Thunder - By Anthony Bellaleigh
Part One: Thrice Fireworks
The End of Everything
London, England
It’s like some massive giant’s hands have grabbed me under my armpits and hoisted me into the air and I am suddenly flying backwards, arms and legs flailing helplessly in front of me. A huge weight is thrusting relentlessly into my stomach and chest.
My ears are full of excruciating pain, caused by the enormous concussion, and I wonder – somewhat pointlessly given my rapidly dwindling probabilities of survival – whether my hearing has disintegrated altogether.
All around me is a boiling, churning, fog of smoke. Tiny dark objects are flashing through it, all travelling in the same direction as me. One of these glinting projectiles emerges from the swirling mist as a strobing reflection of background flames and fire. It’s getting larger. Rotating as it hurtles forwards. Flying faster than me. Catching me. Resolving itself into a jagged splinter of metal. Metal which has been ripped bodily from its origin by some tremendous force.
What is happening?
The jagged piece of metal is closing quickly. Homing in. My flailing limbs are no protection and the shard hits me toward the top of my chest, slicing into my neck. The sudden stabbing pain makes me open my eyes wide and I try to scream but don’t seem to be making any sound.
Through horrified eyes I can see the dying flash of sun-bright light, see the white-hot core of the explosion, see the flying street furniture, pieces of vehicles, burning cloth, fabric, papers and – I suppose – flesh. The billowing smoke around me is tinged with crimson. It’s a bloody mist of atomised humanity and I sense that I’m surrounded by the last tiny fragments of those who were unfortunate enough to have been closer to the epicentre than I had been.
For some reason, I feel compelled to glance to one side – I don’t know why – and a face, a human face, emerges from the vapourous swirling fog. The face’s mouth is open and its lips are quivering as they’re driven outwards by the force of another inaudible scream. He looks like he’s an old guy: given the grey beard framing his soundless shriek. He’s tumbling too. Flying alongside me for a moment. I can see his hair burning. Can see the blood pumping from the stump of his severed arm. His torso ends just above his waist where another wave of bloody spray is erupting from its shattered edge. He is looking straight into my eyes: imploring me, pleading with me, begging me as he makes this one final, silent, cry for help. Then he vanishes into the billowing conflagration.
Hell is erupting around me. Erupting from the very place where, a few short moments ago, my life partner and my beloved daughter were standing, smiling and waving. Now here I am, just another piece of screaming fleshy shrapnel, flying backwards amongst the scattering flotsam, watching through wide eyes and slicing pain as my family are snatched away into oblivion.
~~~~~
Brigadier Crispin Greere – a squat, bland-looking, man with side-parted, flat, black hair and strangely bulging eyes – stood in silence alongside Lieutenant Walter Ellard – a taller, older, slimmer man with hair the colour of fresh snow. Their code-names were Ace and Deuce.
They were in one corner of a small office, buried deep inside the odd-shaped monstrosity of a building that many occupants nicknamed Legoland. Finding enough space to set up a private Operations Room in this weird Babylonian palace – the MI6 Secret Intelligence Service Building on Albert Embankment – was becoming progressively easier as successive governments chipped back at nonessential services like national defence and security. For a tiny unit, like Ace’s, it hadn’t been difficult at all.
The room was a simple cube: one door, no windows, and plain magnolia-painted walls. There were two long desks in the centre of the room, separated from each other by a tired, grey, four-foot partition. The desks were laden with massed piles of papers, computers, monitors and printers. In one corner, the corner where the two men were standing, was the only other table. On it was a large LCD flat-panel monitor. The monitor was displaying an array of live feeds from various London MI5 Security Service cameras...
“F*cking hell,” said Deuce.
His boss just shrugged. “This could be exactly what we’ve been waiting for,” he said coldly.
~~~~~
I can see a bright light. It’s like the biggest firework I’ve ever seen. My old dad would have liked it. He liked fireworks. I can imagine him scampering back from its fizzing fuse, grinning like some Cheshire Cat.
