Bloodshot--The Official Movie Novelization

by Gavin G. Smith

  “Who?” Harting asked.

  “Martin Axe.”

  The doctor looked around at the various screens until he found the image he was looking for: a photograph of Martin Axe and a map pinpointing his location in one of the most exclusive hotels in Budapest.

  “Alright, I see him,” Harting told him, purposefully sounding noncommittal.

  “You see him because I found his file. You guys do a lot of work with federal agencies, you know that?”

  Harting could hear that Bloodshot was feeling pretty pleased with himself right now. A glance at another screen showed the data trail that had led to the discovery of Axe.

  “You scraped a CIA database from our server? That is beyond illegal. I need you back here. All of Chainsaw is after you,” Harting told him, except he knew Garrison’s psych profile and knew how Bloodshot would respond to such a threat. It was tedious, but his wonderful creation had inherited the mannerisms of the weak flesh prototype.

  The doctor snapped his fingers twice at Dalton and Tibbs and gestured for them to go. Tibbs pounded Dalton on the shoulder before the pair left the ops center.

  “If they get in my way I’ll put them down,” Bloodshot promised.

  “Oh for...” This time the impatience wasn’t faked. He was so tired of having to deal with this kind of macho bullshit. In many ways it was a real shame that only the military and their attendant industries had pockets deep enough to fund his research. He was giving some of the greatest technological bounties humanity had ever seen to knuckle-dragging apes. “This isn’t a hit job, it’s a salvage operation. You are a billion-dollar prototype, my billion-dollar prototype, and I can’t—”

  “Doc! This is what I did.”

  That at least was true, Harting mused.

  “You don’t even know what you can do yet, what you can take,” Harting told him. In many ways putting such tech into someone like Garrison was a waste; on the other hand, bills had to be paid and Garrison was a valuable test subject.

  “Clearly I took a lot before,” Bloodshot said quietly.

  Harting looked up at the screen providing point-of-view from Bloodshot’s own eyes. As the car approached the small private airport Bloodshot was looking at the old scars on the back of his hands.

  “And it’s time for a live fire test,” Bloodshot told him.

  Harting straightened up, looking around the ops center, ensuring that, considering the current situation (and Eric), everything was running as it should. He allowed himself a brief moment of self-satisfaction. A system should be efficient, whether it was human or technological, and a really good system allowed for contingencies.

  * * *

  The muscle car roared across the airstrip past hangars housing expensive private planes. He pulled up outside one of the brightly lit hangars, stepping out into the sticky, humid air before the car had even rolled fully to a stop, striding across the concrete.

  “Just take a moment, think this through. You have no money. No passport.”

  Bloodshot wondered if there was a way to stop Harting contacting him through all the robotic bugs in his brain.

  “Don’t need it, I’m flying private,” he told the night as he strode toward the sleek executive jet. With his fragmented memory returning and the microprocessors filling in gaps in terms of pure information, Bloodshot understood how extraordinary rendition worked. He was convinced he had worked a few, either as prisoner escort or being responsible for capturing the target. He suspected he had never been comfortable with it. What it did mean was that he knew about the network of private airstrips and their tame air traffic controllers in countries that had laxer laws as regards interrogation, detention and torture than the US. Presumably a “different” approach to human rights was one of the reasons that RST was based where it was based.

  * * *

  “The Gulfstream... that’s a sixty-million-dollar aircraft. No. Do you even know how to fly?” Harting said into the microphone, allowing some exasperation to creep into his voice. Then he glanced at the screen that moments before had shown Martin Axe’s profile. The screen in question displayed the wireless feed from the microprocessors. Currently it showed the flickering pages of a flight manual, as well as fast-moving cockpit and flight simulation videos. Bloodshot, or rather the nanites he was a walking platform for, were learning to fly.

  Systems, Harting thought.

  * * *

  The door to the Gulfstream opened to Bloodshot’s touch, and he climbed into the jet’s luxurious interior.

  “I’ll figure it out,” he said.

