End Zone

by D C Alden

  Warburg’s eyes flicked towards Marion and the overnight bag at her feet. ‘What’s this?’

  Marion held up her phone. ‘My contact at the European Space Agency has finally come through on those freeze-dried food packs. I’m going to Munich to finalise the shipment. It will supplement what we’ve already stockpiled by at least a year.’

  ‘We have enough supplies,’ Warburg told her. ‘This is an unnecessary risk. For you and us.’

  ‘It’s an overnight stay,’ Marion assured him, ‘and besides, the shipment will guarantee our survival should anything happen to our existing supplies.’

  ‘It’s a prudent move,’ Philip added, ‘which is why I’m going along. To provide support and security.’

  Warburg shook his head. ‘No, no, no, I won’t allow it. Lucas!’ he bellowed over his shoulder.

  The lumbering Englishman stepped out of the recreation room, a table tennis paddle in his hand.

  ‘Yes, boss?’

  ‘Pack a bag. You’re going to Munich with Marion.’

  Lucas scratched at his thick beard. ‘Now?’

  ‘Now,’ growled Warburg. ‘You!’ he barked, pointing at a thin young man with long, lank hair. ‘Take Philip’s bag up to his room.’

  ‘I just — ’

  ‘It’s decided, Philip. Meet me in my office in five minutes. There’s a few things I want to go over.’

  Philip nodded. ‘Of course, Gunter.’

  Warburg marched away. Philip watched the boy dragging his roller up the stairs. Marion spoke loud enough for the onlookers to hear. ‘Walk me to the taxi, Philip?’

  ’Sure.’

  Philip escorted Marion to the main doors. A shaven-headed German girl, Greta, inserted a key into a wall panel and the shutters rattled upwards. Daylight stretched across the lobby. Greta unlocked the glass front doors and held one open. A cold wind swirled around the lobby and rain lashed the parking lot outside.

  ‘Let me take that,’ Philip said, clutching Marion’s roller. He grabbed a large black umbrella from the stand by the door and popped it open. Marion took cover beneath it and together they crossed the courtyard. Rain drummed on the brolly, on the cars and trucks in the parking lot.

  ‘Your luggage,’ Marion whispered.

  ‘Replaceable,’ he told her. ‘Keep walking.’

  ‘D’you think he knows?’

  ‘How could he?’ Philip replied. ‘It’s paranoia. After all, he believes Europe is about to be ravaged by the virus.’

  ‘Wait up!’

  Philip glanced over his shoulder. Lucas and Karl were jogging through the rain towards them. Lucas wore a hooded parka and had a rucksack slung over his shoulder. Karl was one of Warburg’s security team, a former Politzei officer. A noisy ring of keys jangled in his hand.

  ‘Gunter wants you back inside,’ Karl said to Philip, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

  Marion smiled, slipping her arm through Philip’s. ‘He’s walking me to the taxi. Be a liebling and open the gate, would you Karl?’

  Karl hesitated, then unlocked the heavy steel door set into the high concrete wall. He swung it inwards and Philip glimpsed the yellow Mercedes taxi parked by the kerb outside, its lights glowing in the gathering darkness. He took a step towards the steel door. Karl blocked his path.

  ‘The boss was insistent. Inside.’

  Lucas took the case from Philip’s hand and stepped out onto the street. He rapped his knuckles on the taxi roof and the trunk popped open. Marion gave Philip a hesitant smile.

  ‘Well, I’ll see you in twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Have a safe trip,’ Philip said smiling, and holding the brolly aloft.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Lucas shouted, climbing into the taxi.

  ‘Wait, I have something for you,’ Philip told Marion, patting his pockets. He turned to Karl. ‘Hold this, would you?’

  Karl tutted and took the umbrella. As he did so, Philip grabbed the back of Karl’s neck and plunged a knife deep into his throat, jamming it to the hilt and working it side to side. Karl gasped, his windpipe already severed, the air escaping from his lungs. Marion moved quickly, snatching the umbrella from his hand. Watery blood ran freely down Karl’s exposed neck as he stared into Philip’s eyes, a familiar expression of surprise and pain on his face. Philip lowered him to the ground as Karl began choking on his own blood. Anyone watching from the warehouse would surely sound the alarm.

