He walked back to the roadside, looked both ways, swore loudly. Nobody answered so he swore again, giving the finger to a frowning passenger in a passing car. The swearing did not make him feel any better so he continued, varying the words, desperate to purge the feeling of doom that had percolated through his body and which now swung from his bones like shadow monkeys.
He'd made the call almost an hour ago. Shouldn't Higgins be here by now? Didn't he have a fleet of helicopters standing by for just such an eventuality? Or had ten years softened the major? Maybe now he was just a desk jockey killing time until retirement. Cole hated the idea of that, but he thought it likely. Even ten years ago, the major had been unwilling to go to Cole's lengths to track down the berserkers. They're perfect, the old fool had said. There's no way on earth they'd let us catch them, so why even try?
"Because they're fucking killers!" Cole whispered to the afternoon air, and the accusation echoed back at him from nowhere.
But he had killed for good reasons, hadn't he? He'd murdered through necessity, and always quickly. He had never let anyone suffer. No torture. No sadistic shit. Just a quick bullet to the head, death before they knew it was coming. He thought of Natasha lying beneath his gun, closed his eyes, hoped so much that he would see that opportunity before the day was through. And as if it would help find her, he silently promised to kill her quickly.
"Where the fuck is he!" he shouted. A man filling his car with fuel glanced over and Cole stared him down. The man hurried to the shop to pay, head lowered, and Cole looked at his car. The driver's door was open and the keys were in the ignition.
Back to the shop: the man was staring fixedly at the woman behind the till. She too was avoiding looking at Cole, which made him certain that they were talking about him.
It was a Ford Mondeo, turbo diesel, fast and filled with fuel.
The man glanced at Cole then away again, pretending to peruse the display of wine and spirits behind the counter. Selling alcohol in a petrol station—Cole had never understood that. May as well sell guns in a bank.
He looked along the road in both directions, heart thumping with the potential of the chase to come. No sign of Higgins. He'd described to the major the car Tom was driving, said he'd wait here to be picked up, and the idea that maybe Higgins would pass him by only came to him then, a possibility that he tried to disregard but which was now growing and growing in his mind, taking over, taking only seconds to establish itself and convince him of its veracity. Higgins was going after them himself, and the killings that Cole had perpetrated would be for nothing if he wasn't there to see all this end.
"Fuck!" He flicked his cigarette away and strode for the Mondeo just as the man emerged from the shop. "You better just stay there!" Cole said, pointing, staring, and the man dropped the bag of sweets he had been carrying.
"N-n-no …" he said, eyes going wide.
"Just a car," Cole said. "You'll get another. I need it. Don't fucking move." He reached around and grabbed the pistol tucked into his belt, but let it go again. No need to cause such a scene now. He noticed the mechanic peering around the corner of the building, cigarette dipped from the corner of his mouth. "Somebody else's problem," Cole said to both men. "That's me. Leave it that way."
"No!" the car owner said, and he took two steps forward.
Cole pulled the gun. Everything froze. Even the sound of traffic seemed to lessen, as if involved in this moment.
"Puh … please," the man begged.
Cole ignored him, lowered himself into the car, slammed the door, placed the pistol between his thighs, started the engine and pulled away. Music blasted on, some weird whiny jangly shit, and Cole turned it up so that he could not hear the man shouting at him. He saw him, though, running after the car as Cole drove it from the forecourt and onto the road, performing a perfect U-turn and aiming back at the motorway.
Higgins had left him! That fucking jobs-worth gorilla. At least Cole knew he had been believed; Higgins would already have been told about the excavated grave on the Plain, and it would take only minutes to check with police about the stolen car and the showdown at the holiday cottage. So whether Cole was involved or not, he knew that Higgins would have called in every favour owed to him to get a force together looking for Tom and Natasha. He may have been reluctant a decade ago, but the Major would never pass up a chance like this. Especially so close to retirement.
Cole steered onto the motorway and put his foot down, lifting the car up to one hundred with ease. Traffic was relatively light, and he hogged the outside lane and flashed drivers aside when he drew up behind them. His aggressive driving attracted some angry gestures, but Cole ignored them. If only these idiots knew what he was doing and why. Secure in their own blinkered worlds they had no comprehension of what really existed around the dark corner of their existence. They had no idea of the horrors he had seen, which he now hunted to kill. So he let them throw him the finger, flash their lights and honk their horns, comfortable in the knowledge that he was doing all this for them. His legs ached, he bled from various wounds, he was a killer, and it was all for them.
"What the hell is this shit?" Cole ejected the CD. It was bright yellow and decorated with a picture of weird, colourful, fluffy characters. As he dropped it he heard a sound that caused his heart to stutter in surprise.
A baby crying.
Chapter Twelve
Natasha was away again, perhaps talking with Lane and Sophia. Tom was terrified. What he had seen of these berserkers in Natasha's memories was enough to scare anyone, but his mind kept drifting back to what he had seen of their prey. The men and women in the drug house basement, torn and killed and eaten. The two men and one woman they had brought back with them to the boat, naked and shivering and bleeding, little more than fodder. None of them had been with the berserkers later in the truck.
And the people chained to the wall in the berserkers' living quarters at Porton Down. They had looked like corpses, thin from so much feeding, bags of bones that clung on tenaciously to whatever life they had.
Steven would be like that, Tom was certain. There was nothing else for him to be, and the prospect of seeing him in that state seemed worse than believing he was dead. The death of his son was something he had come to live with, if not fully accept. Now, there was a chance that the past ten years would be tipped on their back, and that a whole new history would have to be written for Tom's life.
And with Jo gone—
They're telling me where to go, Natasha said. She had not spoken out loud since leaving the service station. Maybe it was too much effort, or perhaps it pained her. Keep driving north. They'll be waiting for us and they'll tell us where to find them.
"Don't you know where they are?"
Natasha was silent for a while, yet still there, and her doubt made Tom uncomfortable.
Well, she said at last, they're not telling me. I don't think they trust me very much. They know what happened to us, but they don't understand how I'm still alive. I told them about Mister Wolf and what he did, but… I don't think they believe me.
"Do they mention Steven?"
Again that pause, just slightly too long. No.
"They must know that Cole's after us. Why would they risk– ?"
Because I'm one of them.
Natasha withdrew from his mind and Tom drove on. He kept his eyes on the road and concentrated on staying within the white lines. His back was a throbbing pain now, and it itched all across its base. It was the sort of itch that accompanied healing. Since Natasha's last feeding he had felt better, calmed perhaps, stress suckled away. But however much he tried to convince himself that the healing was charged by his own body, he knew that was not the case. Natasha took, and she gave as well. Just what she gave he could not dwell upon right then. It made him better, it helped him drive, and every moment took him closer to Steven.