Candleburn

by Jack Hayes

  A body jumped out of the shadows.

  “Holy shit!” Asp leapt back.

  “You!” Fedor screamed. “I’m the head of the Russian fucking mob in Dubai, do you really think I don’t expect death at every turn?”

  Asp’s eyes widened. A bullet hole was visible in the middle of Fedor’s chest. Through it, the distinctive plastic-like mesh fibres of a Kevlar vest poked through.

  “Motherfucker!” Fedor yelled, waving a pistol. “But it still hurts, it still breaks bone, you know?”

  There were at least twenty metres between the two men.

  Asp looked to hide.

  Before he could move, Fedor fired.

  Asp felt the sting of the bullet enter. His innards felt like jelly. The meat of his body wobbled inside his ribcage.

  He staggered backwards.

  “Yes, you know?” Fedor continued, “That’s what it feels like. Unless it feels like this!”

  He fired again.

  In a daze, Asp dodged left.

  The bullet whizzed past his head. He felt the whistle of wind as it nicked by.

  A clang as it ricocheted off armour.

  Asp’s head spun. His ears filled with the pounding of blood.

  “Or like this!”

  Another shot.

  Asp wasn’t thinking. His brain was empty. He ran using pure instinct.

  Left, right, left, left. Wall. No, right.

  He stumbled away.

  Another bullet.

  Another clang.

  Shit.

  He reached the corner of the room.

  He turned around.

  The Russian was storming forward, pistol pointed directly at Asp’s chest.

  55

  Blake stepped into a long passage that led to the roof.

  At the end, the bright oblong of light indicated the exit was wide open.

  “Great,” he thought. “A literal light at the end of the tunnel.”

  He cautiously nudged forward, P90 ready.

  As he neared the outside, he slowed. If there were snipers on other buildings, he couldn’t take the gun with him. He heard the sound of Rasoul scrabbling across the pebbles that covered the roof.

  Blake scanned left and right.

  Air conditioning units. Solar panels. He couldn’t see the Iranian.

  He dropped the gun to the floor and stepped into the light.

  The intense brightness stung his vision. He put on his sunglasses and continued. A large, tarpaulin was pegged down and draped over a black metal structure the size of two large SUVs.

  Rasoul Kaskhar was leaning into the side of the box, furiously typing on a small keypad.

  Blake began to run towards his foe. He stopped. Rasoul pulled a pistol from his jacket.

  “You are too late, Mr Helliker,” the Iranian said. “I have only to press this one last button and it is all over. The fuse is purposefully two hours in length. The bomb is sealed away in a solid titanium container and bolted to the roof. The timer cannot be stopped. By the time you got a bomb disposal team here, even if there was anyone in the UAE with the skill to disarm one of these – which I’ve checked and there isn’t – there would be no time to drill in and get at the mechanism before it exploded.”

  Blake moved his hands to his side. He wondered if he could reach the PSS pistol in the small of his back and fire an aimed shot before he was cut down or Rasoul finished arming the bomb.

  “Rasoul,” Blake said. “Please, help me understand this. I have to be honest: I don’t get any of it.”

  Kaskhar pointed the pistol firmly at Blake’s head.

  “What’s to understand?” Kaskhar asked. “Does the pawn need to understand its place in the Grandmaster’s plan?”

  “Come on,” Blake said. “Cigarettes, the Royal Family, a bomb? This is a huge effort on your part. For what? To get Prince Harry on the throne? What does that achieve?”

  Kaskhar laughed heartily until overtaken by coughing.

  Blake moved his hands to his pistol and clasped it in his hand. Before he could pull it from his belt, Kaskhar thrust his gun out again.

  “Stop!” Rasoul commanded.

  Blake swallowed.

  “I’ll let you know,” Rasoul said. “As much as I can in a few sentences. I don’t give a damn about your Royal Family and the cigarettes. That part is all Aarez. Its only use to me was to provide extra leverage that could force movement in Britain in favour of my cause, if needed.”

  “So this isn’t about money? About extortion?”

