Harker was already on the move as both gunmen ripped the darts from their bodies, and he flung himself low out through the open window as the sound of gunfire opened up, a bullet just grazing the heel of his shoe. The impact flipped his foot forward and sent him tumbling onto a pile of rubble below with a painful thud.
The gunfire fell silent and a scuffling of boots could be heard as the tramps scarpered for cover. Harker leapt back to his feet and limped to one corner of the house, rubbing frantically at where a sharp edge of brick had jammed into his thigh during the fall.
Above him the exchange of gunfire started up again, but it had to be blind fire because there was no way Botha and his team could be seen in the darkness where they had taken up position as Harker initially approached the abattoir buildings.
Ignoring the stinging in his leg, he stumbled to the back door in time to catch sight of the shadowy silhouette of Legrundy slipping in between a fence and an old storage shed, heading towards the corrugated holding pens he had encountered earlier. Immediately he began to chase her, but was stopped dead in his tracks when the female tramp appeared at the back door with her rifle aimed directly at him.
Harker had been caught cold, but instead of feeling the impact of a bullet in the chest, he watched as the woman’s rifle barrel suddenly tipped downwards and her eyelids began to droop.
The tranquilliser.
Without hesitation Harker leapt forward and slammed one side of his pistol against the woman’s face. With a nauseating crack as her cheekbone gave way, she crumpled to the ground. He then kicked the rifle away from her quivering, outstretched hand and took off into the darkness, in the direction of the holding pens, still gripping his pistol tightly.
With the only light coming from the kitchen doorway, it was difficult to get his bearings. After slamming his kneecap into a corner of the shed, with a muffled yelp he came to a stop at the first holding pen, dropped to a painful crouch and peered over the partition. The blurry outline of the pens lying beyond began to come into focus as Harker’s vision acclimatised, and as he watched for any signs of movement. The night air fell quiet.
Back at the house a couple more gunshots rang out, followed by a subdued groan. Satisfied that Botha had the situation under control, Harker turned his attention back to the enclosures ahead of him. The tranquillisers had worked even faster than Botha had suggested and though Avi Legrundy might be tough, she wasn’t invincible. Therefore she couldn’t be far away, and so he began creeping deeper into the maze of rusting and disused pens, his pistol aimed forward, its barrel quivering due to his own shaking hands. This wasn’t due so much to the adrenalin coursing through his veins as to his own nerves getting the better of him, so he loosened his grip on the gun and, with gritted teeth, moved onwards.
Each footstep made a squelching sound in the muddy earth. Legrundy would most likely hear him coming, so he decided to throw caution to the wind and call out after her.
‘There’s nowhere to go, Avi,’ he bellowed, using the assassin’s first name almost cordially, even though he knew it would make little difference. ‘That tranquilliser has enough stopping power to bring down a fully grown rhino, so don’t try and resist it. I promise you won’t be hurt. The Templars aren’t killers like your beloved cult of Mithras.’
The mere mention of the Templars produced a wheezing groan from somewhere near the last holding pen, and with his gun still outstretched Harker approached the last corner and peeked around the edge warily.
Avi Legrundy lay slumped against the corrugated fencing, saliva dribbling from one corner of her mouth. But that icy glare was far from gone and she stared at Harker with a sincere and burning hatred. ‘I’ll phll uuuu.’
Her words were unintelligible and Harker moved over and knelt down next to her, his gun now dipping towards the floor. ‘I can’t tell what you said, but I’m sure it was something unpleasant,’ he replied acidly as she hissed more words that sent spittle running down her chin.
‘I said, I’ll kill you.’ Much clearer now.
Legrundy’s right arm swung towards him, but it was a sluggish blow, and Harker easily intercepted it with his free hand by grabbing and holding her wrist, exposing the four-inch, serrated steel Tekna knife held loosely in her palm.
‘You’re seriously like a stuck record, Avi,’ he remarked bluntly before pulling the weapon from her hand and throwing it across the floor, well out of her reach. ‘Your mantra’s becoming old and predictable.’
