Age of Heroes

by James Lovegrove

  A lot. If Roy didn’t live, there would be no payout. Josie wouldn’t get to stay at the Gesundheitsklinik Rheintal. She would be jettisoned back out into the world, still fragile and now fatherless, powerless against her own dark impulses.

  If he died, she died.

  But then, were Roy to tell Munro what he knew, he would be sacked at the very least. Badenhorst wouldn’t hesitate; assuming the Afrikaner remained alive long enough to do so. Given how angered Munro was, he didn’t rate his employer’s chances.

  Whatever he did, he was screwed.

  Fortunately, as Munro shook him, Tzadok Friedman had managed to edge round to a new firing position and now had a clear shot at the side of Munro’s head. He resettled the arrow into position, balancing the shaft on his left thumb while he pulled the bowstring back with his right hand – slowly, ever so slowly, to prevent creaking. That, he thought, was what had given the game away when Rojas fired. Had to be that.

  He drew a breath. Held it. Sighted along the arrow.

  Exhaled.

  Released.

  Munro turned his head, dropped both Roy and the pistol. His hands came up.

  He almost caught the arrow.

  Almost.

  The arrow embedded itself in his skull. It went into his cheek, its tip bursting out at the back through his parietal bone with a little spit of blood.

  Munro teetered, incredulity in his eyes. He murmured words in a foreign language, the same language Anthony Peregrine had spoken when confronting the Myrmidons.

  Then, like a felled sequoia, “Iron Dan” Munro toppled and went crashing to the ground.

  THE MYRMIDONS WITHDREW, using the chaos in the camp for cover. Roy was dazed and bruised from his encounter with Munro; his head felt as though it was attached to the rest of him by a slender thread. Nevertheless he helped along one of the wounded, Mayson, whom Munro had shot in the arm, while Jeanne and Friedman supported the other, Corbett, who had taken a bullet to the thigh.

  They were minus Beshimov, Rojas, and one other, a Peruvian called Gutiérrez. Despite the mission being a success, it was more a rout than an orderly retreat. They stumbled across the darkened savannah, putting distance between them and the compound. Gunfire rattled intermittently along the camp’s southern edge, and parachute flares went up, shedding a wavery crimson glow over the landscape.

  In time, the gunfire dwindled and died out. The camp was in ferment for the rest of the night, however. Its inhabitants scoured the scrubby desert, in jeeps and on foot with flashlights, looking for their attackers. At break of day they abandoned the search, giving it up as a lost cause. The raid had been short and sharp, and the perpetrators seemed to have vanished into the night as abruptly as they had appeared.

  Gavin and his squad met up with Roy’s while the sun was just breasting the horizon. The rendezvous point was a rock outcrop some two kilometres northwest of the camp, not far from the dirt track which was the only road access in and out.

  Gavin was still buzzing from the adrenaline high of launching the fake raid. It had all gone to plan. Once soldiers started mustering at the camp perimeter, the Myrmidons had simply skirted round, slipped in alongside them and merged into their ranks. Soon they were all blasting away side by side at an enemy that wasn’t there.

  Sneaking out of the camp just before sun-up had, similarly, been child’s play. The discovery of Munro’s dead body had thrown everything further into disarray. Lieutenant Dupont had deduced, not entirely wrongly, that the attack from the south had been a diversion, enabling a second raiding party to infiltrate from the other direction and cut down the camp leader alongside three of the new intake. The radicals – the culprits could only be Islamist radicals – had shown an unprecedented level of nerve and ingenuity. Dupont was furious. But even with him now nominally senior officer, he couldn’t fill the vacuum left by Munro, in whose absence the camp felt rudderless and incohesive. Gavin and the others had walked out without being stopped or questioned even once.

  Gavin’s exhilaration faded when he caught sight of Roy and what was left of the other group. Mayson’s arm was in a makeshift sling; Corbett had a field-dressing bandage round his thigh. Roy himself sported dramatic purple contusions on his neck.

  More than that, though, Roy was seething, and after he gave a hoarse-voiced account of the hit, Gavin understood why.

