don’t care if it’s one newly-turned vampire in the middle of an open field, Lieutenant Williams. You have your orders, you have your briefing, the surveillance data has been transferred to your consoles and your transport, and I am deeply bored of talking to all of you. Dismissed.”
For a moment, no one moved, then Turner walked swiftly round the podium and took two long strides into the middle of the room.
“I said, dismissed,” he said, and this time they all moved, quickly.
Six and a half hours later Operational Squads F-7 and G-17 huddled together in the shadow of a grey factory building on the banks of the River Tyne.
The towering cranes that had once been such a feature of the skyline of this part of the world were gone, dismantled and sold to an Indian shipyard two years earlier. The huge yard, where thousands of men had laboured to build the legendary RMS Mauretania in the first years of the twentieth century, where their grandsons had built the Royal Navy’s flagship, HMS Ark Royal, seven decades later, was silent. The floating dock, with its four wide berths, sat open to the lapping water of the Tyne; it was already becoming overgrown, and was slowly filling up with discarded bottles and cans, left by the teenagers who prowled its wide-open space after dark.
The factories that had once manufactured engine parts and hull panels were empty, their heavy machines sold to shipyards around the world that were still enjoying better times. They were coated in graffiti, and beginning to rust at their corners. The roads that ran between them, which had once hummed with the accumulated sound of thousands of men’s voices when the evening whistle blew, were covered in a spider’s web of cracks and holes; tangles of weeds emerged from these gaps, as though the earth was already beginning to reclaim land that had once been home to the very best of human ingenuity and innovation.
A thick fog was rolling down the Tyne from the North Sea; as Jamie looked out across the desolate, creaking yard, he could not see the far bank of the river. The grey tendrils were drifting up to the edges of the concrete dock below them, but were not, as yet, cresting them and moving on to the land.
“This is going to be no fun at all if that fog breaks over the dock,” he said. “Seven vamps may as well be seventy if we can’t see them.”
Jack Williams nodded. The six Operators had finished their reconnaissance of the old shipyard, and concluded it was sufficiently isolated for their purposes. It was far from secure, however; there was a main thoroughfare, Hadrian Road, less than two hundred metres to the north, and the fences that surrounded the yard were in significant disrepair. There was no time to plug the holes and tighten the net round the yard; instead, the plan was to never allow the vampires to get more than a few metres from their ship.
“I’ll take Kate and Larissa down there,” Jamie continued, pointing to a series of rusting metal containers that stood at the edge of the concrete dock, fifteen metres from the river’s edge. “Jack, why don’t you take your squad over there, behind that wall? That way they’ll have to come between us, and we can ambush them from both sides. OK?”
He turned away, ready to jog towards the position he had just described, when Larissa grabbed his arm, and he turned back. The three members of Squad F-7 were not moving, and Jack Williams was staring at him with a look of enormous apology on his open, friendly face.
“What’s the problem?” asked Jamie.
“I take my orders from Jack,” said Shaun Turner, a belligerent look on his face. “Not from you. Nothing personal.”
Temper flared in Jamie’s chest.
It bloody well sounds like it’s something personal, he thought. Does he just naturally hate me, like his dad does?
“Really?” asked Kate, her voice fierce. “You really think now is the time for this petty crap?”
Shaun’s face flushed, but he didn’t look away.
“Jack outranks Jamie,” said Angela, who had the decency to sound embarrassed as she spoke. “In terms of experience. We think he should take point.”
Larissa snarled, and her eyes flickered red. “This is complete bull—”
“Angela’s right,” interrupted Jamie. “Tell us what you want us to do, Jack.”
Larissa looked at him, her face pained on his behalf, but he shot her a tiny smile, pleading with her not to make a big deal out of what was happening. She returned it, and his heart swelled with fierce affection for the vampire girl.
Jack Williams gave him a brief glance, full of gratitude. “Positions as Jamie described,” he said. “Remember that we need at least one vamp alive for questioning. At least one. The new SOP doesn’t apply, which I’m sure we’re all very happy about, but let’s not get carried away. Dead vampires aren’t going to tell us where Dracula is. Let’s move.”
The six dark figures were crouched, ready to scuttle-run to their posts, when the air around them changed; it seemed thicker, as though something huge was altering the pressure. At the same moment, the six Operators realised they could hear something too: a steady thud-thud-thud, and the low rush of breaking water. They looked up the river, into the thick, swirling fog, as the vast, curved prow of the Aristeia burst into view, blinding them with its running lights, its enormous control tower looming far above them. The huge ship was slowing rapidly, slicing through the river parallel to the long concrete dock.
“Move! Now!” hissed Jack, and the six Operators scattered, hunkering low to the ground as they sprinted to the positions that Jamie had suggested. Then Larissa’s head was up, turned to the north, her supernatural hearing picking something up in the dark, sodden night air.
“What is it?” asked Jamie. He was standing with his back to the corner of the container nearest the dock, peering out at the incoming ship. Its size was boggling his mind; the deck was a football-field long, the hull a daunting, vertical wall of steel, the control tower the size of a large office building. It approached with eerie quiet; he could hear no voices, no sounds of any activity on the decks, or below them, just the steady thud of the engines.
“Trucks,” replied Larissa, then turned to look at him. “Three trucks inside the gate, heading this way.”
“Any idea what’s inside them?” asked Jamie.
Larissa nodded.
“Vampires,” she replied. “Lots and lots of vampires.”
12
INSIDE THE VOID
JEREMY’S 24HR TRANSPORT CAFÉ, NORTH OF KÖLN, GERMANY SEVEN WEEKS EARLIER
Frankenstein was jolted awake as the truck shuddered to a halt. He opened his eyes, and looked over at Andreas, the skinny, speed-addicted kid who had given him a lift out of Dortmund as the sun set on the previous day.
“This is as far as I go,” said Andreas. He twitched constantly, gnawing at his fingernails until they bled, but he had shared a flask of soup and some black bread with Frankenstein when they had stopped for petrol, and for that, as well as the lift, the monster was grateful.
“That’s fine,” said Frankenstein. “Thanks for bringing me this far.”
He unwrapped a grey-green hand from the moth-eaten blanket the kind lady at the homeless shelter had given
