The Fish Kisser

by James Hawkins

  Night returned instantly without the car’s lights, and voices at the front of the trailer were calling, shouting, demanding. He ran back. Two bodies had been pulled from the wreckage of the truck and laid on the ground. The unnatural shape of one was enough to confirm to Bliss that the man was dead. The other figure, slender with a mop of golden hair glinting in the starlight, caused Bliss a heart tremor.

  “Dave, I’ve been shot,” Yolanda said calmly as soon as he bent over her.

  “How?” he managed to force his taught throat to say.

  “Just as we were leaving.”

  Bliss remembered—the single flash from the man he’d killed with the barrier.

  Men stood around, stunned. “Don’t just stand there,” Bliss shouted angrily, “Two of you get to the back and keep watch. “You,” he said, pointing to a shadow, “see if there’s any guns in the car, we’re going to need them. Owain, help me with Yolanda.”

  She let out a cry and bit her lip as they lifted, and Bliss felt the sticky warmth of blood on his fingers as he carried her. “We’ve got to get you to a hospital,” he said as if it were a matter of calling 911. “What happened to the other guy,” he asked. “Was he shot?”

  “No. Hit by a rock when we crashed.”

  Bliss felt himself going pale. How many more would die? How many more would he kill?

  Shadowy figures crowded Bliss as he knelt over Yolanda. His racing mind offered no solutions. Feeling his hands starting to shake, he clasped hers more tightly, trying to squeeze warmth and comfort into them, hoping to draw inspiration from them.

  Owain broke the silence. “Are you O.K., boy’o?”

  “Yes … No … We’ve got to get away quickly.”

  “We’ll never get home,” wailed one of the others. “Why didn’t you leave us alone?”

  “I wish I had.”

  The Welshman’s nasty tone stung. “You should’ve had a proper plan.”

  “Stop bloody whining you ungrateful bastards. We didn’t have to rescue you …”

  Another voice cut in. “You haven’t rescued us. You’re goin’ to get us all killed.”

  Hearing mutters of agreement, Bliss rounded on them. “You would’ve been killed anyway you stupid bastards. Do you think they would ever have let you go?”

  “What about your people. Why can’t they help?” persisted the complainer.

  “No one knows we’re here,” he was forced to confess.

  “Dave?” Yolanda’s thin voice drifted up from the ground. Bliss bent to her. “We can’t go over the mountains. It’ll take forever.”

  He knew.

  They desperately needed a lifeline and Owain threw it. “There were planes back at the place,” he said nonchalantly.

  “Why didn’t you say so before?” shouted Bliss.

  “I thought you knew what you were doing,” he sneered. “Thought you had a plan.”

  Bliss ignored the obvious contempt, “How do you know about the planes?”

  “We used to hear them taking off. Why, can you fly?”

  Bliss looked down at Yolanda. He didn’t need to ask.

  “I could try,” she said.

  Ten minutes later they had dumped the body of the dead man back into the trailer and unhitched it from the cab. Shouting, “Keep clear,” Bliss used the powerful motor to push the mangled trailer toward the cliff edge. The car, containing the bodies of two guards, still jammed under the rear of the trailer was dragged along with it.

  The trailer’s final journey was something of an anti-climax. No fireball; no ear splitting explosion; no screams. Just a dull thud echoing up the side of the escarpment as the huge container crumpled onto a ledge five hundred feet below. The secret compartment had become a flying sarcophagus for the man killed when the trailer crashed into the rock wall; an ironic internment for someone whose life had apparently ended a year earlier in a fiery head-on collision with a train.

  The drive back toward the compound was nervewracking as they anticipated an attack at every turn. Several of the men clung to the outside of the unlit cab with guns at the ready and spoken words were few. Each man prayed silently to his own god. Those without gods prayed there was one. A few flickering lights showed up in the distance. Candles or oil lamps thought Bliss. “They haven’t fixed the fuses,” he said, more to himself than anyone else.

  “It took two days to get the power on after Mary killed herself …” Owain’s voice faded at the bitter memory.