  “It’s always about money, Mr Helliker – money and power,” Rasoul replied. “When those bastards took Iran in 1979, they throttled what should be one of the greatest nations on earth. Iran has everything: the world’s fourth-largest oil reserves, uranium, metals of every type, agriculture, history, literature, mountains, beaches, an educated population. It is one of the cradles of empires of old, the birth place of religions. Iran should be a superpower. Instead, it is a sick weakling strangled by corruption and ruled by homicidal morons.”

  “How does any of this affect us?” Blake asked.

  “I am worth $250 million, a lot of money but not nearly enough to finance a revolution and win,” Rasoul replied. “To take Iran back will require billions – if not trillions. The US wants to invade. Israel too. They just need a little help.”

  “There won’t be a war with Iran,” Blake stated. “The world is too weary of fighting in the Middle East.”

  “Iranians have a phrase, Mr Helliker,” Rasoul said, “it translates roughly as ‘when a man stumbles, look to see if the hand that pushed him was British’. Persians have a love-hate paranoia with you British. We assume you to be behind everything. And perhaps today you will again see that it’s true.”

  “You’re crazy,” Blake exclaimed. “In the empire of old, perhaps, but today? Britain is a middle income economy – a tiny, cold island, barely afloat off the coast of Europe!”

  “It is you, my friend, who are crazy. The evidence is everywhere. When the Americans went into Iraq. Who went with them? Britain. Afghanistan? The same. From the Dhofar Rebellion in 1962, to 1976 where the SAS kept Oman’s Sultan in power – the British were there. Your nation is one of puppeteers. Take Libya’s Civil War in 2011 or Syria’s in 2012 – how do you think piss-poor, ragged, small rebel groups with no training took on fully-armed military regimes? Seriously? It was the British. Your SAS, your SRS, your SBS! You were there. You are always there – in Bahrain, in Yemen, in South Sudan – even in your weakened state today.”

  “So this is some warped revenge?” Blake asked.

  “Revenge?” Rasoul laughed again. “You really are an idiot! No! If I want the Americans to attack Iran and I let off a bomb in Dubai that kills the British Royals what will happen?”

  Blake bowed his head as he realised the brilliance of the cack-handed attack.

  Arab nations would be in uproar. They would bay for Iran’s blood. Israel, hot-headed over Iran’s nuclear ambitions was already riding the United States to take a tough line. President Connors himself was also clamouring to invade.

  To do it, to get cover, Connors needed the United Nations to give its rubber stamp of approval. Kill Prince William and his wife? Suddenly Britain would turn from restraining the Americans, vowing to veto any Security Council resolution, to leading the charge.

  And for the attack to come from an Iranian using a Russian-made bomb?

  Would France or Russia or even China seriously stand against a war with Iran then?

  “Rasoul, I don’t know if what you’re planning will work,” Blake said. “The world is a strange place – things play out oddly on the international stage. I do know that you’ll be a wanted man on the run. And you’ll be remembered as a mass murderer.”

  “Life is a ball of twine,” Kaskhar replied. “Each individual strand, each fibre is a person’s will – separate yet interlacing to form a whole, to form history.”

  “Spare me your half-baked pseudo-philosophy.”

>   “I do not care to be remembered for being an individual thread, a part of a whole, if I am remembered at all. I wish to be known for what I actually accomplished. I will be known as a man who took the rope and used it to my own ends – a man who made knots, who bent wills to achieve a goal – a free and stable Iran. How many can say they did that?”

  “You’ll be remembered as a terrorist,” Blake said.

  “At first, certainly,” Rasoul replied. “The plan relies on it. But in a tale this complex, do you really think the truth won’t leak out eventually. As I said: we are all pawns...”

  A crooked grin crossed his face.

  “...some more so than others, Cavallo!”

  As he spoke, his finger lifted slightly. Without moving his gaze from Blake, he punched the final button and the bomb was primed.

  56

  Asp dodged back into the room.

  Another bullet. This one thudded into the plaster wall.

