Spiral

by Andy Remic

  ‘Kade, I despise you.’

  ‘No, you don’t Carter. You are me; and you can’t hate yourself.’

  ‘I always have ... Listen, don’t you ever get tired, Kade? Tired of the killing?’

  ‘It is why I exist,’ said Kade darkly.

  Carter nodded, the HIDSS bobbing. He banked the Comanche, there was a drone from the engines and they spun out across the Pacific Ocean; beneath them the waves rolled and the sea seemed suddenly endless, a vast world of black merciless beauty stretching out for ever and beckoning for them to jump aboard and ride her into a sweet-tasting oblivion...

  ‘Kamus-5,’ said Carter softly, nodding to himself. The blood speckles and smears had dried on his hands, on his face, on his clothes. He looked demonic in the gloomy light. ‘We made a pact; that the land of the Kamus was sort of holy; sort of evil.’

  ‘Are we going there, brother?’

  ‘Yes.’ Carter nodded to himself.

  ‘You know, that motherfucker Langan stitched us up bad. Dumb fuck led them right to us ... If I had known I would have shot the stupid bastard myself; drilled out his eyes and puked into his skull. I wish I had known. I wish ...’

  Carter ignored Kade; Kade was an insignificant buzz of insect talk in his head. Carter felt sick. Carter felt cold. Carter felt alone.

  Somebody is going to pay, he realised.

  Somebody is going to pay bad.

  CHAPTER 23

  THE KAMUS

  □ Ωclass relay □ qiii mainframe code logon

  01001010

  booting ... sequences initiated...

  Carter fell from infinite dark dreams out of one world of pain and into another - a world of pain that was wakefulness. Pain: pure and white, it pounded his temples and brainstem like a lump hammer. A diamond drill bit pierced his eyelids and popped his eyes. A razor wire sliced layers from his cerebellum. His mind was crushed in an iron grip and held for all eternity.

  He forced open his eyelids and looked up into a face he knew only too well.

  ‘How goes it, old buddy?’ asked Jam, grinning. The tall man was standing, leather coat wrapped around his frame, hands in pockets, a smoking cigarette hanging loosely from between his lips. His hair was still spiked, his eyes dark-ringed and hooded but twinkling with an inner humour laced with concern. ‘Thought you’d fucking died on us out there. You touched down in that battered war machine and bam, out you went like a fucking light!’

  ‘Not good,’ sighed Carter, wincing as he eased himself tenderly into a sitting position. He noted his Browning to his right, beside the bed where they must have dragged him. ‘That to share, you stingy old bastard?’

  Jam held the cigarette towards Carter. ‘What’s mine is yours, and yours is mine.’ Carter’s weary face brightened a little and he took the cigarette, took a long drag, passed the cigarette back and lifted the barrel of the Browning gently under Jam’s chin. Jam blinked, hand outstretched to receive the weed. He coughed slowly.

  ‘You seem a touch on edge,’ he said at last, after a long meditative pause.

  ‘Let’s see both hands,’ said Carter, and Jam could see there was no humour and no compassion and no give in the man he had once called a friend. Jam removed his other hand from the coat pocket and spread his fingers wide.

  ‘What’s going on, Carter?’

  ‘Where’s Slater and Nicky?’

  ‘Out front.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘On the landing yard.’

  ‘Let’s walk; you in front. And don’t make me shoot you in the back, Jam, because it would be a fucking bad ending to a good long friendship. Unfortunately, events have conspired to fuck with my brain; I can no longer trust anybody. Not even you. The Nex are fucking everywhere.’

  ‘We did Belfast together,’ said Jam, his voice hoarse through gritted teeth.

  ‘I know we did. And in a few minutes we’ll either be sharing a drink or a new adventure in the Realms of the Beyond. I shared a history with Gol, but a fucker who looked just like him still tried to kill me.’

  They moved down the draught-filled stone tunnels, Jam’s coat flapping in the gentle cool mountain gusts. Carter walked carefully behind the other man, aware of how fast he could move and how deadly he really was. He might have a glib tongue and a wicked way with the women, but he was a deadly killer. Very deadly.

  They emerged into the darkness of pitch-black night.

  Slater was sitting on his pack; Nicky had unpacked a small stove and was cooking food. They both turned as Jam and Carter entered—

  ‘You OK, Jam?’ growled Slater, rising quickly, hands straying towards his gun.

