The Balance Omnibus

by Alan Baxter

  The next few moments were a blur. He was lost in a berserk frenzy of melee, swinging the sword around himself wildly, stabbing, slicing, punching. He felt hot lines spring up on his arms, chest and face as the soldiers scored hits on him, but he felt no real pain, no emotion, no fatigue.

  Suddenly there was silence and he realised it was because he had stopped screaming. A wave of tiredness washed over him, his arms felt like lead. He slowly collapsed onto his knees, the sword dropping from numb fingers. As his vision began to clear he looked cautiously around. The soldiers lay about him on the blood soaked grass, all of them dead, their bodies leaking blood from dozens of wounds. Edward’s arms and hands were running in gore, he could feel blood dripping from his face. He had no idea how much of it was his own. Falling forward, his forehead on the grass, the tears came again. He stayed that way, kneeling amongst the massacre, for a long time.

  Isiah snapped open his eyes, gasped in a quick, short breath. The dripping toilet was otherwise quiet around him though he could still hear Vincenzo and his men talking, laughing in the other room. He had let himself drift away. Dangerous. The images from his past were still fresh in his mind as he stood up. How many people had he killed since then? So very long ago. And why were these thoughts washing through his mind again now? He hadn’t thought of those events for some time. Never hurt a girl when the guy that loves her is standing right there. There’s no fury like that in the world. It was a fury that had made him what he was now.

  There was something about this job, something that gave him an icy feeling inside if he thought too much about it. To coin a phrase, he had a bad feeling about this one. Perhaps that’s what was making him so melancholy, so nostalgic. Besides, he was so tired of this, his life, his mission. His unrequested, undesired almighty job. Would he ever be with Megan again? Was it even possible?

  He checked his watch. Might as well go, only a few minutes until Baker was supposed to arrive. It would probably be a lot longer than that until he actually did show. Isiah looked around himself, slightly concerned. It had been quiet for too long. Where were Satan’s little shuriken?

  Letting his will and energy build he let his body break apart and travelled in his unique way to the empty, sterile hotel room he had checked out. As he arrived he looked around at the polished sink, the neatly made bed. With a noise of appreciation he scooped up the two complimentary chocolates, one on each pillow. He popped one into his mouth, pocketed the other one for later. It wasn’t stealing, they were free anyway. Perks of the job. Unlocking the door from inside, he stepped out into the hall, checking that no one was around. He quietly closed the door, locked it with a quick mental twist, made his way down to the bar to wait for Baker.

  3

  Carlos Villalopez ground his teeth, staring at the wood and straw roof of the hospital mission, cursing his weakened condition. Father Paleros sat on a little wooden stool beside him, his calm, benevolent face relaxed, his eyes looking lovingly into nowhere as he spoke. The words were an incoherent drone in Carlos’ ears, deliberately ignored, but he knew what they were all about. Every day the same speech disguised in different fables, varying anecdotes.

  Carlos lay on an old, unsteady army camp bed, the thin wire pressing uncomfortably into his back in a dozen different places through a thin, filthy mattress. The Central American heat and humidity made him sweat, his back and buttocks raw with bedsores, flies continually hassling him, mosquitoes feasting on his naked skin. His lean, muscular body was taut with discomfort and frustration.

  He endured this most recent effort on the part of the priest to convince him to embrace the love of God, repent his evil past. He didn’t hear the words, his mind too full of images of the agony and suffering he would subject this bastard priest to when he was strong enough.

  For nearly three weeks now he had been lying here, recovering. Ignoring the moans of sweating people in beds on either side, concentrating on his own anger at this confinement. The first week or so had been a blessed morphine haze of bizarre hallucinatory dreams and childlike confusion, making the pain a second hand experience.

  Hard to believe it was that long since he had been partnered with that idiot. Standing there in the camouflaged compound of one of the many groups of people he dealt with.

  ‘What do you mean, a partner?’

  The grizzled old veteran had laughed, shrugging. ‘It’s in the contract, Carlos. There are outside interests in this.’

  ‘But who is he, Paco? What does he know of the area, the terrain, the enemy?’

  Paco raised a placating hand. ‘He’s going to be there simply as added firepower. You’ll retain control of the whole operation. He’ll follow your orders.’

  Carlos spat. ‘Fuck, Paco, I work alone, you know that. I don’t want to work with anybody else and I don’t need any additional firepower. This is a covert extraction, for fuck’s sake.’

  ‘I know, Carlos, I know. But they’re the ones with the money.’

  Carlos sneered. ‘I don’t like it.’

  Paco shrugged. ‘You want to walk away, then walk away. I can find somebody else for the job. Not as good as you, sure, but there’s lots of people out there that would jump at this kind of money.’

  Carlos stared at the ground, his jaw clenched in frustration. It was a lot of money. And it was a pretty straightforward job. Maybe this extra person could be ordered to just keep out of the way. ‘Who is the guy anyway?’

  Paco smiled. ‘The guy is on their payroll, but he’s merc. I guess he specialises in working for them. He’s a German and doesn’t speak Spanish, so we’ll have to communicate in English.’

  Carlos barked a humourless laugh. ‘This just gets better!’

