Dark Winter

31

It was good to be in the non-smoking area with her for once. We ordered up a plate of sandwiches, a couple of bananas and a yoghurt, then drank tea and spun the shit like every other couple seemed to be doing. The café stopped serving at six p.m., but we’d nursed our food and drink for an hour beyond that. Now the cleaning woman was doing her best to mop round us and it was time to go.

We took the main drag out of the town, via the docks and towards the bypass, Suzy still at the wheel. I took off the interior light cover and felt around in the door pocket. ‘Where are the bulbs?’

‘In the glove thingy.’

I screwed them back in, then plugged my phone into the charger dangling from the lighter socket. I got the shaving kit out of the carrier-bag, flipped open the visor mirror and worked a handful of foam into my stubble.

To our right, beyond the wasteland, lights glinted in the back rooms of the houses in Sir Lewis, but not in the one that, from this distance, we thought was the target. The odd figure walked or cycled along the river path, and a couple of chimneys were spewing smoke. Suzy was already getting herself worked up about going back in there. ‘They’d better not be boiling cabbages.’

I was making quite a bad job of shaving as Suzy drove past estate after estate of flats and houses set back from the road, then a fire station with its strike posters still stuck to the doors. Finally we hit the new steel-and-glass trading estates, where shiny new Audis and Citroëns were on display in the showrooms, just waiting to be delivered to the detached houses nearby; the ones in their own grounds with stone lions standing guard over the gateways. I wiped my blood-nicked face clean with tissue paper from my Next bags, and was left reeking of menthol.

We eventually hit a major roundabout on the bypass. The second left looked the darker option, and Suzy took it as I ripped open the packaging on our smart new Morrisons washing-up gloves. She turned right into a B road and finally pulled up in a dried-mud layby next to a field.

Instead of reflecting quietly on what we could be getting involved with in the next few hours, Suzy seemed to be getting increasingly revved up about it. She picked up her gloves and gave me a flick. ‘You into rubber?’ She laughed. Her door opened and the interior light came on as she held out her hand for the boot bulb. ‘I’ll get the kit.’

I heard the back open and her rummaging about inside. It wasn’t long before six packs of NBC kit were tossed on to the back seat. Large white cards beneath the Cellophane simply said, ‘Trousers’, or ‘Smocks’. We would prepare one bit of kit at a time, leaving everything else packed in the back. If someone was out walking their dog or another vehicle stopped alongside, it would be easier to hide.

I peeled back the outer covering, then ripped at the thick, airtight plastic packaging with my teeth. There was a rush of air as the pressures equalized. The NBC suit inside was made of a dark grey-green cotton shell, laminated to layers of tiny carbon spheres. Fingers crossed, it would absorb any biological or chemical agents before they made contact with the clothing worn underneath and, more importantly, my skin.

To cut noise, Suzy let the back down gently so that it locked only on the first click, before getting back into the driving seat and gripping one of the trouser packs. We each had three packs in all: the trousers, a hooded smock, and rubber boots. The trouser legs felt as if they’d been over-starched in a Chinese laundry; I had to push my arms through to unstick them. Suzy pulled apart her smock the same way. She was still on a high. ‘This is great,’ she whispered. ‘It feels like we’re on our way to a fetish party.’

Once we’d dealt with the smocks and trousers, we rolled them up and unwrapped the black overboots. They were one-size-fits-all and had to be laced up like Roman sandals. We threaded the strips of rubber through the loops round the sides of the soles, and that was the NBC kit ready to go.

The windows were misting up. We wrapped our suits round the boots, then got out to pack them back into the ready bags. I pulled apart the Velcro at the top of a green nylon bag and removed my standard British Army S6 respirator. It was a black-rubber job with two eyepieces, and a canister already attached. No spares had been provided but that wasn’t necessarily a problem; a single canister should last for days. It just would have been good to know whether this was a new one.

I checked that the rubber bladder that formed a seal round the side of the respirator was properly adjusted so no bad stuff could get inside. Forward of where my chin was soon going to be there was a small valve: I twisted anticlockwise to let the air pressure in the bladder equalize with the ambient air pressure to form a tight seal. That was why I’d had to have a shave; stubble got in the way. Short hair is an advantage for the same reason: you don’t want bits of your fringe getting in the way of the seal either.