  “Everybody out,” said Bliss as he eased the truck to a stop a few hundred feet off the road. “We’ll walk the rest of the way.”

  Using the flickering lights as a beacon they stumbled toward the compound in the dark, well away from the road. The man with the smashed arm screeched in pain at every jolt from the rocky ground and the others took it in turns to shush him. Yolanda had tried walking, but her knees collapsed the moment her feet touched the ground. Bliss had scooped her up, carefully laid her over his shoulder, and struggled manfully for several hundred yards before accepting Owain’s offer of help.

  The rising moon gradually warmed the sky with a soft yellow glow, and their surroundings slowly took shape. The mountains became visible as spiky grey splodges against a starry, deep blue canvas, and the camp buildings showed up as black boxes in the foreground.

  “The airfield must be on the other side,” said Bliss scanning the huddle of buildings through the perimeter fence. “I can’t see any planes here.”

  “There might not be any,” cautioned the Welshman. “They might just fly in supplies and guards, then fly out again.”

  “Why didn’t they fly you in then?” asked Bliss. “Why use a truck?”

  “They brought us in from Turkey,” he replied, expecting Bliss to realize the significance. He did not.

  “So?” he said

  “The United Nations no-fly zone,” explained Owain in an exasperated tone. “They’re not allowed to fly in Northern Iraq.

  An hour later they had skirted the compound to approach from the south and found their path blocked by a river. The sluggish water glistened with moonlight and ran like a ribbon of thick dark molasses along the valley floor. Bliss knelt on the bank and peered intently, trying to gauge depth and current, then he reached forward. Imagining the water to be warm, even sticky, he flinched as the coldness bit into his questing fingers.

  “It’s bloody freezing!” he exclaimed with a note of surprise. “It must come from the mountains.”

  “That’s a fairly safe bet,” sneered Owain, “considering we’re surrounded by them.”

  Spurred by the Welshman’s sarcasm, Bliss ripped off his socks and shoes and slipped knee deep into the water. “Stay there,” he commanded, but could have saved his breath. No one was following.

  Primal fear caused him to hesitate, just for a second, then he gingerly stepped forward. Apart from the numbing cold, the river posed no threat. It was barely waist deep and he was soon guiding the little group across.

  The moonlight painted everything with a grey wash that distorted perspective, erasing clues as to size and distance. The four aircraft shaped objects at the end of the runway could have been jumbo jets or two-seat Cessnas. Bliss pointed to the assortment of planes and asked Yolanda. “Could you fly one of those?”

  “Dave, I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I don’t even recognize them.”

  “Isn’t flying one plane the same as any other?”

  “The basic controls are the same, but you have to learn each type.”

  “I hope you’re a fast learner—I just learned to drive a truck.”

  She gave him a look of astonishment, then buried her head in her hands, and burst into laughter. The laughter quickly turned to a bout of violent coughing and ended when she brought up a handful of blood. As she wiped her hands on her skirt Bliss saw the dark stain smeared across her palm in the moonlight.

  “Take it easy. We’ll soon get you to a hospital.”

  “Okey dokey, Dave.”

  chapter
nineteen

  The ridged metal flooring of the old Russian freight plane, an Illushyn according to Yolanda, bit into Bliss’ backside. The figure lying by his side stirred with a groan. “What’s the time Dave?” she enquired.

  “It’s still very dark,” he replied without bothering to find his watch. “How are you feeling?”

  “It hurts a bit.”

  He found her hand and soothed it. “Try to sleep as much as you can. You’ll need all your strength to fly this in the morning.”

  “Dave …” she started, then stopped herself, wondering how best to disillusion him with the news that she was certain she’d be unable to fly such a large plane. “We’ll be alright,” she sighed, and drifted back to sleep.

  The choice of the Illushyn had been a matter of chance. Two of the four aircraft were jets. “I’ve never flown a jet,” she explained, “I wouldn’t even know how to start it.” The third appeared to be undergoing repairs, or demolition, with several important looking chunks laying on the ground. That only left the twin-prop Russian freighter, and the stench had taken their breath away as they clambered in through the cargo hatch.

