QUAKE
QUAKE
The Tennagore Valley- Chile, South America
Carter's head snapped violently left, eyes narrowing as Kade's honey treacle voice whispered a warning of napalm mockery across the rugged torched landscape of his brain. There came a zip and something brushed Carter’s ear as he flipped himself to the right with an inculcated instinct, hitting the ground hard and smashing into a low concrete wall with a grunt. His hand came up, feeling warm slick blood caress the lobe of his ear and his teeth clenched tight in the sick parody of a grin - that had little to do with humour.
‘It’s a fucking sniper …’ soothed the voice of Kade, cascading hollow like the rattle of acid-etched bones across Carter’s psychological coffin. Carter frowned, closing his eyes for a moment, pain stabbing needle-like through his brain.
‘Leave … me … alone!’ he snarled.
A battle scarred battered Browning HiPower 9mm appeared in Carter’s fist and with pounding heart, he checked the magazine. A sniper: that meant he had been spotted ... At last a guard with more than a single brain cell! But no alarms had been audibly sounded ... which meant he had almost been taken by surprise.
Almost: a fine razor tightrope between breathing the cold mountain air and lying sprawled in a blood-pooled hollow with no face and an empty, bone-ringed skull.
Carter slammed the mag back into the stocky weapon and crawled to his knees, wind buffeting from the moonlit cratered mountainside above. Shadows swirled in snapping black veils, plummeting and falling down from the high mountain passes and dancing delicately across the massive concrete expanse of the dam.
Carter moved stealthily along the narrow concrete walkway and halted, shielded by a low, rough-rendered wall and glancing with lust and need down towards the shadowed KTM LC7 757cc motorbike, a special custom built Spiral Stealth Edition packing 289bhp and a torque rating of 174 lb-ft. It squatted, camouflaged in the darkness and shadows, concealed behind huge steel drums and taunting Carter with not just its proximity but the knowledge that to reach the bike he would have to pass once more before the focal point of the infinitely patient sniper's cross-hair.
He could see his escape route.
Compromised.
Vulnerable, alluring, and yet –
So dangerously far away.
‘It's not going to be easy,’ came the unbidden mocking dark twin’s voice from the grave that was Kade’s granite bed. Kade growled at the back of Carter’s mind and fuel-injected the Spiral operative with a syrupy heroin vitriol.
'You don't fucking say,' muttered Carter. His eyes scanned the layout before him, heart-rate increasing a little at the prospect of the coming fight.
The dam sat high in the mountains, spanning the narrow rock-carved Tennagore Valley; its highly advanced and masterfully engineered structure had been built at a very great expense by the Seckito Syndicate in collaboration with a corrupt section of the SNI – the Chilean secret police, in order to irrigate plantations of coca plants which were harvested for the basis of cocaine refinement. This refined product was in turn smuggled to the few global sites still imposing a prohibition on hardcore drugs, thus commanding premiums which were used to finance illegal heavy-duty military arms purchases by the Seckito Syndicate - who then handed the weapons out like candy to the eager grasping paws of terrorist organisations JWKA and Spirits of Blood, located on opposite geographical sides of the globe but ultimately craving the same aim, soft civilian targets and high-profile media coverage.
Spiral had decided it was time to smash the Seckito Syndicate with a blunt broad hammer. Seven operations were in progress ... Carter's mission was to blow the damn, destroying the crop and pushing the Seckito Syndicate into an already treacherous internal war and downward spiral against its tentatively untrustworthy arms suppliers. This would coincide with the assassination of several key figures, the destruction of three terrorist and corrupt SNI-protected drug factories and strikes by ZZ-guided long range cruise missiles from HMS Thunder moored over a hundred miles away in the Pacific Ocean.
Accuracy was essential.
The shit had to hit the fan – with perfect fecula timing.
Carter pulled free his ECube; the tiny black alloy device vibrated softly in his hand and he thumbed a delicate sequence across its surface panel. Digits flickered at him, ghostly blue in the darkness. 3 minutes, 14 seconds until detonation ... And Carter had initiated the Anti-Intrusion Filter on the bomb. Which basically meant that the explosion and subsequent destruction was unstoppable ... the dam doomed within the next few minutes ... the drug crop lost ... the Seckito Syndicate smashed -
‘But I'd rather get out alive,’ he muttered.
Think!
Sniper: location?
Carter whirled, eyes scanning, calculating the angles and velocities involved; if he could climb down to the bike and fire the engine on remote using the ECube, then …
'Hey, Mestizos, what is dees stinking bike doing here? Ees not look like one oh ours …’
'I has no idea, hombre.'
