Metamorphosis (4 page)

It was just
after five in the afternoon when he walked into the H-hut that
housed his men. They were relaxing in the usual cacophony of
conflicting music and shouted conversations, waiting for the mess
hall to open for dinner. Rai was there, on his bunk, restoring his
recently-returned blade to its former glory.

The man had
been waiting for Liam when his transport landed and had greeted him
warmly. Liam was touched by the gesture. He hadn’t expected anyone
to be there and he was glad that he had taken pains to bring the
wicked-looking knife back to England. As Rai drove him to their
barracks, he filled him in on what had been happening in Britain.
Liam had found it almost harder to believe that the news of the
aliens themselves.

Now, as the
men gradually became aware of their officer’s presence, the chatter
and music died away. They looked at him expectantly, curious at the
troubled look on his face.

“I’m going
into
Echo Lima One
tonight,” he began in a quiet voice. “My
son was sent there when Kate died and I mean to bring him out.” He
took a moment to compose himself but, before he could tell them
that he wanted their help, they beat him to it.

“We’ll be
ready to go in ten,” Rai said, sliding his knife into the sheath on
his belt. “That’s no place for a child.”  He pulled on his
boots and started lacing them up.

It was as
simple as that. Liam looked around at the sudden hive of activity.
Everywhere, men were pulling on ballistic armor and taking their
weapons from bedside lockers. Liam fought his emotions and lost. He
turned for the door to hide the riot on his face. He had never felt
more sure that he belonged in the military. He finally understood;
this unit was his family.

A family that
was preparing to risk their lives for his son.

Every single
one of them, and they seemed relieved that he had asked.

He remembered
that they had been waiting for dinner. “I’ll pick up field rations
from the quartermaster before they close for the night.” It would
be a long night, but they could at least eat something on the way.
It was best never to fight on an empty stomach if you could help
it.

“No bloody
tuna!” three or four of the men chorused, almost in unison.

Liam laughed.
“Meet me at six at the motor pool.” He stopped at the door and
turned back. The room slowly grew quiet again. “Thank you,” he said
lamely.

“You would do
the same for us, wouldn’t you, sir?” Lance Corporal MacKinnon said
it more as a statement than a question, but Liam nodded without
hesitation. “Then it’s a good thing Simpson stopped you from going
alone and making an orphan out of your son, isn’t it?” He pitched
slightly forward as the man behind him checked the fit of his
armor.

“Simpson?”
Liam began but trailed off, shaking his head in wry amusement.
These were the kind of men who wouldn’t wait around to see what
happens. Of course they had taken steps to prevent their officer
from running off and getting himself killed.

“We’ve had a
few people watching out for you,” Rai explained. “We figured you
would have to see Simpson unless you planned to walk all the way.”
He grinned as he slid a sidearm into the holster on the front of
his vest. “You didn’t really plan to do this without us, did
you?”

England

May 17, 2016

Tendrils of
smoke rose from the sector, light grey against the darkening
sky.  Some indicated homes with fireplaces but most were far
too thick to be anything but a burning structure. Liam stood in the
open roof hatch of his vehicle, looking down a street running
parallel to the barrier. Most of the windows were dark, the houses
abandoned. Nobody wanted to live this close to a lawless zone and
Millions of dollars in real estate had been left to rot. Graffiti
decorated any surface within reach from the ground. Some
enterprising individual had found a way to tag the upper stories of
a nearby building with an anti-government slogan. Trash blew about
the pavement, slowly being pinned down by the growing rain.

The silence
was overwhelming. He had never expected to find a part of London so
quiet. There was no traffic, no flow of pedestrians, no hucksters
selling cheap cologne in expensive bottles. All the background
sounds of nighttime London were gone.

This part of
the city was dead. Behind him was the old world. The investment
banks and electronic stores. In front was the new reality. A
churning, mutating society with brutal rules and constant,
desperate innovation. 

He wasn’t sure
which society would end up surviving.  

