Dancing the Code Part 9

Inside the cell, a short, dark-haired man with startling green eyes glanced at her briefly, then turned his gaze to look over her shoulder at Catriona. A strange expression, half-frown, half-smile, crossed his face.

'Miss Talliser! So you have decided on direct action at last!'

Jo looked round, saw Catriona wiping blood from her chin with one hand, pus.h.i.+ng back the messy hair from her forehead with the other.

'Vincent b.l.o.o.d.y Tayid,' she said. 'I might have known it would be you. And no, I haven't decided anything. I just didn't have much choice.'

Vincent grinned. 'Nevertheless I am pleased to see you.' He stepped forward, held his hands out. Catriona threw him the pistol that she was still holding.

'You should be careful with these things, my friend,' said Vincent, hefting the gun, clicking something into place. 'They're killing machines, eh?'

Light blazed into the corridor. Vincent pushed Jo sideways into his cell, so that she fell onto the floor. There was a crash of gunfire. Jo saw Catriona crawling towards her across the floor, heard a man scream.

Catriona rolled into the cell, winced.

'Are you all right?' shouted Jo.

Catriona winced again. 'My neck hurts,' she said. 'But I'll live.'

Outside, the gunfire stopped. In the silence, Jo muttered, 'Who is Vincent? Can we trust him?'

'An old friend,' said Catriona. 'And absolutely yes.' She paused, bit her lip. 'I think.'

Footsteps sounded in the corridor, stopped outside the door.

'Are you all right, ladies?' Vincent's voice.

There was a moment's silence. Catriona didn't seem to be going to say anything, so Jo spoke up. 'We're okay. What do we do now?'

The door swung open, and Vincent beckoned to them.

'We get Belqua.s.sim,' he said. 'Then we get out of here.' He indicated a cell door. 'That one.'

Jo managed to unlock the cell this time: Belqua.s.sim turned out to be a younger version of Abdelsalam, with - Jo thought - a nicer smile. He greeted Abdelsalam and Vincent with a brief embrace, bowed to Catriona and Jo.

'Come on,' said Vincent.

They ran.

A guard lay dead at a junction in the corridor, blood pumping from his head. Jo stopped, stared. For the first time it really came home to her: these were people, people people, not Autons or Daleks or Ogrons. And they would still be alive if she hadn't insisted on escaping from that cell - Someone grabbed at her arm, pulled her along. Jo looked up, saw Catriona. Their eyes met for a moment.

'Time for regrets later,' said the older woman quietly.

Jo swallowed, nodded. They ran on.

Vincent seemed to know the layout of the prison well. They descended some steps, came to a locked door. Jo got her bunch of keys ready, but Vincent didn't wait for that. He pushed his gun up to the lock, fired. It took several seconds for Jo's ears to recover sufficiently to realize that another alarm had gone off. By then they were running along a darkened pa.s.sage past something that looked like an office.

They came to another door, this one protected by a coded lock.

'Only trusted prisoners in here,' said Vincent, looking round with a grin. 'We're all trustworthy, aren't we?'

Belqua.s.sim laughed.

Vincent punched in the code and opened the door, gun at the ready.

'Empty,' he said, beckoning them forward. 'It shouldn't be. We get lucky. Which one of you is it has the luck, eh?'

Jo stepped through, found herself in a large room lined with books, evidently the prison library. Vincent was already clambering up a set of steps intended to fetch down books from the shelves. When he reached the top, he jumped, hung by his hands from something on the ceiling.

Jo heard the sound of a bolt sliding back. Then a second bolt. By this time, Belqua.s.sim had climbed the steps, grasped hold of Vincent's legs. He pushed, and Vincent disappeared into a hole in the ceiling.

Abdelsalam now climbed the steps, was lifted by Belqua.s.sim. The steps tottered dangerously, and Abdelsalam was gone. Catriona glanced at Jo.

'Go on.'

