Another War

Chapter Two

They were all volunteers, Thacker had made sure of that◦– genuine volunteers, too, not the kind of line up where some vindictive bastard of a senior officer picks the soldiers who’ve clocked up the most charges.

They’d come to him, one by one, and said that they were scared but they’d do it. Thacker would nod grimly and mutter, ‘Good man’, and write a name down on his clipboard. Those too scared simply didn’t show. No blame attached. Every time Thacker looked down the sweep of the hill to the red-brick pile surrounded by nothing but ash and decay, he felt like running for home, too.

He checked his equipment one more time. Full NBC suit. Air-tight save for the heavy respirator strapped hard onto his face.

Thacker had been exposed to all the known war gasses, and many of the biological weapons, in a suit just like this one. He’d survived. He was immune to anthrax and two strains of smallpox. The bubonic plague was treatable with a simple course of antibiotics.

Rifle. Bayonet. Spare clips of ammunition. He had his handgun as well, but he wanted something with a little more punch. Geiger-Muller tube. He turned it on, listened to it crackle away like someone was folding thick brown paper, then off again. There was a dosimeter badge on his webbing. Gas detector. Such a shame there was no biological equivalent. Torch. Night vision goggles he could hold over his respirator eyepieces.

Radio. And a mobile phone for emergencies. Grenades. Standard issue NATO fragmentation, and the not-so standard issue phosphor bombs.

The equipment was piled on a small plastic sled, the sort kids used for two days each year when it became snowy enough, and spent the other three hundred and sixty three days wishing for winter. Being the army, the sled was dark green and ten times more expensive than the red versions sold in the shops.

The instruments he pulled weren’t necessarily heavy, but bulky. Others in the squad had to lug a portable laboratory, complete with blowtorch to seal off glass sample vials. There was a big gas chromatograph in the back of the Warrior armoured car, but it was on wheels and would be out and his men in at the first sign of trouble.

The car had a thirty millimetre cannon and smoke launchers, and the inner compartment had been specially modified to be airtight.

Thacker still didn’t know who, or what, if anything, he was supposed to be fighting. After all those years of hanging around a chemical weapons establishment, he felt more like a scientist◦– at least a competent technician◦– than a soldier.

Only the once had he ever had to put his training to use. That had been a long time ago, and absolutely no one knew about it. Perhaps Dickson did, but Thacker couldn’t ask him.

The sun was coming up. The shapes in the valley were becoming distinct: the dead hands of leafless trees, the rotten walls of buildings. Long shadows were forming across the dust and ash of the estate. It was as dead as it was yesterday.

Thacker pulled his sled to the start of the long gravel drive, and the guards pulled the coil of razor wire aside, taking exaggerated care that the barbs didn’t puncture their own suits.

Behind him he could hear the rustling and rasping of clothing and plastic on stone. The engine of the Warrior started up, a great roar of diesel, and he felt just a little more confident.

When they were all through the gap, and the wire barricade replaced, he motioned for his men to fan out in an arrow shape, the point on the driveway, and the armoured car just a little behind. He started forward, one hand on his rifle, one on his sled rope. Where the soldiers to his left and right walked on what had been, eighty years ago, grass, little clouds of matter stirred up and clung to their legs, coating everything in a fine layer of bone-dry powder.

His radio man waved. He wasn’t pulling a sled, but had a high-powered satellite transmitter strapped to his back. Thacker went over, treading for the first time off the road. It felt like snow under his boots: a soft collapsing compaction that almost squeaked under each footfall.

‘What is it?’ shouted Thacker through his respirator.

‘I’m getting interference. Nothing specific: white noise across most of the radio spectrum. There’s a rough peak around fourteen megahertz, but there’s no transmission.’

‘Is it significant?’

‘No idea, sir. It’s slap-bang in the short wave band, which could foul up our own handsets, but I can still contact Comms. Just thought you ought to know.’

Thacker nodded. Caution was good. ‘Tell me if it starts to affect our ability to talk to base. Otherwise, keep an eye on it.’

It was the first strange thing that morning, and it wasn’t too bad. Thacker assumed his position at the head of the arrow, and taking up his sled, started walking again.

It was, according to the maps, just over half a mile to the hall from the gates. Not far in anyone’s terms. Thacker could run it in less than three minutes, in normal conditions. Conditions were far from normal, but he felt he could break a record or two if he had to.