Legrundy managed only a quiet grunt of anger before finally succumbing to the chemicals in her system. Her eyes fluttered momentarily then closed as she fell into a deep, drug-induced sleep.
He expelled a relieved breath, then sank back on his haunches as he stared down at the sleeping woman. She had been responsible for so many deaths, and those were only the ones he knew about. How many others had succumbed to a painful and miserable death of the kind that this Mithras assassin had dished out during her lifetime? How many final images had been of this face he now looked upon with such distaste?
As Harker gazed down at her motionless body, he heard a rustling sound behind him and jumped up to see Botha making his way over with a 9mm semi-automatic Beretta firmly gripped in one fist.
‘Where is she?’ he demanded anxiously, then his shoulders relaxed as he caught sight of the incapacitated Legrundy splayed out at his colleague’s feet. ‘Move,’ the Templar ordered, and he pushed Harker to one side before pressing his fingers against the assassin’s neck.
‘She’s out cold,’ Harker assured him calmly, now feeling pretty pleased with himself for having orchestrated such a successful plan.
But Harker’s moment of personal pride was brought to a swift end when Botha stood back up and gave him a firm slap around the face.
‘What the hell was that for?’ he exploded, but Botha seemed unmoved by his indignation.
‘I should never have let you go inside first,’ the Templar growled, as Harker rubbed at his cheek. ‘My job is to protect you at all times and that came far too close. Another few seconds and you would be lying dead back there in that house, and all for the sake of satisfying your ego.’
Since acquiring his own personal protection unit three months earlier, Harker had found the line between his personal space and being smothered by security becoming increasingly blurred. With the Legrundy pledge to kill him hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles, of course he had appreciated the protection thrust upon him by the insistence of the Templars. But he had always known that once Legrundy was finally tracked down, he would need to confront her face to face. This wasn’t ego per se, but rather a real need to see it all through to the end, considering how much she had put him through, not to mention the people he cared about. Not so much ego but a sense of justice.
As Harker stared into Botha’s unyielding gaze, he now felt a mild pang of discomfort. OK, maybe ego had come into it… by just a sliver.
‘Anyway, it’s over now,’ Harker offered as he glanced down at Legrundy, who was now sleeping like a baby without a care in the world.
Botha’s expression began to relax and with a long outward breath he nodded agreement. ‘OK. I’ll have someone package her up, but right now we have to get you back inside the house.’
The last suggestion had Harker immediately looking around him in concern. ‘Are there more of them?’
Botha shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think so, but there’s something inside you need to see.’
‘What is it?’
‘Not exactly sure. I only caught a glance at it as I headed back here to find you, but it made an impression on me.’
Harker eyed the Templar with curiosity because Xavier Botha was a man prone to understate rather than exaggerate the facts, not unlike most Englishmen purported to do until the world-renowned stiff upper lip mentality had relaxed in recent decades. If Botha admitted it had made an impression on him, then it was important.
‘Show me,’ Harker urged, then gave Botha a firm slap across t
he face.
‘What was that for?’
‘That was for allowing me to enter that place all alone.’ He gave a sarcastic smile and, as Botha’s nostrils flared, started back towards the house.
‘Cheeky bastard,’ the Templar cursed, but with a smile, then headed after him, leaving Legrundy to continue dreaming whatever twisted things ran through her warped mind.
The body of the female tramp was still lying where Harker had left her, although now handcuffed. He stepped over the motionless woman and then back into the kitchen, while Botha ordered one of his men to secure Legrundy immediately.
‘In here, Alex.’ Botha gestured him into the room Legrundy had emerged from.
The room itself was just as shoddy as the rest, in keeping with Legrundy’s shabby-looking armed guards. Only a few shreds of the floral wallpaper had survived on the walls here and the floor was filthy with an assortment of dust, dead insects and pellets of rat crap, giving the whole place a kind of public-toilet vibe.
