Tamsin Beech Ch. 14: Portsmouth

The woman's eyes widened as she spotted Ada.

Was it even possible? After all this time?

With trembling lips Ada opened her mouth to speak, "Mu ... mummy?"

Volk looked askance at her, "What the fuck is going on?" he demanded, "you know this woman?"

Beyond the doorway, Jessamy Beech struggled desperately against the cable tie securing her wrists and tried to force her way past the two guards, "Let me see my daughter, PLEASE!"

"Your daughter?" Volk asked in English. He looked stunned for a moment, then smiled as realisation dawned, "so ... young Ada Prizrak isn't Ada Prizrak at all, but the daughter of the great Jessamy Beech? Neveroyatno. Incredible."

"Please let me see her."

"Oh I don't think so. Ada is one of us now. She's sworn loyalty to the Coalition."

"YOU MOTHERFUCKER!" Jessamy had to be forcibly restrained by both guards as she lunged towards the doorway.

Volk studied his captive, "So you're Jessamy Beech, eh? THE Jessamy Beech. Who apparently saved the world a few years back? Twice, if ... the stories are true. But I think you'll find you're too late this time," he turned to the console and jabbed a button, "voice authorisation ... Volk, Alexei ... 206546. Prepare to receive launch code."

"Otpechatok golosa podtverzhden. Ozhidaniye koda zapuska ..." intoned a synthesized voice from the console.

"Thirty four Topol ICBMs up on the flight deck are awaiting my command," Volk informed Jessamy, "all I have to do is speak the twenty four digit launch code."

Ada was torn. Beside her, President Volk prepared to unleash nuclear annihilation on the UK's last few pockets of civilization. The president had fed her, the Coalition given her shelter and a purpose in life. She owed them everything.

But outside in the corridor, a wild eyed and disheveled woman that she'd only barely recognised struggled against two of the president's bodyguards, proclaiming to be her mother. For the first time in thirteen years Ada Prizrak began to seriously wonder where her loyalties should be.

Volk regarded her warily from the corner of his eye, then opened his holster and calmly drew a freshly oiled Grach handgun. No looted and worn cast-offs for the president.

From the corridor outside, an unfamiliar voice bellowed. A woman's voice, "WEAPONS DOWN! ON THE FUCKING FLOOR! MOVE!"

"SOPROTUVLENIYE!" cried one of the Spetsnaz, "Tamsin Zakhvatchikov!"

TAKATAKATAK!

On spotting one of their sworn enemies, one of the Spetsnaz opened fire with his AK12 ...

BLAM!

... and was thrown backwards with a bullet in the head.

"The name's Beech. How many fucking more times?" then incredibly, the resistance leader herself - Tamsin Beech stepped into view outside, as the second Spetsnaz roughly shoved Jessamy out of the way into the missile room.

"Getoffome!" Jessamy twisted away and, catching the guard off balance, shoulder charged him. Sending him sprawling back out into the corridor ...

BLAM!

... straight into Tamsin Beech's firing line.

Ada's eyes darted around the small room for a weapon. But apart from Alexei Volk's Grach there was nothing. She kicked off her impractical shoes and dropped into a fighting stance ...

... just as the president seized Jessamy Beech by the collar and wrapped an arm around her neck, pulling her against him as a human shield. Tamsin stepped into the doorway.

"One more step and I'll kill her," snarled Volk.

Tamsin stared at him calmly down the sight of her own handgun, "Aunt Jess."

"Tamz. Fancy meeting you here."

Alexei Volk appeared to be a withered shadow of the man she'd known on Lindisfarne. He'd been an imposing figure back then, setting impossible standards for his troops while Commandant of the Northern Colonies. Now he looked ashen, unkempt and ... old. A pathetic shell driven to insanity by the Coalition's crippling losses.

"Long time no see Volk. I'd say it's good to see you again, but I'd be lying. Let Jessamy and the girl go ... you piece of shit."

