitude.
Jack bit his lip and let out the quietest sigh he could. Reward or not, it had still been the right thing to do. And if Spitfire’s Rise were ever in danger of being exposed again, he would take the same actions again. His personal preferences had no right to enter into it.
But serving others did not mean they would like you. Gracie had been colder to him than frostbite ever since he had told her the truth. She and Simon followed him into the tunnel, and Thomas brought up the rear with a small box of food. Once they reached the entrance, Mark was waiting next to the Memorial Wall.
‘That’s everything, is it?’ he muttered.
‘Yeah,’ answered Jack. ‘What’s that in your hand?’
Mark lifted up the bottle of wine, and Jack read the label closely.
‘Crémant de-something-or-other-Frenchie,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t be offering that to underage teens, you know.’
‘I think we need a bottle,’ Mark answered as Simon and Gracie dumped their boxes of weapons, and Thomas carried his food in the direction of the farm. ‘One way or another, we’re writing history tonight. Either we lose this war forever, and we’ll drink to the death of Great Britain. Or the guys will return victorious, and we’ll drink until we believe it.’