SKELETON GOLD: Dark Tide (James Pace Book 4)

by Andy Lucas

  ‘Up, at least two floors,’ he commanded, taking the lead back to the stairs and taking them two at a time, the old Sten held low and ready, finger poised. He could almost feel the breath of his comrades on his neck as he kicked open the door of the sixth floor stair entrance and just dodged a hail of bullets that tore over his shoulder as he dropped to his stomach and emptied the whole clip from his Sten in reply.

  The two mercenaries were shielded by the door frame, shooting their weapons blindly around the side of the frame, out into the stairway. Pace’s bullets flew through the door, completely missing. Coming up the stairs a second after him, Baker fired through the dry wall on the left side of the doorway while Hammond poured a clip of 5.56 rounds through the right wall.

  The bullets easily passed through the wall, stitching the skulking enemy, cutting them down. Before they had even slumped to the carpet, Pace was up and moving through the doorway, reloading as he went, this time with Baker leading and Hammond behind him.

  Somewhere behind Hammond, he hoped, was Munambe; sensibly staying out of the firing line.

  By chance, Pace had chosen the correct floor and a few twists and turns later, just past a set of elevator doors, the familiar sight of the conference room popped up. The door was open, revealing the impressive mahogany conference table and familiar red leather chairs. Neat, tidy and waiting for the next poor bastard to cross Josephine Roche or her pet thug.

  ‘Now where?’ asked Hammond, puffing slightly from the exertion.

  ‘We’re close,’ said Pace. ‘I don’t know exactly, Max. The private quarters have got to be here somewhere. Baker, didn’t Yucel know where to find them?’

  Baker shook his head slowly. ‘He said he’d never been to this part of the building.’

  ‘You believed him?’

  ‘Of course not. He was happy to become a turncoat to save his own skin but he wasn’t prepared to lead us straight to them.’

  ‘There’s only one more floor above this one. The likelihood of the quarters being on the same floor as a business room is minimal. Let’s head up to the top floor and bag ourselves a couple of she-devils, shall we?’

  ‘You should be on the stage, with theatrical flair like that,’ laughed Hammond. ‘You missed your vocation.’

  ‘I’m a bloody helicopter pilot,’ argued Pace, grinning, ‘who’s new career isn’t doing much for his life expectancy.’

  ‘Come on,’ interrupted Baker. ‘The fight’s still on, or have you forgotten?’

  ‘Lead on, sir,’ Hammond offered.

  ‘Happy to.’

  The final flight of stairs led onto a more open floor, with double width corridors that boasted plush carpets, in light salmon. The lighting was soft and carefully designed to exude a sense of soft, calm. Along the corridor were several doors, well spaced apart. They were all closed and no sound could be heard apart from the distant rumble of gunfire and grenade detonations.

  Pace was just wondering why there were no guards on this floor, if this is where Josephine and Fiona would be found, when three of the doors burst open simultaneously and at least thirty mercenaries streamed out into the wide corridor, firing as they came.

  The resulting barrage of bullets was wildly aimed, as men jostled for position and struggled to bring their weapons to bear on the intruders quickly enough. The corridor suddenly resembled a packed commuter train carriage in rush hour, allowing Pace to throw himself bodily into a diving, sideways roll, coming up smoothly into a crouched stance and firing his submachine gun into the pack.

  Baker and Hammond dropped into a crouch from standing and poured their own deadly fire into the opposition. Like the battles of yesteryear, where the rows of men at the front were gunned down as they advanced, the safest place for the mercenaries was at the back of the crowd. Unfortunately, within three seconds, most of the front men were dead.

  Yet these were professionals too and they recovered themselves, fighting back ferociously. Baker was hit twice in the chest, flying backwards five feet to land in a winded, cursing heap, and very glad that the bullets that stuck his Kevlar vest had not been armour-piercing. Hammond went down as well, shouting in pain, just as Pace fed a new clip into the Sten and raked the last few mercenaries with cold, calculated intent.

  The corridor was filled with gunsmoke and the whimpers of wounded men.

  ‘Max! Are you okay?!’

