Order of the Black Sun Box Set 8

by Preston William Child

  “Jesus Christ! Three minutes? We will be roasting by then!” Sam screamed.

  “Three minutes, Sam! Hold on!” Purdue shouted. In the door of the server room, Charles and Lillian had come to see what the bellowing was about. They knew better than to ask or interfere, but they listened to the drama from a distance, looking dreadfully worried. “Of course, changing tracks runs the risk of a head-on collision, but I don’t see any other trains right now,” he mentioned to his two staff members. Lillian prayed. Charles swallowed hard.

  On the train, Sam gasped for air, having no solace from the icy landscape that thawed as the Valkyrie passed. He lifted Nina to resuscitate her, but his body was the weight of a 16-wheeler and he could not move any further. “Mach 3 in a few seconds. We’re all dead.”

  The sign for Poliskaya appeared in front of the train and, in a blink, passed them by. Sam caught his breath, feeling his own body weight multiply rapidly. He could see nothing anymore, when suddenly he heard the clatter of a railroad switch. It felt as if the Valkyrie was derailing from the sudden break in magnetic field to a normal rail, but Sam held on to Nina. The turbulence was immense, throwing Sam and Nina’s bodies into the machinery of the room.

  As Sam had feared, a kilometer further, the Valkyrie began to derail. She was simply moving too fast to stay on the tracks, but by now, she had decelerated enough to come to less than normal speed. He braced himself and held Nina’s unconscious body against him, covering her head with his arms. A magnificent crack ensued, followed by the hell-bent vessel capsizing at what was still an impressive speed. A tumultuous crash folded the machine in two, shedding the plates beneath the exterior.

  When Sam came to on the side of the tracks, his first thought was to get everyone out before the fuel combusted. It was, after all, atomic fuel, he thought. Sam was no expert on which minerals were most volatile, but he was not taking chances with Thorium. However, he found that his body had completely failed him and he could not move an inch. Sitting there in the Siberian ice, he realized how intensely out of sorts he felt. His body weighed a ton, still, and a minute ago, he was being cooked alive while now he was cold.

  Some survivors of the delegation gradually crawled out into the freezing snow. Sam watched how Nina slowly came to and he dared to smile. Her dark eyes fluttered as she looked up at him. “Sam?”

  “Aye, love,” he coughed and smiled. “There is a God after all.”

  She smiled and looked up at the grey sky above, exhaling in relief and pain. Grateful, she said, “Thanks Purdue.”

  33

  Redemption

  Edinburgh - Three weeks later

  Nina was treated for all her injuries by a proper medical facility after she and the other survivors were plucked up by helicopter. It took her and Sam three weeks to make it back to Edinburgh, where their first stop was Wrichtishousis. Purdue, as a way to bond with his friends again, arranged for an exuberant catering company to host the evening’s food, so that he could dote on his guests.

  Known for his eccentricity, Purdue set a precedent when he invited to the private dinner, his housekeeper and butler. Sam and Nina were still black and blue, but they were safe.

  “I believe a toast is in order,” he said, lifting his crystal champagne glass. “To my hardworking and ever loyal slaves, Lily and Charles.”

  Lily giggled while Charles kept his poker face. She shoved him in the ribs. “Smile.”

  “Once a butler, always a butler, my dear Lillian,” he replied wryly, evoking laughter from the others.

  “And to my friend, David,” Sam chipped in. “May he receive his medical treatment only in hospital and refuse home care forever!”

  “Amen,” Purdue agreed with big eyes.

  “Incidentally, did we miss anything in the time we were recuperating in Novosibirsk?” Nina asked through a mouthful of caviar and salt biscuit.

  “I do not care,” Sam shrugged and swallowed down his champagne to top up with whiskey.

  “You might find this interesting,” Purdue assured them with a gleam in his eye. “This was on the news after the report of the deaths and injuries of the train tragedy. I recorded it a day after you were admitted to the hospital there. Come see this.”

