Quake (56 page)

Kade lifted himself from his crouch and deactivated the MercG, coiling the thin wire into the pocket of his badly torn and bloodstained trousers. He tilted his head, considering coolly the shocked gaze of the Egyptian policeman - and the narrow line of red across his throat. Then one of his knees buckled, blood flooded down his chin, turning the tips of his moustache into a dark glossy beard, and his head slid free and slopped onto the floor. Kade saw the yellow glimmer of severed spine within fat-pulp and flesh.

He gave a mock shiver.

‘Ooh, I am
dangerous
,’ he crooned softly and lifted the Browning from the table, settling the stocky grip in his battered hand.

One of the other prisoners, the nearest one, started to get a bit twitchy. He was peering through the bars of his cell and could make out the severed head of the policeman lying limp and bloody on its side, spilling a little yellow neck-fat to the stone floor. He opened his mouth and started to shout something ...

Kade hissed, in Arabic, ‘Shut the fuck up or I’ll cut off your balls.’ The man took one look at the levelled Browning and retired to the corner of his cell, curling into a ball and closing his eyes to blank out the demon gaze of Kade’s insanity.

Kade took a large bunch of keys, including digital PlasSticks, from the policeman’s pockets, and found a small bag of chewy sweets. Popping one into his mouth, he started to hum as he moved to the barred windows and stared out into the street. Across it, on the other corner, a group of people had gathered - and Kade could see by the looks in their eyes that they were a lynch mob. Obviously they did not believe that the police would conduct a fair trial with him, and believed that their own meat cleavers could deliver a finer slice of retribution to the evil man in the cell.

‘Dum de dum de dum.’ Kade chewed his sweet and strolled - almost happily, certainly calmly - to the front door of the police station, locking it and sliding three thick bars into place. Then he heard a voice shouting from the station’s interior and he moved smoothly to the doorway, standing discreetly to one side.

Another policeman appeared, carrying a yellow folder. He stopped. His gaze dropped and he gasped. Kade blew his head open. Still chewing, Kade stooped and pulled the policeman’s gun free, checking the magazine.

‘Yum yum, cherry flavour,’ said Kade, helping himself to another sweet. More shouting erupted from the interior of the police station and Kade sighed, almost resignedly, hoisting both weapons in his blood-slick grasp.

He tilted his head, smiling at a cowering prisoner and shaking his head almost in sadness.

‘Time to go to work,’ he sighed.

It had been a hard climb, but at least the two pilots on the roof of the
Egyptian Times
news building had not been armed. Two punches and two broken cheekbones later, Mongrel had dragged them away from the civilian helicopter and stared in horror at the white flanks of the RT10 with their bright red and yellow stripes. Mongrel danced around, realised he had been caught on some form of CCTV, and decided that standing next to two unconscious men while armed with a sub-machine gun was not going to endear him to the journalistic staff of the building below - nor to the inevitable security and police forces who would follow.

Mongrel stared at the name etched on the machine’s flanks.

An RT10 Dandelion.

‘An RT10 fucking
Dandelion
,’ he muttered.

Mongrel fired up the helicopter, and listened in agony as the rotors began their snail-speed acceleration. There came a curious metallic squeaking sound that made Mongrel shudder.

From a nearby building Mongrel had watched Carter being beaten up by a mob, and had been just about to open fire with his M24 when five policemen had waded in, driving back the crowd who were armed with sticks, bottles and rifles, and dragging a bloodied Carter into their battered old Land Rover. Thinking that he and Carter needed transport fast, Mongrel had decided to secure the helicopter from the nearest logical source -the news building. But, just after punching the two pilots into oblivion, he had heard the familiar distant report of Carter’s Browning from the police station below - and decided that his best option was to take to the air and monitor events from there ...

Carter was obviously looking after himself.

The ‘copter spun into action and Mongrel climbed on board. He hated flying - and admitted to everybody including himself that he was, basically, an awful pilot.

