Alix smiled. “You’re a prize technophobe, girl. They warned me about you and gadgets, and how you have a nasty habit of destroying them.”
“That’s a lie,” Lola was smirking, “They only sometimes break. Otherwise they just break-down…”
Alix played with the phone, and frowned again. “I thought these things were practically bomb-proof?”
“They are,” Lola called back from the front seat. “I very much doubt whether it has been damaged.”
Alix looked at a loss, as Lola handed him her Scorpion smartphone. He attempted to bring the device to life, but it refused to boot-up. He shook his head, “Where to next?”
“We need to contact Ferran & Cardini, and we need to find out what the hell is going on. We need to be alert and remember that a number of Scorpion units have been assassinated.”
Alix looked perturbed, answering. “No I haven’t forgotten.”
“Didn’t you think it a little odd that Scorpion made a point of requesting that they brought Dillon in to protect Kirill and his niece
— and not us?”
“A little.” Said Alix, lighting a cigarette and laying back, staring at the panelled ceiling, smoke spiralling upwards and escaping through the torn bullet holes making him feel a tad wary. Tension, spinning bullets and a lack of sleep did not fuse together to well. A cold draft whistled in through the holes. Alix started to dismantle and clean his Glock.
He closed his eyes, thinking back to his last tour of Afghanistan and the random suicide bombers.
And the bullets…
And the killing…
“We need to pay a visit to an old friend,” said Alix. He shivered. And welcomed the darkness of sleep as the van rumbled through the rain swept streets of the city.
REUTERS NEWS RELEASE. GCHQ INTERCEPT CLASSIFIED HQ1/FYEO-457 — D NOTICE APPLIED. At 7.30P.M.today London city suffered a total loss of electricity — telecommunications and mobile satellite coverage. The black-out lasted for approximately 15 minutes.
Millions of residential homes and commercial businesses, including Government departments and agencies, hospitals and the police, were left in total disarray as the lights went out and computer systems crashed.
There have been no reasons given for this failure by the Government or the power companies. Although, one theory is that it was caused by an explosion at a sub-station, which in turn generated a power surge to the grid network.
GCHQ Transcript 3. CLASSIFIED HQ1/FYEO-457A SPECIAL SERVICES SUPPORT UNIT. MI5 intelligence confirmed that a Cyber-Terrorist attack occurred today. The target: Electricity power supply — telecommunications and mobile telephone satellite coverage. The Home Office immediately issued a D-Notice press black-out order. The attack was made by, as yet unknown, terrorist or organised crime syndicate, was registered at 7.30P.M.today for a 15 minute duration. All Scorpion and associated personal should go to Code Orange until further notice.
Chapter 6
It felt surreal, like a million light years had passed, as if he was on another planet. Dillon lay in the steaming hot Jacuzzi bath, water flowing over his body, massaging his back, easing the tension from his muscles, washing away the spatters and smears of blood. His eyes closed, his head resting on the roll-top bath, his fingertips massaging his temples ever so gently; round and round in tiny circles. It had been a long journey and his weariness had all but consumed him, devoured him whole and spat him out on the other side of the universe.
Too much had changed in the world since he had opted for the quiet life in the Highlands of Scotland.
He stepped out of the bath. The towel had been warming on the heated rail, and he dried himself in slow-motion, automaton movements. Then naked, he walked through to the master bedroom and collapsed onto the richly coloured, thickly opulent duvet. Sleep claiming him immediately into its embrace.
Dillon tossed and turned, sleeping a restless and sweaty sleep…
Zhenya — the look of utter disbelief. And then the silenced spitof the gun — everything in slow motion. A bullet spinning through the air, slamming into her shoulder, cloth tearing as the hollow-point bullet bore through skin and muscle, smashing bone. Kirill, face covered in blood and saliva, eyes unfocused as he lay in a state of shock — dying. But it was Dillon who took the bullet, felt his flesh tear and the searing heat as it entered his body and looking down, watched blood soaking through his shirt. Could see Kirill’s face staring down at him as he was lowered into the shallow grave and Zhenya throwing flowers on top of him as they started to shovel the soft earth in and he wanted to shout, shout; “I’m still alive. I’m not dead…”
He awoke suddenly in the darkness, a cold sweat covering his body, shivering with flashbacks of his past cascading through his mind. Dillon pulled the heavy duvet up around his neck, groaning with tired and aching muscles. A moment later he rolled from the bed and pulled on navy blue jogging bottoms and a thick woollen pullover, much too large but really soft and comfortable, just the way he liked it. He went barefoot down to the kitchen and made himself a cup of tea as the first weak rays of sunshine were filtering over the summit of the mountain range on the far side of the loch.
Dillon went through to the living room and stretched his spine, then unlocked the French doors and stepped out onto the terrace. The cold hit him like a slap in the face and he gasped, revelling at the shock. Wind lashed his unruly hair and he leaned over the stone balcony, gazing out across the snow covered lawns. In the distance he could see woodland, snow-laden and picturesque. The lane snaked into the distance, between hills, and beyond it all; the mountains over lording the valley and watching over mere mortals far below.
God, this is such a beautiful place, he thought. The phone rang. He stepped back inside and picked up the handset. “Hello.”
“Dillon, its Tatiana.” She sounded serious.
“Tats — I need a servere word in your ear, my lovely. Have you any fucking idea what happened to me in Cornwall?”
“No time, Dillon. There’s something very bad going down, here in London. I just wanted to let you know that I’m coming up.”
“Here?”
“Yes. I’m on my way now, should be with you in about three hours. Do not use the mobile phone that I gave you. In fact, I doubt whether it is even connected at present.”
“Why”
“It’s the Scorpion units. It looks like three of them have been assassinated — wiped out. Look, I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
The line went dead. Dillon went back inside and picked up the mobile phone. He checked the signal strength, which was usually strong, nothing, not a single bar; the screen showed that the satellite network was temporarily de-activated. Tats had called him from the secure phone system built into the Mercedes SL55 on-board computer system. She had obviously not wanted anyone to listen into her call…
Dillon ran open fingers through his hair, her words troubling him. He shrugged to himself, pushing this worry from his mind temporarily. He would just have to wait until Tatiana arrived and wonder in the meantime what the hell was going on — and what her words of warning really meant — but it wasn’t that simple. Why had he not heard from Vince Sharp or Edward Levenson-Jones at Ferran & Cardini? What the hell was going on?
He changed into a dark blue tracksuit and pulled on a battered old pair of Nike running shoes and trotted down the stairs and out through the front door. Dillon stood in the middle of the drive already feeling the invigorating effects of the bitterly cold morning air and fresh snowfall under foot. A moment later, he set off across the vast lawn leading down to the water’s edge, and at a steady pace followed the contours of the shoreline around the Loch, as wariness and bad images of the assignment down in Cornwall flickered through his mind with each stride.