Temple of the Gods

by Andy McDermott

  ‘There’s a long fucking list of people I’ve pissed off,’ said Eddie. ‘Shorten it. Who is he?’

  Instead of answering, she glanced down the aisle. Eddie turned his head – to see one of the other passengers pointing a gun at him. Another SD9. A second man approached from behind Scarber, similarly armed. ‘You took your goddamn time,’ she snapped.

  ‘Sorry, ma’am,’ said the first man. His accent was American. ‘We didn’t have clear line of sight on the subject. If you’d sat in the aisle seat, as we suggested . . .’

  ‘Don’t you try to give me fieldcraft tips, kid,’ Scarber said irritably. ‘I was working undercover in China while your dad was still in diapers.’

  ‘More like his granddad,’ Eddie said, grinning.

  With an angry look she took the Makarov from him. ‘Son of a bitch,’ she muttered, ejecting the magazine and finding it empty. ‘It wasn’t even loaded.’

  ‘What do you want us to do with him, ma’am?’ asked the gunman.

  ‘Gee, what do you think? Deal with him.’

  His gun still locked on to Eddie, the man slipped into the seat beside him. The other goon took the empty seat next to Scarber, also fixing his weapon on the Englishman. ‘You’re just going to shoot me?’ said Eddie, feigning casualness even as his mind raced to figure a way out of the situation. ‘I think the other passengers might notice.’

  ‘Everyone in this car was with me,’ Scarber announced smugly. ‘We booked every seat.’

  ‘Oh. Glad I bought shares in Japan Rail, then,’ Eddie replied, his affected nonchalance rapidly fading. The remaining ‘passengers’ headed for the exits at each end of the carriage, presumably to stop anyone from passing through while Scarber’s people completed their work. ‘Be a bit hard for you to hide a body with a bullet hole in it for another hour, though.’

  ‘Don’t worry, kiddo, we thought of that.’ She nodded to the man beside Eddie, who cautiously holstered his weapon – the other gunman pointedly raising his SD9 towards Eddie’s face to discourage him from trying anything – and took out a shiny metal tube with a nozzle on one end. ‘Gas injector,’ Scarber explained. ‘No needle marks, no noise, and you’ll be dead in twenty seconds. We get off at Nagoya, and by the time someone tries to wake you up at the end of the line we’ll be out of the country.’

  ‘Well, hoo-fucking-ray for Japanese politeness,’ said Eddie. Blocked in, with the man across the table covering him, he could neither fight nor run. ‘Do I at least get to finish my ciggy?’ He raised it to his mouth.

  Scarber shook her head. ‘Those things’ll kill you.’ She gestured to the first goon, who turned in his seat to face the Englishman, bringing up the gas injector—

  Eddie spat the cigarette into his eye.

  Sparks flew, the blinded man screeching and clapping a hand to his face – and Eddie yanked him over the armrest. The startled agent opposite found his line of fire blocked by his partner.

  The anguished operative was still clutching the injector. Eddie clamped a fist round his hand and twisted it to jam the nozzle up against the goon’s jaw. There was a sharp hiss. The man’s shrieks turned to pure horror as he realised his death was just seconds away.

  But the same would be true for Eddie if he couldn’t get clear . . .

  He bodily shoved the dying man across the table, then snatched at a lever on his chair. The first-class seat slammed into its reclined position as Eddie threw himself back against it. The other man stood to bring his gun above his spasming partner – only to have the Smith & Wesson kicked from his hand as his target rolled backwards.

  Eddie crashed down in the next set of seats and scrambled to his feet. He had to get out of the carriage – the presence of witnesses would drastically limit Scarber and her men’s actions. He leapt into the aisle, about to sprint for the door at the end of the coach—

  It opened. Another suited Asian man came through, gun raised.

  Eddie dived across the aisle as he fired. A dull thump of lead against flesh and a choked scream came from behind him. The man beside Scarber had moved to retrieve his gun, only to take the bullet in his chest.