The two guards were standing loose, one scratching his lank-tailed head, the other's face illuminated in a circle of orange from a home-rolled cigarette pluming lazy grey spirals of cancer-smoke into the contrast of cold fresh mountain air.
The alarms sounded, shrill bitch screams, and both men sprung into immediate action cocking Kalashnikov AK49s and glancing around with urgency and vigilance … ready for action and blood.
'There must be gringo here ...'
Carter heard more guards leap from their restful watches, fired into alertness by this sudden screech of intruder alarms.
'Shit.'
‘Do something,’ growled Kade.
Below Carter lay a widespread collection of painted concrete buildings; and away from their scatter stretched the dam itself, its summit a metre wide length of smooth glassy concrete veering away in a slight curve for over half a kilometre. To the left, the choppy waters of the reservoir lapped beneath the shadowy peaks of the rearing snow-capped mountains, and to the right the dam fell away almost vertically, several wide channels gushing with white foam and dropping into the colossal open valley below.
Carter's eyes narrowed on the exit at the far expanse of the dam’s ridge. His stealth bike had cruised in unseen. And now there was only one – nastily compromised - way out ...
He took a deep breath and leapt from the parapet, landing before the two startled guards whose eyes went wide, cigarettes tumbling from lips on fear spittle . Their AK49s twitched but Carter's Browning boomed in his fist once, twice, and both guards were kicked from their feet, brain slop and shards of bone rattling against the steel drums. The bodies folded to the ground but Carter was already moving; a bullet zipped past his face, then another past his knee. He leapt, rolling and skidding to the opposite side of the steel drums and their inherent thin-walled protection -
'There! Ees fucking gringo!'
Machine guns opened fire and bullets howled around Carter. His Browning came up over the drums, thumping against his hand as he emptied a full magazine across the stretch of concrete and kicking another two guards from their feet in mushrooms of blood mist. One fell into the reservoir with a splash, and was immediately lost in lapping moonlit oil.
Carter slammed his back against the drums and changed mags.
‘I told you so,’ said Kade smugly.
‘What?’
‘I told you this was a bad idea. I personally would have used a series of automated rocket launchers, but no, you had to do your fucking James Bond bit and sneak in here like a throbbing gold speckled peacock on heat ...’
‘Kade,’ growled Carter in the depths of his sub-conscious, ‘we haven't fucking got automated rocket launchers ... and this was supposed to be a low-key covert mission ...’
‘Well, you've fucked that up then, haven't you? Every man and his bitch is out to shoot you now …’
Carter turned, sharp eyes spotting the sniper's position high up in a tiny shaded bunker on the mountainside. Bastard, he mouthed. He hated snipers. Really fucking hated snipers.
Carter suddenly stood, sighted along the Browning HiPower held supernaturally steady in both hands, and fired a full thirteen rounds at the tiny firing slot visible in the face of the nestling bunker. He saw spurts of stone-dust leap from the edges, and waited ... No return fire came. Again, he changed magazines, then leapt across the KTM LC7, firing the beast bike into life and scanning ahead. His ears picked out the noises of slapping boots and approaching guards ... He checked the ECube. Two minutes.
‘It's going to be tight,’ mused Kade darkly.
Tight? I’d love to get my hands tight around your throat ...
Carter holstered the Browning, stamped the bike into first gear and flicked free the stealth exhaust mods; the bike could run silently, but silence bleached power. Now Carter needed the power more than the need to remain undiscovered ...
He screwed the throttle and the front wheel leapt into the air, the KTM screamed with LVA exhausts spewing from high-level pipes as the back wheel spun leaving melted tread across the concrete and the bike shot like a needle bullet into the night from its suddenly hazardous hiding place.
Carter gritted his teeth, holding on tight and clamping himself to the broad tank as the front wheel touched down and the cold mountain air tried to smash him from the saddle. The KTM LC7 hammered through the night, a tiny black bullet spinning across the dam's metre wide walkway; Carter could smell the fresh water to his left, could sense more than see the fearsome drop to his right with the valley spreading out like a colossal dark sea twinkling with flickering candle lights and beckoning for him to dive in and swim and ultimately drown -
Carter focused. On the narrow ridge of the dam.
On his road to freedom.
Water was gushing, roaring all around him. He accelerated, needle bouncing against the red-line, the bike howling as it hit 220 m.p.h. The world flashed around Carter in a series of stuttering, splashing bright images.
‘Guards,’ hissed Kade in warning.