  “That bloke Munro,” Roy said. “He wasn’t human. Seriously, Gavin, he was not a normal human being. Not by a long shot. He was like fucking Superman. I am not kidding. And Badenhorst expected us to go after someone like that with those?” He flapped a hand at the two bows. “With something out of the Dark Ages? That’s taking the piss, that is. The piss is quite firmly being taken. There is stuff going on here that we’re not being told about. We’ve been lied to. This is bigger and weirder than we’ve been led to believe.”

  “You’re sure you saw what you’re saying you saw?” said Gavin. “I mean, heat of battle, mate. You know it, I know it. Doesn’t always seem real.”

  “It was real,” Roy insisted hotly. “Ask Jeanne, ask Friedman, any of them. They saw it too. Munro was a Terminator. Beshimov, Rojas, Gutiérrez – they didn’t stand a chance. Look at Mayson and Corbett. Look at the state of us. One man did this to us. One man. Badenhorst has got some explaining to do. When that bus comes...”

  The bus did come, an hour later, in response to an encrypted text sent by Jeanne confirming that the mission objective had been achieved.

  When the Myrmidons climbed aboard, however, Badenhorst was not there. Roy could only sit and fume as they drove back towards Kismayo. Every jolt of the bus sent a sharp pain daggering through his bruised neck muscles. Kindling for the blaze.

  SEVENTEEN

  Mexico City

  AS THEO DUCKED through the ropes into the wrestling ring, the thought uppermost in his mind was: I have to lose this fight in order to win.

  In the opposite corner, his opponent was limbering up. The man wore a bright yellow leotard and matching boots, accented with gold trim here and there. The front of the leotard, stretched across large pectorals and the pronounced ridges of his abdominals, was embroidered with the image of a lion. His full-head PVC mask continued the motif, with tawny cat’s eyes framing the eyeholes and carnivorous fangs snarling around the mouth hole.

  This was the hulking, fearsome, much-loved luchador known as El León.

  Better known, to Theo at least, as Heracles.

  And he was not in a good mood.

  IT PERHAPS SHOULD not have come as a surprise to Theo that Heracles had found himself a niche in the world of Mexican wrestling. As Chase put it, “Muscle men? The manly slap of male body against male body? A basic good-versus-evil drama played out before cheering crowds? Lucha libre might as well have been invented for Heracles, it’s so him.”

  They were flying down from Washington to Mexico City aboard a privately chartered Cessna C750 Citation, and Chase showed Theo some YouTube clips of El León in action. Clad in his lion-themed costume, Heracles cavorted around the ring with gusto, executing drop kicks, bouncing off the ropes and grappling opponents into submission with complex, quasi-contortionist holds. Chase explained that in luchador terminology El León was a técnico, a good guy, who almost always won his bouts, but not before the bad guy facing him, the rudo, had come close to defeating him, often by playing dirty and sometimes blatantly cheating.

  “He’s really having to hold back,” Theo observed. “You can see him trying to be as delicate as he can.”

  “No shit. Of course he is. If he used even a tenth of his full strength, he’d reduce the guy to mincemeat. Not that it matters. It’s not an actual contest, you know, lucha libre. It’s play acting.”

  “No shit. But there are elements of palé to it, still. Pins, hip throws. Three falls and you’re out.”

  “Aw, are you getting all dewy-eyed about the good old days?” Chase adopted a crotchety old-timer voice. “‘Bring back Milo of Croton and Leonskitos of Messene, that’s what I say.
Now they was wrestlers, them boys. Tough as all get-out, and they didn’t mind a bit of bare-ass nudity. Referee didn’t blow no whistle at ’em neither. They wouldn’t behave, why, he’d just take a whip to their backs.’”

  “Palé was at least exciting to watch. So was pankration. Genuine skill. Genuine pain. Genuinely high stakes. This...” Theo nodded at Chase’s phone screen. “It’s a cartoon. Tom and Jerry with actual people.”

  “It’s loved by millions in Latin America,” said Chase, “just like WWE is in the US. And the wrestlers are athletes, if nothing else.”

