Hurt World One and the Zombie Rats (25 page)

‘You know, I hadn’t smoked for two years
before you showed up,’ murmured Scope.

‘Why not? You’ve got lifetime cover against
cancer and cardio.’

‘You call that a perk of the job? You take
away one possible cause of death and add a hundred more. Very few
of them long term.’

‘Only a hundred? I think you are
underestimating this mission. I daresay there are more than
that.’

Scope took a long draft on his cigarette and
blew it into McRaven’s face.

McRaven smiled through it. ‘My only guarantee
is that I won’t be leaving you down there no matter what. So, if
you die, I die too. That’s a true partnership.’

Scope noticed the rocket pod streaking
through the sky like a fast moving satellite. He shot a hard look
at McRaven. ‘What you just said is stupid. If you die, I’ll make
sure as many of the enemy die the same way as I can. Then I’ll
return to my ranch and forget all about it. That’s my promise.’

McRaven nodded with a hard smirk. ‘That’s why
you’re going first into the Meltman’s tunnels.’

The rocket pod’s Hydro Glide Sales deployed
directly above them and the vessel entered a silent, measured
descent that culminated in it touching down in the dead centre of
Launch Pad One. Blast was the first to leave, running out to sniff
the feet of McRaven and Scope. Kaptu and Clorvine came next,
casually carrying their guns that were now recharged and
reloaded.

McRaven looked them over intently. ‘We
weren’t expecting two people,’ he said.

‘Clorvine is an officer in the Congolese
National Rangers,’ said Kaptu. ‘She will be coming along.’

McRaven’s eyes settled on Blast. He motioned
to pat it but was dissuaded by a snarling display of teeth. ‘You’ve
brought your attack dog.’ He gestured to Scope. ‘And I’ve brought
mine. How long since your fix on the Meltman?’

‘Two or three hours.’

‘We’ve tracked the location to one hundred
metres below the surface in the Afghan District. The heart of the
Meltman’s kingdom. This is your final chance to change your mind if
you don’t think it’s going to work.’

‘People one hundred metres beneath the earth
do not go for country drives. He will still be close. Still,
there’s no time to waste.’

McRaven nodded. ‘Well, you’ve chosen the
right team. We’re the best extractors in the business. And this
will be our Super Bowl.’ He bounded up the Mach 99s entry ramp. The
other members of the party followed a step behind. Already waiting
inside in seats lining the walls were ten battle-hardened soldiers
decked out in the black Peace Keeper uniforms. Some were chewing on
their tobacco, others were smoking it. Only their mouths were
visible, with the visors drawn down from their black helmets.

McRaven pointed Kaptu and Clorvine to two
empty seats at the rear of the craft. ‘You have ten seconds to
strap yourself in before the G-forces splatter you like runny
omelets across the wall.’ He left for the pilot’s seat. The doors
closed and the engines loudly stirred as the mercurised-nitro fuel
was released.

Kaptu helped Clorvine into her seat first
before strapping himself in beside her. He wrapped his arms around
Blast, who was panting wildly with excitement. The Mach 99 aircraft
launched vertically with a staggering force. Blast, however,
managed to again be licking Kaptu on the face with her sticky, wet
tongue. Katpu grimaced helplessly.

*

The waiter clearing the dirty dishes from the
Meltman’s table was jittery such that a champagne flute tumbled off
his silver tray and smashed on the floor. ‘Sorry,’ he gasped in
horror, kneeling down to pick up the shards.

The vibrant conversation had stopped dead,
all eyes upon him. The waiter cowered like an abused dog fearing
another kick. His fingers were getting badly cut in his haste to
clean up the glass. He hurried back to the kitchen, leaving behind
a trail of blood upon the carpet. There was a chuckle amongst the
diners.

‘Is that how they wash the dishes around
here?’ the Meltman quipped. ‘By using their blood for
dishwater?’

‘He thought you were going to kill him,’ said
Natalie, playing with her dessert spoon beside him.

‘I don’t kill the people that are afraid of
me. It is the people who aren’t scared that I prefer to send to
their graves. The sad part about that is sometimes fearlessness is
a characteristic of real talent. Such as the good generals here.
And your mother of course. It can be worth the risk keeping them
alive. The chef is another case in point. The duck l’orange was
superb, was it not? And the chocolate soufflé we are about to
experience is the best in the world without question. He has such
control over the fusion of his ingredients that he could make
cyanide mouth watering. I pay him well and see to it that he wants
for nothing simply because I cannot resist what he serves. It the
same rationale that has seen these men at the table promoted to
generals. They are hardened brutal killers one and all and, like
chocolate soufflé, are a guilty pleasure.’ He toasted them and
smashed the glass on the floor with a spearing throw. ‘When the
waiter returns, I will have him pick that up too.’

