Spiral (54 page)

‘They should never have closed it.’

‘Well, your splinter faction
reopened it.’

‘Only as a temporary measure.’

The two men shared a moment of pleasure.

‘What are your plans now?’ said Carter.

‘This splinter faction of Spiral has a mobile division based on a fucking warship, if you can believe that. Durell, the fucker, thinks he is going to dominate the world, or something shite like that. We’ve got to stop him.’

‘We?’

Jam turned and grasped Carter’s shoulders. ‘You’re part of our army now, Carter. You’re a Demolitions expert; we need you.’

‘I have my own war to fight.’

‘And what war is that?’

‘A war in my head,’ said Carter softly.

‘Well, I’ll let The Priest convince you.’

Carter scowled. ‘You’ve brought that mad fucker back here? He’s a fucking liability.’

‘Not just him,’ said Jam. ‘All of them.’

‘All of who?’

‘All the remaining DemolSquads,’ said Jam, eyes gleaming in the glow of his cigarette. ‘Durell and Feuchter - and those Nex fuckers - they have brought us a war. Now it’s time for a little friendly retribution. There ain’t enough time for the USA or China or Russia to get to Durell and his fucking warship ... large parts of NATO’s C&C - Command and Control - structure keeps crashing, spinning off-line and killing its own data ... It looks like Durell’s plan is, well, going according to plan. I think we should fuck it up for him good and proper. Now, come over here. I suggest we sit down - drink the bottle of Lagavulin I packed especially for my old friend - and while we wait for the heavy mob, you can bring us up to speed on what exactly happened in LA.

Carter smiled; the expression felt strange on his face. ‘Lagavulin, you say?’

‘Well matured.’ Jam winked. He strolled over, booted Slater from his pack and drew out a bottle of whisky and some small glasses. ‘Drink, anybody? A toast to Spiral’s tough little boys winning against all odds?’

Carter laughed then; giggled like a schoolboy. ‘Give me a glass,’ he spat dryly. ‘I need a fucking drink.’

Carter lay on the floor in the corner, snoring. Slater was curled up beside him, also snoring. Nicky had disappeared for a ‘long soak in a bath’. And that left only—

Jam. He sat at the mouth of the tunnel, staring out into the night, mulling over thoughts of battleships and the Nex killers. He could not understand; could not understand why their eyes were so strange, could not understand why they were so good at killing. Because he knew that
he
was one of the best, and that he was totally outclassed by the Nex. In one-on-one combat with a Nex he would be dog meat.

‘What the fuck did they do to you to make you like that?’ he mused through a mouthful of smoke. ‘What was the Nex Project? And why did Gol pull out in those early days?’

He watched the smoke as it was snatched by the wind and dispersed.

Like us, he realised. Dispersed. Broken up. Scattered ...

And he remembered the pain on Carter’s face; the pain from talk of Natasha’s death.

Jam shook his head.

Shit always happens to good people, he realised. It’s just the way of the world.

A low drone came from over the mountains.

And then, in a burst of anticlimax, a Piasecki Pathfinder-3 helicopter loomed from the darkness, hovering ponderously into view, and climbed slightly, then dropped, suddenly, unsteadily, rotors clattering, towards the landing yard. Engines screamed. The rotors whined in deceleration. There was a strange banging sound and a bad smell of old oil.

Jam shaded his eyes against the glare of the Pathfinder’s landing lights, climbed to his feet and strode across the stone.

A grinning face met Jam’s scowl, and a short squat man leaped down. He had powerful arms and shoulders plastered with tattoos from a life in the military; his head was shaved, bullet-shaped, and his round cheeks were a rosy red. ‘How’s it going, pussy?’ he bellowed at Jam.

Jam blinked.

‘Haggis - what - the fuck - is that?’

‘It’s a ‘copter, ain’t it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jam slowly, walking alongside one rusted flank and staring in disbelief at the huge ragged hole that revealed nestling fuel pipes. ‘Haggis,
where
did you get it?’

‘Stole it. From an Italian. Is a long story.’

Jam sighed.

‘You think we’re going to wage a war using
that
?’