There’s a figure in front of the light, running toward me. Perhaps it is Dad, after all? Come on, Dad! Get a move on! Before it goes off ... but it can’t be him? He isn’t here any more. The cancer took him years ago. Long before his time.
It’s taken us a long time to recover from that. Both Mum and me, but Mum the worst. She imploded into a pale shadow of her previously jovial self. I guess she was always stronger when he was around? Like she fed off his good humour and boundless energy? Like he kind of made her whole... I do try to spend more time with her, but you know how it is: with all the pressures of work and everything, what can you do? She decided to move into a residential home recently... It means she’s got company around her... I feel a bit better about her now...
So why’s my old dad running towards me?
He looks like he’s shouting something but I can’t hear him. The roaring noise from that huge firework is drowning out all other sounds. And those flames don’t look right? They’re catching him up.
“Dad, hurry!” I yell.
He’s running quicker. Still shouting something. Getting closer but the flames are faster than him and they merge into a huge wave of fire which races toward me.
Engulfing him.
“DAD...!”
And now I can hear his voice: cutting through the raging storm, burrowing into my tortured soul, flooding me with unexpected calmness and confidence. And I can feel him reaching out to me: just like he always could, whenever I needed him most...
“Be strong, Nic,” says his voice. “Be patient. Your time will come. You know what’s right. Do the right thing.”
~~~~~
“Stop bitching, and see what you can do, Joker,” barked Greere. “I’ll send the pictures to your cellphone now.” He tapped away at his keyboard. “Try that drug dealer. He owes me, big time. Call me when you have something.”
Ellard, who was sitting at his own workstation, glanced over the partition at his boss.
Greere saw the look and tossed his encrypted cellphone angrily onto the desk. “Stranded asset,” he explained brusquely, in response to the unasked question. “From a previous operation. Useful residue. No-one you need to concern yourself with.”
Deuce grunted something incoherent and went back to his work.
Greere sat back in his chair. It would be good if Joker could get him a result. It might help raise his team’s profile. Things were happening earlier than he’d have liked, but this latest incident would be the perfect mission for them. Perfect and very high profile.
He cast his mind back to the meeting, all those months ago, when he had floated his radical idea to his own boss: Major Richard, ‘The Bull’, Charles; a.k.a. Sentinel. The meeting where he had risked everything. Pushed the edge of the envelope...
“Imagine it, sir,” he’d said. “A handful of our worst, most nasty, most extremist, individuals – just like they are – but backed by the financial and military assets of a whole nation state.”
“Deliberate rogues?” Sentinel had looked skeptical.
“Exactly,” he’d hurriedly continued. “Predefined as such. Completely segregated from the mainstream. Nonexistent. Untraceable.”
“Sounds like the terrorists we’re supposed to be fighting?”
“Exactly.”
“Fight fire with fire?” He remembered nodding as he’d watched his boss considering the suggestion. “Just out of interest, how many are you talking about?”
“Three, maybe four.”
“Completely isolated operatives?”
“Completely. Utterly ring-fenced. Packaged as isolated entities. Loners.” Greere had spent many years quietly developing this idea. He’d even started to design the loose network of financial and physical assets required to furnish, house, and fund such a unit.
“Do you really think you could find potential candidates with the right attributes? It would be extremely difficult. It doesn’t sound like they’d have much in the way of career prospects?”
Greere had anticipated Sentinel’s cynicism. “Very difficult, sir,” he’d acknowledged. “I’d like to try though. I’d like to give it a shot. I’ll run it. The operating budget would be negligible compared with the other projects. For instance, I’ll only need one other person assigned to me, to help with the legwork.”
“Got anyone in mind?” Sentinel’s response had sounded promising.
“Ellard, sir.” Greere had answered quickly. He’d known that he needed to keep his boss interested and, besides, he liked Lieutenant Colonel Ellard. Ellard had a straightforward and unassuming ability to do what he was told. Ellard was his ideal foot-soldier: too old to be ambitious whilst still fit enough to do all the donkeywork.
Sentinel had nodded. “Okay,” he’d said. “Come back in a week’s time with a detailed establishment plan, costings, and a list of suggested candidates. Assuming, of course, that you can find any.”
