The Henchmen's Book Club (30 page)

“
Anytime now would be
good!
” Big Cat chided me, his voice barely audible over the never-ending
sputter
of machinegun fire around him.

I smacked the green button on the door panel and me, Mr
Smith and Mr Petrov ducked through and found cover before we were seen.

Sector Five was different still. It wasn’t just a long
series of corridors. It was an open hanger the size of a football pitch, with
rocket tubes stretching all the way up to the concrete ceiling and scores of
surface-to-air missiles lined up like terracotta warriors.

X
³
’s men were
running backwards and forwards loading the tubes and firing off missiles,
telling me either our air cover had just returned or that the UN fleet was now
closing. Either way; the lads in Sector Five were busy, so the three of us
tip-toed through as silently as we could and might have made it to the
stairwell had some little drone in a white hard-hat not rounded the corner and
blundered straight into us.

Mr Petrov dismissed him with a silenced muzzled burst but
it was too late, we were clocked.

“There! There!” Sector Five’s lieutenant screamed, pointing
at us from his gantry position and winning a volley of 9mms for his troubles.

Several of the drones dropped their ordnance trolleys and
started shooting, so we took cover and returned fire, until some little Chinese
scientist in an orange boiler suit ran out into the fray and urged us all to
stop shooting.

“You’ll kill us all. You’ll kill us…” were his last words
before Mr Smith gave him something else to worry about.

It was only then, when a bullet missed my head by inches to
ping off the white tube behind me that I realised what our little peacemaker
had been so upset about – we were hiding amongst the missiles. The
opposition seemed to twig this too because the shooting abruptly stopped and
was replaced by gasps of exasperation.

“Jesus! What the hell! I forgot!” that sort of thing.

“Come out of there, you’re surrounded,” we were ordered.

“Make us,” Mr Smith suggested, aiming his MP5 at the
nearest missile.

“You’ll kill the kids as well if you do that,” he was told.

“And you’ll kill them if we don’t,” Mr Smith replied.

A few of
X
³
’s men started
edging around to cut us off from the stairs. There must’ve been about eight or
nine of them in total, six of whom were armed, so I slung my MP5 over my
shoulder and pulled out my hot knife. Some enormous oily Krout a few feet from
me smiled as he found his own blade and squared up for the fight.

“I’ll have you for breakfast,” he grunted, passing his
knife from hand to hand and cackling with delight at the prospect. Knives were
obviously this man’s speciality. I would’ve stood no chance against him if this
had been a fair fight.

But it wasn’t.

I squeezed the rubber grip of my handle and whipped back
the magnetic blade like a fishing rod, yanking the hulking murderer’s knife
from his hand as if pulled by an invisible cord. I caught it in my free hand
and hurled it straight back before he knew what was happening, scoring a
double-top as I skewered him between the eyes.

The others baulked in surprise, giving us the chance to
disarm three more of them before the shooting started again. Mr Petrov let off
a stream of lead at a couple of fleeing backs, cutting them down in their
tracks and blowing a gas canister in the corner of the hanger. This got us all
motoring and we dropped into the stairwell as
fire
extinguishers
and screaming broke out behind us.

“Which way?”

Section Four stretched out in two different directions and
resounded with gunfire and explosions. It was difficult to tell which way the
sounds were coming from, so I tuned in my eye and saw the sound waves pouring
from the right-hand tunnel.

“This way.”

We set off again, more cautious this close to the battle,
and soon found men and mania to accompany the crash bang wallops.

Around a long sweeping bend the corridor opened up and
became a large provisions depot, with cupboards, shelves and crate after crate
of Pot Noodles. About thirty men were here, running backwards and forwards
between the crates as they tried to get to the kids. The far end of the store
blazed
with shrapnel and shards like the most spectacular indoor
firework display ever and right there, in the very epicentre of all that hell,
almost invisible against the sheer weight of fire being brought to bear on it,
a lone gun fought back to keep at bay all the evil
X
³
could throw at
it.

It was
Big Cat
.

“
Big Cat
,
Big Cat
, we’re here. Watch you’re fire
and we’ll push them into your path, over,” I radioed.

“
Do it!
” Big Cat
demanded, his voice now more determined than frantic.

We fought our way through the back markers and into the
stores along with Mr Woo and Mr Jean who’d secured the submarine dock and soon
more Affiliates were joining us until
X
³
’s men were the
ones on the back foot, hemmed in on two fronts and suddenly fighting for their
lives.

I don’t think I killed anyone else over the course of the
battle. Not for the want of trying, you understand, but I used up most of my
ammunition all the same covering the others as they thinned out
X
³
’s men.

Mr Smith in particular fought like a man-possessed, taking
personal umbrage at those who sought to harm these kids and hacked away with
his hot knife until he had to be dragged away.
 