‘Sorry, Jam.’ Haggis gave a red-faced scowl. ‘But we can’t all nick fucking Apaches, right? They’re not the sort of thing that are ten a fucking penny! It’s not like hotwiring a fucking Escort!’

‘OK, OK, calm down. Go and get yourself a brew. Are the others on their way?’

‘Aye,’ nodded Haggis. ‘They’re coming, all right.’

And come they did.

Shortly after the arrival of Haggis, the dark sky was filled with a clattering of rotors and howling engines. A squad of helicopters, two Lockheed AH-56A machines followed by a Sikorsky Black Hawk, made a majestic entrance and slowly touched down. Jam’s face glowed as eight men and a woman disembarked. They exchanged greetings, Jam laughing at the custard spilled down Bob Bob’s combats, and the weary group of DemolSquad operatives moved into the protective embrace of Kamus-5 in search of a brew and some chocolate biscuits.

Jam stood, hands on hips, staring at the six helicopters gathered in the yard; still the machines were dwarfed by the sheer rock walls, the huge expanse of barren stone, rocky and uneven, carved from the very mountain itself. His memories drifted back: he could still picture the base when it had been operational ... but that had been twenty years ago when he had been a young bright-eyed man without the weight of years and the weight of murder burdening his shoulders.

Jam took his seat once more. Lit a cigarette.

‘Hiya.’

He glanced up at Nicky.

‘Hi, love.’

She handed him a tin mug filled with steaming tea. ‘Lots of sugar, Jam, just how you like it.’

‘Cheers.’ He took a sip and stared back out over the darkness. Austria nestled below him.

‘You OK?’

‘Yeah,’ he sighed, wrapping his leather coat around him. ‘Just tired. Tired of it all.’

Nicky sat beside him, snuggling up close, and he looked at her, surprised. She rested her head against his chin and the smell of her hair filled his senses.

‘Hello?’

‘Mmmm?’

‘You feeling horny or something?’ He grinned his boyish flirtatious roguish grin; it was the sort of chat-up line that had got him beaten about the head on many drunken occasions.

Nicky met his gaze. His cheeky grin disappeared when he saw the seriousness there. ‘You’ve always been an insolent fucker, Jam. But I have enjoyed working with you. I feel - I don’t know - I have a very, very bad feeling about what we’re going to do.’

Jam nodded. ‘It’s a war,’ he said softly. ‘Durell, and Feuchter - they brought us a war. They tried to wipe us out; now it’s time to give them a bullet up the arse.’

‘Yeah. But... not everybody is going to make it back.’ She licked her lips. They gleamed in the light from Jam’s cigarette. She reached up, suddenly, and kissed him. Their lips stayed pressed together, tongues darting, and Jam felt lust smash through his body with a ferocity that he had forgotten.

She pulled away.

Jam stared into her beautiful eyes.

‘I need some company tonight,’ she said, her voice husky.

Jam nodded. Speechless. And, standing, she led him inside by the hand.

As the tendrils of dawn light crept over the mountains, Jam rose bleary-eyed and happy from the pallet bed. The covers fell away to reveal Nicky’s bronzed skin, a rounded breast peeking from above the covers. Jam rubbed at his eyes, then at his stubble, lit a cigarette and stumbled in his boxer shorts and socks down the draughty stone corridor.

Noise greeted him and, shielding his eyes, a cigarette limp between his lips, he stepped out into the dawn ...

And into a hive of activity.

There were at least a hundred helicopters, filling the yard with their metal menace. Some had engines screaming, rotors hissing through the air as men and women stood by, staring into engine compartments or filling the machines with fuel. Others merely stood, waiting for the mission, glinting in the glorious dawn sunlight.

Jam’s jaw dropped.

He could see Fegs, Bob Bob, Jones5 and Russian, all working on their helicopters, dark oil staining their arms and hands. Blitz and the sexy lithe Czech assassin named AnnaMarie were carrying jerrycans of fuel to their rusting steeds, while Carter sat nearby, his head in his hands, cigarette dangling from his lips as The Priest stood above him, quoting from his small leather Bible, a look of wild hatred in his eyes, spittle dripping from his impassioned lips. Jam’s gaze roved across groups of men and women he had trained with and fought beside. Some he had trained himself. Hundreds of his DemolSquad operative friends had all been brought together here for the first time, the only time. The last time.

