‘You were involved with the Evolution Class Warhead?’
Justus tilted his head, eyes bright. ‘Ahh, so that’s the pretty toy which you seek. Yes, Carter, I was involved with the machine—but not with its development. My skills lie in other directions.’ He coughed again, a small fit which lasted a couple of minutes. He took Mongrel’s canteen and drank deeply, then spluttered and gave Mongrel a shocked look. ‘Rum?’
‘Jamaica’s finest!’
‘You are a good lad, Mongrel!’ He took another hefty drink and felt the rum warming his belly. ‘Ahh, I thought I would never again taste such a wondrous liquor! You are to be congratulated! You make me feel human again.’
‘Warhead?’ Carter urged.
‘Yes, yes, sorry. I presume we haven’t got much time. Although I’m not sure what you think you can do with the ECW, even if you find it, even if it was completed. The finished product is still a myth, to the best of my knowledge.’
Carter felt a teetering sensation, as though he was walking along the razor-blade edge of an abyss. So many factors in this game were unconfirmed; so many things could go wrong. Spiral was playing a dangerous game in which the stakes were extinction or survival. And only Durell seemed to know the rules.
‘Do you know where this Warhead is?’
Justus shook his head sadly. ‘Like I say, Papa C, this machine was not finished as far as I know. And I never saw it—I never set eyes on even a damned prototype.’
‘We were told you know the whereabouts of the ECW programmers, the people who worked on coding the machine.’
‘Yes.’ Justus nodded slowly, rubbing wearily at his great dark eyes. ‘But that information is old; certainly out of date. And there is another problem.’
‘Another
problem?’ said Carter.
‘Yes, my friend. There were three programmers originally, based at Spiral_R in Tibet. They worked on the Quantell range of processors, and were then sidelined into ECW coding—a prototype that, as far as I am aware, was never built. I think you are chasing a dream, Carter.’
‘You say there were three programmers originally. What happened to them?’
‘Suzy Pagan is missing, has been missing for the past five years—since Durell bombed the fuck out of our world. Tademo Svdenska was taken out by Nex assassins three years ago; his corpse was delivered to Spiral in pieces. And Angel Constanza ... well, she went mad, my friends.’
‘Mad? You mean, as in loony?’ sputtered Mongrel through a mouthful of chocolate and rum.
‘Yes, Papa Mongrel. Mad.’
‘Yeah,’ said Carter, ‘but mad doesn’t necessarily mean dead.’
‘She is as good as—or so I was informed.’
‘And your source is reliable?’
‘No source is totally reliable, Carter. But I have many men and women whom I trust, who have worked for me for many years—even from before my Spiral days. And so, yes, this came from a reliable source—as much as it can be.’
‘Do you know where we can find this Angel Constanza?’
Justus rubbed at the scabbed skin of his face, and tenderly touched his recently broken nose. ‘I think so. Or at least, I know where you might create enough interest to bring her to you ...’
‘And where would that be?’
‘Spiral_R. Tibet. The home of the Evolution Class Warhead, the place where the concept was devised, created—the place where they talked about the building of the prototype.’
‘Won’t this Spiral_R be crawling with Nex?’
‘Unlikely. The place was stripped, bombed, smashed by earthquakes during Durell’s rise to power. It has become bandit country, a no-go area even for the Nex—run by an army of men and women with many machine guns. The only other technological artefacts that remain are Spiral’s old automated air defences—surrounding Spiral_R in concentric rings for a hundred kilometres—a highly intelligent masked network of SAM sites run by a single AI chip of advanced design and related to the Quantell processors. An AI chip whose intelligence has unfortunately gone AWOL, and which now shoots down anything that intrudes into its airspace. No aircraft can go there so the Nex had to go in on foot, searching for this army that lives in the mountains surrounding the remains of Spiral_R. An army that unhesitatingly kills all who go near the ruins—for the site has become their shrine. Their holy place. The Nex started to hunt these people down, but the bandits waged a guerrilla war and it became too much trouble, cost too many Nex casualties for absolutely no purpose, no gain. After all, Spiral_R had been bombed, right? So the Nex were pulled out and the savages were left to their own devices. Nobody goes there now. It is a wasteland.’
