Thunder (49 page)

He stumbles out of the door, and into the deluge of sparkling-glass rain.

~~~~~

The concussion drove him down the last few stairs and out into the garden. His ears were ringing but despite this he heard the familiar caustic bark of rifle discharge to his left. Spinning toward it, he started to raise his pistol, but something sharp punched into his midriff, and he looked down in surprise to see the tail of a flighted dart sticking out from his lightweight jacket.

There, on the edge of the woods which stretched away from the property, was Mercury.

Sitting cross-legged.

Watching him.

“Hello,
Ace
,” said Mercury’s voice in his ear.

A flush of wild fury coursed through him. The fucker was sitting there. Watching him. As bold as brass.

He thrust his pistol out in front of him.

Then his legs gave way.

~~~~~

I watch as Greere crumples pathetically onto the ground. That was quick.

“Night, night,” I purr.

Time for me to get moving. I don’t want us to be here for too long. Just in case someone comes to investigate the noise and the smoke.

No, I don’t want us to be disturbed.

I have somewhere ready and waiting for us.

~~~~~

Greere slowly opened his eyes. He felt numb. Drugged.

He was lying, face down, on the ground. He could see a scattering of sparse weeds and undergrowth in front of his gummy eyes. Everything around him looked parched and dried out.

He tried to move his arms. They were unshackled, so he sluggishly pushed himself up into a kneeling position.

Mercury was sitting a few metres in front of him, leaning comfortably back against the gnarled wide trunk of a tree. He was dressed in standard DPM woodland camouflage with a black woollen hat on his head. His face was smeared with dirt.

“Welcome back,” Mercury grunted, and with one hand waved a small empty hypodermic in front of him. “The wake-up juice seems to have worked as well.”

Slowly Greere could sense the feeling coming back into his limbs. He still felt groggy, but could sense that whatever Mercury had injected him with was counteracting the sedative.

He looked around. They were in the middle of woodland, in a small clearing. He could see trunks and undergrowth extending away in all directions. He couldn’t see any open land or fields. He couldn’t see the house.

~~~~~

I’m feeling pretty pleased. Neither the tranquilliser, nor its counteracting stimulant, appear to have killed him. I found them in a box which said they were for ‘Medium Sized Animals’. Well, I’d known that ‘animal’ was correct, but I’d had to take a punt about the dosage. It would have been mildly disappointing if I’d got it wrong.

I toss one of my closed switchblades onto the ground next to him.

“Time to fight fair, don’t you think,
Crispin
?”

~~~~~

Mercury threw his open wallet across so that it landed next to the sheathed knife.

“Oh dear,” his deep voice grunted. “I don’t suppose you’re going to be able to let me walk away now, are you? Now that I know
so
much about you?”

Greere watched as Mercury casually pushed himself up onto his feet.

~~~~~

“Pick it up,” I instruct him.

“What’s this?” he says, not moving.

“A sharp knife,” I say sarcastically. “Be careful not to cut yourself.”

He presses the release catch and the knife’s bright ten-centimetre blade springs forwards with an elegant zing of fine metalwork being unsheathed. I flick mine around in my practiced fingers and similarly open it toward him.

The polished steel blades glint wickedly, as flashes of thin sunlight speckle down through the leafy canopy and reflect off their cruel gleaming edges.

~~~~~

Greere heaved himself to his feet, and stumbled slightly to one side as he regained his sense of balance. Feeling was rushing back to him. It had been for several minutes. The stimulant, most likely amphetamine based, was helping. He feigned another stagger to the other side and held his body limply. Best not to let Mercury know too much. He fluttered the knife in front of him as he took a couple of deliberately feeble practice swings with it.

“People will be coming,” he gasped, keeping his voice sounding weak. “After the explosions. What then?”

Mercury laughed coldly. “Maybe,” he said. “But I doubt it. There are working quarries in these hills. Regular blasting. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I’ve carried your sorry arse a long way from there. No-one will come looking for us here.”

Greere glanced behind him for the first time. He needed to work out how much space they had. All around the edge of this small glade he could see only sun-speckled woodland continuing into the distance. No sign of habitation. No sign of any open land.

On one side of the clearing was a hole. It looked like it had been dug, recently, into the hard-packed stony topsoil. An old fashioned spade stuck out at an angle from a pile of excavated earth on one side. Six foot long. Two feet wide. A shallow grave.

“For one of us,” says Mercury.

