Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [13]
But Jessica didn’t feel like being sensible or safe.
She cut back through a corridor restricted to flight personnel and opened a door onto the runways. She walked out of the concrete building into the grey slanting evening rain. Night was falling swiftly over the great airport.
Jessica walked back towards Terminal One, walking air-side in the rain with the thunder of the big jets coming in all around her. When she got to Terminal One she walked down a long slip-road. The occasional goods vehicle rumbled past but there was no one else on foot. With good reason. This whole area was forbidden to pedestrians.
Jessica didn’t care. She walked along the exit-road in the rain until she came to the motorway approach lane. It was totally dark now. The rain was getting heavier. Jessica sheltered by a big concrete motorway support that rose to the dark road above. Headlights flashed by.
Jessica stuck out her thumb, squinting into the rain.
‘I suppose you’re rather angry at me,’ said Mrs Woodcott.
She was peering in at Roz through the opening in the low steel ceiling. Roz said nothing.
‘Aren’t you speaking to me?’
Roz said nothing.
‘I thought those airport security guards were rather decent about the whole thing. Nobody’s hurt you. Nobody’s mistreated you.’
‘Nobody’s told me what the hell is going on,’ said Roz.
‘This really is a remarkable vehicle,’ said Mrs Woodcott, pretending to take a sudden interest in the rubber lip of the roof-hatch. ‘Why do they call it an APC?’
‘Armoured Personnel Carrier,’ said Roz. She had recognized the vehicle as soon as they’d walked round the corner of the airport building and she’d seen it parked there.
Squat and blunt-nosed, built for armoured security under fire as well as speed. It was sheltered from the rain under a makeshift tarpaulin on the runway outside the airport’s smallest terminal. ‘You didn’t answer my question,’ said Roz.
‘Why have I been arrested and put in this thing?’ It was hot in the armoured personnel carrier and she was sweating.
‘For heaven’s sake,’ said Mrs Woodcott. ‘You have not been arrested. Stop dramatizing. You’ve been press-ganged.
It’s quite different.’
‘Press-ganged?’
‘It’s an historical term,’ said Mrs Woodcott. ‘You may not recognize it.’
‘Well, what does it mean?’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Mrs Woodcott, staring at something. She looked back into the hatch and waved at Roz. ‘Sorry, dear.
No time. Your colleague is here so I’d best be going.’ She disappeared from sight but Roz could feel the vehicle shift on its suspension as the old woman climbed down from it. Then another shift in weight as someone else climbed up on to the APC.
A dark shape appeared in the open hatch above her and Roz moved back quickly to make room as a man dropped into the vehicle beside her.
The man wore a military style uniform, grey camouflage, but with no rank or insignia on it. He turned to Roz and looked at her for a long cautious moment before nodding a greeting. ‘My name’s Redmond,’ he said. His face was thin, with a small ginger moustache. There was something tentative about his pale blue eyes but Roz couldn’t detect any fear in them. A good sign. His voice was soft, with a trace of an Irish accent.
Redmond turned away and moved to the cockpit of the vehicle, contorting his body to climb into the driving seat.
Roz came forward and joined him. Sliding past the bulkhead which bulged with control panels she sat down in the shotgun seat. Redmond was busy with the computer, programming their route, but he glanced up from the illuminated map and gave her a surprised appreciative look as she sat down.
‘You know how to move in here. Have you been in one of these things before?’
‘I used to drive something similar.’
‘Well, you’re not driving this one,’ he said pleasantly. He looked over at her and his deeply lined face creased as he smiled. Roz decided she liked his smile.
‘So, what do you know about all this?’ said Redmond, raising his voice as he started the big engine for its pre-drive warm up, the vibration so strong through the metal bulkhead that it rattled