‘Savages?’ said Mongrel, unwrapping his seventh chocolate bar. ‘You make this so-called army sound primitive. Like cavemen or something, har har har.’ He shoved the chocolate into his mouth.
‘Indeed. There seems to have been some nightmare effect of biological or chemical warfare—it is said to have regressed these men and women, turned them into nothing more than aggressive animals with a single purpose, a single aim.’
‘Which is?’
‘To kill.’
‘Yeah, that’s a definition of the whole fucking human race,’ muttered Carter. Then he sighed a deep and weary sigh. ‘Right, so you believe that if we can infiltrate as far as Spiral_R then this Constanza woman will show herself to us? Take an educated interest because we’re on her front doorstep and heading towards the ECW?’
‘Yes.’
‘But what about savages?’ asked Mongrel, chomping away. ‘Why they not kill her? Make her into big Neolithic sausages? Put her in bubbling dinosaur stew?’
‘Because,’ said Justus slowly, gazing out over the sea and breathing deeply the cold salt air, ‘Angel Constanza is their leader. She controls the army of the insane. She controls Spiral_R. And she is the only woman alive who can take you to the Evolution Class Warhead—if the machine was ever built; if it even exists.’
‘If it even exists,’ repeated Carter. He turned to stare with a cold sense of foreboding into the distance where a brightening sky was rolling towards them in the wake of the storm.
The Comanche came in high over China. Huge swathes of the landscape below were obscured by cloud. The engines howled furiously as Mongrel thrashed them to within an inch of their lives.
Carter, sleeping in the back, came awake from sour dreams and found that he was shivering. He lit a cigarette and gazed down at the thick cloud cover rolling unevenly below. Above, the sun glimmered in the sky, its rays shimmering hazily through the smoked cockpit glass. As Carter lit his cigarette, there came an immediate whine of cockpit air purifiers.
‘You shouldn’t smoke,’ Mongrel admonished him.
‘Get to fuck.’
‘No, really. It may affect our oxygen.’
‘Yeah, by filling it with nicotine fumes. Just fucking great. Just what I need. Mongrel, I might die today, and if I die, at least I want to have had a last blast on my beloved weed. OK?’
‘You’re getting tetchy again.’
‘Hmph.’ Carter rested his head back, closing his eyes. He hated flying, and he was feeling deeply nauseous from the constant thrum of the Comanche’s engines and from the lower air pressure of high-altitude travel.
After rescuing Justus, they had loaded up the Comanche with supplies from the SP_Plot beside the Søndre Strømfjord in Greenland. They had dropped Justus at Ammassalik on the east coast where he planned to spend a few days recovering his health—and his sanity—before going back to war. Gone was the big black guy’s easy smile. Torture by the Nex had left him bitter, and ready to seek out a terrible and lengthy revenge.
Carter and Mongrel had then taken shifts piloting the Comanche, refuelling in Sweden and stopping off at yet another SP_Plot on the Russia/Kazakhstan border where they acquired and loaded up two KTM LC8 890cc motorbikes, custom-built Spiral desert racers tastefully sprayed up in suitable camouflage and packing 329bhp and a torque rating of 198 lb-ft inside their rumbling engine casings.
Mongrel now hammered them high above China with a single objective: the location of Angel Constanza and information on where to find the Evolution Class Warhead.
Carter enjoyed his cigarette. Within the next thirty minutes the Comanche banked in a wide sweep to drop down below cloud cover.
A dazzling vista met their eyes.
Tibet, the Roof of the World. The highest country on Earth, where the lowest depths of the valley bottoms were at higher altitudes than most of the summits of the tallest mountains across the rest of the globe, and where the Tibetan Plateau was surrounded by the highest mountain range in the world: the Himalaya. Carter looked down in awe at this spectacular vision as they descended. Always a lover of mountains, for Carter this was an orgiastic visual feast. Greater than any other vision on earth, it quite literally took his breath away, spiking his senses with a heady blend of wonder and adrenalin.
