The Apocalypse Fire (Ava Curzon Trilogy Book 2)

by Dominic Selwood

  But in the centre of the far wall, silhouetted in flame and moonlight, standing out on the platform over the bailey’s courtyard, she could see Durov’s back.

  He was addressing the crowd of Skoptsy below – his arms outstretched in a messianic gesture.

  “And there followed hail and fire mingled with blood,” he declared, holding a small olive-green metal box in his hand. A black cable protruded from it, and ran back to the MLRS launch controller.

  Before Ava could do anything, Durov held up his hand, and pressed the remote unit’s single button.

  On the monitor, the image came to life as the MLRS kicked into action.

  Ava felt herself go numb.

  Clearly visible in the green haze, the end of the MLRS’s large rectangular missile pod rose until it was pointing over the top of the personnel cab, then swung out, angling itself sideways.

  A moment later, the vehicle shuddered for a second, before being engulfed in a swirling billowing cloud of grey smoke, obscuring it completely. Simultaneously, a fireball erupted in the middle of the rolling smog as a rocket shot out at forty-five degrees.

  Ava’s eyes were locked on the screen in horror.

  Durov was insane.

  He had actually done it.

  Out on the balcony, he was holding the manuscript roll high above his head, bellowing, “The time is here. The dead will be judged, and the faithful rewarded.”

  Mesmerized, Ava watched aghast as his fingers found the ancient black seal, and cracked it open.

  A moment later, on the monitor, there was another searing blast of light within the smoke cloud, and a second missile launched.

  Ferguson was already up on the platform, throwing himself towards Durov, who had turned around at the commotion and was striding into the donjon.

  Durov’s eyes widened in surprise as Ferguson landed a heavy blow to the side of his jaw, sending him reeling back against the wall. Durov slumped, and his hand opened, releasing the manuscript onto the floor, where it rolled under the purple-draped table.

  Ava snapped out of her paralysis, and flung herself towards the satellite guidance system, crashing onto her knees on the floor beside it.

  She stared at the controls.

  Above her, on the monitor, the MLRS continued to judder as it spewed out its lethal payload.

  In no time, all twelve rockets were airborne.

  Over by the doorway to the bailey, Durov had recovered, and was now charging forward. But Ferguson was quicker, and took him down hard to the floor.

  Ava stared wildly at the equipment in front of her.

  None of the buttons were labelled, and the embedded mini-screen was blank.

  Unsure what to do, she spun the black trackball beside the keyboard, and the dark blue screen illuminated with a single green word:

  LOGON

  Underneath it, eight boxes appeared.

  “Password?” she yelled over to Durov.

  Ferguson was kneeling on top of him, pinning him face-down to the floor with his arm behind his back.

  Durov stared defiantly across at Ava.

  Ferguson leant harder on Durov’s bent arm, straining the shoulder joint to its limit.

  “You have no time,” Durov gasped through the pain. “Your time has ended.”

  “Speak up,” Ferguson ordered, leaning even harder on his arm.

  Durov clenched his teeth, his face draining of all colour. “We’re approaching the end of time.”

  “Password?” Ferguson grimaced, digging his knee down between Durov’s shoulder blades. “Now.”

  Ava frowned.

  Something about the way Durov had said the last words was not right.

  She looked at him, and saw the corners of his mouth twitching into a smile.

  He was teasing her.

  Behind Durov, through the doorway, she could see Mary out on the platform. She looked even worse closer up. Her face was puffy and bruised, covered in small cuts.

  Ava stared desperately down at the control screen again. If Jennings had been correct and the rockets were trained on Damascus, they would soon be touching the edge of space, and preparing to drop.

  She did not have long.

  She went over Durov’s words again.

  No time. Time has ended. End of time,

  The sweat was starting to sting her eyes.

  How could he make a password out of that?

  Eight letters.

  She wracked her brain.

  CHRONOS? No. That was seven.

  APOCALYPSE? No. Ten.

  Mary shuffled slowly into the room, staring at Durov with loathing.

  Ava screwed up her face in concentration.

  JUDGEMENT? No. Nine.

  RAPTURE? No.

  Think!

  She turned her mind back to Rasputin’s cryptographs.

  Was there anything in those that might have inspired Durov?

  She pictured them in her mind’s eye, cycling through the images to see if there was anything related to the End Times.

  She focused in on the images and words, then suddenly realized there was one clue left.

  The cross Rasputin had drawn in his notebook had eight corners. And each one had a letter beside it:

  ESHTNOAC

  It was eight letters!

  She visualized the cross in her mind, trying to see it in the context of everything she now knew about Rasputin, the icon, and the Apocalypse.

  And then she saw it.

  Oh God.

  How could she have missed that?

  She had rearranged it to make CHASE NOT. But that was ridiculous. Rasputin did not speak English.

  Now, it made sense.

  She had to read it line-by-line off the cross, not clockwise.

  Durov had even said the word, back in Rome.

  And it was exactly the sort of word that would appeal to him.

  “We are approaching the eesatton.”

