It seemed to glow in the faint light, reflecting the LED display on the chopper’s control panel. The sight made Jimmy feel sick. So far this was the only visible damage from the one thing that put him in more immediate danger than anything else. More than the police scouring the town for him, more than the British Secret Services, more yet than the assassin instincts inside him that were gradually overwhelming his human mind. As if all that wasn’t enough, he had radiation poisoning.
The French Secret Service had tricked him and left his body damaged by massive over-exposure to uranium and actinium. A fully human body would have been destroyed by now, Jimmy was sure. But he had no idea how the radiation was affecting him. He just knew he had to find a doctor who could help him as soon as possible. He scrabbled through the pages of the newspaper. His eyes scanned the text with the processing speed of a computer, letting each sheet fly away into the night when he was finished with it. At last he came to a directory of local health services.
By now he had brought the helicopter above the line of the buildings around the field. He hovered there. Where should he go? He studied the tiny print, his eyes’ natural night-vision enhancing the available light.
Jimmy knew it would take luck to find a doctor who would examine him willingly. He was an enemy of the State, and anybody helping him would surely be found and punished. But he knew that out there were other people against the system of Neo-democracy. Jimmy had to find a doctor who not only had the expertise to treat radiation poisoning, but wasn’t afraid to stand up to the Government.
A thought burst into life. If the doctor’s afraid, it hissed, use force.
Jimmy’s heart jolted at the violence in his own head. The power of the darkness inside him was growing and it shocked him, even though he knew that in this case it was right. He would probably have to at least threaten violence to convince a doctor to help him.
He scrunched up the last sheet of the Hailsham Gazette and hurled it out of the cockpit. There was only one place Jimmy had any chance of finding a hospital with the right, modern equipment—and the right doctor. He ran his fingers over the control units of the chopper and tore through the sky towards London. In seconds, he was away from Hailsham, soaring over open country.
Suddenly, Jimmy heard a sound. A distant thud. His eyes jumped to the horizon. At first all he could make out were the shapes of the clouds against the night sky. Then he picked out a tiny flash. Soon there was another just alongside it. They disappeared behind a cloud for a second, then emerged brighter. Not brighter, thought Jimmy. Closer.
Only then did the helicopter’s 2012 four-beam Doppler radar system confirm it. Two planes. It hadn’t taken long for the police to identify who had broken into the local newspaper, and these days the Secret Service kept a constant watch on the police. Jimmy’s only surprise was that it had taken them this long to send the Royal Air Force.
He felt a sudden swirl of panic that his programming quickly crushed. Forward, he heard throbbing in his brain. Faster. But the chopper wasn’t fast enough. His ears could pick out the sounds of the two planes ripping through the clouds towards him. He was exposed. A single shot would take him out.
With the flick of a finger he shut off the lights on his helicopter. The Nomex Honeycomb panels and Kevlar skin of the chopper made tracking it by radar almost impossible at the best of times. If Jimmy stayed dark and low enough he could escape precision guidance systems on the planes’ missiles. Now the pilots would have to rely on their own aim, and that gave Jimmy his chance.
The display on his control panel still glowed, as did the banks of LED lights and switches. Even that was too bright. Jimmy didn’t want to give the planes any chance of seeing what they were aiming at. His hands darted across the controls, overriding the onboard computer to shut off any system that gave off a light.
Now Jimmy’s senses prickled, heightening his awareness in a way he’d never experienced before. Every tiny ripple of air tingled the hairs on his forearms. His eyes flickered hundreds of times a second, his night-vision illuminating his path in a faint blue haze, giving his reactions precious extra split-seconds to guide the machine.
He could feel the grip of the assassin on his muscles, holding them steady, guiding his limbs. The power of the Tiger Hellfire surged through the mechanism around him. It was as if his body had a direct connection to the 1200 kW turboshaft engines. His slightest thought impacted on his flight path before he even knew what he was doing.
He crossed a motorway, the helicopter low enough for the runners to whoosh over the car roofs. He dodged between two lorries expertly. Still he could sense the presence of the planes holding a position above him, like hovering eagles waiting to swoop on a vole.
Even in the darkness Jimmy could see the animals in the fields scampering away. He dipped beneath every telegraph wire, leapt over every fence and swung past the front door of every farmhouse. Meanwhile, the engines rumbled, straining to push the chopper beyond its supposed maximum velocity.
The planes kept pace with him. Their two floodlights danced across the fields with Jimmy, sometimes catching him in their glare, but only for tantalising glimpses. Jimmy was making it impossible for them to fire at him, but he still wasn’t getting away. It was no good, he thought. Even if he reached London, he would never be able to land.
Then he realised that NJ7 had no intention of this chase ever making it that far. Rising up from the horizon ahead of him were more than a dozen black dots. A cluster of state-of-the-art military helicopters. Each one held steady, just above the land. Then, as one, a dozen sets of floodlights flashed into life. Jimmy squinted in the glare and felt the sweat break out on his forehead. And NJ7 could see every drop.
There was nowhere to hide. Jimmy wanted to throw up his hands, or brace himself for the explosion of the missiles, but his body wouldn’t let him. The lights from the enemy choppers had shown the assassin in him a new way out. They lit up a track that crossed directly between them and Jimmy. And approaching slowly from the right, like a worm across a battlefield, was a train.
Instead of turning his helicopter around, or even slowing down, Jimmy charged straight ahead. The helicopters confronting him did the same, moving towards him as a pack. They were hunters, designed and built to complete a mission with total efficiency—and a zero failure rate.
But so was Jimmy. His eyes locked on to the train. His muscles relaxed when he should have been growing more tense. It was as if some chemical had been injected into his system to make his limbs more supple and give him greater control. But it all came from within.
He was nearing the tracks now, winning the race with the choppers ahead of him. The planes overhead fired two rockets, but Jimmy was already into his defensive manoeuvre. He dodged so quickly that he didn’t have time to be afraid. The explosion rocked the cabin, but it was the ground behind him going up in flames, not him.
At last he reached the tracks and turned. The detour to avoid the rockets had worked in his favour. It had given the train time to reach him. Jimmy slowed to keep pace with it and once again brought the chopper as low as it would go, gliding past the telegraph poles, wires and signals, sheltering alongside the last carriage of the train.
The fleet of NJ7 helicopters circled over the top, then wheeled round to follow, just behind the train. Jimmy could almost feel himself smiling, against his will. Something inside him was revelling in the danger and the furious pace, responding to it with a detached fury of its own.
Jimmy
