Spiral (23 page)

‘Sore.’

‘You hungry?’

‘Yeah. Can I check your bags now?’

‘Sure. The green one is full of food and I apologise in advance for the poor calorific content. I swear, somebody should sue those fucking service stations.’

Natasha rummaged. Found food - or a close approximation thereof. She ate, and fed small tit-bits to Carter who guzzled greedily with hands clamped on the Cessna’s controls.

‘Why don’t you have a break? Eat? Drink?’

‘Are you going to fly?’

‘Hmmm ...’

‘Well, perhaps not, then. We’ll be landing at Cairo to refuel—’

‘I thought you were a wanted man in Egypt? Wanted by men with machine guns who want you very, very dead?’

‘I am. When I say Cairo, I don’t exactly mean Cairo -I kind of mean a secret rendezvous seventy miles out of the city.’

‘So there’ll be no time for sunbathing or seeing the pyramids at Giza?’

‘Not this time, love. I’m sorry. Anyway, the bombing during the Battle of Cairo7 put an end to
that
Wonder of the World. The pyramids are just rubble now.’

‘I’d still like to see what’s left. It’s
historical
rubble, after all.’

They were over the sea now, and the sun glittered across waves and tiny crests of foam. Natasha watched Carter carefully; she could see his fear but he hid it well. He hated flying. She had read it on his file, and seen his nervous sweat first-hand. As he always said, it wasn’t the height that bothered him, it was the heavy impact with the unforgiving ground ...

Hours had passed.

The ‘rendezvous’, much to Natasha’s horror, was a narrow desert strip marked in the sand between two huge rocky outcroppings. Carter brought the Cessna down in a swirl of dust and had a heated conversation with four men in Arab dress who had honking muzzled camels with many tufts tethered to a nearby twisted palm. Natasha watched the tense discussion from the Cessna’s cockpit, decidedly on edge and alert for signs of trouble—

She needn’t have worried. Carter, all smiles, winked in her direction and she watched the men lead him away to throw back tarpaulins concealing drums of what Natasha assumed was aviation fuel. She did not understand how Carter had made his contacts, nor how he had arranged this little meeting; she decided it was probably best not to ask.

Two hours later, when Carter climbed sweating and sand-flecked into the cockpit, Natasha had been sleeping again. She smiled wearily at the man. ‘We full up?’

‘It will see us to Mombassa at least. I curse having to deal with dodgy Egyptians. And I curse even more the fact that a Cessna will only fly twelve hundred pissing miles without completely emptying her bladder ... the cheap whore ...’

They flew into the sun.

Natasha decided it was quite romantic—

Or it would have been if she hadn’t recently been shot and hadn’t been running for her very life. What happened? she thought. What happened to my world? It had been going so smoothly—

So smoothly.

Gol sat in the sand, gazing down at the grains that swept scattering across one another, fighting for precedence, fighting for height, fighting to be king. He lifted his head slowly, beard whipping gently in the breeze, and gazed out across the vast landscape before him - a medley of browns and burned orange. The amber light flowed majestically across the landscape like molten honey, breaking across the rocky formations, moulding itself around the trees. Huge protrusions of rock smashed up from the earth and Gol felt the violence of the land within his soul.

The rugged red rock squatted hard beneath the large man, comforting, solid, real, without any give. Gol sat on the mountain and the mountain was his, was a part of him, belonged to him - and he belonged to it; a symbiotic relationship that made Gol smile through his beard. His hand reached down, touched the jagged rock and the sand and the dirt. He sighed.

The sun was sinking, glinting a deep burned red in his dark eyes.

He rose slowly to his feet, pulling himself to his full height and stretching the heavy muscles of his back and shoulders. Moving out from his beautiful vantage point, from his Window of Wonders, he was soon walking through the dust, boots leaving imprints between the scrub bushes. The trail was narrow, winding between large groups of boulders and leading uphill towards the summit of the low mountains that hid the sparkling dance of the sun’s sinking rays. Gol walked on, sweating heavily, his grey hair plastered to his heavy-set thick skull, his large and apparently cumbersome rifle slung tightly across his back.

