by Danny King
But then, I guess this was why blind hands paid out the best.
And were played by the players who had the most to lose.
“Thanks young man, very kind of you?” Bill told some young boy-scout bar-teen who’d brought our pints over a few minutes later. He gave the lad a wizened old smile, just to underline his ‘kindly granddad’ credentials, then waited for him to leave before pressing me on my plans. “So what are you going to do? Are you going to try something else or are you going to sign up again?”
I rolled this over in my mind as I drained the first couple of inches. Mr Smith had asked me the same question on the plane back from the island. I hadn’t known then and I didn’t know now, though I doubt if either he or Bill believed me.
Come to that, I’m not sure I believed myself.
Some times, there simply were no choices.
No matter what we liked to think.
5.
CAPRICORN IN ASCENT
The first thing I noticed was the pain in my neck. Something had hit me from behind and it had hit me hard.
The second thing I noticed was the headache that was splitting my skull in two. Right between the eyes it was. Jesus, I could hardly see straight. I blinked a few times and rubbed my face before noticing the third thing.
My gun.
Someone had incapacitated me with a blow from behind.
But they’d left me with my gun?
What sort of brain surgeon did that?
I looked around the corridor and saw Mr Grey, who I’d been on duty with tonight, also spread out across the deck. I pulled myself to my feet and checked him over and found he too was alive but unconscious, and had similarly been left to sleep it off next to his rifle.
Christ, my head!
I somehow managed not to honk over the sleeping Mr Grey and hauled myself to my feet. I felt pretty wobbly on my pins, like Bambi on ice after too many alcopops, but eventually I managed to steady myself against the wall until I had my balance. My head wouldn’t stop throbbing and I scratched my face and rubbed my neck until I realised the violent throbbing was actually the bunker alarm. And it was then, only at this moment, that it finally dawned on me not all was as it should’ve been with Operation Solaris.
Oh God, not again.
I looked up and down the corridor for signs of intruders and saw that the steel door at the far end was open. I approached cautiously and peered around the corner. Four more guards littered this corridor, though these guys hadn’t been as lucky as us judging by all the scarlet that had been splashed all up the walls.
What the hell had happened here?
I wracked my brains and tried to think. The last thing I remembered was talking to Mr Grey about The Miracle of Castel di Sangro by Joe McGuinniss, which half a dozen of us had just finished. We had been due to discuss it at our next dinner break but Mr Grey had chosen to disregard book club protocol to tell me that he thought Joe had overstepped his brief as a writer and had gotten too close to the Castel di Sangro team, which I thought was a valid point, if a little fucking obvious.
The next thing I knew, I was waking up with a splitting headache and a P45 in my pocket.
I followed a trail of death through the winding labyrinth of corridors, past the Communications Centre, in which everyone was also dead, and eventually came to the main operations room. And it was here that I found Victor Soliman, our esteemed benefactor. At least, I think it was Victor Soliman. It was a bit difficult to tell without his name badge or skin. He’d somehow been cooked to a crisp between his enormous crystal refractors so that only his bones and glass eye survived – which is how I recognised him in case you’re wondering.
Scattered all around were piles of scientists, technicians and guards, all of whom had been either shot, blown-up or crushed under fallen beams. I checked the ceiling to make sure the roof wasn’t about to come in and reasoned I’d missed the worst of the fun and games, although judging by the plastique plastered everywhere, the party wasn’t entirely over yet.
I sprinted on through, past the destruction, past the death and past caring, following the emergency lighting towards the surface when all of a sudden a voice stopped me in my tracks near the thermal guidance hard-drive.
“Look out Rip, he’s got a gun!” it yelled, and I looked up to see two guys spinning around from planting charges around the mammoth computer system to glare at me.
“Oh nuts,” I froze.