  They turned to the screen of a laptop Purdue had on the still charred bar counter. Nina gasped and nudged Sam at the sight of the same reporter who did the story on the ghost train she recorded for Sam that time. It was subtitled.

  ‘After claims that a ghost train had killed two teenagers several weeks ago on a deserted railway track, this reporter brings you the unthinkable once again.’

  Behind the woman, in the background, was a Russian town called Tomsk.

  The mangled bodies of American tycoon Clifton Tuft, Belgian scientist Dr. Zelda Bessler and Scottish mayoral candidate Hon. Lance McFadden were discovered on a railroad track yesterday. Locals reported seeing a locomotive appear seemingly from nowhere, while the three visitors were reportedly walking on the tracks after their limousine had broken down.

  “Electro magnetic pulses do that,” Purdue grinned from his station behind the bar.

  Tomsk mayor, Vladimir Nelidov, condemned the tragedy, but explained that the so-called ghost train’s appearance was just the result of a train passing through in the heavy snow that was falling yesterday. He insisted that there was nothing odd about the terrible incident and that it was just an unfortunate accident because of low visibility.

  Purdue switched it off and shook his head, smiling.

  “Looks like Dr. Jacobs elicited the aid of Olga’s late uncle’s colleagues at the Russian Secret Society for Physics,” Purdue laughed, recalling that Kasper mentioned the failed physics experiment in Sam’s interview.

  Nina sipped her sherry. “I wish I could say I was sorry, but I am not. Does that make me a bad person?”

  “Nope,” Sam replied. “You are a saint, a saint who gets gifts from the Russian Bratva for killing their biggest opponent with a fucking dagger.” His statement caused more laughter than she thought.

  “But all in all, I am delighted that Dr. Jacobs is now based in Belarus, away from the vultures of the Nazi elite,” Purdue sighed. He looked at Sam and Nina. “God knows he redeemed himself a thousand times over for his deeds when he called me, otherwise I would never have known you were in peril.”

  “Don’t exclude yourself, Purdue,” Nina reminded him. “It is one thing that he alerted you, but you still made the biggest decision to redeem yourself.”

  She winked, “You answered.”

  END

  The Hunt for Excalibur

  Prologue

  The island was undefended, yet many had died in the initial attack. Two days into the occupation, it became evident that the landscape was ideal and the inhabitants easy to subdue, therefore leading to instant hoisting of German flags. Fear ran rampant among those who chose to stay after the evacuation, but they hoped that adherence would profit them mercy.

  Four years on, the islanders had become accustomed to their occupants, although most of the Jewish citizens were dispatched to concentration camps by now. Other islanders had to suffer under the greed of Nazi garrisons, full of soldiers who had to be fed. These intruders annexed all fishing and agriculture, leaving the islanders starving. Rations were garnered for the soldiers first, and this caused a lot of subdued resentment among the islanders.

  Ronald Hall was a widower, having lost his wife to pneumonia while she was pregnant a year prior. At thirty years of age, he was already tasting the bitter essence of life, but his older brother, Colin, cheered him a great deal with his eccentric recklessness. They elected to give the Nazi’s no morsel of fear on their part, although they kept within the rules as not to be picked out unnecessarily. Their town had come to a crisis, and the two brothers decided to foolishly brave the bad weather on October 13, 1944.

  When the night was ripe and the weather so foul that no man would walk there by choice, the two set out to the former town hall, where the German Luftwaffe had sett
led their headquarters for Guernsey. Curfew was imposed between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m., which only proved the amount of trouble Colin and Ronald would be in, should they be discovered. All the two brothers wanted to do was to relieve the German stores of some food, in order to help their neighbors – Jewish families still living there, as well as those exploited by the alien monsters for their farming production.

  “Hurry,” Colin whispered to his trailing brother, his blond hair whipping in the cold gusts. They crawled up the hillock from where they could examine the guard stationed. As planned, they split up at the base of the low hill, using the surrounding tree line to advance towards one of the three smaller entrances to the building hosting the Nazi officials.