As he pushed on, the ECube pressed against his thigh through the pocket of his beige desert DPM combats. He hated the feel of the device. It had been hacked of course, by his programmers - just because they
could.
A small act of individualism. An act of pride. The ECube had been pulled to bits and reassembled minus certain circuitry and AI core components. Gol kept the small machine close to him at all times; it reminded him of older, better days.

The ECube dug against his leg and he halted for a moment, turning, hands on hips, regaining his breath.

The African scrubland spread out before him, the most awesome of panoramic views he had ever witnessed in his years of travelling the miserable ball of rock called Earth.

Gol loved Africa; that was why he had chosen this place in which to set up and run Spiral_F.

Gol pushed on, cresting the rise and finding himself momentarily dazzled by the sun. A horseshoe of low mountain hills surrounded him, rocky and wild, trails snaking down onto the flatland and the orange-tree orchards filling the valley beyond. This vision of contrasting violent colour splashes filled his perverse mind with calm, soothed the raging beast that burned his soul, selected his neutral gear and allowed him to coast gently downhill.

It must be wrong, he realised.

The hacked ECube must be wrong—

An icicle sliver wormed into his heart.

Carter would never dare come to Africa ... Gol laughed out loud then, his laughter echoing out over the valley. And if he
was
coming to Africa - and by the ECube codecs and encryptions, it seemed that it was a top priority to find and intercept him - if the fucker
was
coming to Africa, then the chances were that he was coming to find Gol.

‘I swore I would kill you.’

Gol’s voice was deep, incredibly deep and melodic -almost Shakespearean in its delivery, a rich voice, the voice of an actor, not the voice of a ...

What are you? he thought.

What have you become?

Spiral had redeployed him. Had sent him from London to work on a special new project. Spiral_F.

He hissed between clenched teeth.

Gol began to walk, boots now stomping rock, leaping from ridge to ridge and then thudding onto a new track. This one led across the summit of the hill, winding like a red dried snake under the sun towards the string of concealed proximity detectors and anti-personnel mines—

Spiral...

They had a lot to answer for. A
fucking
lot to answer for...

He reached the lower end of the track. Gol glanced back, then set off, entering the cool protection of the trees. The sinking sun still burned hot as it sank quickly towards oblivion.

Gol relaxed the closer he got to his home: the HQ of Spiral_F - a simple white-walled house hiding a billion dollars’ worth of technology under the ground in the form of extremely high-tech vaults, weapons systems, hangars for vehicle modification and...

Gol’s eyes glinted.

And
something else.

A breeze rustled the branches of the orange trees.

How the world has changed, he thought. How it has descended into a quagmire of guns and wars and violence.

He shivered.

How
I
have changed ...

He caught a flash of white between the trees, and soon the crumbling dilapidated house came into view. Gol moved cautiously, attempting to catch out King George, a huge black man who stood on guard with his SMG safety catch switched off. The big man spotted him at a good distance and Gol grinned, waving as he approached.

‘You OK, boss?’ growled King George, his broad face split into a smile.

‘Just sneaking up on you,’ said Gol.

King George shook his head. ‘That never happen, Big Boss. This king too smart; he have too good an eye; that why you buy my services, eh, boy?’

Gol grinned wider. How could somebody call
him
a
boy
? They shook hands, and Gol stepped past the huge sentry, past the man’s natural aroma of oil and fruit and into the cool shade of the red-tiled white-walled villa beyond.

Such a nondescript mask, he thought.

A true disguise, hiding technology the world could not even begin to comprehend.

His boots clacked against the polished wooden floor -cracked and warped in places after the dry passing of years. He jogged up a few battered steps and turned right, moving down a wide corridor with its peeling paintwork and past personal artefacts that were there more for show than for any real personal value or nostalgia; Gol was the sort of man who did not harvest history. He carried love and pain in his mind and in his heart.