Heat rose out
of the opening around him, carrying the smell of gun oil and
hydraulic fluids – the smells of home. The comforting rumble of the
armored car’s diesel engine blended with the second vehicle behind
them. True to his word, Simpson had been waiting for them in riot
gear with two German-built
Fuchs TPz
armored scout cars. The
six-wheel drive, ten-passenger armored cars could travel at highway
speeds and provided excellent protection. Liam especially liked the
diesels. The British Army’s previous generation of light armor had
relied on gas engines and he had never been fond of going into a
fight surrounded by thousands of liters of highly flammable
fuel.

He looked down
as the light meter sitting on the periscope began to beep. He
activated his headset. “We’ve a spot of good luck: the rain is
reducing the light levels and it should keep the buggers inside for
the night.” He could hear the men in the vehicle below him mutter
in approval. Bad weather was typically their ally. It would keep
the locals inside and leave the streets to them. “Drivers, night
vision only and keep the revs down. We should be able to sneak in
with nobody hearing or seeing us.”

He waved down
to the small guardhouse where soldiers controlled gate nine, their
chosen point of entry into the sector. Nothing happened. He sighed,
dropping down the hatch to see who was closest to the back hatch.
“Kent, go see what those arsehats are doing in the guardhouse. We
need to get moving while conditions favor us.”

Corporal Kent
headed for the small structure while Liam climbed back into the
rain to watch. He frowned as the two guards came bowling out of the
windowed hut. The ten-foot-high chain-link gate, topped with
razor-sharp concertina wire, began to slide out of the way. Kent
came out and leaned over to talk to the men on the rain-slick
asphalt before trotting back over to his vehicle. When he shut the
door and sat back in his seat, he found his officer looking at him
with a raised eyebrow.

“Both of them
are bloody bagheads, sir.” He shook his head in disgust. “Needles
and spoons all over the place. Told ‘em if they weren’t waiting for
us to come out, they’d have to explain why their pretty little gate
was laying on the ground in pieces.”

The 320-hp
engine grumbled as the driver engaged the clutch. Liam pulled
himself back up through the hatch just in time to see the two
guards stumble back into the shelter of their post. With surprising
agility for an eighteen-ton machine, the Fuchs maneuvered around
the low concrete barriers, built to prevent vehicles from building
enough speed to smash through the gates.

Though the
neighborhood still had power (there would have been regular riots
otherwise) the streetlamps had all been smashed long ago and the
small convoy travelled in near darkness. The occasional burning
house caused them to slow as the ambient light reflecting off the
rain played havoc with the drivers’ night vision goggles.

They reached
the old, four-storey estate building where Liam’s brother-in-law
lived and both vehicles came to a stop by a huge, stinking garbage
heap near the back stairs. The men piled out the back door and
headed straight for the open door, moving up the stairs in relays,
guarding the entry from each floor until reaching the third. Liam
took the lead, passing through the rusted door frame and heading
down the broad concrete walkway. On the right was a heavy,
crumbling-concrete balustrade, overlooking their vehicles. On the
left, light seeped out from under closed doors. There were no
windows.

They reached
Leo’s front door and regrouped. One of the troopers stepped up with
a Halligan bar. Combining an adze and pick head at right angles to
each other, the bar made an excellent breaching tool for quiet
operations. The man slid the adze edge between the door and jamb
next to the lock and gave the long bar a push, popping the latch
free and swinging the door into the small apartment.

“Buggeration,”
one of the men muttered. “Smelled better back by the garbage
heap.”

Leo sat in a
dirty old lounger in front of his television, snoring, a half-empty
bottle in his lap.

He woke in
terror, lying face down with his hands and feet bound and heavy
tape over his mouth. Liam looked down at him as his wide-eyed gaze
took in the armed men in black uniforms and gas masks. He looked
back up as Rai came up to him. “He’s not here,” the sergeant said
in a worried tone.

Liam pulled
his brother-in-law to a sitting position and knelt in front of him,
pulling off his gas mask. Leo’s face showed relief when he
recognized his sister’s husband but the expression was short-lived.
Guarded alarm stole across his features and Liam felt an icy knot
of fear grow inside his own chest.

He couldn’t
afford to sound desperate in front of Leo. He needed the man to
have no doubts as to who was in charge of the situation. “All
right, Leo?” he asked casually. “Thought I’d pop round and visit
with Tommy; see how he’s getting on.”

