Armageddon Heights (a thriller) (19 page)

The others watched him, their faces unaccountably blank.

She awoke with a start. Something nudging her into wakefulness.

Lieutenant Linda Keegan – on the outside at least – skipped from the bed and picked up her assault rifle. She was still fully clothed, and needed to be, given the drop in temperature. The small heating unit in the bolthole offered some comfort but even that struggled to keep the place warm. She shivered as she went to the metal door and listened intently. Not a sound. Not that she expected bonesnappers to be around once daylight came, and she knew from the mechanical watch she wore that it was already dawn, the nights in the Heights fortunately very short, the temperature beginning to rise with the sun. Dawn was the coldest time, touching minus 21 degrees centigrade in places, but the heat would start to build up rapidly as the sun climbed swiftly into the sky and she had to be on her way before the full heat of the day made itself felt.

She double-checked everything, weapons and ammunition at the ready, and ensured her backpack was packed with as many provisions as she could carry before sitting on the edge of the bed to eat a can of cold beans for breakfast.

Once her hunger had been satisfied she gathered up the pack, her assault rifle and the AT4 anti-tank weapon, loaded during the night with a rocket. Cautiously, she unlocked the door to the bolthole and pushed it open. The sky was sore-red, the eye of the sun a fiery scarlet ball just peeking above the mountains as dawn broke, the landscape all around painted a lurid pink colour. She looked across to the motorcycle. It still stood where she’d left it; thankfully it appeared undamaged by the bonesnappers. The ground outside the bolthole’s door had been churned up by the frenzied feet of the bonesnappers, but she was glad that’s all that remained of the repulsive creatures of the night.

With agile bounds she ran across the flat floor of the gully to the incline of its bank and mounted it, throwing herself down flat as she reached the top. Through her binoculars she scanned the terrain. There was no sign of the two armoured trucks, and she dared to believe she’d lost them. Giving herself another five minutes to make sure her pursuers had indeed disappeared for now, she went back to the bolthole and strapped the AT4 to the motorcycle’s side. Sliding her arms into her heavy backpack, she adjusted her helmet, pulled down the goggles and gunned the bike’s engine. It spluttered noisily – too noisily for her liking, but it was the best way of getting around this terrain, and quite frankly, all that was on offer. Weapons and vehicles were in short supply here in the Heights, so beggars could not be choosers, she thought, and rode the bike up the side of the gully, pausing only to get her bearings before starting out across the fiery landscape, the bleeding disc of the sun at her back casting a long shadow in front of her.

She had to get to Wade fast, hoping she’d get to him before he entered Cain’s Territory. She tried not to dwell on the fact that Samuel Wade might be her final target. Time was running out for men and women like Wade, only they didn’t know it. They were totally unaware of what they really were and how, very soon, unless it could be prevented, men like Wade and many like him, would perish, if Lindegaard had his way.

She was galvanised into near recklessness by her thoughts, the bike roaring across the land, throwing up a cloud of dust behind her. Just let me bag Wade, she thought. Please, for the sake of everything I’ve ever worked for, let me get to Wade before…

Half an hour later, the sun now beginning to scorch her back and causing her to break out in sweat, she reached the dirt-track road, coming to a halt and taking out her binoculars again. She steadied her breathing as she narrowed her eyes and trained the binoculars down the long, straight roadway. She thought she saw something. A dot in the distance, a cloud of dust maybe? That had to be the coach. Christ, she was going to be too late. She reckoned they’d already crossed over the boundary and into Cain’s Territory.

Damn! If they ran into a patrol – which was very likely – then that was going to make things a
lot
harder for her. To the point that it might not be worth risking her life going in there after Wade.

What are you saying, girl? You’d abandon him? You don’t really mean that, do you? Not after finally finding him.

‘Shit, no, I ain’t going to abandon him,’ she growled, stowing away the binoculars and revving up the bike’s engine. She’d give it her best shot. She wasn’t going to let Wade go without a fight. ‘Why’d you bring all this gear with you if you didn’t expect to use it at some time?’ she told herself, racing down the road, thankful at least for the level, if not entirely smooth, handling of the bike.