  “Kidneys,” said Owain, retching as he tasted the distinctly metallic flavour of stale urine.

  “Reminds me of my wife’s steak and kidney pie,” said one of the others, his voice cracking with nostalgia.

  “Smells like a bloody shit-house to me,” said another, with a handle on reality. “Animals, I’d say.”

  “Yeah, and we know what sort,” shot back another, recalling the behaviour of the Iraqi guards.

  Yolanda had been gently lifted aboard and carried forward toward the cockpit. “Put me down,” she requested between gasps.

  Bliss struggled to contain his impatience. “We should take off as soon as possible.”

  “In the morning.”

  Impatience got the better of him. “Yolanda … We have to go now. They’ll be searching everywhere. If they’ve got dogs they’ll trace us from the truck.”

  “They’ll lose the scent in the river.”

  “Damn!” swore Bliss, immediately realizing his mistake. “We shouldn’t have gone straight across, we should have walked downstream. They’ll pick up our tracks. We must leave now.”

  “No dice,” she continued, “I’ve got to see what I’m doing and where I’m going. We wouldn’t get off the ground and, if we did, we’d hit the first mountain …” Her speech slowed and faded as she drifted to sleep.

  “Yolanda!” he called in a panic, shaking her arm in the darkness.

  She woke with a start. “What?”

  “It’s O.K.,” he said, glad he’d been wrong—glad it was only sleep. “Get some rest. Maybe they won’t start looking ’til the morning.”

  Owain sidled up, drawn by Bliss’ concern. “Is she going to be alright?”

  “I hope so. We can’t get out without her.”

  “It’ll be your fault if we all get killed,” Owain complained.

  “So! Sue me …” started Bliss then stopped—this was no time for a fight. “Sorry …” he began, then idled in thought: Sorry for-what? Risking my life for a freak like LeClarc; for chasing a kidnapped stranger across two continents; for trying to rescue you and your ungrateful mates; for getting Yolanda shot … This is all way over my head. I’m a cop—not James Bond. “Sorry,” he said, leaving Owain, to fill in the blanks, then moved on, “Tell me about this computer virus.”

  “We call it C.I.D.”

  Bliss, still pre-occupied with concern for Yolanda, unthinkingly blurted out, “Criminal Investigation Department?”

  “No you idiot. Computer Immune Deficiency.”

  “Sorry,” he said, for a third time, determined to concentrate.

  “It works by making the computer blind to viruses.”

  “How?”

  “We don’t know. That’s what they needed us for. They’ve got it working now they want to find a way to stop it.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “Computer viruses behave the same as human viruses,” he explained. “It’s like getting the flu. The computer gets sick, makes mistakes, slows down, and gradually deteriorates. Without treatment the virus eventually kills it, and every time we find a cure, there’s a slightly different strain waiting to take its place.”

  “So what’s different about C.I.D.?”

  “It isn’t really a virus. It doesn’t make the computer sick, it masks the presence of other viruses. When a computer has C.I.D it rejects any attempt at a cure because it won’t accept it’s sick. Then it passes it to every other computer it connects with.”

  Bliss was catching on. “So the Internet will spread the virus, or whatever it is, from computer to computer.”

  “Not just the Internet. Defence systems, banks, communication and navigation satellites all operate on relays of computers—it’s called convergence. If it gets into the system anywhere it will infest the whole lot. The Iraqis reckon ninety percent of the world’s computers will be infected within six months of ‘D’ day.”

  “ ‘D’ day?”

  “Yeah. The beginning of the end—the invasion. They’re calling C.I.D. the Millennium Vengeance, so we reckon it’ll be soon.”

  Bliss slowly repeated, “The Millennium Vengeance,” and tried to grasp its significance. “Do unto others as they have done unto you, I suppose.”

  Owain nodded. “As far as they’re concerned, we filthy western imperialists crushed their economy and turned them into a backward third world country. Now they’re bent on revenge.”