There was drunken laughter from amongst the
generals. One of them drained his wine glass and smashed it on the
floor, too. They might have all gotten into the act if not for the
ping of an arriving elevator catching their attention. Tagger, the
Head of Security, squeezed out from the opening doors with an
intense look upon his face. He hurried to the Meltman and said in a
tremulous voice, ‘Security has been breached. We believe it to be a
subterranean raiding party.’

The Meltman frowned. ‘You believe?’

Tagger dry swallowed. ‘Communication above
the thirty metre depth has been lost.’

The Meltman suddenly pulsated with anger.
‘Broken down?’

‘They are not responding.’

‘The only people entitled to ignore me
underground are the buried. There is an army between me and the
surface. Talk to someone.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Tagger hurried back to the
elevator.

The Meltman turned to Natalie and tried to
smile away the anger lines upon his face. ‘Shall we dance before
dessert, my lovely?’

Natalie smile right through him. Her eyes
were searing. ‘A dance is a wonderful idea.’ She leaned closer.
‘Especially while you smell so good.’

There was a muffled barking of dog, seemingly
emanating from behind the steel wall. Mario jumped that way,
unslinging his snubbed-nosed laser-acid shooter. ‘What the hell is
that?’

The Meltman’s face went blank. ‘Through that
wall are one thousand Cobra Xs. It’s a Heroin 3 snake pit.’

‘Do your snakes bark?’ exclaimed Shally,
pulling out a pistol from her thigh holster.

The barking was incessant and coming closer.
Just on the other side of the wall. Shally fired a probing shot
that way. For a moment there was silence, and then the wall
exploded. The steel tore open into a gaping hole, the accompanying
shockwave throwing them off their feet. Stun bombs followed. Kaptu
and John Leroy Scope ran into the dining room first, guns at the
ready. ‘Don’t move!’ Scope screamed.

In the next instant, however, he was thrown
backwards by a bullet thumping into his chest. Tagger came running
out of the elevator, turning his gun on Kaptu in a wild spray.
Kaptu dived below a table and did not appear again until he sprung
out from the side putting a pistol round between two generals and
into the chest of Tagger. Although knocked backwards, Tagger’s life
was saved by his body armour. Kaptu ran at him, just managing to
get hold of his arm before he could get his gun back up. He lifted
a sharp knee into his stomach and slung him through the hole in the
wall into the snake pit. A hideous screen came a moment later.

McRaven entered the dining room with two
Peace Keepers at this side. He went to the keeled over Scope and
patted him on the back. ‘You can take your time getting up. The guy
that shot you is already dead.’ He turned to the Meltman, savouring
the sight of him being handcuffed. He wouldn’t have been surprised
if his wrists shattered, for judging by the force the Meltman’s
general had gone flying into the cobra pit, Kaptu Z’s blood was
well and truly up. The Meltman, however, was too consumed by the
fury of being caught to acknowledge any physical pain.

‘You are all dead men,’ the Meltman spat.

More Peace Keepers stormed the room both
through the wall and out from the elevators. Blast came with the
elevator party. Her head was up and her tongue was out. She looked
happy. McRaven had never owned a pet or felt any real affection for
an animal, but he couldn’t help but smile now. This gamely little
dog had just helped crush one of the world’s most insidious
criminal organisations. And there was perhaps more to come. McRaven
walked over to Kaptu and patted him on the shoulder. ‘Nice work.
The Hurt World isn’t so shabby, after all.’

Katpu pulled the Meltman to his feet. ‘Let’s
not get too excited. It’s still a long way back to the
surface.’

‘That’s true.’ McRaven turned to address his
team. ‘We’re going back via the elevators. Secure the prisoners. If
we are ambushed, we shoot them. Especially the Meltman. A hundred
metres beneath Asylum City, this is his turf and we play by his
rules.’ He pulled the Meltman out of Kaptu’s hands. ‘Kaptu, you go
back through the snake pit. The vessel you wanted tracked, the
Kudos, has just been spotted by Rojas Hose. The man can find
anything from his bathtub.’

‘Where is it?’ queried Kaptu.

‘The Artic. There is a rocket pod at the
Turkish Embassy that has been made available to you. Clorvine is
already there doing the leg work to get it released to the United
Nations.’

