Exit Alpha

by Clinton Smith

  Cain had noticed the dead marines in brown paper bags under the bed but knew that EXIT training was so thorough it stayed with you, even when drunk. And, at 3-metre range, Stromlo’s shake would be as effective as vibrato on a violin.

  The man of God seemed intrigued by the weapon as if eager to test it on flesh. He stripped the barrel, receiver and bolt assembly without instruction. ‘Interesting design. So — what do you suggest?’

  The act put the cap on Cain’s assessment of the priest Grade Four. A dismal, self-dramatising soak he might be. But even a blotto Stromlo would give a special ops hard-arse the trots.

  He said, ‘I reckon they’ll come around 4 am. They could have body armour, carbines, image intensifiers and they’ll head for the bedrooms upstairs. They’ll know I’m a minder. Will they think you’re just a priest?’

  ‘Signore Vita Angelica.’ The old fraud smiled and shook his head. ‘No. They know I’m part of it. But not how much.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘They’ll also know about the motion sensors, the door and window circuits. But they won’t pick the perimeter system.’

  ‘Okay.’ Cain factored that in. ‘So they’ll cut the power — get in quietly, spring us asleep if they can, take us out and grab the family.’ He reached down to his metal box and lifted out two calf pouches fabricated by EXIT stores. Then the flak jackets, the balaclavas, the camo-cream. ‘Good idea to look like them. The more confusion the better.’ He filled the pouches with P90 magazines, pulled over the Velcro flaps.

  A contemplative look from Stromlo, unconnected to piety. ‘Would you engage them outside or . . . ?’

  ‘Too sloppy.’ He slid his hand over the hammerhead stock of the MINIMI. ‘If you hosed them with this or started tossing bombs you’d have a siege or a back-off. You’d take a couple out and the others would live to tell the tale.’

  ‘Not good.’

  ‘Less they know the better. No, I suggest we ask ourselves what we’d do if we were adults.’

  Stromlo’s face fell, his low opinion of himself re-engaged. ‘If we were surgeons, we’d invite them in and surprise them.’

  ‘. . . And trap them in the house and backburn.’

  ‘Can I be the backburn?’ He was like a child asking to hide first.

  ‘Go for it. Ground floor near the back stairs. I doubt they’ll bother with the front.’

  ‘No. If we were doing it, we’d come from two ends — a window and near the back door.’

  ‘We’ve got two handsets. We’ll know when they’re coming. So I’ll be upstairs. You . . . ?’

  ‘In the gym,’ Stromlo said. ‘Good metal cover there. And it commands the back stairs and pool.’

  ‘Fine. Now we can’t smuggle the family out . . .’

  ‘Too obvious. They’ll be watching us now. And we need bait.’

  ‘So what if we hide them in the sauna?’

  ‘Splendente!’ He clapped. ‘Then I can cover them as well as backburn.’ He inverted his P90 and smiled at the ejection port. ‘I’ll tell cook to make sure the staff stay in their wing when it starts.’

  ‘Good.’ Cain divided up the remaining magazines. ‘We’ll need to chat up the family.’

  Stromlo raked in his ammo. ‘Perhaps as I’ve lived by the sword . . .’

  ‘Hoping to get killed?’

  ‘With luck.’

  ‘Whatever turns you on. Just make sure you take two of them with you.’ He pulled the last object from his box — the piano wire with wooden handles. ‘You never know.’

  Stromlo fondled his gun. ‘I thought this had passed me by.’ His face contorted to a grin, returned to a guilt-ridden mask. ‘I haven’t fired at anyone for years. God forgive me, I’ve missed it so much.’

  ‘My sympathies.’

  Stromlo, he thought, must have been a hoot in the Vatican.

  COALS OF FIRE

  ‘All right,’ Eve said, ‘if we can’t go outside, what’s going to happen?’

  Cain surveyed the council-of-war around the living room fire. ‘We think they’ll enter the house from two directions then head for the bedrooms and find you.’

  ‘Find us?’ Nina shrilled.

  ‘We’ll mock it up — bolsters in the beds. The lights will be knocked out. They’ll have night scopes — image amplification, not thermal, and only Gen II.’