Volk pressed his own weapon up against Jessamy's side, "The girl ... is my bodyguard. My bodyguard. She's sworn to defend me until her last breath. She stays. I'd say ... you have about thirty seconds until the corridor you're standing in is full of trigger happy North Koreans."

"I'll take that chance. Let Jessamy go."

Volk ignored her, "Computer! Launch sequence begins ... 206 ... 546 ..."

"Dva ... nol ... shest ... pyat ... chetyre ... shest," repeated the missile room's launch computer.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?" Tamsin yelled, "are you insane?"

"Quite possibly," replied Volk, "006 ... 956."

"Nol ... nol ... shest ... devyat ... pyat ... shest."

Twelve digits to go ...

Tamsin stepped boldly over the threshold into the missile room itself, eyes blazing, "VOLK! PLEASE! Stop this. If it's me you want I'll surrender. Just stop the fucking launch."

Volk regarded her coldly, "You were a spoilt little bitch on Lindisfarne. Always wanted your own way. That's what got that boy ... what was his name?"

"Timur?"

From somewhere behind Tamsin, she could hear shouts and running footsteps. Volk nodded, "That's what got Timur shot. When are you going to realise Miss Zakhvatchikov, that everything isn't always about you?"

BLAM-BLAM!

Neither of his shots could possibly miss, fired point blank into Jessamy Beech's abdomen. She gasped in pain and slumped forward. But Volk held her up, "119 ... 817."

"Odin ... odin ... devyat ... vosem ... odin ... sem," repeated the launch computer.

"BASTARD!" Tamsin yelled.

Ada stared wide-eyed. What was she supposed to do? The man she'd sworn to lay down her life for had just shot her long lost mother.

"Sh-shoot ... him Tamz," Jessamy hissed, blood frothing from the corner of her mouth.

One more sequence of six digits and the launch code would be complete.

"I CAN'T!" Tamsin screamed, "I ... I MIGHT HIT YOU!"

Tamsin had often asked herself if she'd be prepared to sacrifice someone she loved for the greater good. Leonid. Angus, or even her parents. She'd never been able to give herself a satisfactory answer.

Summoning up the last of her strength, Jessamy lifted her head and sought out Tamsin's eyes with her own. Pleading, "Just take the fucking shot Tamsin! This has to end now."

Tamsin nodded once, hoping that the simple gesture might somehow convey the love and deep respect she felt for the woman the entire United Kingdom regarded as a legend. She took aim ...

BLAM!

... and a redundant monitor exploded as the shot went wide. A woman's black stiletto had hit her knuckles and knocked the Grach out of her hands.

"What the fu ..." Tamsin swore across the room at the pretty blonde in a cocktail dress standing behind Volk. It certainly looked like Jessamy's daughter Ada. But why the fuck would she simply stand by and watch her own mother shot?

"2 ... 0 ..." began Volk.

"Dva ... nol ..."

Tamsin dropped swiftly to one knee and tugged her only remaining weapon from the side of her boot. Jessamy Beech's Royal Marines Commando knife. Jessamy would be dead in minutes anyway. If she missed Volk, she'd failed. If she accidentally hit her aunt she'd only be responsible for killing a legend a couple of minutes before her time.

She gripped the slim knife blade between thumb and forefinger, focussed on a point an inch below Volk's chin ...

... and threw it.

THUNK!

Volk dipped sideways as he spotted her hand arc forward. The knife merely grazed his ear and embedded itself in the brittle plastic surround of a wall monitor.

Blood oozing from his earlobe, Volk laughed, "Admit it. You've lost, Tamsin ... 1 ... 5 ..."

"Odin ... pyat ..."

Behind her president, Ada Prizrak wrenched the knife from the console. Her mother's knife. Thrown by the familiar looking redhead. She and her sister Phoebe had played with a red haired girl called Tamsin when they'd lived in Berwick Upon Tweed. Before the Reekies had attacked. Before the Coalition.