Kaptu nodded and took a parting glance at the
Meltman – Asylum City’s most notorious gangster still looked
stunned, as though the bomb’s shockwaves. Kaptu wanted to introduce
him to Blast, but he was distracted by the sight of Natalie being
handcuffed. He fought back the urge to intervene. The lawyers could
free her without having her involvement in the Meltman’s arrest
revealed. He turned back for a final taunt of the Meltman, but he
was already away, being driven by McRaven to the elevators.

Blast jumped up onto him, wagging her tail.
Kaptu gave her a pat. ‘You can afford to wag your tail now, your
mission is done and I hope they give you a very big bone as a
reward - perhaps one of the bones of the people that have been
hunting you. That’s where I come in.’ He looked to the soldier
holding Blast’s leash. ‘Hold on tight. Don’t let her run loose in
this place.’ He ran out through the wall’s impact hole onto the
snake pit’s gantry. Three metres above a sea of slithering deadly
snakes. He headed for the catacombs of the Turkish Embassy.

25 The rats

‘Are you sure it was the Kudos you heard?’
murmured Rojas to Kaptu Z, peering out the magno-chopper window at
the distant vessel cutting through the icy grey waters below.
‘There is a town in Mexico called Ludoz where drug smuggling is
said to occur. And there is a hotel in Argentina called the Cutos.
Maybe Mas is taking a vacation there.’

‘I doubt it,’ replied Kaptu.

‘But you can’t be sure. After all, you were
drugged and being dragged by the hair towards a cage of lions when
you overheard the name.’

‘I was being dragged by the arms,’ Kaptu
corrected, sitting casually with a sniper rifle on his lap in the
back seat of the magno-chopper.

‘Well, we’re nowhere near the Mexican
badlands or Argentinean hotels,’ said Clorvine from the pilot’s
seat. ‘So, let’s just work with what we’ve got.’

Katpu, Rojas and Clorvine were the only
occupants in the magno-chopper and they were flying high above the
massive desolate expanse of the Arctic Ocean. Even with the
sunshine of a clear afternoon, the Earth’s crown was revealing
itself to be an icy grey ocean whose jewels were a sprinkling of
barren islands. And judging by the amount of blood that had been
spilled over it during the Artic Wars, the crown was priceless.
Directly beneath the magno-chopper, the restored Kudos was punching
through the rolling waves in a relentless battle against wind and
currents. Rojas was using high powered binoculars to gaze over the
rusty hulk that was so stubbornly refusing to betray any signs of
life or reasons for being. An ancient cargo ship sitting low enough
in the water that it seemed its rows of containers were still full
with whatever contents it had been charged with delivering so many
decades earlier. An unlikely scenario in Rojas’s mind. Surely a
boat adrift for so long would have long since been stripped bare by
the salvagers and pirates that infested the globe. Rojas tried once
again to make radio contact only to be met with the same unwieldy
silence. ‘I’m not sure why we haven’t already turned back for
Alaska,’ he murmured disconsolately. ‘I’m afraid to admit this rust
bucket is all that I’ve dragged you out here for.’

‘But we haven’t turned back,’ said Clorvine.
‘There is something that has got you thinking, isn’t there?’

Rojas nodded despite himself. ‘These waters
don’t look like much but they were heavily fought over during the
Great Artic War. Many thousands of lives were lost and a very shaky
truce was the only thing to show for it. So, maybe it is the kind
of place to find the likes of Mas, after all.’

‘Well, we’ve come all the way to the Artic,’
murmured Kaptu. ‘I might as well go down there and take a
look.’

‘No, I’ll go,’ voiced Rojas, picking up his
jetpack from the floor of the magno-chopper and slipping into its
shoulder straps. ‘Keep your sniper rifle at the ready.’

‘You’re an analyst,’ said Kaptu
incredulously. ‘If Mas is down there it’s not something you’ll be
able to survive by analysing.’

‘
This is the
only
option. The insurance agents have banned you
from
entering
the United
States.’ As Rojas finished tightening up the jetpack, he pointed
towards a small barren island sitting alone on the horizon. ‘That
is Alabama Island, a United States protectorate. Less than twenty
miles and closing. We are in US territorial waters and
that
is
as
good
as
Washington
DC
in
the
eyes of international
law
. The Great Artic War Treaty allows one military
installation per island and the major players have done the best
they can with what is permitted. That will include state-of-the-art
surveillance. You can bet
the
government
will be watching us.
So,
you
stay
here
,
and
wish
me
luck
. Boarding a fifty
year old abandoned wreck in the Arctic Ocean in search of a poacher
from Africa might be difficult to explain if the poacher is not
there.’