Spiral (50 page)

Carter looked him up and down. The man’s beard was a touch shorter, neatly trimmed; everything else about Gol was exactly how Carter remembered him. Carter grinned wryly.

‘You
do
look pretty good for a dead man.’ He lowered the Browning. ‘Natasha will be thrilled.’

‘Ahh, my sweet little Natasha! I thought you might bring her along, but then - ah yes. A trap. You thought me dead, hah! Had you no faith in your old Spiral buddy - even though you left me for dead in Prague ...’ Gol’s eyes twinkled as he took a step closer. ‘But then, we won’t go over that old ground again, eh?’

Carter smiled, holding Gol’s dark gaze. ‘How about a drink? You’re there enjoying that brandy without offering me any? And after all the shit I’ve been taking from Natasha recently ...’

‘Yes, I heard about your exploits. Spiral_F has been following your progress with interest - although, it must be said, always a few steps behind you. Is that rogue Langan behaving himself?’

‘He’s doing fine.’ Carter pocketed the Browning but kept the HPG hidden. He accepted the brandy and took a sip.

Gol’s gaze lingered on the glass and Carter forced himself not to frown as the other man turned to stare out of the window once more. Something is wrong, screamed Carter’s brain. He carefully spat the brandy back into the glass ...

Gol turned again, a swift movement, a small black gun now in his large hand. ‘I’m sorry, Carter,’ he said. ‘Really sorry.’

J
am, Nicky, Slater and The Priest stood beside the two Chinook Ch-47s on the Kamus-5 landing yard, gazing inside the holds of the battered rainswept aircraft.

‘They’re ferrying crates,’ said Jam quietly.

‘Yes, but look at this,’ said The Priest, leaping up into the back and kicking free a narrow crate panel. Nestling within straw were large shells, gleaming menacingly under the weak light.

‘Big big bullets,’ said Slater.

‘Shells,’ corrected Nicky.

‘These,’ said The Priest, ‘are 12.5cm-calibre rounds.’ He stared hard at the assembled DemolSquad. They looked from his fevered eyes to the shells, then back to his eyes.

Jam shrugged. ‘You’re going to have to enlighten us.’

‘Warships use them,’ said The Priest softly. ‘In their large deck-mounted guns. They are devastating weapons.’

‘So we’re looking for a warship now?’

‘They have abandoned this base,’ said The Priest softly. ‘What better position to operate from? If you have a large ship, filled with supplies - you are totally mobile. Now, in the briefing room here at Kamus I found maps and charts; most were of the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean.’

‘That’s a lot of fucking sea,’ said Jam.

The Priest nodded. ‘Yes, I agree, but did you notice the huge drums of oil in the storeroom? There were markings on the floor, suggesting that many have been recently removed. The drums were inscribed with a sales originator trademark: Kastevsky Co.’

‘Russian?’

‘Yes. The Kastevsky Co. operates out of Ostrov Vaygach covering the Barents Sea and Karskoye More. Spiral have always used them for oil when they’ve been operating in that region.’

‘It gives us a starting point,’ said Slater.

‘I will send the remaining TacSquads to sweep the area; it is the strongest lead we have. We need to gather the remaining DemolSquads together ready for when the new threat is identified. Only then will we be in a position to do something about this Nex invasion.’

Jam nodded, enjoying his cigarette. ‘I have an idea. If you are right and we are looking for a ship to link with these Spiral traitors, then we will need weaponry. Big weaponry. We can coordinate from here - Slater and Nicky can call the DemolSquads to the Kamus via the ECubes. This place has fuel, weapons - it is the perfect place from which to launch an offensive. You can locate the enemy and pinpoint their exact position; and I ...’

‘Yes? What skive have you dreamed up for yourself this time, Jam?’

Jam grinned.

‘I have to see a man about a bomb.’

‘I’m sorry, Carter,’ said Gol. ‘Really sorry.’