That couldn't be a coincidence.

Before Volk. The man who'd just shot her mother ...

"6 ..."

"Shest ..."

Memories came flooding back, sweeping her Spetsnaz conditioning aside, leaving blinding clarity. And at once Ada knew exactly what she had to do. Shifting her grip on the slim black dagger ...

... she grabbed President Alexei Volk's head and plunged it into the side of his neck.

Jessamy Beech tumbled to the floor as Volk's hands went to his neck, scrabbling for the knife. Ada twisted the blade, her bare arm slick with warm blood squirting from the mortally wounded president's severed artery.

Tamsin Beech snatched up her Grach and stumbled to her Aunt Jessamy's side, as outside in the corridor North Korean voices called urgently to one another.

. . .

"Ye damn near gave me a fuckin' heart attack ye shite brained wee bawbag."

Leonid Denisovich couldn't help but smile as he watched Phoebe root through his rucksack to see what food he'd brought.

"How'd ye ken I was here at the hotel? Did ye see ma tracks? Or ma fire?"

Leonid shook his head, "Smelt the smoke. You've picked a good spot to watch the road but you really need to be more careful Pheebs."

Phoebe helped herself to some jerky, chewing in silence for a minute, "This is tasty. Ye make this?"

"No. Finlayson."

At the mention of Finlayson, Phoebe pulled a face. It was after all the old man's homemade vodka that had put them both in their current situation.

"I read your note," Leonid continued, "it was ... er, lakonichnyy."

"Succinct?"

The Russian nodded, "Da. Succinct."

"So why are ye here?" Phoebe frowned, "I said in ma note that I've got this."

Leonid raised his hands in a placating gesture, "I came to take over. And to send you home where you'll be safe."

Phoebe's eyes blazed in the light of her smouldering fire. She rose to her feet, "Bollocks! Like fuck ye will! I'm no' a wee lassie anymore."

"You're certainly not," Leonid involuntarily smirked, "but Phoebe, consider this ... if I can find you that easily then the Reiver scouts probably can too. If they capture you, you'll honestly wish you were dead. Rape and torture will be the least of it."

Phoebe strode across the bare hotel room, fuming. Hamnavoe had told her that she'd inherited her mother's temper.

She could see the truth in Leonid's words. But damn it, she was here trying to prove her worth and make up for her indiscretion with Tamsin's husband, "I KNOW! Ma mum drummed it into me all the time we lived on Kerrera. Don't be seen. Leave no trace. I'm no' fuckin' stupid Leo! I suppose ye've told fuckin' Merida where I am?"

"As a matter of fact, no," he stood, his eyes darting to the boarded up window, "keep your voice down."

Phoebe spread her arms, her voice growing louder, "Why? I just wanted to do one thing by mysel' Leo. This one simple thing. To prove to Ross an' Merida that I'm capable. They're threatenin' to chuck me out fer shaggin' ye last night. Can ye believe that?"

Enough was enough. Leonid twisted Phoebe's arm behind her back and clamped a hand over her mouth, "Bud' spokoyen! Be quiet. The Reivers will hear your bleating from miles away."

Phoebe struggled, trying to bite the Russian's fingers. But he simply increased the pressure on her arm, sending needles of pain through her shoulder as he pushed her up against a wall.

. . .

They'd done it. The missile launch had been stopped. For the time being at least. The blonde woman in the blood soaked cocktail dress let President Volk's twitching corpse fall to the floor as Tamsin felt desperately for a pulse in Jessamy's neck.

"Ona zhiva?" asked the young woman in Russian.

Tamsin nodded, "Yes. She's alive. But only just. You're Ada, right?"

Ada nodded, "You understand Russian? Da. Yes, Ada ... Beech," she dropped to one knee and sliced through the cable tie securing her mother's wrists.

In the absence of a few pounds of C4, her Grach's entire magazine emptied into the launch computer's main console would have to do, thought Tamsin. Prevent the Baekdusan from ever launching its nukes against anyone.

