“Hola Comrades!” called one the rope-heads, four figures wading towards them – three men and a woman. Hooker watched them through night-vision – the first man was a giant, stooped in the low-ceilinged tunnel. Two other men in capes carried shotguns. The last was a woman wearing a shapeless hat, a rummage bag over her shoulder.
“Comrades?” the rope-head repeated. “It’s only Gunther and Max. We’re doing maintenance on the cantilevers. No problem, okay?”
Shotguns coughed in reply. The first rope-head bounced off the wall, a fist-sized hole in his belly. The second’s head dissolved in a cloud of wet gristle. “Let’s move,” grunted one of the gunmen.
“Was that necessary?” asked the woman.
“Were these your men?” said the giant. Hooker thought his accent Arabic. He wore some type of work uniform beneath bulky body armour. Armed with two AK rifles, a ballistic bag slung across his back.
A gunman racked a new shell into his pump-gun. “The Generals orders were simple – nobody enters the tunnels after the alert is sounded. On pain of death.”
“A la mierda,” said another voice.
Hooker thumbed the Hanyang’s fire selector, grips buzzing in his palm.
Weapon ready.
An amber icon appeared in his goggles. He didn’t need to raise the weapon, or aim. Just look. Stare – blink – stare…
Hooker’s goggles broke water, eye movement painting target vectors, thermal imaging picking out heat signatures. He squeezed the trigger, the Hanyang making a ripping noise as explosive-tipped darts tore into the first gunman...
…with a blink, he lit up the second, nano-flechette ripping through his torso. His head and shoulders toppled into his lower body cavity, like something from a grotesque cartoon. In the half-light, Hooker saw the giant aim both rifles, the woman tugging something from her bag.
Shit.
Hooker looked, blinked and fired, flechette gouging a lump from the giant’s armoured shoulder. I aimed at his head. A globe of searing light filled Hooker’s goggles – the bastard’s armour has countermeasures.
The giant charged, roaring in pain, weapons blazing. No more than twenty metres away and closing, flares popping from his body armour like a gunship on a hot LZ. The sonic whine of bullets hurt Hooker’s ears, a round slamming into his plate-carrier. He was thrown backwards, gel-armour gripping his body.
“Abid!” the woman hollered, pulling a stubby submachinegun.
Then, a prayer, a soulful roar coming deep from the giant’s chest. The giant pulled something on his armour, some kind of rip-cord…
It’s a bloody suicide vest.
Hooker’s weapon spat flame, a stream of bullets tearing off the giant’s arm at the elbow. The Hanyang’s slide snapped back – weapon empty. Return fire sliced by Hooker’s head as the woman returned fire. She scurried away, back towards the Commune. Gunk bled from the giant’s suicide vest, liquid explosive swirling and fizzing in the water. Grunting with pain, he grabbed his half-submerged bag. Bundles of loam-grey stuff bobbed on the surface.
Plastic explosives.
Hooker half-swam, half-staggered for the bullet-chewed tunnel wall. Pocked with nano-munition strikes, black water trickling from the edges. He kicked, hard as he could, against the wall and the crater widened as the trickle became a stream. Hooker mashed himself into the gap, gloved hands tearing at brick and wire. Something gave, like a rotten bone. A corroded joist, more rust than steel.
The shahid’s prayer grew louder, the giant pressing himself against the wall, clutching the stump where his arm had been. He was smiling.
Hooker tore at the hole with his knife, muscles straining, sinews burning. Water gushed into the void, the Thames desperate to claim the tunnel as its own. The giant exploded with a howling roar. Pieces of flesh, bone and equipment spattered the walls, peppering Hooker’s armour. He fell, ears ringing, into a watery vortex, face stung by debris.
Then nothing, apart from shapes of dark, fractal light.
Then Hooker gasped, eyes flicking open, ears aching and throbbing. He checked the watch strapped to his wrist – he’d lost ten minutes of his life. It felt like an hour. Coughing water, he gobbed the taste of sewage from his mouth. Overhead, night-time clouds were tinged with flame, the stink of burning trash on the wind. He reached for his holster – the Hanyang was gone. His oxygen mask lay by his side, a sharp pain in his forearm where a shard of metal stuck from the fob on his wrist. He probed his ear with a finger, felt sticky with blood and tiny pieces of grit. The NatSec audio grub was broken. They can’t hear me. They’ll torture Leah.
