‘A gentle reminder,’ said Carter bitterly.
‘The sooner we get out of here the better,’ said Natasha.
‘I didn’t realise that Switzerland was prone to earthquakes.’
‘Neither did the Swiss.’
They cruised through the snow for another two hours, then left the trail and again headed cross-country through the forests. At one point the world fell away to the left, a massive vertical drop down into a huge canyon filled with snow and the occasional scattering of black, shining rocks. Carter stopped for another cigarette and Natasha stood, shielding her eyes with her gloved hands and gazing down in awe as the wind whipped at her. Snow began to fall again, scattering patterns down into the valley below, and both of them felt privileged to witness such a display of Nature’s awesome power.
‘We’re so small,’ said Natasha. ‘So insignificant. It’s like, one minute we’re dancing at the party, the next the whole fucking hotel is swallowed by the Earth. We think we are so strong, so in control. And yet Nature - she could smash us in an instant.’
‘Yeah, you hold on to that thought,’ said Carter, flicking the butt of his cigarette away into the gulf of the vast valley. It spun, carried on eddies of snow and wind, and disappeared into the immeasurable expanse of bleak dawn wilderness.
It took them another hour to reach the cabin, located by the ECube’s coordinate navigation. It was a small building set against a picturesque location and standing among huddled conifers. It had only a single room, and the outside log walls were piled high with snow. Still, the cabin seemed extremely inviting after the cold of the journey and the bleakness of the long stretches of mountain trail. The snow-heavy undergrowth surrounding the structure was dense and eerily quiet.
They killed the Yamaha’s engine and Carter had to dig a path to the front door, which lolled open on broken leather hinges. Working together, they cleared the spill of snow and filled the fireplace with wood from a narrow protected log store out back. It took a good ten minutes to get a fire going because the firewood was damp, but as the small flames finally took hold warmth began to flood out. Wedging shut the door with a heavy, rough-hewn table, they pulled off their wet clothing and boots and set them steaming on the earth floor before the fire, and warmed their numbing hands and feet before the flames.
‘The snow has got heavy again. Will the Comanche be able to fly through this?’ asked Natasha.
‘Our modified Comanches can fly through anything,’ said Carter softly. ‘They might not be able to land here, but they can winch us up; a real
chilling
experience.’
‘How long to the rendezvous?’
‘One hour.’
‘I’ll make us something warm to eat.’
Carter grinned. ‘I thought you’d never offer. My stomach is like a Nazi’s soul - empty.’
Carter stared at the bowl.
‘I can’t believe it.’
‘What?’
‘Of all the foodstuffs you could have brought with us from the cabin, all you brought was B&S.’
‘What’s wrong with B&S?’ Natasha smiled encouragingly.
‘Nothing, but ... well, B&S is just standard military fodder. It’s got a fair amount of roughage in it and ... it’s about as bland as bland can be, Nats. Couldn’t you have brought something else?’
‘Carter, we’re only an hour from a pick-up. I wasn’t going to go shopping for T-bone steaks!’
‘Yeah, but...’
He stirred the red gruel. It seemed to be staring back at him.
As he ate, Natasha reclined and skipped through recent files on the ECube. ‘You mentioned before that the snowmobile ran on LVA?’
‘Mm.’ Carter nodded.
‘Seems like Leviathan Fuels are stirring up some interest. NATO’s Fuel Commission are talking about investigations. The oil companies of the world are kicking up a right stink ...’
‘So they will.’ Carter gesticulated with his spoon. ‘Imagine, a new fuel springs seemingly from nowhere -best-kept energy secret ever: it’s much cheaper than what’s currently on offer, needs only a minor engine modification costing a few hundred dollars, and fuck me if it doesn’t do eight times more miles to the gallon as well. The oil companies are fucking green with envy!’
‘Apparently it’s started a price war.’
‘Yeah, and that’ll get worse as the competition hots up. But hey, who am I to give a flying fuck about fat-cat billionaire oil industrialists with wads of banknotes falling out of their tax-free Swiss bank accounts? It’s a free market ... But let’s be honest, if the petroleum moguls had clocked Leviathan Fuel researchers digging LVA out of the rock, then how long would those researchers’ life expectancies have been? Nice man with a sniper rifle, anybody?’