The old machine’s joints rattled painfully, and its wheezing engine seemed to cough on the dust being thrown up. But she smiled at how doggedly it responded to her demands. They didn’t make them like this anymore, she thought; they knew how to build things to last back in the 1960s.

Samuel Wade slowed the coach right down to a crawl. There was something in the middle of the road ahead.

He’d seen it some distance away. So too did Martin Bolan, never very far away from the driver’s cab. Both men were staring silently out of the window, passing each other a curious, questioning glance. As the coach slowed down everyone else became aware of the object and gradually filtered towards the front of the coach. At last Wade stopped the coach some fifty yards away from it. The object had its back to them, but it was plain to see what it was.

Amanda Tyler asked, ‘Is that a chair? An old chair?’

‘Sure looks like it,’ Jack Benedict said. ‘Well I’ll be…’

Benedict’s wife Lauren came to his side. ‘It’s like one of those padded ones my great grandma used to have,’ she said. ‘What’s an old chair doing out here in the middle of the desert, and stuck in the middle of the road?’

Wade opened the coach’s doors and stepped outside, telling everyone to stay inside. The sun was growing stronger with every minute, once again his slowly moving shadow making him aware of just how inordinately fast the orb was rising into the sky. Hartshorn ignored Wade and left the coach.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘It’s a chair, right? That means someone dumped it here. People. Nearby maybe. That right, huh?’

Wade turned. ‘I’d stay on the coach for a while if I were you until I check this out.’

‘Well you ain’t me…’ He followed in Wade’s cautious footsteps.

Wade ignored the man as he approached the chair. It was indeed an ordinary armchair, the padded type used in the 1930s, he guessed, still bearing some of the once-colourful Art Deco-inspired material, which was now terribly faded and dusty, the weather having stripped most of it off and leaving the bare bones of its wooden frame exposed to the elements. Stuffing hung out of rips in its arms and back.

Typically British in design and construction, Wade thought. And like Lauren Smith, he’d seen many examples, one in his own grandfather’s house, some in antique shops and fancy boutiques as the Art Deco period became increasingly popular the further away in time it became. But to see one out here in a desert caused him a certain degree of disquiet. This place was getting weirder by the minute, he thought, looking about him at the endlessly empty stretch of land that started to shimmer under the ministrations of the sun.

It was as he got to within a few feet of the chair that he noticed the sweat-shiny rear of the man’s shaved head peeking above the high back of the armchair. Wade held up his hand and Hartshorn stopped dead.

‘What have you seen, Wade?’

Before he could reply, they heard a loud cry and someone sobbing from the door of the bus. It was Cheryl. ‘What the hell are you doing, woman?’ Hartshorn burst angrily.

‘Keith, where are you going? Don’t leave me! I need my medicine!’ her face was distraught, panicky.

‘Get back inside,’ he demanded.

‘You know I need my medicine! Don’t leave me!’ She was beginning to sound hysterical.

‘What medicine?’ Wade asked.

‘Heroin,’ Hartshorn returned flatly. ‘She was on her way to rehab. She’s having to go cold turkey mush faster than we thought…’ He waved her away. ‘Get back on the bus, Cheryl. I’ll come to you in a few minutes. We’re checking something out.’

Amanda came down to steps of the bus and took a gentle hold of Cheryl’s arm. ‘Come with me – he’ll be back in a minute.’ She glanced meaningfully over at Hartshorn, but he merely rolled his eyes.

Cheryl was having none of it. She screamed and pulled her arm free, running awkwardly towards Hartshorn ‘Keith! I need you! Don’t leave me! Where’s my medicine? You promised me! You promised me!’

‘I’d go to her,’ Wade advised. ‘She needs you.’

‘What do you know?’ he returned bluntly.

‘Look, this might not be safe…’

‘Is that a guy sitting in the chair?’ said Hartshorn, coming to Wade’s side.

‘Did you hear what I said? Look after Cheryl. She needs you. Leave me to check this out.’