  ‘Bastard shot me in the fucking ear,’ he moaned, getting back up with one hand clasped to the left side of his head, vivid crimson pouring through his grimy fingers. ‘Damn that hurts.’

  Baker staggered to his feet, joining them, rubbing his chest armour and sucking hard on the smoky air. ‘Come on, let’s keep going.’

  ‘Stop,’ barked Hammond, his own wound momentarily forgotten. Then, softly. ‘Look.’

  Pace followed his gaze back towards the doorway. Slumped in an untidy heap on the carpet, his eyes already glazing in death, lay Solomon Munambe. He had followed them in through the door and walked straight into the initial wild barrage fired by the guards, not reacting swiftly enough to roll, duck or drop. It was just bad luck that two bullets had hit him directly in the head, rather than in his body armour. He was dead before he ever had time to recognise the fact.

  Pausing to check in with the other assault teams on his head mike, Baker reported that the base was now secure. Although many of the guards had been killed, along with half a dozen on their own side, many had surrendered, realising they were outclassed. Baker smiled grimly. He killed when he needed to, as did the soldiers that he commanded. Like any true soldier, he always preferred it when the enemy gave up the fight, preferring to save their own lives.

  Pace and Hammond checked the doors out, one by one, guns at the ready. The suites and luxurious bathrooms behind the doors were all empty. Finally, rounding a bend in the corridor, they were faced with one final door. It had to be the master suite.

  ‘Shall we knock politely?’ wondered Hammond slyly.

  Pace cocked an eyebrow. ‘Hell no.’ Kicking the door with his booted foot, the lock popped open at exactly the same moment that a dozen bullet holes appeared in its centre, forming a near instantaneous circle of splintered wood. Diving in through the door, SAS-style, Hammond went right and Pace went left. As if oblivious to the risk, Baker strode inside, his own gun held level and ready.

  The room was in complete darkness, with heavy curtains pulled shut to keep out even the hint of moonlight. Fiona knew the corridor light would silhouette anyone who came in through open door, giving her a good chance of killing them before their eyes could adjust enough to the darkness to spot her, crouched behind an armchair. In her hands she held an Uzi machine pistol, the blue smoke drifting up from its barrel invisible in the blackness.

  This was her big mistake. Normally, she would have been right. The typical night vision goggles had to be removed, even in partial light, to be effective but she knew nothing of the McEntire Corporation’s true purpose, or its technological creations. The McEntire glasses worked well enough in half light to keep them on and instantly changed with the light level. Stepping into the room, Baker spotted her immediately and fired his M16A4 from the hip, flattening her with the force of half a dozen chest hits against her own bullet-proof vest.

  As she thrashed around on the floor, eyes bulging, desperate to breathe, he stepped over to her and looked down. Without night vision of her own, Fiona could barely make out his outline in the darkness but she sensed his intention.

  ‘You...you...don’t need to do this,’ she gasped. ‘Please, we can work something out...please...’

  Pace and Hammond joined him and all three looked down at her. Hammond, momentarily felt a sense of pity but Pace had seen her murder an innocent man just for the effect it would have on her other captives. She was ruthless and would kill them all in a heartbeat.

  ‘Where is your boss?’ Pace snapped at her.

  Recognising the voice in the darkness, and feeling a little more in control as her breathing grew ea
sier, Fiona felt a spurt of anger. ‘Damn you, James Pace. I wish I’d killed you when I had the chance.’

  ‘I’m sure you do. Where is Josephine?’

  ‘Long gone,’ she said truthfully. ‘Where you will never find her.’

  ‘And the vials?’

  ‘Already used and gone,’ she snapped. ‘Whatever you’ve done here won’t matter a bit,’ she sneered, scrabbling to her feet despite the guns that she sensed were aimed at her. ‘ARC will use Scorpion to clear a path for its pipelines and solar farms, from here to South Sudan. Nobody will have any clue that it’ was us. They’ll put it down to an act of God.’ She barked a laugh.

  ‘What about Dark Tide?’ asked Hammond. ‘What is that going to be used for?’

  She laughed again. ‘What a waste of time,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t do anything.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Baker was growing irritated by the woman’s attitude and had the inclination to shoot her.