I left it open for a minute and watched Suzy wiping her eyepieces with the cuff of her fleece. Then, tightening up the valve and brushing back my hair, I put the respirator to my face and adjusted the elastic straps round the back of my head. My nose filled with the smell of new rubber.

The canister was mounted on the left-hand side – so you could get a weapon into your right shoulder. Unscrewing it, I covered the gap with my hand and sucked in hard to make the respirator squash against my face. The seal was good.

Next was the SD. We had three thirty-round magazines each, more than enough. If we needed anywhere near a hundred and eighty rounds on this job we’d be severely in the shit and probably land up dead. We had nowhere to carry the spare mags; for some unknown reason, Packet Oscar didn’t come with mag carriers, or even a chest harness for the weapon. This meant we wouldn’t be able to run round and fight with both hands free; we’d have to put them down and maybe even leave them on target, which was where the Morrisons gloves came in.

I put them on and pressed the on button of the HDS with a rubbery finger. The heads-up sight started to glow. In theory the batteries in these things lasted for days, but I’d had bad experiences with them in the past and switched it off again immediately.

We each pushed a full 10mm mag into the SD’s housing. I listened for the click before giving the mag a shake and pulling on it a bit to make sure it was fully home.

Suzy held her right hand over the cocking piece. ‘Ready? After three. One, two, three.’

We made ready together, both pulling back our cocking pieces, which ran along the side of the chunky barrel, then letting them slide forward so the working parts picked up a round.

I checked chamber by pulling back slightly on the cocking piece once more, then applied safe. Suzy was ahead of me again: she’d already undone her NBC kit and was ripping apart the Velcro that secured the top flaps of the map pockets on her trousers. An SD magazine went into each; it meant they wouldn’t rattle. I copied her, thinking about my Browning. ‘I’m not bothering with the short. Even if I need it, I haven’t got anywhere to put it.’

There was no reply as she placed her pick-and-rake wallet in the chest pocket of the smock, closed the Velcro fastening and checked it was secure. We couldn’t afford for anything to fall out: we didn’t want to make any more noise than we had to, and we didn’t want to leave anything behind. If we weren’t able to pick up our empty cases, then so be it, but that was it.

‘Is that your way of insisting the shorts stay in the car?’

I twisted the bottom off my mini Maglite and reversed the bottom battery so that I had power again – something else I didn’t want to run out on me when on target. ‘Yeah, along with our docs – why risk leaving anything in there?’

‘Done. But this car park of yours had better be safe.’

My MOE wallet stayed in the boot.

She was silent for a moment. ‘Nick, what happens if they do contaminate us – you know, start throwing DW about?’

‘We’ll just have to assume we’re in the shit, and hope the suits work while we wait an hour or so for the stuff to lose its fizz.’

‘Just sit tight and wait?’

‘What else can we do?’ I reached into the back of my jeans. ‘Apart from giving it a bit of help.’ I pressed out four capsules and offered her the card as I felt them make their way down my gullet.

A set of headlights approached from the direction of King’s Lynn, disappearing for a few seconds as the road dipped. We got back inside the Peugeot and I took my respirator with me, cleaning the eyepieces with my sweatshirt as the lights got nearer. For a few seconds we were bathed in a misty glow as the passing headlights cut through our steamed-up windows. I glanced at Suzy. She no longer looked so hyped-up as she polished her eyepieces all over again, with short, distracted strokes. I checked that the pressure valve was screwed up tight for the last time, wondering if maybe she had a capsule stuck in her throat or something.

We collected up all the plastic wrapping and shaving kit and threw them into the boot. Everything we needed on target was now stowed in the ready bags, so I could take off my gloves and shove them into my pockets. Nothing that came out of the car on to the target area would carry our fingerprints: we’d be going in sterile and, with luck, coming out the same.

‘How come you know this place?’ She closed the boot. ‘Family holidays?’

We walked back either side of the car. ‘Very funny,’ I said. I couldn’t see her face in the darkness. ‘We didn’t do holidays.’ The truth was, we didn’t do family either. ‘I used to live a few miles down the coast. Just for a while.’

‘With Kelly?’

The doors opened and the interior light came on as we both got back in. Suzy was waiting for an answer, but she wasn’t going to get one. ‘OK, what about this, then? How much of a coincidence is it that the source is shacked up in King’s Cross?’

‘All I want to do is get this job over and done with so I can get back to the States.’

‘Sort out Kelly?’

‘All kinds of shit.’