Spiral (34 page)

Gol did not glance behind him. But he could hear them, hear their boots on the rock. Gol considered himself a fit man, but the bastards had chased him for miles; most of it uphill; most of it across rock. The Nex had known exactly who they were after right from the beginning of the battle; they had cornered Gol, sent him fleeing with bullets at his tail, like a rat down a maze, separating him from the other members of Spiral_F—

They had known.

Known what he carried.

A grim smile twisted his lips. He pounded on. Gol’s endurance had been pushed to its limit and he could feel his body consuming itself, using reserves that he had never dreamed he had - the large man did not know how he still managed to put one foot in front of the other—

For the past mile the Nex had slowly wound him in, like a big fish on a line. Now they were mere feet behind him and panic settled like a demon across his soul. What to do? What to fucking do?

Why hadn’t they shot him?

They knew; knew he was a key to the schematics encryption - the key to unlocking everything inscribed on the optic disk. With him dead, it would take them a long time to crack - days, maybe... but alive, and tortured?

Mere minutes. He had seen what they could do.

He shivered. He did not want to be caught by the Nex.

Better to fucking
die,
he thought.

His boots thumped on rock.

His angle of ascent altered.

There was a shout behind him as the Nex realised what was happening-—

Gol pounded up to the ridge and in silence, without looking down, leaped with all his might. Gloved hands brushed against his back. A Nex followed him, not from choice but from speed and momentum.

Gol, legs still pumping, sailed out over the abyss.

He kept the disk tight in his fist.

There were no final words. No heroic shouts. Gol merely clamped his jaw tight in the throes of bowel-wrenching fear as the world opened up before him ... so large ... so bright...

And he knew; this was the first time he had truly
seen.

The first time he had truly
felt.

And life felt so, so good.

The wind roared through his beard.

Red rock flashed past his tear-blurred vision.

Gol fell.

‘No!’ screamed Natasha.

The Comanche banked once more; the MiniGun screamed and the Nex on the mountain ridge were cut in half - it all happened so fast that they didn’t even know what hit them.

‘Go down, to the river,’ she commanded.

‘The walls are too narrow,’ said Langan softly. ‘I can’t take this beast down there; the rotors would smash into the rock.’

‘Do it!’

‘We will fucking die,’ snapped Langan.

Natasha went silent. Dead silent. Langan risked a glance back. He could see her tears. ‘You need to focus, Natasha,’ he said softly. ‘Get Carter sewn up.’

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Sewn up. Be strong. Yes.’

‘It’s what Gol would want.’

‘Yes.’

Langan flew the Comanche along the ridge and then dropped towards the river when the walls widened and dropped with the contours of the land. The river, wide and fast-flowing, showed no signs of life. For a while the Comanche cruised up and down the banks, searching; but Gol had gone.

‘We can’t search for ever,’ said Langan eventually, drained, exhausted.

‘I know. Just a few more minutes.’

Rotors thumping, the Comanche circled and paced and searched. Finally, it veered off, climbing steeply, and then headed south, away from the valley, away from the river and away from Kenya.

The snowy peaks of Kilimanjaro glowed in the distance, majestic and mighty, domineering and eternal.

‘Take me away from this place,’ whispered Natasha.

The Nex walked slowly into the chamber; another two stood beside the black body bag that had been unzipped to reveal the riddled body of the smashed female Nex within.

The first Nex glanced down, then removed the dead female’s mask. Copper eyes looked without apparent emotion at the prostrate figure; a hand reached out, touched the bullet holes, moved lower towards the visible punctured organs and the yellow of spilled torn fat.

‘What shall we do with the body?’ came a soft voice.

‘Burn it.’

‘Shouldn’t we return it for analysis?’

The Nex smiled then; a cold grim smile. It shook its shaved head and turned away, stepping towards the tunnel hewn through the stone and the welcoming calming cool darkness beyond.

The Nex hated the heat. It hated this place.

Its words echoed back, hollow and empty.

‘She is dead. Her OneThoughts are gone. Burn her. She can be of no more use to us.’

It was night.

Insects buzzed in the darkness.

The Comanche sat, clicking, its metal cooling slowly, beside a small grove of palms.

The fire was a small one, the dry wood burning without smoke. Langan brewed tea in a little tin pot and Natasha sat, chin on her knees, arms around herself, staring into the flickering flames, lost: lost in a world of her own creation. Carter had finally come round; he was grey with exhaustion and accepted the mug of sweet tea without a sound. He didn’t even have the energy to question Langan’s presence, never mind engage in playful banter.

‘You any closer to knowing what the fuck is going on?’ asked Langan finally.

Carter nodded. ‘I think so. Things are becoming clearer.’

‘You still need me?’

‘We need one last favour,’ said Carter.

Natasha looked up. ‘We do?’

‘Aye.’ Carter nodded, sipping at the sweet tea as one hand probed tenderly at his wounded flank. ‘We need you to drop us somewhere.’

Langan nodded with a supportive smile. ‘Anywhere, buddy,’ he said softly. ‘Just name the location.’

‘We need you to take us to Saudi Arabia, the Great Sandy Desert,’ said Carter. ‘I think it’s time we paid Count Feuchter a visit regarding this fucking QIII project of his.’

you’re just
another coffin

on its way down the emerald aisle

when your children’s stony glances

mourn your
death in a terrorist’s

smile

the bomber’s arm placing fiery gifts

on the supermarket shelves

alley sings with shrapnel
detonate

a
temporary hell

Forgotten Sons

Fish/Marillion

T
he Apache, piloted by Jam and with Slater snoring in the back, soared through the pouring rain, refuelling at a tiny local military outpost in Switzerland before heading east towards the borders of Austria and beyond. Jam cruised the Apache on a cushion of howling engines, heading east into the wind and the rain.

