Spiral (2 page)

‘No,’ Jax mouthed silently.

The grey intruder squeezed the pistol trigger and, even as Dazna’s brains were mushrooming from the side of her head, kicked off from her falling corpse, curled into a ball, somehow avoiding the screaming 7.62mm rounds from Jax’s weapon, hit the ground and rolled towards a low wooden chest. From nowhere a shotgun appeared and there was a heavy bass
boom.
Jax was plucked from his feet and blown across the room. He left a huge smear of blood against the plaster, then toppled onto his face and lay unmoving.

Suddenly everything was still, awesomely silent. The flickering damaged light illuminated the kneeling, hunched figure of Sacha Bora. He looked up slowly, glanced around, and let out a long-drawn shuddering sigh. He understood: understood that he was lucky to be alive, understood that he was lucky not to be a corpse sprawling beside the three broken carcasses on the floor.

The grey-clad figure was standing with the shotgun in his - her? - hands.

‘I ... you came just in time,’ wheezed Sacha Bora through cracked lips.

The figure said nothing. It made no move - no sound.

Sacha squirmed uncomfortably as trickles of sweat crawled down his face and body.

‘I can’t believe you killed three members of a DemolSquad,’ he croaked. The figure did not move: it made no physical or oral response.
‘How
did you move so fucking fast? And are you here for what I think you’re here for? I’ve got it - don’t worry, it’s safe, I was bringing it to... him.’

The shotgun’s barrel swung up and with twin snarls smashed Sacha Bora across the room and into a twisted heap in the corner. There was a clatter as the shotgun fell to the ground and lay in a pool of blood. Soft black boots left crimson imprints across the floor while footsteps pounded down the corridor towards the scene of carnage. Men’s voices were snarling, shouting orders. The grey-clad assassin threw a switch and the room’s shutters began their clattering ascent.

The figure approached the finely carved leather case, hurled aside in the recent confusion. Hands moved swiftly, revealing a further concealed section below the secret compartment. There was a glint as a sheaf of metal sheets was withdrawn and stowed away inside the tight grey clothing.

The assassin leaped up onto the balcony and glanced down at the jungle far below. Fresh morning sunlight bathed the scene and for a few moments the copper eyes seemed to glow like molten metal.

And then the figure was gone, leaving only bloody footprints on the parapet.

There was a distant rattle of machine-gun fire.

The guards who had been examining the room and the four corpses exchanged worried glances.

‘How did he open the digital locks? I thought they were foolproof. A billion fucking combinations or something.’

‘Hey, look here.’

They lumbered towards the gaping window, saw the footprints in congealed blood and glanced down into the sprawling jungle...

Within the damp, dripping cellar deep beneath and
within
the clifftop house, something barely visible dropped to a crouch. There was a scrape - of metal on stone. Then a single red light came on, glowing faintly, an omen of death and destruction.

The bomb detonated.

Fire and hell-fury screamed white-hot through the building, wrenching it apart with the force of unleashed chemical savagery.

In the jungle below, there was a pattering of pebbles, followed by heavy thuds as chunks of stone and plaster described their individual arcs through the foliage and tropical morning mist.

Black smoke rolled up towards the sky, blocking out the newly risen sun.

The wind howled violently across the North Sea’s heaving, beating waves towards a dark rearing metal structure, unlit and unloved, pounded and abused by the elements.

The oil rig was old, a cast-off from one of the world’s largest petroleum companies. The rusting machinery no longer drilled and pumped, the derrick was a tangle of fused rusting steel being gradually eaten away by sea spray, and the huge engines no longer thundered and beat with life. The rig was a cast-off - discarded, abused, raped, bled, drawn, fucked and forgotten.

The rig was a steel ghost, deserted.

Almost...

A figure glided out into the blackness from some pit in the bowels of the machine, wearing a tight-fitting black garment and a rolled-up balaclava. Gloved hands grasped a rusting rail and the man lifted his face, gasping as the wind rocked him, pulled him into a tight embrace and promised him—

Death.

He grinned, revelling in the violent wild-ride feeling, pulled out a cigarette and shouldered his Sterling submachine gun as he searched for his Zippo.

‘You’ll never light that out here.’

‘Aye.’

Pulling free the lighter, he cupped the cigarette in a valiant attempt to defeat the gale. Miraculously, the cigarette glowed, a bright spark against the gloom. Smoke plumed around the man’s face and he inhaled, closing his eyes and enjoying the nicotine rush.

‘Scott, this is a fucking shite gig, man.’

Scott merely nodded, turning his back on the wide-shouldered man with the pock-marked complexion and staring out into the black churning waters. ‘Get us some coffee, eh, lad? And check on our Chechen friend while you’re at it.’

Grumbling, the big man - newly recruited to Demol77 - thudded his way down the riveted iron steps and into the stairwell below.

Scott took his time enjoying the cigarette, gazing out over the rolling waves that hid the Skene Fields. He wondered idly what it would be like, working on a rig, living off the black gold from deep beneath the surface. His mind drifted; he pictured blueprints - of the rig, the seabed pipelines, the outrigged tankers - and thought about the locations of the huge mooring anchors, pontoons and columns that kept this piece of shit squatting like a drunkard in a gutter.

And he thought about himself: Scott; eighteen-year Spiral veteran; fucked up the arse by his superiors and given one of the lamest protection gigs ever devised by the shadowy Spiral planners. To protect Vladimir Kachenyav, Chechen rebel sympathiser and member of VKW, an underground Grozny action group. Vladimir was a hunted man. Scott was merely tired; and he wanted to go home. Wanted to be out of the game. Wanted - that elusive word he never, ever thought he would stoop to consider -
retirement.