"MUGILEUL TTEOL-EO TTEULIDA!" yelled a DPRK soldier from the missile room's doorway a few feet away. Tamsin glanced up to see at least half a dozen North Korean Kalashnikovs aimed at them.

"I guess that means surrender," Tamsin slowly raised her hands. What were the odds against being able to sufficiently wreck the console before she was cut down in a hail of bullets? What would be the point in even trying? With Ada Beech's help, she'd achieved more than she'd hoped. With Volk dead, a new Coalition leader would have to be chosen. Hopefully someone less volatile. Someone more ... sane.

From the corner of her eye, Tamsin watched Ada cradling Jessamy's head in her lap. She began to lower her Grach to place it on the floor.

"Geunyeo neun mujang hago itseupnida!" a twitchy young North Korean immediately raised his AK to open fire ...

SHINK!

... and yelped as a handmade shuriken sliced into the back of his hand.

"Jeung-inseog-eseo mulleona da," a grey haired old man, shrugging on a DPRK captain's tunic, pushed his way through the group of soldiers accompanied closely by a petite North Korean woman.

Yeonmi.

"STAND DOWN!" she ordered, "all of you. There's been enough killing. This has to stop."

"Get medics down here, the president's doctor," ordered Captain Geomi, "NOW!"

Tamsin assumed any medical aid would be for Jessamy, not Volk. Her former jailer was clearly beyond any kind of help.

With tears gathering in both eyes, Jessamy Beech gazed up into her daughter's face, smiling. A face she hadn't seen since sailing off from Berwick Upon Tweed all those years earlier, "Y-you've grown ... into a fine young woman."

"Save your strength mumiya," Ada's bloody hands shook as she thumbed away her mother's tears. Volk's blood? Jessamy's blood? There was no way to tell. Both their lives mingled in a widening pool on the missile room's grimy floor.

Tamsin tried to apply pressure to the two bullet wounds. But it was no use. Her aunt's life oozed from her, regardless.

Memories fluttered through Jessamy's mind as she drank in the glorious sight of her youngest daughter alive and well. Years of not knowing finally at an end. Images, like flicking through a family photo album ...

"I'm so s-sorry," whispered Jessamy, "for not c-coming to look ... for you sooner."

Impressions of boarding an evacuee train on her eighth birthday with her brother Ross, as Thanatos tore apart the heavens above Cornwall. Escaping the island of Mull after leaving Butcher Beaconsfield for dead. Her first kiss with Merida Zakhvatchikov in Oban ...

"Ssh. Let's not worry about that now. Where's Phoebe?" asked Ada.

Jessamy nodded weakly, "Your sister's safe ... a-and well."

Single combat against a Reiver champion in Tyndrum. The cultists in Glasgow. The laminated list from Airforce One. Lupita Mpenzi. Alison Nethybridge. Making love on Jiff Wiseley's scruffy trawler ...

"WHERE'S THAT FUCKING MEDIC?" Yeonmi yelled furiously. She stood in the missile room doorway watching the tableau but making no move to interfere. Tamsin nodded her gratitude for that simple act of compassion.

"Pr-promise me something ... Ada," Jessamy's face contorted as a wave of pain wracked through her. She gripped her daughter's hand.

"A-anything. Anything at all," Ada replied, "just don't fucking die on me."

Giving birth to her beautiful daughters. The desperate battle for Truro on the river Fal. Hunting, then falling in love with Hamnavoe. Executing Trevithick in Gloucester's bunker. Thanatos finally destroyed in the Earth's upper atmosphere ...

"Bit ... too l-late for that baby. Now pr-promise me. You ... a-and Phoebe ..."

Ada leaned closer as her mother's voice grew faint, "What about us?"

"Sisters. You l-look out for each other. N-never take ... the people you love ... for granted."

