The UnTied Kingdom (33 page)

Charlie tapped at the open door. ‘Sir? Wagon’s packed. We’re ready when you are.’

She was unconscious and bleeding
. Harker glanced from Mary to Charlie, then back again.

She was acting. I know she was acting.

‘Sir,’ Charlie said, and wibbled on about the wagon and supplies and provisioning.

Who was she acting with?

Mary’s eyes were huge, full of fear. Of course she was afraid; she knew just what a soldier could do to a woman.

And Harker knew what a woman could do to a soldier. She could make his fears and doubts persuade him that he was seeing lies instead of the truth.

Or the truth, instead of lies.

‘Sir?’ Charlie said to Harker, who had his eyes resting on a pile of laundry, but was focused on a dark alley and a woman in a red dress.

‘You said she was hurt,’ he said distantly.

‘He couldn’t see where exactly, but there was blood on her clothes. He could see it even against the red of the dress.’

‘They were going to the Abbey,’ he said.

‘They take everyone there. People who disagree with them, or fight … and they don’t come back, sir.’

‘Sir, you said she went with them,’ Charlie said.

‘I know what I said,’ Harker muttered.

You were wrong.

‘Maybe she didn’t go willingly,’ Charlie said cautiously.

‘
No one
would go willingly,’ said Emmy, speaking for the first time.

What would Harker do if he was faced with six enemy soldiers? He’d fight. But Eve? Eve wasn’t a soldier, she didn’t know how to fight. She knew how to smile and flirt and pretend.

She was trying to save herself. Maybe she was trying to save you. And now look what you’ve–

‘Sir,’ Charlie said, touching his arm, and he snarled at her, and Mary flinched back against an ironing board so hard it clattered. Emmy turned to her mother immediately, soothing her, and Harker watched them, breathing hard.

Mary’s risked an awful lot to come here and tell you this, to offer her help. It could get her hurt, killed, or back in the hands of men who beat and rape.

He remembered with horribly vivid accuracy the blood and the bruises and the silent, white-faced sobbing when he and James had found her.

And Eve’s hurt, there was blood soaking through her clothes–

‘We’ll go in after her, sir,’ Charlie said, her voice calm and quiet. There was a look in her eyes he hadn’t seen before. She was wary of him. ‘Tonight, if you want.’

The sooner the better
.

He nodded, strode out to tell the others, and cannoned into Banks, who said, ‘Sir, butler’s looking for you. Telephone; it’s General Wheeler.’

Annoyed at this diversion, Harker took the back stairs two at a time and snatched up the phone. ‘Sir?’

‘Ah, Harker. I’m glad I caught you before you left. The telephone at the Hull base isn’t working. I thought with your clever captain you could get it fixed.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Harker said distractedly. Then reality smacked him in the face. ‘Uh, sir, when did you say the Humber Bridge was being blown up?’

‘Tonight. We simply can’t leave it up, it’s an open invitation for the Coalitionists to spread further north.’

‘Tonight,’ Harker repeated. Behind him, Charlie winced.

‘Yes, Harker. Did you have something else planned?’ There was a note of slight humour in her voice. ‘Riggs said you were leaving this afternoon. You’ve got everything you need, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, although we don’t know if it all works,’ Harker hedged. ‘The new piece we got last night, sir, it might not–’

‘Well, if it’s damaged I’m sure we can repair it. Your Miss Carpenter should be able to help, you said yourself how co-operative she’s been.’

‘Yes, sir. That’s the thing, sir. She’s actually been – well, sir, she’s been captured by the enemy, and–’

‘Captured?’ Wheeler said sharply.

‘Yes, sir. While we were fetching that piece last night. That’s why we don’t–’

‘By the Coalitionist rebels in Leeds?’ Wheeler drew in her breath. ‘It’s a shame, Harker, because she might have been useful.’

‘Yes, sir, very useful, which is why we’re going in tonight to rescue her.’

