Paradise Burns (27 page)

SIXTY-TWO

With Natalia
out of the picture, I had her brother, Gene, Ketranovich and Clara to take care
of. I wasn’t too worried about any other personnel, given that they seem to
kill them themselves once they’ve served their purpose. If there is anyone else
left, I’d simply advise them to leave while they still can.

Armed with Natalia’s gun and knife, I
made my way down the long corridor, away from the furnace rooms and back toward
the main control room. My priority was contacting Josh and warning him about
the trap waiting for all the GlobaTech and U.S. troops.

As I approached, I dropped to one knee
and tried to sneak a peek through the window of the left hand door. The room
looked empty. The large screen that had previously displayed the radar battle
between missile and plane was turned off. The main computer hub was unmanned.

I nudged the door gently and waited to
see if it provoked a response. After a minute, I’d got nothing. Happy that the
coast was clear, I stood and walked through into the control room. The entrance
to the furnace hub was the door on the west wall, as you looked at it from the
main entrance where I first came into the room before the airstrike. God knows
where those three were, or what they were doing. I’d deal with that in a
minute. I ran over to the control panel and looked for a means of
communication.

There were consoles and screens
everywhere, but nothing that resembled a phone. I looked around the room in
desperation, but saw nothing. I checked my phone again, but there was no
signal. I glanced around one last time. In the corner of the north wall, I
noticed that there was something flashing on one of the screens. Clutching at
straws, I went over and looked at the computer terminal. It appeared to be some
kind of communications system. It said satellites were offline and a signal
emanating from the compound was active.

That must be why there’s no cell phone
signal in the area – they’re manually jamming it.

I looked around the room at all the
doors to make sure I was still alone, then sat down at the console. I wasn’t a
complete beginner with computers, but I wasn’t Josh either. I clicked through
the various menus and after a couple of minutes of what felt like, and probably
looked like, random button pressing, I was able to deactivate the jamming signal.
I quickly checked my phone and saw that it had re-established contact with the cell
phone network, and coverage had reappeared on the screen.

Jackpot!

I quickly rang Josh.

‘Adrian!’ he yelled as he answered. ‘Where’ve
you been? It’s all gone to shit up here!’

‘I don’t have time to explain right now,’
I replied. ‘Just listen to me. We’ve been played from day one – this whole
thing is a set-up for GlobaTech and we’re playing right into their hands.’

‘Yeah, we figured something was up when
the airstrike failed. What the hell happened?’

‘They had MIM-23 SAM sites that were armed
with Hawk missiles.’

‘Jesus! Where did they get that kind of
hardware?’

‘I’m guessing with the funds they got
from GlobaTech before they did the internal re-shuffle and cut off their
allowance.’

‘But how did they know about it in the
first place?’

I paused, taking a deep breath, knowing
that repeating it out loud for the first time would hurt.

‘It was Clara,’ I said. ‘She was with
Dark Rain the whole time.’

It was Josh’s turn to be silent. I made
a note of the time and date, as it didn’t happen often.

‘Well,’ he began. ‘What a fucking bitch!’

‘Yup. But listen, you
have
to get
GlobaTech to call off the ground assault. If they come in here, they’re all
going to die.’

‘No can do, Boss. It’s already underway.
In addition to Clark’s little army, Secretary Schultz has brought in troop
support from the American military now too. Because the assault on the F-22s
took place on U.S. soil, it’s being hailed as a terrorist act. Gives them just
cause to intervene and make this more than just a private matter.’

‘Shit. How many soldiers?’

‘You’ve got fifty or so GlobaTech
personnel, plus another two or three hundred U.S. military troops.’

‘Holy mother of God...’

‘What?’

‘Josh, they don’t have any nukes here.
They don’t have missiles of any kind. They don’t even have any soldiers.
Everything you know about Dark Rain is a lie. It’s just Ketranovich, Clara and
the Salikov twins. Everyone else, they kill after they’ve served their purpose.’

‘So, what exactly
do
they have?
Just themselves?’

‘What they have are five rooms, each of
which contains a furnace the size of a house, which was apparently used for
disposing of chemical weapons fifty years ago. Each room also has about three
hundred pounds of C4 attached to the ceiling. The section of the compound is
directly under the main yard. You can probably see where this is going.’

‘Christ almighty!’

‘I know.’

‘Blowing the entire compound like that
would leave a crater a mile wide and definitely kill everyone who was in the
area – no question. But when it was just GlobaTech troops, it was just a minor
conflict that could be explained away by the media spin doctors. But if the U.S.
army is sending men in and
they
die, then we have a much a bigger
problem that could lead to a war.’

‘Hence the urgency of me contacting you.
You need to do something. Anything. Just stop them coming in here, Josh.’

‘I’ll get on the line to Clark right
away.’

As he said that, the main entrance door
opened and Gene Salikov walked in.

SIXTY-THREE

Our eyes met
and he stopped in his tracks, clearly confused. I could see him working it all
out in his head. I was meant to be dead by now, or at the very least still
locked up in the furnace. His sister, Natalia, was sent to do the job. He’s
staring at me, free as a bird, talking on the phone. Logic would dictate his
sister is injured or worse, and that it’s my fault.

After a few seconds, he screamed
something incomprehensible at me in Russian and reached for his gun.

‘Josh, I gotta go,’ I said, as the first
bullet whizzed past my head.

I ducked behind the desk, throwing my
phone down and pulling Natalia’s gun out, instinctively checking the magazine.
It was full, which was helpful. I reached up and blind-fired one round in the
direction of the main door, just to try and get an idea of where he was.

There was a moment’s silence after I’d
pulled the trigger before he stood, screaming, and squeezing off round after
round at me. He began walking toward me, firing and yelling. I stuck my head
around the corner of the desk and caught a glimpse of him. His eyes were wide
with rage. He wasn’t thinking, he was just focused on putting a bullet in me.
Which I can understand, given I’ve just head-butted his sister and then shot
her in the leg.

