Hurt World One and the Zombie Rats (3 page)

‘Fair enough. Nevertheless, it is the
unforeseen that must give us pause.’

‘The President is scared?’

Caixa wiped the perspiration of his forehead
with the back of his hand. ‘The unforeseen is a tiger stalking in
tall grass. No matter whether or not you fear it, the tiger is
stalking.’

Jalanti was not about to get into a poetry
recital session with a Harvard graduate. ´I would be interested to
know where the President sees the possibility of trouble. Perhaps,
there are extra measures I can take.’

‘You mean, where do I suspect the grass is
longest?’

Jalanti nodded.

Caixa answered quickly, not needing to think.
‘This poacher Mas is quite a curiosity. Do you really think she has
what it takes to complete the mission?’

‘She saved the last wild snow monkey in
China. A businessman had put a bounty on its head. A very large
one. He was convinced that being the last, its brains would contain
mystical properties. Mas tracked it down to a monastery in remote
mountain range and smuggled it to the Las Angeles High Security
Zoo. With the obscene amounts of money involved, it was little
wonder the body count was so high.’

Caixa frowned. ‘To think someone would want
to eat the last living specimen of a species.’

‘Unfortunately, his appetite lived to see
another meal, but a lot of people working for him were not so
lucky. There was a trail of blood and wreckage from China all the
way to the zoo.’

‘That is not the kind of publicity Savage
Alliance is looking for.’

‘She has never been recorded on the System.
Not a shred of DNA or even a picture. She lives in the same jungles
she hunts her prey. She is truly wild.’

‘Then are you sure you have employed the real
Mas? If the System can’t identity her, what chance do you
have?’

Jalanti considered this question carefully.
‘She’ll need to be her. Operation Advance has started in earnest
and she is in it up to her neck. Me too, I suppose.’

‘The difference is you’re the Minister for
Risk and Acquisition. Your job is to take risks and make
acquisitions. And for that you are well rewarded.’

Jalanti nodded. ‘Although I am taking risks,
I want to assure you that Savage Alliance is not. I have only met
Mas once and she is under the impression I am the front for a
consortium of bankers. The cover will stand up to a rudimentary
check, which I suspect is all that a poacher is capable of.’

‘Be careful not to underestimate this woman,’
said Caixa. ‘If you think you have lured her with the thickness of
your money roll, just remember she had the opportunity to cash in
handsomely on the snow monkey bounty and yet she chose a trip to
the zoo.’ He shook his head. ‘So, do not get too close to her. More
importantly, do not let her get too close to Savage Alliance. Try
to pat a wild creature like that, you’re going to lose a hand.’ He
inexplicably broke into a broad grin. ‘Having said that, she sounds
perfect for the job.’

4 The Stamford Transaction
Facilitato
rs

The man didn’t care if the police stopped
him, for he had a gold badge to flash them: Harry Murtle of the
CIA. If that didn’t work, he also carried gold coins with which to
bribe them. He had his hands in his pockets, surreptitiously
holding onto both. He was plump and anemic looking. He walked with
a slight limp which he tried to make a swagger. He had well-groomed
black hair streaked with grey and he wore a stylish dark blue suit.
He certainly liked to think he stood out in this grim Guatemalan
coastal village, where illegal fishing crews and smugglers
predominated. The town’s name was San Paul. The few people out and
about on its unswept streets were keeping their distance from him
and their eyes to themselves, apparently assuming he was either a
police officer dressing up or a gangster dressing down. The
building the man was heading to was constructed of thick grey
concrete and all its windows were barred. Ostensibly it was to keep
out the tropical storms but in a town like this customers were
attracted for other reasons by the impenetrability of its windows
and walls. The man stopped at its entrance and scanned over the
list of proprietors trading from its ten floors. His eyes stopped
on the Desear on the ninth floor. The inscription underneath read
Tapas and Spanish wine. The man withdrew slowly across the street
to a corner opposite doused in later afternoon shadow, and there he
stood and watched and waited.

