Paradise Burns (26 page)

SIXTY

‘Fuck me!’ I
said, struggling to get my head around
that
much explosive.

There must’ve been close to a hundred
bricks of C4, all with detonators stuck into them, attached to the ceiling. If
this furnace hub was directly under the main courtyard, then the explosion this
would cause could simply make the entire compound implode and sink into itself.

Then something worrying came to mind. I
looked over my shoulder at the other doors, then back at Ketranovich. He
smiled, seemingly knowing what I was thinking.

‘Yes, Adrian Hell,’ he said. ‘All the
furnace rooms are equipped exactly the same.’

‘Holy shit!’ I gasped. I knew what they
were going to do. They were going to lure all the GlobaTech soldiers into the
compound and then blow this entire area. The explosion would be catastrophic.
This entire area for miles would become a crater. Taking out a very large chunk
of both GlobaTech’s and the U.S. military’s forces in the process.

‘You’re insane,’ I said.

‘Sanity is simply a matter of opinion,’
he said.

I turned and walked out of the furnace
room and back into the cooler central hub. I looked at Clara.

‘So where do you fit in then?’ I asked. ‘You
were being shot at just as much as me.’

‘No-one in our organization knew about
my role in this except the Colonel,’ she said. ‘I told you that he only tells
people what they need to know. Trust has been an issue in the past for us,
which is why we like to keep our numbers small.’

‘I thought there were thousands of you?’

‘And who told you that?’ she asked,
smiling.

‘Ted Jackson, and then you,’ I said, trailing
off as I instantly realized I’d been lied to from the start about something
else, too.

‘We told GlobaTech what they needed to
hear in order to secure the deal for the uranium. A little bit of clever
marketing goes a long way.’

‘Unbelievable. So Jackson had no idea
you were playing him?’

‘Of course not. He was an idiot who was
blinded by his own greed. He’d have believed anything if he thought he could
get rich from it.’

‘I still don’t get why you were being
shot at by Natalia.’

‘I saw you tailing us days ago. I recognized
you and knowing about the Pellaggio deal that Jackson had recently cancelled, I
put two and two together and figured you were in town to take out Jackson. When
you knocked on our hotel room door, I just let you and Jackson form your own
conclusions and leapt on the opportunity to play the victim. I spoke to the
Colonel, who agreed we’d play it out in secret, to keep up appearances with
you. It was difficult fighting against Natalia, but necessary.’

‘You guys are ruthless bastards, I’ll
give you that.’

‘Once GlobaTech turned their backs on us
and you gave up the deeds to the uranium mine, we had to change our plans and
simply go after the people who had screwed with us. It was easy cleaning up
after our original plan was abandoned. I was able to take out the soldiers we
no longer needed when Natalia found us in the bar. I got you to take out Marcus
Jones, and I was just about able to get rid of Webster before you found him.’

‘Wait,
you
killed Webster?’

‘Yes. The men at the safe house had been
torturing him for fun once they’d learned he was no longer necessary. I went
there to clean up, which you helped me with. I was just about able to shoot him
before you walked in, assuming I was the victim as always.’

I began pacing up and down, trying to
process the fact that everything I’d gone through in the past few days had been
a lie. I stopped and turned to face Clara and Ketranovich, who had moved to
stand next to her.

‘So you’ve been using me to clear up
your mess and position everything to execute your revenge on GlobaTech?’

‘And you played your part beautifully,’
said Ketranovich. ‘Once everything was in order, we tried to kill you, but you
somehow managed to survive the blast.’

‘The car bomb,’ I said. ‘That was you?’

I remembered when I was face to face
with Pellaggio. Right before I killed him, he began to say something. It didn’t
register until now, but he must have been trying to say he didn’t know anything
about the car bomb.

‘Yes, but you assumed it was the mafia
man, Pellaggio, so we let you run with that idea and it led to you wiping out
his entire empire!’

He paused to laugh.

‘Very impressive, by the way. I’ve said
since the first time we met, we could use a man like you in our cause.’

I stared at him. I could feel the anger
and hatred boiling to the surface.

‘That was nothing compared to what I’m
gonna do to you,’ I said, before turning to Clara. ‘Both of you.’

‘I’m afraid you won’t have chance to
try, Adrian Hell. The next phase of our plan is beginning now, and soon you
will be nothing but a stain on the graveyard that will replace Nevada.’

I had one last card to play to buy me
some time. And it was a long shot.

‘And what did Natalia think of this
master plan?’ I asked Clara. ‘I’m assuming she was kept in the dark as much as
the rest of us?’

‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘I’m the only
one who knew what the big picture was. Our Colonel keeps his plans to himself,
remember?’

‘Are you sure she’s okay with not being
the number one girl around here?’

Ketranovich moved over to Clara. He
stood in front of her and brushed a piece of hair from her face before kissing
her on both cheeks. He turned to me.

‘Natalia is one of my finest soldiers,’
he said. ‘But who else could I trust with such a delicate plan, if not my own
daughter?’

Back

Thunderstruck

SIXTY-ONE

I wasn’t even remotely
surprised.

I obviously had no idea Clara was
Ketranovich’s daughter, but at this point, nothing else could shock me.

‘Your daughter,’ I said. ‘Of course she
is.’

