Warhead
ANDY REMIC
SPIRAL Book 3
COPYRIGHT
Published by Hachette Digital
ISBN: 978-0-748-13370-3
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2005 Andy Remic
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Hachette Digital
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
will
last for ever!
Nothing is created in a vacuum, and as always I would like to thank my loving wife Sonia, my little boy BIG JOE, my family and friends, and everybody who has made this work possible. I salute you all!
PROLOGUE
THE SCOURGE OF WAR
It began with a contract.
A building contract worth 939
billion
US dollars.
The sleek black Manta screamed through the heavens at over a thousand klicks an hour, armoured engine ports hissing and thumping, exhausts vibrating with metal torture. Carter gave a nasty sideways glance towards Mongrel as the sun broke in a sudden explosion over the distant horizon, its rays sparkling through the tinted cockpit and radiating fingers of violet iridescence over the serrated steel-blade skyline that defined New York City.
‘ETA one minute,’ growled Mongrel as tracer started to streak and flash from the urban landscape below; heavy-calibre rounds smashed up from anti-aircraft guns and localised groups of small-arms fire. Thunder seemed to rumble in the distance. Explosive purple flashes flickered, lighting the underside of the fist-bunched clouds in a surreal display. ‘I’ve got SAMs coming in; get your shit together, Carter.’
‘Let’s do it.’ Carter hit the cockpit release, which folded neatly back on tiny hydraulic sighs. Wind thumped in, making the small fighter rock violently; Carter stood, gloved hands grasping alloy rings riveted into the fighter’s flanks as Mongrel banked the aircraft and Carter felt suddenly—weightless. His eyes widened and his breath was ripped away in a ragged gasp as Manhattan rushed beneath him. The Sentinel Corporation tower block raced towards him. Tracer streaked all around, coloured bursts tossed carelessly into the dawn sky on high-explosive projectiles.
‘Da vai!’
screamed Mongrel, but Carter was already leaping. The fighter roared over him and was instantly gone—and the wind cracked him in the face like a brick. He dived, and the Sentinel tower block sped towards him.
Carter armed the Spiral Parasite, felt it buzz beneath his gloved fingers as the world spun crazily around him ... and fired: it rocketed into the lip of the concrete roof, tiny alloy teeth chewing to burrow deep. Carter was jerked violently and abruptly, swinging in a huge arc on an umbilical cord of two-millimetre TitaniumIII cable. His speed carried him forward and around with the stepped world of Manhattan flashing below him as a tiny buzz screeched like an insect in his earpiece. His dive decelerated as the Parasite hummed in his fist, and his downward trajectory slowed as his boots thumped against the vertical dark glass wall of the Sentinel Corporation’s New York HQ.
Carter grunted, all wind knocked from him. He glanced quickly around. The tower block fell away beneath him for a hundred storeys. Far below, NYC was a toy town, with hundreds of tower blocks staggering away in huge stepping stones. Carter’s M24 carbine was slung tight against his back, his battered Browning 9mm HiPower holstered on his hip, and he grinned.
‘Knock, knock.’
Kicking himself backwards, he swung for a moment, aimed and threw a tiny HPG, which connected with the black glass fifteen metres to his left, with the dial set to CFE—concentrated funnel explosion—it was designed to create a rapid entry point for Carter. He averted his gaze, and there came a sharp
crack.
Carter walked himself across the vertical wall, buffeted by the wind, nostrils wrinkling involuntarily at the cold chemical stink from the pressure grenade’s explosive—and blinked in astonishment.
The explosive had failed to penetrate the Sentinel tower block—and failed even to shatter the glass. Which was unusual: an HPG could eat a ten-metre hole in twelve-inch armour plate.
‘Son of a
bitch.’
Bullets ricocheted with howls and sparks to Carter’s right and he flinched, feeling suddenly extremely vulnerable.
Carter looked around frantically, hanging on his tiny spider’s thread. Gritting his teeth, he began to climb as Mongrel banked the Manta far above, and the tiny matt black fighter went into a steep dive, its heavy machine guns thundering.
Carter kept climbing.
Reflected in the dark glass of the tower block, the world seemed on fire behind him. More Spiral fighters tore through the glittering heavens, tanks rumbled through the streets far below, crushing cars under heavy steel tracks, and Spiral soldiers fought Nex killers across the insanely ordered grid of streets and buildings that was modem New York City.
