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“We’ll get there first, Mike. We must.”
Mike looked out the window, to the barren hills below. “I wonder where Curie’s secret lab is located.”
“We have to find Adam Pearce alive to get the rest of the story.”
73
Ten minutes later they were buckled into the seats of a Merlin chopper on their way to the frigate HMS Dover. The pilots were curious; it wasn’t often they were diverted to a closed air base to pick up two civilians for a ride up to the North Sea.
The pilot said, “Be prepared, it’s choppy as hell out there right now, so buckle up. We’ll have you over the loch in thirty minutes and land you on the Dover. She’s waiting for us. The minute we’re on board, the boat will head into the loch. This ship you’re searching for, the Gravitania, they’ve already moved into position, they’re in the loch as we speak.”
Nicholas said, “If that’s the case, can you put us down on the Gravitania?”
“Unadvisable, sir. It’s an enemy ship, we don’t know who or what’s down there. Our captain would have us for breakfast if we pulled a stunt like that.”
“Gentlemen, I am not lying to you. This is a matter of national security. All of our lives are going to depend on you getting us on that ship.”
“No can do, sir.”
Nicholas looked at Mike, raised his eyebrows, then said, “Alert me when we are nearing the ship.”
“Roger. I have a call to patch through, from a Superintendent Penderley. You want it?”
“I want it.”
There was static for a second, then Penderley’s voice came clearly through their headsets.
“Drummond, there’s blood all over Weston’s Oxford house, but no sign of Sophie Pearce. There was one dead man in the house, shot through the head, no idea who he was. There had also been an MI Five agent on the grounds, Alex Shepherd. He left us a note saying they’d gone to Scotland, to the Gravitania.
“Looks like Havelock and Weston are together, with Sophie Pearce. The note has a time on it. They left less than an hour before we got here.”
Nicholas said, “Then they’re all on the Gravitania now. Sir, I need another favor. You have to get us on board that boat. I can’t waste time landing on the Dover, then sailing into the loch. It’s all going down on the Gravitania. If I get there first, I may be able to stop this whole mess before it goes up in smoke.”
When Penderley remained quiet, Nicholas said, “I promise I can stop them, sir. Can you get me on that boat?”
Penderley heaved a huge sigh. “Do try not to get yourself killed, Drummond.”
The call abruptly ended. Mike shouted into her headset’s microphone, “Say they pull it off and get us on Havelock’s boat. Do you have a plan?”
“Oh, yes. You and I are going to put down on the Gravitania, shoot the bad guys, and hand the ship over to Her Majesty’s Navy. Then we’re going to stop Havelock before he gets to the sub and steals the key.”
“Well, okay, sounds like a good plan to me. Let’s do it, sounds like fun.”
He grinned at her, and she thought to herself, I’m becoming as mad as you are. In any case, it didn’t matter, they had to pull it off, there was too much at stake to believe otherwise.
Should she call Zachery, tell him what was happening? She looked at her cell, then shoved it back in her pocket. She caught his eye, and read his unspoken words clearly—Good call.
The chopper was skimming the land below, its flight path on a northerly heading. The moors of northern Scotland spread before them in a glorious multicolored pattern, greens and browns and oranges muted into rusty grasses and yellow fields, colors Mike had never seen before.
It was bleak, desolate beauty. Sheep dotted the fields like tufts of white cotton, and the fields ran up the hills into thick, green forests. Fog was threatening; her map showed the Firth of Moray to the east, but the late-evening sun was keeping the fog at bay.
The hills swelled into sudden mountains, gray and forbidding and sharp-edged. The chopper flew over misty peaks, swooped down the lee edge of the mountain, letting the wind take them, and the moor spread again before them. The loch appeared suddenly, a long, blue finger of water, and she could swear she could smell the peat fires burning below.
She said to Nicholas, “That has to be the most beautiful fifteen minutes I’ve ever spent.”
“Lovely, isn’t it? Cold as the dickens, though.”
The pilot broke in. “You must know some pretty impressive people, sir. We’ve been instructed to put you down on the Gravitania. The ship’s too small for us to land, you’ll have to fast-rope onto their deck.”