  * * *

  Bloodshot was somewhere over the Himalayas, under a vast canopy of stars. Far below he could make out the tips of the peaks breaking through the cloud cover like islands in the sky. It had been a bewildering day and yet here he was en route to deal with the man who had taken his life, taken Gina’s life. It didn’t matter that he had never flown before. It didn’t matter that he was a walking technological marvel, or nightmare, depending on your perspective. Somehow this felt right, like he was taking it in his stride. At the back of his mind a thought like an itch made him wonder if that should be the case. Should this feel so... normal?

  CHAPTER 14

  If you had the money you could pretty much do what you wanted in certain parts of the world. This included having assault-rifle-wielding Russian mercenaries all but shut down the street outside the most opulent hotel in Budapest. The power that came with money aside, it was still a very unhappy Martin Axe that was hustled out of the hotel and into one of the waiting black SUVs as the sun rose over the Hungarian capital.

  * * *

  Harting was now standing over Eric’s shoulder as the tech tapped away at his keyboard, data scrolling down the monitor screen.

  “How’s he tracking him?” Harting demanded, glancing at the screen showing the CCTV feed from Budapest.

  Axe was all but being pushed into one of the identical SUVs by a black-clad Russian merc.

  Eric paused to study the scrolling data.

  “Well. It appears he cross-referenced every available auto-manufacturing database with live GPS data to identify all the vehicles in the area. Then he pinged them one at a time. All nine thousand of them.”

  A map of Hungary flashed up on the screen. Dots flared and then ghosted out like fireflies under glass.

  “Why?” Harting asked. He could have figured it out, but why bark when you had your own dog?

  On the screen a cluster of five dots blinked up on a highway, in a group. These dots did not fade away.

  “To find the five moving in a convoy.”

  Harting sat down, leaning back in the swivel chair. He wasn’t sure what he was most impressed with, Bloodshot’s strategy, or the technology that he’d built that enabled it.

  “Well, that’s new,” he mused.

  On the screen CCTV footage showed the five-strong convoy of armored SUVs racing along the banks of the “Blue” Danube. The river, however, was gray in the early morning ghost light, as the convoy passed the Hungarian Parliament. The vehicles turned onto the Széchenyi Chain Bridge crossing from Pest to Buda and into the Castle District, driving at speed toward the vast baroque complex that was Buda Castle. The convoy reached a ramp in the road and sank out of view as they descended into the tunnels beneath the castle.

  * * *

  Martin Axe was not having a good day. He knew someone was after him, didn’t know who, or even who had provided the anonymous tip-off to Baris. Despite the fact he was in an armored SUV speeding through the tunnels under the castle, surrounded by a small army of mercenary bodyguards, heading toward a super-secure bunker, he still couldn’t stop his leg from bouncing up and down. It was a childhood nervous tic that he’d never managed to shake.

  Despite the influence he had been able to wield here, he couldn’t wait to get out of Eastern Europe. Everything was so old here. He could tolerate certain parts of Asia, mostly the cities, and America, if he didn’t have to speak to too many Americans, but they c
ould keep this old-country, fairy-tale bullshit. He suspected that four decades of Communist rule hadn’t helped but it all just looked so old-fashioned. He desperately needed to get back to a proper country, like his native Oz.

  As well as being in Europe, and the thought of an imminent assassination attempt, his mood was not being helped by just how badly the meeting with the Russians had gone. Baris had arranged it through his old government contacts. Axe was pretty sure they had employed Baris before he had gone private sector. The Russians had not wanted what he had been selling, mainly his own expertise, and most humiliatingly of all it seemed as though they hadn’t even believed him. They just couldn’t see the potential of the advances that he was offering if they would just pony up the cash, in their thick Slavic minds. To their dull, cow-like brains it must have all sounded like science fiction.