  Theo demurred. All he saw was theatre, a comic-book spectacle of heroes and villains. That said, there was an intriguing sociological subtext to lucha libre, in so far as the rudos tended to adopt identities that represented the forces of authority and oppression – politicians, police officers and mobsters – making the técnico a symbol of the common man as he stood up to the crooked and the corrupt and triumphed. Theo could, at this very simplistic level, find something laudable in that.

  As the five-hour flight drew to an end and the jet began its descent towards Benito Juárez Airport, Chase once again aired his opinion that they were on their way to see the wrong demigod. “Don’t want to harp on about it or anything, but isn’t it Evander Arlington we should be trying to going after? Gottlieb pointed the finger straight at him. Said more or less that’s where we ought to look. If Arlington has known all along where the weapons were stashed, stands to reason he’s the one who’s dug them up. Couldn’t be anybody else.”

  “Couldn’t it?” said Theo. “I explained this. We can’t trust a damn thing Gottlieb says. Yes, he gave Arlington the cylinders, but even if Arlington still has them, it doesn’t necessarily follow that he’s opened them. That’s only conjecture. And if he has retrieved the weapons, why? What does he stand to gain from deploying them against the rest of us? And why now, when he could have done it any time in the last couple of thousand years?”

  “So we go see him and ask. Nicely at first, but if he doesn’t co-operate...” Chase clenched a fist. “We get a little more convincing.”

  “He’s not easy to get hold of, let alone meet face to face. According to you he has a dozen homes all over the world, apart from his Manhattan penthouse. He could be at any of them.”

  “Then we visit each and every one until we hit paydirt.”

  “That would take days – time we can ill afford, given the rate at which the deaths are coming. It would be pointless anyway; if Arlington is out there roaming the planet, bumping demigods off one by one, home is the last place we’ll find him. Not that I think he’s carrying out the killings personally.”

  “No, that isn’t like him, is it? He’d have minions doing the dirty work for him.”

  “But maybe he’s supervising the operation at first hand. He’s got himself some paid assassins and he’s leading them from victim to victim, siccing them like attack dogs when they’re close enough.”

  “He’d need plenty of them, if you ask me. Neither Aeneas or Orion would have been a pushover, even if you caught them unawares.”

  “It still doesn’t feel right, though,” Theo said. “Doesn’t feel like a Minos thing to do. I can’t figure out what his motive might be. On top of which, Gottlieb could simply be using him as a smokescreen. Misdirection. We focus on Arlington and forget all about Gottlieb himself, leaving him free to continue orchestrating his big psychopathic masterplan.”

  “One or other of them, Arlington or Gottlieb, that’s who we should be concentrating on,” said Chase adamantly. “I can’t see why you think Salvador Vega is more important than both.”

  “Salvador Vega is... was... has been my friend. He is, in old-fashioned parlance, a stand-up guy.”

  “He’s also my step-grandson – and my half-brother, actually. I still don’t think we should be bothering with him when there’s an actual suspect we could be tracking down.”

  “Noted, but I want him with us anyway, because he’ll provide some serious muscle. We may need it. More to the point, Salvador could well be in the firing line, and I could never forgive myself if I didn’t at least warn him. Do you have a problem with that? I don’t think you do, given how you agreed to come on this hideously expensive plane flight with me.”

  “What can I say? You fished out your black Amex and starting waving it around. I wasn’t going to turn down the chance of a sweet ride like this, was I?”

  As if to underscore his point, the Cessna hit a patch of low-altitude turbulence, but daintily, with none of the heavy, slithery bumping of a passenger airliner, as if there was nothing a sleek little jet like this couldn’t take in its stride. Outside the cabin windows the most populous city on Earth sprawled in every direction, filling a plateau ringed by mountains and volcanoes. Irregular geometric blocks of buildings were divided by lushly tree-greened avenues and freeways, all overlaid with a thick brown pall of smog. It might not have been a very beautiful sight but, for scale alone, it was impressive.

  “Anyway,” Chase added, “I’m just the sidekick, like Gottlieb said. Robin to your Batman. You do the thinking, I tag along.”

  “You know that’s bullshit. We’re family. We’re equals.”

  “I guess. And I do bring some much-needed flair and pizzazz to our partnership.”