‘Take a look at this.’ Botha gestured to the nearest wall, where a large world map had been tacked up, with a solitary, thick, red dot drawn on it to mark a location.
As Harker got closer he realised the mark had not been made by any pen. It was a single spot of blood that had left a thin drip line running down the surface of the poster. ‘What is this?’ he wondered as he began noting the location marked by the sickly blotch. ‘Gibraltar,’ he muttered to himself as Botha also now showed interest.
‘I’ve no idea what it means, but it was that table full of stained cutlery that caught my attention.’
‘Cutlery?’ Harker turned away from the map to look over to where Botha was pointing on the far side of the room, where a scratched wooden table stood with bloodstained tools spread carelessly over it. The glinting blade of a butcher’s cleaver stood upright at its centre, having been rammed into the surface, and as Harker moved closer he recognised the other scattered implements. If you ignored the blood splattered amongst them, it was a collection that any professional gardener or butcher would have been proud of.
‘What the hell have they been doing here?’ Harker muttered, almost not wanting to know.
‘I don’t know, but nothing good.’
Harker was leaning over to inspect the implements further when he heard a low-pitched groan to his left. He spun towards it, then discerned the outline of another doorway in the gloomiest corner of the room.
Botha had his pistol drawn already and aimed towards it. With a nod to Harker, who had similarly raised his weapon, he made his way over there and gently grasped the handle. With a glance back at Harker, he easily wrenched open the door. Harker’s nose immediately wrinkled at the smell of urine intermingled with blood that wafted through.
The room itself was little more than a closet in which sat a man wearing blue jeans and an ill-fitting, grey T-shirt many sizes too big for him. He was tied into a wheelchair, his face covered by a brown woven sack over his head.
Harker initially flinched at the sight, but on noticing the man’s legs twitch he dashed forwards even as Botha holstered his gun and wheeled the man further into the centre of the room. The hood was peppered with blood spots but it was the severed stump remaining where his right hand should have been that made Harker recoil, even as the bound figure now began to shake violently while emitting a high-pitched whimper.
Gulping apprehensively, Harker grasped the top of the sack and slowly pulled it off. What he saw had him once again recoiling, dropping the sack to the floor, but this time in astonishment because he had not seen anything like this before.
It was a man, that much was clear, but his features were unlike anything Harker had seen previously. The forehead was double the size of most people’s, slanting back at an unusually steep angle, and the ears were large and bulbous like a veteran boxer’s yet possessing no earlobes. The cheekbones were so thick and pronounced that both eye sockets appeared buried deep into the man’s face. And stranger still, the eyes weren’t round but teardrop-shaped, elliptical almost, and now focused on Harker in desperation and pain.
‘In here,’ Botha called out through the doorway as Harker hastened back to the implements table and swiped up a small hunting knife, the only blade not already covered in blood. ‘I need help, now.’
One of the Templar security team appeared at the doorway but only managed a few steps before the bound man’s bizarre appearance had him gaping in stunned silence. Meanwhile Harker slipped the knife under the white plastic cable ties restraining the prisoner, slicing through one and then the other.
Free of his bonds, the man peeled himself off the seat like a dead weight, and tumbled straight into Harker’s waiting arms with a groan.
‘What are you waiting for?’ yelled Botha and only then did the Templar rush to the man’s aid, as the other member of the team appeared in the doorway, looking equally appalled by the spectacle.
Botha shot Harker a look of confusion over the man’s bizarre appearance but he said nothing as his teammate pulled a roll of bandages from his black flak jacket and tossed them over to Botha, who began addressing the fellow’s bloodied stump.
‘You’re safe,’ Harker murmured, but the man appeared uninterested. Instead, he raised his remaining hand upwards and motioned for Harker to move closer.
Normally Harker would have done so without pause, but he caught sight of the man’s surviving hand and hesitated, his eyes widening in surprise. Not at the blood encrusting the man’s fingertips, but rather at the fingers themselves. There were five of them – not including the thumb.
