The Keepers of the Library (25 page)

N
either Greg nor Nancy talked much during
their two-and-a-half-hour ride from Glasgow to Pinn. For the most part Greg drove, relying on the nav system while Nancy stared at the misty landscape. Although there was no snow, save for the tops of the fells, the morning frost was still clinging to the verges and the meadows, and small melting icicles were dripping from the downspouts and gutters of village roofs.

They arrived in Kirkby Stephen at lunchtime, and with time to kill, they stopped at a café for sandwiches. There, they read the local newspaper splashed with stories on the front page about a mysterious police action in Pinn. At other tables it was clear that this was all that people were talking about but it was equally clear that no one knew the underlying facts. Nancy asked their waitress what she thought and got the two favorite theories: there was either a drugs factory at the farmhouse or some kind of armed religious cult. The girl added, “Fowks at Mallerstang are weird, ya know.”

They waited until three to make the final drive to Lightburn Farm, and at three thirty, with only four kilometers to go to their destination, they hit a wall
of traffic on the B road to Pinn. Nancy got out of the stopped car and asked one of the people milling beside their own halted vehicle.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“There’s a roadblock ahead,” the motorist answered. “Some kind of police business.” Some cars were executing three-point turns and reversing. “That’s what I’m going t’ do,” the man said, climbing back into his car.

She poked her head into the open car window and told Greg, “We don’t have all the time in the world. Let’s pull off the road and hike the rest of the way.”

O
fficer Wilson awoke with a start in the backseat of his patrol car. One of his fellow community patrol officers, a crusty older officer named Perkins, tossed a foil-wrapped bacon sandwich into his lap from the front.

“They passed these out but I let you have your kip,” he said. “Sweet dreams?”

Wilson tried to stretch his legs without success. “Not likely. Can they do this?”

“Do what, marra?”

“Keep us on duty round th’ clock without proper breaks.”

“Don’t bother ringin’ your union steward. Since they’ve declared a police emergency they own your bollocks. Unless you choose t’ return t’ civilian life.”

“I might just do that,” Wilson said, unwrapping the sandwich. “I’ve got enough saved t’ make it till th’ Horizon without working.”

Perkins snorted. “Your luck, the Horizon’ll come and go, the world’ll be dancing and singing, and you’ll have t’ blow your brains out ‘cause you’re bankrupt.”

The sandwich was gone, wolfed down in a few
bites. Wilson looked at his watch. “Half two, and th’ light’s already startin’ t’ go. Let’s take our posts.”

“Thought you were packin’ it in?”

“My missus would kill me if I spent the next year sittin’ at home,” Wilson said. Something caught his attention on the fells. “See that?”

“What?”

“There’s some walkers over yon headin’ toward th’ farm.”

“Christ’s sake,” Perkins said, opening his door. The cold air rushed in. “Tapped fools don’t realize they’re likely t’ be shot. Come on.”

The two officers strode up the fells waving their arms to get the attention of the walkers.

Nancy and Greg saw the policemen in the distance and swore. The hike had taken longer than Nancy thought it would. They’d taken a tack away from the easy visibility of the road which meant having to go partway up the fells. Their leather-soled shoes gripped the slippery slope poorly and there were stone walls to traverse.

“What do we do?” Greg asked. The stone outbuilding Will had described was within view.

“We’ve got to talk our way around them,” she said.

They gingerly made their way down the fells toward the policemen. Nancy whispered to Greg to let her do the talking.

“Hello, Officers, is there a problem?”

“What do th’ two of ya think you’re doing?” Perkins asked.

“We’re having a walk,” she said.

“Is that right?” Wilson asked. “Didn’t ya see th’ roadblock up there?”

“We thought that was just for cars.”

Perkins was looking at their street shoes. “If you lot are fells walkers then I’m the king of England.”

Nancy smiled at them as coquettishly as she could. “Look, Officers, the truth is we’re journalists. We’re just trying to get close enough to observe what’s going on and get a good story out. Could you give us a break?”

“Look, missy,” Perkins said. “There’s a police action in progress. If we had a few miles of incident tape we would’ve marked out a perimeter. So, we won’t arrest ya for perverting the course of justice if you turn around and go back t’ your vehicle wherever you’ve left it.”

