And the World Changes - A M Kirk (books to read fiction txt) 📗

from Mark’s nerveless fingers. “Now, stand up, both of you.”
With an effort Mark struggled to his feet. He turned to face the man behind him. He was a tall, muscled figure, dressed in a black t-shirt and carrying a light back-pack. The figure cupped a hand to his mouth can called, “Hey! Come on! I’ve got them.” He looked at Janette who stood trembling beside her son. “Quite a chase. I’ve even broken sweat.”
Johns came up. “Good work,” he said. “You need to practise your shooting, kiddo,” he said to Mark. “You missed me by a mile.”
“Sorry,” said Mark, then realised the absurdity of his remark.
The two men laughed. Johns took out a mobile. “Come and pick us up. We’ve got them.”
Ten seconds later the noise of a helicopter could be heard approaching from the east. It came in low across the loch, the downdraught rippling the blue water, and landed on the flat of the bank fifty metres from Henderson and Johns. A slim man wearing dark glasses jumped out. Mark immediately thought Human Freedom League.
“So we have them at last,” the newcomer said. “Bring them.” He had something in his hand. Not until Mark drew much nearer did he make out what it was: a hypodermic needle. He felt his legs begin to shake uncontrollably, and the first man, Henderson, had to hold his arm to make him walk.
“What are you – “ Janette began, but Johns slapped her hard in the face and she was knocked to the ground. The man from the helicopter stepped quickly up and Mark watched in hopeless horror as he plunged the needle into his mother’s shoulder. Janette was too surprised and frightened to make any motions to prevent what was happening, and within seconds collapsed into unconsciousness. Johns and Henderson caught her easily and lifted her into the back of the helicopter.
The other man, clearly their leader, advanced upon Mark. He still had the needle in his hand.
Logan grinned at the trembling boy before him. He was following his orders to the letter and everything was now going smoothly. Nothing could stand in his way now. He held the needle up in front of the boy’s frightened face and stepped forward laughing.
Mark saw the long sharp point of the needle floating towards him. He had been aware of his mother being placed in the helicopter, he had heard the rotor blades still spinning and felt their draught, chilling him; but now all that awareness, Mark’s entire awareness of the world shrank and concentrated itself into this one image – the delicate thinness of the needle coming towards him. It filled him with black terror. The last thing he knew was pain searing through his head and the side of his neck and he collapsed to the cold ground.
Logan stopped laughing. The kid had just flopped. His eyes had rolled up, showing just the whites and all colour had drained from the boy’s face. Then, Jesus, the kid had just hit the ground.
Logan had never intended to inject anything into the boy. He wanted to scare him a little, sure, but the plan was now to take his mother and leave him here in the wilderness to fend for himself. Logan did not know why the plan had changed. And he did not understand why, when the kid had flopped like that, he had suddenly felt a little frightened. Frightened of what? He was just a kid, and Logan had come here to kill him, after all. “Fright” should not enter into the equation.
Logan looked away.
He turned on his heel and, crouching to avoid the blades, moved quickly back into the helicopter. The pilot, McGregor, lost no time in lifting off and pointing the chopper back the way it had come, keeping low down Loch Lyon, and then contouring remote hills in order to fly virtually unseen through little-frequented glens and passes over into Glen Dochart and so to approach McGregor’s farm from the west. In this way they avoided flying over the busy tourist town of Killin.