The Apache cruised across the Western Alps of Austria, rising to an incredible altitude until the mountains snaked away like the dark teeth of some huge giant’s gaping maw. Jam cruised in silence, with only the thrumming of rotors disturbing this high bleak cold solitude. The Priest, seated beside him, watched on in silence, mouth a grim line, eyes bright and fevered.

‘There,’ said The Priest softly, peering forward a little.

The Apache cruised for slick fast minutes until both Jam and The Priest saw it; it was huge, a mammoth mountain rising from the Hohe Tauern range like a broken tooth, jagged and fearsome, capped with glittering sparkling crystal-wine ice.

‘Grossglockner,’ said Jam, his voice filled with an awe he knew would never leave him, no matter how often he visited this magical and yet ultimately
horrifying
place.

‘And the Kamus,’ whispered The Priest.

Kamus-5. An old disused military complex built into the side of the mighty Grossglockner, well above the timber line and far away from roads of all description. One could only reach the crumbling edifice by two routes - one was by air, the other by a cable car consisting of long-disused carriages and steel lines from a nearby summit.

Jam brought the Apache in high, then dropped steeply towards the slopes of another mountain in the range, hugging the ground before climbing past huge swathing forests of beech and Austrian black pine, up into larch, fir and spruce and higher still, speed decreasing with the changing pitch of the rotors.

‘You see anything?’

‘It is too distant,’ said The Priest. ‘Head for that patch of forest, over there; where the trees break. We can reach the old cable-car base on foot. That will be the only sure way to avoid detection.’

Jam brought the Apache in to land, and the metal beast was swallowed by the trees. The rotors spun down, engines dying and clicking, and the four travellers stepped onto a forest bed of fir needles and dead branches that crackled softly underfoot. Water dripped from the trees around the clearing and Slater and Nicky found themselves looking around, deeply unimpressed.

‘Smells damp,’ said Slater.

‘This is a wet forest,’ said Jam. ‘What do you expect?’

‘I a city boy,’ grumbled Slater. ‘I not like this wilderness thing.’

Nicky approached The Priest, who was half kneeling, hand touching the sodden earth, eyes raised up and
blinking at the rain. ‘We heading for the old cable-car house?’ she asked.

‘Yes. The Lord will guide us. Come on, darkness will be falling soon and it would help if we could find the place before then.’ He rose, ponderously. Shouldering their packs the group moved off between the trees, heading up the slopes made slippery by mud and fern.

Before long they were all panting, red-faced, and covered in twigs, leaves, and smears of mud. The going was steep, tough. There were no natural paths and only tree boles and branches to grab hold of for support.

The Priest led the way, and Jam dropped back to walk with Slater and Nicky as they fought their way up this mountain slope.

‘Do you know what he plans when we get to the Kamus?’

Jam shrugged. ‘He wasn’t exactly a talkative passenger. I think we need to wait until we’ve had a good look; see what this supposed
activity
actually is at our old friend -the Kamus.’

‘I not like the place,’ said Slater, slowly. ‘I not want to go back.’

Jam said nothing.

Eventually, they came across a pathway; heavily overgrown, a dirt trail with occasional wood-slat steps set into the earth to form a snaking natural staircase. They climbed more easily now, aware of their destination as darkness started to creep through the woods and an eerie ambient blackness began its smothering of the world. Just as total night fell like a shroud they emerged into a small clearing. The Priest motioned them to stop and they dropped to sudden crouches. A silenced Sig P226 9mm appeared in The Priest’s huge hand and Jam crept up to kneel beside him. ‘What is it?’

‘I heard something.’

Jam palmed his Glock 9mm, complete with silencer, and squinted into the gloom.

They waited for long minutes, kneeling there in the gently dripping rain. Up ahead there was a slight bend in the trail, heavily wooded; beyond the steep turn squatted the old cable-car house.

Jam closed his eyes, focusing on the sounds and smells around him. After fifteen minutes of concentration, he was just about to give The Priest a mouthful of abuse when he caught it: the distant scent of a cigarette.

Their gazes met. Jam nodded and, gesturing back to Nicky and Slater, moved carefully forward with The Priest by his side. They took it a single step at a time, halting, checking their surroundings in the gloom, eyes fixed, ears alert.

Rounding the bend they came upon the run-down cable-car building. Its crumbling rendering was being slowly absorbed by the forest, and grass and branches poked rudely at its walls. Its huge wooden door was closed, and to the right sat the black maw of the cable mechanism: a huge set of wheels and gears with twin parallel cables, each as thick as a man’s wrist, snaking out from the cabin and away into the remote darkness, swaying gently in the wind, which howled mournfully.

A light glowed within, glimpsed through time-shrouded windows.

Guards,
signalled Jam.
Two.

The Priest nodded.

You wait here,
Jam signalled, and again The Priest nodded.

Jam moved carefully to the door and then rose to stand, back against the damp wood. Inside he could hear soft voices, speaking in German, complaining about the cold. They’re not Nex killers, then, he thought to himself with a grim smile.

And he could see, from this new vantage point, the distant platform of Kamus-5; lights flickered through the darkness, and the whole platform was illuminated. Jam heard the whine of distant engines, and glimpsed the flickering red lights of a helicopter.

He licked his lips. The Priest’s source had been right.

There was definitely activity here.