I recognised one of the men immediately. It was Rip Dunbar, formerly of the SEO (Special Executive Operations), a clandestine branch of the CIA, which was odd as I’d heard he’d hung up his guns to flog Bonsai trees somewhere. I guess he’d come out of retirement again. Anyway, he was the furthest away from me and about twenty feet from his own gun, while between us was some skinny looking Nguni, who’d obviously led Dunbar to us.
Like me, the Nguni was also holding his rifle, and while his wasn’t actually trained on me, I was smart enough to realise my former colleagues hadn’t all shot themselves, so slowly and very carefully I slipped the rifle off my shoulder and set it down on the grilled floor to show them I wasn’t interested in disturbing them at work.
The Nguni broke into an evil smile and slipped the rifle strap from his own shoulder.
“Okay then, let’s make this more interesting shall we?” he chuckled.
“What?”
Before I could say anything more, the Nguni had set his rifle down and was posing in front of me like an action figure.
“Jabulani, no!” Dunbar cried and I was in full agreement, but the Nguni wasn’t listening and grabbed a couple of six foot sticks from a nearby pile, hanging one over his head and holding the other out just in front of himself.
“Let’s do this the Nguni way,” he laughed, fully sold on the idea.
“You’re can’t be serious?” was all I could say.
The Nguni’s eyes darted toward the pile of sticks and he urged me to pick up a couple and try my luck.
“Get bent!” I almost choked, damned if I was about to fight someone with sticks, particular someone who’d been fighting with sticks since before he could walk, but he was suddenly in show off mode and intent on proving himself to his Yank friend.
“Watch yourself Jabulani, Soliman’s mercenaries are killers,” Dunbar warned him, laughably overlooking the fact that none of his mates were dead while some forty of mine most certainly were.
“Argghhh arggghhh!” the Nguni screamed, coming at me in a blur and making me stumble backwards over my gun. I landed painfully on my butt and at the Nguni’s mercy, but the Nguni stopped just short of me and instead simply glowered with amusement and threw one of his sticks into my chest. “Fight!” the mentalist demanded.
Before he could molest me further, I hurled the stick back with all of my might, straight into the bridge of the nose and the Nguni screamed with pain. This bought me a precious few seconds and I used them well, snatching up my rifle and machine-gunning the bastard off to see his forefathers.
“Jabulani, noooo!!!” Dunbar cried in horror.
I swung my rifle his way and offered him the rest of the clip, but Dunbar whirled like a Dervish, and dived behind a stack of wobbly crates. I sent another clip his way, splintering his surroundings to matchwood and Dunbar dashed out from behind them and found safety behind a huge reel of steel cables.
I continued to pepper his position with my AK, dropping empty clips onto the floor and slamming home new ones, but this was purely to keep Dunbar’s head down while I desperately wracked my brains for ideas.
The position he’d taken up was in a direct firing line with the exit, so I couldn’t make a dash for the surface, while behind me only death and detonation awaited.
Worst still, Dunbar had decided to take my recent stick fighting success to heart and called back from his shelter: “Okay you mother, you just made this personal,” which was simply astonishing. Like it was okay for him and his stick fighting little mate to wipe out everyone I knew but the moment Team Soli
man got on the scoreboard suddenly it was personal. Unbelievable.
Once out of ammo I retreated back to the ops room to escape Dunbar’s wrath, only to remember all the new plastique fixtures and fittings that now decorated the place. I was caught between a rock and a hard-head, but a burst of automatic gunfire told me Dunbar was intent on seeing the whites of my eyes when he avenged his termite-eating buddy. This worked in my favour.
I grabbed a fresh clip of ammo from a dismembered torso and ran back to the corridor I’d been guarding with Mr Grey, lock & loading as I went. Mr Grey was still flat out, oblivious to all our worries as I leapt him in a single bound and found a loose maintenance panel in the wall just behind where we’d been standing. This was obviously where Dunbar and stick boy had entered and how they’d got the drop on us.