“That’s enough! They’ve given up!” I said, bundling Mr
Smith away from the men on their knees before he could carve up any more of
them. “Remember it’s just a job. For us and for them.”

I held onto Mr Smith while he sucked in a few acrid
lungfuls of smoke and eventually he seemed to snap out of it.

“I’m all done,” he announced, sheathing his knife and
walking away.
 

Naturally
X
³
wasn’t amongst
our prisoners or the dead, which didn’t surprise me in the slightest. I
couldn’t see him getting his hands dirty with this particular task, which meant
he’d be in the Command Centre, either letting Jack Tempest out of tubes or
having his eye sockets romanced by Rip Dunbar. Not that I cared. We’d done what
we’d come to do. Everything else was above and beyond. And I didn’t do above
and beyond. I was a flat-rate kind of guy.

“Are we clear?” Mr Woo was calling.

“Clear.”

“Clear!” we sounded off, kicking away the prisoners’ guns
and checking over the dead to make sure no one was faking.

When we were confident it was safe, we gave
Big Cat
the okay and told him to come
out.
Big Cat
was reluctant at first
and I can’t say I blamed him. Stacked up all around his hastily erected
barricades were piles and piles of dead. Burnt, battered and mutilated; arms,
legs and heads; it must’ve been a terrible fight but by the skin of his teeth
Big Cat
had somehow held out. I can’t tell
you how because I’d not been there fighting alongside him, but I knew him to be
a survivor because we’d walked away from worse in the past – a nuclear
blast and a tumble into the Zambezi being two such adventures – and
finally
Big Cat
rose from behind his
makeshift battlements and shot me a broad, toothy grin.

“Good to see you again, Mr Jones.”

“Good to see you again too,
Mr
Bolaji,” I replied. “The kids?”

“They’re shaken, but not too stirred,” he said inviting us
into his inner sanctum to see for ourselves.

I must say, with the limited materials at his disposal, Mr
Bolaji had done well to protect them. He’d chosen a large, solid larder at the
far end of the stores and worked to ring the entrance with crates. He’d stacked
them up to form three lines of defence, forcing his former colleagues to funnel
through a single point, then fallen back as each line had been breached, but
only after making his attackers pay a heavy price.

The kids themselves were inside, huddled against the far
wall and cowering under more bales and boxes. One of Mr Bolaji’s colleagues, Mr
Trent, was in there with them, covering the cell door with a mini-gun as their
last line of defence. He and Mr Bolaji were all that remained. Well, almost.

Four dozen tear-streaked eyes turned to look up at me as I
slung my gun over my shoulder and pulled an eye-patch over my falsie so as not
to frighten them with the grinning devil’s skull that stared out from my face
– well, it is a classic design, you know.

“Come on then children, let’s go home, shall we?” I
suggested, holding out my hand to a girl of six who was shivering
uncontrollably nearby.

At first she hesitated, flinching with fear and wobbling
her lip, but Mr Bolaji reassured her I was a friend, helping her find the
courage to climb into my arms.

“Okay then little darling, I want you to close your eyes,
okay? No peeking,” I insisted, speaking to her as softly as I could. The girl
did as I said, burying her face into my neck for fear of what she might see
outside, so I winked at Mr Bolaji – though when you’ve only got one eye,
a wink can so easily be mistaken for a blink – and headed back to the
surface.

33.
A STING IN THE TALE

The others followed my lead, helping the kids to their feet and carrying the
smaller ones out through all the carnage. With hands across faces and whispered
reassurances, we did what we could to protect their minds as well as their
bodies, at least until they were someone else’s problem.

Even the lads on the other side wanted to lend a hand. We’d
taken four prisoners at the end of the fighting and they were all keen to make
amends for their recent paedocidal efforts. Well, when the
shooting
’s over and the battle’s won, there’s no point in holding a
grudge, that’s for amateurs or the Rip
Dumbbells
of this world, so we let them come with us. Of course, we didn’t let them
anywhere near the kids, we weren’t that silly, but instead had them carry Mr
Petrov out who’d lost a foot along the way.

Sector Five was deserted. Smouldering and bloodied corpses
littered the floor, so I made sure the little girl’s eyes were still closed
before proceeding. They were. I wondered if she’d ever open them again.

If the rest of
Île de
Roc
looked like this then we’d done all we’d needed to do, so I hijacked
X
³
’s base
frequencies and put out a call across the airwaves, telling the lads to finish
what they were killing and make for the exits.

“Roger.”

“Will do.”

“Copy.”

“Sector Three still hot. Avoid if possible.”

“See you on the surface,” came back their quick-fire
responses.