Carter focused on staying alive. The Parasite buzzed beneath his gloves and he carried on walking his way up the skyscraper, boot soles squealing in protest. Within a few minutes he reached the roof, leapt onto the galvanised flat roof rim and turned, inhaling deeply and looking down into the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
Bullets spun up towards him, tracer rounds trailing streamers of fire past his gaze. Carter dropped to a crouch and turned. The roof spread out before him on a gentle incline that rose to a tapered point—on which flashed the steady pulse of a bright white light as a warning to air traffic. The roof panels were formed from corrugated alloy, undulating away and criss-crossed by galvanised grey walkways with handrails for the use of servicing personnel. Huge extraction fans stood in grille-masked steel enclosures, and smoke poured from a narrow silver chimney beside a scattering of high-tech satellite dishes.
Carter’s boots pounded heavily as he made a charge for the black-alloy lattice-work doorway—
Which burst open, three masked Nex spilling out onto the concourse. The butt of Carter’s Browning thumped against the palm of his hand as his bullets tore the face from the lead Nex and crushed the chest of the second, leaving it on its knees.
The third Nex had disappeared.
Carter changed mags, his back against the ridged alloy columns of a satellite dish’s support struts. His head snapped right, then left, eyes narrowing, tongue moistening dry lips. His breathing calmed and his boot found purchase against the Sentinel skyscraper’s rooftop as the Nex with the caved-in chest coughed and vomited a stream of blood and mucus into a large puddle to one side.
‘You want me to do it?’
came the cool voice of Kade.
‘I don’t need your help,
brother.
’
‘Yes, but I need
you ...
Come on, don’t be such a spoilsport, let me kill them—I will take them all! It’s months since I imbibed the copper stench of blood. An age since I rolled from dreams of pumping bullets into unprotected faces, watching soft, rotting fish-flesh part and the handsome, neatly carved flush of crimson spurting from a perfectly pulped brain ...
’
Carter rolled, his Browning describing an arc that ended with a—
Bullet. The Nex tried to flip, but was a nanosecond too slow; the bullet entered high in its throat, slightly to one side but still destroying the larynx. The Nex sat down slowly, hands pressed against the heavy flow of spurting blood, eyes swivelling up to stare at Carter. He strode forward, cautious gaze scanning left and right. Above, Mongrel’s Manta screamed and accelerated with a burst of stinking aviation exhaust. Carter looked down at the Nex, gazing into the soft glow of the copper eyes—fixed on him in anger, and hatred, and loathing. His steps left imprints in the Nex’s blood. He rubbed at his mouth with the back of his gloved hand and clamped a boot on the Nex’s MP38 sub-machine gun.
He aimed the Browning.
Carter thought briefly of Natasha. Natasha, the mother of his baby boy; Natasha, lying cold and dead in a grave over two thousand miles away, flowers withering against the simple black marble cross bearing no inscription. Carter’s teeth bared in a grimace that displayed his burning need for revenge.
The bullet smashed through the Nex’s nose, spattering its brains across the damp roof from the back of its shattered skull; the body flopped limp.
Carter should have felt better. Should have felt
avenged.
But he didn’t.
‘
We need to get this thing done,’
said Kade.
Carter looked deep within himself; looked into the glossy black emotionless eyes of Kade set in a face that was his own, only seen through a much darker mirror. ‘Yes.’
With a blink Carter spiralled back into reality.
Took a deep breath.
And headed for the stairs ... and Durell beyond.
The Spiral mainframe had decoded the signals thirty-five minutes earlier. All units had been scrambled—not
available
units, but
all
units. The call had gone out—Code Silver. They had received the coordinates of Durell’s exact location in New York.
Carter crouched in the darkness on the stairs, the only light a stroboscope of spinning red, flickering on-off, on-off, on-off. He moved forward, boots smooth against the alloy and eyes scanning for sensors. His ECube rattled in his pocket, digitally disabling a hundred different detection sequences. And yet—Carter knew. Knew that
they
knew he was there.
Carter grinned a malicious grin and hefted his trusty, battered Browning 9mm, his loyal and steadfast friend—the one thing in his life which had never—
ever
—let him down.
Carter moved down the stairs—expecting a fight, and wondering where the hell the rest of the Spiral squads had got to; Carter was merely one among many. And yet now he felt suddenly alone ...
He reached a door. Behind it he could hear voices.
Bracing himself, he lifted his leg and delivered a kick which thumped open the steel portal, revealing ...
16 kilometres south, Mount Erebus Base Camp
Sunlight gleamed against slick ice. Corrugated waves rolled off across an endless plain leading to distant mountains.
Metal gleamed under the witch-light of a cold and frosty Antarctic day. A snub nose emerged, followed by a smooth tapered cone edged with four delicate fins. Ice fell away, tumbling to the frozen plain as the missile rose on powerful hydraulics. Motors whirred and engines ignited, fire flowering out against the ice and briefly scorching it black before it melted. There came a roar and the missile suddenly leapt into the sky like a fish escaping the jaws of sudden death snapping at it beneath the surface of a still lake. It powered away on twin jets of glowing purple into the cold vast bleak sky.