Jo clambered up, felt Belqua.s.sim grasp her under the arms. He almost threw her up. Someone caught her hands. She thought her arms would pop out of their sockets, but within a moment she was scrambling out into the open.

She found herself on a low, flat roof. Rather to her surprise, it was raining: big, isolated drops. The sky glowed with the reflection of street lights. Vincent and Abdelsalam helped Catriona up, then Belqua.s.sim jumped, gripped the edge of the trapdoor and was hauled to safety. A loud crash from below told Jo that the ladder had fallen down. She slammed the trapdoor, then looked up, saw Vincent peering over the edge of the roof. Catriona was by his side. 'Come on!' he called, in a stage whisper.

Jo realized that Belqua.s.sim was already gone, that Abdelsalam was in the act of lowering Catriona over the edge. She trotted up, saw Belqua.s.sim standing on a wide pavement ten feet below, saw Catriona drop into his arms. He swung her round like a partner in a waltz. Catriona winced, and gave him a nasty glance.

Jo grinned to herself, took a couple of steps sideways and jumped on her own. Ten feet was no worse than landing with a parachute, and she'd done that loads of times.

She landed easily, rolled, jumped up, and grinned at Belqua.s.sim from a safe distance. He smiled broadly in return, and winked.

Vincent landed behind her, patted her on the shoulder.

'You know how to jump, eh? As well as having the luck. You are good to have around.'

A siren began to sound, horrifyingly loud, from the direction of the prison. Vincent ran down the street like a sprinter. Jo and the others followed, but only Belqua.s.sim could keep up with him. After a moment she saw what he had been running towards: the dark blob of a car parked against the side of the road.

'Can you break into this?' asked Vincent, as they approached it.

'Got a piece of wire?' asked Jo.

'No need,' said Belqua.s.sim from the pa.s.senger side. 'They left the window down.'

There was a click, and after a moment the driver's door swung open. Abdelsalam - still out of breath from the run - got in.

Vincent opened the back door, ushered Jo and Catriona in, then got in himself. In front of them Abdelsalam was fiddling with the wires beneath the dash. Abruptly the engine fired, and Jo was jolted back in her seat as they accelerated wildly along the road.

'Where are we going?' she asked.

They took a corner, bearing right, tyres screeching.

'Vincent?' asked Catriona. 'Where are we going?'

Vincent laughed, and said something in Arabic. Abdelsalam laughed. Belqua.s.sim looked over his shoulder and winked at Catriona.

'He says we ought to blindfold you,' said Belqua.s.sim. 'We are taking you to our safe house.'

Vincent laughed again. 'Which only the entire Kebirian Secret Police, and the Army, Air Force and probably the Navy too know about!' He looked across at Jo. 'You know who I am, eh? Vincent Tayid, world-famous Arab campaigner for revolutionary justice? You have heard of me?' The last question had an almost pleading note.

Jo opened her mouth to say, No, you must be kidding No, you must be kidding - then closed it again. Now that he mentioned it, the name did seem awfully familiar. She just hadn't had a chance to think about it in the last ten minutes or so. - then closed it again. Now that he mentioned it, the name did seem awfully familiar. She just hadn't had a chance to think about it in the last ten minutes or so.

She looked at Catriona. The older woman glanced at her sidelong; her lips curled in a small, ironic smile. 'Sorry, Jo,' she said. 'But you make the strangest friends when you're a foreign correspondent.'

Eight.

When the Brigadier got to the hangar, the Superhawks were ready to go. The first plane was already hitched to the guide truck, its RAF roundels standing out clearly in the glare of the floodlights. The pilot, his helmet on, was in his seat in the open c.o.c.kpit. The Brigadier strode across the concrete floor, feeling slightly embarra.s.sed and more than slightly hot in his flight suit, hastily put on over a still-damp uniform. He wondered where the Doctor was.

The pilot stood up, waved, pulled off his helmet, thus revealing himself to be the Doctor. The Brigadier noticed for the first time another man in a flight suit standing under the wing of the plane, inspecting one of the engines.