With that, it had started. Greere now enjoyed full autonomy and authority over his own, independent, splinter unit within Sentinel’s spiderweb of splinters and fragments. He had his own power over missions, over actions, over consequences, over life and, of course, over death. His unit would be assigned to undertake ‘radical action, suppression, countermeasure and selective target liquidation’ operations against extremist terror threats. The RASCAL Unit... Greere thought the acronym fit its agents just perfectly.
~~~~~
Like someone pulling back a pair of heavy drape curtains, light floods back into my mind but, this time, there’s no firework.
There is also, thankfully, no sign of Dad.
Instead it’s just another London grey-summer day. Not too cold. No rain. No need for a coat. Not too hot either. A good day for sightseeing. A good day for a small family to get a train up from the Home Counties. A good day to get away from the normal, nonstop, pressures of work. A good day for visiting a museum or a gallery. A good day for us to come wandering out of Victoria Station and to decide to make our way into the city, on foot, past Buckingham Palace. Lizzie’s never seen the Palace. Yes, this is a good day not to squeeze onto the tube like we usually would.
We’re weaving through the crowds that swarm endlessly on the pavements. Three ordinary souls, heading toward the traffic lights. Heading this way because the junction offers the only almost-safe place to cross the busy roads in front of the hectic station. Hemmed into the masses by heavy, black-painted, metal bollards which line the footpath like upturned-cannons and which are planted like sentries all along the edges – I guess they’re there to keep cars from parking on the pavements?
Now is the perfect moment for me to move into a niche between two shop fronts, to stoop to retie my shoe laces, and to notice a large plain-white box van pull up at the lights...
‘That’s odd,’ I’m thinking. ‘The lights are on green.’
A taxi behind the van hoots his horn angrily, but the van refuses to move from the junction. It’s stopped about a hundred metres in front of me.
Maybe he’s letting some old person get across?
The other two have nearly reached the traffic lights, I can see them moving away from me, the buggy working like some form of people-plough and cutting them a pathway toward their objective. I’m going to need to scoot to catch up with them.
Then there’s the light...
Like I say: no firework.
Fireworks don’t come packed in vans.
~~~~~
Time seems to pass. I’m not sure how long and, all the while, there’s a lot of pain. It hurts all over and I suspect that I may not know the half of it. Maybe I’d better stay asleep for a bit longer? The dreams might be unpleasant but I have a sneaking feeling that waking up will be worse.
There’s another light glowing in front of me.
Not as bright as the fiery one.
No, this one’s more manmade. More white. More neon.
I think I’m going to ignore it.
I don’t think I want to wake up. Not yet. Maybe not ever...
What are you doing here again, Dad?
There aren’t any fireworks now.
What...?
Why shouldn’t I sleep? I don’t want to wake up. Not yet...
Okay, I promise I won’t give in to the pain.
If that’s what you think is best...
~~~~~
Now I can see you. Laughing and joking with your friends. Not noticing me staring at you through the partying masses.
I like this dream better...
The loud pub is banging tonight. Jumping to the latest songs. Full of happy students.
Summer has arrived – hot and dry and full of promise and freedom from our otherwise endless studies. Long weeks of well earned rest and relaxation lie ahead of us and we’re celebrating the sunshine’s homecoming.
Then you look up.
Catch my eye through the half light.
You are staring and I’m suddenly feeling shy. But I steel myself. I’m going to be brave. I’m not going to look away. Your eyes are such a lovely ice-blue colour. So alive and bright. So unlike mine, which are as black as coals. You surely can’t be interested in me? I’m just plain and ordinary. Nothing special. Everybody’s friend. Good for a laugh. Good old, always single, me.
Then you smile and suddenly my heart is racing.
I dare you then...
I smile back...
And then I turn away.
~~~~~
The white light has returned.
Shining at the end of a very dark tunnel. Like a distant beacon.
Come home, it says. Come back...
And there are movements in front of the light. Blurry shadowy movements.
One comes closer. Obscuring the light.