  “You can keep running,” Fedor shouted, “I have nowhere else to go and I plan to shoot you like the fucking dog you are. And don’t fear I’ll run out of bullets. Plenty more still in this gun.”

  Asp shambled on. He felt the pain in his chest as blood welled through his shirt. There was warmth in his belly and chilling cold in his face and spine.

  Right turn, duck, left, left again.

  He didn’t know where he was going – some part of his subconscious was driving him on – searching, retracing, looking. He didn’t understand.

  “He shot me,” was all he could think. “This bastard shot me.”

  No more Pepper Pig. No more Ginny. Alexandria.

  Right turn, right, left.

  “My lovely beautiful Alexandria...”

  He shuffled to a halt, panting and slumped on a pedestal mere yards from Kaskhar’s desk.

  “And now, the coup-de-grace,” the Russian, closing behind him, said.

  No more children. No more hope.

  His fingers clawed and clasped, his normal mind no longer controlling his actions. Pure instinct had driven him here.

  Something raw.

  Survival.

  Asp’s fingers closed around firm metal, his head filled with rage.

  “I can’t believe you fucking shot me!” he shouted.

  Asp turned.

  The Russian rounded a column ready to fire.

  The crossbow bolt caught him in the middle of his chest. Strong, slow, and heavy – the thick metal arrow sheared through the Kevlar as though it were paper.

  Fedor Milanovich was skewered to the fake-stone pillar.

  His pistol fired a single impotent shot, well wide of Asp as the Russian hacked and scratched to hold on to life.

  Asp reloaded the crossbow. With patient precision, he wound the piano wire of the bow tight then loaded a second bolt.

  “I hate guns,” he shouted. “I hate them.”

  The Russian, juddering, feet scraping against the floor to back away, looked on as he watched Asp raise the crossbow to his shoulder.

  “They are the dark harbingers of an uncivilised age,” Asp jabbered. “But crossbows – now there is a weapon a man can get behind.”

  Asp pulled the trigger.

  The quarrel sailed free.

  A dull thud.

  The Russian went limp.

  ***

  Rasoul moved forward and his fingers began to tighten around the gun’s trigger.

  “I’m afraid we must part ways, Mr Helliker,” he said. “That, unfortunately means only one of us will be leaving the roof alive.”

  Blake took slow paces backwards.

  His brain was buzzing.

  The PSS pistol in the small of his back. It still had one bullet. He needed a distraction to get his hand to the grip and then perhaps a half-second to aim and fire...

  He glanced slowly left and right.

  A distraction.

  “Come on, anything...”

  There wasn’t one.

  He edged backwards.

  Get away, somehow.

  But there was nowhere to go.

  “And now you will die,” Rasoul said.

  Blake saw the impact. Then the blood. Then heard the crack. Then the thump.

  Rasoul’s head exploded like a melon wrapped around a hand grenade.

  Blake knew instantly what had happened.

  He raised his arms rapidly, empty palms above his head.

  “Please don’t shoot me,” he whispered. “Please, please, please don’t shoot me.”

  Roof-top snipers.

  He peered gently forward. He saw the timer for the bomb.

  1:59:36.

  He took delicate, hesitant steps towards the tunnel downstairs.

  “Please, please, please,” he mouthed, hoping desperately the sniper could read lips and cared that he was unarmed.

  He made it to the door.

  The Special Forces of Britain, or Dubai, or someone would be storming the building within minutes.

  He needed to decide what he and Asp were doing next.

  Stay and get arrested?

  Try and explain their actions?

  Go on the run?

  Even if the locals believed him and he wasn’t dropped in a desert hole for eternity, how on earth could anyone defuse the bomb?

  ***

  “Asp?”

  “What?” Nate roared, lifting the crossbow as a club.

  Blake stepped to the side of the swing and disarmed his friend.

  “I think you got him,” Blake said calmly.

  Fedor’s body had five well-feathered bolts protruding from its chest.

  Responding as if to a hypnotist’s clicking fingers, Nate shook his head rapidly.

