72. Headlong
Liam raced north as Sally flagged by his side, her head lolling against the head rest. The radio spat crackles back at him, the car bucked as he weaved across the curb, hidden under a foot of climbing water.
None of this was how it was supposed to be.
Wilcot. Sally. The Mustang. Three wasted months of booze. Leaking, lying, coming apart at the seams.
Who even was he now? Crossing lines again and again. He looked at Sally. The rough bandage was beading through. He shouldn't be doing this.
But then here he was, doing exactly this, because of her.
Lydd flew by on the left, a blur of gray and rain, and he raced south toward the reactors. Dungeness. Cold poured through the shattered window and engulfed him. Making bad decisions, gambling with lives on the line.
His father had told him never to join the force.
He'd wanted a lawyer or an engineer. He glimpsed Emily Chakrati's face again, in that final moment as Sally dragged him away.
He'd barely known her, but she was police, and that was supposed to mean something.
Maybe he hadn't ever really understood what until now.
The job was just a way of keeping score, of thumbing his father's eye, of being his own man.
But it was more than that. A partner. A purpose. His family of choice.
The lighthouse emerged from the black gloom ahead, the reactors looming beyond it. He turned onto the reactor approach, accelerating right up to a skidding halt scant meters from the fence.
For a second only he sat there, heart pounding, staring through the chain links. No explosion, no chaos. Had they beaten Mercer here? A figure in hi-vis yellow came toward the car, one hand on her radio.
Liam opened the door and the rain and wind pummeled him. The guard seemed familiar, maybe the same one who'd scanned him in three days ago.
"What's going on here, officer?" she shouted over the wind.
"There's an imminent terror threat to the reactors," Liam said, holding out his warrant card. "You may already have a bomb in the compound. You need to start searching for it immediately."
The woman stared. "Is this a joke?"
"It's not a joke. You also need to get your road blockers up here and all other access points. We believe a vehicle may be inbound, possibly carrying the bomb."
"You're serious."
"Right now, ma'am. Counter-terror are coming, but it'll take time."
She stared at him, like he was barely real, then brought up her radio. Liam got back in the car. The engine idled, the wheel was wet, and he didn't know what to do. Wait here and try to ram Mercer when he came down the access route? Or go looking for him?
"Circle … route," Sally said.
Liam turned. She was slumped in the seat but her eyes were sharp. "Up past Appledore?"
"Drier roads, probably."
The map of the marsh spun in his head. "So we go back to Lydd, try to intercept him there?"
"Safer than … this close to the reactor."
He grunted. Then he put the car in gear and took them back north. "How you doing there, Sally?"
"I'm … fine." She tried to sit up. "Try the radio again."
Liam tapped through the channels, but all he got was static. He picked Tactical One and relayed their situation, hoping some of it got through to Gemmell back in Rye.
They passed the track to Umberside Lodge, then Edwin Pike's repurposed museum, eyes straining into the downpour ahead. He expected to see Mercer's vehicle emerge from the darkness at any moment, but there was nothing.
Then the radio crackled and caught. A voice came through, briefly clear and urgent.
"…repeat, Scots Float is gone! … pumps breached, all of Iden Lock is … cascade failure of the … everything just went white, we felt the vibration, and … Hoskins was out there! We're looking at … collapse, with … backflow across the marsh, the system wasn't designed for–"
The signal crackled away. Liam tapped buttons rapidly, trying to get the signal back, but it was gone.
Had he just heard that correctly? A bomb at Scots Float? He looked at Sally.
"Single point … of failure," she said.
Liam flashed back to Arthur Bledd standing atop the Scots Float pumps two days ago, berating several young environmental officers.
'Single point of failure,' he'd said. 'One catastrophic flood. One severe weather event paired with a failure of the pumps, and a century's worth of balance and delicate co-evolution is lost forever.'
All that meant something, but he couldn't quite grasp it. "Mercer did this," he mumbled. "Mercer bombed Scots Float. But why?" He looked at Sally. "What does it mean?"
She looked as stunned as he felt, but there was something else there too. Something building in her eyes. "It means … there's more, Liam. He's not done."
"Not done."
The words made no sense to Liam. Were they wrong about it all, and the reactor was never a target? Was the marsh somehow the real target?
The road dipped and the car plowed into a deep tranche of black sewer water. Sheetlike waves rolled to either side as their momentum bled away, and for a moment Liam thought they wouldn't make it. The car would stall and they'd be stranded.
But he downshifted, put the pedal down and they growled and coughed up the incline.
"Not only Dungeness," Sally muttered as the car jolted forward.