Scott laughed to himself, and leaned out over the rail. It creaked, the noise lost in the wind as he gazed down into that black water. His fear made manifest, close at hand ...

Scott licked his salt-dry lips and finished the cigarette. He flicked the butt out over the water and the glow disappeared in an instant.

Retirement.

I thought only old men got tired, his inner voice taunted him.

I thought you were a soldier. A fighter. A warrior.

He had seen enough after the Siege of Qingdao to last a man a hundred lifetimes.

Toffee was right, he thought as he moved to the stairwell and caught his breath away from the wild wind. This
is
a shite gig; a full eight-man team locked away on this desolate piece of junk for a whole two weeks with Vladimir, a slightly crazy Russian.

Scott shook his head and spat into the howling wind.

He stomped down the stairs, rigged with emergency lighting that hung untidily from low ceilings, and strode on towards the canteen, his boots hammering the metal, his torso twisting and turning to fit through the narrow doorways with their heavy bastard rims and gunmetal-grey decor.

‘You get that coffee on?’ Scott grinned as he stepped into the canteen. The smile was wiped instantly from his face. Bodies were strewn across the floor, blood pooling on the grey metal. Blood was spattered up the walls, across the stainless-steel worktops, dripping from the tables and benches. Toffee was sprawled on his back, mouth slack, dead eyes staring as the flickering fluorescent tube above him strobed over his corpse.

Scott did not move; slowly, very slowly, he unslung the Sterling and flicked off its safety. His gaze moved to the right. His teeth clamped tightly and he tasted blood in his mouth.

Fuck,
screamed his brain.

Fuck.

Powell was dead, trailing backwards off a bench, blood-speckled fingers clasping the cord of his SA80. Holloway lay face down against the iron-studded flooring. And Worm, arms outstretched, face twisted in abject agony, a huge hole smashed through his throat, looked sightlessly up at the ceiling, blank eyes pleading with the God who had abandoned him.

Focus.
Think…

There had been no sound of gunfire; the assassin - or assassins - had used silenced weapons. The poor fuckers - Toffee and the others - hadn’t even known what had hit them. And that meant the assassins were—

Fast.

A blur raced across the edge of Scott’s vision and he kicked himself backwards purely from reflex. Bullets sprayed up the iron wall, splashing bright firework sparks that burnt his face. Scott hit the deck hard, rolled onto his front and squeezed the trigger of his own weapon. The base of the stairwell was filled with a deafening roar of gunfire, and ricochets peppered the canteen with hot bright metal flashes as Scott scrambled up and sprinted for his life.

His booted feet pounded along the corridor and the blueprints for the rig flickered back into his brain: corridors, ramps, cranes, derrick - all now seemed a blur and Scott halted, slowed his breathing, and took a quick glance behind him. He stepped sideways into a doorway and waited, his breathing suddenly calm, his professionalism kicking him into—

Reality.

Nothing, no sounds of pursuit, and—

The figure glided into view, its attention focused up ahead, and sensed rather than saw Scott by its side. The head, mere inches from the levelled sub-machine gun, snapped left - and Scott found himself staring into bright copper eyes...

He squeezed the trigger.

The world seemed to explode as the Sterling hammered in the confines of the corridor. The assassin was smashed up against the wall and drilled with a whole magazine of bullets whose impacts held the body upright, dancing and twitching, until the ‘dead man’s click’ reverberated in Scott’s skull and brought the world to a sudden echoing silence. Scott fumbled for a fresh magazine with gore-slippery gloves, trying not to look at the pulped brains that covered his arms, trying not to choke on the cordite reek that filled his nose and throat.

The corpse slithered to the deck and lay in a slick crimson pool of its own blood.

The fresh magazine clicked firmly into place, and Scott - breathing slowly and heavily through blood-speckled lips - looked left and right. His ears were ringing from the deafening roar in the narrow metal corridor.

What
the fuck
is going on? he thought.

He stepped gingerly over the corpse, then headed towards the steep stairs ahead. Warily, clasping the rail, he climbed towards the night. Rain was pounding, driven by the wind, a sudden heavy downpour. Above, Scott could see nothing but darkness riddled with diagonal slashes of sheeting rain.

Carefully, and with all his senses on full alert, he pulled free his ECube and, with a twist, initiated the emergency call-up. But instead of the usual flicker of lights the ECube failed to respond. Scott stared at the device in disbelief. In all his years as a Spiral operative an ECube had never failed him.

‘Fucker.’

He licked his lips again.
Calm,
whispered his raging mind. Focus.

Vladimir: Scott knew that he had to reach the Russian. Had to protect him; save him. Get them both off this desolate rusting graveyard.

The only escape craft that the squad had were boats, moored at a pontoon floater on the other side of the rig. But the most important question now was:

How many killers?

One? Five?

They had killed seven members of a DemolSquad. It had to be more than one.
Had
to be. Which meant—

The game was not yet over.

Scott peered over the edge; the platform, at eye level, was a riveted monstrosity, slippery like black glass, stretching away into apparent infinity. Scott peered along the platform, towards the ramp at the end that seemed to descend into nothing.

Not far.

But not far is always
too far
when bullets are clipping your heels.

What to do? Run or wait?

Scott crept up until he was crouching on the platform; the rain needles drove into him and the wind howled though his jangling brain finding a way into his tight military clothing and caressing him with fingers of ice. His eyes followed every contour that the weak natural light could reveal. He searched for every possible sniping position. He tried to think where best to lay an ambush—

If he could sneak down the left flank of the rig, Vladimir’s chamber was nearby; a few easy steps and -hopefully - the fucker would be there, waiting, ready to sprint to the safety of the boats ... Scott nodded to himself. He craved the nicotine buzz of a cigarette.

It was instinct, more than anything else, that made him freeze.

And then it was there, his worst nightmare.