  “Meet you at the tower base,” Ronald told Colin, who nodded affirmatively.

  Each managed to find a way into the storage rooms, where the guards did not walk in this weather. Above them, only mounted security lights revealed any movement to the eye, their beams only displaying the showering rain that gleamed as the droplets fell through the light. On occasion, some cruel commandant would force one of the troops to walk that way in the pouring rain, but the Hall brothers even had this timed right.

  Ronald was the first one to make it out. He waited at the tower base, a ruin several meters from the town hall. The path was relatively safe, as the shadows cast by the tall trees impaired visibility from the roof of the guarded building. He waited in the heavy downpour, the sack in his hands growing heavier by the minute as it took on the water.

  “Come on, for God’s sake,” he murmured under cover of his collar, shrinking his body deeper into the shelter of the branches. Finally, he saw his brother careen forth from the building, making straight for him. On his back, he was carrying a bag of provisions that weighed him down greatly, but what brought sheer panic onto Colin was what was on his tracks.

  He ran right into Ronald and screamed, “Run! Run, Jesus, just get out of here!”

  Without question, Ronald obeyed the order and scarpered into the wet grassland on the other side of the trees. On Colin’s heel were two Nazi’s, shooting at them. After managing to break in undetected, they certainly made a calamitous exit. Their only saving grace was that they knew the terrain better than the men occupying it. Under a leaning oak, they took refuge to wait for the soldiers to pass and hopefully give up the search.

  “They are going to kill us. Oh my God, we are going to die,” Ronald whispered to himself.

  “Shut your mouth, Ron!” his brother shoved him. “Just be quiet. Under those uniforms, they are just men, after all. They are going to get too cold to run after a few canned goods and medicine.”

  “I do hope you are right,” Ronald sighed nervously, his voice shivering from the cold that gripped him. Their coats were drenched through, but their lives were more important. Soon the dreaded shadows of the German devils appeared in the edge of the mounted security light’s beam. Colin grabbed onto his brother’s sleeve as they both held their breath. In the hellish storm, the wind was muffling the conversation between the two men as they discussed the next course of action. The two British brothers sat frozen in position, watching the Germans’ body language. It appeared that the soldiers had called off the search because of the harsh environment, but as they turned in their tracks to leave, they summoned someone to take their place.

  The Hall brothers glanced at one another, but remained perfectly still. It was not long before the most terrifying sound came to their ears. Thus far, they had thought it only a rumor, but they were about to meet one of the most sinister characters purveyed about among the islanders for years. From afar, the sound grew louder, and even in the absence of the Nazi soldiers, the two brothers clawed at each other in terror.

  “What is it?” Ronald asked Colin, but Colin could not move. In fact, he closed his eyes and prayed. “Colin!” he pushed his brother, but he needed not hear it from Colin, as the dire shape of her came into view, accompanied by the growls of her beasts.

  Colin finally opened his eyes to look upon the horrible shapes, ready to pounce in the light. “Holy shit, Ron, she is real!”

  “Who? Who is it?” Ronald asked.

  His brother gasped, “The woman with the dogs.”

  1

  Best Laid Plan

  Over the course of the day, Court was feeling apprehensive. He had never done something like this before, but he really needed the money. It was Tuesday. Paul, his drinking buddy and instigator from the local pub, were working at the junk yard next to Hamish Auto Repair, where Court was a mechanic.

  Both men had families, but Court had to take care of his wife, grandson and the child’s mother, since the boy’s mother could not take care of him by herself. Court and his wife thought it only fair to help out with young Brian, since the child’s father was Court’s son. It was sore to admit, but Court’s son had abandoned his child and girlfriend when he got the news of her pregnancy.

  Court did not raise his boy that way, but his wife insisted that it was not their fault that their son turned wayward. Joe was a grown man and he had chosen his path, one of delinquency, destination regret. They just referred to Joe’s girlfriend as their daughter anyway, as she was close family, and more loyal than Joe, who was blood.