He stopped by a section of battered wood panelling, peeling and warped. He flipped free a small door and punched digits into an alloy panel that contrasted severely with the dilapidated surroundings. The panelling slid away and Gol descended - down through the rough-hewn narrow rock, circling down and down the tightly curved iron stairwell towards a low-roofed dusty passageway and on towards—

The Vault.

Welcome back to Heaven, Gol thought.

It was evening when Carter flew the Cessna across the shimmering ocean east of Kenya. Sunlight glittered, accelerating over the horizon. Natasha was sitting with her head on Carter’s shoulder when a tiny rumble vibrated through the plane’s cockpit.

Natasha stirred. She turned, her gaze meeting Carter’s.

‘What was that?’

The rumble came again, followed by a stutter from the engines as Carter leaned forward, eyes scanning the digital read-outs.

‘Tell me we don’t have a problem.’

‘We have a problem,’ said Carter through gritted teeth. ‘Fuel pumps. Shit.’

The engine stuttered once more, and Natasha’s grip tightened on Carter as fear flashed bright in her eyes. Breathing deeply, he turned the Cessna south. ‘We’ll have to land.’

Carter knew Africa - especially Kenya - extremely well; he had carried out a variety of overt and covert missions across its rugged dusty ravaged landscape. He hugged the coast ten miles south of Mombassa, and chose a spot where he had previous agreements with a certain landowner of disreputable disposition.

Carter brought the Cessna in low over the sea. Turquoise waves sparkled. White foam danced in huge curving crests. They cleared a long line of beach-hugging palms and a wide sweep of unspoilt white sand. The Cessna approached a wide long lawn within an arena of high walls and touched down smoothly, then bumped along the short grass towards high fences and a dazzling white-walled house. Natasha gazed up at the structure as they rolled to a halt, bushes and trees whipping to either side, the drone of the engines an irritant chirping in this sudden paradise. The house was large, built from wood and stone, the lofty roof supported by huge beams lashed together with thick ropes skilfully woven from huge leaves and dried grass.

Several men ran towards the plane. They carried guns.

‘A welcoming party?’ asked Natasha.

Carter smiled. ‘They know me here. Don’t worry.’ He killed the engines, which died swiftly, the propellers humming and clattering unevenly to a halt. Carter helped Natasha from the cockpit, down the short steps, and onto the grass—

Where they were hit by the heat.

‘Warm,’ breathed Natasha huskily. ‘Just what an injured woman needs to recuperate while you fix the plane.’

‘We’re near the equator. What do you expect?’

‘Just a shock after
sunny
Scotland,’ she said and smiled sardonically.

Carter greeted the men and explained his position in a garbled mishmash of English and Swahili. He and Natasha were escorted back up to the house at gunpoint by an obviously suspicious group.

As they reached the porch a man appeared, wearing a loose-fitting white shirt, which flapped in the strong east-coast breeze, shorts and Adidas trainers. The man had a look of hatred and insanity and unfathomable anger in his dark eyes, and a silenced sub-machine gun in his huge hands.

‘Justus, I have a fucking problem.’

The huge man grinned then, a broad grin, breaking the spell of fear, and shouted, ‘Papa Carter, you old dog! How the hell are you, Big Man? You a horny old goat who still has the bastard look of eagles about you? Come up here and give old Justus a hug.’

Their stay was short, sweet and very much to the point. One of the twin fuel pumps had worn free of its housing, the matrix-mesh innards clipping the metal base and smashing it up, reducing fuel-pumping capacity. A new pump was needed. Justus said he would do what he could.

With limited medical facilities Carter restitched a couple of Natasha’s wounds, applied fresh sterile dressings and gave himself an injection of antibiotics. He strapped up his broken finger and they showered quickly to remove the stench of travel and battle, sweat and blood.