Paradise Burns (25 page)

FIFTY-SEVEN

I felt like I’d
been punched in the stomach. I’ll be honest, I was genuinely speechless. Even after
the mother of all shitty weeks that I’ve had, where I thought I couldn’t
possibly ever be shocked by anything again, that was one helluva curveball.

My head was spinning and I felt sick. My
body gave up and I dropped my gun, sinking to my knees – all the while unable
to take my eyes off Clara. Much in the way you can’t drive past a car crash
without looking.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘I don’t...
I just... What the fuck is going on?’

Clara laughed.

‘Poor Adrian,’ she said, patronizingly. ‘Finally
lost for words?’

Behind her, Ketranovich and the Salikovs
started laughing. She walked toward me, her gun aimed at my head unwaveringly. 
My eyes flicked between the barrel of her gun and her venomous green eyes.

‘This has been the longest week of my
life,’ she continued. ‘Having to listen to you go on and on with yourself.
Watch you skate around what’s going on right in front of you, too stupid to
figure anything out yourself. I almost wanted you to work out our grand plan sooner
– at least then I’d have an ounce of respect for you as I watched you die.’

I couldn’t describe how I felt.

Heartbroken? Maybe.

Betrayed? Definitely.

An idiot? Arguably.

My mind was working overtime, not just
playing out every outcome ahead of me, but also piecing together everything
that happened to get us to where we are right now.

Clara was playing me right from the
start. That much was now obvious. But how? And why? I grimaced at my own
ignorance. I hated not knowing everything.

I could see her watching me, struggling
to put it all together in my head.

‘Get up,’ she said, laughing. ‘You
pathetic little man. The mighty Adrian Hell, helpless in front of me.’

I slowly got to my feet, brushing the
dust off my knees. I bent down to retrieve my gun, but didn’t get chance.

‘Ah ah ah,’ said Clara. ‘Don’t even
think about it. In fact, you can toss the other one down as well.’

I didn’t move. She took a step closer, re-emphasizing
the gun she had pointed at my head.

‘Now.’

I sighed and reached behind me to
un-holster my other Beretta. I looked at it in my hand for a moment then threw
it to the ground, where it landed next to its counterpart.

We stood in silence for a moment, regarding
one another. Her eyes showing no sign of the person I believed I knew well, only
a few hours ago. A gust of wind picked up and swirled dust around us. In that moment,
there was nothing but me and her. My gaze shifted from her eyes to her gun,
then back again.

When I look back on this, I’ll know it
was this moment right here when I decided Clara was going to die. She was going
to suffer and she was going to know that death would be a welcome, sweet
reprieve compared to the pain I would make her experience.

‘Walk,’ she said, gesturing to follow
her with her gun.

We walked over to Ketranovich, who was
smiling from ear to ear. A smug look of triumph on his face that said he knew
all along it would end like this, and I’m a fool for not realizing it.

Maybe he was right.

He turned and nodded to Gene Salikov,
who ran over to the MIM-23s and began activating them. The loud whirring of
machinery sounded throughout the near-deserted compound as the SAM sites
configured themselves and moved into position, preparing to take aim.

The airstrike would be close now. The
squadron of jets are zooming toward us at nearly sixteen hundred miles per
hour, which means in less than ten minutes, those F-22s are going down in
flames. I had to find a way of warning Josh. But right now, like Clara pointed
out, I’m helpless.

‘How are your SAM sites going to target
the F-22s?’ I asked, trying to focus. ‘They’re stealth fighters.’

‘Adrian Hell,’ said Ketranovich. ‘You
worry too much and know too little. Our low frequency radar easily bypasses the
stealth capabilities of your fighter jets. Now come – we have much to discuss,
and such little time.’

He laughed out loud at nothing in
particular then walked off toward the concrete bunker with the metal door.
Natalia turned to follow him, but stopped. She looked back at me, then turned
and walked over toward me. She stood in front of me, fixing me with her
trademark evil death gaze of hatred and contempt, then planted a straight right
punch flush on my jaw. She was only a slight little thing, but she had some
force behind her punches. I rocked backward, momentarily losing my balance and
eventually dropping to one knee. I shook my head in a gesture to clear the
cobwebs and looked up at her. She had a wicked smile on her face. She held my
gaze for a moment longer, then turned back and followed Ketranovich.