19 Roberts

Roberts finished reading Mark Daniels’ notes for the second time. His clear-thinking logic could not avoid the fact that this case had suddenly evolved into something entirely unexpected, and he had no idea where it was heading. Unless the boy was completely delusional… But Roberts suspected from the style and clear descriptions of the writing that the boy was not insane.
He used his G5 to get through to Military Command at Stirling and was patched through to General Miller.
“Miller here,” said the terse voice from the viewscreen. “You’ve got news?”
“I’m at Bridge of Orchy, on the train. Janette Daniels was here with her son. Just as we thought. It looks like the Human Freedom League are heavily into this. One of them seems to be dead on the hillside outside, and another two appear to be in pursuit of our couple. But there’s a new dimension just opened up and I’d like your opinion on it.”
“Go ahead,” said Miller.
“General – I have here a set of notes written by the Daniels boy. In them he describes…”
“Describes what?”
“He describes in detail the appearance of the Soros Number 1. He identifies it as bearing a Striped Arm to signify his command.”
“Well? Nothing unusual in that. He could have got that from any number of media reports.”
“He goes on to detail a conversation he appears to have overheard between you and the Soros. He quotes the Soros as saying to you: We are carrying out some routine surveys of this area, General Miller, as you know, and this morning, as the satellite we were using at the time passed overhead, it photographed this event.”
“What the hell!” cried Miller.
“There’s more – a lot more.” Roberts scanned the sheets of paper. “At another point he writes: If you agree, then, that it looks as if these two are fleeing the scene of the crime, it may interest you to know that our sensors detected another, much weaker tremor a little while ago, in the area of the town you call Crieff. Not a little curious about this second event, we turned our satellite eye on to that area and saw this: The boy then describes how you saw a hologram of the Daniels car.”
“My God! This is absolutely frightening. How does the boy claim to know all this?”
“From dreams.”
“From dreams?”
“From dreams.”
“Then listen, Director Roberts, we need to get hold of that boy right away. Bring him in for questioning… “
“I’m on it already. I’ll call later to keep you informed.” Roberts severed the connection. He gathered up the notes, stuffed them in his pocket, and ran for the CIS helicopter.
The pilot lost no time in getting airborne. The bulbous cabin lifted high over the railway line and headed up Glen Auch. What took hikers over an hour and a half was accomplished by the helicopter in mere minutes. They passed over the police Landrover that Campbell had despatched earlier. It was blocked at a metal gate across the track. The men were venturing on foot. Soon the chopper left them far behind.
Rounding a curve in the hillside beyond the watershed, they came to one of the heads of Loch Lyon. From their airborne position they could see far down Glen Lyon, past the dam to the little farmhouses far off in the distance. Roberts, however, was intent on the ground below them. The pilot, who had more experience than Roberts at scanning ground from the air for anomalies, suddenly pointed. Beside the shore of the loch was a level flat patch about two hundred metres square. A figure was lying on the ground, the figure of a boy.
“Put me down!” said Roberts, and the pilot nodded.
Roberts ran over to the unconscious boy and checked his vital signs. The pulse was weak and fluttery, skin pale and clammy. He was, Roberts surmised, in deep shock. To move him was risky but he had no choice. The boy could die here in the open. He signalled for the pilot to help and between them they gently carried the boy into the chopper.
“We have to get him to a hospital straight away!” Roberts shouted over the idling engines.
The pilot nodded. “Stirling’s slightly nearer, but Glasgow has landing facilities right in the hospital,” the pilot shouted above the noise as he eased open the throttle to quicken the rotors. “It’s where mountain rescue cases are usually taken.”
Roberts nodded and gave the thumbs up. He covered the boy in a warm synthetic blanket and tried to keep his legs elevated to increase circulation to the brain. Shock, he knew, can kill, by starving vital areas of the brain of blood.
“Go east, first!” shouted Roberts. “The two men and the boy’s mother can’t have just disappeared.”
“There was another chopper!” came the reply. “There was an oil leak on the grass back there, quite fresh. Nothing else could have explained it. Ain’t no vehicle tracks around here.”
Roberts thanked his stars for the pilot’s keen observation. As soon as he could he opened up his G5 to order a trace put on all helicopters working north of the Highland line. They would not escape him for long.

**********

From the shade of a barn door at McGregor’s farm, Logan watched through binoculars as the CSI helicopter flew overhead and turned to the south. Behind him, inside the barn, McGregor’s helicopter was cooling down. The farmer himself was busy emptying the fuel tank. He planned to make the engine look like it needed repair and could not have been flying that day, should any investigators come calling.
“Good,” said Logan as the other chopper finally disappeared over the ridge of southern hills, “they’re too busy to look for us just now. The boy will be their priority. The woman will be ours. McGregor, my friend, you have done wonders this day for the League. The Chairman himself will be informed of the key part you played. I suggest, however, that you try to find yourself alternative employment somewhere far from here for a while. Obviously an alibi will be supplied for you, but it would be better if you laid low. They will come looking.”
“Don’t worry about that, sir. The time is maybe ripe to visit my nephew in Dundee. In fact, as I recall, I’ve been there a week already, and we’ve just spent the whole day fishing in his boat in the River Tay. “
Henderson and Johns had carried Janette, still heavily sedated, to the back of the Jeep, and strapped her in. Henderson sat beside her to prevent her flopping about too much. Johns rode in the front.
Logan jumped into the driving seat and turned to explain the next step. “We’re going to take her to my place in Stirling. We’ll have the means there to keep her quiet for as long as it takes. It’ll take about an hour from here, so we should be there for three-thirty.