Stark (46 page)

228: EVE OF BATTLE

T
hey spent the first part of the night before the battle cleaning and checking the weaponry. Zimmerman took them through the reloading and firing procedures of the pistols, the rifles, the automatic weapons and the grenades. There was only one shoulder-held launcher, so this he kept for himself.

Around two, Zimm declared that they knew enough. There is only so much about the science of armour that can be taken in at once, besides which, according to Zimmerman’s plan, the other three were only expected to cause a huge distraction and draw the enemy fire. Zimm himself would do the precision killings.

For the hours preceding the strike, each sat alone with his or her thoughts. Occasionally Zimm would stand upon the ridge beside Walter Culboon and stare out towards the field of battle and the target beyond, psyching his head.

‘I still can’t quite see how it came to this,’ said Mrs Culboon, ‘the four of us defending the whole world. But I want you all to know that I’m proud to be a part of it, and proud to be alongside you all.’ It was a nice thing to say. For a moment CD wondered why Walter did not say something nice back on behalf of everybody, he normally did that sort of thing very well. Then he remembered that Walter was dead. CD went back to thinking about Rachel and what honeyed words and stirring arguments he might employ to bring her back to them once the battle was won. Who could tell? he thought, hope springing, as always, eternal. Maybe she’d be so ashamed of herself she’d let him sauce her there and then, under the big desert sky, as a penance. Yes! that was it, this was his big chance.

BATTLE

‘OK let’s go,’ said Zimm in the low, almost hissing murmur that he had adopted ever since he had turned into Clint Eastwood. ‘We got just one shot at saving the world.’

The hours of waiting had embittered Mrs Culboon.

‘And avenging our dead,’ replied Mrs Culboon. ‘Most of me is doing this for my husband.’

Each had their ghosts to bury. If any of the combatants fell, they would be in good company. Mr Culboon, Walter, Linda Reeve, Toole…Rachel. CD certainly harboured the most searing sense of mission. The others had only lost the dead; he had lost the living. He was going in to save Rachel from a fate worse than death, he would do anything to stop the launch and give her a chance to come to her senses.

They shouldered their arms and whilst Zimmerman mounted Walter Culboon, the other three got into the station wagon. They had decided on using the station wagon only, being shot was going to be bad enough, there was no sense having to pay for a damaged hire car as well.

‘Now don’t forget,’ Zimm said, ‘don’t try and take ‘em, that’s my job. Just draw their fire, I’ll be coming up behind them.’

The proposed target was very clear, a truck and two searchlights, men hanging around, some making a desultory attempt at being guards, others just crashed out on the ground. There were two camp-fires and a number of lamps run off a little generator by the light of which some of the men were playing cards.

‘Well they certainly have gone to a lot of trouble to pick themselves out as targets, haven’t they,’ said Chrissy. ‘It’s nearly time,’ said CD who had been earnestly studying the luminous dials on his watch.

They began to crawl closer. As they did so, they spread out, to about fifty metres apart. When they started shooting it was essential that the enemy believed themselves to be facing a formidable opponent. Zimm had told them to vary their weapons every few bursts, even to fire with both hands — it didn’t matter what at since they were only the diversion.

CD fired first. From somewhere to Mrs Culboon’s right she heard the crackle of automatic fire. Almost simultaneously she opened up, as did Chrissy to her left.

‘Make it look like they’ve got a fucking army in front of them,’ Zimmerman had said. ‘Just party down man, whoop, holler and make it big.’

CD was the best at it, he was throwing grenades vaguely towards where the light had been, shouting at the top of his voice quotes from all the war movies that had got him through so many endless Sunday afternoons.

‘Steady there,’ he screamed. ‘Dress from the right. Up periscope. We’re all scared kid. Charge. Take cover. Banzai.’

It is unlikely anybody ever heard him but the explosions he was lobbing certainly had their effect, even if they were falling about sixty yards short. All the lights went out in the security encampment and it began to return fire. They seemed to be doing it in as haphazard a way as EcoAction, and of course they were, because three people make extremely small targets in a great big desert and the guards firmly believed themselves to be facing a much larger enemy.

Once Zimmerman heard the return of fire he figured that they were about as abstracted as they would ever be and spurred Walter Culboon on towards the cameras and electronic sensors of the security perimeter.

229: AN ARMY APPROACHES

T
he battle had been going for less than a minute when Durf made his decision. What could he do? He had no idea what was attacking him, but if it was anything bigger than a handful they were in trouble, and it sounded a lot bigger.

‘Whatever you do hold them where they are,’ he barked down the phone at the officer in the field. ‘A ten thousand dollar bonus to each man; they must not get through.’