I stood up and looked at Clara.

‘So, everything was a lie?’ I asked. ‘You
were playing me from day one?’

She smiled.

‘Don’t take it too personally,’ she
said. ‘You’re not the first person I’ve manipulated, and you won’t be the last.
Everything was going to plan until that idiot Pellaggio brought you in to kill
Jackson. Once we knew of your involvement, our plans had to change drastically.
We needed to keep a close eye on you so you didn’t screw things up any more
than you already had.’

She prodded me in the back with her gun,
and we both set off after Ketranovich and Natalia. I could still hear Gene
behind me, fiddling with the controls for the SAM sites.

I sighed. I’d been played. Spectacularly.
I was angry at myself for not realizing it before. But I pushed those thoughts
out of my head. The only thing that mattered now was stopping Dark Rain doing
whatever they were planning to do.

And get my revenge.

FIFTY-EIGHT

As we entered
the large, concrete bunker, there was a narrow metal stairwell that descended
down a poorly lit shaft. We went down six flights of stairs before emerging
into a bright, long corridor. The walls were old brick, mottled with damp stains
– the end result after years of neglect. Cobwebs and pipes lined the top of the
walls, both attached to the ceiling, which had fluorescent lights flickering
all the way along.

At the far end was a set of doors which
were a lot newer than their surroundings. Ketranovich and Natalia had just gone
through them as Clara and I approached.

‘So is this your little command center?’
I asked, as we made our way down the corridor.

‘You’ll see,’ she replied with a smirk.

I pushed open the doors and walked into
a large, circular room full of computers and large monitors. There were three
doors leading off to other rooms – one in front and one on either side. From
where I was standing, it was like the face of a compass, acting like a hub for
the underground network beneath the compound.

There were two men sat down at a bank of
computers, working feverishly on their keyboards. Ketranovich was stood leaning
over one of them, looking at his screen. Natalia stood a short distance away,
staring daggers at me.

Or was it at Clara? I couldn’t tell for
sure, but I’m positive I saw her flick her evil gaze over to her briefly.

Interesting. And duly noted.

Ketranovich looked over at me as I
entered.

‘Welcome to Dark Rain, Adrian Hell,’ he
said, gesturing to the large, empty room and smiling.

‘Oooo, I’m impressed,’ I replied,
sarcastically.

Clara hit me on the back of my head with
her elbow. It wasn’t too hard, just a little dig to tell me to stop being
cheeky, I think.

‘Everything will soon become painfully
clear,’ said Ketranovich, cryptically.

He turned back to the two men at the
computers and begun chattering away to them in Russian. I turned to face Clara.

‘Okay, so, forgive me if this is a
stupid question, but where is everyone? I thought you guys numbered in the
thousands?’

She smiled that smile people show when
they know something you don’t and want to rub it in your face.

‘Patience, Adrian. All will be revealed.’

I really didn’t like not knowing what
was going on, and this whole situation was getting weirder by the second. I
also didn’t like being helpless, and right now I could do nothing but stand and
watch as three fighter jets were about to be blown to bits.

Behind me, the doors opened and Gene
Salikov walked in and went straight over to Ketranovich. He whispered something
to him and the Colonel smiled.

‘Excellent news,’ he said. ‘You have
done well, Comrade.’

He turned to me.

‘We are ready,’ he said, gesturing to a
huge monitor on the right hand wall that suddenly flickered into life, revealing
a large radar screen and a topographical view of the compound.

‘As you can see, we’ve just picked up
your F-22s on radar, approximately twenty-five miles away. As you know, they’re
on their way here to drop many bombs on us, to wipe the nasty terrorists off
the face of the earth!’

