Tamsin Beech Ch. 12: Windermere

"Who wants to know?" she asked.

The man laughed, drawing the attention of some of the locals, "After what you did ya sheriously don't fuckin' recall?"

Jessamy peered more closely at the scarred newcomer. If she'd met someone as imposing as this before, surely she'd remember.

Then she had it. Before she'd realised his innocence, Jessamy had been escorting Hamnavoe back to stand trial on Orkney. They'd walked into Nairn on Scotland's east coast and gone straight to the harbour. The boat Jessamy had expected, the old John O' Groats ferry, 'Pentland Venture' had been moored up ready and waiting. But unfortunately, so had Bob Spivey and his goons, blocking their way.

"I don't want a scene Spivey," Jessamy had warned, "just let us get on the boat."

"Hey Bob, why ain't she even got him in cuffs?" asked Milo, a big lumbering giant of a man wearing a full length black leather coat.

"Yeah Beech, you goin' soft?" Spivey had taunted.

"How I treat my captives is my fuckin' business. Now stand aside," Jessamy had noticed a few locals stop what they were doing to watch the confrontation.

Spivey had taken a step forward, "We'll take him from here ... unless we can come to some sort of an agreement?" he'd lewdly clutched his groin.

"Fuck you!" Jessamy had snarled.

Spivey had grinned, the sun catching one of his gold teeth, "That's what I ..."

Jessamy's arm had been a blur as her hand crossed the distance to Spivey's throat and delivered a crushing blow. She remembered seeing Hamnavoe wince at the sound of cartilage cracking as Spivey staggered back clutching his neck.

In the seconds that followed both Spivey's colleagues had died. Cheswick with Jessamy's Royal Marines Commando knife embedded in his right eye, Milo drowned in the oily waters of Nairn's harbour.

"Spivey!" Jessamy exclaimed, immediately on her guard.

"Yeah. An' thanksh to you I still can't talk pro-perly," Spivey took a great swallow from a leather mug of ale.

Jessamy didn't want to make a scene. All she wanted were answers. And besides, there was no way of knowing how many of the tavern's clientele were Spivey's associates, "Listen, uh ... Bob. I'm sorry about the, um ... neck."

"Pfft," Spivey waved a hand, "it's all in the pasht darlin'. What ha-ppened with the killer anyway, the Ham-navoe guy?"

"I married him."

"You m ..." Spivey shook his head in disbelief, grinning. As far as Jessamy could tell he carried only a handgun and hunting knife with a shotgun and two machetes strapped across his back, "shit ... you're fulla shur-prises woman. What's he got that I ain't?"

"A conscience?" Jessamy grinned, "anyway ... I like to keep you guys guessing. What happened to your face?"

"Reiver. Weegie guy by the name of McNeish. Using cramponsh as knuckle dus-ters," Spivey touched his fingertips to the scars as he edged a little closer, "sho ... what you doin' over thish way?"

"Looking for someone," Jessamy answered guardedly after a second's hesitation. Someone like Spivey wasn't to be trusted, "as a ... favour. I'm after someone who used to be at the Coalition holding facility in Fort George."

"Coalition are pished. What's left of 'em any-how. I seen a lot headin' south. Maybe for winter. Maybe for good."

Jessamy raised an eyebrow, "Do you know anything or not?"

Spivey's eyes wandered around the room to ensure no-one else was in earshot, "I might know ... something."

Jessamy tried to sound nonchalant. But her pulse was racing. Could it be this simple to find news of Ada's whereabouts? "Oh? What?"

Spivey leaned closer, "It'll cost ya."

"How much?"

Spivey glowered, his hoarse voice taking on a hard edge, "I've never for-gotten what you an' the Scot did to Milo an' Cheshwick. Took me fuckin' months to find new part-nersh. Not to mention get my fuckin' voice back."

Jessamy held his gaze, "So how much?"

"A night of your time," Spivey answered.

"You want to fuck me? Still? Hmm ..." Jessamy frowned as if giving the proposal serious consideration. She'd no more get into bed with Bob Spivey than she'd saw her own legs off. But that wasn't what he'd want to hear. She ran a finger down the lapel of his coat, "I think just this once ... we could probably come to some ... mutual understanding."

Spivey huffed, "You're shtill lookin' good. Tits might be gettin' saggy. But a wo-man o' your age should be grateful of the atten-tion though."

Jessamy decided to ignore that remark. She leaned closer, straining to hear his whispery voice, "Fine. I'll fuck you. But ONLY if you tell me what I need to know."

Spivey scratched the flaky skin on the pink ridges of his scars, "From what I heard, women from Fort George were all shent to a work camp, kidsh were all recruited."

Nothing that she hadn't already heard from Finlayson, "Recruited?"