A few minutes later Durf was addressing a very shaken final Stark Summit Meeting.

230: A MERC AND A CHEVVY APPROACH

A
s Zimmmerman and Walter Culboon galloped towards the perimeter he was astonished to be passed by two cars, a Mercedes and a Chevrolet, about a hundred metres to his right. Zimm wondered if this was the long delayed effects of some unwisely taken hallucinogenic. But it couldn’t be, he had been straight for donkeys years. Zimm was a pretty laid back guy at times but there was no way his body worked that slowly. As Zimm charged along he decided that the cars must be real but there was no point worrying about them.

231: A TRUCK AND THE CAMEL

Z
imm galloped across a wide diagonal sweep of desert floor in order to place himself behind the scene of the battle. His friends were still kicking up as much racket as they could but it would clearly not be long before the guards cottoned on to the fact that very little was happening. Speed was of the essence. Zimmerman had to get to the enemy and hit them while they were still confused.

The security guards had retreated to the comparative safety of a sand dune from where they were vaguely popping bullets out towards the source of their discomfort. As Zimm cantered up behind them he heard a commanding voice ring out. A depressingly commanding voice, the last thing Zimm needed in the enemy camp was somebody who knew their job. Unfortunately that was exactly what he had got.

‘Hold your fire!!’ he shouted raggedly, for his men were scarcely crack troops. He was obeyed.

The result was slightly embarrassing really. A quarter of an hour before when CD, Chrissy and Mrs Culboon had opened fire, their collective mayhem had seemed quite convincing and impressive, coming as it did out of the eerie stillness of the night. Since then the company had been joined by the noise of twelve men firing back and the noise had been terrible. Now that the defenders had stopped shooting and the three Ecoattackers’ fire was left to itself again, it no longer sounded impressive, in fact it sounded pathetic. It sounded like exactly what it was, which wasn’t much.

The commanding voice rang out again.

‘Christ, there’s fuck all out there. This ain’t no army, it’s kids or yobs or something. I want three men, we’ll clean ‘em up in the armoured truck.’

If the commanding officer had thought to radio his conclusions back to Durf the outcome of the night might have been very different. However, he didn’t because he suddenly had other things to think about. This being that his armoured truck was now a blazing fireball and clearly not about to clean up anybody, at least not until they had put it out.

Zimmerman, on hearing the commander’s aggravating grasp of the situation, had decided immediately to go onto the offensive. He started his campaign by shooting a shoulder- launched anti-tank shell into the security truck. This, Zimmerman had intended to be only the beginning, unfortunately after this he lost control of events.

232: MAN OVER CAMEL

W
hen Zimmerman had first met Walter Culboon, he had based their relationship on a combination of brute force and superior will. Having stalked her at a dried up water-hole (the same one at which her distant ancestor had killed the explorer Bullen), Zimm wrestled her to the ground and punched her in the face. After this Zimmerman had tried to establish some form of psychic bond between them. He had talked long and hard into her ear; he had developed eye contact and applied his small knowledge of hypnotism to the situation. His will had unquestionably triumphed over the camel’s and Walter Culboon had decided to do what she was told.

Zimmerman flattered himself that this was because the camel recognized a fellow wild beast when she saw one; another creature who knew the terror of the hunted.

‘I’m more camel than I am man, man’ Zimm had assured the camel as he twisted its neck upon the ground as one would a steer, ‘except for the hump and stuff obviously. But like inside we are the same.’

Actually Walter Culboon had not recognized a soul mate, but she had recognized trouble. Her finely attuned animal survival instincts had alerted her immediately to the fact that she was in the presence of an unstable wild bastard. The fact that he had jumped her from behind, throttled her to the ground, punched her in the face and then appeared to be trying to make friends, did nothing to dampen this impression. This was why she had decided to do what she was told.

The present situation, however, had forced Walter Culboon to revise her decision, the bloke on her back might be an unstable weirdo with a fist like a ‘roos tail, but he did not explode in a twenty foot mushroom of burning oil. The truck had, and the camel didn’t like it. Gunfire and explosions were out as far as Walter Culboon was concerned and so she decided to run like fuck.

Unfortunately she was facing the wrong way because Zimmerman had been approaching the enemy from behind. He now found himself careering back towards his friends, all his efforts at penetrating Stark in vain.

‘Hey listen, I thought we were a team,’ protested Zimmerman as they careered across the desert back towards the others. ‘At least run the other way Walter Culboon,’ he pleaded, ‘we have to save the world here.’