Nancy and Greg exchanged glances. They had no options. With desperate glances at the outbuilding ahead, they turned around and walked away.

D
eep in a bunker at RAF Fylingdales, the joint UK and US Ballistic Weapons Warning System on the North York Moors, a British RAF radar tech and his US Air Force counterpart were manning their work screens during the evening shift.

At 16:33, a faint green circle appeared six kilometers north of Whitby, heading east to west from the direction of the North Sea. It was on-screen for under two seconds then disappeared. None of the autoalarms triggered.

“Did you see that?” the British tech said.

“I think it’s a glitch,” the American answered.

The British tech didn’t seem satisfied. “I’m playing it back.”

He went into playback mode on another screen and slowed the image down. The ultrafaint signal from Fylingdale’s phased-array radar system, if not an anomaly, was moving at 320 kilometers per hour close to the deck.

“I think it’s birds,” the American said.

“Pretty fast flippin’ birds,” the Brit answered. “It could be a stealth signal.” He reached for a red handset.

“You’re not telling me you’re going to scramble jets over that piece of crap shadow!” the American exclaimed.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. I live here, mate. You don’t.”

L
ow clouds filled the Mallerstang Valley and filtered out much of the last afternoon light. The towering Wild Boar Fell rose to the east of Lightburn Farm and High Seat was to its west. The geography seemed to guard the farm from the coming night. Down on the valley floor, high-intensity floodlights powered by humming generators lit the terrain as if it were a film set.

The police on foot patrol were the first to hear it, a high-pitched whine that rapidly flared in volume. Something seemed to be approaching from the northeast. Officers Wilson and Perkins in position on the north side of the farm strained to see what they heard. The whine stabilized as if something that had been moving was now stationary.

Although he was half a mile away on the opposite side of the valley, Kenney was perhaps the first to identify the source of the noise.

He trained his night-vision scope on the western slope of the High Seat fell and saw a hovering helicopter and men making a rope egress.

“What the hell is going on?” he mumbled.

“What is it, chief?” Lopez asked.

“Someone’s dropped in a special ops team.”

“Is it us?” Harper said.

“Of course it’s not us! I think we’d know about it, don’t you?”

“Do you think the Brits know what’s going on in there?” Harper asked.

“No way,” Kenney said. “We’re listening to all their comm. We haven’t heard jack shit about a Library. Still, it’s got to be the Brits. I mean, who the hell else could it be?”

“Can you make out any insignia on the chopper?” Lopez asked.

Kenney grunted a no and called Groom Lake.

A
dozen special ops troops outfitted with short-barrel automatic rifles and night-vision headgear hit the slope of the fell and began racing downhill, surefooted despite the slick grass.

Officer Wilson thought he saw the distant form of a man through the mist and radioed to the incident van. The Assistant Chief Constable picked up, and Wilson said, “ ’Scuse me, Guv, do we have any of our blokes coming down High Seat?”

“Course we don’t. What’s making that bloody noise? Can you see anything?”

“I think …” Wilson dropped the radio and it dangled by his side. He instinctively felt his chest, and the last thing he saw before falling backward was his hands, wet and red.

Perkins managed to transmit a frantic, “Officer down! Officer down!” before he took a .50-caliber sniper round to his head and dropped stone-dead beside his partner.

Inside the incident van, Chief Constable Raab responded by shouting questions over the radio.

“All units, is the fire coming from the house or the barn?”

A series of responses flooded in jamming the airwaves and making it hard for Raab to process the info.

“Nothing from the house!”

“Not the barn!”

“It’s coming from High Seat.”

“Taking fire! Man down!”

“I see them! They look military!”

“There’s a helicopter up on the fell!”

Raab turned to the Assistant Chief Constable, who had the look of a man who was going to be ill. “We’re sitting ducks,” Raab said. “We either turn tail or engage the hostiles.”

A large-caliber round passed through the van well over their heads but they hit the floor nonetheless.

“What shall we do?” the Assistant Chief Constable croaked.