He was two hundred yards in, when his rifle twisted in his hand like it had suddenly come alive. He had no idea what was happening, but knew he didn’t like it. He dropped the sled rope and brought the weapon up in one quick snap. The gun wouldn’t point straight, and he stumbled back. Now he had control of it.

The other eight men had all crouched down and were scanning the empty land for targets.

Thacker braced the gun butt against his shoulder and inched forward. He could feel the pressure against the barrel that was turning it away. He pushed back against the force and felt it slip aside the other way.

When he had been a child, he had been fascinated by magnets, especially when he’d try to bring two of the same polarity together. They would squirm in his fingers, resisting all the more the closer they came.

It was like that now. His gun was being repelled by an invisible force. Thacker backed off again, and bent down to scoop up a handful of dusty gravel in his gloved hand.

Then with a high throw, he scattered the dirt into the air, and watched the curtain of debris stick in mid-air and slide gently to the ground.

‘Now how about that,’ he said under his breath. To the soldier charged with carrying the video camera, he called, ‘Did you get that?’

The private stood on his shaking legs and picked up the discarded camera. He was still trying to aim his rifle.

‘Should I do that again?’ asked Thacker.

‘I’d rather you didn’t, sir.’

‘Any change in any of the readings: radiation?’

‘Background only, sir.’

‘Right.’ Thacker would have scrubbed his chin with the fleshy part of his thumb, but he didn’t have access to either. He kicked his heel against the ground, then shot the air in front of him.

The bullet, perfectly formed and still glowing from the propellant, span slowly in the air. He had time to lower his gun and inspect it closely before it started to fall to the ground.

‘The question is, can anything get out?’

His radio squawked, and he turned away to answer it. ‘Thacker. Over.’

‘Dickson. Sorry I’m late. Bloody politicians and all that. You shooting pheasants?’ Pause. ‘Over.’

‘How much of this can you see?’

‘I’ve a very large set of binoculars. I’m also getting a feed from a helicopter outside the perimeter.’

‘Whatever you do, don’t send it in. If it runs into what we’ve just run into, you’ll lose it.’

‘Talk to me, Major. Tell me something I can use.’

‘For the want of a better word, it’s a forcefield. Shape unknown, though it’s probably centred on the house. It deflects metallic and non-metallic objects, and stops a bullet dead in its tracks.’

Dickson digested the news. ‘You’ve got surveying equipment down there, yes? Map the outer edge. There may be a way through.’

Thacker’s small band of soldiers were unconsciously backing away towards the main gate. They were already level with the armoured car. He had to take control, give them something to do rather than contemplate the impossible. Too much thinking was bad for squaddies.

‘I’ll get back to you. Over and out.’

He called them together, close in, like a scrum, their heads almost touching. He told them what he wanted them to do, and told them to go and do it. That bought him some time. When the soldiers had dispersed to their tasks, he hefted the radio again.

‘Dickson?’

‘Loud and clear, Major.’

‘That matter we were talking about last night. Did you get anywhere?’

‘I’m afraid I’ll have to talk in circumlocutions. Careless talk and all that. I mentioned it to my superiors. They are a little, how can I put it, squeamish about the idea.’

‘Why does that not surprise me? Dickson, press them. Press them hard. Tell them I’m crapping in my hermetically-sealed pants out here, and I’d breathe a lot easier if I knew it wasn’t all riding on me.’

‘What happened to the rufty-tufty army boy, Thacker?’

‘This house, this bloody forcefield, the fact that everything here is dead, dead, dead, and we have no explanations for anything. Do it, Dickson. Make them see sense.’

‘I’ll do my best. They, and not us, have command. Unless you’re going to organise a putsch. Tell me about this invisible wall.’

‘I’m hoping that as nothing can get in, nothing can get out. I’d bet a pound to a penny that this is what brought down the plane. But I don’t think the forcefield’s stable. It’s contracting back to its source, somewhere in the main building. It started off at the perimeter, and it’s been retreating ever since. I’ll know for sure when the surveying’s done, and how long we have before the field goes to zero.’

‘What happens then?’

‘Damn you, Dickson. I was hoping you were going to tell me.’

‘We have to know before it happens.’

‘Then tell me how to get through the field. Things inside appear to be able to come out: we’ve dead grass and dead trees to prove that point. But a moving object… I have an idea. Speak to you in five minutes.’