“Are you okay?” said a voice. A London voice, raspy and rough. “Take these antivirals. You swallowed a load of shitty Thames water.”
Hooker looked into a horror-movie visage. Gnarled and twisted, the monster’s eyes were iridescent spheres, each tipped with a glittering lens. Something glistened wetly in the sockets, stopping them sliding out of the melted parody of a face. Sitting up, Hooker realised he was on the ziggurat, in the middle of the river. The monastery of The Answerers. The creature’s lipless mouth moved, exposing uneven yellow teeth. “Rufus Hooker?” The voice was laboured and wheezy, sibilant against a broken tongue. “It’s been a while, but I’d recognise that face anywhere.”
Hooker thought the voice familiar. Tufts of coppery hair between the pads of burn tissue on the creature’s face stirred his memory. “Yes, I’m Hooker.”
The monster grunted wetly, lips making half-a-smile. “They used to call me Cooper. Section leader on Taskforce-12. You were TF-17, right?”
Hooker studied the fob on his wrist and sighed. “Yeah.”
“We covered you in Sheppey. Gordy Rice was your boss.”
Hooker remembered the red-headed Taskforcer, commanding a troop of Land Rovers fitted with heavy machineguns. Sheppey had been brutal, a network of prisons overrun by convicts. A month of bitter fighting, hand-to-hand. “Gordy’s still my boss,” Hooker replied.
“Some things change, others stay the same,” said the monk.
“Like me being up to my neck in shit, Cooper.”
“I’m called Brother Samuel now,” the monk replied. He wore a rust-coloured robe, rubber sandals on his feet. A small group of similarly dressed men stood nearby, holding flaming torches, “I’m reborn.”
“Oliver Cooper wasn’t it?” said Hooker. “I thought you were dead.”
The creature gently pulled the fob away from Hooker’s wrist, dabbing bloody skin with an antiseptic wipe. “Oliver Cooper is dead. I am Brother Samuel.”
Hooker coughed, the taste of sewage on his tongue. “I remember now. Taskforce-12 was wiped out on Sheppey.”
Brother Samuel touched his face. “Swaleside prison. They lured us into an ambush and detonated a half-ton of napalm. Sixty-six dead, twenty-three MIA.”
“I’m glad you made it,” Hooker replied.
“It’s strange, watching your own funeral on the omni. The shit that gets spoken about you…” Brother Samuel finished fixing a dressing to Hooker’s wound and shook his head.
“How did I get here?”
“Brother Ranjit. He was out on the water, seeing if he could evacuate civilians from the estate. Then he saw wreckage on the water. The wreckage was you.”
A hooded monk stepped forward, fine-featured and slim. “I’m Brother Ranjit. You were unconscious – I couldn’t pull you in the boat, so I towed you back. Your smog mask’s air supply saved your life.”
“Thanks,” Hooker replied. “I owe you.”
“No,” Samuel replied, tucking his hands in his sleeves. “Helping without asking for anything in return is all part of The Answer.”
“The Answer?”
“Well, it’s all about the question too,” Brother Ranjit chuckled, passing Hooker a towel and a flask of coffee.
“Thanks,” Hooker replied, crowded by curious monks. “Have any of you got a fob I can borrow?”
Brother Samuel pulled back his robe. Underneath he wore a belt studded with p
ouches. He produced a fob and switched it on. Hooker winced, peeling the dead NatSec fob from his wrist, taking a bloody patch of skin with it. He pulled the liquid memory chip from the device and slotted it inside the new fob. A series of codes scrolled across the screen. Hooker tapped on one and waited.
“What are you playing at?” said Chisholm.
“I’m on the container island, out in the river. The monks rescued me, I was in a tunnel under the Commune, but there was a bloke down there with a suicide vest…”
“We saw,” said Chisholm. “A proper fuck-up. If I were you I’d get my arse moving, before we tell the beauticians to start on your girlfriend.”
“Yes,” said another voice, business-like and cold. Bliss. “Contacting us was the right thing to do. What’s your alternative plan for infiltrating the Commune?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Work harder. Faster. Smarter. We have an extraction plan if you succeed.” Bliss ended the call.
“What’s that about?” asked Brother Samuel.
Hooker pointed across the river. “I’ve got to get inside the Commune.”