  “And would a sidekick have a constellation named after him?”

  “Nice of you to bring that up. A once-a-year meteor shower, too.”

  “Strictly speaking, the Perseids are named after your children.”

  “Wouldn’t be any children if there wasn’t a father.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” said Theo. “It’s good to have you along, Chase. That’s what it comes down to. I’d rather you were with me than do this alone.”

  “Coming from you, cuz, that’s almost smushy. Are we having a bonding moment? Do... do we hug?”

  “No. No, we do not.”

  “Thought not.”

  “I just like having someone around I know I can rely on – most of the time, when you’re not being a jackass.”

  “And the moment is ruined.”

  “You have my back. I have yours. And if we can get Salvador on side, he’ll have both our backs. Extra insurance.”

  “How easy do you think it’s going to be, getting him on side?”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” Theo said. “I hope.”

  FAMOUS LAST WORDS.

  A television contact of Chase’s who worked for the Azteca network had made some calls, done some digging around, and discovered where El León trained. It was a gym in the Tepito barrio, tucked up a side alley not far from the Tianguis street market. Chase’s rusty Spanish and a fistful of pesos got them past the front door and into a large, yellowly-lit room with bare cinderblock walls and a strong reek of sweat and liniment. Here a dozen or so Mexicans with husky physiques were working out with weights, while in the ring that occupied much of the floorspace a pair of luchadores prowled, lunging at each other occasionally. The clanking of the weights was interspersed with grunts of exertion and the shuffle of boot soles on canvas.

  The gym owner himself had given Theo and Chase permission to be on the premises. The bribe helped, but also he believed their claim that they were relatives of Salvador Vega. “There is a family resemblance, cierto,” he said. “I can see it. Salvador will be here soon. Take a seat. Make yourselves at home.”

  The other Mexicans, however, were none too happy about the pair of Americano visitors. Theo and Chase weathered hostile stares and muttered comments about gringos as they waited.

  Theo tuned it out, concentrating on the luchadores in the ring. It became apparent that they were choreographing an upcoming fight. They would plan a sequence of moves between them, which they would run through slowly at first, getting faster and faster with repetition until they had it down pat, at which point they would start putting together the next sequence. Neither was in costume, but distinguishing técnico from rudo wasn’t difficult. The former had a clean, acro
batic style while the latter was more of a brawler and would resort to mouth hooking and crotch grabbing. Gradually, grudgingly, Theo was forced to concede that there was some artistry involved, and some physical courage. Lucha libre might not be a sport, but it was entertainment, and it was performed by people who were as dedicated to their craft as ballerinas, if not quite as graceful.

  When Salvador Vega arrived, the mood in the gym changed in an instant. It had always been that way with Heracles. He never merely walked into a room. He boomed into it, pushing his presence before him like a ship’s bow wave. He greeted his fellow wrestlers with handshakes and high fives, studiously ignoring Theo and Chase, even though Theo had seen the gym owner pointing them out to him. This, too, was typical Heracles. Knowing you had gone to some trouble to seek him out, he would give you the cold shoulder for a while before deigning to notice you. Am I important to you? Well then, let’s make you feel unimportant to me. His ego was big, but it was also fragile.

  Finally he strode over to them, and he was all grins and hearty back-slaps, as magnanimous as any monarch. He told them in Spanish how delighted he was to see them, what a surprise, it had been too long, how were they? As he said this he yoked an arm around each of their necks and steered them towards the locker room. To all appearances he had them in a friendly bear hug, but his grip was so powerful even Theo nor Chase couldn’t have escaped.

  The locker room was unoccupied, and as soon as the door swung shut behind them Salvador switched to English and lost the bonhomie.

  “Who the hell do you think you are? Coming in here like that. This is where I work, you idiots; you can’t just show up unannounced. Don’t you know how that’s going to look? A pair of well-heeled Westerners saying they’re family. I have a reputation to uphold. I have to fit in. It’s taken me years to establish myself here, to be accepted despite not being a native Mexican. Outsiders are not welcome in lucha libre. I had to work hard to prove I was worthy to belong and to earn my place. And now you’ve just gone and blown that in a minute.”