  ‘No worries,’ said Jam softly, waving for the large man to sit down.

  Carter pocketed the Browning. Jam turned, gently patted the face of his old friend. ‘You’re a dumb motherfucker, Carter, you know that?’

  ‘Hey, sue me,’ said Carter, moving over to the food. ‘Smells good.’

  ‘You pull a gun on him?’ asked Nicky.

  Carter nodded.

  She shook her head. ‘You mad bastard - he’s here to help.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’

  Jam jogged over and squatted beside the group. ‘Right, then - to business, now that Carter has it solid in his mind that I am real. I presume you know what’s going down with Spiral?’

  Carter nodded. ‘I know some of the Divisions have been wiped out, some of the DemolSquads have been murdered by assassins. There’s some kind of splinter faction that has a processor that can take over the global military and is intent on world domination. And it was being run by two men: Feuchter and Durell. Only I killed Feuchter back in Saudi Arabia, when Spiral_Q blew up.’

  ‘Yeah, it really is that bad,’ said Jam, grimacing. ‘They’ve hit Spiral, and fucking hit them hard. Apparently they used this processor to hack Spiral mainframes, put us all in fucked-up situations where they could take us out.’ He took a breath and his eyes were wild, flaring with adrenalin. He lit a cigarette, grabbed a fork and speared a sausage. ‘Yeah, we found out much the same with the help of The Priest. Gol worked with Durell, way back, on something called the Nex Project -although no bastard seems to know what it was, or what it did. Gol pulled out, but Durell carried on with the work until Spiral withdrew the funding and moved him more on to medicines. Gol then moved to Prague - hey, and you know the history behind that little venture.’

  ‘How did you find out about this Nex Project?’ said Carter softly.

  ‘Well, we’ve been talking to some of the remaining DemolSquads - Nicky and Slater have pulled a few in here to the Kamus. They’re out now, helping The Priest with his various projects’

  ‘Thank fuck for that. So we weren’t all wiped out?’

  Jam grinned nastily. ‘Take more than a few copper-eyed cunts to wipe this bunch of Squads from the face of the earth. Once we’d discovered the shit that was going down, we used ECubes to relay messages to the Squads who were still alive; created our own little network, piggybacked on descramble codes. Then we started to work on finding out just where those fuckers have run to.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Aye, there’s always a but,’ said Jam, blowing smoke into the night. He frowned as Slater shovelled food into his maw without offering anybody a single sausage. Jam reached over and stole another one, peering at it in the gloom as smoke trailed from his nostrils.

  ‘Demol16 was hot on your trail when you left England with Natasha. Apparently the TacSquads had a special interest in you - fucking secret police sniffing around your coat tails. Demol16 was sent to monitor you but always ended up being one step behind - they turned up to a fucking massacre in Africa; they nearly died there, Carter, fucking Nex crawling all over the place. Then they tracked you to Saudi Arabia, but lost you shortly after the explosion.’

  ‘What did Demol16 find in Saudi?’

  ‘A mess: the remains of Spiral_Q. But no Feuchter.’

  ‘That’s because I killed him,’ said Carter through gritted teeth.<
br />
  ‘There were no signs of his body. Even though he was involved in an explosion, they had top grade PFScanners and there were no genetic residues - no traces at all. Somebody must have come back for his corpse.’

  ‘Why do that?’ said Carter.

  Jam shrugged. ‘No fucking idea. What use is a fried chicken carcass? But anyway, we lost you after that until your ECube blast. Glad you remembered the descramble code, old buddy.’ Jam bit into his sausage and chewed thoughtfully. Then he stood, walked towards the edge of the landing yard and the Apache, and stared out into the Austrian night. His long leather coat whipped around him in the wind.

  Carter stepped up beside him.

  Together, they stared out into the depths of blackness below. The wind howled around them, buffeting them on the cliff edge; here there were no parapets, no barriers - just a long steep fall into rocky chaos below. Far beneath the two men occasional lights twinkled: synthetic stars deep down towards the ground - bright yellow, white, and sometimes red.

  ‘I love it here,’ said Jam softly.

  ‘Yeah. Love the insanity of the place.’

  ‘They should never have closed it.’