There was a pause. Then Wheeler said, her voice firm, ‘Major Harker. Lieutenant Riggs informs me that you are down to four men plus one medical officer untrained in combat. Leeds is one of the biggest Coalitionist strongholds and I cannot possibly imagine that it is poorly defended. You may have managed to sneak in and out on your raids but a person captured while stealing a computer component is, I am sure, going to be held at the highest level of security.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Harker said, already mentally calculating how much firepower he had and how much more he’d need.

‘We have lost men to the Coalitionists before,’ Wheeler said. ‘Only five were returned alive, and I doubt they will ever live full lives again.’

‘Yes, sir, which is why we have to go in now,’ Harker said.

‘Major. She is probably already dead. And if not, then she almost certainly will wish she was. You do not want to know,’ Wheeler added quietly, ‘what state our female officers were returned in.’

‘Exactly, sir, that’s why–’

‘Harker, I need you to go to Hull.’

He closed his eyes. ‘Can’t the bridge be delayed until tomorrow?’

‘No, Major. My orders are for you and your remaining men to go to Hull. Do not go back to Leeds. There is nothing for you there.’

‘But, sir–’

‘Those are my
orders
, Harker.’

Orders. It was like a magic word. He couldn’t ignore it.

… soldiers don’t need to think. They need to obey. They need to have it hammered into them that when they’re told to march, they march. When they’re told to run, they run. And when they’re told to abandon the woman they’re mad about to go and fix a telephone line
–

‘Major?’ Wheeler’s voice echoed down the line.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

‘Telephone me from Hull when the line is fixed,’ she said, and ended the call.

Harker replaced the receiver slowly, turning to see Charlie and the squad watching him silently.

He got out a cigarette and lit it, moving automatically until he’d sucked in a lungful of nicotine.

It’s a bridge. It’s a telephone line.

It’s Eve.

They knew what their orders were. They’d known since Wheeler had told Harker about the bridge the day before.

And they knew about Eve. They’d known how he felt about her before he did.

‘I take care of my men,’ he said.

‘She’s not one of your men, sir,’ Charlie said quietly.

‘I know that,’ Harker said. He dragged hard on the cigarette, burning half of it down in one go. ‘And I don’t care.’ He nodded to them all and turned to go. ‘See you in Hull, then.’

‘No, you won’t,’ Charlie sighed, and he turned back to see them all standing behind her.

‘We’re with you,’ Tallulah said.

‘Got to follow the Major,’ Banks added.

‘Can’t leave an injured woman unaided,’ Daz said.

Harker met Charlie’s eyes, and a world of communication passed between them.

She sighed. ‘She’s one of us.’

‘Damn right she is.’ Harker ground the cigarette under his heel, pride swelling in him. ‘Right, men, fall in. Let’s go and do something stupid.’

Charlie stared at the Abbey, a dark shape against the glow of hundreds of fires from the refugee camp, and then she stared at Harker.

‘When you said something stupid,’ she said, ‘I didn’t think you meant this stupid.’

‘Thank you, Charlie, for that valuable input.’ Harker kept his eyes on the Abbey and the gate guards.

‘We don’t even know where she is.’

‘Well, I do.’ When Charlie raised her eyebrows, Harker said, ‘While you lot were fannying about stealing uniforms, I learned the layout of the place. Cells are underneath the kitchen. Used to be the cellars. Have their own entrance.’

‘So we just make a run for that, all guns blazing?’

‘Got a better idea?’ Harker said.

‘I suppose the old sneaking in as washerwomen trick isn’t worth considering?’

‘No, it is not. Besides, we’ve sneaked in before, and we’ve raided one of their convoys, and last night I got recognised by half-a-dozen guards at the grammar school. We ain’t going to be able to sneak anywhere.’

Charlie looked up at the Abbey again, and sighed.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Something stupid it is.’