  Jane said, ‘Can we have that in English?’

  ‘Three times less photosensitivity,’ Stromlo said, ‘and only half as much luminous gain. Far less resolution than the one I have upstairs.’

  ‘Means it won’t be that great for them,’ Cain said. ‘New moon with cloud. We’ll get away with bolsters. No heat signature needed. It only has to fool them for a moment.’

  Jane said, ‘And where will we be?’

  ‘In the sauna. I’ve switched it off.’

  ‘Why there?’

  ‘Thick door, double walls and Father Roberto can cover you from the gym. He’ll need the light from the atrium roof and reflection from the pool. Because I’ll be upstairs with the scope. You can leave the door open till he tells you.’

  Jane’s stolid look. ‘If we have to stay in this house, I want a gun.’

  Stromlo shook his head. ‘There’s nothing more dangerous than a gun you’re not familiar with.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Cain said. ‘You’re safer without it.’

  ‘Well, I’m taking my machete.’

  ‘Fine.’

  The daughter cut in. ‘How come a priest knows so much about night scopes, guns and all this crud?’

  ‘A misspent youth, my child.’

  ‘God you’re a wanker.’

  Eve slapped her leg. ‘Apologise.’

  She made a silly face and said smarmily, ‘Sorry, Father.’

  ‘You have an evil mind, young lady. I suggest you pray earnestly tonight.’

  ‘I’ll pray I’m not shot. If you’re protecting me, I’m stuffed.’ She turned to Jane. ‘Have you smelt him?’

  ‘Behave yourself,’ Eve snapped.

  Jane said, ‘At least they don’t want to kill us.’

  ‘They could rape us,’ Nina yelled. ‘And I guess you’d think that was epic.’

  ‘You’ll be safe, dear. I promise.’ Stromlo patted her shoulder with a not quite fatherly affection. His eyes flicked to her small high breasts, to the reddening thigh sprouting from her skirt.

  ‘Who’d trust you?’ She jerked her arm away. ‘And get your hands off me, you perv.’ She glared at the fire, tears budding.

  Cain said, ‘That’s it then. We’d better dummy up the beds.’

  Nina sobbed, ‘What if we’re killed?’

  He felt something hot near his cheek, shied and quickly turned.

  A grey-red glowing coal was hovering in the air near his eye.

  ‘Shit.’ He tried to knock it away but it seemed to avoid his hand and moved back like a dragonfly to hover near the fire.

  The shock of it sent him reeling.

  Anti-gravity!

  No wonder they wanted her.

  Now other coals were lifting from the fire and hanging in the air.

  They scrambled back towards the walls.

  Then the girl was on her feet, beside herself with rage, shaking her fists at them, breathing in harsh gasps while dull red coals circled her.

  ‘Stop it,’ Eve yelled. ‘Right now.’

  ‘Chicken-skinned shits. You go along with them. You suck.’

  ‘Nina. Stop.’ Eve’s voice was a harsh command. ‘Or I’ll . . .’

  ‘. . . Send me back to dad? I’ll kill you first.’

  A coal sailed toward Eve and seared the front of her blouse. She shrieked and ran from the room.

  ‘I command thee, ancient serpent, to depart from hence.’ Stromlo was belting out prayers. ‘We beseech thee, Holy Mary, to intercede for this prodigal child and adjure the Father to grant her redemption through the love and mediation of . . .’

  The girl turned to Cain and yelled above the racket, ‘They’re only
half-sisters because their dad fucked two women for years — their bloody mums — in the same bed. That’s what gave them the idea. So have you fucked them yet? Fucked my mother? Screwed her blind?’

  Cain kept his eyes on the coals. One sailed slowly across the room, hit the carpet, which began to char.

  The girl, face distorted, extended her rage to the others. ‘You’re all fucking scum. And that sick old wanker,’ she thrust her arm toward Stromlo, ‘wants to ram it up us all.’

  Hot coals started to fly around the room, not in straight lines but erratically like flies, changing course in midair. Several landed on the carpet. Cain kicked the nearest back to the fire and stamped on the spots, knowing now, beyond doubt, that he’d lost his thousand bucks.

