Liberation (I Am Margaret Book 3) (5 page)

“Let’s get started then.”

“Okay. So our objective is to – without killing anyone – acquire enough nonLethal weaponry to arm say, ten strike teams.”

“Ten?” My surprise was mirrored on Jon’s and Kyle’s faces. “That many?”

“Every time we identify a method of getting into a Facility, we’ll only be able to use it once – they’re not completely stupid. So we should coordinate as many simultaneous operations as we can. Ten would be good. Eduardo’s having some likely people shipped over here.

“Anyway, as I think you all know, we invited Carla and Francesco to join us to act as advisors for this first stage. And they kindly agreed.”

“To hell with
kindly
,” said Carla. “Thank Luciano’s weird ideas. Even so, we wouldn’t have come if we didn’t happen to know exactly how to pull this stupid thing off.”

“But you do this sort of thing all the time, don’t you?” I remarked.

“Not without killing anyone.” Carla smiled nastily. “Don’t you even understand how much more difficult that makes it? We don’t kill everyone we kill just because they deserve it, y’know.”

“Some of them actually
deserve
it?” Father Mark spoke
almost
under his breath.

Francesco gave him a long look, but just said, “If you want zero casualties on either side, well, normally I’d have said impossible and left it at that. But a bit of information was circulated among the Europe-wide cells a week or so back that puts it in a different light.”

“A useless piece of information,” said Carla. “That’s what we thought until loverboy here turned up with his softie plan.”

“We’re listening.” Bane was clearly determined to ignore the whole ‘loverboy’ thing.

“A cell in Norway derailed a weapons train,” said Francesco. “Among the stuff in the cab they found a confidential document with ‘on no account remove this document from the compound’ stamped all over it. Luckily for you lot the idiot driver took it into the cab with him regardless. Now, has it ever occurred to you how they stop a munitions train?”

The lights were
supposed
to be green for the entire length of their journey, but munitions trains didn’t stop for red lights, full stop – everyone knew that – too easy for the Resistance to short circuit or fake a signal.

“Never thought about it,” said Bane. “But they’d want to be able to stop them, wouldn’t they? If one of those trains hit something hard enough, there’d be a whopping crater.”

“Exactly. Well, they have a flashing sequence of red and green lights. Only changed once a year because the drivers have to recognise it instantly in an emergency. And this document…”

“It’s got the sequence on!” Several people spoke at once.

“That’s right. Not due to change for another two months. And the code wasn’t supposed to be on that train, so the EuroGov don’t know it’s compromised. Now, none of
us
will bother messing around with it – so much simpler to polish off half the guards in a derailment and the stuff ’s packed well enough it doesn’t usually go off just from being rolled over a few times. But it might be exactly what you lot need.”

Everyone started talking at once. Bane was just calling for quiet again when there was a knock at the door and a Vatican policeman looked in.

“The visitors are requested to report to Security,” he announced in Latin.

Eduardo obviously couldn’t bear it any longer.

“What did he say?” asked Carla in Esperanto. “Is it a security alert?”

“You two
are
the security alert,” said Bane, glancing around the table as the policeman withdrew.

Jon looked half-asleep where he sat, and after that awful night, I was no better. Kyle and Father Mark looked perky enough, but Bane said, “Look, I think we’d better call it a night. In here, after breakfast tomorrow?”

Murmuring agreement, everyone got up to leave.

“A whole train, huh?” I whispered to Bane, when we found ourselves snuggled up together on the window seat of my room. Alone... Well, this loving snuggling wasn’t actually unchaste – at the moment. Oh, if my hormones would level out, we could plan the wedding! Not that we wanted anything over the top, the way Registration parties often were, but something a little more than simply grabbing the nearest priest and heading into the cathedral – tempting though that was.

Though… we were probably going to be too busy hijacking trains for a bit, weren’t we? Bother-bother.

“That seems to be the target,” agreed Bane.

“Well, if the entire cargo’s made up of nonLethals, you should be able to arm your ten teams.”

“Could arm a hundred. But we won’t be able to organise more than about ten, I reckon. But it won’t be a bad thing to get the Underground thoroughly equipped with weapons it can use.”

“Reckon Eduardo agrees.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I notice it’s all ‘us’ and ‘our’ when you talk about the Underground, these days,” I teased gently.

“Well, I reckon this is the side I want to fight for,” he said seriously. “Even if I’m not quite one of you.”

My arms tightened around him and I pressed my cheek to his chest.

“Makes me so happy to hear you say that.”

He kissed the top of my head and didn’t try to reply. After a moment I spoke my secret fear into his chest.

“I just hope we can pull this off without any of us getting shot.”

Because Carla was wrong, I
did
know how much harder it was to do this… ethically.

Bane went rigid.

“You’re not coming, Margo!”

I put my fists on his chest and pushed myself up, staring into his moonlit face.

“Yes, I
am
.” My voice shook slightly, but my resolution didn’t. Been thinking about this the whole time he was away. Well… since I’d managed to lay the nightmare to rest, anyway.

“It’s too dangerous.”

“It’s no more dangerous for me than for you.”

“Yes, it is! If they catch me, I’ll just get standard dismantled. If they catch you, they’ll… y’know.”

Happily he hadn’t said the words, because if he said those words to me very often, I probably
would
change my mind. But I didn’t
want
to.
Lord, lend me Your strength
...

