Atomic Swarm Read online

  ‘Then you must be a very clever young man. J.P. only works with the best,’ said the chief.

  Jackson nodded but, in his mind, the idea of attending lectures and doing homework belonged to a dim and distant past.

  ‘Is everything OK, Brooke?’ continued the chief. ‘It’s quite late for a visit!’

  ‘Everything’s cool,’ she said calmly. ‘Jackson is going on an expedition tomorrow and I wondered if you had a travel charm.’

  The chief smiled and moved over into the corner of the room, where the kitchen was. As he spoke, he poured tea into three small cups, from a large pot on the stove.

  ‘You should know better, Brooke. Charms are for tourists – something they can put round their necks to show their friends that they met the Indians.’ The chief raised his eyebrows in mock amazement. ‘Are you a tourist, Jackson?’ He smiled as he handed Jackson a cup of hot, black tea.

  ‘No,’ said Jackson firmly.

  The chief turned his attention back to Brooke. ‘Then my guess is that this journey is a dangerous one!’

  ‘Kinda,’ Brooke replied.

  The chief didn’t question Brooke any further but looked at Jackson inquisitively, as if he was sizing up whether or not he was worthy of his help. He got up and walked over to a large wooden chest and opened it. ‘My ancestors believed that each journey they took ended in two different locations, a place for their body, and a place for their soul.’ He pulled a colourful bead necklace from the chest, along with an old leatherbound book. Then he walked back to the sofa and, motioning to Jackson to lean forward, placed the necklace over his head.

  ‘Before a member of the tribe undertook a perilous journey, he first shared sustenance with the chief and his family.’ Eagle Chief took Jackson’s cup from his hand, drank from it and handed it to Brooke, who did the same.

  ‘And finally,’ said the chief, his pale-blue eyes staring right at Jackson’s. ‘He asked the gods that this trip bring him closer to an understanding of the true nature of his life’s journey.’

  Eagle Chief handed Jackson the old book. ‘Open it, at whatever page you like. According to my ancestors, the true nature of your journey will reveal itself to you.’

  The notion that arbitrary pages from the chief’s book could tell Jackson anything he really needed to know didn’t tally with his scientific brain, but Jackson didn’t want to be rude to the chief.

  Feeling a little self-conscious, Jackson let his thumbs part the book around two thirds in. The text was a meticulous calligraphy in faded black ink, but a few words in and the words behind the fancy, swirly font became clear.

  All things in the world are two.

  Strong and weak, wise and unwise,

  Friend and foe, father and son.

  With our eyes we see two things,

  Things that are fair and things that are ugly.

  One foot may lead us to the right way,

  The other foot may lead us down a different path.

  So are all things two, always two.

  Brooke talked the whole way back to Salty’s, but Jackson remained quiet. He wasn’t sure how, or even why, but the ancient book’s words had really seemed to relate to the things he was going through. Even so, as they left the beach and climbed up to the boathouse, Jackson decided that thoughts of Indian wisdom would have to wait – it was time he set out on the trail of the men who haunted him.

  CHAPTER 22

  An overpowering feeling of nausea woke Jackson.

  He was drunk with tiredness, but forced himself to get up and run to the metal steps that led out on to the deck of the trawler before hurling a stomachful of vomit over the side.

  The sun was up, but it was bitterly cold. Jackson stood in his T-shirt and jeans, shivering, trying to detect the signs of a second round of seasickness, when he noticed the thin strip of land beside them.

  ‘Bonjour, Canada!’ It was Salty and he had a thick, fur-lined coat that he placed over Jackson’s shoulders.

  ‘Coastguard brought his launch alongside us, while you was sleepin’. Gave us a right good scour with his spotlight. Dare say he thought that a runaway international terrorist, such as yourself, would put his nose up at a smelly old bag o’ bones like her ladyship.’ Salty lovingly patted the handrail like it was a dog.

  International terrorist? thought Jackson. He had to admit it, though, he was living the lifestyle – stowed away in the middle of the ocean.