  ‘The taxi, quickly!’ Philip ordered.

  Marion ran to the vehicle and climbed in. Philip was seconds behind her. He yanked open the other door.

  ‘Lucas, something’s wrong with Karl! Come quickly!’

  Lucas frowned and clambered out of the car. Philip pointed to the steel door.

  ‘Get something under his head! I’ll call an ambulance!’

  Lucas lumbered across the pavement. Philip slipped into the taxi and eased the door shut.

  ‘Go,’ he ordered the driver.

  The Mercedes pulled away from the kerb. Philip twisted around, saw Lucas disappear behind the steel door.

  ‘Nicely done,’ Marion said. She spoke in Polish because the driver was a middle-aged Turk whose radio was tuned into a Turkish talk show.

  ‘I had no choice,’ Philip replied in the same tongue.

  The taxi slowed for a corner and the warehouse disappeared from sight.

  ‘Poor Lucas,’ Marion said, turning around in her seat.

  ‘He’d served his purpose. They all have.’

  Philip watched the street ahead. The traffic was moderate, the grey skies darkening by the minute. He saw a sign for the train station and settled back into his seat.

  ‘Gunter will lose his mind,’ Marion observed.

  Philip smiled and looked at his watch. ‘The stage is set. It’s up to us now.’ He reached out and squeezed Marion’s hand. ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘I’m ready,’ she said, and smiled.

  ‘What do you mean, he’s dead?’

  ‘Philip cut his throat open,’ Lucas said, panting.

  ‘Philip?’

  ‘He jumped in the cab with Marion. They’ve gone.’

  Warburg frowned. ‘Gone where?’

  ‘No idea. I dragged Karl inside and locked the gate.’

  Warburg ran a hand over his dome. ‘I knew something wasn’t right. I knew it! Marion too. That bitch.’

  He headed across the lobby and out into the rain, flanked by half a dozen security guys. Lucas didn’t know many of them, and he couldn’t speak the language either. He felt abandoned. Alone.

  Karl’s body was behind the door where Lucas had left him. He lay on his back, eyes and throat wide open. Water dripped from Lucas’s thick beard as he stared down at the body. Warburg stood next to him, his shirt plastered to his skin.

  ‘Philip did this,’ he told them all. There was a murmur of disbelief. Warburg silenced them with his next words. ‘He’s probably police, or a government agent, something like that. Marion too.’

  Lucas shook his head. ‘That’s impossible.’

  Warburg looked up at him, blinking away the rain. ‘Why d’you say that?’

  ‘I’ve worked with Marion for months. She did away with the other team in England.’

  ‘What d’you mean,’ Warburg spluttered. ‘They’re at the Refuge.’

  Lucas shook his head. ‘That’s what they thought. There is no Refuge. We drowned them in a quarry. All of them.’

  Warburg’s mouth dropped open. ‘You did what?’

  ‘Marion ordered me to do it. She said we couldn’t take the risk of anyone talking. No copper would ever do that, don’t matter how deep they are.’

  The rain trickled down Warburg’s wrinkled face as he stared at Lucas. Then he went to the steel door, yanked it open, stepped out onto the street. Lucas followed, the others spilling out onto the wet pavement behind them.

  ‘Not a single car,’ Warburg told them, head swivelling left to right. ’No traffic, no people, nothing.’

  Warburg was right, Lucas realised, t
here wasn’t a single living soul to be seen. The normally-busy street was empty, the buildings around them dark and lifeless. The only sound was the rain and the quiet hum of cars on the distant overpass.

  ‘They’re watching us, right now.’

  ‘Who is?’ Lucas’s wide eyes searched the windows of the buildings across the street.

  Warburg pushed him backwards. ‘Everyone inside, quick!’

  The door slammed shut. Heavy bolts clanged home. Lucas’s heart pounded as Warburg gathered them close.

  ‘We’ve been set up. Just like the British team.’

  ‘Set up?’ Lucas echoed.

  Warburg tapped the side of his head. ‘Don’t you see it, Dummkopf? Marion had you do her dirty work for her. Now look at us, all gathered together in one place, and not a single drop of the virus to our name. Philip and Marion have used us. Now they’re going to sacrifice us.’

  The rain swept across the compound as reality sunk in.