“And they say we’re crazy.” Samuel’s eyes swivelled in their sockets, tiny motors whirring. The other monks laughed. “Why?”
Hooker stood up. “There’s a kidnapped girl over there. If I don’t find her, NatSec are going to torture my friend.”
“I see,” Brother Ranjit, frowned. The monks gazed across the river, at the smoke-wreathed Commune. Copters chuntered overhead, floodlights carving scoops of light from the darkness.
“I’m struggling to see how you’re gonna pull that one off,” said Brother Samuel. “Not with the leagues laying siege.”
Hooker got to his feet, wiping his goggles with the towel. “Will you help?”
The monk pulled up his cowl, covering his war-scorched face. “Just before Ranjit dragged you out of the water, we were watching the newsfeeds. There’ve been explosions, hundreds of casualties…”
Hooker, grim-faced, grasped Samuel’s shoulder. “I don’t have a choice.”
“Perhaps we can help, but I’ll have to speak with the others. There will be a price, though. The Answer demands it.” Samuel’s eyes glittered.
“You keep talking about The Answer. What is it?”
“What we believe in. Belief systems require beliefs, Rufus.”
“Although we are, I’d argue, a meta-belief,” Brother Ranjit added mysteriously.
“Whatever,” Hooker replied, stamping water from his boots. “I’ll pay your price. Just get me across the river.”
Brother Samuel nodded slowly. “Let’s see if you’ll pay, Rufus Hooker. Not everyone can…”
Twenty
Paolo keyed his fob. “Sorcha?”
The Irishwoman was breathless. “We were ambushed, in the so-called secret tunnel. Abid’s dead.”
“You were double-crossed by the Spaniards?”
“I don’t think so. Feckin’ trigger-happy bastards started a gunfight with some other squatters. Said something about the General’s orders. Abid was badly wounded, he activated his bloody vest. The tunnel is flooded now, I’ll never get out.”
“Where are you?”
“Just inside the perimeter, near the palisade. It’s quiet now.”
“The lull before the storm. Come back, Sorcha, we ’ll rethink the plan.”
The Irishwoman sighed. “Paolo, I think it’s over. My agent isn’t answering his fob. And even if he does, there’s no Abid…”
“It’s not over yet,” Paolo insisted. “We’ve other cards to play.”
“I don’t see...”
“Just come back, Sorcha,” Paolo snapped, ending the call. He tapped his fob, opening an emergency Darknet feed to the Command Council. He was loathe to contact the Centre, especially in a denied operations area. No doubt he’d have to justify his decision to a desk-jockey Commissar, if he ever returned to Kyiv. But something about Lottie’s story intrigued him. In another life, Paolo had worked intelligence cases. He felt a familiar itch.
***FLASH MESSAGE***
CODENAME RIVERSHRIKE. REQUIRE URGENT MISSION-CRITICAL INTELLIGENCE REGARDING MALE SUBJECT OF INTEREST (POSS. RESIDENT IN WESSEX) CALLED ‘TRISTIAN’ (SURNAME UNKNOWN), MALE, AGE 18-25, UK NATIONAL, EDUCATED USA. PRESENT AT SOCIAL GATHERING FOR SPEAKER OF WESSEX PARLIAMENT WITHIN PAST TWO MONTHS.
***MESSAGE ENDS***
He was still running Evernet searches when Rourke returned, red-faced and panting. Her clothes were soaked, trailing filthy water. She dumped her rummage bag, weapons clattering on the linoleum floor.
“Tea?” said Paolo easily.
“And there was me, not knowing you were secretly Irish,” said Rourke. She scanned the data scrolling across the omni. “You’ve sent a flash message to the Centre? Jesus, Paolo, why? Who’s Tristian?”
“Tristian? The man responsible for Lottie’s mysterious pregnancy, one way or the other,” Paolo replied, prising open the tea caddy. He put the kettle on a camping stove and lit it. “I need you to contact every source in your network. Put them to work, I don’t care how old or new. Activate them now.”
“Why?”
Paolo told Rourke about the speaker’s party in Wessex, and Lottie’s disturbing encounter with a young man called Tristian. “I think there’s more to her story. Something we’ve missed.”
“Just because Hyatt was cagey when you mentioned the pregnancy? I need more than a hunch to risk my entire network.”