“Hello, can you hear me?” says the shadow.
I can, but I don’t want to.
Not yet.
The light fades away again, like someone has slowly turned a dimmer switch...
~~~~~
Now we are dancing. I still can’t believe you’re with me.
My friends look on. I know they’re jealous. Why Nick? Why plain old Nick?
I know. I don’t understand it either, but here you are, wheeling me round and round, and my head is spinning, and I feel so happy. So alive...
And suddenly we’re together in the darkness and I can smell your hot scent. Feel the gentle moist sheen of sweat on your back as I’m running my hands over your nakedness. Your face is smiling down at me.
I have never felt so complete.
So satisfied.
So full of joy.
You lean forward and bury your panting face into my neck.
I can feel the ragged flutter of your hot gasps billowing over my shoulders and chest.
Your ear is close to my lips.
“I love you,” I whisper nervously, and for a long moment you are silent and I’m scared that I’ve said something wrong, but you lift your face and stare long and hard into my eyes, and then you smile...
You are so beautiful.
“I’m glad,” you say. “Because I love you too.” And with your words I feel like I have died and gone to heaven, but you’re not finished yet. “I have done,” you duck back down and murmur into my ear, “from the first moment I saw you.”
I scrabble excitedly away from under you – this has got to be the best possible moment – and reach across into the drawer of my bedside cabinet. “I bought you something,” I splutter self-consciously. “I couldn’t help myself.” And I hand you my tiny, carefully wrapped, package. “I hope you like it...”
~~~~~
“There’s definite improvement every day,” says a voice. “It’s probably some form of psychological reaction that’s preventing consciousness.”
“Coma?” says another.
“No. It’s strange. More a deep unconsciousness. Not surprising given the level of trauma sustained.”
“Do we reduce sedative levels further?”
“No. I don’t think so. The pain must still be excruciating....” It is. “We’ll leave the dosage at the current amount and let nature take its course.”
Thanks. I don’t want any more of this pain and you can stop talking about me now. Whoever you are...
~~~~~
Iuli is raging and shouting. “Hanging would be too good for them!” you shout. “Back home I think they’d just disappear. One day they’d be there. The next gone. Know what I mean, Nic?”
You’re looking at me expectantly.
“I’m not sure,” I reply truthfully. I suspect you’re exaggerating. “Wouldn’t it continue to escalate matters?”
You huff and shake your head. “For what possible purpose should they be allowed to continue to live?” It’s not really phrased as a question, and I know you too well to interrupt. “The animal kingdom would deal with such brokenness. Would eradicate it for the good of the species. We don’t, because we’re supposed to be more sophisticated.” You shake your head and for a few seconds we sit in silence, watching the TV screen.
“...As many as two hundred casualties at the moment. Many fatalities, including whole families. It seems that the car bomb was detonated toward the centre of the resort. Timed for maximum impact and devastation amongst restaurants, where large numbers of people were gathered for evening meals. Whole families are missing...”
There are pictures of children drenched in blood. Pale little faces with eyes wide in stunned shock, not comprehending. Being led to ambulances by medics. Adults crumbling to their knees, casting their arms to the skies, screaming in awful grief.
“Tell me, Nic,” you say in a voice so calm, yet so angry and so impassioned that it’s frightening. “Tell me why the monsters that do this kind of thing should be allowed to live?”
I think about our unborn child, of future children, and of how I might feel if any of them were involved in something like this. Or any of the rest of my family? For sure I feel like weeping for those affected tonight, but I’m not convinced that more violence would help in any way...
~~~~~
Greere stood up on the other side of the partition and plucked his jacket from the back of his chair. “Need my help with anything, Deuce?” he barked imperiously. A slight lisp made the word ‘with’ sound softened. “Otherwise, I’m going over the river to make my report to Sentinel.”
‘Like you couldn’t just do that by phone,’ Ellard thought quietly to himself. ‘But you wouldn’t want to miss out on a chance to brown-nose though, would you?’ He shook his head and caught sight of the reflection of his shoulder length ice-white hair oscillating in the glass of his monitor.