I thought about hiding inside, then thought better of it and hid in the concealed broom cupboard a little further on. A few seconds later Dunbar appeared at the far end and scanned the space. He looked around, kicked the body of Mr Grey and told him to get up. Mr Grey didn’t move, not even when Dunbar put a shot in his thigh and I realised then that Mr Grey’s brains were probably porridge. Dunbar must’ve given him one hell of a whack when he’d first come in. And suddenly here he was, with his back to me, just begging to be shot.
I clicked the safety off my AK and began to take aim when I heard Bill’s words again.
“Common sense. That’s what you’ve got to use, your common sense,” they said and knew he was right. What was done was done. And I’d almost fallen for the same distractions that had dazzled Dunbar and got him hunting for me in person when he could’ve just locked the door on the way out and triggered the plastique.
I lowered my gun, shook these daft notions of ‘pay-back’ from my head and focussed on staying alive.
“I know you’re in here somewhere,” Dunbar told the corridor. “Come out and show yourself you sonovabitch!”
In an instant, he swung and blasted what remained of Mr Grey in half, even though he hadn’t moved so much as an eyebrow in the last half an hour, then he swept his smoking barrel back across the pipe-lined corridor. He moved slowly, taking his time, studying every nook, cranny and access panel, of which there were plenty. That’s the thing about these bases I’ve found. There are no end of access panels, service ducts and maintenance hatches, all of which are usually just large enough for a heavily armed raiding party to crawl through. One day someone’s going to ask themselves if all these ducts are absolutely necessary, because this is usually how the enemy gets in. Or out. Or away. Or manages to eavesdrops on our plans on their way to the poorly defended arsenal. One day, someone’s going to realise this and the architect responsible is going to get fired – possibly through an electro turbine – which’ll be no bad thing.
For the moment though I was grateful, because Dunbar didn’t know which of the myriad of doors, ducts and grates I was behind, but he knew I was close because he kept talking to me as if I were a skulking child.
“I know you want me, so come and get me. Here I am. Just you and me. So let’s get it on.”
As tempting, if somewhat homo-erotic, as this sounded, I was damned if I was going anywhere near him while he was in this sort of mood and stayed quiet and let him pass without trying anything heroic.
“So, you like to play hide and seek do you? Well okay then, let’s play, you cowardly motherfucker!” he snarled, lacing his invitation with a few strategic insults but still to no avail. Then, as if to underline the point, he started counting backwards from thirty as he pulled the corridor apart. “Twenty-nine… twenty-eight… twenty-seven… twenty-six…” panels were ripped open “… twenty-one… nineteen… eighteen…” tunnels were scanned “… fourteen… thirteen… twelve…” crannies were poked.
Dunbar swept the corridor methodically from side-to-side, pulling off and looking inside each service panel as he passed, though I noticed he didn’t look inside the panel just along from my position.
The one that was already half-open. The one he and stick boy had entered through.
Hello, I thought. Got some booby prizes up there already have you?
No, Dunbar walked right past it as if it didn’t exist, and instead finished his countdown just outside my coat cupboard.
“… three… two… one.”
Dunbar braced the rifle stock into his shoulder.
“Coming…”
His finger tightened around the trigger.
“… ready…”
His eyes narrowed.
“… or NOT!”
In that instant, he turned on a sixpence and machine-gunned the Coke machine opposite to bits.
The machine disintegrated in a ball of glass and sparks as he emptied his clip into its shiny neon belly until the only noises to be heard were the crackle of circuitry and the tinkle of shell casings as they tumbled through the steel grating walkway.
I was crouching just about as low as I could, right at the bottom of the cupboard, and curled into a little ball, though I still heard him tell the wreckage, “That was for Jabulani!” which suited me just fine; no Doctor Pepper and crisps for a week in exchange for that annoying little honey thief. That was a trade I could live with.
Unfortunately, Dunbar hadn’t settled the score he thought he’d settled and his tearful manly rhetoric soon turned to whiney cursing when he found that I wasn’t behind the lads’ snack dispenser either.
“You fucking mother!” he spat, “where are you?”
I didn’t say, so he stepped up his search.