Carter grinned nastily, the brandy glass in his hand, the Browning in his pocket.

Stupid, he thought. Guard down ...

Stupid.

‘So, you alive, or dead, or what? The Nex get to you?’ Gol shook his head sadly. ‘It’s a lot more complicated than that, Mr Carter. A lot more complicated than you could ever believe. Now, I believe that you are carrying the QIII processor schematics. I would like them, please. They are ours. They belong to us and should have died in Rub al’Khali, just like you.’

Carter allowed himself to frown.

‘You know when we worked together, out of Egypt. Do you remember the night in Luxor? When we were surrounded by Arabs with machine guns, just a veranda and the sea below us, the dark waves crashing against the shores at the height of the storm? You remember that?’

Gol nodded; but it was there. A flash across his face. A moment of...

Confusion.

‘You mean ... what we called the Fifth Night?’

Carter nodded. ‘Gol, tell me what you said to me before we charged at those fuckers. Tell me the exact words you spoke to fill me with confidence on that dark night when we both thought that we would die.’

‘I have no time for this, Carter. Give me the fucking schematics.’

‘You are not Gol.’

Gol smiled then, a flash of white teeth through his grey beard. ‘Shit, Carter, you have me there. So fucking what? I
am
Gol - a part of Gol; but you cannot understand. I have been instructed not to kill you; there are a variety of people who would like a little ... shall we say
chat.
But first you must give me the schematics you hold in your hands.’

Carter saw Gol’s - or the
imitation
Gol’s - finger tighten a little on the trigger. Taking up the slack, the taut; getting ready to reel in the line with the big flapping fish struggling on the end...

Carter smiled.

He uncurled his right hand to reveal the HPG.

‘Surprise, fucker,’ said Carter dryly.

Carter threw the HPG and saw Gol’s eyes go suddenly wide, his mouth open in a silent ‘Fuck!’

Reflexes took over; there was no thought. The large man reached up to catch the HPG—

His gun muzzle moved.

Carter’s Browning was out and he was firing even as he dived for the bathroom. He rolled across the thick carpet as the Browning’s bullets tore into the wall and then the window, which shattered with a crash of exploding glass ...

Gol was running.

Carter aimed the Browning from the bathroom—

Just as the HPG detonated.

The room seemed to change suddenly from a normal hotel bedroom into the bizarre heart of a raging tornado. The furniture was picked up and tossed about and smashed up and out and down in a fury of chemical obliteration. The floor shook and trembled; glass shattered; there came the crunching of timbers and the scream of twisted steel. Carter cowered behind the bathroom wall, nose twitching at the heavy chemical stink as dust and debris spat through the doorway. He suddenly realised with horror that if the wall had been merely a plasterboard partition he would have been pulped and fucked up
bad.
There was a heavy
thump
as the wall buckled above him.

He glanced up, the tip of the Browning touching his nose, his eyes blinking in the sudden dust storm.

The shaking gradually subsided.

There was a rattle of plaster and wood hitting the ground.

Carter could hear the beat of his own heart. Hear his own breathing.

The soft
thumps
of his own
life ...

He glanced left. A chewed length of timber leaned against the bathroom doorway; dust was floating thick in the air and only then did Carter realise his ears were screaming at him—

Singing to him—

A song of pain.

The sprinklers suddenly burst into life, dampening down the dust.

Carter eased himself to his feet and peered around the doorway. The room was like a scene from a war movie. All the windows and their frames had blown out. The carpet had been torn up, twisted around the blasted furniture and the whole mess wrenched apart to litter the corners of the room. The walls were smashed and torn and scorched. The ceiling had partly fallen in, and there were several piles of unidentifiable rubble ...

Gol had been running for the corridor ...

‘Gol?’ screamed Carter. He wiped cool sprinkler water from his face and lips.

Somebody hammered on the main door, which had somehow survived the blast but twisted in its frame, wedging shut.

