Spiral (60 page)

Carter.

With a yelp he started to sprint for cover, all pain suddenly forgotten. The machine howled down from the sky, trailing fire, its guns blasting out of control. Bullets drilled a line of dents along the deck beside Carter, a parallel sprint as the machine crashed close behind him. a noise like thunder rocking Carter’s world as an explosion and hot gases filled his senses and he did not look back, dared not look back—

There was a
whiz whiz whum
as Carter ducked, still running insanely with all pain and wounds and
everything fucking forgotten
now in this race for survival. A stray helicopter rotor flashed low over his head, so close that he felt the violent wind of its passing, a twelve-foot razor intent on his decapitation. The rotor clattered onto the deck up ahead and Carter turned to see the burning wreckage too close for comfort, thick black smoke pluming up into the sky, flames sizzling in the ice rain.

More bullets whizzed around him. Carter growled, glaring at the helicopter up ahead. It jumped into the sky and Carter could see Natasha struggling inside with Feuchter. He punched her in the side of the head, knocking her against the glass of the cockpit.

Carter, ducking low, sprinted for the Comanche.

Two Nex ran at him. The Browning’s bullets smashed them from their feet, pulverising their faces. Carter did not even break stride. As he reached the helicopter, it was with despair that he saw the bullet-riddled fuselage.

‘It has been sitting in the middle of a battlefield,’
said Kade primly.
‘You’re lucky it’s still in one fucking piece!’

Carter clambered up and dropped into the cockpit. A lot of the instruments had been smashed, he noticed as he hit the engines. There was a grumble, and a whine. They did not fire.

‘I don’t fucking believe it!’ Carter howled.

He punched the dash, then calmed himself. He tried again.

The twin 1380-shp LHTec turboshaft engines burst into life, and Carter lifted the screaming, groaning, wounded Comanche into the skies; it vibrated alarmingly, its engines howling. All around was a chaos of gunfire and flames and explosions; water dripped in through the holes in the cockpit.

As Carter gained altitude, he realised - with horrifying and undeniable finality - that the DemolSquads were being slaughtered. The cruiser’s cannons had inflicted a massive toll and the Nex helicopters were dancing among the DemolSquads, picking them off—

Carter’s mouth tightened in a grim sour line. His stare locked on the dot that was Feuchter’s helicopter; it had headed out low over the waves and had then circled, describing a broad arc and returning to observe the outcome—

Carter powered the Comanche forward.

The killer ‘copter dived howling towards Feuchter’s small black machine. Carter flicked open the controls for the MiniGun and then realised, in horror, that he could indeed take the helicopter out easily. But that would mean slotting Natasha easily too...

Anger and frustration gripped his soul.

The Comanche, one of the greatest aerial war machines, could not help him perform this final task, this final act of revenge and justice and
need.
Feuchter had to die - but Carter did not have the weapons to do it... or, rather, his weapon was too
bad ...

Lights flickered across the console.

He had a fuel leak; he could see in the HIDSS display on his lap that avgas was pissing from the Comanche’s fuselage. Carter forced the helicopter on in desperation.

Feuchter saw him coming and banked his own machine, on-board machine guns opening fire. Bullets whizzed past to left and right, and ate a line up one flank of the Comanche. Still Carter urged the aircraft forward and something, some inner sense made him eject the cockpit canopy in a hiss of hydraulics; it folded to one side to avoid the flashing rotors overhead and dropped away, shattered glass tumbling away into the sea. Rain and ice lashed down at Carter through the
thrumming
of the rotors, soothing him with their cooling numbness; then wind filled him with insane exhilaration as he veered right to avoid a head-on collision and banked the Comanche in a high wide sweep.

Guns clattered behind him.

Carter suddenly realised there were two small black helicopters on his tail; he realised they must have been flanking Feuchter, protecting this being who was their leader—

Guns hammered again.

The Comanche took more hits.

‘The fuel…’
hissed Kade in warning as the avgas spray streamed away behind the wounded helicopter ...

The Comanche lifted rapidly, gaining on Feuchter’s thumping black machine as it made its way back towards the cruiser. And then everything happened at once—

There was a low, deep sound, almost beyond hearing.

The world seemed to shake.

The cruiser
jolted
, as if stung, as the neutron micronuke planted by Jam detonated. There was a strange underwater roar, an aquatic scream; bubbles erupted and light and fire danced beneath the ocean, spreading out like the tentacles of some great luminous leviathan. The warship lifted and a rending, tearing, screaming sound of stressed steel ripped across the skies - huge cracks appeared down the cruiser’s flanks and it split, the midship dipping and the prow rearing into the sky on a gush of suddenly boiling water and steam, a massive split ‘V’ of steel revealing lights and compartments, tiny toylike items within the massive groaning structure—

Foam and flames burst into the sky, hot spray geysering upwards.

Bullets zipped past Carter, and he launched the Comanche down and
under
Feuchter’s machine. He banked the helicopter so that it was flying on its side and fumbled at his belt, dragging free the wire that he had last used back at the Beverly Hills Hilton. He fired it up above him, attaching it to the underside of Feuchter’s helicopter as more bullets flew towards him and a spark ignited the stream of aviation fuel trailing from the Comanche in a deadly umbilical to the devastating spark—

Carter felt himself tugged free.

The wind lashed at his dangling body.

The Comanche veered off, trailing a line of fire that quickly caught up with the war machine. Blazing bright, it careered out of control, and suddenly flipped and hammered into the waves, blossoming into a final bright bioom of fire and metal as Feuchter’s ‘copter flashed overhead.