Thacker took a slim gas probe from his sled and advanced on the field. He felt he had taken a step further than he ought to have done. He checked with the first of the surveying poles spiking the ground. It was true. He was a foot closer to the house than previously.

He held out the probe, and tried to slide it through the air in front of him. It stopped, was pushed away. He tried again, slower this time. It was like pushing an elephant with a matchstick. But the probe eased in. When he let go, the probe stayed, suspended, and didn’t fall. He tried to pull it back, and it resolutely refused to come until he exacted the same sort of Zen-like control on his hand as he had when inserting the probe.

He went back to the sled. ‘Dickson.’

‘Here.’

‘I think I can get in. It’s not a question of hitting it so hard that it breaks, it’s going so slowly that it doesn’t think you’re moving at all. There’s some sort of threshold speed, no more than half an inch a second. The field is definitely contracting, so I’m rather assuming that I can get permission to attempt a breach.’

‘What do you need?’

‘Apart from the nerves of steel I haven’t got? A wheeled trolley and precision hydraulic ram. There should be some engineering works in Oxford◦– the Cowley car plant should have what we want.’

‘I’m on to it. Over and out.’

Thacker watched his men slowly return. The grey ash near the forcefield was festooned with red and white surveying poles. They had their readings, and could now make an estimate of how long they had before…

Before what? Ragnorok? Armageddon? Or nothing more than a damp squib of nothing.

Thacker was beyond guessing. He pulled his troops out, the Warrior covering their retreat with its cannon.

Everyone had to go through decontamination, despite the fact that they’d detected nothing. It was good practice, but nothing more. He inspected the men who’d gone in with him, thanked them for their duty, and dismissed them. They wandered away as if shell-shocked.

Thacker could still smell and taste the rubber of his respirator. Rank had its privileges, and he commandeered a cup of tea. He found himself back in the marquee he had used for the briefing. His notes were still at the front, now neatly boxed away in a lockable trunk. He nodded to the guard.

‘Do you want me to wait outside, sir?’

‘I imagine that would probably be best. Get yourself to the mess. I’ll shoot any spies myself.’ He patted his sidearm.

He sat at the trestle table and fished out the key from the string around his neck. The padlock was old and stiff. He ought to oil it, or better still, get a modern strongbox with a modern lock, not a nineteen twenties effort that could be jemmied off in seconds.

He dug out Middleton’s report again, and wondered what he was missing. He’d read it over and over, virtually memorised it verbatim. Yet it gave him no clue as to what had happened to the five miles of countryside around Henbury Hall.

He put the paper to one side and took out the maps, and compared them to the sketches and figures that his detachment had made. The global positioning system had made quick, accurate surveying something so simple that even a private could manage it.

Thacker plotted out the details as accurately as his propelling pencil would allow. Then he did the sums in the margins. He looked at his watch, and added the time to his precise, spidery maths.

Dickson came striding back in, cigarette in his mouth and a clipboard in his hand. He slapped the clipboard down in front of Thacker.

‘That do?’ he said out of the corner of his mouth.

Thacker looked at the Ford receipt, and the technical details of the apparatus Dickson had commandeered.

‘Looks fine. You know what I have in mind?’

‘A couple of engineers are bolting it all together, then they need to test it. Should be ready to go in an hour.’

‘Thank you. Makes a difference, not having to explain everything five times.’ He grinned and drank some tea.

Dickson tugged hard on his cigarette, the end burning fiercely for a few seconds. ‘What’s your estimate?’

‘That we have ten hours, plus or minus an hour, until the field contracts to zero. The rate of retreat is relatively constant, but trying to measure the edge of something you can’t see and that is continually moving is a little tricky. Hence the error.’ Thacker shuffled the aerial photograph to the top. ‘More importantly, the field is centred in the west wing of the house.’

‘Is that significant?’ Dickson leaned over and expelled a cloud of smoke. Thacker coughed and waved it away.

‘Emily Foster was quite clear. Everyone lived in the east wing.’

‘And?’

‘Perhaps there was something going on that neither she nor Middleton knew about.’

‘Like what? We can hardly credit some secret government experiment. I’d know about it.’

‘Well, something made a large country estate disappear into thin air.’ Thacker threw his pencil down in annoyance. ‘It wasn’t David Copperfield. Or even Houdini.’