~~~~~

I watch as a strong gust of wind billows amongst the trunks of the watching trees, curving between their crowding trunks, snatching up fine dust from the bone-dry earth and dragging it into wispy translucent ribbons which curl and twist around the clearing.

“A storm is coming,” says Ace, from the midst of these vapourous streamers.

“I’m already here,” I reply. “Time to play.”

Greere lunges toward me with a surprising turn of speed, and I leap backwards to avoid the swooping steel as it flashes in front of my face.

He’s not as weak as he’s been making out.

We circle each other, each lifting and feinting with our tiny weapons. This is close quarter fighting. Combatants need to get very close to strike. He moves into a fighting stance and starts cycling his arms in a complex series of lightning fast Tanto Jutsu knife-fighting patterns.

He lunges.

I step back.

He roars in excitement and spins to one side to lunge again.

The blade whistles past my arm, cleaving through the material of my combats, and slicing a thin cut across my bicep.

Dulled stinging tells me it’s a reasonable gash.

He’s fast.

~~~~~

Greere knew he could win this. His fuck-wit agent wouldn’t have known that he’d be trained in this obscure fighting discipline. More fool him.

He lunged again.

The amphetamines coursed through his veins. Every movement felt like it was in slow motion.

~~~~~

I leap backwards and have to take a half step to one side where an unseen tree-root reaches up and snags at my shoes. The tripping motion makes me lose my balance, and I have to throw myself forwards into a flying gambol.

I tumble forwards, tucking myself into a ball, and let my momentum carry me over until my feet hit the deck again.

I stand quickly and spin around, but the blade is right there. He’s thrusting it toward my stomach...

I gasp, pull my midriff back, and smash down with my left arm to block.

~~~~~

Greere felt his arm being driven downward, but he knew he had the upper hand. He span on the spot, stepped neatly to one side, and struck backwards with the knife, his free hand pushing hard down on the top of its hilt, aiming toward Mercury’s exposed thigh.

~~~~~

Again I’m forced to jerk myself swiftly back and out of range of the jabbing blade. He spins smoothly in front of me, the knife never once stopping as it swoops an elegant, deadly, figure of eight pattern between us. I watch, mildly impressed, as he slides fluidly into his next strike position.

~~~~~

Greere knew he was unbeatable. Almighty. A God.

~~~~~

I see the crazed rush of adrenalin-fuelled confidence flash in the turgid depths of his dark bug-eyes. The fetid orbs seem to bulge from his face. He thinks he can win. He feels like he’s dominant. His metabolic system will be pumping his body toward the most fabulous high.

I’m bored now.

Enough of this playacting.

I take two swift steps backwards, and throw my stiletto straight into his whirling wrist.

He won’t have been expecting that.

~~~~~

A flutter of silver, flying toward him, was all the warning he got.

Mercury’s knife buried itself, up to its hilt, into the soft flesh of his forearm, and he felt its razor-sharp edges chiseling at his bones as the blade ground its way through, and then out the other side of, his arm.

~~~~~

The pain reflex makes his hand spring open.

His knife –
my
knife – pops out and drops to the floor, so I stoop down and grab it, flick it over in my fingers, and then throw it into the fleshy mass of his thigh.

~~~~~

The second knife buried itself violently into his upper leg.

A thin, high pressure, spray of blood erupted from the side of the blade and began streaming in a gentle arc away from him...

~~~~~

He’s screaming.

“Did I say fair?” I say and shrug; partly out of honesty, partly to release my final knife into my palm. “Sorry about that.”

This third knife slams into his other thigh, forcing him to collapse forwards into a kneeling position.

“Mercury, Mercury, please...
please
...,” he whimpers. I can hear his pain. “I’m begging you. I didn’t give any order for you to be killed. Or Tin. Deuce was out of control. A madman. I told him to make sure you were safe. He wasn’t supposed to hurt you...”

The dust rises around us, like a sepia wash splashed wantonly over this spartan landscape. Streamers of its fine particles swirl around us. The wind rises again, as if it too is caught up in all the excitement. It howls between the tree trunks and I can hear the applause of thousands of clattering branches ringing down upon us: the combatants. Upon me: the victor.

Through this sudden dust storm, I can barely see twenty metres in any direction.

He remains kneeling before me, hands raised in supplication. He looks as if he might be praying – if only he knew what such a thing was; if only he had anything that he worshipped more than himself. And he continues to bleat – but I’ve stopped listening.

I wander back to where I’d been sitting earlier.