  But at least he felt as if he was taking action against Lear and Yakimoto. He didn’t envy Brooke. They’d been so busy getting the kit for the mission together that Jackson hadn’t had a chance to discuss with her where she was going to hide out. It would need to be somewhere the police would never think of looking. There had never been any doubt that Brooke would stay behind, even though she couldn’t allow herself to be seen by anyone – she wanted to remain close to Boston where she could keep up with developments in her father’s case.

  Time aboard the trawler dragged. Jackson had checked and re-checked the kit, making sure batteries were charged and transmitting refinements to the route he and Brooke had chosen. Aside from a period of about twenty minutes when the boat was followed by dolphins, the journey was tediously uneventful.

  A thick canopy of cloud was waiting for Jackson and Salty as they left the Atlantic behind and navigated the desolate corridor of water that led into the Hudson Bay. As they approached the port of Cape Churchill, it was as if a heavy white curtain had been drawn all around them. Jackson stayed outside as long as he could stand it, preferring the freezing snowflakes to the musty lower deck. It was a wonder to him how Salty found his way into Churchill’s seaport at all, given they were now in total white-out.

  With the trawler tied up, Salty helped Jackson carry his cases off the boat and hide them under some tarpaulin. Then, with a firm handshake, he was gone.

  Jackson pulled the fur-lined hood of his coat up round his face to keep out the bitterly cold driving snow, then set off in search of his next ride.

  ‘Goddamit!’ shouted Brooke.

  As she lifted the hot dog out of the flames of her fire, both bread and sausage were indistinguishable from charcoal. Next time, she thought, I’ll try cooking them separately.

  Technologically, Brooke’s camp was on a par with some high-tech military installations – she might be sleeping in a tepee in hills above her house on Martha’s Vineyard, but she was sharing the bandwidth of a conveniently located Wi-Fi Max ultra high-speed Internet transmitter. The cable she’d managed to run from a wind turbine substation was supplying all the electricity she needed for her computers, her 60-inch LED flatscreen and the electric bike and trailer she’d used to transport it all up the hill from her boathouse.

  Brooke’s tablet computer screen flashed with an incoming video call.

  ‘So tell me the good news,’ said Brooke. ‘You in Canada yet?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jackson replied. ‘And I think I’ve found a vehicle.’

  ‘What is it?’ inquired Brooke excitedly.

  Jackson held his phone up to the vehicle he was standing next to.

  ‘A snowplough!’ said Brooke gleefully. ‘I’d say it’s a converted Ford dump truck, by the looks of the chassis.’

  Jackson was pleased his choice obviously met with Brooke’s expert approval. He’d picked this vehicle from several different cars and trucks parked in an enclosure because the cabin was high enough to hide him from the drivers of most other cars and because, judging by the snow sweeping across the harbour in thick waves, he might need the robust truck. And there was the small matter that it was the only vehicle in the lot that wasn’t locked!

  ‘Pop the hood!’ said Brooke. ‘The lever is probably located underneath the steering wheel.’

  Jackson climbed up into the truck’s cabin and pulled a large rubberized handle under the dashboard.

  With Brooke’s instructions coming from his phone’s directional speaker, Jackson worked on the engine in blizzard conditions. He’d packed gloves for the tri
p, but rewiring the engine’s electrics required all the dexterity of his bare fingers. To his great relief, the components that gave Brooke’s robotic Chauffeur its senses – the sonar, infrared and Ultra-HD video transmitters – were fully wireless. Thanks to powerful magnets, they stuck easily to the roof, bonnet and boot and, most ingeniously, induced the electric current they required through the truck’s metal bodywork.

  Whenever they sensed road markings, signs, other cars or pedestrians with a death wish, they would communicate via radio waves with the Chauffeur’s tablet computer brain, which Jackson had taped to the dashboard. With the satellite transceiver mounted securely on the roof, to keep Brooke and Jackson connected when their phones lost signal, Jackson could finally get out of the cold.

  Next, Brooke guided him in the installation of three metal actuators, one that attached to the steering wheel, one to the transmission lever and one to the foot pedals.