Carter palmed the Browning and blew the three guards from their feet before they even lifted weapons; two hit the ground, and one fell and toppled down the front of the damn, bouncing and flailing like a tumbling rag-doll, flopping and rolling and sliding until he was lost and dead and smashed into a battered purple pulp-drenched carcass in the darkness far below.
Carter dipped the clutch and the KTM’s front wheel kicked into the air, the rear wheel ploughing through one of the corpses, losing traction for a moment in a supple compress of flesh and kicking the bike violently sideways - Carter felt, for a terrifying moment, his loss of control and the massive drop to the right tore his eyes from their target and fear rammed its fist down his throat. Then the KTM's wheel touched down and the bike stabilised; Carter wound on the speed once more.
‘We've done it!’ crowed Kade. ‘We're there ...’
Carter frowned. His eyes narrowed and he touched the brake, shaving speed out of instinct more than anything he could actually see or hear; his mouth opened, tongue darting against dry wind-chapped lips, and he realised that -
Hell, he thought.
It's a fucking tank.
The war machine squatted at the end of Carter's personal runway. Even as realisation bit, guards swarmed from behind the tank's protective armoured flanks and opened up with heavy machine guns. 7.62mm rounds screamed like tiny tortured insects buzzing around Carter’s face as he squeezed the brakes and left metres of rubber against the dull white concrete. He kicked the bike around, wheel-spinning in a cloud of stinking burning rubber, then wheelied back the way he had come ducking low over the tank as bullets howled. Several slapped and zipped against exhaust pipes, pinging. It was a miracle no metal raped his flesh.
‘You've got one minute, Carter.’ Kade's voice was no longer filled with humour, or arrogance, or mocking. There was tension there. An edge of fear that chilled Carter to his very core - his dark twin, dark parasitical mental lover – whether real, imaginary, or a drug-induced ghost from his past; Kade knew that if Carter died, then his own existence would be violently and terminally extinguished.
‘I - fucking - know ...’ hissed Carter through gritted teeth.
Up ahead, more guards had gathered. Carter could read the music of their glittering muzzle-flash.
Suddenly, he grabbed the brakes and twisted the KTM left; it shuddered to a halt, front wheel hanging over the terrible – and near-vertical - descent. Carter glanced down and Natasha's words came back to him filling his mind with love and just a delicate taint of mortal fear -
You'll come back to me, won't you?
It's not that dangerous, he had lied.
I don't want to be left a widow.
But we're not fucking married! he protested.
All right then … I don't want you to leave your new child without a father ...
But we haven't got a ...
Actually, smiled Natasha weakly, I've got something to tell you …
Oh.
Their love making had been gentle, teasing and soft; a merging of flesh and sex and in the warm afterglow, bathed in the iridescent flickering light of the candles Nats had tickled her tongue down his neck and whispered in his ear, 'You make sure you come back to me, you reckless fucker … You make sure you come back to us ...'
Now, Carter gazed at the vertical drop; 7.62mm rounds screamed around him and the world had descended into a blood red drug-haunted insanity, a snapshot of a kaleidoscopic stuttering illusion and intrusion. His lips compressed in a grim line. Kade was screaming at him to turn back and he was counting, internally, the seconds left until the heavy HighJ detonation and subsequent shock waves cracked the dam allowing the hugely titanic pressure of the reservoir to force its way violently and unstoppably to derailed freedom -
He revved the KTM.
Revved it real hard, popped the clutch and allowed the bike to dip and fall over the edge -
Darkness and the world and twinkling lights rushed towards him, gulleys of foaming white smashing to either side in an insanity of bubbling roaring noise. The bullets were gone, fallen far behind … the bike was an insane bucking metallic bitch straining and heaving beneath him, trying its utmost to launch him from the saddle -
The tachometer’s needle danced, bouncing against the redline, and Carter's teeth were gritted as he grabbed the front brake and left a trail of juddering front-wheel rubber hissing down the concrete face of the dam … but to no avail. Suddenly there came a distant feeling of rumbling and a string of heavy trembling detonations began firing deep within the bowels of the dam … Carter felt them smashing through the wheels and suspension of the bike and he focused his eyes on the distant curve at the dam's base and the heavy smash of dense trees beyond - as the bike peaked at just over 250 m.p.h.
Kade screamed in Carter’s head, words of anger and words of insanity: pure hot curses of heroin-fuelled hatred -
- with a terrifying monstrous lurch the concrete dam moved
- it heaved –
and with a violent animal moan, exploded.
