With no time left, Frankenstein dived into the gap, landing hard on the cross members, which were arranged in an X shape. He hauled himself into the space, and found that the bars were close enough together to support his weight. He wedged himself hard against the round edge of one of the storage pods and braced his legs against a second. Diesel fumes filled his nostrils as the driver put the truck into gear and resumed his journey south, to Paris.
13
HUDDLED MASSES YEARNING TO BREATHE FREE
“Incoming,” said Jamie. He spoke into the microphone built into the side of his helmet, which linked him to the other five Operators on the Operational frequency. “Heads up, Jack.”
“How do you know?” asked Jack, his voice sounding directly in Jamie’s ear.
“Larissa,” replied Jamie. It was all that needed to be said; the vampire girl’s senses were hundreds of times more sensitive than those of a normal human, and she had heard the trucks entering the shipyard long before the rest of the squad would have been able to.
Jack swore. “How long?” he asked.
“Less than a minute,” answered Larissa. “Three trucks, I don’t know how many vampires. At least ten.”
“Ready One,” said Jack. “Nobody moves until I give the go, clear?”
Squad G-17 immediately lowered their visors, pulling their T-Bones from their holsters. Ready One was the code for imminent contact with the supernatural; it meant that the use of force was authorised.
Four heavy thuds sounded from the edge of the dock, and Jamie craned round the corner of the container to see what had made them. Thick ropes were lying on the ground, thrown from the deck of the towering freighter. He looked up at the high steel wall, and saw a flash of movement through the fog, a dark shape disappearing into the gloom. Then the rumble of engines began to shake the ground beneath their feet, and three black trucks appeared from the north.
They drove in single file, approaching slowly along the crumbling central road of the shipyard. The Operators, concealed in the deep shadows cast by the containers and the high concrete wall, watched them as they passed. Their paint was peeling, and the trucks were coated in dirt and dust. But the engines purred as they made their way towards the ship, and Jamie saw that the tyres were new, the walls black, the manufacturer’s logos still bright white. He could not see anyone inside the vehicles; the windows were smeared with grime, and the cabs were high above his low vantage point, making the angle impossible.
He watched the trucks pull to a halt in a line near the edge of the dock, then waited, his breath held tight in his lungs, as the door of the first cab creaked open, and a figure emerged.
The fog drifted lazily round its feet as it made its way to the back of the truck, and began to unlock the rear doors. Behind Jamie, somewhere back towards the main road, something clattered; an animal most likely, skittering across the concrete. The figure’s head instantly flashed round, and Jamie saw the glowing red coals of its eyes.
For a long moment all was still, then the vampire, a man who looked to be in his late thirties so far as Jamie could tell in the gathering darkness, turned back to his task. Seconds later the lock was undone and cast aside, and doors were pulled open, exposing a square of jet black emptiness. Then movement filled the space, as a crowd of vampires piled out of the truck and on to the dock.
They gathered at the back of the vehicle, laughing and shouting, shoving each other with playful familiarity as the vampires who had driven the other two trucks joined them. Several lit cigarettes, and then they got down to business; eight of them went to the ropes, tied them on to huge metal mooring hooks, and began to pull the freighter tight alongside the dock, a display of casually superhuman strength. From somewhere on the hull there came a shout of greeting, which was returned by the vampires as they hauled at the thick lines.
Two of the vampires went to the other trucks and opened their rear doors, so all three vehicles sat open to the night. The first vampire who had emerged oversaw the activity, a cigarette clamped between his teeth; those without specific jobs milled around at the edge of the river, waiting for the ship to be pulled into position.
“I count fourteen,” whispered Jack Williams.
“Me too,” replied Jamie. “Plus seven on the boat. Twenty-one of them.”
“Hold positions,” said Jack. “Let’s see what they’re up to.”
From somewhere up on the high deck there came the sound of a metal door creaking open. Seconds later the seven vampires that they had seen as blobs of bright white heat on the infrared satellite image appeared at the railing at the edge of the deck, and began to shout greetings and insults at the vampires waiting below, their eyes glowing red as they traded friendly barbs and jibes with their welcoming party. This continued for a couple of minutes until the vampire who had opened up the first truck, who was clearly in charge of things, lit another cigarette and told them all to shut up. With a few snarls and hisses, the vampires did as they were told.
“Let’s get this done!” the foreman shouted. “There’ll be time enough for jokes later. Open up the containers; let’s have a look at what you brought us.”
The vampires on the ship disappeared from the railing and got to work, assisted by a number of the greeting party who flew up on to the deck to lend a hand. Another vampire flew easily up on to the freighter, and hauled down a long folding gangway, which met the concrete surface of the dock with an almighty clang of metal and settled beside the row of trucks.
As the doors to the containers screeched open, terrible sounds began to fill the air. There were cries of fear and misery, screams of pain and terror, and a relentless chorus of sobbing, pleading human voices, many of them speaking languages which were alien to the ears of the listening Operators. Then, through the mist, a small figure appeared at the top of the gangway, silhouetted against the grey canvas of the thickening fog. It took a nervous, shaky step on to the metal walkway, then another, and another. Then it passed through the beam of one of the freighter’s huge running lights, and Kate gasped.
Bathed in the bright white beam stood an Asian girl who could have been no more than five or six years old. Her tiny face was pale, her eyes narrowed against the light. She wore a dress printed with a pattern of flowers that had once been white, but was now the deep grey of dust and dirt. In her small hand she clutched a filthy doll that was missing one of its arms and both of its legs. She took a hesitant step forward on bare, filthy feet, then another, then stumbled backwards, grabbing desperately for the gangway’s metal rail. She sat down hard on the metal panel, looked around with awful confusion on her small face and began to cry.
A second silhouette appeared at the top of the gangway, running down towards the girl. In the light, the shape became a tiny Asian woman, as pale and filthy as the girl, who dropped to her knees beside the sobbing child and began to shush her gently.
On the concrete dock, one of the vampires began to laugh, and suddenly Jamie was full of an anger so intense he had only ever felt anything like it once before in his life, when he saw the terrified face of his mother standing beside Alexandru Rusmanov in the monastery on Lindisfarne.
“Let’s get them,” he growled.
“Negative,” replied Jack Williams, instantly. “Not until everyone clears the ship.”
Jamie gritted his teeth, and forced himself not to reply. Larissa’s hand rested momentarily on his arm, a show of support invisible to everyone else, and he felt his rage subside, just a fraction. He refocused his attention on the freighter, where a steady stream of men and women, emaciated, filthy, with looks of blank terror on their faces, were now making their way down the gangway.
The woman and the little girl had reached the bottom, where they stepped nervously off on to the concrete of the dock. Immediately, one of the vampires grabbed for the girl, who cried out with fear, pressing herself against the woman. There was more laughter, and more boiling, acidic anger spilled into the pit of Jamie’s stomach.