Redback (41 page)

The wider world was not her purview, but the FBI's Brenda Janeway was, nevertheless, explaining
to latecomers what was going on. 'Terrorists or insurgents have attacked our Consulate in Peshawar
in northern Pakistan.'

'Good God almighty,' van Louden said. 'What next, for pity's sake?'

'The front half of the Consulate building has been virtually obliterated. It was lunchtime there,
and it's Monday so the place was open, occupied, working. God only knows how many have been killed,'
Janeway said. 'If the devastation in the street outside is any indication I think the death toll, of
both Americans and the local population, will be in the hundreds.'

President Brock, apparently deciding it was time to take command, said, 'Get everyone in here who
should be here so we can discuss what kind of action needs to be taken against these damn
Pakistanis. I think the time has come for an air strike.'

Chiang Mai, Thailand
Monday 2.15 pm

Gideon took a moment to escape the chatter that was still going around the lunch
table nearly three hours after it had started in the kitchen. Coop, Triko and now Ruth were regaling
Jana with stories of adventure and derring-do from the Redback Chronicles and it was all getting a
bit much for Gideon's innate reticence. She put her feet up on the coffee table, lay back and placed
an open magazine over her face so she could take a snooze.

A tingling sensation, that she'd not quite gotten used to yet, slithered its way around her ear.
Shaking her head at the untimely interruption, she pressed her earlobe and said 'Go ahead Link.'

'
Gideon, got bad news I'm afraid
.'

'Hi Oliver. Is there any other kind?'

'
Some serious shit has gone down in northern Pakistan. I've been monitoring the area because
some of the other Redbacks have mates in the region. Triko's brother is also up that way, somewhere,
too
.'

'What kind of serious shit?' Gideon realised everyone around the dining table had turned to watch
her talk to thin air. As it was unusual for home-base to use the Link to make contact when they
weren't on mission, Gideon wasn't surprised they were all curious.

'There's been a terrorist attack on the American Consulate in Peshawar. It was a huge bomb,
about 15 minutes ago, around noon their time. High death toll already, and counting.'

'Shit. Okay Oliver, hang on a sec,' Gideon returned to the table. 'Triko, do you have any idea
where your brother is at the moment?'

'Which one?' Triko shrugged and tried not to look worried. 'Alex is in East Timor with a
Peacekeeping Force, Jason is in Kandahar.'

'Good,' Gideon said with relief. 'I'll just sign off from Oliver and then explain.'

Peshawar, Pakistan
Monday 12.35 pm

Mudge and Brody, riding flat-chat along any southern street of Peshawar they could
gain access to - no matter how crowded or narrow - had still only managed to make it half way into
the Old City. They'd rightly assumed that all traffic along Khyber Road near the Consulate would be
a no-go zone; and that by now the army would have roadblocked everywhere in the cantonment and west
towards the airport. But why the southern route into the Old City was also bedlam so soon after the
attack was a mystery.

Mudge pulled the bike over on Qissa Khawani, the Storytellers' Street, ironically almost out the
front of the Café Baba in which Ashraf had awaited his fellow conspirators.

'This is useless mate,' he said. 'I don't even know where we should be going, let alone how to
get there.'

'Please tell me you've still got your phone, mate,' Brody said, realising he had a cracker of a
headache.

'I've still got my phone, mate,' Mudge said, taking it from his pocket and handing it back.

'Good, there's about 100 missed calls from Bamm-Bamm,' Brody said. 'Obviously he's not in a
million pieces all over this godforsaken country.'

He hit reply button and waited, until, 'Oh, mate, I feel,' he leant left, spewed his breakfast
onto the road, and then finished his statement, 'awful.' 'Brody!' said a voice on the other end of
the call he'd just made. 'Thank fucking Christ! Where the hell are you guys?'

'Just near our old stake-out at the Khyber Hotel. Where are you?'

'Pinned under a motherfucking bed, hanging over a cocksucking blown-up stairwell in a goddamn
collapsed arsehole of a hotel; that's where.'

'You sound a bit pissed off, mate,' Brody noted.

'Come get me outta here,' Dwayne Bamm-Bamm Kennedy shouted.

'Righto, hang on to your nuts.'

'I can't feel me fuckin nuts, Brody. Don't make me swear at you too.'