  ‘There’s no harm in telling you, I guess. Scorpion, as you know by now, is a pure strain of bubonic plague that the British government funded as a weapon of mass destruction in the First World War. Dark Tide, according to the science papers we found in Uruguay is, quite simply, the cure. To be more precise, it is the vaccine to prevent someone contracting the Scorpion strain.’ She paused. ‘But it doesn’t work. Our labs tested a sample from Paul Pringle and a much better one from Uruguay, concluding that the protection would be temporary, perhaps a week or so, and success rates would only have been low anyway. Anyone vaccinated would still contract the plague and die.’

  ‘I’m going to ask you once more. You won’t get another chance,’ promised Pace, having no reason to doubt her words. ‘Where exactly is Josephine Roche?’

  Hammond moved over to the wall and flicked on the lights. Removing their glasses, they found themselves in a stunning bedroom, complete with an impressive four-poster bed, and Fiona came into full focus.

  Standing nearly six feet tall, with shoulder-length copper hair falling in gentle, natural curls, the delicate features of her face were housed on a head that sat atop a veritable mountain of muscle. As on the first occasion Pace had met her, she wore a beautifully tailored business suit with a simple white blouse and patent black high-heeled shoes. The differences were the armoured vest and the Uzi. The malevolence in her eyes was frighteningly unchanged.

  Fiona pressed her lips together firmly and then whipped her Uzi up with a hand speed that belied her muscle-bound arms. She thought she could get the drop on them but it was her second, and last, mistake of the night.

  A single, heavy shot rang out, sending her body flying backwards to land in a sprawling, twitching heap a few feet away, instantly turning the similarly coloured carpet from salmon to deep red as her blood flowed out of the massive hole in the back of her head.

  Arm outstretched, predicting that she would fight to the death, Pace’s old Webley put an end to the matter once and for all.

  ‘Now, let’s find the other one,’ he said calmly. ‘Whatever is going on, Josephine Roche is the key.’

  33

  Rallying, as agreed, in the main compound, Baker took stock of their situation. In all, eight of their side had died, with five more wounded. The helicopter from the frigate was already inbound with the ship’s doctor aboard.

  Speaking with the ship’s captain over his head mike, he also confirmed that there had been no movement out of the facility during the battle, apart from the ill-fated attempt to chase away the diversion team. He had set up a link from the McEntire spy satellite to the ship’s bridge monitor, so Baker knew the man was being accurate.

  Nobody had seen any sign of Josephine, or the Miles woman who was reported to have been taken hostage.

  The entire engagement had only lasted for fifteen minutes so far and the next two hours, as the night aged, involved a detailed search of every nook and cranny of all three buildings, and the dock area. Even the solar farm that backed on to the eastern side, through which that particular assault team had approached the fence, was searched.

  Josephine was not found. No Scorpion or Dark Tide vials were found either. Deborah Miles, on the other hand, did turn up.

  In a medical room on one of the lower floors, Hammond and Pace discovered her in bed, apparently unconscious, and still plumbed into heart and blood pressure monitors. IV drips infused fluid and medication into a butterfly on the back of her left hand.

  As Pace moved closer to the bed, her eyes flicked open weakly and she focused on his face. Looking back, years later, the only thing she remembered about that moment was the compassion she read in his eyes.

  ‘Deborah?’ Pace asked. ‘It’s okay, don’t be frightened. We’re the cavalry,’ he smiled gently. ‘Here to get you home.’

  She nodded slowly, numbly accepting his words at face value before misting up as the reality of her situation came washing back over her. She could not afford to sob. The pain medication was good but the surgeon had opened her belly up wide to harvest her soul. Silently, huge tears began to roll out of the corners of her eyes, down her cheeks and onto the bedding.

  ‘You’re safe now,’ he soothed, misunderstanding. She had the blankets pulled up past her stomach so the surgery was not obvious. Her face was as heavily bruised as Hammond’s; testament Pace was sure to the sadistic nature of the now deceased Fiona Chambers. As he saw her pain, he was even more glad that he had killed her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Deborah sniffled. ‘A good journalist can’t fall apart so easily. Maybe my editor has been right all along.’