“That’s right, Mercury. Be merciful. I beg you. There’s no point. No point in this.”

“No, there isn’t,” I say, and return with his own gun. “Yours I presume? It’s such a shame how your loving relationship with Deuce broke down so messily. That it drove you to kill him and dispose of the body. That it drove you to want to take your own life.” I press the barrel against his temple.

“How did you know?” he whimpers, looking up at me with his lank black hair plastered over his brow and pointless tears running down his cheeks. “How did you know that I’m gay?”

“Call it intuition,” I reply coldly. “Like women have. I’ve left a few love letters around the house. To explain everything. Just in case bits of either of you ever turn up.”

He is shaking, it’s a miserable sight.

“You’ve got
real balls
, haven’t you?” I say contemptuously. “Well, consider this a parting gift from someone you were never fit to lead. Someone genuine, good, and honourable. Someone you have murdered. Someone I loved. Someone completely not like you. Consider this a gift from Jack.”

The dust clouds ghost briefly with bright-red spray as the shell evacuates his brains into the ether, and his soul from this earth.

My own soul is lost as well.

I know this.

I won’t kid myself.

I’m no better than they’ve been.

The best that I can claim, is that I’m not any worse.

In the end I can only console myself with one thought: as far as I’m concerned, I’ve done the right thing.

A crowd of screaming kids
race across the neon-lit square, toward the harbour, as they sprint wildly from their sanctuary on the sides of the waterless fountain. They dodge between, around, and into the groups of randomly meandering adults in a flurry of too-short legs and too-large plimsolls. They laugh and squeal, with the kind of energy that only those who are unencumbered by the weight of life’s sorrows, and who are fuelled by too much sugar and caffeine, can do.

Yanni shakes his head at them, and shuffles one of his tables a millimetre to the left. Maria, surprisingly, doesn’t even lift her head from where it’s resting on my foot. She’s salivating slightly. I can feel it trickling through my sandals.

I had to come back here. Hard as it was. Where else could I go? What other friends do I have?

Khristos waves and smiles, as he hurtles past me like some demented sprite. His drinks tray is packed with refreshments for the latest group of thirsty customers.

I glance over at his destination: one of the tables to my left. There are two adults sitting there. They look tired – drained from a year of hard labours. There are a couple of kids with them. All of them look pale-skinned and happy. They’re on their holidays. Probably just arrived. A happy family.

I try not to stare.

I try not to think about tomorrow.

I try not to think about you and Lizzie.

Try not to think about where I’ve been, and what I’ve done.

In front of me, on the table, near my almost empty beer glass, lies a little bound notepad and simple biro. I bring it every evening. Place it there. Look at it all night. Then take it back, unopened, to Jack’s house. I’m meaning to try writing it all down. To try to find a way to vent all the things I can never say out loud. I’ll get started on it soon. It’s ready, for when I am.

All the while, the village orbits around me. Locals meet and wave arms in animated conversation, children run and play, tourists arrive, are shocked, settle in, and leave reluctantly. The cats chase the sparrows, the dogs chase the cats, and Maria chases everything... When she’s not asleep, that is. Nor dribbling...

I lean forward, to see if I can nudge her slobbering face off my increasingly damp toes.

“You owe me a boat,” says Jack.

“You say that every night,” I reply, without looking up from my gentle pooch-nudging. “Dead blokes sure do lack imagination.”

I feel him settle next to me on the small sofa. “Can’t live with me. Can’t live without me,” he murmurs. “I’m here to haunt you forever.”

“I hope so,” I say.

“Besides,” he continues, “I seem to remember you’ve always had a thing for ghosts?” He reaches up and gently strokes the thin, almost-healed, scar on my bare arm. The one from where Ace caught me with the knife. His finger feels very cold. I suspect he’s been at the frozen Tequila at the bar inside.

“If I had to use my imagination,” I mutter, “don’t you think I could come up with someone hotter than
you
?”

He grimaces theatrically, but I see a tiny glimmer of hurt flickering in the corner of his eyes. Deep down in those pools of pure jade. And I feel myself being drawn in. Falling into that pure green sanctuary. His vulnerability softens my resolve, makes me drop my guard, makes the bottled-up pain flood forward again, and the memories flicker across my vision like some ancient stutter-frame animation. “Hold me,” I growl, throwing my arms around him, and feeling him pulling me close with his one good arm.

