Then something shifted across the far side, between the pillars on ground level of the furthest building, and Shirley realised she was looking at a pair of Black Arrows.
“I see two.”
“I’ve got seven,” Marcus said.
“Show-off.”
“They’re not much good,” he said. “This kind of terrain, this much cover, I’d be invisible.”
“I can see you,” Shirley muttered. Then: “What are they? Are they klieg lights?”
There were two sets of them, scaffolding towers that loomed a few metres tall with searchlights affixed to the top: one by the Black Arrow van, and the other a few metres away, neither lit, but both aimed at a hole in the factory wall. They looked like outsized anglepoise lamps. They also looked like you could tip them over with a broomstick.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what—oh, Christ.”
“It’s a killing ground,” said Shirley.
“Looks like.”
“They’re gonna flush River and the others out of the facility. They come up, the lights go on—blam blam blam.”
“Hush.”
A figure emerged from the back of the van. A balaclava obscured his face, though he was too far away for that to make much difference. After a brief survey of the area, he trotted towards the block to their right.
“Eight,” said Marcus.
“Are you just gonna count, or do you have a plan?”
“Well, in situations like this I ask myself, ‘What would Nelson Mandela do?’”
“. . . Seriously?”
“Dude survived twenty-seven years in a maximum security prison,” Marcus said. “I’m pretty sure he could take care of himself.”
“Yeah, that’s not what most people think of when—oh, forget it. What would Nelson do?”
“He’d take those towers out before the lights came on. You up to that?”
Shirley was, and would have said so, but a figure appeared behind Marcus wielding a truncheon. The alarm in her eyes gave Marcus half a moment’s grace, and he moved just enough that the stick, instead of swinging into the side of his head, caught him on the neck. He bounced full body off the wall and hit the ground with a thud. Shirley had time to note that his baseball cap remained fixed in place; almost time to step forward and launch a chin-bound kick at his assailant; no time at all to do anything but fall flat on her face when her legs were taken out from under her by a second man. Roll, she thought, and took a mouthful of gravel as his kick came in to take her head off.
Running along the corridor, Louisa noticed her heart rate . . . It had been a while since she’d been conscious of the beating of her heart.
Two paces ahead, River barely slowed before launching himself through a set of swing doors; they banged off the walls and swang back at her, and she fended them off with her forearms. Any of the instructors they’d had, back before their fall, would have had seven kinds of fit watching this: they were more like schoolkids having a race than agents on an op . . . If that’s what they were. If that’s what this was.
What it mostly felt like was an unholy mess, but there was nothing unusual about that. Last year, she and Min had had the sniff of an op: little more than a handholding exercise, but it had made them feel more alive than at any time since being kicked out of the Park. As things turned out, they were playing someone else’s game: Min died, and all she’d had since was the daily grind of make-work and nightly stands with strange men; so many strange men, she was near to forgetting there was any other kind.
And now this.
More doors. She’d lost track of which corridor they were in, F or E, but that didn’t matter because here they were, in the room they’d seen on the monitor, with its rows of newly assembled shelving, and crates packed in what looked like cages, as if the information they contained was savage, and needed to be kept behind bars. A lot of it probably was. At the far end of the room, visible along the aisle between the rows, Ben Traynor was by the far set of doors: he’d erected a barricade, and was standing on an overturned cabinet, sighting through a fraction of a porthole window. His gun hung loosely by his side, but on their arrival he spun round, aiming it in their direction.
River and Louisa leaped in opposite directions, taking cover behind caged crates.
Traynor lowered the gun. “What the hell are you doing?”
River emerged, hands raised to shoulder level. “Was about to ask you the same thing. Where’s Donovan?”
The sound of a box file hitting the floor betrayed his position.
Traynor said, “I thought I told you to go.”
“And I thought you said you were after the Grey Books.”
Louisa joined River as he lowered his hands. “Are they showing signs of coming in?” she asked.
He hesitated. Then said, “There’s a room a few yards down the corridor. They’re in there at the moment. I imagine they’re planning their next move.”
Which presumably involved all-out assault, thought Louisa. That or surrender, which didn’t seem likely. “Have they got guns?”
“Maybe one or two of them. They haven’t fired any yet.”
Another box file hit the floor.
River said, “If he’s going through them one by one, we might be here a while.”
“We know what we’re doing.”
“They won’t need guns. They can just wait for the hinges to rust off the doors.”
Louisa moved down the aisle towards Traynor, and stopped when she reached the row where Donovan was. There was something incongruous about the scene: like watching Rocky play librarian. In his hands was a box file. Before she opened her mouth he’d dropped it and was reaching for the next one.
She said, “I found your online musings.”
“BigSeanD,” he said, without stopping what he was doing.
“BigSeanD has a thing about the weather,” she said. “He seems to think They’ve weaponised it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Wasn’t too clear on who They were.”
“I expect They’re the same crowd putting chips in people’s heads to track them when they’re abducted by aliens.” He looked at her briefly. “They get up to creepy shit, They surely do.”
He’d reached the end of the row of box files; next up were manila folders, of varying thickness; some bound with ribbon, others paper-clipped closed. They had catalogue numbers stamped in red ink on the cover; Donovan checked each before unbowing the ribbon, discarding the paper clip. A quick glance at the top sheet seemed to be all he needed, and the folders joined the mess on the floor.
“You have to admit,” he said in a conversational tone, “it doesn’t sound that far-fetched. If the weather’s not being controlled yet, you can bet your life someone’s trying to make it happen.”
“But you don’t care about that, do you? You were just building a legend to get you access to this place.”
“What’s the matter, don’t I fit your image of a conspiracy nut? What have you been told we look like?”
“I gather they come in different sizes,” River said. He stood in the aisle, with a sight line on both Donovan and Traynor. “But whatever you really want, we can’t let you take it.”
“Is that so?”
“Making a move now,” said Traynor.
“How many?” River asked.
“Six. More. I have limited vision here.”
Donovan looked unmoved. He said, “You might want to leave. One or two of them have real guns. They even know which way to point them.”