As Harker gazed at the surplus digit with a blank expression, it was Botha who, in concern, swiftly snatched the man’s hovering wrist and held it tightly while the fellow hissed in pain, before shaking his head.
‘I don’t think he wants to hurt us,’ Harker uttered quietly, recomposing himself, as Botha, eyes still full of suspicion, finally released his grip and returned to his bandaging task.
The man weakly grasped for the side of Harker’s cheek and gently pulled it towards him until Harker was within inches of those trembling lips. His words were spoken in nothing short of a whisper but they were unlike anything Harker had heard before. Yet, as he continued speaking, a few words started to become recognisable.
‘What’s he saying?’ Botha asked, having finished bandaging the man’s wrist, but Harker waved his question aside in frustration as he attempted to focus on what was being mumbled.
The man managed one more sentence before finally succumbing to his injuries, his arm slipping back down by his side as his body began to shake violently.
‘He’s going into convulsions,’ Botha stated sharply, turning to the two other members of his team as Harker held the victim tightly. ‘Get the car up here on the double and call Great Western Hospital. Tell them we’re bringing in the victim of a car accident.’
‘Car accident?’ Harker asked as the men disappeared through the doorway. Botha offered him a stern glare. ‘If you want to explain to the police how this man came to lose a hand, then by all means go ahead.’
‘I don’t think it’s his injury they’ll have an issue with,’ Harker replied, glancing down at the strange-looking person still clasped in his arms. Apart from those obvious physical abnormalities, the man’s skin appeared a light green olive colour, and only now did he notice the double row of teeth, one behind the other, set into his lower jaw. ‘What the hell is he?’
Botha looked just as confused, shaking his head as his two teammates returned and carefully plucked the man out of Harker’s arms, before moving him out towards the front door.
‘What did he say to you?’ Botha asked, still clearly shocked at the fellow’s appearance.
‘I’m not entirely sure,’ was all Harker could offer. This merely drew anger from the Templar bodyguard.
‘Not entirely sure? I thought you were supposed to be a textual archaeologist. Aren’t languages your thing?’
‘It’s not that simple,’ Harker snapped
in response, irked by the insinuation. ‘It’s not a language I’ve heard before, but I did detect some similarities to Mesopotamian languages.’ Harker then fell silent as possibilities churned through his mind, and after a few seconds his eyes began to light up as he finally pieced the mumbled words together.
‘Well?’ Botha demanded, in fact more annoyed by his own surprised reaction to the wounded man than Harker’s need for additional time to come up with a translation.
Harker spent a few more moments mulling it all over before latching on to the best answer he could offer. ‘There are only a few words I recognised. The dawn… no, the dusk… now the dusk is upon us and… and… with it the birth of man… no.’ He gave a frustrated shake of his head. ‘The rebirth of the civilisation. We have now returned.’
Chapter 4
‘What the hell is that?’ asked the surgeon, as the strange-looking humanoid was wheeled into the operating theatre on the third floor of Great Western Hospital by two male nurses.
‘I was hoping you could tell me, Dr Cordon,’ Botha replied, shooting Harker an uneasy glance. ‘But it looks as if he’s been tortured and lost a lot of blood.’
‘And also his hand,’ Harker managed to add.
‘That I can see,’ Dr Cordon said as the nurses heaved the body onto the operating table with deep grunts. It had needed three of them to lift the deceptively heavy patient onto the gurney at the hospital’s side entrance.
‘Leave us to it. Now,’ the doctor added, before the operating theatre’s double doors slammed shut and left them both outside in the hospital corridor.
‘How do you know this doctor?’ Harker asked Botha, more than a little concerned by the looks the humanoid had received from the medical team.
‘It’s not going to be a problem. The staff here are friends of ours.’
The connotation of a Templar association immediately had Harker puzzled. ‘Are you telling me we just happen to have our own people here in this hospital, right at this moment?’
The Shadow Conspiracy Page 3