His other arm is still heavily strapped. From where Deuce’s bullet went through it. Somehow, he’d managed to squirm to one side, so Deuce’s shot had smashed through his shoulder blade. After a period of unconsciousness, he’d come around to find he was still bound hand and foot – and now alone – in the house. It had, apparently, taken him a long time to get himself free. Then, with me being absent – afloat somewhere at this stage – he’d called Yanni who’d taken him to the hospital in Mytilene.

They’d told the doctors that he’d had a hunting accident. If I’d been brave enough to go into the house, on my return from my boat-vaporisation exercises, I’d have seen that he was missing. Would never have gone straight to France. Would never have had to put up with his endless bitching about how I abandoned him.

“I understand,” he says quietly into my ear. “I know. It’s the anniversary tomorrow...”

I nod mutely on his shoulder.

“The village knows too,” he says. “Pastor Philippe has insisted that he’ll ring the church bell tomorrow morning. At eleven forty-eight.” Allowing for the time difference, that was when this all started – it will be exactly one year. “They want to observe a few moments of silence.”

I pull back from him, surprised, and paw roughly at my eyes.

He shrugs apologetically. “I don’t blame them. The whole place has grown to love you. They treat you as a big sister, little sister, daughter, granddaughter, whatever... Personally, I think it’s a good job that I’m as great as I am, or I’d be feeling there was a bit too much competition for my liking.” He sits back suddenly, and starts rooting around inside his light cotton jacket. “Which reminds me... I’ve got you a present!”

He produces a black cardboard box, which he places dramatically on the table between our beers. Pride of place on a soldier’s table.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Have a look,” he says self-consciously. “Hope you like it.”

I lift the lid. Inside is a silver brooch. A roundel, with a stylised arrow and dagger inside it. The arrow and dagger are shaped so they form a crude lightning strike through its centre.

“Alessandro made it,” he explains. “I gave him the idea, and he did it. Clever isn’t he?”

Alessandro is the village smith. He’s best known for his agricultural and mechanical welding skills. I’m speechless. My maiden name is Tonner. Nicola Tonner. Tonner, in French, means thunder. My married name was Dalca. Nicola Dalca. Iuliu was Romanian. Mum and Dad had always found it amusing that I should fall for, and then marry, someone with a name so similar to ours: the Romanian surname Dalca, means lightning. When I chose my cover name – the one that Deuce had hated so much, and that Ace didn’t ever understand – it was, like I said at the time, no real change: Nicholas Thunder.

“Have I fucked up?” asks Jack, concerned at my strained expression and lack of comment.

I shake my head. I don’t dare try to say anything. I can feel hot tears welling in the corners of my eyes. If I say anything, I know they’ll get loose.

A summer storm has been brewing for days, over the mountains, and a sudden gust of warm wind whips violently across the square. It catches up a handful of litter from one of the crammed bins, and tosses the pieces clattering across the paving slabs. All of the awnings splayed round the various bars and restaurants flap like badly rigged mainsails, and a couple of Yanni’s perfectly positioned beer mats slide out of formation.

The sudden rustling noises set Maria off, and she races out from under the table like some short-haired missile. Her barking draws her usual posse of crossbreeds, and the raucous pack rampage into the distance seeking a suitable offender. In the absence of any other obvious miscreant, the pack decide that this outing’s target must be old-man Dimitris – who has chosen this badly timed moment to emerge innocently from the supermarket – and he stands there shouting and waving his walking stick at the barracking animals.

That’s when I see them walk around the corner, and into the square.

I slam the box shut.

Two of them. Coming this way. Walking as calmly as anything. Directly toward us. Dressed like tourists, but I know that these are no ordinary visitors.

“What is it?” asks Jack, concerned at my sudden change of expression, and I sense him turning his head to follow my gaze.

“Mind if we join you?” says the stranger, carefully. Finally I connect the deep voice I heard on Deuce’s phone, with the one I heard months ago, before I first headed out to that cottage in Wales. Suddenly I understand how Shaz was able to help us when I called her from Delaram.

“Who are you?” asks Jack, bluntly, prickling at the invasion of our personal space.

“Friends,” says the man.

“Hi Nic,” says Shaz. “You look great.”

I nod curtly across at her. She probably doesn’t understand why I’m so reticent. As pleased as I am to see her, it’s the man she’s with that’s worrying me. I thought this was all over. That we were safe. That no-one knew how to find us.

“This is Sharinda,” I explain to Jack, and see his eyes open in mild surprise. He knows about Shaz and how she helped me and then, later, both of us. “I don’t know who
you
are though?” I turn to the big man sitting next to her.

