by Greig Beck
Borshov didn’t bother looking down at the papers. He didn’t care about the oil or gas now, the woman’s life, or for that matter even his own. His only objective was to remove this insult to his reputation as the world’s deadliest assassin.
“My bullet. I want it back… now.” Borshov tensed. His unblinking eyes behind his night vision scope were like twin chips of obsidian as he waited for the moment when Alex’s concentration would lapse, even just for a split second. He knew the timed charges must be ready to detonate any minute now, but that meant little to him. Alex Hunter was either going to die in the resulting cave-in or by his hands.
Borshov started another cut on the woman’s cheek. This time Margaret screamed. Alex’s eyes slid down to Margaret for less than a second, but in that mere slice of an instant, Borshov’s hand shot out like a snake and released the lethal black blade directly at Alex’s left eye.
It had been all too easy.
* * *
It was not possible. Where the American captain had been standing there was now nothing but empty air. Borshov heard his blade clatter off into the darkness and in the next instant he felt the woman pulled roughly from his arms. A hand that felt like steel closed on his forearm. A mistake — good, thought Borshov; no man who got within his range could survive against his deadly skills and strength.
From the moment the blade was thrown and the attack commenced the furies were let loose. Alex had been struggling to hold his rage in check when the assassin had mutilated the woman and thrown the killing knife. The voice of an army psychologist telling him to take himself somewhere calm until the rage passed echoed dimly within his head. No, thought Alex, let it come.
Time seemed to move in slow motion around him. His rage built to a cauldron’s heat, and with the anger came a flood of biological chemicals into his extraordinary system that fuelled his enormous strength, speed and fury. He was already on the move before the blade had left the tips of the Russian’s fingers, circling in to get Margaret out from the danger zone.
Borshov caught movement just at the edge of his scope and almost magically another blade appeared in his hand. He brought the toughened black stiletto around in a short arc, intending to force it deep into Alex’s neck. Instead, his forearm was painfully blocked mid-swing. Borshov simply exerted more pressure, intending to force the blade slowly into the American. He knew he had at least eighty pounds on the HAWC and in close combat the odds were in his favour. However, his extra pressure was met with an impossible opposing strength that actually forced his arm away from the HAWC leader. Borshov attempted to use his close quarters, hand-to-hand combat techniques in a flurry of rapid fist and elbow strikes, but each of his blows were blocked and he was in turn struck with what seemed like sledgehammers. When Borshov felt his ribs crack it was time for a change in tactics. He didn’t know how the American captain had managed to improve his skills and strength so dramatically, but he was sure he was still human, and all humans could die. If he couldn’t retrieve his first bullet from Captain Hunter’s skull, he would give it another for company.
At last, Borshov managed to get both his hands on his opponent and quickly lifted the American above his head and then used all his body weight to throw him to the cave floor. Alex hit the ground and bounced from the hard impact, but it was enough time for the Russian to draw and shoot.
Stone chips exploded around Alex as Borshov released a deafening volley of shots in the enclosed cavern. Alex dived and rolled with all his speed and agility to stay ahead of the Russian’s deadly aim. He knew he didn’t have long; the giant assassin would eventually anticipate one of his moves and he would be hit. By the sound of the bullet impacts they had to be glassine-tipped rounds — there was no such thing as a simple flesh wound from one of those projectiles.
On the next roll Alex pulled a flare from his thigh pocket and in a single spinning motion he struck the base on the ground for ignition and threw it towards the Russian. Light- and heat-enhancement sensory equipment is extremely sensitive and the sudden bloom of the hot red flare rendered the equipment useless — and Borshov blind. The Russian ripped the cyclops scope from his head and brought the gun around to try to re-acquire his target.