  The whole operation took about an hour, but even in that time the snow had started to build up around the wheels and radiators of the other vehicles in the pound and Jackson was keen to get going.

  ‘Ready for start up?’ said Jackson.

  ‘Almost there! Just waiting for your satellite dish to get a lock.’

  There was a momentary pause before Brooke came back.

  ‘OK, that’s locked and loaded! Because of the mountains your dish might lose its connection for a minute or two. It’ll sort itself out eventually, but there will be patches where the signal between us will break up. Right, Jacko, you ready to roll?’

  ‘I’d say so! You want to do the honours or shall I?’ Jackson asked.

  ‘Ladies first!’ said Brooke.

  Jackson was looking at the screen of the slimline tablet computer when the virtual button IGNITION depressed itself. He was flushed with a mixture of relief and trepidation as the diesel engine coughed into life without any manual assistance from him whatsoever. A second later and the metal arm Jackson had fixed to the transmission lever slid the gear stick into DRIVE and the truck trundled forward.

  ‘Go easy, Brooke, this weather is atrocious,’ Jackson implored as the six-tonne snowplough built up speed.

  ‘It’s not me you should be telling about back-seat driving – the old gal’s driving herself!’

  ‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’ asked Jackson.

  ‘Don’t worry too much; she can drive blind if she needs to. Take a look at your screen and you’ll see what your truck is seeing!’

  Jackson glanced at the tablet screen, and the almost solid white of the view forwards suddenly flicked to something that resembled a watercolour painting of the environment around the car. Lurid reds, blues and purples were daubed on to the outlines of the vehicles, buildings, intersections and road signs; it was a three-dimensional rendering of what the sonar and infrared sensors were seeing.

  ‘All I’ll say is to look out for the reds!’ said Brooke. ‘The Chauffeur’s computer paints red anything it perceives as dangerous. If you get too close to a kerb, it’ll appear in red. If a kid wanders into the road – red! That’s when you’ll need to hold on, as the Chauffeur system’s Collision Avoidance will kick in.’

  ‘OK,’ said Jackson. ‘And you’ve programmed in the route?’

  ‘Sure have. You’ll join a highway in around…’ Brooke paused to check her computer screen. ‘Fifty-two minutes! It will eventually lead you into Yellowknife.’

  ‘Canada’s diamond capital,’ murmured Jackson.

  ‘You betcha! From there it’s a short hop northwards, on the ice road!’

  The ice road, thought Jackson. At any other time, it would have sounded really cool, if only he didn’t actually have to drive on it.

  The snow didn’t let up, as the self-driving truck ate up hundreds of kilometres of frozen roads.

  Jackson had stopped once to pick up fuel and a plastic sandwich, and hadn’t passed a single other vehicle since.

  All he could make out through the windows of the truck were the sawblade edges of pine forests and the odd glint of a road sign as it flashed past. It was easier to concentrate on this than the questions in his head about his mum. He sighed. One thing he did feel sure of was that his only chance of finding answers lay at the end of these endless snow-covered roads.

  CHAPTER 23

  ‘Jackson!’ shouted Brooke. ‘Jackson, wake up! You’ve reached Yellowknife!’

  Jackson peeled his face from the plastic armrest. He looked at the clock on the dashboard – 5.30 a.m. ‘Good job,’ he said. ‘According to the Kojima twins, Yakimoto’s jet is due to land in Calgary about now. I can’t waste any time.’

  Outside the truck, it was still snowing, but not as hard as it had been during the night. The truck was rolling down the wide high street, freshly laid snow creaking as it compacted beneath its fat tyres. The sun glowed a soft orange, but Jackson didn’t bank on it getting much brighter today.

  Soon Yellowknife vanished in the truck’s wake, all traces of civilization – even the road markings – gone. All that distinguished the path to the North-west Territories were verges made of chunks of ice and rock.

  ‘Looks kinda barren, don’t it?’ commented Brooke, looking at the featureless terrain in boxes on her tablet touchscreen, which were fed by the truck’s wireless cameras.