All in all, we hadn’t fared too badly today. Judging from
the confirmations I received and the eight or nine men who were helping me move
the kids, we’d probably only suffered some fifty per cent casualties, which is
harsh by most standards, but not ours. Fifty per cent’s actually pretty good
for us.

It’s mad when you think about it, but believe me when
you’re an ex-lifer on The Agency’s books your life’s not yours to worry about
anyway. So we do what we’re taken on to do and try to enjoy the ride. Because
it eventually runs out for everyone you know, regardless of whether you drive a
cab for a living or try to melt the North Pole. None of us can avoid it
forever.

We’d made it as far as Sector Seven before running into
more opposition. Two guys who’d not heard they’d been beaten were given a harsh
heads-up by Mr Woo. He peppered them up against the walls with his MP5,
startling both the guys and the kids we were carrying, filling the tunnels with
their ear-splitting screams.

“It’s all right, it’s okay. Just a silly man being silly,”
I said, hugging the Prime Minister’s daughter so tightly that I thought I might
squash her. “Don’t look darling. Keep your eyes closed.”

I took a sneaky peek myself, and instantly wished I hadn’t.
Neither chap had any sort of face left, and in one case, the entire top half of
his skull had come off too.

Mr Woo looked lip-smackingly pleased with himself.

“Now that’s what I call a splitting headache.”

“Oi, do you mind?” I chided on my way past.

“Yeah, you pick up Jack Tempest’s joke book or something?”
Mr Smith echoed, looking equally disdainful.

“Fuck me guys I’m only trying to lighten the mood,” Mr Woo
protested.

“Language,” Mr Jean reminded him, getting the little boy he
was carrying to cover his ears as well as his eyes.

“You lot have changed, you know that?” Mr Woo moaned. “You
used to be cool.”

We hustled to the pipe interjunction at Sector Seven that
led back up to the surface and found half a dozen Affiliates already there
covering the stairs.

“We ready, Mr
Choe?”

“All clear up top, Mr Jones,” Mr Choe
confirmed. “The fleet’s ten minutes out.”

“We got the signal?”

“He’s right on time,” he replied, a
glimmer of excitement flickering across his eyes.

“Let’s move it then,” I suggested patting
Mr Choe on the shoulder as I went.

We started taking to the stairs, men and
children first, when all hell broke loose behind us. Machinegun fire,
explosions and
laughter
, causing
those of us caught in the open to scramble with our kids for cover.

Mr Choe and Mr Woo attempted to defend
the rest of us as we scuttled away but were cut down by an unstoppable spray of
lead within seconds.

We’d been hit so fast that it was
impossible to tell what was going on. My main concern was for the PM’s little
girl (or more accurately, the years her continued breathing knocked off my
sentence) so I bundled her out of harm’s way under the stairs and unslung my
MP5.

Coming out of the darkness of the southern corridor was a
blinding flash of heavy machinegun fire. I took a bead on its core and rattled
off an entire clip, but the muzzle flashes didn’t flinch. Not even a flicker.
They simply turned on me and fired back, ripping up the pipes and the stairs
around where I was crouching, causing me to dive on top of the PM’s girl and
hold my breath until the hailstorm had turned elsewhere.

What the hell was that?

Over the fighting I could now hear the laughter more
clearly. Evil, mirthless peels of cruel delight that grew and grew as the
danger neared until it stopped opposite the main pipe bank.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” the laughter
challenged so I twiddled my false eye until I could see through the concrete I
was sheltering behind. What I saw there when the stairs fell away I could
scarcely believe. It was the outline of a man, only bulbous and unnaturally
tall. It was clearly some kind of machine, like a robot, or even a protective
suit, because it sparkled with flashes as scores of bullets ricocheted off it
to no effect. Hot flashes shot from its arms, directing machinegun fire to all
corners and its legs trundled, rather than walked, suggesting it was on some
kind of tank tracks.

A series of deafening blasts ripped through the stairwell,
threatening to perforate my eardrums for a second time in as many minutes, when
the lads hit it with their grenades but this only served to intensify the
laughter.

“Is it my turn yet?” the booming voice asked.

The machine swung around to shoot mini-rockets to my left
and I used the eye my mother had given me to take a sneaky peak around the
stairs and saw that the beast was indeed some kind of suit. Like a deep-sea
diving suit, the steel figure had two arms and two legs, while the head was a
shiny smooth turret encasing a human face behind a thick polycarbonate dome.

It was
X
³
.

“Here’s a bedtime story for you children!” he roared,
machine-gunning every nook and cranny as he attempted to blast us from our
hiding places. “No one destroys my plans. No one!”

This was a somewhat spurious claim to say the least because
me and Jack Tempest had specialised in bunnying up his operations in recent
years, hence all this revenge malarkey, but I decided not to quibble over
semantics and instead flew a frag around
X
³
’s suit looking
for the back door. The grenade detonated between his legs but it didn’t even
bring a tear to his eye.
X
³
just turned my
way and guffawed some more.