  ‘Fuck the police,’ snarled one of the security team. ‘I’m never going back to prison. I say we go out fighting.’

  Warburg slapped the man on the shoulder. ‘That’s the spirit! Break out the guns and ammunition. Let’s get ready!’

  Lucas’s mind raced as they splashed across the compound and back inside the main building. He was confused. He was also frightened and angry. He was scared because he didn’t know what was about to happen. He was also angry at Philip and Marion, because they’d fooled him and escaped. He imagined them sitting in the back of the taxi, laughing.

  The glass doors were closed and locked, and the steel shutters rattled back down. Everyone had gathered in the lobby, their faces confused, scared.

  ‘We’ve been betrayed!’ Warburg yelled. ‘Everyone prepare to fight!’

  Breacher Up

  Mike Savage brought the spotter scope back to his eye as cold sheets of rain swept across the roof of the clothing factory.

  He was huddled beneath an extractor vent alongside Billy Finch, watching the target building across the street. To the untrained eye, it was an unremarkable structure, a grey, two-storey industrial unit surrounded by high concrete walls topped with rusted barbed wire. Mike and Billy’s observation skills saw something else; an easily defended compound, a main building constructed of steel and cinderblock and ringed by open ground which offered overlapping fields of fire from its many windows.

  ‘What d’you think?’ Mike asked Finch.

  ‘Well, dropping a JDAM through the roof isn’t an option, so I guess we’ll have to see how the locals want to play it.’

  As if on cue, a man in black assault gear scuttled across the roof and crouched down next to them. ‘Drone feed is online,’ he said. ‘Take a look,’ His name was Unger and he was the commander of the Einsatzkommando Cobra federal tactical unit that was leading the operation. Mike took the military-grade tablet and watched the thermal imaging footage. The drone was lost in the low cloud, moving in slow circles above the target building.

  ‘Is that a body?’ Finch asked, wiping the rain from the screen with a gloved hand.

  ‘Ja,’ Unger confirmed, ‘and judging by the low heat signature I’d say he’s been dead for less than thirty minutes.’

  Mike and Finch studied the feed. They saw ghostly figures appearing and disappearing behind the upper windows. Their movements were frantic; there was a lot of running, waving and pointing.

  ‘Guns,’ Finch warned.

  Mike saw them too, the clear silhouette of a weapon in almost every figure’s hands.

  ‘Weapons seen, affirmative,’ Unger repeated, taking back the tablet and passing it to a subordinate. He looked at his watch. ‘We breach in eight minutes.’

  ‘Roger that.’

  Mike and Finch followed Unger and his men downstairs. They moved quickly through the factory and out onto Salamongasse, a road that ran parallel to the Kollarzgasse where the target building was located. Unlike the empty Kollarzgasse, this road was thick with Austrian police vehicles and personnel. There was little noise and no flashing lights, just a quiet air of professional urgency. Mike and Finch peeled away and headed towards the two unmarked black Mercedes Transporter vans that had ferried them from the airport to this northern suburb of Vienna. One was a mobile comms unit manned by a couple of CIA operators from the US Embassy. He approached the other one and yanked open the side door.

  Inside, the guys were sat waiting, CIA operators and SEAL assaulters, ready to deploy. Everyone wore green NBC coveralls, ballistic vests, combat rigs, tactical goggles and helmets. No one wore insignia of any kind, not even a velcro Stars and Stripes, and all of them cradled short-barrelled HK 416 A5’s mounted with Vortex Razor holographic battle sights. All except Pat Flynn, who favoured his Benelli M4 semi-auto shotgun.

  ‘They know we’re coming,’ Mike told them.

  His XO, Don Tapper, frowned behind his goggles. ‘How so?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter at this point. Intel suggests a head count of approximately thirty men and women scattered across both floors, some of whom have military or law enforcement training.’

  ‘What kind of hardware are we facing?’ one of the SEALs asked.

  ‘Handguns and hunting rifles,’ Finch told him. ‘Nothing military-spec as far as I can tell.’

  ‘What about the virus?’ Ty Miller asked. ‘How exposed are we going to be in there?’

  ‘There’s no evidence the hostiles are taking any NBC precautions, but that doesn’t mean the threat doesn’t exist, which is why the locals have a team of chemical troops embedded with them. They’ll take the lead as and when.’