However, he had me pinned down, and I
couldn’t stay without increasing the risk of being shot myself. I fired another
round blindly to make him hesitate a second or two, so I could have a look
around at my options. None were leaping out at me.

But then I caught a break. I heard his
click on an empty chamber. I don’t know how many spare magazines he had, but I
had no wish to find out. Straight away, I was up and walking toward him, my gun
aimed squarely at his chest.

‘Put your gun down,’ I said. ‘It’s over.’

He stopped where he was, which was on
the other side of the center console, about thirty feet from me. He tossed his
gun onto the floor when he realized I had him dead to rights. He was seething
with rage, with an unblinking gaze of hatred on his face.

He stood casually, seemingly oblivious
to the fact I had a gun aimed at him.

‘Why don’t you throw your weapon down
too?’ he asked me. ‘Fight me like a real soldier.’

He cracked his knuckles and smiled,
before switching into a fighting stance, similar to a boxer. Left foot forward,
up on the balls of his feet. Hands high, guarding his face.

Despite my occupation, the concept of honor
and tradition wasn’t lost on me. I do get that sometimes you just have to prove
who’s best. Anyone can pull a trigger, but it takes a true warrior to fight it
out with someone, unarmed, to the death.

I thought about it for a moment. I
looked him up and down. He had a good, solid stance. He was light on his feet
for a guy as muscular as he was. He seemed to put more weight on his front leg,
which made me think he had an old injury on his back leg of some kind, which
could prove useful. He was right-handed, and held his back hand slightly lower
than his front, which means he’ll favor a strong right knock-out blow. Easy to
avoid, but deadly if it lands. I looked in his eyes. That rage was still
burning bright. Ultimately, I all but killed his sister about ten minutes ago,
and he knew it. Someone in a fight to the death with hate as their fuel and
revenge as their motive would be capable of immense things.

Then I assessed my personal situation. I
had cracked ribs, a severely bruised back and had suffered two fairly
significant concussions. I’d also been on the business end of a car bomb less
than twenty-four hours ago, so it was safe to say I wasn’t firing on all
cylinders physically.

I thought about it a moment longer.

‘Nah,’ I said, then pulled the trigger
twice.

The first was aimed at his chest, but
because he was stood slightly side on in his boxing stance, it grazed across
him and hit his shoulder, doing nothing but making him stagger backward a
little.

The second bullet hit him in the face.
His face disappeared in a cloud of pink mist - blood, bone and brain merging
together in a split second, then exploding all over the ground.

His body dropped with a dull thud. I
tucked my gun behind my back and went over to get my phone. I rang Josh again.

‘Sorry about that,’ I said as he
answered.

‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘You making
friends again?’

‘Gene Salikov just started shooting at
me because he figured out I’d killed his sister.’

‘You’ve taken out Natalia? How?’

‘I knocked her out, shot her in the leg
and locked in one of the furnace rooms. I’d like to think that’s game over.’

‘I’m assuming Gene’s beef with you has
been resolved amicably?’

‘Gene no longer has a face.’

‘Yeah, that’d do it.’

I made my way out of the control room
and down the main corridor toward the stairs that would lead me up to the
courtyard outside.

‘You had any luck with Clark or Schultz?’
I asked.

‘I got a hold of Clark, but he wasn’t
convinced. He said their intel can’t be that wrong.’

‘It is, trust me. If they send the
cavalry in here, everyone will die, Josh. Tell him to swallow his pride,
reprimand his intelligence division and pull all the ground forces way back.’

I climbed the final flight of stairs and
pushed open the metal door and went outside into the yard. The glare of the sun
stung my eyes after being underground for so long. I squinted until they
adjusted to the sunlight. I looked around, but there was no sign of Ketranovich
or Clara.

‘How long ‘til they get here?’ I asked.

‘Just under twenty minutes,’ replied
Josh.

‘Shit. I’ve lost The Mad Colonel and his
bitch of a daughter. I’m assuming he has the detonator.’

‘Hold up. Daughter?’

‘Oh, yeah – forgot to mention that, didn’t
I? Clara is Ketranovich’s daughter.’

‘Jesus Christ. I officially hate her.’

‘Join the club.’

I heard the mechanical groan of the
hangar doors opening again to my right.

‘I’ve found them. Do what you can to buy
me some time,’ I said before I hung up.

I ran over to where my Berettas were
still on the ground, near the SAM sites. I got there just in time to see Clara
emerge from the darkness of the hangar on a motorcycle, with Ketranovich
walking out behind her. They both stopped to look at me, then they looked at
each other.

‘Go!’ yelled Ketranovich.

I aimed one of my guns and fired at the
front tire of the motorcycle, causing Clara to stop.

‘Don’t even think about it, either of
you,’ I said, aiming a Beretta at each of them.

‘You’ve lost, Adrian Hell,’ said
Ketranovich. ‘You can’t stop this.’

‘I’m pretty sure you’ve said that
already. And now you’re two Salikovs down and I’m still stood here, so I’d say
I’m doing a pretty good job so far.’

Clara revved her engine.

‘Clara, I swear to God, I would give
vital parts of my anatomy if it meant I could shoot you dead right now, so be a
good girl and get off the fucking bike!’

Ketranovich raised his right hand into
the air. He was holding something in it.

‘I don’t think so, Adrian Hell,’ he
said. He turned to Clara. ‘Get out of here. I will see this through to the end.’

She nodded and revved her engine again.

I was looking at his hand.

‘That’s right,’ he said, seeing my
hesitation. ‘This is the detonator.’

I lowered my guns.

‘Ah, shit.’