* * *
When Borshov was able to locate Alex’s position he was shocked to find him right there beside him with his gun hand held in a vice-like grip. In the light of the flare Alex’s eyes looked red and his face was contorted in a mask of white-hot anger. Borshov brought his other arm around and seized Alex in a deadly embrace, intending to use his larger mass to once again lift the American off his feet. However, before Borshov could brace his legs for leverage, Alex lifted the giant Russian high into the air and then threw him nearly twenty feet down the cave to land with a bone-shuddering thump.
Borshov was momentarily stunned but rolled to his feet quickly; unexpectedly, instead of charging back at Alex, he dived towards Margaret and lifted the semi-conscious woman by the hair. From behind his back he produced yet another hidden blade and was bringing it up to the medic’s face when Alex leaped.
On the cave ledge, the Russian agent knew his commander was going to fall to the unnatural speed and strength of the HAWC he battled. He shrugged, time to leave; he owed Borshov nothing.
He pulled back on his belly, out of the American’s range of vision and reached up to a small timer, bringing the detonation forward by just a few seconds. He rolled and leaped to his feet, sprinting as fast as he could away from the explosives he had packed on each side of the upper walls. They were an upgraded form of the anti-tank sticky grenade designed to penetrate battlefield steel plating. Though largely obsolete due to the newer toughened armour deployed in conflict zones, the impact force of one of these small portable explosives made them ideal for detonate-and-destroy work by the Russian Special Forces.
He glanced down at his watch and then dived the last few feet to gain cover as the deafening roar of the explosives thumped like a giant mallet against the stone; the shock and compression waves travelling for hundreds of miles in every direction.
Several body lengths separated them, but Alex crossed the distance with ease and landed softly like a black-clad ghost. He struck out with a kizami tsuki flat-hand blow at a speed far beyond any normal soldier’s capabilities. In one fluid movement he forced the giant Russian’s forearm up past Margaret’s face and on towards his own. The wicked-looking blade skimmed Margaret’s forehead and buried itself in the orbital cavity of his eye. As Borshov was falling to the cave floor like an empty sack, their subterranean world erupted in a cyclone of heat and thunderous noise. Everything was chaos, everything went black.
Fifteen
On the other side of the world Hammerson sat in his office and watched the steam rise off his coffee. The fresh cup sat next to an identical one that was also full, but cold. This one would probably end up the same.
Arcadian and the team had fallen into a grey-out several hours ago. For headquarters it was the worst sound you could receive from a field unit — the hissing crackle of dead contact, no reception, not even confirmation of a working communication device. After the first hour Hammerson had ordered men and machinery down to the McMurdo base at the Antarctic. Something had gone wrong and support needed to be there where they surfaced… if they surfaced.
Hammerson re-read the intercepted transmission from the Russians down on the ice. The Leningradskaya base was awaiting orders for a covert evacuation — they had men down there, too, and Hammerson bet they weren’t there to lend a hand. Too late and too soon to do anything about it, he narrowed his eyes and continued to stare at the rising steam.
Immediately after the fiery plume from the explosives, hundreds of tons of rock and debris caved in to close the exit for fifty feet from the edge of the drop-off. Large and small boulders fell to the cavern floor making ground-shaking thuds as they either shattered or bounced off into the darkness. Aimee dived for cover, waiting for the sounds of the rockfalls to die down as the echoes continued to travel a
way into the numerous feeder caverns for minutes afterward. If it was dark before, now it was doubly so as even the torch lights had their range limited by the thick palls of dust filling the air.
Aimee was the first to rush forward to check on Alex as the dust began to settle. She had seen the last minute of his battle with the large Russian and couldn’t believe how fast he had managed to move. In the dark she had had trouble keeping up with his reflexes and bursts of speed and wondered briefly if it could be some form of military steroid the soldiers were taking. In the red light of the flare his face had been terrifying and if she hadn’t known for sure it was Alex in combat, she would never have recognised him.
The luminous glow from the flares coupled with the smoky dust in the air gave the cavern a hellish appearance. She centred in on Alex’s voice and the sounds of rocks being moved out of the way. As she approached, she saw Alex lifting rocks from the prone body of Margaret Anderson. He bent at the knees and grasped a stone the size of a man and lifted it aside as if it were no more than an empty box.