  ‘None of you,’ the girl shrieked, ‘none of them — better come near me!’

  AMBUSH

  Cain sat in the dark on Nina’s bed beside a toy goat stuffed with pyjamas. Her room, at the end of the hall at the front, was opposite Eve’s sewing room. He’d closed all the blinds on the top floor to reduce ambient light. The NVG was good though hard to get used to. The monocular presented the night picture to one eye only so that the other pupil remained dilated and with 90-degree peripheral vision.

  It was 4.20 am and the effect of three cups of coffee was waning. He kept alert by moving his attention through his body. He could die tonight if things went wrong — the strongest incentive to be inwardly attentive. To be — not just react.

  His attempt at awareness was also a need to be worthy of John who combined all religions in his inner freshness and stability. They had often spoken of the importance of staying inside oneself, contained. Yet this almost impossible effort was only a beginning. Every moment one forgot. As the experience was always fresh, so by definition discontinuous, without an impulse continually renewed . . .

  The handset on his knee flashed red and vibrated — jerking him back — proving he’d disappeared again into thought.

  He flicked the thing to silent and checked the dim LED readout. The outer grid registered two directions — side of house and back. This was it.

  He switched to the inside grid and waited for them to show. They were registering now — one lot close to the back door, another at his end of the house.

  A slight clatter. An aluminium ladder. Smart. The second group were heading for the upstairs sewing-room window.

  He crossed the hall into the room, skirted the mounds of material on the floor and entered the disused en suite. It was stacked with cardboard boxes and bags of cloth. He peered around the stack until he could see half the window of the room — a window set into a section of tiled roof and two-thirds covered by a blind.

  The muffled noise of ladder on guttering. The click of disturbed tiles. Now a black crescent of rubber sucker projecting just below the blind. The man was releasing the lever to fix it to the glass. He heard the graunch of the cutter. The scene through the NVG was a clear image in shades of green.

  The circle of glass was extracted. A gloved hand reached in to trip the latch. Then the window frame slanted and the man had his head in the room.

  The intruder’s scope was also a monocular but its eyepiece-train covered both eyes. Cain backed behind the boxes as the man did his first scan. The floor creaked.

  It could go two ways from here. And the more effective alternative was most dangerous. If Zuiden were doing this, he wouldn’t shoot now. He’d let the man check the en suite, then silently kill him.

  A silent kill? He had a chance — because the limitation with night scopes was 40-degree peripheral vision and, with a double eyepiece, the man couldn’t look everywhere at once.

  Cain, filled with adrenaline, dropped the P90 on its strap, stepped clear of the stack, the loop ready. He didn’t know the current method but the technique he’d been taught relied on the garrotte. If you were fast and strong it sliced like a cheese wire back to the spine, severing nerves between brain and heart. The victim couldn’t breathe or cry out.

  The bulk of the man in the bathroom. He looked in the shower cabinet first. His mistake.

  Cain got the wire around his neck, kneed him in the back to pull him off balance and hauled on the handles with full strength. The other was helpless in two seconds. Cain held him until the weight came on the wire, then lowered him onto bags stacked in the bath.

  Then he was out of there, ready to fire.

  The second man was in the room, standing behind the sewing machine bench, waiting for his companion to emerge. His carbine pointed to the door while his left hand adjusted his scope. He looked around, registered Cain’s profile as the same masked and scoped figure who’d gone in, and waved him on. The mistake lengthened his life by 40 seconds.

  Cain followed the man across the hall into Nina’s bedroom. The bolster fooled the fellow long enough to have him pulling out a pencil torch.

  Cain clamped the man’s material-covered mouth and thrust his knife in from behind. Body armour couldn’t stop a thin, sharp blade. It pierced the layered synthetic and sank deep into the chest. It wasn’t instant or particularly quiet. A knifed heart took ten seconds to die.

  Cain clamped one arm around the struggling man’s neck, thrust from an undefendable direction. The snap could have been the crack of a stiff joint.

  He pushed the twice-dead carcass over the bed. Zuiden would have marked him ‘pass’ so far. This was kill or be killed between professionals — no place for scruples or qualms. You relied on your training, functioned on automatic. He got back to the door, hoping the old phoney downstairs was on the ball.

