by Simon Toyne
Chapter 134
The empty hold of the C-123 felt like it was shaking itself to pieces as Gabriel pulled himself along the ribs of the plane towards the point in the floor where it angled upwards. He reached it and hooked his right leg and arm into the cargo net lining the fuse-lage, then braced himself for the suction and hit the red punch button to lower the ramp.
A loud clunk punctuated the thunderous clatter of the engines and a thin horizontal crack appeared at the back of the plane pulling the air from the fuselage as the ramp started to lower. Gabriel held on, felt the howling wind tug at the flaps of his wing-suit until another loud clunk told him the ramp had locked fully open. Outside he could see the reflected glow of the city on the underside of the tail. He pulled the skydiver goggles over his eyes and crawled towards the edge. He peered over the side and through the arctic blast of outside air. Below him, nearly two miles down, was the city of Ruin, the four straight lines of the boulevards converging like crosshairs on the darkness at its centre.
He’d done airdrops from this plane before, but never at night and never at this altitude. It was a useful way of getting round red tape when governments dragged their heels over visas while the people on the ground desperately needed help.
He unhooked his leg from the net and shuffled round until he lay centred on the ramp, his feet pointing back towards the howling night. He did a final pre-flight check on the packs strapped to his front and back then edged backwards towards the lip of the ramp, his hands clinging tightly to the cargo net and straining against the pull of the slipstream.
His feet hit the edge and he slid them over into the freezing air, continuing to work his way backwards until his hands were the only thing still holding on. He was in the air now, his body stretched out horizontally from the back of the plane, held up by the fluid roaring rush of the night. He held on tight, staring straight down at the city, watching the patch of darkness creep closer. He fixed his left eye on it and closed his right, as though sighting down the barrel of a rifle.
Then he let go.
The plane was doing a little over eighty miles an hour when he dropped into the churning, frozen air of its prop wash. The moment he cleared the turbulence he opened his legs and arms, flaring the Parapak membranes stretched between them and inflating the wing. The combination of airspeed and the shape of the suit generated instant lift and he felt himself being pulled upwards. He adjusted his arms, leaning one way then another, his open eye never leaving the dark target below as he flew down towards it.
Wing-suit training had been the last course he’d completed before mustering out of the army. They were the latest development in HALO jumps – the High Altitude Low Opening drops that were the cornerstone of covert ops deployment. The theory went that by jumping at high altitude the delivery aircraft could stay well out of range of surface-to-air missiles and by deploying a chute at very low altitude it minimized the risk of being spotted by forces on the ground. A man in freefall is also too small to be picked up on RADAR. It was the perfect method of inserting highly trained troops quickly and covertly into enemy territory. It was also the perfect way of getting into a mountain fortress no one had ever breached.
Gabriel checked the altimeter on his wrist. He was already below four thousand feet and dropping at eighty feet per second. He leaned over and began to turn in a tight circle, watching the darkness grow as he spiralled down towards it, searching its dark centre for the garden he knew was there.
Chapter 135
Kathryn spotted light ahead of her in the tunnel and her fingers tightened around the steering wheel. She reached over to the black canvas bag on the passenger seat, slipped her hand inside and pulled out her gun.
She thought about the pause, out in the alley, after she’d swiped the card, before the steel shutter had started to rise. Maybe they were expecting her. Perhaps she was now heading straight into an ambush. If so, there was no point in stopping. The tunnel was too narrow to turn round and reversing would be too difficult. Besides, running wasn’t going to help Gabriel. So she kept her foot on the accelerator and her eyes on the patch of light, growing brighter beyond the wash of her own headlights. She brought the gun up over the dashboard just as the van cleared the top of the rise. The headlights cut down through the dark revealing a cavern and a car. Lights on. No one inside. Driver’s and passenger doors open.
She jerked down hard on the wheel, bringing the front of the van round just in time to clear the rear bumper of the parked police car. She slammed on the brakes, bringing the van to a crunching halt, brought her gun round, and scanned the cavern for movement. She noticed the closed steel door in the wall in front of her, but apart from that there was nothing.
She reached over and killed the van’s engine but left the head-lamps burning. The sudden silence was oppressive. She grabbed the black bag from the passenger seat, opened the door and slipped out, taking the long way round the car, gun first, checking there was no one hidden behind it. Still nothing. She moved to the back of the van and wrenched open the rear doors.
The contents had shifted around a little on the journey but the pile of fertilizer, sugar and smoky combustibles was still pretty much intact.
One giant smoke bomb, Gabriel had said. With enough explosive power to blow out every door in the lower part of the mountain.
She carefully placed the black canvas bag down on the metal floor next to a large cardboard box wedged against the rear wheel arch. Inside the box was a hurricane lamp and two of the sheet sleeping bags they used in hotter countries. She lifted out the lamp, set it on the floor and knotted the sheets together to make a long white cotton rope. She dropped one end in the box and fed the other under the door towards the petrol cap.