  Bliss thought for a moment, then asked, “If it isn’t stopped?”

  Owain sucked in a deep, noisy breath. “Chaos,” he declared simply. “Absolute, complete bloody chaos … Oh, it’ll seem funny at first. You might even find an extra million or two in your bank account. But it won’t be so bloody funny when planes start crashing; ships get lost and run aground; satellites fall out of orbit; defence systems start declaring war on each other …”

  “Surely the experts will realize there’s something wrong and shut the computers off.”

  “Experts,” he snorted, his opinion showing. “They’ll be the bloody problem. They’re convinced their systems are foolproof—protected with passwords, firewalls, virus scans and even 128-bit encryption.”

  “What’s that?”

  “128-bit encryption …” he started, teacher-like, then changed his mind and offered a simplified explanation. “It’s just an unbreakable code to stop unauthorized access. But C.I.D. doesn’t break into the system: it’s part of the system. That’s the clever thing; it disguises itself so well even the guy who designed it wouldn’t find it.”

  Yolanda groaned as she sought a more comfortable position, but Owain’s passion demanded Bliss’ attention. “Do you have any idea how crucial computers are to the way we live, Dave?” he whispered. “Imagine what it will be like without faxes, phones, radios, television. Even the power stations will shut down. Commodity markets will go haywire; stock prices plummet. Then the whole trading system will collapse as the computers get C.I.D. It’ll throw the western world into a tailspin. We’ll be back to buying local produce at the corner store.”

  “That’s not such a bad idea,” suggested Bliss, completely sidestepping the potential hazards of global dysfunction.

  Owain ignored him and forged ahead with his catalogue of catastrophe. “Look at the fuss they made about the Y2K—remember—when all the computer clocks had to be switched from 1999 to 2000?”

  Bliss nodded. “So?”

  “That bug was a gnat’s bite compared to what the Iraqis have got their hands on.” He paused, shaking his head in dismay, contemplating a disintegration of modern society. “There’ll be worldwide shortages of manufactured goods,” he continued, “Most factories can’t operate without robots …”

  Bliss interrupted, “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Everything’s run by computers, Dave, and they’re networked like a billion-headed hydra: Bite off o
ne head and the whole thing dies. One infected machine will destroy them all. It would take years to rebuild the systems and you’d only need to miss one infected one to screw the whole thing up again. There’ll be civil wars as communities fight over dwindling resources. It could take us back to the bloody stone age. Survival of the fittest; most ruthless; best armed.”

  “Christ, that’s going a bit far isn’t it. You’re making it sound like the third world war.”

  “Well?”

  Bliss’ voice jumped an octave. “You’re serious.”

  Owain nodded gravely. “Worldwide anarchy. Control the Internet and you control the world—that’s what they’re after—total world domination without firing a shot. A megalomaniac’s dream. We’ve created a bloody monster, and all monsters turn on their masters eventually—all it needs is for some crackpot in the Middle East to tweak the hydra’s tail and one of the heads will take a chunk out of the Dow Jones.”

  “But they aren’t going to control it, they’re going to destroy it,” said Bliss, punching a huge hole through the Welshman’s theory.

  Owain’s voice rose in frustration. “That’s the whole idea you bonehead; that’s why they needed us. We were supposed to be finding a program to control the C.I.D. If they have the antidote, the rest of the world will be forced to pay their price, whatever it is …”

  His tirade was interrupted by a loud, “crack,” that rang through the hollow interior of the freight plane. Sleeping men woke with a start. Bliss jumped, then held his breath as his ears strained. Nothing happened. He tried to recreate the sound in his mind. What was it ? Gunshot or metal cooling from the day’s heat.

  “What was that?” questioned Owain, his staccato shout startling everybody again.

  Bliss felt a tug on his arm. Yolanda had woken, her voice was weak. “I’m going to throw up she said, and did. As the vomiting ended the coughing began: violent spasms full of pain. “Sorry, Dave,” she said when she finally stopped.

  He cradled her head in his hands. “You’ll be fine. We’ll be back in Turkey in no time.”