“Look, Bane, why d’you think I came here? I came here to fight them. This is the best way to do that. And I’m a good shot. You need good shots.”

“I’m
quite
sure Eduardo can find me some good shots! He’s only got the Swiss guard, the Vatican Police and the VSS to draw on!”

“Bane…” I twisted my fingers in his shirt and rested my forehead against his chest. ‘Cause this was difficult, really difficult and I was terrified, but also quite certain. “Bane, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life too afraid to be any use to anyone, okay? When I left the
Freedom II
, I didn’t quite realise at the time, but I made that decision. Not to let that happen.”

“You won’t be no use to anyone if you stay here! After publishing that book, the simple fact you’re still free and alive is an enormous blow to the EuroGov. The fact that the papers will soon figure out you’re still kicking around in the EuroBloc, or next thing to it, is an enormous blow to the EuroGov. You don’t have to go over there to prove anything.”

“You proposing I should rest on my laurels for the rest of my life? Still alive, nah-nah-na-nah-na? That’s going to get old pretty quickly, Bane.”

“Then write something else!”

“Actions speak louder than words. How can I call on other people to resist the EuroGov if I’m too scared to do anything myself?”

“You’ve already done…”

“
No
…” I put a finger to his lips and
leant
close. “None of the greatest events of history ever happened because people did
a bit
and thought that was
enough
. Seriously, should I sit around and pat myself on the back for resisting the EuroGov for six months of my life and call it a day? Or should I go out and try to make a world in which you and I can raise children without being afraid one day they’ll be taken from us and murdered?”

Bane’s hand came to rest on my stomach, tenderly.

“Oh God, Margo, why do you have to be so good?” he whispered, his lips almost touching mine. “And… so
right
. I can’t stop you doing this, but I wish I could.”

He gathered me in his arms and rocked me and hugged me – I think the couple of tears he dropped on my scalp were tears of pure fear.

Mine certainly were.

Everyone settled around the table in the morning with mugs of coffee in hand. I sipped mine with more appreciation than need. I’d had a very good night’s sleep, despite the grave conversation preceding it.

Carla yawned ‘til her jaw almost cracked, then looked at me. “I take it loverboy’s in charge?”

“Like you’d take orders from me. This is Bane’s thing, anyway.”

“Just so we all know the chain of command.” She showed her teeth in a mock smile.

“Let’s start,” said Bane hastily. “So, we’re all agreed we’re going to proceed on the assumption we’ll be using the EuroGov’s own emergency stop signal?”

A chorus of agreement.

“Right. We’ll have to fake the signal or get the real lights to operate, we can look at that in more detail later. So we get this train stopped. How many guards and defences do we have to deal with?”

“Look, just let me talk,” said Carla impatiently. “There’ll be two guards at the back, two at the front, and four in the locomotive, including the driver. All armed with rifles, nothing else to speak of. The guards on the outside will be easy to deal with, if you’ve any nonLees at all – assuming you can shoot straight. Obviously they’ll shoot you if they see you, so strike the instant the train’s stopped; should be pretty safe. Impossible to do this with no risk at all.”

“I know.” Bane’s eyes flicked unconsciously to me. “And yes, we have a few nonLees.”

“Fine, no need to worry about those guards, then. The four in the locomotive are the problem. They’ll stop when they see the signal, but they’ll immediately get on the phone to base and it will only be minutes, at most, before they’re told EuroTrac know nothing about an emergency signal. At which point they’ll slam the throttle wide open and get the hell out of there. So to avoid that, I suggest you blow the track in front and behind as soon as they’re stopped. Happy with that?”

Bane glanced around the table.

“That’s fine. We’re happy to blow up inanimate objects, as the EuroGov have reason to know.”

“You only
threatened
to blow up the Vatican. No one knew if you were really serious.”

“The EuroGov obviously thought so,” remarked Jon.

Carla made a dismissive gesture.

“Anyway, you’ll have to be really, really fast getting what you want, because the EuroArmy will have a helicopter
en route
within minutes.”

Bane glanced at Father Mark.

“D’you think Eduardo’s got anything to jam phone signals?”

“Wouldn’t be surprised. That would take a lot of pressure off. Hard to see how we can actually empty an entire train, otherwise. It’s a lot of risk just to grab a few boxes.”

“You see why it’s easier if you kill them all. Dead men don’t tell tales until you’re well away.” All the same, Carla looked green with envy at the suggestion of a signalJammer.

“
Anyway
…” said Bane, meaningfully.

“Fine.
Anyway,
back to the matter of the guards in the locomotive. The thing’s entirely enclosed, so the problem’s getting the door open to get to them.”

“Do we need to get to them?” I remarked.

“What?”

“Well, can they do anything to us if they’re in there? Couldn’t we find some way to stop them getting
out
, rather than try and get ourselves shot getting
in
.”

Carla stared at me for a moment.

“The windows don’t open,” said Francesco thoughtfully.

“No, they don’t, do they. Signorina Silver-tongue may have hit it.
Not
getting to guards just isn’t usually something we consider.”

“I hate to be negative…” said Jon.

“What are you doing in here, anyway?” Carla interrupted him. “
You’re
not going to be hijacking any train.”

Jon closed his eyes for a moment, then went on as though she hadn’t spoken.

“…What do we do if they don’t stop?”

“Simple. You rig the track to blow as far ahead of the signal as visibility allows. They don’t stop, blow it and they
have
to stop.”