Liam kept trying to make sense of it as the car flew between swamped fields, right up to the T-junction at Lydd Road. Liam hit the brakes and the car skidded to a halt.
He turned to Sally. "Still up to Appledore, right? The circle route?"
Sally's eyes flickered left to right over the spread of swelling flood water.
"Sally?"
"Not Appledore," she said abruptly.
"What? Not Appledore? But we said–"
She sat up higher in the seat. The effort clearly pained her but she didn't stop. "Listen, Liam. Mercer. How did he trigger the … Scots Float bomb?"
"I don't know. Remotely?"
"Our radio doesn't work. Phone signal's … down."
That baffled him. "So, in person? Or just, close range?"
Sally nodded. "Close range. Mercer came through Appledore. Blew Scots Float. That keeps the marsh flooded."
Liam worked on that. "Massive environmental damage, so that's his plan? Not the reactor?"
Sally's eyes seemed to brighten. "I think it's both."
"Both? But how does that–"
"Take out Scots Float," she began, "the marsh can't drain. But it's not enough … for Mercer. He'd want more. Bigger."
"How?"
"How?" she repeated.
Liam's thoughts cascaded. He was back with Bledd at Scots Float, then in the water by Prospect Cottage when the boat blew, and chasing Gerald Spate through his swollen holiday park as the deep, pulse-like thumping of the sea crashed against–
"The sea wall!" he blurted. "Dymchurch. If he blows the wall there, he drowns the whole marsh."
Sally twitched. "Then the reactor ... blows?"
For a moment Liam couldn't comprehend it. It was too big, the full scale of it too terrible. Then it sank in.
"All the shit from the reactors washes right into a swollen marsh that can't drain."
His hands went weak on the wheel. "Not just Dungeness, Sally. This would destroy all of Romney Marsh! That's got to be tens of thousands of people. Land, livelihoods, families, homes."
She nodded. "They'll all … have to leave. Contamination will … sink deep. Into the peat, the soil, the trees. The whole … marsh becomes a no-man's land for decades."
He exhaled hard. "The fifth continent."
They sat in silence as the rain buffeted them, water swelling everywhere. It was already happening. It was all around them.
Sally pointed right. "He needs to be near … Liam. To blow Dymchurch. Maybe Greatstone? So he's coming that way."
Liam turned. The road to the right was a wash of sewer water. The road to the coast. To the sea walls. An alternate vector for Mercer to reach the reactors.
"You're sure? If we gamble and he comes straight down through Lydd, we'll miss him."
Sally's eyes bored into him. "You tell … me, Liam. He's planned this for … years. He's not just trying to kill a few … people. He wants to kill the whole marsh."
Liam felt that settling within him. Chaos. Order. Heraclitus. Raving as he died in his pile of dog manure. It made sense.
"OK." He stamped the gas, pulled the wheel right and they flew east on Lydd Road, through New Romney and Littlestone to the coast road. The Gray Lady frothed with rising whitecaps to their right.
Then the radio caught.
"… completely swamped, the tide's swelling at three feet through the wall, it just ripped a hole right through! We–"
Sally looked at Liam, then she fumbled the handset and squeezed the trigger. "What's your location?"
"Our location? We're on Dymchurch High Road."
Those words rang through Liam like a bell tolling.
"When did it happen?" Sally asked.
"The blast? I think, uh, five minutes ago? Ten?"
Five minutes was long enough to reach Littlestone. Ten minutes was long enough to reach the reactor.
"He's already passed us," Sally said, dropping the radio. "Go south!"
Liam swung the wheel. In moments they burst clear of Littlestone. Wind-flung shingle cracked on the passenger side window, starring the glass and causing Sally to flinch.
Greatstone dawned around them like a gray nightmare. The sea boiled and a serrated spear of lightning forked the sky. Off to the right Liam glimpsed the sound mirrors rearing up beyond the caravan park.
No cars on the road. 50 and rising. Then the Dungeness shingle opened around them, massive and raw and wave-tossed, the reactors looming like great titans astride an ancient land.
Then he saw it.
A single pair of red tail lights up ahead, weaving through the storm like a phantasm, cutting a black wake down the center of the flooded road.
"It's him." Sally leaned forward in her seat, a line of red blood running down her cheek. "He's almost there."
Liam tightened his grip on the wheel, thoughts rushing through his head. Was this what Sally had felt, facing down the Rooks in their sewer boat, charging across a field in her Mustang?
Endangering everyone. But this was more than a job. He looked at Sally; already braced, hands clutching the seatbelt across her chest, eyes latched onto him.
"Do it," she said.
He floored the gas and roared toward the van.