Jimmy Coates: Survival

Giesel heaved himself to his feet and stared out of the control centre window, aghast. A second later, two missiles soared into the air.

“Right,” announced Lt Cdr Love, mopping his face with a handkerchief. “Get your team on board the chopper. We’re sending you in.”

“We can’t.”

“What?” Love scowled as if he was trying to shoot lasers out of his eyes straight into Dr Giesel’s forehead.

“I tried to warn you,” Giesel said quietly. “Sir.” He deliberately emphasised the word. “My report recommended that Mutam-ul-it would remain stable if you hit those two specific targets.”

“We did hit those targets!” roared Love. “And we’ll hit them again!”

“But my calculations were based on a single strike. The heat from two explosions will throw everything off.”

Love froze. Giesel waited for his message to sink in, but it didn’t look like the man was listening any more.

“Do you understand now?” Giesel asked, as gently as he could. “After those missiles hit, the whole place could be unstable. There’s no way we can go in.”

Lt Cdr Love turned away and rested his hands on the control desk. His head hung between his shoulders, hiding his face. Then he coughed and scratched at his collar.

“Signal Command,” he whispered to nobody in particular. “Tell them we have a problem.”

09 FRENCH WELCOME

Opening his eyes felt like lifting up a building. Every part of Jimmy’s body was either totally numb or in excruciating pain.

Pain means I’m alive, he told himself again, but it wasn’t reassuring. Then he felt a sudden heat in his chest. Within seconds it washed through his body, melting to a soft warmth. It was like diving into a pool of warm honey. It didn’t soothe his pain completely, but it made it bearable.

Slowly Jimmy became aware of his surroundings. The first thing he saw was soft beige light all around him and a huge ceiling fan whipping round above his head. His nostrils tingled with a bitter smell. It made him think of school on the first day of term. Then he remembered the same smell when he’d lightened his hair as a disguise. Bleach. Jimmy thought. I’m in a hospital.

There was something soft behind his head which he assumed was a pillow, but when he tried to feel around to check whether he was in bed, he found that he had no sensation in his hands.

Then he heard the squeak of soft shoes on lino and a shadow fell across his face. Jimmy felt the kick of a strong force inside his gut. His programming wasn’t only working to dull the pain. It was on full alert. Have they examined me? Jimmy wondered. What have they found? Maybe whoever had examined him had simply followed the usual procedure for victims of extreme cold and not noticed any unusual results yet.

“Uno Stovorsky?” came a high-pitched male voice.

“Yes,” Jimmy tried to cry out, but his throat felt like it had been slashed from the inside. He didn’t care. Somehow whoever was looking after him had found out that he needed to see Uno Stovorsky.

“Hello, Uno,” the man said in a thick French accent. “You are English?”

Jimmy’s heart crumpled. Why would anyone think he was Uno Stovorsky? He strained his neck to get a better look at the doctor. He was a short, middle-aged man with scars on his cheeks and a tidy goatee beard. A line of biros stood to attention in the top pocket of his immaculate white coat.

“I’m not Uno,” Jimmy said. His voice came out deeper than he was expecting and with a rough tone. He repeated himself, but this time relaxed his lips and tongue, letting his programming take control. His words came out in perfect French. “Je ne suis pas Uno Stovorsky.”

The doctor apologised, obviously shocked that his patient spoke the language like a native. He continued in French. “It’s the name you were muttering when they brought you in. You said it over and over. You have no identification on you, so we assumed it was your own name. Tell me—”

“When who brought me?” Jimmy didn’t have time to make a fuss about introductions and he certainly didn’t want to explain what he was doing in the Pyrenees in the first place.

“You set off the alarm when you touched the border fence.” The doctor’s face turned sour at Jimmy’s interruption. “That is only about five kilometres from here. We don’t get many who have survived a journey over the mountains. And children travelling alone…” He tailed off as if he expected Jimmy to give an explanation.