Spivey's hand strayed to Jessamy's thigh. She allowed it, as he continued, "So it's a kid you're after? They were brainwashed. All of 'em. It was Zakh-vatchikov's idea. Indoc-trinated for the Coalition's Spetsnaz. Their special forces."

"Yeah I know who the Spetsnaz are."

"Fine. Then they kept the besht of 'em for the president's per-sonal bodyguard."

Brainwashed? Spetsnaz? This was worse than she'd thought. It was still only a possibility that Ada had in fact been recruited. But into their elite? And they'd heard Zakhvatchikov was dead. Surely the presidential guard would have been wiped out too? "But the fleet was destroyed by, um ... the resistance."

Spivey tapped the side of his misshapen nose as his other hand slid around to rest on the taut globes of Jessamy's ass, "There's ru-mours the president escaped."

Confirmation of what they'd suspected. But Jessamy was confused, "Zakhvatchikov?"

"Nah," Spivey shook his head, "new guy. Evil fucker."

The feel of Spivey's hand caressing her ass was beginning to make Jessamy feel nauseous. She fought against the almost overpowering urge to snap his wrist, "So if the rumours are true he would've taken his bodyguard with him?"

Spivey nodded, groping Jessamy's ass more insistently through her thick sealskin trousers, "Yep. They'd have stuck with'im like shit to a bed. And everyone else will o' been va-pourised. So far as I know there are no more Spetsnaz left on dry land now. If who-ever it is you're lookin' for didn't make the grade, they're toast. You've still got a fuckin' gor-geous arse on ya ..."

"So what about the president's bodyguard? Where are they?"

Spivey shifted uncomfortably. Jessamy could guess he was probably getting a hard on from molesting her in the middle of a crowded tavern. Imagining what he'd like to do to her in the privacy of his own accommodation. Good, she thought. Let the twat squirm, "Any ships that shur-vived would have headed to their emer-gency rendezvous."

Emergency rendezvous?

"Which is where?" Jessamy suppressed a shudder of revulsion as she felt Spivey's hand slide up between her thighs. She briefly wondered how it'd feel to be fingered by him. The idea made her feel sick. Any second now she was going to have to make a move.

Spivey shook his head, "South maybe? I don't have a fuckin' clue darlin'. Now let's go back to mine an' get you outta them clothes. You're takin' it up the shitbox tonight."

One last thing was troubling Jessamy. For a moderately successful bounty hunter Spivey seemed to know an awful lot about the inner workings of the defeated Coalition, "How do you know all this?"

Spivey's other hand appeared from under the bar, pointing an antique Beretta handgun at Jessamy's face, "Because the kids from Fort fuckin' George weren't the only ones the Coalition recruited. Why d'you need to know all this shit, Beech?"

Her arm moved so quickly he had no chance of reacting, as she flung her glass of rotgut whisky in Spivey's eyes ...

BLAM!

Jessamy ducked reflexively as he squealed hoarsely and let off a wild shot. The tavern's patrons scrambled for cover or drew their own weapons as Spivey thumbed stinging alcohol from his eyes, "FUCKIN' BITCH!"

As Spivey turned, trying to locate his target, Jessamy lunged for the door.

BLAM-BLAM!

His next two shots sizzled past her by mere inches. One hitting the tavern's crumbling plasterboard, the other blasting a hole through the head of a local prostitute. Then all hell broke loose ...

TAKATAKATAK!

Assault rifles and shotguns opened up as Jessamy skidded on the wet cobbles outside. The tavern's patrons wouldn't be concerned that the prostitute's death was an unfortunate accident. They'd only want justice.

"I'm really getting too old for this shit," leaving Spivey to deal with his own mess, Jessamy hightailed it back through Whitby's ruined streets to where she'd parked the GAZ Tigr - before she too became a target for the angry crowd.

If Ada was alive and had indeed been recruited, the Coalition's one surviving military vessel might be the only place she'd be, thought Jessamy. The Russians and North Koreans had invested too much in their invasion and occupation to simply give up and leave. So where in all the UK could they possibly hide an aircraft carrier and thirty odd nuclear weapons? For the sake of Fort George, Kirkwall and however many other new communities there were in the UK, she had to find their emergency rendezvous.

At any cost.

. . .

Several hours of near blizzard conditions during the night had obliterated her tracks from the previous day, "Jigeum na reul ttarabosipsio, am kae," Yeonmi muttered with a satisfied grin.

After feeding and changing Jag-eun Neugdae and Angus, and checking both babies were warm enough in the back, she made herself something hot for breakfast then drove the stolen armoured personnel carrier out of Stirling. She still had a long way to go.