  They walked across the complex, bright in blistering midday heat. Corrugated sheds stood around them, jeeps and ATVs parked under camouflaged tarpaulins, busy people moving around with hard eyes and harder faces. There was a cabin on the far side of the compound, raised on short brick stilts, with armoured, blackened windows. Paco swiped a card at the door and pushed it open for Carlos, following him through. A huge man sat in the chair opposite Paco’s desk. He jumped up as they came in, grinning enormously. He wore jungle fatigues, heavy boots, khaki vest top. And a bandana, red, tied at the back. Carlos winced internally, Shit, thinks he’s Rambo.

  ‘Carlos, this is Karl, your partner for the job. Karl, Carlos.’

  Carlos shook Karl’s hand, shooting Paco a withering look for the sarcasm evident in his voice. ‘What the fuck is this guy?’ he asked in Spanish.

  Paco smiled, his eyes mischievous. ‘Please, Carlos,’ he said in English, ‘our friend speaks no Spanish.’

  Karl nodded emphatically. ‘Yes, I must apologise for my lack of understanding with Spanish, though I understand we both have very good English, yes?’

  Carlos nodded, though he refused to smile. For that matter, he rarely smiled anyway. ‘Yes, I understand we do.’

  Karl beamed again. ‘Excellent. I am very much looking forward to working with you. I have heard a lot of your past successes. I have wanted for some time to meet you. Ha, we even have the same name, in our own languages!’

  ‘Well, so long as you can take an order, to the letter, with no questions of any kind, then we’ll get on fine.’

  Karl grinned again, though a little less enthusiastically. ‘Of course.’

  Paco broke the tension. ‘Let’s go over the brief of the job, gentlemen.’

  The next couple of hours were spent studying maps, blueprints, personnel records. All highly confidential, all supposedly safe from the hands of people like Carlos.

  The one thing that became apparent throughout was that this Karl idiot had very little real experience. And that made him dangerous. It took a long time to get good in this game. It took hard training, experience and more than a little luck, but Carlos was no fool. He knew that luck was something that developed too, like a sixth sense. No way did Karl the gung-ho Hollywood mercenary have that kind of experience and that made him luggage as
far as Carlos was concerned.

  Karl was a self-professed dog of war, his experience lying in quelling uprisings and coups, firepower on a big scale. He had fought and killed, but had no sense of the subtle side of war. Guerilla action, infiltration, extraction, assassination.

  They left early the next day, a chopper taking them a long way north. They dropped only a few kilometres from the site, low and fast. It made for a heavy landing, but it meant a lot less walking through the jungle. Following the directions the parent agency had given them to locate the compound Carlos had set out at a forced pace, giving Karl a taste of the level of professionalism he was working with now. Almost immediately the giant German had begun rambling.

  ‘Why do you think they need us to get this guy out?’ he asked.

  Carlos shrugged. ‘What the hell does it matter? We’re getting paid for a service.’

  Karl made a small noise of affirmation. ‘I guess. But you’d think they would ransom him, no?’

  Carlos spun around. ‘How the fuck do I know? Maybe ransom isn’t an option and they’re just going to kill him. It makes no difference. Save your breath in case you need it for fighting.’

  Karl, leaning back slightly from Carlos’ tirade, just nodded.

  It wasn’t long before the fenced compound could be seen, flashes of chainlink and prefab buildings through the trees. Carlos brought his rifle round to his front, resting it carefully by its barrel in his left hand. Karl did the same with his lovingly maintained AK47.

  ‘Keep low, slow, and follow me,’ Carlos said. ‘We’ll breach the fence there,’ he pointed, ‘and cut in behind the building by the jeep. Do you remember the plans we saw?’

  Karl nodded. ‘Sure. We should be able to access the brig from behind the second building?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Carlos crept forward, watching everywhere at once. They got to within about thirty feet of the fence and he stopped, pausing to listen, look, feel. He pointed to his right, Might as well make some use of this idiot. ‘Circle around a little. Check that there’s no line of sight from that window.’

  Karl nodded, circling slowly, his AK47 half raised.

  Suddenly Carlos got an itch, the hairs on the back of his neck raising. Something didn’t feel right. He looked around, and there it was. Almost invisible, certainly invisible to an amateur like Karl. A disturbance in the leaf litter was enough for Carlos to instantly recognise the danger. ‘Karl, don’t move!’ he hissed, and Karl went straight into commando mode, ducking and rolling, swinging his beloved weapon to his shoulder as he came up on one knee. Right on top of the land mine.

  The moment Karl started to move, Carlos leapt for the cover of the trees. As he rolled down amongst the tree trunks, desperately trying to get away, there was a concussive crack and pain lanced throughout his body. He felt white hot metal tear into his thigh and something slammed into his ribs, a thousand other pieces of shrapnel peppering him all over. Then something cracked behind his right ear, his eyes suddenly blinded by searing white pain. Somehow he managed to keep staggering several paces before he fell, his survival instincts telling him to get away from the site of the explosion. If he survived the blast he certainly didn’t want to be found by the people from the complex, who were undoubtedly rushing out straight away to investigate. He managed to roll in under some heavy leaves before he blacked out completely.