It didn’t happen. The man shrugged. “The patrol picked you up immediately. ”

In the past, the French-Spanish border had been left virtually unmanned, with travellers free to cross one way or the other as they pleased. But that wasn’t the case any more. Despite the relatively civil relations between the two countries, there were still security concerns. Now the border was clearly marked out by fences, patrols and checkpoints.

Jimmy remembered the silver glimmer he’d seen before he collapsed. It gave him a thrill of achievement. He’d made it to the border.

“Uno Stovorsky is an agent of the DGSE,” Jimmy explained. “Your Secret Service. Can you contact him for me? It’s urgent.”

Very slowly he flexed his elbows to force his upper body off the bed.

“You can’t get up,” the doctor protested. He tried to push Jimmy down, kindly but firmly. “It might not seem like it because you’re on powerful painkillers, but you’re very ill.”

“I’ll be fine,” Jimmy insisted. “I take vitamin tablets.”

He shook his chest to get the doctor off him, which sent a harsh stabbing pain through his ribs. Jimmy winced, but kept moving. In a second he was sitting upright. The ward housed five other beds, but they were all empty.

“You don’t understand,” said the doctor. “Even if you can get up, you can’t leave.”

Jimmy stared the doctor down, trying to read what he really meant. Then the details of his surroundings flashed up in his brain – details he didn’t even realise he’d noticed.

“Bars on the windows,” Jimmy muttered. “Doors of double thickness with reinforced glass. What sort of hospital is this?”

The doctor didn’t say anything, but glanced over his shoulder towards the thick double doors. Meanwhile, Jimmy rolled his shoulders, without knowing why. Then he realised. His programming was testing his mobility.

He had to know which movements were impossible and which were just painful.

He raised his hands to look at what damage the cold had done and for the first time saw that they were completely wrapped in bandages. He looked down. So were his feet. The balls of bandaging looked like four large portions of candyfloss, one stuck on the end of each limb. Now Jimmy also noticed the tube inserted into his arm, attached to a saline drip next to his bed.

“I don’t need this,” Jimmy announced, surprised at his own confidence. It increased as his programming fuelled his strength. Jimmy was feeling the effects of several weeks’ recovery condensed into a few minutes. It was thrilling. He hooked one bandaged hand under the tube and yanked it out of his skin. “Thanks for your help, doctor. I’m leaving.”

“Stay where you are,” the doctor ordered. “This isn’t a hospital. It’s the medical wing of a border control detention centre.”

“Detention centre?” said Jimmy, testing how far he could flex his knees.

“It’s where we keep people who try to cross the border illegally until they can be identified and—”

“Are you going to help me or not?”

“We are helping you. That’s why I can’t let you—”

Before he could finish, Jimmy swivelled in the bed and stuck a leg out. He hooked his bandaged foot round the bottom of the metal stand his drip was hanging on and flicked it upwards. The base of it smacked the doctor in the knee. The man stumbled forwards.

Jimmy grabbed the pole between his forearms and stamped down on the wheel lock on one leg of his bed. Then he kicked against the wall to send himself rolling across the lino on the bed.

The doctor scrabbled for a whistle that was round his neck and gave it a huge blast. The echo had barely died when the double doors burst open. Two armed security guards charged towards Jimmy, one reaching for the baton on his belt, the other going for his gun. Jimmy kept rolling, using the metal pole as a paddle.

He crouched low on the bed and waited until the very last second. His programming was thrusting power into every corner of his being, as if it was grateful to be let off the leash at last. At the same time it gripped Jimmy’s mind, controlling his actions.

Just as the guards descended on him, Jimmy steered himself round in a sharp twist. He twirled the pole over his arm and smacked it into one guard’s face. The momentum spun the bed all the way round so Jimmy was facing the wrong way. Jimmy brought the pole under control and jabbed it backwards, under his arm. The foot of the stand connected with the other guard’s chest, then Jimmy snapped it upwards into his face.