Compared to the day before, the weather couldn't have been more different. Under a leaden sky that began dropping more snow the moment she set off, Yeonmi continued south along what had once been the M80 past Cumbernauld. Through areas of fog so dense she had to slow the big vehicle to a crawl to avoid driving off the pot-holed road.

When the babies - first Jag-eun Neugdae, then Angus began wailing to be fed, she drove on rather than risk being ambushed in an area with such poor visibility.

Wary of black ice and the strengthening wind blowing debris across the carriageway, Yeonmi sped on. Through a bleak landscape of low hills, past deserted farms and villages, gaping meteorite craters and thousands upon thousands of blackened tree stumps she continued. Along what had once been called the M74 as far as Moffat, and then onto Carlisle. It wasn't until she'd passed Penrith and according to her map was nearing the town of Shap, that Yeonmi encountered her first major snag ...

CLANG!

With a jolt, the BTR-94 slewed across the road, scraping the barriers along the central reservation as its armoured nose hit a wrecked vehicle almost blocking the lane. Stupidly Yeonmi had been driving recklessly fast straight into a fog bank. She slammed on the brakes, praying that the babies wouldn't wake up and start bawling as she listened intently ...

Jag-eun Neugdae snuffled and fidgeted but surprisingly remained asleep. Yeonmi's heart thudded in her chest. The vehicle she'd hit - a mobile home, seemed to have been deliberately positioned side on across the road. The BTR-94 had barely clipped one side of the cab as it shoved it out of the way.

Yeonmi cautiously drew her Grach from its holster and thumbed off the safety as she peered around at the swirling fog - an impenetrable wall of murky grey obscuring both sides of the motorway.

"Close off the road!" shouted a muffled voice way off in the distance, "it's Russian fuckers. They'll be tooled up."

Bandits? Perhaps. Yeonmi wasn't about to hang around and find out. Clenching her jaw she executed a quick turn - the Ukrainian built BTR-94's eight fat wheels squealing on the icy tarmac.

TAKATAKATAK! PTANG!

A controlled burst of automatic weapons' fire and a crude spear ricocheted off the APC's rusting armour plate as Yeonmi floored the accelerator and sped back the way she'd come - just in time to avoid the makeshift roadblock of a massive trailer being heaved into place by a group of shabby figures.

She swerved, catching a glimpse of shaven heads, tattoos, armour made from scraps of metal and sections of tyre. A mix of crude axes, Kalashnikovs and vicious looking halberds ...

Reivers.

"Deo ppalli ttong jogag," Yeonmi cursed under her breath, as adrenaline flooded through her body. She had good reason to be afraid - glancing back over her shoulder, she spotted two other vehicles already steering around the roadblock to give pursuit. An ancient military Humvee with half its khaki bodywork missing and a Toyota pickup sporting a roof mounted machine gun.

As if on cue, both Angus and Jag-eun Neugdae started screaming to be fed.

She was going to have to find another route south. That was if she and the infants survived the next few minutes ...

. . .

"NOW WHAT DO WE DO?" Tamsin Beech yelled. By the grey light of dawn, she waved a hand at the road stretching off into the distance - the shapes of abandoned vehicles and gutted wreck of a crashed Flybe airliner softened by the inches of wind driven snow that had blown in during the night, the tracks made by the North Korean's BTR-94 utterly erased.

Leonid Denisovich grabbed her firmly by the shoulders, "Please. Moya lyubov. Try to stay calm. We can guess which way Yeonmi's heading."

At Leonid's insistence they'd stopped for just a couple of hours on the outskirts of Stirling. With no working headlights on the Tigr, it would have been impossible to drive the forty year old vehicle at night. And strung out as they were with worry for their son's welfare they'd both needed rest.

"Don't moya lyubov me," Tamsin pulled away, "we need to get going."

Leonid pulled on his gloves, watching her climb back into their Tigr. After Thanatos and the subsequent invasion there were only so many roads still passable. He knew for a fact that Zakhvatchikov had wanted the motorways reopened to link all the Coalition's outposts and colonies. But if Yeonmi had turned off onto a dirt track somewhere they might never find her. Or Angus.

"Are you coming or not?" Tamsin called. He noticed she'd climbed into the driver's seat after constantly berating his own skill behind the wheel all the previous day. Angus had been missing for a little over a day and it seemed that instead of bringing them closer together, the crisis was instead tearing them apart.

"Da. Da, I'm coming."

Ten minutes later, Tamsin steered them quickly through Stirling's city centre. Buildings had collapsed against one another like dominos, creating towering piles of mouldering rubble blocking half the road. A branch of Boots, a derelict Lidl supermarket. Down a side street a pack of feral dogs - or perhaps wolves, it was difficult to tell - fought over some meaty bone still clad in scraps of faded clothing.