‘God, you’re cynical,’ said Natasha.
‘I’m just the way the world made me.’ Carter smiled sardonically. ‘Anything else of interest on our little alloy friend?’
‘Jam’s still heading up the SAD teams; reports are favourable about the Nex extermination. I’d have thought they would have been wiped out by now, but every time Spiral think they’ve cracked it and the world goes a bit quiet, another bunch spring up.’
‘Yeah, like a bad penny. I bet Jam’s tearing his hair out. We’re just lucky the Nex bastards haven’t got Durell any more.’
‘He was one insane motherfucker.’
‘Tut tut, Nats, language like that from such a pretty face is most unbecoming in a lady.’ He reached over and rapped her knuckles with his spoon.
‘Carter! You’ll get B&S juice all over me!’
‘Don’t be so soft. Look at me, fucking wrestling with a crevasse a few hours ago and you’re bloody complaining about a little tomato on your dungarees!’
‘Wrestling with ... ? Ahhh, that was her name, was it? Nice pair of long legs Miss Crevasse had to her credit. And the way you saved her by mauling her naked breasts with your face was a true miracle to behold. Proper hero stuff, worthy of Hollywood.’
Carter grinned sheepishly. ‘Hey, can I be blamed if the woman I rescue is naked except for a pair of knee-high boots? Sometimes,’ he muttered, a grim look on his face, ‘you just have to take the rough with the smooth.’
Natasha moved towards him, on her knees, and grinned up into his face. ‘You’re a bad man, Mr Carter.’
‘You’d better believe it.’
Thirty minutes later Carter and Natasha were packed and ready to move out. Nats had killed the fire, they had prepped both ECubes with SAR signals and now awaited their emergency holiday-destroying transport with some trepidation. Something big was going down, they could sense it; something big and bad and they were going to be a part of it. The tension within the two Spiral operatives was beginning to increase: emergency Spiral meetings on this scale were not called every day - nor even every year.
Snow was still falling, and Carter and Natasha stepped out to stand beside the Yamaha snowmobile; Carter checked his watch. ‘They’re one minute late.’ He smiled, but even as the last syllable left his lips the sound of a helicopter echoed through the snow above the vast mountainside expanses of sweeping forest, the thump of armoured rotors reverberating through the falling snow.
Carter tutted. Natasha shook her head, staring at him.
‘There’s no excuse for sloppiness,’ said Carter smugly.
‘One minute!’ laughed Natasha.
‘One minute is one fucking minute. It can mean the difference between life and—’
Sudden fire illuminated the sky in smoking trails that converged from three directions. There was a scream of engines and a heavy bass boom; screeching rotor sounds destroyed the peace of the forest and a fireball blasted outwards suddenly in a flare of purple HighJ energy ... The Comanche was plucked from the snow-filled heavens by three rockets that ignited it and sent it heaving skywards to hang for long timeless moments. Then it fell, trailing black smoke and spitting showers of superheated metal in all directions. It clattered through the trees, its rotors slicing branches and trunks and whining in screaming deceleration, and then crashed into the ground, crackling in the embrace of a sudden raging blue-white fire.
‘—Death,’ said Carter coldly.
‘Three rockets,’ snapped Natasha, her Glock in her hand and her gaze sweeping the trees. Carter pulled free his heavy battle-scarred Browning HiPower. His eyes were very cold. ‘That should have been impossible,’ he said.
‘I know,’ replied Natasha quietly, eyes scanning the forest with unease. ‘The Comanche is supposedly one hundred per cent protected against SAMs. Whatever weapons they used, they were fucking advanced - and fucking invisible. Start the Yamaha.’
The two Spiral operatives backed towards the RX-16, automatically covering one another’s arcs of fire as they searched for trouble. They were immediately a team, expecting an offensive; they immediately became as one.
Distant sounds of screaming echoed. The sounds of agony. The sounds of a man on fire ...