Penzance vapourised by Soteria. Seeing Ada cry as their yacht left Berwick. Her last glimpse of Jack Aubrey's face on HMS Poseidon. Raising Phoebe on Kerrera. Teaching her everything she knew. Watching Hamnavoe die in her arms ...

"I promise," Ada assured her solemnly. She kissed Jessamy's cheek, "but ... we'll patch you up mum. You'll be good as new in no time. Just hang in there. You'll ... be able to keep an eye on us yourself."

Jessamy closed her eyes one final time and smiled, "No. It's my time. I love you Ada. My be-beautiful Ada. Wh-when you see Phoebe, tell her ... tell her I love her too. And I ... I al-always ..."

One final breath escaped her lips as the softest of sighs. And the legend that had been Jessamy Beech died.

. . .

The aircraft carrier Baekdusan left Portsmouth naval base on schedule the following day - manoeuvring slowly out through the harbour's narrow entrance on the morning tide into the choppy waters of the Solent. The DPRK's new leader Kim Yeonmi Gylan had ordered Volk's body thrown unceremoniously overboard and the remaining Russians disarmed and placed under arrest.

"There was a woman," Tamsin began, her pluming breath whipped away by the wind, "a sentry. Out on the dock. Was she found?"

Yeonmi nodded. The balcony outside the carrier's bridge was an ideal place to watch the coast slide past as the Baekdusan steamed eastward. The deck thrumming beneath their feet. It was a bitterly cold day, but for the first time in over a week it hadn't snowed. Tamsin's wound had been dressed and she'd been given fresh clothes.

"She was found next to that gohwan Rosomakha. She's recovering," Yeonmi gazed down into the ship's churning wake, "I ... told you that if we met again I'd kill you," she didn't bother turning to speak, but stayed gripping the chest high rail with gloved hands as she looked up over the freezing white landscape to the north.

"You did," Tamsin nodded, "so what changed your mind?"

"Like I said in the missile room. There's been enough killing. After forty years we should be rebuilding. After Thanatos I mean. Jaegeon. Not fighting each other for scraps of the old world," the North Korean turned to Tamsin, and after a moment's hesitation peeled off a glove and held out her hand.

Tamsin looked from the hand to Yeonmi's dark eyes, unsure for a second, then finally gripped Yeonmi's cold fingers in her own.

. . .

It was agreed that the Coalition would leave the UK. Not a surrender as such but an admission of defeat. The Baekdusan would collect any Russian or North Korean colonists who wished to go along, then take Tamsin and Ada home to Fort George. Yeonmi's baby daughter Jag-eun Neughdae would be safely returned to her, just as Tamsin had promised.

After much deliberation among the DPRK senior officers, it was decided that all thirty four ICBMs would be launched at an uninhabited target well away from the United Kingdom. Disposed of. It was Tamsin who half jokingly suggested Moscow, but Captain Geomi and the others quickly agreed. With the nuclear arsenal gone there would be no further danger of the missiles falling into the hands of a lunatic. Or being used against a civilian population.

Yeonmi was right. It was time to start rebuilding.

THE END OF CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Phoebe Beech squirmed with all her strength, trying to pull free of Leonid's grip. But it was no use. He used his entire weight to hold her in place against the soot stained wall.

"Just calm the fuck down Phoebe ... and stop shouting," the Russian hissed.

She rested her forehead against the cold plaster, tears of anger and frustration stinging her eyes. There was no way she was going to give in so easily. But if she couldn't wriggle free by physical strength, perhaps there was another way. Arching her back, Phoebe pressed her ass back against Leonid's groin.

"What are you doing?"

Beneath Leonid's hand clamped over her mouth, Phoebe grinned to herself. He certainly hadn't been complaining the previous night. She ground herself back against him, flexing her hips as the Russian recoiled, trying in vain to avoid contact. He removed his hand, placing it flat against the wall near Phoebe's head, "Stop that Pheebs. I was just trying to get you to see sense."