Carter swung helplessly for a few moments. He was buffeted wildly, and swinging, turning, he saw that the other helicopters were still pursuing. Wind lashed at him, and ice rain. The pursuers opened fire.

Carter yelped as bullets roared around him, zipping past his unprotected flesh.

He reached up, grasping the enemy helicopter’s landing rails. With a Herculean effort he dragged himself up, spun for a moment, and planted his boots on the rail, detaching his umbilical wire as he did so.

He appeared, suddenly, beside Feuchter.

Carter saw Feuchter mouth something. The helicopter veered left, banking sharply in panic. Carter smashed, helpless for a moment, against the door, his head hitting the glass and cracking its surface; he dragged the Browning up and placed the muzzle against the cockpit canopy. Even through the wind’s noise he heard the tiny
clack
of metal against the window.

Feuchter heard it too.

He turned, staring hard at Carter.

His eyes glittered cold; his mouth was a grim sour line.

‘Fuck,’ screamed Carter through gritted teeth, the word snatched away instantly by the wind as his hair whipped wildly around his head, ‘you.’ He pulled the trigger. The bullet smashed through the canopy towards Feuchter’s face. It drove through his top teeth and his palate and into the base of his skull. Feuchter slumped backwards, releasing the helicopter’s controls as his brain erupted from the back of his head in a shower, splattering against the seat and covering Natasha in gore.

She gasped.

The helicopter lurched and flipped suddenly sideways.

For an instant she met Carter’s shocked gaze. Then he was gone, lost in the darkness, lost in the ice rain, lost in the infinite blackness of the cold night storm.

Natasha grabbed the helicopter’s controls, impeded by her tape-bound wrists. Feuchter flopped around beside her as she managed to steady the aircraft.

They were close to the fast-sinking cruiser. It was sliding beneath the bubbling super-heated waters, settling below the waves like some dying dinosaur.

Natasha suddenly became aware of her aerial entourage and banked the helicopter around in a wide circle, her two
protective
escorts following suit. Then she suddenly spun the aircraft and opened fire with the onboard heavy machine guns.

The two Nex-piloted vehicles evaded the bullets... and collided. In a sudden tangle of metal and twisting screeching engines, they plummeted towards the sea in a ball of fire.

Natasha smiled; she tried to calm her pounding heart but failed.

She steered the helicopter low over the sea, searching for Carter. Again and again she flew passes, her heart sinking, despair flooding through her. The helicopters that she had destroyed had sunk slowly beneath the cold waves.

Spinning the helicopter around once more, she watched as the battling DemolSquads, buoyed by the victory of seeing the cruiser - and its heavy guns - sunk, stormed through the skies, raining hot death on the remaining Nex.

The rain and ice continued to lash down.

Before very long, it was all over.

And a wounded group of heroes limped home.

C
arter fell, and as he hit the icy waters all semblance of sanity was crushed from him in an instant as the freezing sea chilled him to the bone. Deep under he went, his Browning gone in an instant, bright white stars of pain forced into his numbed brain and body. He gasped, breathing in water. He spluttered, and realised that possibly, down in the depths of this polar black ice ocean—

‘You might drown.’

‘Leave me be.’

‘I should have warned you: you should have waited another three seconds so the positions of the rotors and stick didn’t combine to flip the helicopter. Then you wouldn’t be here ... drowning.’

‘What do I have to do to be rid of you, fucker?’

‘You have to die,’
whispered Kade.

All force of will flooded from Carter. But then fire burned bright in his mind and he reached, slowing his descent into this awesome abyss, and struck out, fighting his way up, up, up, bubbles bursting from his tortured lungs. He broke through the surface, sucking in a huge huge gulp of precious cold air. His breath streamed like dragon smoke. He realised that he was screaming.

Opening his eyes, Carter breathed deeply and saw the helicopter banking sharply. Machine guns roared and the other two Nex helicopters smashed and merged together, their rotors folding directly above him as Carter’s grimace of madness dropped from his face—

‘You’re fucking
shitting
me...’

The twisted helicopters fell.

Carter dived, kicking with all his might, diving down and down, and the cold was forgotten in this sudden desperate race to get beneath the surface. Dimly he heard the impact - a dull
whoosh -
and his surroundings were illuminated by the burning helicopters descending above him through the cold waves, ignited fuel a torch lighting his way to a deep dark dominion named Death.

Kicking with all his might, Carter fought his way down: he risked a glance behind - above - and they were there, two glowing machines held in a metal mesh embrace.

He could see a Nex, struggling to fight free of the wreckage. But it was trapped.

The helicopters sank closer to Carter, who kicked to get out of their way.

Sorrow swamped him; he could faintly hear the Nex screaming.

The glow disappeared. Lungs burning, Carter kicked for the surface once more. The cold was numbing him to the point of death. He felt tingling all over his skin; he could not feel his hands and feet and face.

He burst free. Breathed deeply.

Debris littered the sea now. He glanced around.

Distantly, he saw the helicopter battle ending. More Nex were sent hurtling to their deaths and Carter felt sick deep down to his core. He watched idly as the cruiser finally succumbed to the cold dark waters.

Carter trod water.

And he knew that he had nowhere to go.

No way of saving himself.

Would they come looking for him? Or would the bastards think he was dead? Would they leave him to freeze slowly to death, alone with his memories for his last fleeting moments of life—?

There are worse ways to die, he decided sombrely.

But then, there are better ways.

He kept moving but he could not feel his arms or legs now; only the trunk of his body retained some heat. The pain had gone; all his pain had gone, numbed by the freezing waters.

How long will it take? he mused.

Minutes?

Seconds?

‘What the
fuck
are you doing here?’