Breaking into the compound hadn’t been as hard as the Coalitionists might have hoped it would be. The soldiers patrolling the refugee camp had let them through after a quick glance at their forged papers, and never checked for weapons. Now the squad spread out around the more heavily guarded Abbey, and waited for Harker’s signal.

He sent Tallulah round to the far side of the compound to lob a few grenades over the fence before she ran back to ready their getaway. Banks’s sniper rifle took out three guards on the attack side before the rest noticed what was happening, by which time Harker had opened fire with the submachine-gun he’d requisitioned from the raid on the convoy.

They were under the shadow of the Abbey in minutes. Harker’s heart was racing, and not just from the rush of the fight. Eve was in there, just the other side of this wall, and she had to be okay. He prayed it with every beat of his heart.

The sloped cellar door was just visible in the darkness. Harker grabbed a grenade from his belt, yanked out the pin with his teeth, and threw it over the kitchen roof and into the cloisters for another distraction. As it went off, he blasted the cellar doors with his stolen gun.

A grin fought its way out. He’d forgotten how much bloody fun this could be.

The doors flew open but, judging by the yells coming from the other side of the building, most of the coalitionists were too preoccupied to notice.

He ran in, shot the first guard and Banks got the second. They were faced with a low corridor, cheaply subdivided into cells with many, many narrow doors.

‘Shoot the locks off,’ he said, ‘all of ’em,’ and Charlie and Banks nodded.

When Harker caught a glimpse inside the first cell, his smile faded. Inside huddled a family, filthy and emaciated, with what he was pretty sure was a dead child.

‘Go,’ he said, and didn’t wait to see if they obeyed.

He blasted door after door, panic rising as it occurred to him that they might have kept her somewhere else, but then Banks yelled, ‘Sir!’ and he ran that way.

She has to be okay, she has to be okay
, he repeated to himself, and then he heard the faint, rather wobbly but unmistakable sound of the melody Eve had sung last night by the river, and relief made him smile just a little.

She was singing about being found, and he shoved through her door to find Banks crouching over her. He looked up, and his expression killed Harker’s smile.

The light from the corridor illuminated a small figure curled on the ground, shivering, cradling one hand against her exposed chest. Her dress was ripped at her breast, and also at the split on her thigh, ripped high enough for him to see the red, swollen wound there. It was crusted, and oozing, and stank of infection.

Eve’s head lolled on the floor and she was mumbling the verse she’d sung to him about lights on the river, and this time she remembered the last line, because it was about being with him forever and forever.

Banks’s eyes met his, and he looked frightened. And no wonder. Eve was lying on a filthy stone floor, an infected wound in her leg, shivering and sweating with fever.

This is not my definition of okay
, Harker thought furiously as he took off his overcoat and knelt down beside her.

‘Eve?’ he said, and she ignored him. ‘Eve, it’s me, Harker.’

Her gaze fell briefly on him before sliding away. Her pupils were unfocused. ‘Great,’ she mumbled. ‘Now I’m hallucinating.’

‘You’re not hallucinating.’ He laid his coat over her and she huddled into it.

‘Then explain the leprechauns.’ Eve giggled.

Harker exchanged a look with Banks, and picked Eve up, which stopped her giggling and made her yelp in pain.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ he said, standing up and cradling her against his body, indescribably glad to have her back.

He followed Banks, who led with his gun, and met up with Charlie, who was kicking down the last of the cell doors. A stream of people was running, limping and in some cases crawling out of the cellar. Not one of them looked to be in particularly good shape.

Eve moaned in his arms, her face twisted in pain, and Harker shoved through the crowd to the cellar doors. Why hadn’t he brought Daz? Why leave him and Mary back at the Chase? Stupid, stupid Harker. Eve needed help
now
.

She’s survived twenty-four hours, she can manage another thirty minutes
, said a small sensible voice, but the part of Harker that had seen that swollen wound on her leg ignored it.