“Ha ha hah! Your feeble bombs are no match for my
diamo-steel exo-skeleton,” he boasted, cranking his wrist ninety-degrees to
switch his weapons system from machinegun to flame-thrower. A sheet of boiling napalm
splashed across the stairs and pipes, forcing us to flee before his merciless
jeers, and swarms of 7.62mm rounds followed us down the corridor to obliterate
our surroundings.

I dived with my girl into a storage cupboard just off the
main pipe interjunction, only to see the doorframe behind me disintegrate to
matchwood a nanosecond later. The cupboard was just a couple of feet deep and
offered us minimal protection, but we’d be toast the moment
X
³
went past with
his flame-thrower.

“Help me! Help me!” the little girl was crying, but I was
in no position to help anyone – not even myself – and looked up to
see the hulking mass of
X
³
’s exo-skeleton
lumbering into view. He turned to face me, a demented look plastered across
polycarbonate dome, and I was just about to put a bullet the little girl’s
heads to save her from the flames when Mr Smith appeared behind
X
³
…

… and threw his knife?

Well I’m all for heroic gestures but Mr Smith’s effort was
not only feebler than knocking a shuttlecock at a Los Angeles Class submarine,
it was also off-target – by almost ten feet.

X
³
saw the knife
whizz past his dome and turned to look at Mr Smith, presumably out of sheer
incredulity.

“Out of ammo already?” he laughed.

“You know what moved that rubber tree plant?” Mr Smith
asked.

“No what?”
X
³
replied,
delighted to humour the biggest fool in the Mediterranean as a final request.

“Little old ants,” Mr Smith replied, “with high hopes.”

Just then, Mr Jean stood up and threw his knife too, also
missing
X
³
, and sticking it a few feet from where Mr
Smith had stuck his. Mr Bolaji then followed, as did Mr Grey, Mr Kim, Mr Petrov
and a dozen others.

X
³
couldn’t have
been more amused had they been throwing custard pies at each other but I
finally understood what they were doing, pulled my hot knife from its sheath
and twisted the handle. I ran at the door and hurled the knife at a cross
section of RSJ behind
X
³
and ducked back
out of sight again.

As amusing as these petty acts of defiance had been,
X
³
wanted to get
on with his rampage and turned to finish the job, but one-by-one the timers on
the knife handles clicked to zero and
X
³
’s diamo-steel
exo-skeleton was suddenly swamped with powerful magnetic pulses.

He’d been swivelling to burn us out of our cupboard when he
lost his balance and stumbled to his left. Here he ran straight into another
pulse and was violently buffeted the other way.

“Let’s go!” I told the girl, bundling her up and scuttling
underneath the exo-skeleton’s reeling arm as
X
³
started
panic-firing in all directions like the town drunk who’d been given a bottle of
Malibu and a couple of Uzis for his birthday.
 

The others made a break for it too, keeping as low as they
could to stay out
X
³
’s range as he
machine-gunned our polarised knives overhead, and soon we were taking to the
stairs.

“No! No!! No!!!”
X
³
screamed,
alternating between machine-gun and mini-rockets as he sought to kill us while
he could.

We’d made it past him and to within a dozen steps of
daylight when the inevitable happened and a stray pulse spun him around to face
us. There was no time to do anything, we were caught in open ground, and the
flames began spewing from a nozzle under his wrist – when a shape roared
out of nowhere and smashed straight into
X
³
.

It was a forklift truck.

And it was driven by that whoop-crazy foul-mouth, Rip
Dunbar.

“Eat this you
mother
!”
he roared, naked from the waist up and as filthy as a Welshman six months from
his birthday. Just what the hell had that bloke been up to?

He plunged
X
³
into a knot of
pipes against the far wall, diving from the forklift as it was engulfed in a
whoosh of napalm, then rolled across the tiles, grabbing a discarded MP5
en-route and rattling bullets at
X
³
as he spun away
to cover.

The pipes behind
X
³
erupted to
drench
him
with steam but still he was able to fire his machineguns,
roaring with indignation as he fought to untangle himself from the steel.

It’s a sad state of affairs when not even Rip Dunbar’s best
efforts can put a dent in your diamo-steel exo-skeleton, but all credit to
X
³
’s machinists
for producing such a quality piece of kit. Surely they were the real heroes…

… at least, until Jack Tempest stepped into view.

He appeared behind Dunbar with an MP5 and shot up the pipe
work around
X
³
’s head. A pall of sparks exploded as he
cut through the main electrics cable, dropping it onto
X
³
’s back to weld
him to the spot and fry him alive inside.