space. He followed Jam’s footprints in the dirt.
‘I thought you only had five minutes?’
‘Nah, Slater is still in bed and TT is getting our food supplies - funnily enough, from Mrs Spud. TT has a way with Spud. What about you - when do you leave?’
‘About an hour.’
Jam nodded, chewing his lip thoughtfully. ‘You off to Africa again?’
‘Yeah. Nigeria.’
‘We’re paying a trip to Slovenia; we have a lead there. A hot lead, should see us shave a few more pounds from the Nex. Fry the fuckers and kill the pig, that’s what I say. Always did have a thing for bacon.’
Jam halted in front of something covered with a huge green tarpaulin, grabbed a corner, and heaved. The tarpaulin rolled free, revealing the huge bulk of a tank, gleaming dully under a coat of fresh black paint and looking very big, very menacing, and very deadly.
‘A tank,’ said Mongrel, wholly unimpressed. ‘Jam, I have lot of work to do before I head for Africa, I really think ...’
‘Look closely ,’ whispered Jam, placing a hand almost reverently against the flank of the mammoth metal beast. Jam was dwarfed beside the tracks, which rose to the height of his head.
Mongrel frowned, and was about to say something when he noticed the tracks. They looked somehow -wrong. That would never work, Mongrel thought. Then it clicked.
‘An HTank?’
‘Prototype,’ breathed Jam, eyes gleaming. ‘Beautiful, ain’t she?’
The HTank was a tank so advanced that it made the most modern military models look no better than the French Char d’Assaut Schneider, the early prototype that had failed in the muddy battlefields of the First World War.
It was an HTank, a Hover Tank - with the ability to hover over obstacles, using the most advanced turbo-track matrix-fission engine and track displacements. If the HTank reached a near-vertical wall? The huge beast would tilt its nose to the sky and climb almost vertically with the aid of its colossally powerful engines. And it had a few other tricks up its sleeve ...
Jam patted the machine, gazing up at it almost adoringly. ‘You wondering why it’s black?’ He waggled his eyebrows in that cocky, cheeky way only Jam could manage, grinning at Mongrel’s obvious frown.
‘Go on, Jam, why it black?’
‘It’s not.’
‘Da, it is. Look ,’ said Mongrel.
‘No, it’s not,’ said Jam, grinning more widely.
‘How that, then?’
‘It’s a CamCloak.’ Jam paused, for effect more than anything, and Mongrel’s frown deepened as he shifted from one boot to the other, obviously nervous at the prospect of getting caught by the humourless psycho who was Simmo.
‘Jam, we not supposed to be in here!’
‘Don’t be a bean.’
‘Jam!’
‘Go on.’
‘Go on what?’
‘Ask me.’
‘Ask you what?’
Jam tutted, running a hand through his short but growing black hair, which had been pampered and nurtured and had broken many a lady’s heart. Often he would get grief from the other Spiral operatives - along the philosophical lines of ‘Jam, you poof’ and ‘You look like a fucking girl, get a haircut.’ But Jam always put forward the argument that his current locks got him laid, and for that fact alone they deserved respect.
‘About the CamCloak, you dumb-spud monkey.’
‘Go on, then, but make it quick. I got suspicion Sgt Simmo will be looking for us and waiting for us, and he will not be happy that we go snooping into classified military equipment...’
‘Instead of just painting the tank, the CamCloak will replicate any environment at the press of a button; you want advanced blending, you got it. The HTank can operate in hostile terrain almost invisibly. And its weapons systems! Fuck, don’t get me started on the weapons systems! They—’
‘Jam, I going for ammo. Simmo will be really pissed off.’
‘Aw, fuck ‘im!’
Mongrel retreated, and with a final longing glance at the HTank prototype Jam followed Mongrel across the dusty floor, their boots leaving