Surely if Yeonmi could steal and drive a huge APC all this way, she'd be able to defend the three of them against wild animals, thought Tamsin. Try as she might to convince herself, a seed of doubt remained - they had to find the North Korean and Angus as quickly as possible. Ignoring the icy condition of the road, Tamsin stamped on the accelerator ...

Through the morning they continued south through thick fog and yet more snow, the visibility down to no more than a hundred yards. Several times Tamsin imagined she could see tyre racks on the road ahead but each time it turned out to be no more than her own wishful thinking.

It was as they were passing through the outskirts of Penrith, that Leonid suddenly seized Tamsin's arm, pointing frantically ahead, "THERE!"

Barreling towards them at top speed was a BTR-94 armoured personnel carrier. It took a moment to register in Tamsin's consciousness. Her red rimmed eyes widened as the rusting vehicle bore down on them, jouncing and swaying on the uneven road surface, "It's her! It's gotta be!"

"What the fuck is she doing?" shouted Leonid.

The BTR-94 lifted momentarily onto four of its eight fat tyres as it skidded off the motorway barely fifty yards in front of them, onto a sliproad heading west.

"And where the fuck is she going?" Tamsin slowed to take the turn at a safer pace ...

TAKATAKATAK!

... just as one side of the Tigr's windscreen crazed - a bullet missing her face by inches as two more vehicles erupted from the murk up ahead, sending up plumes of fresh snow in their wake. A military Humvee with much of its bodywork missing and a ramshackle Toyota pickup with a roof mounted machine gun.

Tamsin steered quickly right onto the sliproad and slammed on the Tigr's brakes to prevent the newcomers from chasing the BTR-94, "IT'S REIVERS! THEY'RE AFTER YEONMI."

Leonid had guessed the same thing. This wasn't about protecting Yeonmi. It was about stopping the Reivers getting to Angus. Cradling his AK12, he pushed the right side passenger door open and rolled out as Tamsin ducked down into the footwell.

"STAY DOWN!" Leonid yelled. In his peripheral vision he spotted Yeonmi's BTR-94 turning left onto a side road and disappearing from view.

. . .

Yeonmi couldn't believe her shitty rotten luck as she drove north with the Reivers in hot pursuit. One second she'd been roaring through dense fog spread like a suffocating white blanket across the motorway, with the two babies screaming hysterically in her ears from the APC's troop compartment.

The next, there they were. Tamsin Beech and the traitor Leonid Denisovich. Coming straight for her in Fort George's last remaining Tigr all terrain vehicle. How the fuck had they found her?

Later that day she would admit to herself that she'd panicked. She'd had sufficient time to plan alternative routes off the motorway. But in her arrogance she'd forgotten her training and simply hadn't bothered - an almost fatal mistake. Capture by Reivers usually meant rape, torture and death. Not necessarily in that order.

"Na-ege hyusig-eul jwo!" bullets spanged off the APC's undercarriage as the Reivers aimed at her tyres. Spotting the turn off towards the Cumbrian town of Keswick, Yeonmi wrenched the wheel hard left, almost flipping the APC on its side as the approaching Tigr slowed and her pursuers burst from the fogbank behind her.

Damn it. Keswick and the surrounding area were flooded. Zakhvatchikov's people had discovered that when they'd gone in search of the Airforce One wreckage. It didn't matter if the Reivers or the Beech woman got to her first - if she followed the A66 west it would be a dead end. Ignoring the hungry wails of the two infants for the moment, Yeonmi took another left turn down a rutted track.

'WINDERMERE 27 MILES' read a mud streaked road sign.

. . .

TAKATAKATAK!

"Did they spot you?" Leonid called urgently. He'd dropped into a shallow crater on the hard shoulder as big calibre Reiver bullets thocked into the already chewed up tarmac.

"Don't think so!" Tamsin called back irritably from her hiding place. They'd had her. They'd caught up with the bitch Yeonmi who'd stolen their son. Now all that stood between them were a raiding party of fucking Reivers.

"Keep it that way!" he hissed, and abruptly stood up with his arms raised above his head in surrender.

"What the ... you stupid Russian fuckwit," mouthed Tamsin in disbelief, as through the Tigr's open door she watched him chuck his AK12 onto the road, and the lead Reiver vehicle - the Toyota pickup, screech to a halt.

"Don't shoot! I'll come quietly," Leonid called cheerfully as the pickup's machine gunner hopped down. A hulking brute with filed teeth, wearing armour made of tyre strips, and carrying an enormous red fire axe.

Tamsin could see only two of them. The pickup's gunner and the driver. Though hiding in the Tigr's footwell she had no idea where the Humvee had gone. As the Reiver gunner closed on Leonid she took careful aim with her Grach.