A Killing Air

by Nigel Price

  “Oh do fuck off, Clive,” Harry said. With the fullest force he could muster, he ignored the weapon and went for the man. With all his might Harry clapped his open hands. The thing was, Miller’s head was between them. The palms slammed onto Miller’s ears, one perfectly onto each. The shockwave burst both ear drums and Harry was rewarded by the expression on Miller’s face. He took it as down-payment for all that the creature had done to him, to Lisa, to Yan Yajun, and to countless others.

  “That’ll do, Harry.”

  Harry turned to face Ryder Chau as he came out of the smog. He held a pistol aimed at Harry’s gut. “That’ll do.”

  The sound of people approaching was louder. They were homing in on the shots, the shouts, and Miller’s screaming which went on and on as he rolled in agony on the floor. Harry kicked him to shut him up. Without success, but that didn’t matter.

  “Give me the SIM,” Chau ordered. “Now.”

  His free hand was clutching his own gut. There was blood oozing between the fingers. In his enthusiasm to get Harry, Mr Wai had shot his boss. Harry appraised the sticky mess dripping down Chau’s front. “Crossfire,” he said. “It can be a right bugger.”

  Ryder Chau was fighting to remain conscious. He even smiled. “Don’t think you’ve won,” he hissed, struggling to stay on his feet. Harry could see that the floor was beckoning to him.

  “You’re screwed, Ryder. Hate to say it, dear fellow, but you are. Right. Royally. Screwed.”

  “Let’s see, shall we?”

  Soldiers poured out of the smog on all sides. Guns at the ready, they gaped at the extraordinary spectacle of bodies, some moving, some not. They looked from face to face. From Harry to Ryder Chau.

  Lisa opened her mouth and started to speak. The soldier nearest to her shouted for her to shut up. His gun was in her face. He was young. Inexperienced. Clearly didn’t have a clue what was going on or who he was supposed to be arresting. Or shooting. Or bayoneting.

  Ryder Chau drew himself up and addressed them in his most commanding voice. The soldiers listened, confused, looking from person to person.

  As Harry listened, Chau identified himself. Stated that Harry and Lisa were enemies of the people. That they should be shot immediately. That he himself needed medical treatment.

  Harry looked down at Lisa. Made a move towards her. Instantly he heard the sound of automatic weapons being cocked. Safety catches clicked free. A dozen teenaged trigger fingers twitched uncertainly, longing for a clear order.

  And then they got one.

  “Stand down.”

  Harry looked round. A figure walked towards the gathering. Harry squinted to identify the newcomer. There were two of them.

  David Lin and a young woman. He walked straight up to Ryder Chau and held out his hand. Chau stared at him for a moment, then released the gun into the outstretched hand. His legs gave way. As he slumped to the floor, Harry found it hard to tell if the soldiers rushing to his side were supporting or arresting him. Actually he didn’t care. He was too busy attending to Lisa.

  With Ryder Chau being hustled off site, and his team – both alive and dead – being dealt with, David Lin snapped out commands and a medic materialised and went to Lisa’s aid.

  “Hi Harry,” Lin said. “I got here as fast as I could. You’re a bugger to follow. And my, my you’ve been busy.” He turned to the woman who had arrived with him. “Oh, you haven’t met Susan. I’m afraid she wants to know what you’ve done to her car. Padrone.”

  Fifty Four

  Harry always felt that the thing about endings was that there was never any such thing. Whenever he’d been anywhere or done anything, there was never an end. Something always came afterwards, usually leading directly out of the thing that had just gone before. It was odd, in a way, but inevitable. That was just the way the world worked.

  This time however, he wondered.

  Of course Death was a pretty certain ending. Clear cut. Or was it? Even that was hard to say. All those rumours of tunnels of light, an overpowering feeling of an all-embracing love. The warmth as you wafted towards whatever lay at the end. A life review. Relatives.

  Images of his parents and grandparents flickered and were gone. He missed them. Things had been so simple then.

  He eased back and looked at the world spread out below him. Death was a strange thing. The great unknown. The last great adventure, perhaps. In the most private of moments he found himself longing for it. Life was so fucking hard.

  The choice of Scotch had come down to two. Chivas or Highland Park. A premium blend, or single malt. So he had opted for both. Several glasses in, the Gobi desert beneath him presented a tray laden with treasures. Like a god, he looked down upon mountain ranges and ridge lines. Snow-capped peaks and cultivated valleys. How many generations had farmed there? Warred there? Searched for love, life and meaning there?

  Like a game of shove-a-penny, as he aged he felt himself and all those about him inexorably shuffling towards the front. Towards their own moment of tumble into the great unknown. And what would he, Harry Brown, leave in his wake, as remembrance of his passing?