*

‘I do not think we should be docking at this
port,’ said Titov, the new captain of the Zopez. ‘It is very
dangerous. And I am not talking about currents or reefs.’

Mas was glad to hear the concern in her
voice. It sounded just about right. She had made a down payment on
the crew’s services that she had hoped was enough to keep them
interested in their work while still retaining enough money in the
pot to keep them interested in success - and it took a lot to keep
her interested in a lousy job like this. She had learnt early on in
her life within the harsh Congolese badlands that it was the lower,
weaker creatures in the food chain that relied so much upon
camouflage and deception for their survival. In so called
civilisation, there weren’t many creatures able to evolve beyond
that point. Jungles were better than banks to try. But the problem
was jungles were getting smaller and towns like San Paul were
getting larger.

Mas gazed out across the port, less than a
kilometre away now. A few lights had already come on, even though
the night was still an hour away. The boats moored to the piers
remained inactive. Illegal fishing was best done at night when the
fish were biting and the police were not. For many of the boats,
old and rusty, it seemed like the piers were holding them up; the
houses lining the foreshore weren’t in much better shape, their
fronts filthy and dilapidated. Mas, however, was not fooled by
appearances: there was profit enough in illegal fishing and no
doubt beyond the closed doors and shuttered windows there would be
good living and the weapons to protect it.

‘Dock there,’ said Mas, pointing to a free
berth at the end of one of the piers.

Titov hesitated. ‘If we are simply here for
provisions, there are other ports in Guatemala that I’d recommend
over this one. The cops here are particularly hard on strangers;
they have to be, for they have been paid off so handsomely by the
locals.’

‘I am meeting someone here so there is no
going around it. But I am happy for you to stay aboard.’

‘You had better take your bird then. You
might find there is some unfriendly pointing your way in this
town.’

Mas nodded. ‘I will take my eagle.’

Titov hurried from their position at the port
side bow to take control of the bridge. Mas meanwhile set about
climbing the vessels lookout tower, which, owing to the boat’s
illicit line of work, was particularly high. It provided an
expansive view over the town and she took it in with a hunter’s
eye. The town did not occupy a large area of land and yet all the
dwellings were squashed together as though engaged in a competition
to push each other over. Beyond the town was grassland for as far
as the eye could see - a buffer from the killer fireflies, which
once had terrorised these parts. It left Mas feeling uncomfortably
exposed, for there was no cover of trees should something go wrong.
She gazed down at the boat beneath her and found no comfort there
either. The Zopez was an old, creaking cargo boat that had been
lucky to make it through the black market without being sold for
scrap. At least the missile she had set up on the lookout tower
platform packed a punch. Mas tested the missile launcher’s purchase
on the platform and once satisfied held out her arm and Zelda
promptly landed upon it.

‘Where have you been?’ Mas queried, feeding
her some worms from out of her pocket. ‘I suppose as soon as we are
in sight of land, you are up circling the sky, looking for prey. In
this town I do not think you will be disappointed.’

*

Titov steered the Zopez into dock with an
assured hand and Mas was ready, leaping over the side-railing and
into an easy walk without missing a stride. Over her body suit she
wore loose fitting cream shirt and trousers with deep pockets that
hid her weapons well, particularly the laser-acid gun she was
gripping down at her thigh. She ignored the lingering looks coming
her way from the unsavoury looking men loitering about the docks
and the adjoining streets. They could look but not touch. And if a
man broke that one simple rule, she would hurt him without
compunction. She was not one to flirt with.

She reached the nondescript concrete building
with the Desear Restaurant on the ninth floor and, as the entrance
door slid open for her, she stepped into the scanning room. A blue
X-ray beam swirled around in a whirlpool of colour and a small slot
opened in one of the metal walls. There came a voice command in the
kind of Spanish referred to as Spangish, which Mas did not
understand except for
amla
which meant
weapon
. She dropped her laser-acid gun,
stick bombs and knives into it and a large door at the back of the
room opened. She moved through the doorway into a lavish foyer of
royal blue carpet and strikingly provocative abstract portraitures
on the walls.

