Amanda was on the doorstep, Jack behind her. Ed needed back-up. He couldn’t dive in on his own, waving his service issue revolver. Goodness knows what kit they had with them, what was in the van. He sent the emergency signal. Switched to camera mode, got the van, the number plate. Back to the attackers. They were on the boy now, one heading straight for him, two peeling off to one side.
“Come on Jack!” Amanda’s voice from the doorway. “Cab’s waiting outside.”
Jack saw them before he was fully out the house. Three galloping forms out the corner of his eye. It was his reaction speed that saved him. The fraction of a second to prepare, set your balance, position so you can use the speed of your attacker against him. And he knew they wouldn’t suspect he could fight.
He yanked hard at Amanda’s hooded top, pulling her behind him into the house, slamming the door so she was trapped inside. The first man was on him, Jack bent low, in one smooth movement the knife pulled from his sock, slammed it upwards, the weight of the man rolled him over his shoulder, the blade straight, tearing through exposed skin.
The attacker collapsed backwards, clutching his neck, an arterial spray of blood through his closed hand. Jack didn’t stop, low with the knife at the second attacker, swerving to avoid something, the point of a needle veering close to his eye. Swinging the blade to his right, sending him off balance, then a crippling punch to the man’s kidneys, a hard right into his neck. Enough to send him spluttering backwards. They weren’t armed, Jack realised. He might actually win this.
A grip, strong as iron from behind. The third man pinning his arms to his sides. He kicked back, scraping his heel over the knee cap, hard as he could. The man grunted, the vice loosened. Jack stabbed wildly behind him, into the man’s thigh — after the neck, the easiest point to hit a major artery. A thumping at the door behind them, Amanda pushing it outwards, cricket bat in her hand. He heard it crack into the man’s head, not once but twice. The man released his grip, dropped to the ground.
“Come, quickly,” she said, pulling him towards the taxi waiting further down the street. They ran hard, dived into the back seat.
“Addenbrookes hospital!”
The driver didn’t hear. His head bobbing up and down, tinny Turkish pop music from his headphones. Jack yanked them off the man’s ears.
“Addenbrookes!” he said again.
“Sorry, my friend. Very good tune. You know?” He pulled slowly away from the kerb, oblivious to the fracas in the street behind him.
Jack looked over his shoulder. At least they were on the move. Three bodies in the street. Two of them getting awkwardly to their feet. The third immobile on the ground. A mess. As the cab turned the corner, he was surprised to see a British Gas van pull up alongside the bodies. They clambered inside, heaving the third man with them. Jack resisted the temptation to make a bad joke about Amanda not paying her gas bill.
Ed was stunned. He could not quite believe what he just witnessed. The boy had taken out three professionals. Three men floored as if they were straw-stuffed scarecrows. Well, with a little help from the blonde. He forwarded the footage to HQ. Taxi. Where was a bloody taxi? Never one when you needed it. No matter. He had the number plate and the name of the mini-cab firm Jack and the girl had used. He could find out easily enough where they were headed.
10
Sir Clive watched the footage Ed had sent, a large hand ruminatively rubbing his square chin. The boy had a talent for fighting, no doubt about it. And two of the moves he pulled Sir Clive remembered from his own SAS training many years before. Was that what teenagers spent their time doing these days? Learning Kung Fu and street fighting techniques? Somehow he doubted it.
“Mary, can you run a background check on the boy’s immediate family? I want to know if there’s any connection with the armed forces.” He said. Mary nodded, entering the information into the Service’s databases.
Something about the way Jack handled himself put Sir Clive in mind of a young solider he’d known at the Herefordshire base, long time ago. A legendary figure, even amongst those for whom extraordinary feats of physical strength and endurance were the norm.
“No records for his mother. Not much for his father either. Last known address was a semi in Croydon, south London. No occupation listed, no background information and no other immediate family.”
“Thanks Mary.” He suspected there might have been a change of name somewhere along the line. An attempt to shake off an old identity. A lot of men who were ex-regiment did that. It wasn’t so much for security as the need to make a clean break from the past. A new life amongst the civilians.
A knock at the door. “Sir Clive, we’ve pulled the records from the mini-cab firm. They’re headed to Addenbrookes Hospital, research wing,” one of the Information Analysts announced. A bright lad who didn’t yet look old enough to shave. Sir Clive nodded.
“Thanks. I want the chopper scrambled, I’m going there myself. Mary, keep an eye on things here. I might need you to run some further checks.”
Something about the footage he had seen made Sir Clive less inclined to trust the retrieval of Jack and the device inside of him to anyone else. This was a task that would require more than brute force. He pulled out his phone.
“Ed, I’m on my way to Cambridge, in the chopper. Target is heading to the Hospital and so am I. I need you to stay with the British Gas van. Do not let it out of your sight. I’m authorising you to use any means possible, take charge of any property you need, but make sure you don’t lose sight of it.”
“Will do Sir Clive,” Ed replied. He was already behind the wheel of a stolen Ford fiesta, following the van along the ring road and out of the city. That was the problem in a student town, most of the cars were old bangers. Still, the traffic was horrendous. No need for speed at the moment.
Ahmed Seladin pulled the thread tight, neatly tying the suture and wiping the cut with disinfectant, ignoring a jolt as the van hit a bump in the road. The third set of stitches he’d put in since the debacle outside the house. He leant back to admire his work.
“You are lucky. I am a very neat surgeon.” He said, “scarring will be kept to a minimum.” Privately he was rather proud of the work. The back of a moving vehicle was not an ideal place to carry out such a precise operation, especially with the floor all wet and slippery with blood.
His patient didn’t reply, too weak. Ahmed suspected he might not make it, not without a transfusion. He wasn’t too concerned about that, he was more concerned about the reaction they would get from the Chinaman when he learnt of their failure.
11
The taxi pulled up outside Addenbrookes. Jack opened the door and climbed out, realising he had no wallet, no money on him whatsoever.
“Did you bring any cash?” He asked Amanda sheepishly. She nodded and handed a twenty-pound note to the driver, telling him to keep the change and forget he’d had them in his cab. Jack wasn’t sure if that was the best tactic. The driver was far more likely to remember the passenger who left a big tip and made a point of asking to be forgotten than the countless other fares he picked up, but he didn’t say anything. He’d put Amanda through enough already.
They’d sat in silence during the journey. Jack had reached out for her hand, worried at how cold it felt. She’d barely noticed his touch, eyes staring blankly ahead, a glass wall of shock between her and the outside world. Jack tried to think of something to say but he couldn’t, nothing meaningful.
“You were great Amanda. Fantastic.” Her head didn’t move, it was as if she hadn’t heard him. The shock went deep. Shock at her own reaction to the attackers, as effective as the situation demanded. Shock at Jack’s calm response. His seeming ability to shrug it off with barely a second thought. But most of all shock at his face the moment before he pulled her back into the house, before the door slammed. A hint of a smile. On his lips as he turned to face his attackers. It was the smile that bothered her the most.