  ‘Well, your splinter faction reopened it.’

  ‘Only as a temporary measure.’

  The two men shared a moment of pleasure.

  ‘What are your plans now?’ said Carter.

  ‘This splinter faction of Spiral has a mobile division based on a fucking warship, if you can believe that. Durell, the fucker, thinks he is going to dominate the world, or something shite like that. We’ve got to stop him.’

  ‘We?’

  Jam turned and grasped Carter’s shoulders. ‘You’re part of our army now, Carter. You’re a Demolitions expert; we need you.’

  ‘I have my own war to fight.’

  ‘And what war is that?’

  ‘A war in my head,’ said Carter softly.

  ‘Well, I’ll let The Priest convince you.’

  Carter scowled. ‘You’ve brought that mad fucker back here? He’s a fucking liability.’

  ‘Not just him,’ said Jam. ‘All of them.’

  ‘All of who?’

  ‘All the remaining DemolSquads,’ said Jam, eyes gleaming in the glow of his cigarette. ‘Durell and Feuchter - and those Nex fuckers - they have brought us a war. Now it’s time for a little friendly retribution. There ain’t enough time for the USA or China or Russia to get to Durell and his fucking warship ... large parts of NATO’s C&C - Command and Control - structure keeps crashing, spinning off-line and killing its own data ... It looks like Durell’s plan is, well, going according to plan. I think we should fuck it up for him good and proper. Now, come over here. I suggest we sit down - drink the bottle of Lagavulin I packed especially for my old friend - and while we wait for the heavy mob, you can bring us up to speed on what exactly happened in LA.

  Carter smiled; the expression felt strange on his face. ‘Lagavulin, you say?’

  ‘Well matured.’ Jam winked. He strolled over, booted Slater from his pack and drew out a bottle of whisky and some small glasses. ‘Drink, anybody? A toast to Spiral’s tough little boys winning against all odds?’

  Carter laughed then; giggled like a schoolboy. ‘Give me a glass,’ he spat dryly. ‘I need a fucking drink.’

  Carter lay on the floor in the corner, snoring. Slater was curled up beside him, also snoring. Nicky had disappeared for a ‘long soak in a bath’. And that left only—

  Jam. He sat at the mouth of the tunnel, staring out into the night, mulling over thoughts of battleships and the Nex killers. He could not understand; could not understand why their eyes were so strange, could not understand why they were so good at killing. Because he knew that he was one of the best, and that he was totally outclassed by the Nex. In one-on-one combat with a Nex he would be dog meat.

  ‘What the fuck did they do to you to make you like that?’ he mused through a mouthful of smoke. ‘What was the Nex Project? And why did Gol pull out in those early days?’

  He watched the smoke as it was snatched by the wind and dispersed.

  Like us, he realised. Dispersed. Broken up. Scattered ...

  And he remembered the pain on Carter’s face; the pain from talk of Natasha’s death.

  Jam shook his head.

  Shit always happens to good people, he realised. It’s just the way of the world.

  A low drone came from over the mountains.

  And then, in a burst of anticlimax, a Piasecki Pathfinder-3 helicopter loomed from the darkness, hovering ponderously into view, and climbed slightly, then dropped, suddenly, unsteadily, rotors clattering, towards the landing yard. Engines screamed. The rotors whined in deceleration. There was a strange banging sound and a bad smell of old oil.

  Jam shaded his eyes against the glare of the Pathfinder’s landing lights, climbed to his feet and strode across the stone.

  A grinning face met Jam’s scowl, and a short squat man leaped down. He had powerful arms and shoulders plastered with tattoos from a life in the military; his head was shaved, bullet-shaped, and his round cheeks were a rosy red. ‘How’s it going, pussy?’ he bellowed at Jam.

  Jam blinked.

  ‘Haggis - what - the fuck - is that?’

  ‘It’s a ‘copter, ain’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Jam slowly, walking alongside one rusted flank and staring in disbelief at the huge ragged hole that revealed nestling fuel pipes. ‘Haggis, where did you get it?’

  ‘Stole it. From an Italian. Is a long story.’

  Jam sighed.

  ‘You think we’re going to wage a war using that?’