  Pace knew very little about her, so said nothing for a moment, allowing her to deal with the eruption of emotion. Offering her a glass of water, from her bedside table, he sat carefully on the edge of the bed and took her unplumbed hand in his own. He smiled at her encouragingly. ‘Can you be moved, Deborah? It looks like they did a number on you. You’re a mass of cuts and bruises.’

  She looked at him hard before realising that he did not know what had happened to her. Why would he?

  ‘I can move, if someone helps me, but not far. I’d love to get out of here but I’m not stupid enough to risk opening up the stitches. That would kill me.’

  ‘Stitches? What did they do to you?’

  ‘Robbed me,’ she replied forlornly. ‘They stole my future so they could give it to that bitch.’ She snarled the last word with such venom that she pulled her stitches and winced with the pain.

  Pace and Hammond exchanged puzzled looks.

  ‘Who stole it?’ asked Hammond kindly. ‘What was stolen, Deborah?’

  She could not bring herself to say the words, instead simply lowering the blankets to reveal a huge, crossed incision that ran from below her breastbone down to her pubis. As though put there by a maniacal pirate, to mark a wonderful treasure, the cuts were hurriedly stitched and looked infected. Pace had no idea what medicine was in the IV bags but it blatantly wasn’t antibiotics.

  Suddenly, struck by the awful realisation at what had happened to her, both men knew who the culprit was. Who would need to steal the most precious organs a woman possessed but Josephine; needing to make the transformation into a woman complete in every way, other than his genetic code of course.

  ‘Relax,’ Pace said softly, easing the blankets back up as Deborah dissolved into more tears. ‘My name is James Pace and my friend here is Max Hammond. The doctor is on his way from our ship. We’ll have you safely in the medical bay within the hour, and then back to London on a private medi-flight. You’re safe now,’ he added. Her response stuck in his mind for a long time to come.

  Eyes red and puffy, a depth of despair was easily visible within her pupils. ‘I just want my children back,’ she begged. ‘Please help me.’

  They stayed with her for ten minutes before two of their own medics took over. They were already liaising with ship, and the doctor’s closing helicopter, and arrangements were being made to move her first.

  Outside the room, Pace and Hammond were silent, each w
restling with the horror of what they had just witnessed.

  Pace broke the silence first, with a pertinent question. ‘Someone operated on her and took out her reproductive organs. It seems logical that they are intended for transplant into Josephine Roche. I can’t think of any other reason for doing it.’

  ‘Agreed,’ frowned Hammond. ‘But there’s no sign of Josephine or her surgeon anywhere.’ Another thought struck him. ‘Aren’t transplants meant to happen at the same time? You know, the donor and recipient operated on at the same time?’

  ‘That’s true, I believe. It has to happen before cells and tissues start to die. I think they can be on ice for a few hours but generally it happens at the same time.

  ‘Which means that Josephine Roche can hardly be hiding in a dark corner somewhere, can she? She will have just had major surgery herself. She’ll need medicine and care.’

  ‘And,’ Pace cottoned on fast, ‘I’ll bet her surgeon must have planned for her to get to a private facility either to have the surgery, or just after.’

  ‘She’s not here,’ Hammond realised.

  ‘She hasn’t been here for days, I’ll warrant,’ Pace added. ‘Deborah’s scars look fresh but they’re infected, so they look worse than they should. Those incisions could have been made days ago.’

  ‘Before we pointed the satellite down here?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  The ship’s doctor had landed by then and made his way directly up to Deborah’s room. Pace stopped him just outside and asked him a couple of key questions. In the doctor’s opinion, although he admitted to not being an expert in reproductive surgery, the organs could be kept alive but it was better to transplant them immediately. Pace thanked him and let him into her room, closing the door firmly after him.

  ‘She could be anywhere,’ groaned Hammond. He did not get the chance to add anything further before their headsets burst into life again. The radar operator on the frigate had just recorded the large seaplane taking to the skies, under cover of darkness, heading inland on a north easterly track across the desert.