  Another shot smacked into the seat back above Eddie. The new arrival was charging down the carriage for a clear shot. He needed a weapon. The dead goon’s gun had landed on the seats across from Scarber’s table. Eddie flung himself over the row of chairs. Another shot hissed overhead as he landed heavily.

  The gun! Where was it?

  He looked frantically about, hearing footsteps rapidly closing.

  If it had fallen under the seats, he was doomed—

  There, against an armrest. He snapped it up, firing blind over the seats. The running man ducked for cover.

  Eddie jumped back into the aisle. Scarber was still in her seat, but had hooked her gun with one outstretched foot and was reaching under the table for it.

  He pointed the SD9 at her and pulled the trigger—

  It clicked. Empty.

  Scarber nevertheless flinched as if she had received an electric shock. A brief exchange of hostile glares, then Eddie vaulted the dead man and ran for the rear of the carriage. ‘Get Jun and kill that bastard!’ Scarber shouted.

  The door automatically slid open as he approached. He darted into the boarding compartment. Two sets of doors ahead marked the connecting passage between this coach and the next – and through the glass he saw another man hurrying towards him.

  Nowhere to go. The outer doors were sealed, controlled by the shinkansen’s crew and only opening when the train was stationary.

  But there was another door, a ‘no entry’ sign on it. He shoulder-barged it, but the lock held firm. The man was almost at the connecting passage.

  Another slam—

  The door burst open. Eddie fell into a cramped guard’s compartment, hip barking against a shelf-like desk on the back wall. A telephone was fitted above it, but there was no time to call anyone for help. He shut the door, jamming the handle with the empty gun.

  Not that it mattered, as the compartment was too small to provide any cover. All the gunman had to do was fire through the door. He looked about in desperation. Nothing he could use for protection, no panels in the walls or floor—

  A small hatch in the ceiling.

  Eddie didn’t know where it led, or care. He scrambled on to the little desk and tugged at the hatch’s inset handle. If it was locked, he was dead. The handle rattled, but didn’t move.

  Noises outside. The door juddered, clanking against the wedged gun. A kick, then another, harder. The panel around the catch buckled.

  He gripped the handle with both hands, his entire weight on it. Metal creaked. A third strike from outside—

  Something inside the hatch snapped – and it dropped open, wind screaming into the cubicle. Eddie grabbed the frame above and pulled himself up.

  On to the bullet train’s roof.

  The slipstream mashed him against the opening’s rear edge with hurricane force. In the darkness the shinkansen’s white-painted carriages were little more than dim blocks shrinking into the distance ahead and behind, the only illumination the glow of the train’s internal lights on the concrete trackside – and the dazzling blue flashes of electrical sparks where a pantograph arm touched the overhead high-tension cables.

  The roof was smooth except for a pair of parallel ribs running its length, about two feet apart. Eddie lay flat between them, palms and toes pushing against the low aluminium ridges, and crawled forward. Moving towards the train’s rear would be far easier, but it would leave him completely exposed, whereas the pantograph’s raised base was just a few metres ahead. Getting over it would give him some protection against bullets.

  However small.

  The exposed top of his head stung and prickled as dust and grit snatched up by the train’s wake hit him at the takeoff speed of a 747. He kept moving. Even though the pantograph’s base was streamlined, it still disrupted the airflow, blasting a swirling tornado into Eddie’s face as he got closer. He had to
turn his head and bury his chin into his shoulder just to draw a breath.

  Movement behind – a man emerging from the lit rectangle of the hatch.

  The sight of the agent galvanised him. He scrambled along the roof like a gecko, the airflow trying to tear him off with every movement. Another sharp stab as something hit him above one eye, then he reached the pantograph and pulled himself over its base, careful to avoid the arm itself—

  A gunshot!

  He flattened himself against the roof, not sure how the gunman had missed from such close range. Another shot – but still he didn’t feel the agonising slam and burn of a bullet impact. He grabbed the rooftop ribs again and pulled himself onwards, risking a look back. A flash from the power line revealed the agent halfway out of the hatch, anger clear even through the force of the wind on his face.