The RT10 Dandelion helicopter waggled into the air, a dangerous combination of underpowered civilian engines, a worn rudder and a lack of engine oil. Mongrel’s lack of experience and confidence didn’t help. Mongrel watched as men ran onto the roof of the
Egyptian Times
news building, waving their arms at him. He swooped high over their heads with the metallic noise singing a discordant song in his ears, and headed off to the west in what he considered to be a decoy manoeuvre in case these men wanted to chase him.

Mongrel came around in a wide arc, noting that crowds seemed to be gathering in the streets below. Many seemed to be armed, and were waving and chanting.

‘Not look good,’ mused Mongrel.

And something else gnawed at him. He tried to place his finger on it. It was something to do with the guards on the rooftop.

What had it been?

The helicopter thrummed around again and Mongrel was searching now. Where would Carter emerge from? It would not be the front door - there was a crowd there already, hammering against the old worn wood. The roof, then? It had to be his only way of escape.

Mongrel prayed that Carter had seen him ...

He swooped, the engines whining in a strange way that he had never heard before inside a chopper. And then he saw it: on the roof of the police station a door flew open and Carter came into view, firing a gun in each hand. Blood pooled across the floor at his feet and he slammed shut the door, reaching and grasping a bar and sliding it into place through rope hooks.

Mongrel dropped the helicopter.

It still nagged at him: what had been wrong with the men on the roof of the newspaper building?

The helicopter touched down on the police station roof.

Carter leapt in, and his dark-eyed stare moved over Mongrel arrogantly. Carter was soaked in blood, and for a moment Mongrel thought he was wounded ...

‘You OK?’

‘You took your fucking time,’ snapped Kade. ‘I’m fucking covered in blood, had to kill sixteen fucking policemen in there - not that that’s a bad thing.’ He flashed a shark smile. ‘All fucking police deserve to die, whatever their nationality.’

‘Carter?’

‘Hmm?’

‘You’re not hurt?’

‘Nah, never felt better.’

A figure appeared on a neighbouring rooftop and opened fire with a sub-machine gun. Bullets kicked up tiny showers of dust and Kade stepped calmly away from the civilian chopper as the rounds ate their way towards his legs. He aimed the Browning and the gun bucked in his fist, firing three bullets that smacked into the Egyptian soldier’s head and dropped him in an instant.

‘Now the military is involved. What a bummer! I was enjoying shooting the pigs,’ he chuckled darkly.

Mongrel lifted the chopper into the sky. He was frowning ... and knew that something was badly wrong with Carter. It did nothing to relieve his misgivings about their situation.

And now the Egyptian military as well?

Shit...

Kade popped another sweet into his mouth. He held out the bag to Mongrel as the chopper wobbled over Cairo, rotors whining above them as crowds of civilians, police and military swarmed through the streets below in an attempt at pursuit.

‘You want a sweet?’

‘A fucking
sweet?’
bellowed Mongrel. ‘We’ve got the fucking Egyptian army fucking after us now, and you ask if I want a fucking
sweet?
There’ll be fucking military ‘copters here in a few minutes, with fucking heavy machine guns.’

‘Yeah? So? It’s only a fucking sweet!’ snapped Kade, frowning. ‘And anyway, what’s wrong with this pile of shit? Couldn’t you find something a little more -’ he searched for a word, licking at his cherry-tinted lips -
’exciting?’

The rotors whined again, and now there was a grinding note in the sound.

And then Mongrel realised what had been wrong with the guards on the rooftop. They had been waving their arms to him - and yet they’d carried sub-machine guns slung over their shoulders. Their intention hadn’t been to stop him ... but to
warn
him.

Why?

Another grinding sound came.

‘I think you’ve picked a dud fucking chopper, my fat friend.’ Kade fired a few bullets into the swarming crowd below, laughing as bodies rolled in the dust.

‘What are you doing?’ hissed Mongrel.

Kade ignored him - then suddenly whirled, pointing down. ‘Over there. Towards the south. There’s a military airfield. Take us there
now!’