Passing low over the Karakoram Range, Mongrel peered down, frowning thoughtfully.
‘Go on,’ snapped Carter.
‘What?’ Mongrel smiled a gappy smile.
‘Say it. Whatever you’re thinking. Destroy the ambience. Napalm the mood. Nuke the fucking
moment
.’
‘Ha! Mongrel just thinking that you get good bit of skiing done down there. Look all right, it does.’
‘Skiing? Mongrel, those mountains would smash you to a pulp. They would stomp your head in. You are a fucking insect to them.’
‘What about snowboard, then?’
‘I feel the same would apply.’
‘Toboggan?’
‘Mongrel! Just get us down there in one piece, and I’ll be a happy man.’
The sky was bright and clear, signifying the start of the Tibetan winter. Carter knew that the weather was more than likely to be harsh and could give them serious problems. He knew already that it was going to be a cold journey by bike; a supreme test of stamina.
‘What about there?’
‘You got any readings on this rogue SAM system?’
‘Yar. They start to spring up on scanners like flies in jar of jam.’
‘You have such a way with simile.’
‘Similar
what
?’
‘No,
simile.
Comparisons.’
‘Companions?’
‘Mongrel, wash your fucking ears out.’
‘My beers?’ He grinned. ‘Har, only fucking with you Carter. Just liccle of Mongrel playing his liccle ol’ games.
I know what a simile is! I is not ignorant peasant! I is not damned
svolok
village idiot! Simile is just like a
smile
, only with an extra i.’
Carter sighed. It was going to be a long, tough mission.
The Comanche touched down on its creaking suspension. The rotors hissed and thrummed, scattering small stones and dust, as the cockpit canopy was folded back and locked in place.
Carter jumped down, boots thudding on the rocky ground, H&K MP5K ready in his wary hands. Around him reared a range of jagged mountains. Mongrel jumped down beside him, stretching his huge frame with a crackle of popping sinews. ‘Is cold,’ he observed.
‘Yeah.’ Carter nodded, moving a few feet away from the Comanche and gazing over the nearby cliff edge. A rocky slope tumbled away for hundreds of metres and was scattered with rough boulders, some larger than a house. ‘It’s like the surface of the moon, mate.’
‘I get a brew on.’
‘Good idea. I’ll sort out the bikes.’ As Carter unhooked the motorbikes and wheeled them free of the Comanche, checking their chassis mods and tyres, then their fuel tanks and starters and on-board guns, his mind turned over the new mission ahead of them.
Angel Constanza. Commander of an insane army. Willing to kill on sight anybody she met... Carter shook his head. It had to be an exaggeration. He knew that people were only too happy to exaggerate and amplify: it was the curse of the human imagination.
He fired up one of the KTM LC8s with its stealth mods in place, and the engine burbled. He felt the violent thrash of vibes through his hands as he revved the bike, and smiled despite the harshness of their surroundings and the apparently suicidal nature of their mission. There was nothing like a powerful bike to get Carter hard.
Mongrel had ignited a tiny J-block and was heating a pan of water. While it was coming to the boil, he grabbed their kit from the Comanche and piled it next to their makeshift campsite. Both men pulled on extra clothing—several thin layers, plus gloves. Carter changed his footwear for thermal-lined bike boots, and then donned a pair of silver Oakley Juliets with polarised fire-iridium Plutonite lenses to filter out the glare of the bright Tibetan sky. The lenses were specially designed for snipers, and gave clear-cut precision to a wearer’s surroundings. Mongrel pulled free his own shades, square dark lenses set in thick sweeping black frames. Carter stared at them as Mongrel proudly placed them against the bridge of his nose.
‘What the fuck are they?’
‘Hey, this coolest of cool. Or so market trader told me.’
‘Mongrel, you look like one of those extremely old 1960s gangsters. Without any style.’
‘These cool shades, these is. They chic. They was $1.99, reduced from $350! Bargain.’
‘Yeah, a bargain.’ Carter grinned, pouring them two large mugs of tea and stirring in plenty of sugar.