  ‘It looks cold,’ replied Jackson.

  Suddenly there was a loud beeping sound.

  Jackson checked the display of his tablet computer – straight across the strip of blue that represented the road was a thick, pulsating band of red. No sooner had Jackson been notified of the threat than the actuator that controlled the brake pedal began to hiss, and the rod that ran down its centre shot forward. It was the Chauffeur’s Collision Avoidance system.

  The truck started to slide, in a straight line at first – then it began to slowly revolve. In any other situation, the Collision Avoidance system’s emergency braking would have saved Jackson, but not here – not on an ice road!

  With the wheels still locked, the vehicle had almost completed a full revolution when Jackson saw what it was that the automated driving computer was trying to avoid; about fifty metres ahead of him, a chunk of road, as wide as an Olympic swimming pool, had been eaten away by a fast-flowing river.

  Jackson wasted no time – he grabbed the steering wheel and prepared to take control. ‘Brooke!’ he bellowed. ‘I need a manual override – and I need it quick!’

  But there was no answer.

  Jackson shouted her name again, before the penny dropped. It was what she’d told him to expect – patches where the signal between us will break up. He was in the middle of nowhere – there was no Brooke and no way of disengaging the robotic driver, intent on killing him.

  The truck slammed into the rocky river bed and the galvanized steel plough blade it carried on the front buried itself, bonnet deep, in ice and silt. Jackson was thrown forward, smashing his head on the centre of the steering wheel.

  The last sensations Jackson felt, before he slipped into unconsciousness, were of freezing cold water rising up his leg and the metallic taste of blood.

  Jackson shook himself awake. His whole body was shaking involuntarily as the icy water, which had now reached his waist, had dropped his core temperature to dangerously low levels.

  His head was pounding and the impact from the crash had opened up his forehead wound again. Jackson looked at the clump of broken stitches in the truck’s cracked mirror. Lear’s surgical handiwork was ruined. Good! he thought – it wouldn’t kill him. However, the icy water would and Jackson knew he had to get out – and quickly.

  He unclipped his seat belt and tried to open the door. But it was no good; there was no way he could compete with the force of the rushing water. Jackson dipped his hand below the level of the freezing water and found the handle to the window.

  With the window rolled down, he was able to climb out into the thrusting current of the river, but even then he couldn’t just make for the relative safety of the fractured
road that lay a metre above him, because if he was to survive at all, let alone continue his journey to the mine, he needed the gear he’d packed – warm clothes, food and the robots.

  Jackson retrieved the twisted satellite dish, which hung from the truck’s roof by a cable. With no cellular towers for miles, which his handset needed to work long distance, and with the satellite link busted, he wouldn’t be talking to Brooke any time soon.

  It took all of Jackson’s strength to drag two of the cases from the back of the cabin out through the window and push them up on to the road. Tread would be too heavy to lift up to the road, so Jackson just dragged him into the water, and floated him a short way downstream, where, with his last dregs of energy, he was able to roll the robot on to the frozen river bank.

  As he lay there, his throat burning from his attempts to drag down much needed oxygen, Jackson was aware that he couldn’t rest. The snow hadn’t abated, and now that he was outside a stiff wind pulled at his wet clothes. He rolled over and his frozen fingers fumbled to unzip one of the bags. Inside were the clothes he’d brought from Mr Zeal’s apartment and the coat Salty had lent him.

  Even with the dry clothes on, Jackson continued to shiver uncontrollably. His gloved hands were still numb and, despite Zeal’s dry boots, his feet were blocks of ice. He was no doctor, but Jackson knew that being this cold, in a place like this, could soon lead to frostbite and hypothermia.

  Jackson limped towards the bags he’d swung on to the road and found the one in which he’d packed Punk. He rolled the robot on to the road, then groped painfully in his breast pocket for his phone; one of the advantages of the handset’s sealed plastic slab design was that it was one-hundred-per-cent waterproof. Every stroke and gesture with the phone was painful, but slowly Jackson was able to initiate Punk’s start-up procedure.