  It was a threat he had made in the Palazzo Malta, and she had not understood him. She had misheard it because of his accent.

  But now she got it.

  The Eschaton.

  She punched the ancient theological word for the End Times into the keypad.

  The screen cleared immediately.

  There was no time for celebration, as the LOGON screen was immediately replaced with a radar scanner.

  It showed the rockets inbound to their target, with only eighteen seconds to the impact of the first.

  In the bottom left of the screen, in a red box, was the single word:

  ABORT

  Ava jabbed it hard, praying she was in time.

  Nothing happened.

  Then a new prompt appeared across the bottom of the screen:

  RETINAL CONFIRMATION

  “Get him over here,” she yelled at Ferguson. “Iris check.”

  Ferguson yanked Durov upwards, and dragged him to the flight case, holding his head over the control panel, positioning his right eye above a dollar-sized lens surrounded by a circular steel rim.

  Durov was bellowing as Ferguson forced his eye down over the lens.

  The readout on the screen remained unchanged.

  Ava glanced at the radar screen again, feeling the adrenaline hammering around her system as she watched the cluster of twelve dots move eastwards.

  In desperation, she reached her hands down around Durov’s sweaty face and found his right eye.

  It was scrunched tightly shut.

  With no attempt at gentleness, she pinched the skin above and below the eye-socket, and pulled his eyelids apart hard.

  For a second nothing happened, then the controller beeped, and its screen cleared.

  “Get him away,” she yelled to Ferguson, who lifted Durov’s head and dragged him aside.

  The screen flashed up a single word:

  ABORTING

  A moment later another word appeared below it:

  DISARMED

  Ava’s shoulders sagged with relief as she slumped back to the fl
oor.

  The rockets were deactivated.

  The tracking system would find a patch of land away from the built-up area and bring them down. They would make a nasty hole in the ground, but nothing like the damage of detonating in downtown Damascus.

  A few feet away, Durov snarled, and tore his head free of Ferguson’s grasp. Seizing the opportunity, he hammered his shoulder into Ferguson’s chest, and wrenched himself away, pulling something from behind his watch.

  Before Ava had time to react, Durov was on her – one powerful arm around her chest, the other holding a small black triangular blade to her larynx.

  His thumb knife.

  She felt the point of the blade pushing hard against the soft flesh of her neck.

  “Now. Right hand on her jaw,” Durov ordered Ferguson, nodding towards Mary.

  Ferguson hesitated, then took a step closer to Mary. Watching Durov closely, he slowly and gently took her jaw in his right hand.

  “Take the back of her head with the other,” Durov ordered.

  Ferguson stared at Durov, without complying.

  “You don’t want to play games with me,” Durov growled, pushing the blade harder into Ava’s neck.

  Ava felt it cutting the skin.

  She clamped her jaw down tightly, shutting out the pain.

  Ferguson slowly complied, taking the back of Mary’s head in his other hand. He whispered something to her that Ava could not hear.

  Mary’s eyes were darting from Durov to Ferguson.

  “Now,” Durov addressed Ferguson. “I open this deceiver’s throat from ear to ear, or you snap the heretic’s neck. You decide.”

  A flash of contempt passed across Ferguson’s face. It was gone in a second. But Ava had seen it.

  “A price must be paid. Now – choose.”

  Ferguson’s eyes were locked on Durov, monitoring every micro-signal of his expression.

  Ava concentrated hard, trying to feel exactly where the point of the blade was.

  She sensed it was at least an inch from her carotid artery – which meant it was dangerously near her larynx, oesophagus, and trachea. A puncture to any of those was not going to be pretty.

  She focused back on Ferguson, who was staring ahead, granite-faced, assessing his options.

  Opening her eyes wide to attract his attention, she suddenly jerked her head forward in a lightning-fast movement.

  The pain in her neck was excruciating as the blade cut deeper into her. Then she whipped her head backwards with all her strength.

  As she had anticipated, it connected with Durov’s face, and she heard the sound of the cartilage in his nose crunching.

  She carried on driving her head backwards, then hammered her elbow into the soft flesh of his stomach.

  His grip around her chest relaxed, and she seized the opportunity, tearing free and diving for the military radio. Her hands closed around the bendy aerial. “The Apocalypse is a symbolic story,” she grunted, swinging the unit in a wide arc hard and fast at Durov’s head. He sidestepped, and the radio smashed against the wall. “You’re not supposed to take it seriously.”

  Durov glared at her.

  She took a step forward, whipping what was left of the radio unit back at him again. “I mean, there are dozens of apocalyptic books.” The shattered radio unit caught him a glancing blow on the side of the head. “Even in the Dead Sea Scrolls…”

  Durov reeled from the impact, and she could see blood on the side of his head. Oblivious, he recovered and began advancing on her, holding the thumb knife out menacingly.

  Suddenly there was a blur to her left, and Mary was charging towards Durov.

  She slammed into him, wrapping her arms around his chest in a body lock.

  As she did so, she cast a look back at Ava and Ferguson.

  Ava took a moment to process the unexpected emotion radiating from Mary’s face.

  It was triumph.