Ketranovich smiled and then turned back
to Clara.

‘We must begin the next phase of the
plan,’ he said to her. ‘See that our friend here is comfortable then join me in
the control room.’

‘Yes, sir,’ she replied.

He gave me one last look before walking
off, back down the long corridor.

‘
Yes, sir
,’ I said to her in a
funny voice, mockingly. ‘You make me sick.’

‘And very soon I’ll make you dead,’ she
replied, looking past me toward the long corridor.

I turned to follow her gaze and saw
Natalia Salikov walking toward us. She had a pistol in one hand and a knife in
the other. And she looked massively pissed off.

This wasn’t going to end well.

Clara signalled to the furnace room with
her gun as Natalia approached.

‘Get in,’ she said.

I walked in and turned to the right, the
heat hitting me instantly. She followed me inside.

I suspected this was the moment where
she aimed the gun at the back of my head and pulled the trigger. Game over. Well,
I’m not going out like that. I never leave a job unfinished.

I turned to face her. The gloom of the
furnace room closed in around us. The orange glow from the fire behind her gave
her a demonic aura that made her look all the more monstrous.

Natalia Salikov walked in and stood next
to her. She turned to Clara and said something in Russian. Clara responded,
then turned to me.

‘Have fun, you two,’ she said with a
mischievous smile.

‘I’m sure we will,’ I replied. ‘She’s
got to be more entertaining than you were.’

Clara rolled her eyes at my apparently
wasted attempt at a hateful remark and walked out of the room, closing the door
behind her.

I watched her go, then turned to
Natalia.

‘So,’ I said. ‘How are you?’

Like lightning, the gun was raised and
aiming directly between my eyes.

Shit.

Small talk clearly wasn’t going to help.
Time for plan B.

‘Okay. Do you speak any English?’ I
asked.

No response.

‘You strike me as someone who has some
unaddressed anger issues. Would that be a fair assessment?’

Lowering the gun slightly, she swung a
left hook from her hip and connected with the right hand side of my face.

Goddammit, that hurt. But at least I
know she can understand me.

‘I’m gonna take that as a yes,’ I
continued. ‘Ketranovich was very complimentary of your abilities as a soldier.
A person could be forgiven for thinking you were his favorite, the way he was
talking.’

She was thinking about what I was
saying, which made her hesitate slightly before she threw the next left hook
and hit me again.

I didn’t really think this through
before I started. Oh well, too late now.

‘I only mention it, because as a fellow
soldier, I thought it strange he would choose Clara for the mission involving
me instead of you.’

She went to hit me a third time, but I
backed away slightly, causing her to hold back and look at me quizzically.

‘I’m just saying. I mean, I was very
close to her all this time. She didn’t strike me as very capable in the field.
She was almost weak, when it came down to it. Whereas you, Natalia, are a
stone-cold professional. No hesitation, no doubt – you just carry out your
orders with efficiency. If I was Ketranovich, there’s no way I’d have cut you out
of my plans like they did.’

I thought she was going to swing for me
again, but instead she stepped in closer, lowering her gun slightly. She was no
more than a foot away from me. In the poor light of the furnace room, this was
the first time I’d been able to properly see her eyes. They burned brighter
than any furnace could ever hope to. The anger that lay just beneath the
surface was palpable. I keep my demons locked behind a big door. I think little
Natalia here keeps hers stored in a wet paper bag.

In a broken, heavily Russian accent, she
finally spoke to me.

‘I am twice the woman
she
is,’
she spat. ‘I would never have let you get away with what you have.’

For a moment, I saw a flash of that
anger surface and it genuinely worried me. Given my hands were still tied
behind my back, I believed right then that she was capable of killing me.

Which was all the incentive I needed.

I stood up straight and quickly launched
a head-butt that smashed into her face. The best thing about a head-butt is
that no-one ever expects them. More often than not, you hurt yourself more than
the person you’re actually hitting, so it’s just assumed that nobody would ever
bother to try one. But if you do it right, they can be lethal.

I’d brought my head back slightly, then
lurched my shoulders and neck forward, relaxing so my skull became a dead
weight. Natalia was smaller than me, so I had to aim it just right. My forehead
came arching down and connected with her right between the eyes on the bridge
of the nose.

I heard the bone shatter, and instantly
felt the warm blood spray onto my face. I could sense her body stiffen up as
consciousness left her, and she fell straight backward onto the floor. As she
landed, I heard her head crack against the floor. She was out for the count.

Straight away, I went over to her and
knelt down, turning my body slightly so I could reach her knife with my hands
behind me. I maneuvered it in my grip until it was at the right angle, then cut
the ties off me.

I brought my hands up and rubbed each
wrist in turn, trying to get the blood flowing again. Then I went over to her,
picked up the gun and pocketed the knife. I looked down at Natalia Salikov,
unconscious on the floor of the furnace room. It would be so simple to just put
a bullet in her head and move on. But after what these bastards have put me
through, she can suffer.

I took aim and shot her in her right
kneecap. Her leg almost blew apart and her body jolted violently as she flashed
in and out of consciousness. Blood pooled around her as she lay there,
motionless once again.

‘See you in hell, bitch,’ I said.

I left the room, locking the door behind
me. When this place goes up in flames, it’s taking her with it.