Cheryl ran up to Hartshorn and clawed desperately at his sleeve. ‘Keith, Keith!’ Her sweating face was distorted by an inner pain, her body trembling uncontrollably. ‘Make it stop, Keith. You can make it stop, I know you can…’

Hartshorn swung round, wrenching his arm free of her manic grip and belted her hard across the face. She was knocked sideways with the blow, her eyes, once she’d recovered from the shock, flamed with unbridled hatred.

‘Go away, Cheryl,’ Hartshorn said calmly, though his breathing was laboured.

‘Wade was horrified by what he’d seen. ‘You can’t treat her like that, Hartshorn,’ he said. ‘You can’t treat anyone like that.’

‘I’m going to tell your wife,’ Cheryl said, the words spewing out like venom. ‘She’s going to know everything about you and me.’

‘Shut up, bitch,’ Hartshorn returned.

Martin Bolan came running over to the tiny group. ‘You bastard,’ he said, taking a firm hold of the shivering woman and clutching her tight to him. She fought against his hold. ‘Can’t you see this woman needs help,’ he said.

‘She brought it on herself. I’m the sap who’s picking up the pieces.’

‘You said you loved me!’ Cheryl sobbed. ‘You said you were going to leave your wife and marry me!’

‘We all say things we don’t mean,’ Hartshorn murmured. ‘And that was before you got hooked on heroin. Look at you – you’re a dirty, mixed-up mess that nobody wants. I told you – I’d see to it that you got yourself clean again, pay for your rehab, but that was all, that’s it, we’re finished. Now go away, I’ve got business to attend to here.’ He saw Wade eyeing him. ‘What?’ he said.

Wade said, ‘Go back to the bus. I’ll deal with this.’

‘Or what? Gonna put that gun of yours to my head and make me?’

Wade did just that. He pressed the handgun into the flesh of Hartshorn’s forehead. ‘What have I got to lose and what are we going to miss?’ he uttered dispassionately.

‘Wade…’ said Bolan, holding onto Cheryl, who looked to be stopping her struggling.

With a sigh, Wade put the gun away and turned to the man in the chair. ‘I’ll sort you out later,’ he said, watching as Bolan led the woman away. She’d collapsed into his arms like a fretful child. Wade could hear her asking for her medicine. He ignored Hartshorn and stepped carefully around to the front of the chair, giving it a suitably wide berth as he did so.

He was surprised to see that the man was totally naked, his legs tied together at the ankles with what appeared to be copper electrical wire, in turn his ankles fastened to the legs of the chair so that he could not move them in any direction. The wire had been pulled so tight it had eaten into his skin and blood poured profusely onto he dusty ground. The same type of wire had been used as binding around his upper torso, strapping his arms firmly to his body, the cuts from where it had sliced into his flesh weeping blood also. His wrists were strapped together, his hands, clenching something metallic Wade couldn’t make out, covered his genitals. His body was already painfully red from the heat of the blistering sun, as if someone had drenched him in boiling water. Covering virtually every inch of his frame were angry-looking bruises. This man had been cruelly tortured, and at first glance he appeared to be dead, his head lolling to one side, his eyes closed.

Wade was instantly reminded of John Travers, and the image of the man’s battered face appearing on TV nudged its way into his head, but they were banished upon Wade seeing the man’s chest rise ever so slightly.

‘He’s alive,’ he said.

‘Bloody hell, what happened to him?’ said Hartshorn.

‘Looks like he’s being punished for something.’ Wade moved to take the man’s pulse, but quickly pulled back when he recognised what the man was clutching in his hands.

It was a grenade.

‘Get back, Hartshorn!’ Wade warned.

‘If he’s alive, get him to tell you where we are…’

‘Jesus, Hartshorn, the man’s holding a grenade!’

Hartshorn backed away. ‘What do you mean a grenade?’

Martin Bolan, having left Cheryl in the care of the Kennedy’s, came bounding over to Wade, who warned him back with a cautious lifting of the hand. ‘What have we got here, Wade?’

‘I dunno. This man’s been tortured, fastened to the chair and made to hold a grenade. It’s an old-style grenade, too – I’d say 1940s or 50s vintage. As far as I can tell the pin’s been pulled…’