  That same wind had saved Eddie. The gunman’s aim was thrown wildly off as the 180mph gale lashed his arm.

  But now the agent was climbing out after him. No matter how strong the blast, he couldn’t miss from a distance of two feet. Eddie set off again, muscles already aching. He squinted ahead. Machinery was set into the smooth aluminium expanse of the roof, but at the very far end of the carriage. He had a long way to go before knowing if it would help or hinder him.

  And his opponent was younger, faster, not sore from multiple injuries. He was already slipping past the pantograph, smoothly avoiding the electrified arm like liquid metal. All Eddie could do was keep going, knowing that the other man would be close enough for an unmissable shot in seconds—

  A sudden bolt of pain – but in his face, not from behind. The shock almost made him lose his grip.

  An insect, he realised. He had just hit a bug, the unfortunate creature splattering against his forehead.

  If something so small could hurt so much . . . what about something larger?

  Even as the idea blazed through his mind, he was already shifting position, bringing one hand to his jacket pocket. It found hard, cold metal – his lighter.

  He drew it out, looking back. The agent was mere feet behind him. The man brought up his gun, took aim—

  Eddie tossed the lighter over his shoulder.

  Instantly caught by the slipstream, it shot backwards and hit the gunman’s face with the force of a punch. He screamed as blood streamed from his nose – then Eddie’s boots cracked against his head as the Englishman deliberately raised his hands and let the wind whip him back along the smooth metal surface. The agent lost his hold and tumbled along the roof—

  Into the overhead cable.

  Tens of thousands of volts surged through him, his hair instantly bursting into flames. A fiery halo surrounded his head as the cable sliced vertically down through his skull like a cheesewire. Friction dragged him backwards – into the arm, which collapsed under his weight.

  Registering a dangerous loss of power from one of its pantographs, the train’s computers immediately applied the emergency brakes.

  Eddie had just regained his grip on the rooftop, but even had he been equipped with suckers on his hands and feet he wouldn’t have been able to hold on against the abrupt deceleration. Momentum hurled him forward. The low ridges weren’t enough to channel him – he bumped over them, sliding towards the edge and a lethal plunge to the tracks below—

  One hand caught a protruding section of the air-conditioning machinery set into the end of the roof. He jerked to a halt, crying out as his shoulder joint crackled.

  Brakes squealing, the shinkansen dropped below a hundred miles per hour, sixty, thirty. A final shrill, and it lurched to a standstill on a concrete flyover above the surrounding countryside. Eddie painfully dragged himself back on to the roof and started a staggering run towards the head of the train, looking for another access hatch. He had to get back inside before Scarber and her remaining goon found the statues . . .

  Scarber didn’t need the update from her man Jun to know that something had gone seriously wrong; the sudden braking that threw her to the floor of the first-class car had been clue enough. Any stoppage of a bullet train was considered an emergency by the authorities, and with at least two corpses aboard and clear evidence of a gunfight there would be a massive police presence very shortly. It was time to bug out.

  But there was something she had to do first. ‘Never mind that,’ she told Jun as he started explaining where the Englishman had gone. ‘We’ve got to find the statues. You saw the bag Chase had when he boarded – it must be somewhere forward of here. Find it, then evac the train.’

  Jun nodded. ‘Where do we meet?’

  Scarber looked through a window. There was nothing visible in the darkness outside; the train had stopped somewhere between the towns along Japan’s south coast. ‘Hell if I know. Just get the statues, then once you’re off the train call me – we’ll rendezvous when I’ve got a GPS fix.’

  ‘Okay. What about you?’

  ‘Never mind about me, just get the bag. Go on!’

  Jun turned and jogged from the carriage. Scarber raised her recovered and reloaded gun and fired three shots at the nearest window, splintering the toughened glass.

  The other carriages were scenes of confusion and rising concern. The shinkansen were renowned for their efficiency and safety; an emergency stop far from a station was almost unheard of. The train’s staff were making their way through each coach in turn, trying to reassure the passengers that the delay was only temporary, the problem would soon be solved, and they would be moving again as quickly as possible.