He burst out laughing, prompting Clara
and the Salikovs to do the same. This was excruciating to watch. Not just
because of how smug these Russian bastards were being, but because I was being
forced to watch innocent soldiers die in someone else’s war.

‘Missiles are primed and ready for launch,’
said one of the men at the computers. ‘Target will be in range in thirty
seconds.’

‘Arm the SAMs,’ replied Ketranovich. ‘Let
the American death machines work their ironic magic!’

A few clicks of the keyboard later, and
the other man confirmed.

‘Missiles armed and locking on, sir.
Firing in ten seconds.’

I made an instinctive move forward, but
I felt the barrel of Clara’s gun on the back of my head and I restrained
myself. I raised my hands slightly in frustrating resignation.

Above us came the faint whooshing sound
of the first Hawk missile launching, quickly followed by the second and third.
On the radar screen, you could see the small red objects on the left gradually
approaching the three small green aircraft coming from the right.

‘You bastards!’ I yelled, the anger
rising inside me. ‘Call them off!’

‘Don’t you see, Adrian Hell?’ replied
Ketranovich. ‘You caused this! Those men will die in flames because of
you
!’

I stood, paralyzed by anger, watching
the screen as the missiles crept onwards toward the F-22s. Closer and closer
with each blip of the radar.

I had to do something. But what? I was
trapped underground fifteen miles away with no means of communication. I was
desperate, and hated myself for resorting to begging, but was out of options.

‘Please, just call off the missiles!’ I implored.
‘If you’re pissed at me, take it out on me. But don’t kill innocent people just
to prove a point!’

I’d never wanted anything more in my
life right then than I wanted those missiles to explode, sparing the pilots of
those F-22s. But as I stared at the screen, horrified and angry at my own
uselessness, both objects collided. Then, with one last blip, they disappeared
completely.

Silence descended on the large room
momentarily, before the Salikovs cheered loudly and touched foreheads in
celebration. Ketranovich smiled at Clara, who looked both relieved and
satisfied with what had just happened.

I was desperately trying to find a way
to get out of here and warn Josh, but I had nothing.

I looked back at the large screen, as if
staring at it would bring back the aircraft blips.  I looked over at
Ketranovich. He was smiling. Then he pulled a gun from his back, took a step
back from the men at the computers and put a bullet in the back of their heads.

‘What the hell?!’ I exclaimed. ‘Are you
insane?’

‘They had served their purpose, Adrian
Hell,’ he said, nodding at Clara behind me. ‘As have you.’

Before I had time to react, Clara
smashed the back of my head with the butt of her gun, and the lights went out.

FIFTY-NINE

I woke up in a
dark room, sat on the floor and covered in sweat. I blinked myopically to try
and focus, but it was too dark to make anything out clearly. I didn’t know
where I was, but it felt like I was sat in an oven.

I tried to move, but my arms were bound
behind my back. My legs were free, but I didn’t want to move around too much in
the dark without first knowing where I was and who was nearby.

As I regained more of my senses, I realized
there was an awful stench in this room. I also realized there was an eerie,
orange glow coming from something in front of me. As my eyes adjusted to the
dark, I could make out a large shape just ahead of me. It was huge – must have
been about three meters across, leaving a gap of about two meters at either
side to walk around. I figured that meant the room itself was a good eight by
eight square meters.

I got to my feet and staggered around to
my left. The further round I got, the hotter it became. The room was a large
square, with a smaller square in the middle which was giving off the heat. As I
got to the right turn at the end, I noticed there was a door on the left wall
as I looked at it. I also realized that the three by three meter square in the center
of the room was an enormous furnace.

Christ! That explains the heat. It was
almost unbearable to be this close.

I heard keys in the lock outside, so I
backed away a little round the corner and sat against the wall. The door
opened, and Natalia Salikov walked in with another soldier dressed in black,
dragging with them the bodies of the two men Ketranovich shot in the control
room. They dropped the bodies, then picked one up at a time together and threw
them in furnace.