  He got the scope around the doorframe in time to see the second team. Two figures at the top of the back stairs, coming up to check the other bedrooms.

  It gave him the required half second. The confusion factor again. He fired on auto, splitting the silence with the chatter of SS90 ball.

  The slugs were small enough to get through armour, unstable enough to tumble in flesh. The lead man staggered against the wall, then fell back downstairs, carbine spitting at the ceiling.

  The second man returned fire. But Cain, an instant before it came, had dropped. The heavier rounds zinging above him aerated the end wall. Bullets were fast, reflexes slow. The man was back behind the wall the moment he’d fired.

  Noises from the staff wing. People were awake. They’d be trying to switch on lights, and the cook would be telling them to stay put.

  Now, the dangerous part — the hall, the checking of rooms. He waited, listening.

  The sudden racket of the heavier weapon, then the stutter of another P90. A firefight downstairs. Stromlo had engaged.

  It stopped.

  So who was dead?

  He waited a minute until convinced the second floor was clear, then ran to the head of the back stairs.

  A body floating in the pool.

  He gave the agreed two-note whistle.

  A three-note reply.

  Stromlo’s all-clear.

  Cain came down, stepping over the body on the stairs and found the priest by the gym entrance — wearing a captured NVG.

  Cain said, ‘Two my end. Three down.’

  ‘Three this end. Took out two.’

  ‘That’s five. Where’s your second?’

  Stromlo jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

  The fifth man must have checked the gym on his way in. He was on his knees, dangling from the cord of a pull-down lats machine. The heavy weights on the end of the slide had cut the cord into his neck. His protruding eyes and tongue showed it hadn’t been quick. A small dumbbell was near him on the floor. Stromlo had stunned him with it, then entangled him in the machine and watched the unconscious man strangle.

  The priest held up the man’s transceiver. ‘Still must be one man with the transport. Mine, va bene?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  Outside, the first thin light suffused the sky. The vehicle was far down the road — a windowless van with a driver behind the wheel, a driver preoccupied with his earphones and red
-light VDU because he wasn’t getting feedback. They discarded their scopes and managed to close without alerting him. Cain covered the rear doors and left the sacrifice to the priest.

  When he heard the P90 stutter, Cain strafed the back of the van. Then the Great One fell back and covered him as he went in.

  There was no one in the back. Just comms equipment, gun racks, a bench over ammo boxes. Ahead, framed by the blood-soaked windshield was the slumped form of the driver. Arterial blood pumped into the top of his scalp, which was upended like a bowl.

  Cain got out of the van. ‘Three-all.’

  The priest removed his blood-spattered balaclava. The dark oval around his eyes, now exposed against the pallid face, made him resemble a starved panda. ‘I’ve waited years for this.’

  ‘But they didn’t kill you. Tough.’

  ‘All the same. A gratifying night.’

  They shifted the bits of the driver into the back, wiped the worst of him off the seats.

  Cain wiped a clear circle in the windscreen and drove the van toward the house. Stromlo, sitting beside him, hummed to himself, vastly pleased.

  ‘Ever seen Titus Andronicus?’ Cain glanced at him sardonically.

  ‘I haven’t had that pleasure.’

  ‘You’d enjoy it, I’m sure.’

  The sauna door was still shut.

  Cain called, ‘You can come out now.’ He opened the door.

  Jane stood rigid just inside, the machete held high above her shoulder, while the other two cowered in the corner of the topmost bench.

  ‘All secured, dear ladies,’ Stromlo crooned. He walked to the sprung back door. ‘I’ll tell cook we’re mopping up.’

  The family crept out to see the hunched shape in the reddening pool, the garrotted man’s purple-blue face, the bloodied figure sprawled on the stairs.

  The sisters shrieked. Nina screamed, crouched, covered her eyes.

  The surface of the pool heaved. The body floating in it was inert but not the water. What looked like a long ripple began at the far end then advanced, growing in height, making the dangling carcass bob. It gathered in strength until it slapped against the tiles beside them. Water rose up, slopping over the rim. Cain watched incredulous. There had been nothing to cause it at all.