“Ain’t here,”
the man blurted. “He scarpered last month and I haven’t the
foggiest where he is.”

Liam could
spot a lie nine times out of ten and his brother-in-law was no
master spy. He knew where Tommy was and he was scared of Liam
finding out.
Either he’s worried about what I’ll do to him or
someone in Sector One will come after him.
Either way, Liam
needed answers. He leaned in close enough to smell the stink of
cheap vodka on the man’s skin. “Look, Leo, I don’t have all night.
Are you telling me you let something happen to Tommy?” His anger
was just beneath the surface and it came through in his voice.

“He’s fine, I
swear it. Only…” he cut himself off before he could dig himself in
deeper, his eyes darting from Liam to the men standing around
him.

He knows
something,
 Liam realized with a feeling of relief. When
they had discovered that Tommy wasn’t in the apartment, he had
feared the worst. Even if he was still alive, it had been looking
like they would have to go back empty-handed.

But now they
might have a lead – and Liam knew how he would dig it out of this
shell of a man.

“Danny,” he
said nodding to Rai, “you lost your change purse last month,
yeah?”

“I… did, sir,”
Rai answered with only the barest hesitation. He wouldn’t be caught
dead carrying a change purse.

“Well, we
can’t find you a water buffalo but this one should be close enough
for small change.” He slapped Leo’s ample beer gut.  

“ ’Ave it,
Danny,” one of the men called out.

The prisoner
watched nervously as the masked soldier pulled a wicked, dog-leg
blade and advanced on him. “Right,” the black-clad man announced
with a slight South-Asian accent, “get his pants down, lads. Be the
first time this salad dodger’s seen it in years…” The mask hid any
human expression, heightening the sense of menace.

It was nothing
but a mummer’s farce but it worked. As the first man reached for
Leo’s waist, he re-assessed who was the greater threat to his
well-being. “He’s in the tower over by Boleyn Ground.”

Liam had been
there for matches, in better times, and he remembered seeing the
three towers that barely reached above the stands on the east side.
“Why is he there if the government checks are coming here?” he
asked, still not stopping his men who were laying their victim out
on the floor and slicing through his belt.

“Because the
West Ham Syndicate pays better than the government, that’s why,”
MacKinnon growled from where he sat on the prisoner’s feet. “They
‘rent’ kids from locals and put ‘em to work cooking up
Tina
.
They keep ‘em there twenty-four-seven so they don’t lift the
product.”

“You sold my
boy to work in a meth’ lab?” Liam was incredulous; he had never
thought highly of Kate’s brother but this was beyond the pale. He
waved his men away and leaned over to look him in the eyes. “Which
tower?”

“Middle one.”
His voice had lost the edge of terror, now that Rai and his knife
were on the other side of the room. “South got gutted by a fire
last year and the north is almost ready to collapse.” He raised his
bound hands to grasp at Liam’s sleeve. “I swear to God, they take
good care of the boys that work there – wouldn’t be able to get
anyone if they didn’t.”

Liam shook him
off and stood up, activating his headset. “Right, we’re taking a
little spin over to Boleyn Ground; everybody mount up.” He waved
the men out the door and stepped over Leo to follow them.

“You can’t
leave me like this,” the man pleaded. “The neighbors will clean me
out.”

Liam stopped
for a moment, then nodded. “You’re right, Leo,” he said as he
leaned over, his brother-in-law extending his hands to be freed.
Liam delivered a solid blow to the man’s jaw, driving his head back
to strike the floor.

“Couldn’t
leave you conscious like that,” he muttered as he shook his right
hand with a wince. “We don’t want you getting loose and narking on
us.” He turned from the unconscious, semi-naked man and jogged out
the door to catch up with his men.

~*~

The entry team
was lined up just around the corner from the main entrance of the
middle tower. Simpson had volunteered to do the recce and he had
found clear progress right up to the front door. The syndicate that
ruled this region obviously felt that nobody would ever dare attack
them. Liam’s sniper teams were in position in both of the flanking
towers and had identified a concentration of warm signatures on the
southwest corner of the second floor.