‘This is the point,’ said Dickson, lighting a new cigarette from the stub of the old one. ‘You can’t give me anything as a credible threat, yet you want authorisation to nuke half of Oxfordshire.’

Thacker regarded the Ministry man coolly. ‘Shout a bit louder. I don’t think they heard you in Whitehall.’

‘I apologise. I’m a bit spooked.’

‘Aren’t we all? I barely held that lot together down there. I genuinely thought they’d turn and run at one point. Felt like it myself.’ Thacker played with the dregs of his drink and swilled them down. ‘It’s all very strange.’

‘So why not just wait ten hours?’ asked Dickson. ‘Wait until the field has contracted to zero and then just stroll in?’

‘Because there might be nothing left to see by then. I want to get in there and find out before we maybe lose whatever is in there. Put it down to scientific curiousity.’

‘What are you taking in with you?’

‘The bare minimum. I’m not going to mount a full expedition. Me and a weapon, if I can get away with that. I expect I’ll have to take a radio in, but a pound to a penny it won’t work.’ Thacker stood up and manhandled the whiteboard from its stand, pocketing one of the pens that fell to the floor. ‘This’ll have to do instead, unless you know sign language.’

‘I’m only fluent in Russian.’

‘Pity. My daughter’s deaf, did you know?’

‘I’m sure I read it in your file. Amongst other things.’ Dickson finished his cigarette, and extinguished the butt under his heel.

‘Ah,’ said Thacker. ‘So you know about that as well.’

‘Military Cross. Shame you can’t tell your family about it. They’d be very proud.’

‘I trust they’d be proud of me if I was working on the bins.’ He hefted the whiteboard, and started for the tent flap. ‘Dickson, I don’t mean to needle you. It’s the situation.’

Dickson nodded, and patted his pockets for his lighter. ‘Stop being so bloody reasonable, man.’

They marched down the main drive in front of the Warrior, with the Heath Robinson arrangement Thacker was going to use installed inside. A squaddie had taken point, a surveying pole extended out like a pike, looking for the start of the forcefield.

Thacker carried a cage of white mice and a pressurised cylinder of halon.

Fifty yards on from the last surveying point, the man on point came to an abrupt halt, and held up his hand.

‘Right,’ called Thacker, ‘let’s unload. Time is fleeting.’

The other soldiers heaved the contraption out of the armoured car and carried it as close to the house as they could. It was a hydraulic car-ramp jack on a carriage. Bolted to the moving end of the jack was a man-sized wheeled board that bore a faded Ford logo. Slung under the carriage was a motor and a modified hydraulic pump. It would move at the achingly low speeds required to pierce the barrier.

But first, Thacker was going to send etherised mice through. And to anyone who would have argued, he would have insisted that of course he was more important than a couple of bloody rodents.

He put the cage on the very front of the trolley and gaffer-taped it down. The mice scampered around, sniffing the strange air full of odour.

‘Right, edge it forward.’

The men pushed the carriage until the trolley was abutting the field.

‘Gentlemen, start your engines.’

At the roar of the two-stroke, the mice dived for cover. Thacker could see their little noses twitch, trembling the sawdust. He gave them a blast of anaesthetic, and the twitching stopped.

He stood, and motioned for them to start the pump. As he watched, the cage started to buckle.

‘Slower! You’re going too fast.’

The needle valve on the hydraulics was closed even tighter. Thacker got back down on his hands and knees. The cage was keeping its shape. The trolley wheels were going round, their motion barely perceptible.

‘Steady.’

After a minute of pushing, Thacker called a halt. The cage was inside, intact. He couldn’t see the mice.

‘Do you want me to bring the cage back?’

‘Not yet. Wait.’

At first he thought it was his eyes, blurring with tears through the strain of looking too intently. Then he realised that the blurs were the mice moving about their tiny world. They seemed like fat white ghosts, sliding about behind the thin wire bars. Thacker blinked hard. He could just about make out features: a whisker drawn into a solid plane; a pink nose a drawn out smudge. Then he noticed the cage itself seemed strangely extended, stretched out through the forcefield.

‘Okay, wind it back in. Slowly.’

The mice were alive inside the area of influence. If they made it back out again, he’d be strapping himself to the board in a few minutes, and praying that nothing went wrong.