Aimee halted and stared; it couldn’t be real. She had read of instances where people in extreme stress situations had lifted cars but Alex’s face was calm; there were no signs of any stress. When Aimee reached his side he wasn’t even breathing heavily, just looking down with weary resignation. Margaret’s body lay like a broken doll beneath the tons of debris.
“Bruno?” she asked.
Alex looked into her face for a few seconds and shook his head slowly.
* * *
The remaining HAWCs were quick to assemble around Alex, and even Mike was back on his feet. Though his bleeding had stopped, he was gritting his teeth to keep the pain under control. “Is everyone OK?” Alex raised his voice and surveyed the dust-covered group. They had all switched on their helmet lights and the beams were like train lamps swinging back and forth around the large, choking cavern.
“OK? OK? No, we’re not fucking OK! We’re trapped miles under the ground. We have several people dead, a bomb’s just gone off and there is some sort of creature trying to eat us. Oh yeah, and who the hell were those guys who were trying to kill us?” Silex looked down at the crushed body of Margaret. “I mean, did kill us. They knew you, Captain; what did you bring down on us? I’d say your mission management is about as bad as it can get. Anyone else want to take a bet on how long the captain can keep the rest of us alive?”
From the corner of his eye Alex saw Aimee closing in on Silex, her head shaking as if in warning to the fulminating scientist.
“You asshole, Silex! We’d all be dead a dozen times over if it wasn’t for Captain Hunter. We only came down here to the lower levels on your instructions, so shut up or God help me I’ll knock you down myself.” Aimee was shaking her fist right in Silex’s face and with the dust covering her from head to toe, and her once soft blue eyes red rimmed and glaring, she hardly looked like a woman you’d want to mess with. Silex’s head jerked back in surprise at the sudden onslaught from his rather mad-looking fellow scientist.
Alex recognised the anger in Aimee. He still felt its traces himself. He had just brutally killed another human being; it shouldn’t have mattered to him. As an elite soldier he was trained to disconnect from sympathy, empathy or any regret for a fallen foe. But he felt something; something else. It had felt good to obliterate the giant Russian. And now, something inside him wanted even more conflict, more war.
Alex needed to head this off. Though he felt like throttling Silex himself, an intergroup conflict in these circumstances could be fatal. He called out to Monica, who was scurrying around peering into the cave mouths, presumably to see if any led back to the surface.
“Ms. Jennings, we need another route back to the surface. Any suggestions?”
Monica rejoined the group. “Well, there is no breeze coming from any of the large caves. There’s also no cooler air in any of them that would indicate a path to the ice surface either, and there’s no discernable upward slope. All that leaves us is a choice based on direction. My view is we head north which takes us towards the coast and away from the interior which we know is covered in several miles of ice, as well as rock. So…” Monica pointed to a medium-sized opening. “That one.”
“All right, sounds like as good a plan as any to me. Any alternatives or objections? OK. Mike, get fifty feet down into our exit cave and see if we still have something large and slimy to worry about. Takeda, Tank, check our Russian friends for anything we can use. Everyone else, gather everything we may need into your backpacks, non-essential items remain here and we travel light. We leave in two minutes.”
Alex watched Silex turn away and check his bulky backpack. He knew what he was doing. “Sorry, Dr. Silex, essential equipment only. The electronics are non-essential and must remain here.”
“No! I am not leaving this device here. It’s a prototype and represents millions of dollars and years of research. I demand to be allowed to take it with us; if the device stays, then we all stay.”