  ‘Hey, if I go nuts, someone shoot me,’ Flynn quipped.

  Everyone grinned except Mike.

  ‘Pat’s got a point. Let’s keep Baghdad in mind, okay?’ He studied the faces around him. ‘We’re here to evac Nunez, nothing more. This is their turf, and these are serious troops, so we take their lead.’

  There was a sharp knock on the van’s door. One of Unger’s men, heavily-armed and dressed head-to-toe in black tactical gear, pointed down the road.

  ‘Transport’s waiting. You follow, okay?’

  Mike led the Americans out into the rain. It was coming down harder now, and the light was fading fast. They jogged behind the Austrian commando, weaving through a cluster of police and military vehicles. Lined up along the road were four, eight-wheeled Pandur 2 armoured personnel carriers, dark green monsters glistening in the rain. The commando pointed Mike towards the nearest one, and they piled into its compact interior, slamming the doors shut. The rumbling of the turbo-charged diesel engine filled the metal compartment.

  Mike looked at each of them in turn. ‘Remember, this is their operation. We’re observers, unless we’re called upon.’

  The engine roared and the APC lurched forward.

  ‘Here we go.’

  Lucas had never been so scared in all of his forty-one years.

  He’d never fired a gun before either, and his fingers were slippery with sweat as he tried to plug rounds into the revolver’s chamber. Wrong size, he realised. The canteen table was filled with boxes of ammunition, and surrounded by men and women desperately loading their weapons. Bullets spilled across the table and scattered on the floor. Lucas realised Warburg was yelling at him.

  ‘It’s the thirty-eight calibre ammunition!’ He picked up a cardboard box and jammed it into Lucas’s chest. ‘There! Hurry!’

  ‘I hear engines!’ someone shouted. ‘They’re coming!’

  Everybody around the table stopped to listen. Then Lucas heard it, a low rumble somewhere in the distance. He prayed it was thunder but knew it wasn’t. The overhead lights went out and the room was plunged into darkness. Warburg began shouting again.

  ‘Everybody to their positions, now!’

  Lucas stared at him. He usually wore slacks and a shirt, but now Warburg was dressed like a revolutionary, his camouflage trousers tucked into high-legged boots, a bullet-proof vest strapped over a black polo neck. He wore a pistol on a
holster around his waist and Lucas watched him pull it out and cock it. The thunder outside got louder.

  ‘This is it!’ Warburg roared. ‘Kill them all! Kill the pigs!’

  Lucas bolted from the room with the others. With the power cut and the windows boarded up it was difficult to see. Torches bounced in the darkness. Lucas made for the staircase and clambered up to the second floor, praying no one would notice. His assigned defensive position was downstairs in the main corridor, behind the hastily-constructed barricade, but Lucas didn’t fancy his chances behind an overturned canteen table. He’d seen enough TV to know that when the authorities mounted raids they did it tactically, with helmets and machine guns. Lucas didn’t have the stomach to stare down the barrel of a machine-gun.

  I should’ve run, he berated himself. But he didn’t. Instead he’d sounded the alarm, and now he had a gun in his hand and his back against the wall of the upstairs landing. He crept along it and peered through a window overlooking the street. The rumbling got much louder, and with it, the beating of Lucas’s heart.

  The pistol felt greasy in his hand, and then he remembered it was still empty. He dug into his pocket and pulled out the box that Warburg had given him, spilling the rounds onto the floor. Greta was standing at the next window and cursed him viciously, and then her head exploded in a puff of red mist. She folded to the ground, her side-by-side shot gun skittering across the tiles. People began shouting and screaming as glass exploded and more people were hit, their blood leaking across the hallway. Lucas finally managed to load his revolver. He flipped the chamber closed and held it in his sweaty palm. The roar of vehicles filled the air and drowned out the screaming and shouting around him. Lucas risked a look and saw a line of tanks thundering along the road towards them.

  Holy fuck!

  The first one turned, crashed through the vehicle gate below and disappeared into the compound. The others followed, their huge tyres screeching. Lucas dropped to the floor as more bullets shattered the windows. He stared into Greta’s lifeless eyes as her blood leaked across the tiles. So much blood. Running feet pounded past him and down the stairs towards certain death. Lucas wasn’t interested in dying.