‘Good evening, madam,’ said the maître de,
stepping forward to greet her. He was immaculately dressed in a
black silk suit and his hair was oiled even blacker. His skin had
the hard marble look of laser skin treatment done too cheap.

‘I am a guest of Gustavo Fall,’ said Mas.

The sly sneer she received in return was
familiar enough. All towns like San Paul had at least one such
restaurant, a place where most things to be purchased did not
appear on a menu. And it appeared the maître de had already been
paid.

‘Come this way, madam.’

Mas was led into an elevator that stunk of
tobacco smoke and perspiration. It was a quick trip to the ninth
floor. The restaurant that emerged from the elevator doors was
breathtakingly beautiful with luscious green carpet and tables
draped in rich Persian silk table cloths upon which the silverware
gleamed. The few diners already in the restaurant were contributing
to the spectacle with seemingly every earlobe, neck and wrist, of
both males and females, taken up with diamonds, gems and gold -
this was a detail Mas was lacking, but she was not the type to
worry about things that glittered, for to her way of thinking they
were just more examples of things taken from nature and tamed.

The maître de led her to a table near one of
the large plasma-windows, which was currently showing a superbly
colourful tropical beach at sunset, the colours exceptionally vivid
- and they could be enhanced still further for anyone able to
afford the optical implants. The maître de seated Mas and was
promptly replaced by the waiter. Mas ordered Russian vodka with
Canadian ice. She found it amusing: two of the biggest rivals in
the First Artic War now coalescing perfectly within her crystal
glass. Mas closed her eyes to sip the drink and savour it. And she
kept her eyes closed a while longer, for her memory was more vivid
than any plasma-window, taking her back to the jungles of her youth
with the sounds ranging from the lonely cries of solitary apes to
the mad laughter of hyenas. For Mas, they were the sounds of
home.

Footsteps approaching the table encroached
upon the moment, compelling Mas’s eyes open again. It was the
waiter, bringing on his silver tray an oversized floral porcelain
bowl.

‘Gustavo Fall has been briefly detained,’ he
explained, ‘and he humbly requests you to start the entre without
him.’ He rested the tray on the table and slid the bowl across to
Mas. ‘Soup of the Day is seafood. Enjoy.’

Mas gazed down at the soup curiously. The
thick brown liquid did not look particularly inviting. And Mas
couldn’t quite place the smell. Something vaguely fishy. Probably
the day’s catch brought in on the back of an oil slick. Mas eyed
her spoon with a kind of revulsion. She was a poacher. She liked
hunting big animals and throwing them on the fire and eating them
with her fingers. Anything else was too convoluted for her liking.
She was still gazing at the soup when she noticed a series of
bubbles moving along its surface. It seemed peculiar. Was the soup
still boiling? She cautiously touched the side of the bowl to test
its temperature - it was dead cold. Mas’s eyes widened as she
sensed danger. She started to pull back from the bowl just as the
tiny scorpion lobster sprung out of the soup. Its legs attached
onto her neck and the spike on the tip of its tail plunged into the
skin. Mas grabbed it and ripped it away, but she knew it was too
late: the poison would be in her system and it was fast acting. Her
blood was already turning noxious, a foul taste in her mouth and
she could feel her heart pressing up against her tongue. Her
attempts to get up off the chair were doomed from the start. The
poison was washing through her muscles, leaving her with nothing.
Her eyes rolled into unconsciousness and she collapsed onto the
table, her face landing flush in the soup.

The waiter was back at the table: he stroked
her hair a moment before using a clump to pull her head out of the
soup. He looked around at the other diners in the restaurant,
daring them to look up from their own plates. But no one took up
the challenge. A nervous hush had fallen over the tables.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said the waiter in a
dull, flat voice, ‘it seems our soup has quite a bite to it
today.’

*

‘Come and join us,’ came a voice through the
darkness. ‘The anti-venom is taking effect. You are still on the
right side of oblivion.’