  Durov was far taller than her, but Mary had momentum. He staggered backwards from the impact, and Ava watched in horror as Mary drove Durov’s body through the open doorway, and out onto the small platform suspended over the bailey.

  Ferguson was already running towards them, but in the next instant they were both gone, over the edge.

  Ava had also started running, and arrived on the platform at the same time as Ferguson, only to gaze down with horror at the two bodies lying on the rocks far below.

  Durov was sprawled partially on top of Mary, his head on her chest.

  Mary’s neck was broken, and even from over forty feet away, Ava could see by the light of the torches that a dark pool of liquid was spreading out from under her cracked skull.

  Chapter 69

  United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF)

  Mount Hermon

  The Golan Heights

  Israeli Occupied Syria

  A MINUTE EARLIER, Major Annibale Della Torre of the Order of Malta’s Corpo Militare stared in disbelief through his high-powered night vision binoculars.

  Down below in the valley, a second rocket was thundering from an MLRS.

  “Mother of God,” he whispered to himself.

  That afternoon, he had received an unusual order from a senior officer tasking him to keep an eye out for a rogue M270 MLRS that was suspected to be moving about in the area – intention hostile. When he located it, he was to report back.

  He had spent the last few hours scouring the territory beyond the Purple Line, scanning for any irregular movements.

  He had seen nothing except miles of desert.

  But now there could be no doubt he had found the missing MLRS.

  And it was too late to report anything useful.

  It had started live firing.

  All hell was going to break loose.

  He prayed the Syrians had a functioning missile defence system.

  This was going to get very ugly, very fast.

  There would be reprisals.

  The IDF units embedded around him in the Golan were going to be engaged in no time.

  This sleepy area would go hot in minutes.

  “Call it in,” he shouted to his radio operator. “Rockets away. Into Syria.”

  Who the hell was launching ballistic missiles?

  He stared at the vehicle through his binoculars.

  It was pretty much on the Bravo Line – but close enough to Israel for anyone in Damascus to assume that Tel Aviv had a hand in this. If past encounters were anything to go by, all parties would shoot first and ask questions later.

  Della Torre wiped the sweat from his eyes.

  Damascus would have to take care of the incoming rockets. Perhaps Russia would be on hand to help. Dozens of radar screens would already be tracking the inbound warheads – but downing state-of-the-art missiles was never an exact science. It took special equipment on high readiness, and somehow Della Torre doubted that Damascus had the infrastructure or hardware.

  He watched, powerless, as the rockets continued to roar from the mobile platform, the intensity of the fireballs burning white against the night sky.

  The stark reality was that there was nothing he could do about it. This was going to escalate way beyond the resources he had.

  But one thing he did have to make a decision about was what to do with the MLRS.

  There was no time to get further orders from HQ UNDOF, or to liaise with the Israeli chain of command back at Camp Rabin in Tel Aviv. Going through the official channels would take hours. By then the MLRS would have disappeared into the desert and be long gone.

  This was down to him.

  He peered through the binoculars, and watched as the smoke cleared sufficiently for him to see the missile pod slowly swing back into alignment and slot into place on top of the chassis.

  As the MLRS began to move off, he was acutely aware that he could not delay the decision any longer.

  Could he be certain that the M270 was not going to reload somewhere and be deployed again?

  It would be a brave
person who made that call.

  But what if the occupants were friendly forces? Maybe this was part of some wider covert operation he did not know about?

  He could feel the sweat soaking his back.

  The fact was that he had all the information he was going to get. And making tactical decisions with imperfect information was part of what he was paid for.

  No one expected him to do anything other than rely on the evidence he had – and on his gut instinct, and his considerable experience.

  He put the binoculars down on top of the observation post’s hessian-clad wall, and turned to his radio operator. “Call in fast air,” he ordered. “Give them coordinates, bearing, and speed. I want it taken out.”

  The corporal nodded, and transmitted the message to the US 39th Air Base Wing at Incirlik in Turkey. They would have something in the air nearby. They always did. If there was a friendly operation under way, they would probably know about it.

  Over to them.

  Down in the desert, the MLRS was starting to pick up speed.

  It was not long before Della Torre lost sight of the vehicle, as the grainy night vision image struggled to distinguish between the M270’s sandy-coloured camouflage and the Syrian dunes.

  In what seemed less than a few minutes, he heard the deep boom of heavy ordnance, and saw way up ahead the flames licking high into the air, and the telltale billowing plumes of oily smoke.

  He breathed out deeply.

  Job done.

  Tango down.

  Chapter 70

  Château de Montségur

  Languedoc-Roussillon-Midi-Pyrénées

  The Republic of France

  AVA LOOKED DOWN at the two bodies, and suddenly realized that – although battered and bloody – Durov had started to move.

  He slowly pulled his body up onto all fours, and hauled himself off Mary, dragging one leg behind him.

  Reaching over, he took one of the flaming torches that had been mounted low on the wall. Holding it out ahead of him, he began to drag himself on his other arm, moving away from Mary, and towards the Skoptsy huddling at the far end of the bailey.