“Hyatt was never evasive before. It shook her, Sorcha. More importantly, Lottie says Hyatt plied her with champagne the night she met Tristian. Lottie already has suitors identified for her, yet Hyatt was happy to let her flirt with another man.”
“Yes, I’ve heard the elites prefer arranged marriages,” Rourke replied. “I’ll grant you, that does sound off. D’you think the girl’s telling the truth?”
The kettle boiled. “I don’t think she has the wit to lie. Not now.”
Rourke patted her pockets, producing a neoprene pouch. Inside was a fresh fob. “I’ll do it. My entire network, although they’ll all be burnt. Now, is there any chance you could get me a bloody towel?”
Paolo found clean towels and a blanket. He fixed a cup of Earl Grey and placed it in front of the Irishwoman, along with a plate of biscuits. “D’you need anything else?”
“Chocolate, if you’ve got any,” she replied, loading an encrypted chip into her fob. “I need you to run searches when I get anything. Is that Darknet node working?”
Paolo pulled a slab of Swiss chocolate from a draw and passed it to Rourke. “Yes. It’s encrypted for contact with the Centre.”
Rourke broke off a black square of chocolate and popped it in her mouth. Then she began tapping messages into the fob, running them through an encryption matrix before firing them into the ether. Urgent call-in codes, ordering agents to contact their handler. The first reply came in seconds. “That one’s my tame journalist,” she said. “He might be feckin’ useful for a change, he’s usually drunk.”
“For a change?” said Paolo.
“This kid Tristian, arsing around at Wessex garden parties and seducing young girls? Gossip column bollix, so it is. He’s good for that sort of thing, usually knows who’s screwin’ who.”
Three more agents responded. “That’s my municipal peeler, a Green Zone council clerk and my best agent. I call her Margot. She usually delivers.”
“What does Margot do?”
Rourke put another piece of chocolate in her mouth, fingers trembling. “It’s not often you recruit a data entry supervisor at NatSec’s Security Vetting bureau. High-level clearance, she sees a lot of useful stuff. I use her very-feckin’-sparingly.”
“If she’s compromised…”
“Don’t go there,” Rourke replied. “I’ve tasked the entire network to identify anyone called Tristian with links to America or Wessex. It’s an unusual name, so at least that’s something.”
They waited in silence, Rourke washing down t
he rest of the chocolate with lukewarm tea. Paolo sat by the window, studying the siege below. The leaguers were still pinned down by marksmen, each wave drawing closer to the perimeter. He’d call Hyatt soon, allow her to talk him out of the execution.
There was a knock at the door. A big man, dressed for battle. Caleb, the Englishman. Paolo led him inside. “This is Rourke. She’s a trusted comrade.”
“Who’s this?” Rourke replied.
“One of the General’s bannermen. He’s here to make sure the girl is dealt with properly if we’re… indisposed.”
Rourke didn’t look up from her fob. “Tell him he can he wait outside. I’m working.”
“He has a name,” the Englishman growled. He jutted his chin, a grimace on his war-painted face. “I am Caleb of Enfield, Bannerman of the Black Rifles. I’ve volunteered for dark work. I do it out of respect for the Crimson Brigade, so the least you could do is show some manners, woman.”
Rourke’s lips made a snarl. “Paolo, get this…”
“Forgive my friend,” said Paolo, steering Caleb towards the door. “She’s just been in a gunfight. We lost a comrade.”
“So? We’ve all lost comrades,” Caleb spat. “I’ll be outside if you need me.”
“You’re meant to be an expert in handling human assets,” said Paolo. He banged his palm on the table, tea splashing from Rourke’s cup. “Act like it.”
“I feckin’ hate the English, I’ve had enough of them,” she spat. She held her hands, palms down on the table. It didn’t stop them shaking. “Five years in this shithole, when I could be in Free Cordoba or Red Kyiv.”
“Are you prepared for death, Sorcha?” Paolo replied. “I am. I have been for fifteen years. If you are not, work harder. This operation isn’t finished, dammit.”
Rourke’s fob buzzed, juddering on the table like an upended bug. “Hi, it’s Roisin,” Rourke replied, slipping easily into her alias. “Margot? Thanks for getting back so quickly. You’re working at this time of night? They’ve sent you to the communications centre? Yes, that’s grand my love, let me grab a pen.”
Dark as Angels: We are the Enemy Page 16