the black silk covering his face, his world was completely dark. He closed his eyes and felt the waves surging beneath him.
Jimmy was suddenly aware of a burning sensation on his face. He opened his eyes, then immediately shut them again. The sun was too bright and the parachute must have slipped off his face. How long had he been asleep? His mouth was so dry he thought his tongue might stick to the back of his teeth. Am I dead? he thought. No—too much pain. Every muscle ached, especially his belly, and when he squinted, the skin around his eyes stung.
It was only now that he realised why he had woken up—the roll of the sea had stopped. He had reached land. He didn’t dare move. Where was he? Faint noises invaded his thoughts. Then they grew louder. Slowly, his brain was coming back to consciousness. There were seagulls above him. Their squawks were like sirens telling him to move. He was too exposed. He could be anywhere in the world and anybody could be watching him.
A huge pelican flapped down and perched next to Jimmy’s left ear. Still Jimmy couldn’t gather the energy to move. Water—that was his next thought. Water or I’ll die. The pelican stabbed its beak into Jimmy’s hair. Suddenly, energy seemed to explode into Jimmy’s muscles. His arm thrust out so quickly the pelican never saw it coming. Jimmy stabbed his finger and thumb into the base of the bird’s neck, pinching its gullet.
In a flurry of feathers and panicked squawks, the pelican choked up one of the fish stored in its massive beak, then flapped away in a hurry.
“Sorry, mate,” Jimmy muttered. His voice was so hoarse he hardly recognised it and his throat burned. Gingerly, Jimmy rolled off his raft. His back screamed in pain when he moved, but he had no choice. The helmet weighed his head down, so he pulled it off.
He landed on wet sand and looked up for the first time. He was on a deserted beach. There were no buildings, just large dunes with long tufts of grass. A few hundred metres up the shoreline he could see some fishing boats tied to a small jetty, but they were too far away to make out the language of any writing on them. He still didn’t know what country he was in.
When he tried to get to his feet his vision blurred and his head started pounding. But he refused to black out. He could feel his programming rumbling inside him, wrapped around every nerve ending. He knew what it was urging him to do.
He slumped back to his knees and scooped the fish off the sand in front of him, picking up a shell at the same time. In swift, confident movements, his hands went about the painstaking process of scraping the scales off the fish. It took less than a minute.
Then he dug the corner of the shell under the fish’s neck and forced a slit down its entire belly. With his fingers, he carefully scooped out the guts. Blood and entrails slopped all over his hand, still warm. The smell was putrid, but Jimmy didn’t care. It was vital sustenance. He closed his eyes and started sucking the flesh off the fish’s bones. In normal life he was sure it would have tasted gross, but right now his taste buds were almost dead. There was enough fish meat here, and enough precious juice, to keep him alive for the moment.
When he had swallowed all his stomach could take, which wasn’t a lot, he turned back to his raft. He ripped down the sail. Then he used every trace of strength to scratch at the markings on the metal. If he left a piece of the US airforce on a public beach, there would be questions asked. Fortunately, there wasn’t a lot of work to do—just a serial number that Jimmy quickly bashed out of shape, using a large stone as a mallet. He buried his helmet in the sand, once he’d scratched off the airforce emblem.
The wind whipped off the ocean, blustering his hair around his ears. The tide formed puddles around his knees, but at least the air was warm and the sun had already started drying his skin.
When he’d finished, Jimmy knew he had to move. He was too exposed here. He longed to run, but his body forced him to walk. It took huge effort to move his limbs and even more effort to make it look like he was strolling casually. Running, limping or anything else would have looked conspicuous.
At last he reached the other side of the dunes and found himself on a quiet street with no cars. Across the road was a line of large houses, each one with fancy decking that looked out across the beach. Jimmy felt his fear intensify. Anybody could have seen him being washed up just now. He shuffled along, not knowing where he was going. His clothes were torn and sodden. Every step left a muddy pool on the pavement, and his feet squelched inside his trainers.
Should he knock on one of these doors and ask to go to the police?
Then he heard two words in his head: Neptune’s Shadow. They hummed in his ears beneath the sounds of the seagulls. He couldn’t get rid of that voice. It was the scream of a dying man and it taunted him.
There was no way to ignore it. Jimmy could remember Bligh’s words perfectly: If we go down…Whoever survives… Jimmy saw the image of the man flailing in the wind. It haunted him, but he forced himself to focus. Take this information back to Colonel Keays. He has to know. He has to stop them.
Outside the British Government, Jimmy was the only person in the world who knew that Neptune’s Shadow wasn’t an oil rig, but a secret missile base, with rockets trained on Paris.
Suddenly, Jimmy felt like he was back in the plane, with the massive G-force holding him down. How much time did he have? Maybe he was too late already. How long had he been stranded on the ocean? His gut was in knots. For all he knew Paris had already been destroyed by British firepower, with thousands of people dead.
Jimmy shuddered and staggered to the side. It took a huge effort just to keep walking down the street. But where should he go? How could he get a message to Colonel Keays? And what would he say? He stopped and held his face in his hands, trying to force up those images he’d seen flash before him on the plane’s display station—the aerial photographs of Neptune’s Shadow. He had to remember. They only survived in his head.
His programming seemed to buzz in his head. One by one, Jimmy started to see lines forming. He could remember. Despite only seeing the images for a fraction of a second, it might be enough. If he concentrated, he could piece parts of them together. They were taking shape now.
Then he saw a flash of blue. Jimmy looked up. He swivelled to take in everything around him. There it was—a muddy white saloon car with POLICE in massive letters across the side and a flashing blue light on the roof. Jimmy froze.
“Well, hello there, amigo,” drawled a lanky police officer, stepping out of the driver’s seat. “Welcome to Texas.” His accent was a thick Southern American. His uniform was dark blue, with a badge on his chest, and hanging off his middle was a belt stacked with every piece of hardware he might possibly need.
Very slowly, his partner climbed out of the passenger seat—a fat man with no hair and a cruel smile all over his face. In his hands was a long, slim rifle.
“We’re your ride back to Mexico,” he said.
“I haven’t come from Mexico,” Jimmy said in a hurry. “I’ve come from New York. I’m…” He was about to say that he was British, but stopped himself. He didn’t want to say anything that could possibly attract NJ7’s attention later if it was reported. He quickly put on an American accent—imitating it almost perfectly. “It’s urgent that I speak to Colonel Keays or somebody in the CIA.”
The