  Jun pushed through the worried commuters, eyes sweeping from side to side as he searched the luggage racks. Chase had boarded the train carrying a nondescript black holdall, and a couple of passengers had already protested when he examined what turned out to be false positives. But he was running out of time to worry about raising suspicion; the operation had already gone to hell, and he wanted to get out of the confines of the train as quickly as possible.

  He spied another black bag on the luggage rack. The fact that nobody was sitting in the seats immediately beneath it made it a likely prospect. None of the passengers nearby paid him any attention as he took it from the rack, more concerned with questioning the guard about the delay. He unzipped the holdall. Inside was a polycarbonate case. He opened it – and smiled.

  Three crude statuettes of purple stone gazed dumbly back at him. Why they were important, he didn’t know, or care. His superiors wanted them, and that was all that mattered. He closed the case, refastened the bag, then squeezed back down the aisle.

  The door to the boarding compartment slid open and he went through. Those to the connecting passage were push-button operated rather than fully automatic, so he tapped the control and waited for them to hiss apart—

  An arm locked round his throat from behind, pinning him in a brutal chokehold as a clenched fist pounded paralysingly into his kidneys. A voice growled in his ear: ‘I think that’s my bag.’

  The fist rose to his head, opened, clamped round his face—

  There was a horrible crackling snap as Eddie twisted hard and broke the man’s neck. He let the limp body drop, ignoring the helpless choking gurgles from the agent’s crushed windpipe as he took the SD9 from inside his jacket, then collected the bag before moving at speed into the next carriage.

  He headed for the first-class coaches. The body would soon be discovered, so he had to get off the train as quickly as possible. But he also had to find Scarber.

  One way or another, she was going to give him answers.

  He reached car number ten, immediately noticing a breeze as the sliding door opened. A window had been smashed. Scarber’s escape route. He hurried to it, gun at the ready. The train was on a long viaduct over a bowl of farmland. The lights of towns shimmered in the distance ahead and behind, but he was searching for something nearer . . .

  Movement on the tracks, a scurrying figure picked out by the glow from inside the train. Scarber. Eddie jumped down and ran after her. She was crossing the other line, headin
g for the broad concrete maintenance path along the viaduct’s edge.

  He followed, closing quickly. He would catch up well before the end of the bridge, leaving her with nowhere to run.

  Which meant she would fight. The former agent wouldn’t give up easily.

  He passed the shinkansen’s streamlined nose, now only a hundred metres behind her. Tough and resourceful Scarber might be, but she was a decade older than Eddie, and a chain-smoker to boot. Fifty metres. With the rumble of the train’s motors fading behind her, she would soon hear him . . .

  Forty metres – and Scarber looked back.

  Eddie dropped the bag, taking careful aim as the woman spun and raised her gun. He couldn’t risk killing her, not yet.

  Scarber had no such restraints. She fired three rapid shots. Bullets cracked against the concrete, closer to him each time—

  Eddie pulled the trigger. One shot, but it was all he needed. Scarber shrieked and staggered, dropping her gun and clapping her left hand to her right shoulder.

  Keeping the SD9 fixed on her, he ran the rest of the way. ‘You fucking little shit!’ Scarber hissed.

  He kicked her gun away. ‘You’ll live – if you tell me who you’re working for. Otherwise I’ll shoot you right here.’

  Her voice became tremulous. ‘You’d shoot a defenceless woman?’

  Eddie almost laughed. ‘Defenceless? You just tried to fucking kill me!’

  The tremor disappeared. ‘No, I didn’t think you’d buy that.’ She screwed up her face in pain, looking down at her injured arm. ‘All right. But do I have your word that you’ll let me go if I tell you?’

  ‘Yeah. I just want to know who wants me and Nina dead.’ Behind her, a new light appeared in the far distance – another bullet train, coming the other way. The service path was wide enough for them to keep safely clear, though he expected it would be horribly loud. ‘Think we should move back a bit first, mind.’ He retreated a couple of steps.