  For one thing, a wrong righted. Small in the great scheme of things, but significant nonetheless. Several days previously he had stood in a park with Lisa Tang. Journalist. Sort of. Together they had scattered the discovered ashes of Mrs Yan Yajun. They had buried the fragments of memory stick as emblem of something or other. Her doggedness. Her sheer bloody will and faith and …whatever.

  To Harry’s surprise Lisa had said prayers of a sort he had been unable to follow. There had been some Chinese this-and-that, stuff with burning paper notes signifying money for use in the afterlife, pieces of fruit, and incense. Lots and lots of incense. He had stood on the sidelines, entranced. Not so much by the procedure, which struck him as cock. But by the woman herself. His eyes couldn’t leave her.

  On the other side of her had stood his friend David Lin and his partner, soon to be wife, Susan. She hadn’t said a lot to Harry. Not after being reintroduced to her car. The little red Chery. He would indeed repay her for the damage. Just as soon as he could.

  There had been ceremonies too for Herbert Zhu and for Hans Zhang. Family members for both had appeared like unexpected travellers emerging out of the desert. Explanations had been presented, justifying their deaths. Both men had slipped into Eternity with the ease of cats into their garden. For them there would be flowers and sunshine, a world to explore and exult in. Whatever reward awaited the just and the brave, would be there for them. Tied up with ribbon. Anointed with oil. In so far as he prayed, Harry prayed it was so.

  For Ryder Chau there had been prison. Worse, obscurity. Quite simply, he had vanished as if he had never trodden soil or breathed the air above. The new leader and President of China had emerged with a nonchalant wave to move his country into the next phase of its development towards greatness. Smart suit, enigmatic smile, he possessed the qualities expected of him. Qualities that were acceptable to the invisible echelons that had moved him to their front as caricature of Leader. For now he would symbolise what the nation required. Until the next time. The King is dead. Long live the King.

  Miller was a caged songbird. Ears repaired, he tweeted and chirped and sang his empty heart out for the authorities who possessed his soul. It was likely that at some point he would see the light of day. When the grey men had finished with him. Whereupon he would be sent back to England. Thereafter a life of disintegration awaited. Harry had seen it with similar characters before. Somewhere, a bar reserved a corner for him. A table with stained beer mats, and drunkards even more derelict to hang on his tales of past greatness. Peering through their own destruction they would know him a liar, while accepting his rounds. Yan Yajun would have her revenge. It would be wrought throughout year upon year of increasing irrelevance and, finally, death.

  For Harry, on the other hand, there had been a new Smartphone. With it, a Niagara of texts and emails from Delaney, from Brannigan and from triple-chinned Alderton, tight
and pinched as a snake’s anus. The promise of a return to his old life appalled him. And yet here he was. Business Class. High over the Gobi, aiming for Siberia, for Russia, over the top towards Europe, England and home. Hours in the sky. Head in the heavens. And supper on the way.

  He had chosen his meal. Tenderloin and claret. But first, a few more Scotches would do.

  Do for what? What was there still to kill? The inner Harry. There as before. Like a leper he carried his cankers and sores with him. To wherever he might go. Be it Paradise or Hell.

  He took a long, deep drink from his glass. The light from the 40,000ft-high sky glinted off the ice cubes chinking in the tumbler. The killing air had gone. Here there was light. For now, there was life too.

  And here, coming towards him down the aisle, wobbly as a rumble of turbulence buffeted the Boeing’s cylindrical airborne oasis, came Lisa Tang. Journalist. Sort of.

  She dumped herself into the seat next to him. Refastened her belt. Shuffled and settled, returned from the loo. She looked at him and gave a long, long, long smile. And then took his hand.

  “What now, Harry Brown?” she asked. He knew it was coming. It was scrawled across her beautiful golden face as she erupted in giggles. “Charlie Brown.”

  Her hilarious joke. The funniest in the world.

  If you enjoyed A Killing Air, please share your thoughts on Amazon by leaving a review.

  For more free and discounted eBooks every week, sign up to our newsletter.

  Follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

  About the author

  Nigel Price, who wrote also under the pseudonym Anthony Conway, read English and Philosophy at St David’s University College, Lampeter.

  After training at Sandhurst he was commissioned into 7th Duke of Edinburgh’s Own Gurkha Rifles, remaining with the Brigade of Gurkhas for twelve years. He fought in the Falklands War.

  His first novel, The Moon Tree, deals with the 1940s Burma War and the years of conflict in Asia that followed. The Caspasian series set in the 1920s and 30s, follows the adventures of Captain John Caspasian, Indian Army officer and defender of the Empire.

  The Black Hand is the opening novel in Jaeger, a spy series set during the Great War in homage to one of Nigel’s heroes, John Buchan.