Natalia turned to face me, her face lit
from the right hand side by the hellish blaze of the fire, making her evil
smile all the more supernatural. She winked at me, then in the blink of an eye,
turned, drew a gun from the holster on her right thigh and shot the man who she’d
walked in with.

‘Jesus!’ I yelled. ‘What is it with you
people killing each other?’

She said something in Russian that I assumed
was derogatory, judging by the tone of her voice, then walked out and locked
the door behind her.

What the hell was going on here? It
seems everyone who works for Dark Rain is expendable. The airstrike had failed
dramatically, which I can only assume would lead GlobaTech to bring forward
their ground assault. I admit, I was completely surprised by Dark Rain’s
counter-measures for the airstrike, but I can’t see how they could survive a
ground attack - they keep killing their own troops for God’s sake! What’s their
next move?

Just then, the door unlocked again and
opened. This time, Clara walked in. She pointed a gun at me.

‘Get up,’ she said.

I did, never taking my eyes off her or
saying a word. She moved her gun, signaling for me to walk out of the room in
front of her. Again, I did without comment.

I stepped outside and immediately felt
the welcoming cool breeze of an air conditioning unit. I was in a small,
circular room with a metal grid floor and old brick walls. Ahead of me was a
long corridor, leading into another room at the end. To my left and right were
two more doors on either side, similar to the one I’d just walked through.
Presumably containing the same massive furnaces as my room did. There were no
windows, just the buzz of the fluorescent lights overhead.

The doors at the end of the corridor
opened and Ketranovich walked through and headed down toward me.

‘Your guest quarters suck,’ I said as he
approached.

‘Typically, our guests do not stay long,
Adrian Hell,’ he replied. ‘The quality of where they stay does not concern me.’

‘Fair enough. So when are you gonna tell
me what the hell’s going on?’

He stopped just in front of me. Clara
was behind me to my left. My hands were still tied behind me.

‘What do you want to know?’ he asked.

‘Where are your nukes?’

He looked at Clara, then back at me,
seemingly confused. Then he laughed out loud and patted my shoulder like we
were old friends sharing a joke.

‘Okay, what have I missed?’ I asked.

‘There are no nukes,’ he said, still
smiling.

‘But GlobaTech have detected a massive
underground heat signature that they said was...’

I trailed off, realizing that Josh had
been drastically misinformed. I looked all around me. Five rooms, five
humungous, three meter square furnaces on full blast. That’s what the heat
signature was.

‘Holy shit,’ I said, starting to piece
things together. ‘You’ve laid a trap for GlobaTech and they’re going to send
their troops to walk right into it.’

‘Finally, he starts to use his brain,’ said
Clara behind me.

‘But I don’t understand what you’re
going to do to them when you’ve lured them all here. There’s, like, four of
you. GlobaTech are going to roll up to your front door with a few hundred
heavily armed soldiers from their own private army.’

Ketranovich walked past me, turned and
gestured for me to follow him back into the room I woke up in.

‘This entire compound is a network of
underground chambers,’ he began. ‘Think of this place as a wheel. The control
room back there is the center, and each spoke that leads off it bring you to
its own little hub, like this one. We’re pretty much directly under the main
yard of the compound right now. There are five mega furnaces here, originally
used to dispose of chemical weapons in the fifties and sixties, that your
government said didn’t exist, that were used for trials and tests that your
government said never took place.’

‘Hey,
I’m
not responsible for
what the government did or didn’t do fifty years ago,’ I said. ‘Don’t take your
little temper tantrum out on me.’

‘Whatever,’ he continued. ‘The point is,
when GlobaTech turned its back on us after your intervention, and our access to
the uranium was taken away from of us, we had to quickly change our plan of
attack.’

We were all stood just inside the door
of the furnace room now, being blasted by the heat in front of us.

‘Instead of launching an attack on
America, we had to start off slightly smaller.’

He pointed to the ceiling. I looked up,
struggling to make out what he was looking at in the gloom. It took a moment
for my eyes to adjust, but I eventually saw it.

Stuck to almost every inch of the
ceiling was enough C4 explosive to blast the world out of its own orbit. . .