Ellard had started to go grey in his early twenties. Initially he’d tried using dye, to cover it over, but had abandoned hope of keeping ahead of the process by the age of thirty, and by forty the grey had further regressed to white. He privately hoped that, if it kept going like this, then maybe it would go full circle to its original brown again. Even his eyebrows were white. It was the only notable distinguishing feature he had. The rest of him was six feet and one inch of entirely average muscle, propping up a long narrow face, a pair of hooded brown eyes and his punch-flattened nose. His mouth was small and most often inarticulate. A sneer seemed to be his default expression.
The door to the office opened, then closed again, as Greere left without another word. Ellard didn’t expect anything else. His boss was an arse. A pompous, overambitious, self-righteous, slime-ball.
Not that he cared.
He’d worked with Greere on a few assignments and, unlike many superiors, the man seemed happy to leave him be, to let him get on with things the way he wanted to, and didn’t keep trying to get him, through the Service’s ridiculous and never-ending appraisal process, to improve himself. Ellard was done with improving. He just wanted to keep getting paid. To keep getting handed opportunities to add to his personal retirement fund. To continue working toward the not-too-distant prospect of getting out of this whole business.
This latest project was typical Greere. Right on the edge of insane – at least as far as Ellard was concerned. Over the last few months he’d been babysitting and training up three complete oddballs. None of them knew about the others and they were scattered in locations across Europe. Two of the three were ex-military which had made things a little easier for him. Of these, one appeared to be making promising progress – albeit that he was a complete dick-head. The other one was less promising – there was something just a little unstable about that ex-soldier. The third agent was, even for Greere, a real gamble – an ex-civilian, ex-criminal. Ellard felt pretty certain that this particular nasty-piece-of-work didn’t pay the slightest attention to anything he ever said to him.
Well, that was Greere’s lookout.
Not Ellard’s.
When they f*cked up. Which they would. He’d just have to go and sort them out.
Clean up.
Get rid of the evidence.
He was good at that.
It was fun.
~~~~~
Suddenly I’m younger. My dad is here, and my mum. They’re both smiling down at me.
“We hope you like it...?” says Dad.
It’s not hard to guess what might be in the box. It’s too long and narrow to contain anything other than my wildest dream... But there’s no chance... My wildest dream is far too expensive for my parents to afford. Too expensive for a Christmas present.
My hands are shaking as I gently unwrap the paper...
Unbelievable...! I look up in awe at my parents and they can see the delight written all over my face. “Awesome...,” is all I can manage to say as the rush of emotion becomes too much and I burst into happy tears.
I gaze down at the beautiful, strange, spider-like object sitting there in the box in front of me. A wonderful matrix of brand-new, red and black, carbon fibre. Almost four feet of precision engineering with a complex pulley system which will even out the pulling strain and allow a longer aiming window. Whilst I love my old-style recurve bow, this ‘Javelin Precision Elite’, IBO 313fps, compound sports bow is one of the best archery tools on the market. Super-accurate. Super-powerful. Capable of putting a heavyweight carbon fibre bolt straight through a full size, dense wicker, target. A deadly weapon in the wrong hands, but these are my hands. It will be safe in them.
“We hope it’ll help you win this time,” says Dad.
“We know how much this means to you,” says Mum.
“It is the right one, isn’t it?” Dad asks, suddenly sounding concerned.
I look up and nod excitedly. “It’s perfect!” I hear myself cry out. “I’m going to call it Vengeance.” All the other kids have names for their bows. Until now, my old one has been called any number of things: some of them unpleasant.
“That’s an odd name,” says Mum. “Not like you?”
I laugh. “No, not like me. But it’s going to help me get revenge for last time.”
“It was a tough competition, last time,” says Dad.
“I’m ready for tough,” I say proudly, and lift the weapon in my hands for the first time.
It’s lighter than I imagined, which is good because at the moment it’s nearly as tall as me and will take some serious pulling.
This weapon is good for a lifetime. It will grow in power as I grow.
Nothing will be able to stop the two of us.
~~~~~