  He was dazed.

  “Whoa,” he said, his voice tinged with fright. “That’s the second time today. I really didn’t know I had that in me.”

  “And if you do this kind of thing long enough, that person is who you fear you might become all the time,” Blake said slowly. “If you’re lucky. Because at least that person still feels some kind of emotion.”

  “Jesus,” Nate replied wavering.

  His face was waxy and pale.

  “You’re shot,” Blake said. “We need to deal with your wound.”

  Blake slung the P90 over his shoulder. His eyes panned across the room. He yanked a thick wad of tissues from the box on Rasoul’s desk and opened Nate’s shirt. He held the dampening paper with pressure to the bleeding.

  “Use your hand,” he said. “Take over for me.”

  Blake took Nate by the unwounded shoulder and walked him to the lifts.

  They had little time before the building was totally sealed off.

  It all depended on the Gorilla test.

  Yes, the roof-top snipers had shot a man with a gun. That’s what they’d been primed for and they’d followed through with ruthless efficiency. But how prepared were forces on the ground to seal off a building, any building picked and selected at random.

  Would it take one minute?

  In that case, Blake and Nate were sunk.

  Two?

  Touch and go.

  Three?

  They stood a better than coin-toss chance.

  They exited the lift on the ground floor. Nate began towards the front door. Blake redirected him, heading deeper into the building. Sirens were already echoing in the streets.

  There had to be a back exit. It was their only hope.

  Even then, their chances were slim.

  Blake was almost carrying Nate as he depressed the lever on the fire door and stepped out behind a thick row of pampas grass bushes into the maze of gardens behind the Kaskhar building.

  “Sit here a second,” Blake said.

  Nate complied.

  Blake removed his jacket. He planned to sling the gun back over his shoulder so it was hidden beneath the suit when he put it back on.

  “Blake Helliker?”

  The P90 was in his hand and pointed toward the voice before he even realised he’
d heard it.

  “Whoa, whoa!” the British voice said.

  Blake stared at two men, who had their handguns trained firmly on him. Brawny, military types in dark suits and darker glasses.

  Behind them stood a furious third man.

  “Mac?” Blake said, stunned.

  “I’m really losing my patience with you,” Mac said. “Put that thing down and come with us, unless you want to be caught by the local Ceebies, who’re taking this place apart even as we speak.”

  57

  “Basically, you’re saying you were correct all along?” Mac said as he walked Blake through the tunnels beneath the Burj Khalifa complex to the rooms set aside for the British delegation.

  “Right,” Blake said. “There’s a thermobaric bomb on the roof of Kaskhar’s building. He said it can’t be stopped.”

  “How long until it blows?”

  Blake pulled out his mobile phone. A countdown clock indicated 1:47:08.

  They moved into an elevator and rose two floors.

  “In here,” Mac said sternly.

  The two suited agents marched a semi-conscious Nate to the sofa of the British legation’s conference preparation room. A doctor and nurse ran forward. They began to work on his wound.

  “You are scarily prepared,” Blake observed.

  “The Prince’s personal physician,” Mac replied. “As soon as I heard there was a gunman on a roof talking to a man fitting your description, how long do you think it took me to figure out that someone was going to get shot? And who do you think ordered the men not to put a bullet in your head too, you cretin?”

  “Hey!” Blake replied. “You were the one that wouldn’t take my theory seriously! If you’d checked out Kaskhar when I warned you on the phone, none of this would have happened and we wouldn’t have a nuke-equivalent bomb about to go off on a nearby rooftop.”

  Mac said nothing.

  “Your thank you is accepted,” Blake said.

  He went to a table in the corner and grabbed a bottle of water. The cap clacked abrasively in his hand as he twisted it loose. He downed it and went for a second.

  “Oh, by all means,” Mac said, “help yourself to the Prince’s biscuits as well.”

  Blake took three and began scoffing them.

  “Rubbish,” he replied, “he’s clearly a hob-nob man and these are digestives.”