She noticed the camera as she rounded the end of the van, set high in the back wall, red light burning steady by the lens. She fumbled the key into the petrol cap, twisted it off, and turned her back to the camera while she carefully fed the other end of the rope down into the fuel tank, leaving the middle part looped under the door and trailing on the floor. She ducked round to the back of the van, grabbed the hurricane lamp and unscrewed the reservoir cap at the base. She doused the length of the cotton rope with kerosene splashing a generous puddle where the middle section draped on to the cavern floor.
This is your fuse, Gabriel had explained.
She emptied the last of the kerosene into the box in the back of the van then reached into the bag and took out two grenades, their dark green surfaces now buried beneath multicoloured layers of rubber. It was the sum total of every single elastic band she had managed to find in the warehouse office. She placed them carefully in the centre of the kerosene soaked box.
These are your detonators, Gabriel had said.
Do not arm them until the very last minute.
She took the first grenade, slipped her finger through the ring, then stopped. She was getting ahead of herself. She put it down again and reached over for the last thing Gabriel had hauled into the van before sending her on her way.
The lightweight trail bike slid out of the back of the van and bounced on to the stone floor. The helmet was threaded through the handlebars, but she left it there, mindful of the security camera and the ticking of the clock.
She leaned it against the tailgate and picked up the grenade again. There was a small snicking sound as she pulled the pin then she carefully laid it down at the bottom of the kerosene-soaked box.
If the spoon springs open after you pull the pin you have six seconds to get away.
Gabriel had told her.
Her eyes bored into the metal arming spoon as she slowly forced her fingers to let go of it.
The lever didn’t move. The rubber bands had held it in place.
She blew out a long stream of air, picked up the second grenade and pulled its pin before her nerve failed her. She placed it in the box next to the first then pushed the whole lot further into the van until it rested against the fuel cans and the sacks of fertilizer. She pulled
a large box of matches from the black canvas bag – the last piece of the bomb.
Kathryn slung her leg over the bike, reached into her pocket for the swipe card and jammed it between her teeth. She struck a match, fed it into the open box and dropped the whole lot on to the puddle of kerosene just as the matches flared inside the box. The kerosene whumped alight and bright yellow flames scuttled up the soaked cotton rope, one way towards the fuel tank, the other towards the grenades.
From lighting the fuse you’ll have about a minute to get out, Gabriel had said.
Maybe less.
Kathryn turned the front wheel of the bike towards the dark mouth of the tunnel, twisted the throttle and kicked down hard on the starter.
But nothing happened.
Yellow light from the spreading flames brightened around her as she pumped the throttle some more to feed in fuel. She stamped down hard a second time.
Still nothing.
She released the throttle, terrified of flooding the engine, heard the soft roar of fire behind her, pushed hard with her legs, away from the flames and toward the dark of the tunnel. The trapped air whispered past her ears as the bike rolled forward into the dip. She flicked on the headlight and saw the bottom ten feet in front of her. She knew she’d get just one chance at this.
She pulled on the clutch and stamped on the foot pedal twice to put the bike in second gear as the bottom rolled closer. The bike jerked beneath her as she released the clutch. The engine coughed as it dropped into gear and the momentum of the bike turned the engine. It spluttered once then roared into life. She twisted the throttle and grabbed the clutch with her other hand to stop it stalling. The chainsaw buzz rattled down the tunnel as she gunned the engine to clear the fuel lines, then she eased off the clutch and felt the bike jerk forward as the gear engaged and the wheels pulled her across the uneven stone floor and mercifully away from the burning van.
Chapter 136
The darkness continued to grow in Gabriel’s vision, spreading like an ink stain over the brightness of the city as he fell towards the Citadel.
Round the edges he could now see individual lamps on the deserted streets of the old town lighting up store fronts, and shuttered souvenir shops, and swinging signs hanging below the sloping sides of steepled rooftops. He could also see shapes rising up from the dark mountain as he fell towards it. He could see the highest peak, from which Samuel had fallen, sheer on one side and dropping steeply away on the other. It flattened to a ridge and ran round the lower part of the mountain, curling around the impenetrable dark in the middle like a noose. He still could not see the garden.
He spiralled down, aiming at the centre of the blackness to a spot he remembered from the satellite photo of the garden. When it centred in his vision he yanked down hard on the ripcord. He felt the slight tug of the guide chute shooting up from his pack then the wrench of the main chute deploying. The canopy arched over him like a huge curved airbed as he slipped his hands through the handles of the guide ropes and steered himself down through the darkness.
With the roar of the wind gone he could now hear the sounds of the city: the hiss of traffic on the ring road, music from the bars beyond the southern side of the wall mixed with the sound of talking and laughter. Then the sound was cut off, along with most of the light, as he dropped below the high ridge and into the dark crater at the heart of the mountain.
The moment the light went Gabriel switched eyes and the night vision that had been preserved in his right eye instantly made sense of the flat blackness. He could see fissures in the mountain walls and round, fluffy shapes rising in soft-edged clusters from a large area below him that looked lighter than the rest of the mountain. It was the garden. Much closer than he had imagined. Rising fast.
He pulled down hard on both guide ropes. Felt a bounce and a soft yaw in his stomach as the chute pulled him up. He lifted his legs away from the feathery top of a tree rising up from the darkness. His boots clattered noisily through the thin branches as he caught the top. He pulled hard on the right-hand rope to swing away from the tree. Felt his leg get snagged by a thicker branch. Kicked free and looked up just as the next tree rushed out of the darkness towards him.
