from these flashes of clarity, Jimmy’s visibility was less than a couple of metres. His body had developed the ability to see in the dark far better than any normal person and he had used it to escape some nasty situations in the past. But this wasn’t darkness – it was the opposite. His night-vision wasn’t going to help him here.
He glanced back and just made out the hole where he’d been stuck. Buried about half a metre into a wall of snow and ice was a cavity roughly the shape of Jimmy’s inverted body, with extra holes where he’d wriggled free.
He struggled to his feet, still clutching his ribs. Without realising he was doing it, his palms were prodding around the bones. When he came to the origin of the worst pain he winced and let out another cry. Two cracked, he heard himself thinking. He knew his programming was evaluating his condition and keeping him alive. Without it he would certainly have frozen to death hours ago.
He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head and tried to calm down. He took several deep breaths, but every gulp of air chilled his gullet. Now he was out of the shelter of his snow hole, the wind brought the temperature plunging down. And Jimmy felt it threatening him. His shivering was brutal and uncontrollable. Then he looked down at his hands and knew that two cracked ribs were going to be the least of his problems. The ends of his fingers had turned yellow and white.
Immediately Jimmy found himself marching away from his snow hole. Every step sent a severe stab of agony from his feet. He assumed they were turning the same colour as his fingers, but he didn’t have any choice but to keep going. He deliberately planted every pace more firmly, almost revelling in the torture, challenging his programming to lessen the anguish. It was the only way he could make himself carry on walking.
Soon he developed a rhythm, then at last his programming swelled inside him. It felt as if he was growing an extra protective layer against the cold – almost like a fleece just underneath his skin. But still the wind bit into him, attacking every pore.
The further he walked, the more the snow around him revealed blackened corners of debris, like spots on a Dalmatian. A few paces on he saw the wreckage. It was a mess of ashen detritus and twisted metal, hardly recognisable as a plane. It might have been invisible in the snow except for fragments of metal shimmering under the thin layer of frost and blackened, burnt-out corners flapping in the wind.
Jimmy rushed forwards as fast as his body would allow. He crouched among the wreckage, desperate for some shelter, and dug around the ash and snow looking for anything that could help him. He tucked his hoodie into his trousers and scooped up armful after armful of ash from inside the body of the plane, stuffing it down his top for added insulation. Some he forced down his trouser legs too, until he felt like he was wearing a fat suit.
His hands were virtually useless now. He had no sensation in them except throbbing agony and couldn’t flex his fingers. Nevertheless he forced them into the snow and shovelled.
The only recognisable piece of debris he pulled from the wreckage was a half burned, blackened, in-flight washbag. The cloth cover had protected its contents surprisingly well. Jimmy pulled out an eye-mask, a mini-toothbrush, a tiny tube of toothpaste and a shoehorn.
With a rush in his veins, he snapped the shoehorn in two and used the elastic from the eye-mask to strap the pieces to the soles of his shoes. The upside-down curved shape would dig into the ice and give him vital extra grip.
Then he snatched up the travel-size tube of toothpaste, squeezed it in his fist and forced the contents down his throat.
Take all the energy you can get, he told himself. You’ve got some walking to do.
The waves attacked the shoreline with such ferocity, it was as if the water was angry that it couldn’t reach any further. For all its might, it couldn’t change the fact that just a few metres away was the edge of the largest desert on Earth. This was the battle line where thousands of miles of water met thousands of miles of sand – the West Coast of Africa.
On a mound overlooking the beach stood a single figure, lean and supple. She seemed to bend with the wind, not letting it bother her, and held a Zeiss-Ikon rangefinder steady at her eyes. Behind her trailed a stream of hair as black as her skin. Against the sand, her limbs stood out like charcoal twigs on snow.
Suddenly her whole body stiffened at what she saw in her scopes.
Through the thunder of the waves approached a ship so powerful and furious it looked like a salivating beast on its way to fight the whole of Africa single-handed. A Type 48 destroyer; 7500 tonnes of warship. She recognised the curious straight edges of the bridge section and the slim, arrow-like construction of the bow. From the centre rose a huge mast, which was more like an Egyptian monument. Radar balloons stuck out on either side and when the sun hit them they glinted like scowling eyes.
The destroyer was charging through the swell of the ocean towards the shore. She estimated the rate at over 30 knots. And at the sharp point in the front of the ship flew a bright Union Jack flag.
The British are coming, the girl thought, fear creeping into her joints.
She looked to her left, down the coastline, and adjusted the triangulation of the rangefinder. From here she had the perfect view of the only buildings for several kilometres. A couple of heavily marked tracks scarred the sands to the south and led to parallel lines of high fences. Within that was a complex of low buildings, connected to a dozen vast warehouses that backed on to the water. And there were two concrete towers supporting crude look-out stations, both topped by sun-bleached flags of red, white and blue – the French Tricolore.
Despite the distance, the girl could also make out human figures around the outer fence. Were they running? Yes. That’s when she knew for sure.
Mutam-ul-it was preparing for an attack.
So should we, she thought, steeling herself. Time to raise the alarm.
07 FEAR, PAIN AND A RED BEARD
Jimmy had been on the move for hours. The terrain was rugged and the air was thin. He could hear his brain assessing the surroundings. He had to be over 3000 metres up, he guessed. Above the snowline. That put him somewhere on one of the highest peaks, in the centre of the mountain range. But however difficult it was, he had to keep moving if he was going to stay alive. And there was the constant fear at the back of his mind, driving him on – the British attack on France. He had to stop it.
By now the agony that shot through his body with every step had mutated in his mind into some kind of reassurance. It told him he was still alive. That he was still moving. His legs felt so heavy that his feet dragged along the ground as he walked.
He travelled in a dead straight line, but the going was getting steeper. At least the fog had cleared a little so he could see his route further ahead. In the crash he’d slid a long way down the slope and he was paying for that now, always having to march against the gradient. Every few minutes he came to what looked like an impassable rock face, but his body seemed to relish the challenge. Despite the onset of frostbite and the cracked ribs, Jimmy free-climbed as if he’d been born a mountaineer. The hooks of shoehorn he’d fixed to his soles served as makeshift crampons.
With his eyes squinting against the elements and his body straining to keep his basic systems going, Jimmy fought on. But the real torment was in his mind. The whiteness that surrounded him seemed to reach into his brain to plant fear and worry, but most of all anger.
As he heaved himself up the cliff face, he thought back to the very first night that