The door handle of my cupboard was given a good hard rattle, but I’d locked and jammed it from the inside the moment I’d climbed in, pissing over his plans somewhat. Not to be deterred, Dunbar turned the door into Swiss cheese with his AK, but I’d seen this coming and was now cowering with a mop bucket over my head behind a load of Kevlar vests as the brooms around me bit the dust.
Another clip done, Dunbar spent five more minutes trying to bluff a confrontation out of me before chucking in the towel and killing a couple of bins on his way out. The SEO would come to view this as one of their greatest triumphs, but on a personal note Dunbar ended his day on a bit of a downer. Which was good.
When he was finally gone, I kicked open the door and tumbled out into the corridor. I knew he wouldn’t be waiting for me as big men like Dunbar didn’t do sneaky things like that, so I shook the bucket from my head and considered my position.
I was the last man standing, with life and limbs intact. Which was good. But I was a mile beneath several million tons of African volcanic rock and the wrong side of an unnecessary amount of plastique explosives. Which was less so.
I had to get out of here.
And I had to get out fast.
Dunbar would’ve no doubt hit the countdown on his way out, which gave me just five minutes to get clear. SEO and CIA detonators always counted down from five minutes for some reason. I wasn’t sure why. Perhaps they’d got them as a job lot on the cheap or perhaps they always set them to five minutes because this gave them just enough time to get clear of a standard blast radius, high-five a buddy, eat a Hershey Bar and salute a flag. Either way, I was at least fifteen minutes from the nearest exit and all out of hard hats.
I ran around in ever decreasing circles, pondering my fate and considered risking Dunbar’s less-than-inviting point of entry, before accepting that my best days were behind me. See, while the base had no end of tunnels and access ways, only a couple of them lead to the surface. The rest just circumvented the volcano and criss-crossed back and forth because that’s what base tunnels did. My chances of picking the right tunnel without consulting a blueprint were less than impressive and my prospects were rapidly going down the pan.
The pan!
That was it.
I tore down two corridors and thundered into the men’s latrines. The place was empty. No one dead with their heads down any of the toilets and no signs of any explosives, just a beaten up old copy of The Miracle of Caste
l di Sangro in the last cubicle.
I pulled the trigger on my AK and splintered the porcelain pan into a thousand pieces, then lobbed a frag grenade into the hole.
The frag widened the hole with a deafening thump and splattered the walls with second-hand stew. Victor Soliman would’ve been distraught at the sight of his brilliant white walls in such a state. I’d worked for a lot of fusspots in my time before but never one who’d been so anal about the brilliance of his latrines. Perhaps if he’d spent a little more money on the base’s security measures and a little less on Vim we might’ve even got away with this one, but no, once again we all paid the price for signing on with a man who’d once tried to patent disposable toilet door handles.
I dived into the jagged hole the frag had just made and slid down a tube, landing in six inches of last night’s supper. For almost thirty seconds, I lay on my belly gagging, retching and choking until I had nothing to add to the soup. Had I known I was leaving this way I might’ve grabbed a gas breather from one of the emergency stations, but I’d been in such a hurry to get out of here that the details simply hadn’t occurred to me. In the event, I pressed on as best I could and tried to overlook the décor. It might’ve been cramped, it might’ve been slippery, it might’ve been toxic to the point of suffocating but at least it led to the outside world.
The pipe sloped down at an angle of about thirty degrees, so that once I had a bit of momentum behind me I was able to half drag, half slide my way to freedom, which might’ve been fun at WaterWorld, but was less so the morning after Tex-Mex night. Sewage splashed in my face, sweet corn collected under my nails and other people’s piss filled my trousers, but at least I was making process, which was good considering I had only… two seconds left!
The first in a series of deep thunderous booms resounded behind me and I gave up caring about trying to keep my mouth closed as I flung myself down the sloping pipe. I scrambled and scampered, but it was too little too late – the blast caught up with me in a heartbeat.