‘Fuck,’ snapped Carter, firing up the Yamaha. He revved the vehicle and looked back at Natasha. ‘You know we’ve got to check it out...’
‘It’s a trap,’ said Natasha.
‘
Damn fucking right it’s a trap
,’ hissed Kade in the dark recesses of Carter’s brain.
‘Go
on, check it out, get a bullet in the brain and end up eating soil and you will be worm food, my brother ... go on, do it, let’s see what balls you really have, you dumb-arse fuck-brain ...
’
Carter pushed Kade’s comments from his raging mind. Anger threatened to consume him, but he controlled it. Out there in the snow one of his Spiral comrades was suffering, screaming and dying, and he could not leave him to cook, or to be shot by - who? The Nex?
Carter grinned a grin that had nothing to do with humour.
‘You bastards,’ he snarled as he opened the throttle. In a shower of cold snow-ice, he sped off between the trees.
Carter knelt warily beneath the tree line. The Comanche had gone down hard, rotors chewing wood and bark, body shell aflame, and now it lay buckled and twisted in a smoking, blazing mess. Carter’s stare swept the opposite side of the small clearing and the trees that had been pulped by the plummeting war machine. Too nasty, he thought. And too fucking open ...
Crouching, he crept forward.
And saw the body, smouldering in the snow. The pilot had managed to crawl a short distance from the Comanche’s still-burning wreckage but his HIDSS helmet had been flame-fried to his face, melded to burning skin, blended with charbroiled flesh and muscle and hair. Carter wrinkled his nostrils, almost gagging as he moved closer. That man must be dead, came the unbidden thought. He must be dead ... because to live—
It did not even bear thinking about.
Carter paused, gaze scanning the trees once more. Something was wrong, his senses screamed at him. Still he moved forward, and crouched beside the nightmarishly burnt pilot. He forced himself to look down at the scorched blackened face, and only then did the vomit truly force its way into his mouth as he saw eyes watching him from beneath a melted, caked brow and blackened crusted crispy skin ...
A hand grasped his, a sudden movement that took him by surprise. Looking down, Carter saw that there was no real skin, only an oily, tarry mess of muscle and blood and crisped hide. The stench filled his nostrils and he vomited to one side and heaved until his stomach contracted and spasmed in a fist of horror. He met the pilot’s gaze. The man was beyond screaming and his twitching eyes made only one entreaty and that was ‘Please ...’
Carter’s Browning lifted and a single shot rang out across the small forest clearing.
Carter’s eyes narrowed.
Three figures stepped out of the tree-haunted shadows.
Nex.
Carter stumbled back towards Natasha as the Nex attacked.
Bullets spat from JK49s and Carter leapt swiftly into the forest, rolling behind a fallen conifer where Natasha crouched. The Nex sprinted towards the destroyed Comanche, kneeling beside the fallen pilot. Their grey-balaclava-clad heads turned as their stares fixed on Carter. They rose to their feet and began to run towards the Spiral agents.
Carter’s Browning boomed in his fist. One of the Nex was sent slamming to the ground with its blended insect-human brain spreading in a bone-scattered pool of pink snow-mush.
‘One down,’ muttered Natasha, taking aim—
The other two continued their charge.
They moved fast - inhumanly fast...
But then, the Nex were not human.
Natasha fired, once, twice, three times. The Nex weaved left and right, keeping low, legs pumping, JK49s stitching a line of bullets in the log behind which the two Spiral operatives crouched, making Natasha yelp and duck. But Carter’s Browning fired seven times, the gun heavy in his fist, and the second Nex was sent sprawling in the snow with only a gruesome ring of smashed bone where once the masked face had been.
‘
That’s my boy,’
cheered Kade.
Carter snarled as the final Nex reached the log and leapt, its sub-machine gun tracking him as the Browning jerked up. Carter could still see the eyes of the dead Spiral pilot, surrounded by melted flesh: the HiPower jolted in his grip and five bullets sent the Nex lurching over him, legs kicking, blood spraying, to sprawl against a tree and fall twisted and dead among its roots.