'Okay, okay,' Brody said, unexpectedly thrilled that he was still able to be annoyed by this
annoying American. 'What hotel are you in?'

'Ashraf's friggin hotel, of course, you, you - And I'm under it, not in it.'

It took Brody and Mudge ten minutes to get to the Hotel Marhaba, which wasn't actually all there
anymore. It looked like a giant's hand had punched in the front of the building and ripped the guts
right out of the middle three floors.

The street resembled a massive rubbish dump with squashed cars, chunks of concrete, broken bits
of unrecognisable things, thousands of strips and pieces of cloth and twisted plastic and metal.
There were people everywhere. Walking wounded staggered out of the rubble, rescuers clambered into
the ruins to help, men and women shouted instructions or wailed in anguish or pain.

Brody redialled Kennedy's mobile, as they headed into the destruction. 'We're here B-B. I'd say
we're coming in to get you, but you're right - there is no in. Can you give us a clue?'

'I was half way down the north-end staircase when the building went boom.'

'Righto, just stay where you are,' Brody said, redirecting Mudge to their left.

'Oh very funny,' Kennedy said.

'Just keep talking, so that Mudge can listen out for you,' Brody instructed as he followed his
friend up over what used to be a bus, and up onto a broken section of concrete that had been the
hotel's first-floor balcony.

They hauled themselves into the cavity of the obliterated building and stood listening
for…anything. The wailing sirens down on the street made hearing anything difficult.

'I think I'm still on some stairs. And I wasn't kidding about the bed, at least I think it's a
bed that's got me pinned to the wall,' Kennedy was saying.

'Give us a shout, Bamm-Bamm.'

'What's keeping you goddamn Arse-ies?' he shouted.

'There he is,' Mudge pointed up into the jagged remains of the stairwell. 'We'll have to cross
over there.'

Brody followed Mudge along the precarious edge of all that was left of the first-floor's floor;
or perhaps the ground floor's ceiling. They jumped a two-metre gap - over a three-metre fall to the
rubble below - and climbed up again onto the bottom step of the north-end staircase, that was now
hanging out over nothing.

Bamm-Bamm was just above them, on the mid-floor landing, trapped against the wall by a twisted
metal bed base. Above him the staircase continued to the third floor and no further.

'What took you so long?' Kennedy demanded. He was grinning like a fool.

'Don't you complain Monkey-boy,' Mudge said. 'The whole of Peshawar is being blown to
smitherbloodyreens. You're lucky we're even alive to save your hairy bum.'

Brody tried to lift the mangled bed but realised it was wedged into the step above. He and Mudge
had to get either side of it and yank with everything they had. The corner of the step crumbled and
the bed lurched backwards nearly knocking them off the edge. They lifted it, turned and threw it up
the stairs.

'Whoa,' Mudge said when he saw the state of Bamm-Bamm's legs. 'I bet that hurts like buggery,
mate.'

'Kinda lost feeling about 20 minutes ago, but,' Kennedy wiggled his feet, then moved his ripped
and bloodied legs. 'They still work. Oh, and now they hurt again.'

'Don't even think about fainting, Bamm-Bamm,' Brody said, watching what little colour there was
in the guy's face drain straight into his boots. 'We still have to get you down from here, and I for
one am not carrying you.'

'And don't throw up either,' Mudge added, helping Brody help Bamm-Bamm to his feet. 'Spud's
already been spewing all over town, ever since that fuckin Ashraf whacked him in the noggin with a
rock.'

'Ashraf? What the hell have you two been doing?'

'What have
we
been doing? You mean while you've been lounging around on the stairs here?'
Brody dropped back down to the first floor and got ready to support Bamm-Bamm when Mudge lowered him
down.

'Wait, wait,' Kennedy suddenly said. He pointed back to where he'd been lounging. 'Get that for
me will you, buddy.'

Mudge bent to pick up the whatever-it-was. 'A TekBox?' he said and tossed it down to Brody. 'Are
you looting, Bamm-Bamm? Can't you get these back home?'

'Don't be a moron, Mudge. I took it from Ashraf's room.'

'Don't you moron me, pebblehead,' Mudge said, hooking his arms under Kennedy's to ease him down
off the step. 'Why did you steal it then?'

'It was on and playing after the last time they left the room. I was checking it out when I
realised the room was wired to blow-the-fuck-up. So I grabbed it and ran.'