  After a week of morphine induced bewilderment he had realised that he was in a mission hospital. It had taken him another week at least to piece together the events that had put him there, but he remembered enough now. Vague memories of voices shouting as they discovered which mine had blown. Discussions as to who the guy might be whose legs were in three different places and whose guts were spilled across two metres of ground. It didn’t occur to them that he might have had a partner, it seemed, and that was fine by Carlos. Then a couple of boys from Paco’s outfit had come along that night, presumably after Carlos hadn’t communicated before dark like they had arranged. It must have been late, but he couldn’t remember any conversation. Too much blood loss, shock. They had found him, dragged him to a jeep and dumped him outside the mission hospital. He didn’t blame them for that. Standard procedure, risks of the job. The people he was employed through this time, just like all the others he freelanced for, had neither the money, resources or inclination to have facilities for anything but the most minor medical emergencies. The people that worked for them were like machines and if a machine got broken, well, they weren’t mechanics. It was evidence of the respect they had for Carlos that they had even gone so far as to find him and deliver him to medical aid.

  And now here he was.

  It was a shame that Karl was blown into mincemeat, he would never get the opportunity to exact any revenge on the bastard. It was bad for his reputation, a mission botched so badly. He had told Paco that he worked alone, and would stick to that rule from now on, no matter the money.

  Now an eight inch gash in his leg was healing, his broken ribs re-knitting. Headaches from the shrapnel had pretty much stopped. They were going to take out the stitches in the next day or two. The doctors couldn’t believe he had survived, but now they knew what a tough bastard he was. It would take more than some action man to finish Carlos Villalopez.

  In a day or two he would be strong enough to leave. He could get together his gear, reset his life. And come back to kill this fucking priest that wouldn’t leave him in peace. The patronising, superior bastard, with his great advice and constant coercions to reach out for the love of God. What God? There was no God in the life of Carlos Villalopez, no Devil or Virgin Mary or Baby Jesus. There was Carlos and nothing else. He looked out for himself. He killed with incredible expertise and he loved to do it. All he lived for was that buzz, as the bastard stares into your eyes as his life drains away, or his body dances like some perverted marionette as slug after slug of red hot metal slams into him. This priest with his holy lectures would understand the meaning of pain, the limits of suffering, before Carlos sent him into a black pit of death to learn that there was no God, no afterlife. Just this life, this world and the pure beauty of the kill.

  This priest was like all the others. Like all of them at the Church orphanage with their uncompromising childcare. The glory of God, the lessons of Jesus, the stinging cane across young buttocks, the invasion of his innocent, uncomprehending flesh. He remembered the leering faces, the glazed eyes. Their foul hypocrisy, their twisted morals. How could there possibly be an all-powerful, benevolent god that would let his earthly representatives do these things? He had hurt himself at night to tear away the memories, while he imagined ways of hurting them back. Making them suffer.

  In his mid-teens, hardened and strong, he had left a legacy of blood and struck out, becoming one of the most efficient, ruthless and successful men in his field, feared and held in awe by all his peers.

  He clenched his fists as the priest droned on. His grip was getting stronger. Day after tomorrow and he would be out of this stinking mission, maybe the day after that. As the priest laid his hand on Carlos’ brow, saying a prayer for his salvation, Carlos sucked in a deep breath, hearing his teeth creak together, the muscles in his jaw twitching spasmodically. Patience, patience.

  Isiah stepped from the lift into the lobby of the Royal Hotel and paused to get his bearings. He stood on a marble floor, marble pillars all around stretching up into the high, glass ceiling of an atrium that was the main entrance. A huge chandelier hung from the domed glass so far overhead, like glittering diamonds reflecting the evening sun. It would be dusk soon.

  An enormous desk to Isiah’s right, far bigger than necessary, buzzed with a small horde of immaculately turned out staff, ready to patronise a person at a moment’s notice. Yes Sir, Of Course Madam, hand stretched out for mandatory tip. False smiles on false staff, all to please the false patrons of this artificial paradise.

  Isiah hated anywhere like this, but the advantage was the complete anonymity it afforded. Baker probably liked th
e place, thought it was impressive. Isiah knew nobody would pay them a second glance, and that was fine with him. Although he had attracted a couple of double takes and turned up noses due to his shaggy hair and leather jacket, his rugged face and strong boots. They would probably dismiss him as a rock star, undeservedly wealthy. He could never take these people seriously. If he didn’t see them for the joke they were it would drive him mad. He could never fathom why they didn’t see the joke too.

  The marble floor became thick, spongy carpet as he entered the bar. Leather chairs and couches stood all around, surrounding highly polished tables, marble of course, with wrought iron legs. The bar was an experiment, it seemed, in just how much chrome and mirrored glass could fit into a limited space. The overall effect was disorienting.

  He took a stool at the end of the bar, caught the barman’s eye. A clean shaven man of about thirty or thirty five was sitting a couple of stools down, his suit sharp, his Rolex glittering. He glanced at Isiah. Isiah gave him a broad grin and a slight wink. The man quickly looked away and studied his drink. Probably had no idea how to interact with someone that didn’t have an appointment.