Raab said coolly, “Why don’t you give the order to return fire while I call the MOD to see if I can find out what the hell is going on here.”

A
dmiral Sage became unhinged and began screaming into his phone. It was immediately apparent to Kenney that he had no knowledge of the unfolding operation.

“It’s got to be the British Army trying to take control of the facility,” Sage yelled, “but I don’t know how the hell they found out about it unless there’s a leak at the Pentagon. The SecDef is meeting with the Joint Chiefs right now to formulate our own plan to present to the President.”

Kenney interrupted him. “Admiral, I’ve seen four cops go down by sniper fire in the past minute. You think they’d be taking out their own guys?”

“If it’s not them, who is it?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Jesus Christ, Kenney! Don’t tell me you don’t
know,” he shouted. “Find out! I’ve got to break into the SecDef’s meeting. Call me back.”

D
aniel Lightburn knelt on the floor of his bedroom and parted the curtains of a rear-facing window. His son Andrew crawled across the rug until he was next to him, “Are they comin’?”

Daniel motioned for him to keep his head down, and said, “Someone’s comin’ but it’s nae th’ police. I just saw a copper get his head blowed off.”

“What should we do?”

“Are the women underground?”

“Yeah.”

“You and me are gonna defend th’ house. If they come in, we blast ’em. Kheelan and Douglas are still in th’ barn, reet?”

Andrew nodded.

“Good. The bastards are coming down the fells, so th’ barn’s a good place t’ take ’em on. You scared, son?”

“Wee bit.”

“Don’t be. If it’s our time, it’s our time. Simple as pie.”

N
ancy and Greg were just north of Lightburn Farm when the shooting began. Nancy pulled Greg down onto the cold grass and watched in amazement as tracer rounds came in showers off the fells. She saw the two officers who’d turned them back go down from long-range fire. By habit, she started to reach for her weapon which wasn’t there.

She couldn’t understand why it was taking so long for the police to return fire but the order must have
been given because all of a sudden the officers started defending themselves with semiautomatic pistol and rifle fire.

“Someone knows about the Library, Greg, and they’re trying to get to it.”

He seemed too scared to lift his head. She heard a muffled, “Who?”

“I hope to hell it’s not us.”

“You mean Area 51?” he said.

She ignored the question. “We’ve got to get Phillip and Will out of there.”

W
ill had spent all day chained to his bunk beside Phillip and Annie. Haven and Cacia had come down to deliver meals and Kheelan and Daniel had both paid surly visits to check their bonds. In the morning, while waiting for his turn in the lavatory, Will had seen one of the writers, the oldest one. The old man had looked through him as if he didn’t exist.

During the morning, he had tried to keep things light for Phillip, making jokes and small talk with him and Annie, but the boy seemed to grow more choleric every time he and Annie exchanged a laugh or a smile.

In the afternoon, Will pulled in his horns and stayed quiet. While Phillip and Annie napped, he stared at his watch and counted down the hours until 5
P.M.

“Did you hear that?” Will asked, looking at the ceiling.

Though muffled, he recognized the prolonged and irregular staccato of automatic weapons—a firefight.

“It’s started,” Annie said, sitting up. “They’re coming to rescue us.”

“You think?” Will said. “I don’t hear shotgun fire coming from the house.”

“What then?”

“Beats me, but I don’t like it. It’s almost five. I hope Cacia’s okay or we’re kind of screwed.”

Phillip tried not to look scared but Will could tell he was.

“Don’t worry, kiddo,” Will said. “We’re going to get out of this fine and we’re going to have some great stories for Mom.”

T
he police dived for cover as rounds crashed into car doors and tree trunks. The unarmed Community Patrol Officers could only cower and try to survive while the SWAT members engaged an unseen foe, blindly firing bursts up to the fell.

Inside the incident van, the Assistant Chief Constable shouted at the driver to move the vehicle up the road out of the line of fire but as the driver took his place at the wheel a round shattered the glass and his head.

Two MI5 men scrambled into the van and hugged the floor as they made their way to the Chief Constable who was on the carpet with his mobile at his ear.

“I’m getting shunted from office to office at the MOD. Nobody seems to know anything,” Raab bellowed.