“That’s your choice, Dr. Silex, but everyone else will be sticking together and finding a route back to the surface. I won’t try to drag you along.” Alex looked back at the cave where the creature had attacked them and then looked back at Silex. The inference was clear: you’ll be here by yourself and that thing is just down in there. Silex looked at Alex with a mixture of fear and hatred and turned to find Aimee; she shook her head and turned her back on him. Silex ground his teeth and then began to swear under his breath as he tore off his backpack and roughly ripped the image resonator and several other small boxes from the webbing and flung them over his shoulder. Alex watched them loop slowly in the dusty air before bouncing and cartwheeling across the fallen boulders, giving off a spray of sensitive electronic debris as they went.
Alex turned away from Silex to face the tunnel where Mike had just disappeared. He knew the injured HAWC was hurting and now he had just been sent by himself back into a cave where he had been attacked by a creature from a nightmare. Mike hadn’t flinched as he rushed to follow his instructions. Good man, thought Alex.
Aimee came up beside Alex. “Are you OK?” She laid her hand on his arm and looked into his face.
Alex nodded in Silex’s direction. “I get the feeling he doesn’t like me anymore. But I feel safer with you here — you can be pretty terrifying, you know.” He smiled and she smiled back.
“Who were those guys that attacked us? Dr. Silex was right; they did seem to know you.”
“They were Russian Special Forces. I’ve come across the big one before. He shot me and left me to die on the other side of the world. I can only guess they were sent to retrieve or destroy the work we’re doing. The world is hungry for oil, Aimee, and how the world gets it is of secondary concern these days. Anyway, forget that, how are you?”
“Don’t worry about me. My dad always said I was steel wrapped in velvet. I’m tough.”
“Good, I think we’re all going to need to be tough before we see daylight again.” He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. She looked like she wanted to say something but didn’t know how to start. Alex’s comm pinged. “Mike, report in.”
“All clear and quiet.”
“OK, come back in, we’re moving out.” Alex turned towards the chosen tunnel and hopefully their path back to the surface.
It heard the boom of the falling rock and hesitated. A cave-in was one of the only things it feared. Also, the noise and vibrations made it impossible to hunt in the caves. It held its place and waited until it was sure there were no major rock falls that could crush it. It could smell the floating debris and dust from the cave and also detected the scent of fresh blood but could not risk entering a weakened cavern. It would take another route, as it sensed one of the little warm animals moving fast through the upper passages.
Pieter Dragan had been a Krofskoya agent for three years and had never failed a mission. He was not sad that his comrades had been killed. Borshov was a psychopath and made killing a prolonged game to
savour, when it should have been quick and surgically efficient. His time wasting had been his downfall; too bad.
Pieter was racing back to the American’s jerry-bridge when his night vision lens picked up a flicker of blurred movement, and then a human shape appeared standing beside the bridge at the edge of the ravine. It was a girl, and she was holding what looked like a baby. Pieter flattened himself against the wall; there didn’t seem to be anyone else and the girl looked harmless and a little lost; she also looked dripping wet.
The girl didn’t move or speak and when Pieter called to her, she seemed to glide a little closer. Maybe she came from the airplane crash and had been wandering around lost all this time. But how did she get down so deep by herself — and in the dark? Pieter stood up and called to her again, in the few words of English he knew. “Hello, who are you please, you identify, yes?”
The girl shape leaped forward and crashed into Pieter with a wet smacking sound. The pain was excruciating as several dagger-like tusks pierced his flesh. He could not push himself away from the girl as she seemed covered in foul-smelling glue and now even his face was stuck to hers.
Panic set in as he was pulled by an unbelievable strength towards the edge of the rift. His last vision through his night scope was of being hoisted over the cliff edge and drawn down into the blackness where something large and liquid-sounding waited hungrily in the depths below.
Sixteen
Alex distributed the useful items and food among the remaining non-military team members. The long rifles he left behind; though he would have liked the extra firepower, he decided instead to travel light and fast. He also managed to recover one of the handguns which he gave to Aimee. Silex protested, but there was no way Alex would put a loaded firearm into that man’s hands. He figured that even though the guns fired hard impact rounds as opposed to the HAWCs’ safer compressed air armaments, the danger from the creature far outweighed the danger from ricochets.