'Hurry up, man,' shouted the Doctor. 'There's not a moment to lose!'

The Brigadier shook his head. 'We still haven't got permission from the Kebirians. I don't know about this, Doctor. We might have to turn back, you know.'

'Nonsense, Brigadier. This young man says the Superhawk can outpace anything that the Kebirians have got.'

The Brigadier felt the familiar impatience growing inside him. 'It can't outpace a missile, Doctor. And we're not going in there armed.'

This wasn't, strictly speaking, true: the bomb bays were empty, but the Brigadier had made sure that the wing guns were loaded.

'Brigadier, I really must insist that we leave as soon as possible. If I'm right, Jo and the others could be in considerable danger.'

The Brigadier ignored him, instead walked up to the flight-suited young man and tapped him on the shoulder. 'Flight-Lieutenant Butler, isn't it?'

The young man ducked out from under the wing and saluted. 'Sir.'

'You'll be taking your orders from me, young man. I'll be in the rear plane, but I'll contact you by radio if there are any developments.

If I say turn back, we turn back. Don't take any notice of the Doctor, whatever he says.'

About half way through this speech, an expression of consternation crossed Butler's face. When the Brigadier had finished, he said: 'But I'm not going, sir! My orders were to show the Doctor the route and set up the flight directory, then leave him to it.'

'Leave him to it?' The Brigadier shot a suspicious glance up at the Doctor, who was putting his helmet back on. 'You mean he's going to fly the thing?'

'With you as pa.s.senger, sir.'

'But what about -?' the Brigadier gestured at the second plane.

Not going, sir. Air Vice-Marshal's orders.'

'Look, Butler, I spoke to the Air Vice-Marshal not half an hour ago.

He a.s.sured me that there would be two planes, and two pilots.'

'Sorry, sir, but the Air Vice-Marshal has been in touch with the Ministry. As soon as they found out that the Doctor was a qualified pilot, they ordered -' The young man looked at his boots. 'Well, they said it was a lot cheaper to send one plane, sir.'

The Brigadier swallowed hard, looked hard at the Doctor, who was flicking switches on the control panel, smiling brightly like a child with a new toy.

'Doctor? Can you really fly this thing?'

The Doctor looked up, pushed his visor up. 'Of course I can, Brigadier. I did over seventy thousand hours on a Martian Exploder a couple of centuries ago. This plane is practically the same apart from the radar and Flight Lieutenant Butler has very kindly briefed me on that. Now will you please get in? We're supposed to be taking off in three minutes' time. You know, I really can't imagine why it's taken you nearly an hour to get all this ready. It would have been quicker to replace the TARDIS navigational circuits altogether than wait for your people to come up with the goods.'

The Brigadier swallowed again, muttered a dismissal to the Flight Lieutenant, and climbed the c.o.c.kpit steps. He got into the back seat, fastened his helmet, heard the Doctor's voice talking to ground control. The plane began to move as the guide truck revved up.

'Doctor,' said the Brigadier quietly. 'You will remember that as pilot of this aircraft you're under my orders, won't you? If I say we turn back, we turn back, is that clear?'

'Perfectly clear, thank you, Brigadier,' said the Doctor. 'Now hush up, there's a good chap, I have to concentrate on this.'

There was a click and the channel went dead. A whirring of pumps announced the first stage in starting the Superhawk's twin jets; at the same moment, they cleared the hangar door into a grey, half-lit dawn.

Rain spattered on the canopy.

'I wonder what a Martian Exploder is,' muttered the Brigadier to himself.

The jets began to rumble, and, detached from the guide truck, the Superhawk began to trundle across the tarmac. As they paused at the end of the runway, the Brigadier thought about the gun holstered inside his flight suit. It was a .35, nothing like the one in the Prognosticator sequence.

The jets throttled up, the airframe began to shudder. The Superhawk accelerated down the runway through the rain.