But it was no use. Walter Culboon had made up her mind, she wanted out. Obviously when the other three saw Zimm careering towards them out of the dawn on his camel, they stopped firing, therefore, quite suddenly, through the actions of one camel, peace descended again upon the desert. Hearing this, Walter Culboon responded at last to Zimm’s frenzied pullings and pleadings and stopped running. By now Zimm was about another hundred metres past Mrs Culboon heading towards the holiday home. He turned Walter Culboon around and headed back to regroup.

In the sand dune the apparition of a wild figure on a camel appearing from nowhere and blowing up their truck had left the security forces in thoughtful and subdued mood.

‘Shall I radio back a report, sir?’ said the radio operator.

‘What, and tell them that we got beaten by a man on a camel? No way. Turn the damn thing off, this needs thinking about.’

233: THE END AND THE BEGINNING

234: RACHEL

A
ll Rachel’s plans were completely thrown. The careful scenario that she had been plotting for almost a week was as knackered as the ozone layer. They had been awoken shortly before dawn by the sound of intense gunfire and a series of explosions out towards the security perimeter. Sly jumped out of bed, unlocked his desk and brought out a machine pistol. He put it beside him and began to dress hurriedly. The phone rang, it was Durf. When they had finished speaking Sly slammed down the phone, told Rachel that everything was all right, that he would be back shortly, and rushed out of the room.

Rachel sat, wondering what on earth could be going on out at the perimeter; wondering what it meant to her and her plans, wondering what she was going to do right now.

She did not have long to wonder, for much more quickly than she had expected Sly rushed back in, breathless and fantastically excited.

‘This is it! This is fucking it!! We’re leaving early,’ he blurted. ‘What do you mean?’ said Rachel, very scared. ‘We can’t. What’s going on?’

‘Trouble out on the wire,’ said Sly pulling out their prepacked flight packs. ‘Looks like something’s coming at us…seem to have a hell of a lot of fire-power too, heard some vague talk about camels. Those are the new Soviet hand-held armour piercers. Could be anything from ten men to a bloody army! Durf thinks it’s big. Anyway, whether it is or not, we aren’t hanging around to find out. There’s only five members not arrived yet and it’s been decided to leave them…This is it, darling! We’re going, we are fucking going!! Off to a new world. In forty-five minutes we will be in fucking space!!’

Sly was breathless with excitement. He was shaking as he took the bags to the door. Who wouldn’t have been? The world was an itchy, steaming, rotting pigsty and he was off with his best girl to the pure, cool cleanliness of space. Except he wasn’t.

He turned at the doorway to urge Rachel on.

For a moment she felt a terrible regret, not doubt, but real regret. It would, after all, have been a very big adventure.

She had walked across to the desk and snatched up Sly’s gun. Now he was looking down it, the elation frozen on his face.

Rachel hated it, she had not wished to confront Sly, she liked him too much for that. Their passion had been a genuine one. Her plan all along had been to wait until the morning of the launch, perhaps even as the ships were loading, before making her move. She had intended to claim a desire for one last private walk upon earth. Then she would have made her way to the mission control room which by then would be functioning on remote, and hence be empty of staff. Once there she had intended to kick it, unplug it, throw chairs at it, basically carry out any method of disabling the controls that sprang to mind at the time. Having done what she could and, presuming that nobody had shot her, Rachel then intended to make her way out into the desert and try to find her friends.

The basis of this plan had formed the moment that Sly had made his proposal. She had seen instantly that here was a chance to transform herself from hunted nuisance to privileged insider; she had known at once that no such opportunity would ever emerge again to stop Stark. And stop it she must, that she knew.

Rachel’s instincts had reached the same conclusion as Chrissy’s logic. She could guess that if the world was to stand a chance, which surely it must, if only a tiny one, then those in control, those with power and influence, must be forced to take some responsibility for that which they had helped to create. It was obvious to Rachel that the fastest way to motivate the world was to make Stark admit to its vile plans and then be forced to use their colossal resources to help try and deal with the awful situation instead of running away from it. Therefore, from the first moment that she had been indoctrinated into Stark, she had resolved to use the unique position that her sauciness had presented her with to abort the launch.

However, she had not expected to be confronted by Sly, intent on rushing her straight into a ship and she had not expected to feel that she was betraying him.

‘What the fuck are you doing, Rachel?’ demanded Sly staring at the gun in disbelief. ‘Stopping the launch, Silvester. I’m sorry but nobody’s leaving. We’re going to the mission control room. Lead the way.’

Of course he protested, but she cut him short.

‘Shut up! I don’t want to hear. I tried to persuade you to give it up, I said let’s stay, you and me, but you’re such a selfish bastard, you wouldn’t do it. We’re going to the control room, lead the way.’

Sly was astonished, it was twenty years since anyone had spoken to him in that manner. Actually he was rather hurt. They left the room in silence.