‘Fuck you,’ wept the imitation Gol.

Carter stepped out of the bathroom. He moved to the prostrate body of Gol, who was lying on his side clutching his twisted, smashed leg. The right limb had been almost ripped free and was only held on by tatters of muscle. A split second earlier and Gol would have made it to the sanctuary of the corridor and the protection of a genuine brick wall—

Carter grinned nastily. Put his Browning in Gol’s face.

‘Who the fuck are you?’

‘I am not Gol.’

‘Well, no fucking prizes for
that
answer.
Who the fuck are you?’
Carter jabbed the Browning against the side of Gol’s head. ‘Answer me - at least you’re still fucking
alive ...
’

Carter heard a zipping sound, and a buzz. Something warm raced across his cheek.

His hand lifted, bringing a vision of blood in front of his eyes—

‘Fu—’ he began as he dived for the ground and three more bullets skimmed overhead. Carter crawled away from the window, teeth gritted, shock registering in his system.

The sniper’s bullet had taken a strip of skin from his cheek, and nicked his ear lobe.

Carter breathed deeply, calming his racing heart.

Close call...

Close call.

Millimetres ... a single millimetre ...

Fuck, he breathed—

‘You got an answer, Gol?’ he suddenly bellowed through the ringing in his own head.

The sniper’s bullet took the imitation Gol in the face, punching his head back against the carpet. The man’s huge body seemed to sigh, to deflate, to settle back and finally lie still.

Carter’s mouth became a grim line.

‘Son of a bitch,’ he hissed.

He crawled across the room, across the chaotic debris of the explosion. He could hear distant sirens. The fire service and LAPD. Could he trust either? He doubted it.

And then he heard a scream - from outside the room, in the wood-panelled corridor. Machine-gun fire shattered the door from its frame and Carter found himself back in the bathroom, ducking below the trajectory of the sniper’s bullets and - thankfully - a little shielded by the frosted glass.

He heard boots, charging down the corridor—

Carter tossed another HPG; the globe bounced from the wall of the room and rattled across the torn floor—

He heard a single word.

‘Shit—’

They ran for it.

The explosion rocked the room as Carter put a bullet through the bathroom window. The whole world seemed to have gone mad as Carter crawled to the ledge. The sniper’s bullet had cut diagonally across his cheekbone and down to nick his ear lobe. That meant the sniper was above Carter’s position and to the left—

He saw it: a nearby rooftop. Ideal—

Carter’s sharp eyes spotted the tiny figure. Steadying his hand on the ragged glass-edged sill, Carter levelled the Browning and began to fire—

Five, six, seven, eight bullets.

He could see the distant stonework crumbling.

Twelve, thirteen. He switched mags, pulled a small device from his pocket, snapped it against the wall beneath the windowsill, took a step back, dropped an HPG in the middle of the bathroom and leaped out of the window—

Several things happened at once—

Five black-clad Nex slid around the corner, carrying sub-machine guns—

The sniper got to his feet, screaming in pain at the bullet in his shoulder, and painfully picked up his rifle. Shaking with anger, fatigue and the agony of hot metal piercing his flesh; he tried to level the weapon over the parapet and aim it at the opposite building—

The HPG detonated.

Carter bounced violently against the wall ten feet below the window on the end of the wire and the attached small black circular object - standard Spiral issue - that he held in his free fist—

The bathroom exploded.

Debris spat from the hole in the wall; even as the chaos erupted Carter swung himself around on the wire and, hanging suspended, unloaded another full magazine towards the sniper.

Then he flicked the release.

Buzzing filled his ears and he shot towards the ground; his boots touched down beside the Olympic-size swimming pool and a few onlookers who were standing, mouths agape, staring up at the room that he had suddenly and urgently vacated. Fire bellowed out, then was suddenly sucked back in. There was a splash as a scorched and flaming wall cabinet landed in the pool, where it hissed and steamed.