Deadly States (Seaforth Files by Nicholas P Clark Book 2) (37 page)

city highway, Jack kept a cautious eye on the rear view mirror for any
signs that Deeley was finding the route Jack had selected as being in
any way strange.
As the journey progressed Jack grew more confident
as more of the roadside features became familiar to him.
As they drove
further from the city
major signs of human civilisation grew less, and
that made it easier to navigate as the urban clutter was stripped away.
Soon the ominous dark outline of the chemical plant came into view.
Jack
drove
off the
main highway with a speed which spoke
of
how
he was
on an important mission, but not so fast as to appear desperate, and certainly not so fast as to elevate the suspicions
of the man
who he would soon kill. For his part Deeley remained very calm and
completely silent. His
mind was clearly somewhere else and for that
Jack was grateful. Deeley
had not looked at Jack properly from the
moment he got into the car. The dirt that his clothing and skin had
picked up when
he
entered the complex through the hole was still
clearly visible. That in itself should have been enough to give Deeley a
sign that something was not quite right. Deeley noticed nothing.

There were several cars parked close to the entrance of the laboratory where Robert had interrogated Jack earlier and Jack assumed that
was where Deeley would want to be.
As he brought the car to a stop
Deeley said nothing. A door to the corridor beside the lab opened and
Barry
stepped
out. He was carrying an
AK47 . Jack turned his head
away from Barry as Deeley got out of the car.

“Don’t wait for
me,” Deeley
said to Jack, and then he closed the
door.
Jack continued to look away from Barry as he pulled clear from
the front of the building. As he drove back towards the main highway
Jack stole a few fervent glances in the rear view mirror. He saw Barry
and Deeley head into the building but he did not focus
on their faces
for long enough to judge what kind of mood either man was in. Jack
calmly pulled off onto the highway and he drove back towards the city
at a steady speed.
About a mile from the chemical plant he pulled off
the road and then he killed the engine. As he sat by the side of the road
his mind turned to the meeting with Deeley and Barry.
As bedfellows
went the pairing perhaps wasn’t so strange; but
one thing Jack could
be certain
of, with the pair
of them working together, whatever they
were planning was going to mean a lot of trouble for a lot of people,

and Jack would be counted amongst that unfortunate number. There
was no doubt that
one,
or
both
of them would at some stage betray
the other; that was their nature, but would that critical turning point
arrive before they put a bullet in Jack’s head, or would they both have
the good sense to wait until after Jack was dead? It was a question that
he did not have time to dwell upon.

That he had to return to the chemical plant was not in question,
but taking the car
or going
on foot
did have to be weighed up carefully. The car would provide him with a
quick getaway
should the
worst happen, but the car would be spotted long before he made it to
the plant. On foot would take time and he would not have an escape
vehicle, but assuming he did make it in and out again alive then stealing
one
of the vehicles already
parked at the plant would not
have
posed much of an
obstacle.
After a few
minutes
of silent
debate Jack
decided to take the middle road; he would drive the car slowly, with
the lights
off, to within half a
mile
of the
entrance to the chemical
plant, then walk the rest of the way. He wasn’t as young or as fit as he
once was, but he felt confident that he could keep up a decent sprint
from the complex to the car whenever the mission was concluded; he
was confident enough to bet his life on it.

As he placed a hand on the key in the transmission the headlights
of a car in the distance came into view. Jack paused to give the car
time to pass
before he turned his car
on.
Although the lights
of the
approaching car were
landscape. The dying
on, there was still a
dull twilight
bathing the
African light was
much shorter than twilight

back in the UK and Jack knew the country well enough to know that
within minutes
proper
darkness would fall like a stage curtain. The
approaching car was driving suspiciously slowly. Jack slid down into
the seat as the car drove past. The car did not slow down as it passed;
it
maintained the constant, sober
pace. It was a
black BMW. It was
being driven by a burley looking man in a dark suit. Jack gleamed all
of this information as he tried to conceal himself from the occupants
of the passing car. With so much information to process in that brief
moment the BMW was long gone before Jack processed the last, most
important, most surprising piece of information. It hit him with such
unexpected clarity that for a
moment
he dismissed it as a
delusion;
brought on by exhaustion or the unending pressure of that day. As his

mind replayed the passing car again and again he came to the same
conclusion. It was
her. It really was. In a life
of lies and death and
ceaseless anxiety she had been his one tiny ray
of hope. She had come
into his life at a time when he had resigned himself to the fact that this
world was an evil, unscrupulous, demonic beast, and the best that he
could ever hope for was to survive it and give others such as himself
the opportunity to do the same. She was an angel. She was grace. His
redemption and his
downfall.
And now, at that time, in that
place,
she was back in his life; more unexpected than the first time she had
stepped onto the stage of his life.

Absently
he turned the key in the ignition. The engine roared to
life as
his foot
pressed
down
on the accelerator with just a
bit too
much force. Jack
didn’t care. Nor did he care when a
quick release of
the clutch caused the car to jerk forwards and threaten a stall. Nor
did he care as he pulled onto the highway in front
of a white pick-up
truck, which swerved with an angry blast
of its horn. Nor did he care
why she was there in South Africa or why the car that she was travelling in was pulling off the road ahead of him into the chemical plant.
He cared for none
of it. He
only
cared that the
one true love
of his
life was back long after he had given up all hope of
ever laying eyes
on her again. So eager was Jack to see her face at close range that he
abandoned his plan to drive within half a mile of the plant. He didn’t
stop until he was less than one hundred yards from the entrance of the
chemical
plant. When he got
out
of the car his legs were trembling.
It
was
not
the tremble
of
terror
that
came with the
prospect
of
walking towards
one’s possible death, but rather it was the cowardly
shaking of a teenager out on a first date and in over his head.

As the entrance to the plant neared his head was snapped back into
the game as another car approached along the highway from the city
side. Jack hid behind a small billboard close to the entrance and he remained in that spot until the car had slowed down before turning into
the plant. His irrational self took control; though in truth his rational
self wanted to see her face up close as much as his irrational self did.
That would never happen if
one of the guards at the plant took him
out before he made contact with her.