The monk looked up from the fireplace – listening.
He rose and moved over to the door, his red cassock the only colour in the monochrome lower hallway of the Prelate’s private quarters. He put his ear to the door leading out to the garden and heard it again – quieter this time. It was like a huge bird shifting about in the trees, or maybe someone pushing their way through bushes. He frowned. No one was allowed in the garden after dark. He reached into his sleeve for his Beretta, shut off the lights and opened the door.
The moon was still hours from rising and the monk’s eyes could see nothing in the deep darkness of the garden. He stepped outside, closing the door quietly behind him, then scanned the darkness, turning his head like an owl, listening for the sound of movement.
A sharp crack split the silence and his head snapped round towards it. He listened harder. Heard a faint whispering, like a branch shaking, then silence flooded back. The sounds had come from the orchard. He stole down the stone steps to the pathway and stepped over the gravel path to the silent grass beyond. It whispered softly against his hurrying feet as he moved towards the copse of trees, gun extended, the darkness taking form as his eyes grew accustomed to the night.
He could see the trees now, and something else near the centre of the orchard, lighter than the prevailing night, moving in the darkness like a ghost. He levelled his gun at it, moved closer, keeping the uprights of the trees between himself and the apparition. As he drew nearer he noticed ropes draping from its edges, then saw an empty harness at the end of them, trailing on the ground. He realized with a jolt what it was just as his vision whipped round and everything flashed white in time to a deafening crack. The monk tried to turn and level his gun at whoever had grabbed him but the lines of communication between his head and the rest of his body had already been severed by his broken neck. He collapsed to the floor, smelt the rich moist fug of the dark soil mixed with the rotten mulch of last year’s leaves, was aware of someone loosening his rope belt and his cassock being tugged. Then his eyes fluttered shut, and darkness engulfed him.
Chapter 137
The bike’s headlamp swept across the jagged walls of the tunnel, curving up and away towards the flat steel upright of the entrance.
The solid shutter loomed up and Kathryn stamped hard on the brake, locking the wheels and slithering across the concrete floor until the front wheel clanged against it, bringing her to a sudden, echoing stop. She snatched the key card from her teeth and reached across to swipe it through the lock, dropping the bike to the ground where it stalled into silence. From behind her she thought she could hear the crackle of fire echoing down the tunnel and she dropped to the floor next to the bike, ready to slide outside the moment the shutter started to rise.
But nothing happened.
She looked down at the card, bent slightly from where she’d bitten down on it, flexed it straight and swiped it again.
Still nothing.
She looked round, searching for another lock or way of escape and saw a security camera, squatting like a crow high in the corner, peering down with its large glass eye. The red light on its front winked and she realized with rising panic that the door was not going to open.
She was trapped.
* * *
Gabriel’s left arm burned with pain as he rolled the stripped body of the monk into the parachute and dragged it across the wet grass to where a tangle of cut branches lay in a pile. He’d knocked it badly when he hit the trees and now the adrenalin of the free-fall was easing off, the pain was flooding in. He could just about move his fingers but could hardly grip anything worth a damn. It felt like it was broken.
He cradled it to his body and pulled some branches over the cocooned shape of the monk with his good right hand then headed back to where he’d stashed his backpac
k at the base of an apple tree. Above him he could hear the dry whisper of leaves and the distant hum of the city beyond, but no muffled boom shook the ground beneath his feet. Maybe something had gone wrong.
He reached inside the bag and switched on his PDA. He closed his right eye to preserve night vision, ducked his head down to the opening of the pack and peered inside.
The monitor was showing a white dot, expanding and contracting towards the top of the screen. There was no other information. The wire-frame lines sketching the skeletal outlines of streets had gone. He was off the map. Without any points of reference he would have to use it as a simple direction finder, following the signal from the transponder in Samuel’s body. He was pretty sure that wherever they’d taken him would be where they’d now take Liv.
He closed the bag and gritted his teeth against the pain as he pulled the hood of the russet-coloured cassock over his arms and head. Through the trees he could see the faint glow of a light behind a window cut high in the wall. He watched it while he reached into the backpack to remove the gun and PDA, listening for the rumble of the explosion. It should have happened by now. He was counting on the shock of the blast and the smoke that followed to cause enough confusion for him to get safely lost in the mountain. But he couldn’t wait for ever. Someone might miss the monk he’d just killed and come looking for him, or sound an alarm and put the whole mountain on alert. He couldn’t afford to let that happen. Not if he wanted to get Liv out alive. His mind drifted to thoughts of what might have happened to his mother but he quickly shut them down. Speculation wouldn’t get the job done.
He waited for a few more seconds, flexing his stiff left hand to test it. It hurt like hell but it would have to do. The light in the window shifted slightly as someone moved behind it and he rose from the ground, his hands buried in the sleeves of the cassock – the good one holding his gun, the other gripping the PDA as best he could. He headed across the grass, following the line of the pathway that would lead to a door and into the Citadel.