He smiles congenially and extends a hand across the table to Jack. “Nice to meet you, at long last, Jack.” Jack takes his hand carefully. “And you, Nicola.” He grasps my hand firmly, not tightly, and retains his grip. “My name, madam, is Major Richard Charles. Sometimes called ‘The Bull’ for some inexplicable reason.” A cheeky grin lights up his face, and immediately I get a sense of why Shaz likes him so much. I venture a half-smile in return. “I am also known as Sentinel.”

He reaches into the fashionable satchel he has placed by the side of the table, and Jack and I both sit back tensely. He sees us flinching, and gently raises both hands above the table top. No guns. He’s just holding a thin folio, which he places gently onto the table, and pushes over to us.

“I seem to be missing a couple of my assets,” he says cryptically, whilst looking hard at me. “It’s a shame, because we’ve picked up leads on a couple of very interesting characters. One, it would appear, deals drugs in the Northern Provinces, coerces local troops and likes to
chase
people with all manner of weaponry. This character, for the sake of argument let’s call him Gulyar bin Imraan, is also not against upsetting his neighbours who, in turn, are not averse to telling us where we might find him.

“The other,” he continues, “is a rogue agent. Also in the same area. Code-named Joker – somewhat inappropriately in my opinion. He has a fetish for abusing underage girls, and no qualms about providing information to the aforementioned dealer regarding the whereabouts, and possible extraction point, of operational military personnel.” He tapped the folio.

We sit in silence for a second or so.

“Talking of odd code-names,” he says. “Mercury is fine. Are you sure you’re happy with Tin?”

“I’ve grown into it,” says Jack flatly.

Sentinel nods.

“We’re finished with this,” says Jack.

“Finished,” I agree from beside him.

“It is
never
finished,” says Sentinel leaning forwards to us. “It’s like weeds in the garden. We pluck the heads off and more keep growing back. We’re getting deeper though. More and more nations ally around a common motivation for peace and security, and we get ever closer to the sources and advocates of atrocity. You would be surprised how few people actually have the skill to weave language into a form that genuinely inspires death and destruction. How few humans are so lacking in social empathy that they can behave as psychopaths.”

“We were betrayed before. Lied to. How could we trust
you
?” I ask.

He shrugs. “It’s probably best not to,” he observes, wryly. “But you know my name. And my partner,” he glances across at Shaz, who smiles supportively back at him. “That’s a lot of trust I’ve put in you two. Call it an act of faith.

“In my opinion, you were both made for this business. You’re both too good at it. And I suspect you’ll get bored here. Soon...

“So, when you do, call me. I think you’ve still got my number.”

He looks at me knowingly and, yes, I
do
still have Deuce’s cellphone.

“There’s no immediate hurry.” He says, tapping the folio again. “Those two aren’t going anywhere in a hurry.” He stands and smooths his dark linen trousers and lifts his bag. “Unlike us. We’ll leave you in peace.”

I stand hurriedly and embrace Shaz. “Thank you,” I whisper in her ear. “For helping us. For helping me.”

She pulls back, gripping my shoulders, and smiles as she looks me in the face. “He’s a good man,” she says simply. “It’s
so
good to see you, Nic.”

“And you,” I agree, and with that they turn and walk off.

We watch until they round the distant corner and disappear from view.

The folio is still on the table.

I lift it up and put it in my bag.

“Might want to give it a glance later?” I suggest, feigning disinterest.

“Yeah, maybe,” Jack says, trying his hardest to catch a glimpse past the cover as I thrust it out of sight.

Yanni wanders over and unnecessarily shuffles a couple of beermats. He’s kept a discrete distance throughout the recent visitation. “One for the road?” he asks, and flashes his impish grin at us.

One for the road?
Somehow I doubt it. More likely one of many, I suspect. I think we should stock up now, while we have the chance.

“One for the road,” we both agree.

Far away in the distance a flickering splash of bright-white strobe light blinks into the dark night sky. The storm is finally breaking.

Jack rises and follows Yanni into the bar to help with the drinks.

Maria trundles back from wherever she’s been sniffing, and settles herself down next to my chair.

I reach forward and pick up the empty journal. Flick to page one and pick up my pen.

A distant, angry, rumble of thunder crawls down from the mountains, and echoes ominously around the square.

Time to start writing...

‘
Mine is a love story. Written in blood...
’