Page 1 of Slack Tide Kill

MONDAY FEBRUARY 5

1 SLACK TIDE

The tide ebbed away from the barren Dungeness beach like the rasping eyelid of a corpse. Breakers crashed and sank on the shingle, a trillion tiny pieces of stone where Vikings once landed their longboats, come to pillage the ancient Britons.

Sweeping. Desolate. Immense.

All watched over by the flint-gray hulk of Dungeness nuclear power station, a mass of salt-tarnished gray reactor shields encased in scaffold as workers toiled around the clock to fulfill the decommission. The only flash of color came from Coastguard craft out on the still Channel waters, racing to intercept small-boat immigrants from Somalia or the Sudan. Lost souls seeking a better life.

8:14 a.m.

Slack tide. The frozen moment after the sea drew out, but before the world rocked and the waters stormed back up to the high tide line, where the body lay.

A young man. Tangled in frayed blue fishing net and striped with fresh green seaweed, hair brushed into a neat side parting as if by a lover's touch. Pale and still as the beach itself, washed up like an offering.

Twin cockle shells protruded where his eyes should be.

An echo of a death 30 years gone. Never solved. An echo set to resound through Kent's fragile marshland community and rip its people apart.

2 BURIED IN MUD

Sally Rogers ran and the horde ran with her.

Hundreds of bodies churned through a thick warren of mud, roots and rain; at her sides, at her back, in front of her. Elbows pumping, thighs slapping, breath coming in short, sharp gasps as cries rang across this heaving, many-bodied mass.

Sally's heart pounded madly. Her muscles burned and stretched. Pushed right to the edge, juiced with adrenaline and caffeine.

She'd have it no other way.

At a sharp twist in the downward trail, heading for the mid-stage events in a forest of old oak and birch, half a dozen runners lost their footing and slid out of control just ahead.

They became a human avalanche, gaining greater mass as others ran in and bogged down; bodies toppled over outflung limbs, tumbling in filth and sliding off the course together, arms raking furrows in the deep muck.

Cries rang out. Screams.

Sally leaped once, twice, three times cleanly. Skipping a pale calf here, landing in a closing window of mud as the avalanche rolled by, then regaining her feet in the approach to the fourth obstacle.

Deep Dive.

A 50-foot stretch of freezing water and mud in a four-foot deep trench, sunk with five sections of concrete sewer pipe. Completion required full submersion for each section of pipe.

Sally's heart reached fever pitch as she raced up to the water line. People stood all around, some too afraid, some catching their breath, some vomiting into the filth.

This was her greatest fear.

She dived, hit the filthy water and sailed through the first pipe. With both legs kicking and one hand raised like a fin to stroke the ceiling, she resurfaced in seconds, surged over the gap, sucked in a breath then dived for the next.

Bodies thrashed around her. She powered past with clean kicks and controlled strokes. Dark Peak was in the past. She was moving on.

Then something had her ankle. All forward movement halted.

Someone? She spun and kicked, but the water dulled any impact and she couldn't get free. Was it a hand, clamped around her left ankle? Bodies thudded past her, elbows thumping against her chest, knees kicking by.

Her chest tightened. The water became dirt, packed and settling, crushing her on all sides. She flailed, tried to pull herself down to untether her ankle, but took a shoulder in the nose, bursting air from her lips. She tried again and this time the top of someone's head cracked into her cheek, driving her back.

Silver shot across her vision as the seconds mounted. The one-way flow of bodies made going backward impossible. All she could do now was kick. She kicked until her right heel found what felt like a thumb and she pounded it repeatedly, digging the edge of her rubber sneaker into the soft pad of flesh. The urge to breathe grew desperate. She twisted, bucked, kicked with everything she had and finally the lock released.

Sally shot out of the pipe. Her head broke the surface and she gasped for air, rubbing her eyes and spinning on the spot.