  Axe took his eyes off the mercenary commander in the front passenger seat, talking into his tac radio in Russian, to look at the reinforced concrete walls of the Soviet-era tunnels as they sped through them. He was pretty sure that the commander’s name was Vasilov. Mercenaries only had the one name it seemed, like Madonna, or Bono. Baris had recommended Vasilov and his crew. They were ex-GRU Spetsnaz, Russian special forces. Apparently Vasilov had come up fighting a brutal counter-insurgency war in Chechnya. He had been one of Putin’s “Little Green Men,” among the first into the Ukraine during the “Intervention.” Good ole’ Vasilov had even seen action in Syria. Most of the men with him had served under him at one time or another.

  Speeding through the tunnel Axe saw nothing but curved concrete ahead of them, the bright sodium arc of the lights shooting by overhead so quickly that they smeared across his vision.

  Axe almost soiled himself as the lights went out and they were plunged into darkness. The panic felt like a bucket of ice-cold water thrown over him.

  “What’s going on?” he screamed.

  Five sets of headlights from the SUVs suddenly illuminated the tunnel, and the eighteen-wheeler truck barreling toward them.

  Axe’s eyes went wide.

  The truck swerved violently, hitting the side of the tunnel hard in a spray of sparks, jackknifing, the trailer swinging round toward the cab. The lead SUV in the convoy hit the truck hard enough to bounce up into the ceiling of the tunnel.

  Tires smoked as the remaining SUVs braked hard, swerving as the trained drivers struggled to control the heavy, speeding vehicles.

  The truck’s trailer tore free, flipping, tumbling through the tunnel in the strobing lights of the braking SUVs. The trailer was torn apart, jettisoning heavy bags of powder that burst as soon as they hit the concrete. An alabaster explosion engulfed the SUVs like a blizzard.

  It got very quiet then, very still. Even the convoy’s headlights were dim islands of light in the white clouds.

  “What the hell just happened?” Axe demanded. He could hear the fear in his own voice but he still sounded a lot calmer than he felt.

  “It’s blocked,” the driver said in heavily accented English.

  “Really?” Vasilov said, looking at the driver as though he was an idiot, before speaking into the mic of his tac radio. Axe had just about enough Russian to understand: “Team Two, see if we can move around it.”

  Outside the SUV, road flares burst into life and were flung into the whited-out tunnel. The hellish, flickering red light gave Axe glimpses of the split truck trailer, splintered wooden pallets and shredded bags of powder with Cyrillic writing on them. Axe had to suppress a hysterical giggle at the thought of the bags being full of cocaine.

  Two of the mercenaries stepped out of the second SUV. Assault rifles at the ready, aim-lights penetrating weakly into the thick cloud, their boots kicked up little puffs with every step. They ignited more flares and sent them spiralling into the white gloom.

  “Flour...” The first mercenary said over comms.

  Not coke then, Axe thought. He knew if he started laughing he’d never stop.

  The two mercenaries moved through the clouds of powder to the crumpled wreckage of the first SUV.

  “Team One is down,” the second mercenary said.

  Axe wasn’t surprised. Armored or not, they’d hit the truck and then the roof of the tunnel pretty hard.

  “What about the truck driver?” Vasilov asked from the front passenger seat of Axe’s SUV.

  The second mercenary made his way to the wreckage of the truck and peered inside.

  “The driver is gone,” he said over comms.

  “Dead?” the commander asked.

  “No. Gone. He’s not here.”

  A figure walked straight out of the haze toward Axe’s SUV, little more than a powerfully built shadow in the red light from the flares. He slammed a canister down on the hood hard enough to rock the sensitive suspension, then he raised a submachine gun and unloaded the entire magazine into the windscreen. Axe screamed and cowered in the footwell of the back seat. His vision filled with sparks from the bullets ricocheting off the spider-webbing armored glass. Axe gave serious thought to revisiting the soiling himself option.

  There was more gunfire, the muzzle flashes lighting up the darkness as two of the mercenaries from one of the SUVs in front of them fired bullet after bullet into the attacking gunman, and he went down.

  Axe didn’t even have a moment to breathe a sigh of relief before the canister the figure had slammed onto the hood ignited and turned the front of the SUV into a raging inferno of molten metal.