Mongrel flew in silence, jaws clamped tightly closed, his mind whirling. He glanced across at Carter - and saw an expression on the man’s face that he had never seen before. Mongrel looked at Carter: the battered and torn clothing, the cuts and bruises, the drying blood, the pieces of brain tissue and fragments of bone in his hair. He was a demon figure, a nightmare horror-show walking the earth, dealing out hot gunfire from his bruised and sliced hands ...

He feels no pain, Mongrel realised.

And no remorse ...

The chopper banked, leaving the surging crowds in the streets behind. It swept down low over buildings, mostly built from sandstone and a few from breeze-block and rusting corrugated metal sheeting. Dogs barked, and women shouted.

The rotors continued to scream above the two men—

And then the control-panel dials started to flicker madly as certain pressures dropped.

Kade caught Mongrel’s stare. ‘You fucking looking at something?’

‘Yeah, something bad,’ snapped Mongrel.

‘There.’ Kade pointed. ‘The El Kashem airfield. I don’t think this bag of shit is going to get us anywhere. You see that grey plane over there?’

‘You mean the MiG?’

‘Aye.’ Kade nodded, smiling slyly, and popped another sweet into his mouth. ‘Land next to it.’

‘And what about those guards with those big fucking dogs?’

Kade slammed a fresh magazine into his Browning. ‘You leave them to me,’ he growled, sucking hard.

Carter tumbled through darkness, falling for ever. He spun, curled in a ball, round and round and round, wind lashing through his hair. His eyes were clenched shut and he contained the
pain.
It was an animal raging within him and he cursed Kade; Kade had trapped him, ensnared him within a cage of agony and in fury Carter punched out at the dark invisible veil all around him—

He heard the gunshots. The yelps of the dogs.

Carter’s jaw tightened grimly.

The pain beat in huge tidal waves against the shore of his brain.

Pulsed, like an evil cancer.

Smashed him with the eternity of death ...

Light flooded in, as if somebody had torn a hole in the canvas of darkness surrounding him. Carter pushed away the pain, felt it slide between him and Kade as Kade fought him with claws of steel. He dropped to his knees, spittle drooling from his mouth and the desert sun scorching his eyes, lancing directly into his tortured cerebellum ...

Carter coughed.

The Browning felt solid in his throbbing fist.

He glanced up - at the airfield, at the sand under him, at the corpses of Egyptian soldiers - and four dead Alsatian dogs, their heads twisted back, long canine tongues protruding and their blood staining the desert.

Carter breathed deeply, cursing, as Kade’s laughter drifted into a haunting nothingness. He glanced back at Mongrel, who was staring at him with disgust.

Carter climbed to his feet.

‘I’m back,’ he said softly.

‘What’s that fucking supposed to mean?’ snarled Mongrel.

Carter approached the large man, weariness suddenly hitting him with an incredible intensity, sucking away his will to go on. He reached out and placed his blood-caked hand against Mongrel’s tattered Nex clothing.

‘I am sorry, Mongrel. That was not me.’

Mongrel’s eyes glittered. ‘What you mean, Carter? I don’t like what I fucking see here.’

Sirens wailed from the distance. Carter stared down at the eight dead Egyptian soldiers, their faces and bodies blown apart by the wrath of the Browning. He felt something go cold inside and he made a promise to himself - when this was all over he would find a way to kill Kade. He would burn that fucker in the furnace of his mind.

‘Those men did not deserve this,’ said Carter softly.

‘What?’ snapped Mongrel. ‘I seen bad things in my time, and you one of them, Carter.’ And Carter caught it, the big man was afraid.

And Carter felt shame.

A deep shame that burned him.

The sirens were getting louder. Across the airfield jeeps sped into view, displaying the red flashing lights of military police. Carter stooped under the grey belly of the big Russian MiG 8-40 MFI -
Mnogofunktsionalny Frontovoi Istrebitel -
and kicked out the wooden block from behind the front wheel. He moved under the wings, kicking out the rear blocks as Mongrel heaved himself up the narrow ladder to the cockpit and climbed into the co-pilot’s seat.