Kennedy's messed-up legs made the going a little difficult but the three men made it out to the
street in about ten minutes. Several local men came to help carry Kennedy clear of anything else
that might still collapse, and gave them all some water.

Mudge went to get the motorbike he'd just dropped on the road when they'd arrived, while Brody
explained the other disasters of the last 90 minutes.

When Mudge trudged back, he sat down with an uncharacteristic slouch. 'Some bastard nicked the
bike,' he sighed.

'My so-called car should still be parked around the corner,' Kennedy said. He shook his head. 'I
can't, no I don't want to believe that about our HQ and the Consulate. Man, that's just fucked. I
mean, half the people who work there are Pakistani. And Muslim. What the hell is their problem?'

'I tried to beat an answer to that question out of Ashraf but he refused to do anything except
scream at me,' Brody said.

'Thanks mate,' Mudge said to the Pashtun man who'd just handed him another bottle of water. The
man nodded, then also offered a piece of cloth and pointed at Kennedy before continuing on his way.
Mudge swivelled and dropped to his haunches to take a look at Kennedy's leg.

'Did you hit your head in there, Mudge?' Brody asked him.

'No why?'

Brody reached out with the flat of his hand, wiped the side of Mudge's head over his right ear
and then showed him all the blood.

Mudge laughed. 'Yeah, well I was in our car when it got blown to buggery across the Far Frontier
parking lot. Got kathumped around the inside of it like ice in a vitamiser, mate. Did you think I
came back for you on that crappy bike just for the fun of it?'

'What the hell are we actually going to do now, guys?' Kennedy asked.

'You need a doctor for a start,' Brody said. 'We'll take you back to wherever all the American
casualties are being taken.'

'No,' Kennedy raised his hands. 'I'm not, you know,
here
, man. I can't turn up and be
counted. High price of being an American spy.'

'
None
of you spooks are ever allowed to come in from the shit storm,' Mudge corrected. He
finished washing out the largest of Kennedy's leg wounds, then wrapped it with the Pashtun's
makeshift bandage.

'Yeah, but I couldn't have gone to the Consulate for help, even if it was still there. Which it
isn't. Fuck. This is unbelievable. And, oh man,' he groaned, 'I don't even have access to extra IDs.
I'd stamp my feet if I thought it wouldn't hurt. All I've got to my name is this stupid stolen
TekBox.'

'Mudge mate,' Brody said thoughtfully. 'All of our stuff
was at…'

'The Batcave,' Mudge interjected.

'Ok, what do we do now?' Brody asked. 'I feel like absolute crap which means I've probably got
concussion, Bamm-Bamm is next to useless, and Useless is grinning at me like an idiot.'

'That's because I'm going to go get B-B's car, come back for you two and then we're getting out
of town. Although, one more crack about me being less than Einstein and I leave without you.'

'Where the hell can we go? Tora Bora in the Ghan is closer than
our
nearest unit,' Brody
said.

'Look mate, mates,' Mudge said, 'we are not supposed to be in this country and the shit has been
completely shredded by a very large fan. We've got fuck-all and that includes fuck-nothing; as in no
passports, no papers, no friends, no comrades, no command structure, no clean jocks. We have to get
out of Pesh before some bastard shoots us just for the fun of it.

'We can hole up in Taxila or somewhere while you two recupe. I can make some calls or maybe zip
down to Islamabad and get us some help from our High Commission there. I actually met the Commish
once and she's a top bird, so we should be fine.

'If we're not, well I still won't be the one to remind you,
Spud
, that I wanted to stay in
Kandahar where only the Taliban were shooting at us.'

The White House, Washington DC
Monday 4am

'Are you sure you don't mind doing this, Adam?' the Vice President asked, as he and
Lyall entered one of the many sitting rooms around the Situation Room hub.

'Of course not,' Lyall said, pleased with the response he'd gotten after following the VP into
the head. Manipulation was one of Lyall's most favourite nouns, and interests.

And there was no one more malleable
and suggestible than an already-worried man
standing at a urinal with his dick in his hand.

The favour that Arlen Conte thought he'd asked of Lyall, of his own volition, was one Lyall had
been fostering for a week or so. And now here it was. The Vice President wanted the Deputy Secretary
of State to arrange something for him.