  “Thermite. Engine’s gone!” the driver cried, presumably in a bid to win a prize for stating the bloody obvious during a gunfight.

  “All teams. Full sweep. Eyes on everything,” the mercenary commander told his people over the comms.

  The doors on the remaining SUVs were flung open, and the mercenaries climbed out. Weapons swept left and right, up and down as they moved like cogs in a well-oiled machine, their training and experience on show. Axe’s experiences with the Russian dignitaries aside, their military freelancers were very capable. They had a lot of trigger time, were cheaper, and had fewer moral compunctions than their Western counterparts. At least that was what Baris had promised him. None of it impressed Axe today, however, as he was mostly trying very hard not to shit down his own leg because the car he was in was on fire!

  “Do something! We gotta get outta here!” he cried.

  “You sit. My men will handle it. We sweep... then switch cars,” Vasilov told him in a tone that did not brook argument.

  Axe couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. What kind of idiot wanted to remain in a burning vehicle? He felt like screaming this at the mercenary commander. The thermite was no longer burning. It had done its job, however, leaving a molten cavity in the hood of the SUV where the engine used to be. Axe thrashed from side to side trying to see where the figure was. Trying to get a glimpse of him, but he wasn’t sure how much he really wanted to see this particular ghost’s face.

  * * *

  Bloodshot’s eyes snapped open as he came back to life. Again. He could feel crimson mercury-like blood dripping off his shoulder. Nanites or not, it still hurt getting shot, Bloodshot decided. He could feel the cooling heat of the thermite-slagged engine block against his skin. He was aware of the mercenaries as they searched the area. The powdered white fog and the red-burning flares made the tunnel look like a hostile alien world. The nanite blood started to reverse its course, seeping back toward the bullet holes in his pale flesh.

  He thought of Gina. Just for a moment. And instantly his need for revenge was renewed and he became a focused white-hot knife of rage.

  Two mercenaries were approaching him through the cloud. To them he would look very dead.

  When they were close enough he erupted onto his feet in an explosion of powder. He moved with such speed that even the experienced mercenaries didn’t have time to react. The first he booted in the kneecap, hearing the satisfying snap of bone before bouncing the man’s head off the SUV. He broke the neck of the second mercenary and grabbed his
assault rifle before stalking into the white mist.

  Metallic flecks of blood knitted the holes in his flesh back together, fully healing him. He wondered just how long he could keep this up. He knew there had to be a limit to the nanites’ capabilities. Harting and KT had said as much when they had told him that the microscopic machines needed to be “recharged.” He pushed these thoughts away. He had other things he needed to focus on and it wasn’t really a concern as long as the nanites kept him going long enough to deal with Axe. That was all that really mattered.

  Then the mercenaries opened up. The flickering muzzle flashes illuminated the tunnel in strobing light, throwing everything into distorted relief. Bloodshot ran, moving from cover to cover, seeming to dance through the bullets that filled the air, moving with superhuman speed, returning fire when he had a shot. Feeling the kick of the butt of the assault rifle into his shoulder as another mercenary died. He grunted, staggered a little, but otherwise barely felt the bullets that found him, burying themselves in his augmented flesh. It didn’t matter. The pain was well worth it if he could get his hands on Axe.

  He could tell the mercenaries’ discipline was eroding as the incoming fire became more desperate, as they blazed through their magazines, fear trumping training.

  Bloodshot appeared where they least expected it. Fired, took another mercenary down – his skills as a killer so long practiced they’d become instinct – before vanishing into the clouds of powder again.

  He came around the side of the second SUV in the convoy. There were two mercs, who both swung round to face him. One of them brought his own assault rifle up but wasn’t nearly fast enough. Bloodshot put a bullet into his face, squeezed the trigger again to double tap him, and heard the metallic click of a hammer on an empty chamber. He tossed the assault rifle, grabbed the other terrified mercenary and dragged him through the open door of the SUV.

  Inside the vehicle bones were splintered and the man went limp.

  “He’s not going down!” the panicked voice crackled from the dead mercenary’s tac radio.