Pride filled him.

His chest swelled and he took a step forward. Several of those nearby glanced up, smiling, giving the occasional wave. A torrent of strength flooded through Jam and drowned his despair.

‘Can I have your attention!’ he bellowed.

Activity died down, and slowly all the DemolSquads turned towards this man in his underwear. His gaze met with that of The Priest, who gave him a quick thumbs-up sign.

Jam took a drag on his cigarette. ‘I see you all standing in front of me,’ he rumbled, his words coming out on a cloud of smoke, ‘and it fills me with pride; it fills me with love; and it fills me with strength. There is a great enemy that we will face today, a fucker that we must smash to make the world a better place, a fucker we must kill. I talk about the terrorists who have sought to bring down Spiral from within; the people who have sought to murder us all over the last few months. The betrayers of the Spiral cause. The men who have betrayed not just Spiral but their
friends
as well.’

A few clapped.

Jam’s wild-eyed gaze roved over the gathered group. He exchanged glances with Dublin, Sarah and Legs. 9mm gave him a small wave, her dark eyes flashing bright with love for him, and Jam beamed her a huge smile: they had been through good times together. His gaze took in Jupiter, Mongrel, Banks, Kavanagh and Ballard: all were ready, all had weapons primed, all were ready to go to war against the evil that was attempting to fuck the world and fuck it bad.

Jam smiled slowly.

‘This processor, the QIII which the enemy possess - it is masking their presence, hiding their mobile operations, their
warship
from the world’s military until they are ready to subvert all countries’ own war systems - and that will be soon. Very soon. Once that happens, they will be unstoppable ... Demoll6 found them while sweeping the Arctic -’ there came a small cheer ‘— and now
we
are the only ones who can make a difference. We are on our own... but we will win,’ he said, his words soft as he tossed his spent cigarette down. ‘We will break them. I will complete briefing of operations in thirty minutes; people, be ready to move in one hour. We have some madmen to kill.’

Carter walked slowly among the groups, between CH-478, past a Bell UH-1N Iroquois - the famous Huey -and a 1967 Sikorsky HH-3 that looked severely the worse for wear. A hundred helicopters; many sported homemade artillery attachments and many had had heavy machine guns welded to their frames, feeds of ammunition dangling from makeshift containers made from plastic boxes. Inside many machines he could see bundles of explosives strapped together with masking tape, grenades, and anti-personnel mines that had been stripped and cobbled together as makeshift bombs. Pride swelled through Carter, and he understood just how Jam had felt; never before had he seen such a gathering of DemolSquad operatives. And these were the survivors; these were the toughest of the tough, the men and women who had fought off attacks by the Nex and had slain hundreds of them.

Every man and woman had a grudge.

Every man and woman had lost friends to the Nex -and to those who were behind the Nex.

Every man and woman wanted a slice of the payback cake.

Carter halted. The Priest had been following him around for the last hour, quoting from the Bible and reciting mantra-like phrases at him as if possessed. Carter turned and looked up into the big man’s gold-flecked brown eyes. The Priest was large; one of the largest men Carter had ever seen.

‘Can you
fucking
leave me alone,’ said Carter.

‘I see, my son, that you are aggrieved,’ rumbled The Priest, closing his Bible slowly. The book was dwarfed in his huge hands. ‘But I seek merely to make light of your pain, to fill your soul with joy in this most strenuous of times, to fill you with light before the coming battle with the evil God-mocking Satanic Hordes.’

‘Well, don’t - just don’t. I need calm; I need to compose myself.’

‘I see that you have suffered great loss at the hands of Durell and Feuchter. The Lord will pay back these evil men with flashes of lightning from Heaven; the Lord shall smite down our enemies, He shall fuck them up bad.’ The Priest grinned then; he had lost many teeth, mainly in pub brawls while trying to convert Satan’s unholy drinkers. ‘Carter, my son, put your trust in the Lord and He will surely guide thee.’