Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [47]
‘Tell that to the . . . what is it, seventy-odd families who’ve just lost someone because of trivialities,’ said the Doctor angrily.
‘The Doctor’s right,’ confirmed Tyrone, sitting at the Time Lord’s side. ‘This should be as much our concern as InterCom.’
‘Agreed,’ noted Lethbridge-Stewart, which seemed to greatly surprise the Doctor. ‘And speaking of InterCom . . . ’
‘I saw what they wanted me to see, although I was convinced of alien involvement during my visit.’
‘And now . . . ?’
The Doctor gave Lethbridge-Stewart what he was looking for. ‘After what your bright young boys saw in the complex. I’d say “convinced” has become
“certain”. The question is, how many players are there in this game?’
‘I don’t follow you,’ said the Brigadier.
‘Do you remember what I told you about the CIA?’ asked the Doctor.
And, indeed, the Brigadier did. He remembered a conversation on a summer Sunday afternoon on a south London river bank almost thirty years earlier, with a bright sky, the laughter of children and an exiled Time Lord wearing a velvet smoking jacket. Ridiculously, what the Brigadier could remember most about the conversation was that while he and the Doctor were talking they were watching a child learning to ride a push-bike. It seemed a lifetime ago. For the Doctor, it was two lifetimes ago.
‘You suspected that aliens had infiltrated the CIA thirty years ago,’ he said.
‘It’s always been in the back of my mind.’
‘Oh Brigadier,’ began the Doctor. ‘If only it were so simple. The situation is much more complicated than that.’
It had been one of those days for Chung Sen. And it was about to get worse.
‘A progress report would be helpful,’ said Sanger via the videolink. Chung winced. His silence told Sanger everything he needed to know.
‘You should know,’ Sanger continued, ‘that I’ve changed my mind about the girl.’
‘Oh really? In what way?’
‘I want her found along with the disk.’
Chung Sen was puzzled. ‘Why is she suddenly so important?’
91
Sanger seemed amused by the question. ‘That’s none of your concern,’ he said with a calculating sneer. ‘The fact is that you will find her. Or heads will roll. Specifically, your head.’ The videolink was disconnected with such suddenness that for many seconds Chung sat and blinked at the little white dot on the screen in front of him. A thought ran through his mind – something Nietzsche had once said about sleeping with dragons.
He sighed, deeply, and turned on the videolink again. Almost instantly he found himself looking at the face of the Japanese InterCom head of security, Shajo, who raised a quizzical eyebrow at Chung’s worried expression.
‘A progress report would be helpful,’ said Chung Sen.
The man’s silence told Chung everything he needed to know.
In the basement of the UNIT headquarters was a shooting range.
Paynter and Barrington excitedly took their Browning 9mm pistols into this Aladdin’s cave like a pair of kids let loose in a sweet shop. As soon as the elevator doors opened, they found themselves flat on the ground in a mock-up of a typical small American town whilst, around them, semiautomatic gunfire exploded.
‘Target left,’ shouted Paynter, rolling over in the dirt as Barrington shot the head off a target dummy. ‘Cover me!’
‘What’s the objective?’ asked Barrington firing blindly.
‘Shoot lots of targets and don’t get shot yourself. A bit like life really,’ noted Paynter as another target turned – this time a green-skinned Julsaen. Paynter got himself into a classic two-handed firing position and took out the alien with three rapid bullets to the head.
‘What do you make of the Doctor?’ asked Barrington. His target was a mother and child and he shouldered arms. A bullet whizzed past his ear and he turned to see Paynter firing. Looking back, he saw the paper faces of the pair falling away to reveal shape-changing Zygons.
‘UNIT motto mate,’ said Paynter. ‘If it moves, shoot it. If it doesn’t move, shoot it just in case it tries to.’ He turned back to his own side of the street and pumped three shots into a coffee shop