  ‘Sorry, Jam.’ Haggis gave a red-faced scowl. ‘But we can’t all nick fucking Apaches, right? They’re not the sort of thing that are ten a fucking penny! It’s not like hotwiring a fucking Escort!’

  ‘OK, OK, calm down. Go and get yourself a brew. Are the others on their way?’

  ‘Aye,’ nodded Haggis. ‘They’re coming, all right.’

  And come they did.

  Shortly after the arrival of Haggis, the dark sky was filled with a clattering of rotors and howling engines. A squad of helicopters, two Lockheed AH-56A machines followed by a Sikorsky Black Hawk, made a majestic entrance and slowly touched down. Jam’s face glowed as eight men and a woman disembarked. They exchanged greetings, Jam laughing at the custard spilled down Bob Bob’s combats, and the weary group of DemolSquad operatives moved into the protective embrace of Kamus-5 in search of a brew and some chocolate biscuits.

  Jam stood, hands on hips, staring at the six helicopters gathered in the yard; still the machines were dwarfed by the sheer rock walls, the huge expanse of barren stone, rocky and uneven, carved from the very mountain itself. His memories drifted back: he could still picture the base when it had been operational ... but that had been twenty years ago when he had been a young bright-eyed man without the weight of years and the weight of murder burdening his shoulders.

  Jam took his seat once more. Lit a cigarette.

  ‘Hiya.’

  He glanced up at Nicky.

  ‘Hi, love.’

  She handed him a tin mug filled with steaming tea. ‘Lots of sugar, Jam, just how you like it.’

  ‘Cheers.’ He took a sip and stared back out over the darkness. Austria nestled below him.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he sighed, wrapping his leather coat around him. ‘Just tired. Tired of it all.’

  Nicky sat beside him, snuggling up close, and he looked at her, surprised. She rested her head against his chin and the smell of her hair filled his senses.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mmmm?’

  ‘You feeling horny or something?’ He grinned his boyish flirtatious roguish grin; it was the sort of chat-up line that had got him beaten about the head on many drunken occasions.

  Nicky met his gaze. His cheeky grin disappeared when he saw the seriousness there. ‘You’ve always been an insolent fucker, Jam. But I have enjoyed working
with you. I feel - I don’t know - I have a very, very bad feeling about what we’re going to do.’

  Jam nodded. ‘It’s a war,’ he said softly. ‘Durell, and Feuchter - they brought us a war. They tried to wipe us out; now it’s time to give them a bullet up the arse.’

  ‘Yeah. But... not everybody is going to make it back.’ She licked her lips. They gleamed in the light from Jam’s cigarette. She reached up, suddenly, and kissed him. Their lips stayed pressed together, tongues darting, and Jam felt lust smash through his body with a ferocity that he had forgotten.

  She pulled away.

  Jam stared into her beautiful eyes.

  ‘I need some company tonight,’ she said, her voice husky.

  Jam nodded. Speechless. And, standing, she led him inside by the hand.

  As the tendrils of dawn light crept over the mountains, Jam rose bleary-eyed and happy from the pallet bed. The covers fell away to reveal Nicky’s bronzed skin, a rounded breast peeking from above the covers. Jam rubbed at his eyes, then at his stubble, lit a cigarette and stumbled in his boxer shorts and socks down the draughty stone corridor.

  Noise greeted him and, shielding his eyes, a cigarette limp between his lips, he stepped out into the dawn ...

  And into a hive of activity.

  There were at least a hundred helicopters, filling the yard with their metal menace. Some had engines screaming, rotors hissing through the air as men and women stood by, staring into engine compartments or filling the machines with fuel. Others merely stood, waiting for the mission, glinting in the glorious dawn sunlight.

  Jam’s jaw dropped.

  He could see Fegs, Bob Bob, Jones5 and Russian, all working on their helicopters, dark oil staining their arms and hands. Blitz and the sexy lithe Czech assassin named AnnaMarie were carrying jerrycans of fuel to their rusting steeds, while Carter sat nearby, his head in his hands, cigarette dangling from his lips as The Priest stood above him, quoting from his small leather Bible, a look of wild hatred in his eyes, spittle dripping from his impassioned lips. Jam’s gaze roved across groups of men and women he had trained with and fought beside. Some he had trained himself. Hundreds of his DemolSquad operative friends had all been brought together here for the first time, the only time. The last time.