  “You done with Dover’s diff work, mate?” Tony asked. Tony Hamish was Court’s boss only in name, the signature on Court’s checks. Other than that, the two middle-aged men had known each other since early high school at Queen’s Park and kept a close friendship. It was when Court was retrenched from his job at the ironworks that Hamish stepped in to offer his friend a job.

  “Almost, Tone,” Court answered, his oil-stained face wincing under the hoisted up chassis of the Peugeot 406.

  “Been taking a bit long on that, haven’t you? You alright, mate?” Hamish asked.

  “Aye. No worries. My hands are just clumsy today, but I will get it done long before closing,” Court reported, lying to sound far more emotionally stable than he had been of late.

  He could never tell his friend and employer about his personal problems, his wife’s illness and his mounting debt. Court was a proud Glasgow fighter, not some needy sorner, sponging on the charity of others. Another thing he was not was a criminal. Thus far, in his fifty years on the planet, Court Callany had never broken the law, save for the odd traffic fine.

  That was why tonight’s plan had him scatterbrained all day long. Paul was to meet him after work and then they would start on rectifying their respective social situations. Court did not know Paul’s true circumstances, and neither did he care, but he knew that Paul had a solution lined up and that was more than what Court could ever accomplish. He was definitely not much in the way of a planner or executer, but with Paul’s ‘sure thing’, it was worth a try. If the plan worked, he was looking at a substantial amount of money with which he would be able to plug the leaks in his life.

  The smell of oil and rubber filled his nostrils as his greasy hands fumbled at the bolts of the car’s differential. It was the smell of his second home. He loved fixing cars, but it was simply not enough to make ends meet. Tonight he would be introduced to a new kind of employment, if the term could be applied to what Paul from the Pub had planned.

  Several customers had come to collect their cars already, as closing time drew nearer. Wiping his hands on one of his dirty cloths, Court stood upright to stretch out his back. On the other side of the fence, he saw Paul. He was quite hideous to look at. Greasy hair clung to his head in long straight streaks, enveloping a face that had seen better years. Wrinkles sank deep into his skin and his thin lips covered rotten teeth that repelled anyone he smiled at.

  It was unclear to the Court if Paul had done this kind of thing before, but by the looks of him, even back in high school, it was not too farfetched to believe. Sure enough, he sounded as if he knew what to do, and unfortunately that was all Court could count on. The two men nodded at one another in acknowledgement, and carried on with their work. Tony Hamish came marching from th
e office to talk to Court, looking a bit awkward in the face.

  “Erm, listen, Court,” he started, casting his eyes down to the messy floor. “Just got a call from Connor, and he said he is held up in a meeting. He will collect the car at 6.30, if you do not mind.”

  Flabbergasted, Court’s wringing hands hastened in the cloth. “But we close at six.”

  “I know that, Court,” Hamish said in an irate tone, “but he is a regular customer and I am sure you can stay thirty minutes later to wait for him?”

  “Why can you not wait for him?” Court asked. “I have a meeting after work.”

  Hamish smiled amusedly. “What, at the pub?”

  “No,” Court retorted in frustration. “Believe it or not, Tone, I have a life after work, you know.”

  His boss pulled back visibly, mocking his employee. “I am so sorry, Mr. Callany, but without this job you would have neither, would you now?”

  Court had to concede that it was true. He had to be grateful that he had a job, even with unexpected sacrifices such as these, but what he could not tell Hamish, was that his time after work was reserved for something on the other side of legal. He nodded in defeat, looking at the dirt on his hands as he saw the cruel irony in it. Throughout his life, he always found himself trying to wipe away the dirt and grime, using a fouled rag. It was the epitome of his existence to try fixing problem by creating other problems. There it was, always wiping dirt off with more dirt, only bringing forth a different manner of pollution.

  “Aye,” a subdued sound escaped him as he looked at the cloth in his hands. “I will be here.”