Exile

by James Swallow

  Across the way, the second fleeing gunman broke cover and sprinted toward the far side of the circular chamber, firing wildly over his shoulder as he made for a gap in the far wall. Lucy and the Russian ducked low and shot back, taking out the runner in a crossfire.

  The GRU operative came over as Marc warily approached the man he had shot and kicked his gun out of reach. He was badly wounded but still breathing – at least, he was until the moment the Russian aimed his silenced pistol at the man’s head and finished the gunman with an execution shot. The GRU operative glared at Marc, as if daring him to say something.

  ‘Is this it?’ said Lucy, moving carefully toward the gap in the wall.

  Marc nodded. The map he had seen on Simonova’s tablet showed the only entrance to the next chamber, the one closest to the underground reservoir. He held his breath as a low rumble sounded in the distance. ‘Train coming . . .’

  ‘We go when it’s loudest, right? Stay close to the walls. There won’t be much cover in there, and this place is a goddamned rat run.’

  ‘Got it.’ Marc muttered the acknowledgement under his breath and pressed up to the wall near the gap. The little cuts on his face stung from where tiny razors of metal had cut him in the wake of the mine blast.

  The sound of the passing train built to a crescendo, and Lucy gave a curt nod. The three of them burst through the entrance into the dead-end chamber and started running.

  Marc saw a cathedral-like space with a high ceiling, the floor dotted with discarded oil drums and the rust-chewed frames of abandoned fifties-era coupés. His mind took it in like a snapshot. Spread out along the length of the artificial cavern, there were thick stone supports close to the walls that were big enough to hide behind, and he aimed straight for the nearest one.

  At the far end of the chamber, maybe a hundred and fifty metres distant from the entrance, he glimpsed a low stone wall, more piles of debris, a quick blink of light off a disc of glass.

  A rifle scope –?

  A loud gunshot sounded and Marc heard the whirr of a heavy-calibre rifle round slice through the air, close enough to make him flinch. Another shot rang out in quick succession as he slammed into the support with a gasp, and spun in time to see the hit strike the pelvis of the GRU operative coming up behind him. Before the Russian stumbled to the ground, a third bullet hit him in the chest and he landed in a messy heap.

  Marc swore under his breath and looked away, finding Lucy against the opposite support on the other side of the tunnel. She was holding her pistol up, straining to listen as the thunder of the shots died away.

  ‘7.62 round,’ she said quietly, just loud enough that he could hear her. ‘Single shot semi-auto. Best guess, shooter down there has got a scoped SVD trained right on us.’

  ‘You can tell that all from the sound of the shot?’

  She gave a wan nod. ‘You got your geek skills, I got mine.’ Lucy was silent for a moment. ‘So if he’s a shooter with good judgement, he’s not gonna spray and pray. Not at this range. I’m guessing he’s got a five-round mag. Any more adds too much drag on the rifle . . .’ She held up her hand, fingers spread, then folded three of them. ‘Get me?’ She pointed with her thumb and forefinger like a pistol. ‘We go at the same time.’

  ‘What if he’s got a ten-round magazine instead?’

  ‘We’ll find out the hard way.’

  ‘Wait . . . .’ Marc began, but he ran out of breath. What was he going to say? Don’t run? Don’t risk your life? It all seemed trite.

  ‘One. Two.’ She began the count and Marc sucked in a lungful of air, tensing for the break. ‘Go!’

  They burst out of cover and sprinted forward, racing toward the next two support blocks, a third of the length down from the end of the echoing stone chamber. Marc concentrated on the pace, trying to weave and present a difficult target as he moved around a couple of overturned drums. He heard the rifle discharge and the sound of it was such a shock to his system that for a terrible moment he was afraid he had been hit. But then he collided with the stone support and almost knocked himself down with the force of it.

  Marc turned around and the first thing he saw was Lucy lying on her back in the middle of the chamber, her gun lying out of her reach. Colour drained from his face as he feared the worst, but then she coughed and moved slightly. He could hear her wheezing, struggling to take in each laboured breath.

  His first impulse was to dash out and go to her, try to drag her out of the firing line, and Marc had to physically stop himself from following through. This was an old sniper trick, he knew. Wound a soldier so that others in the unit would be waylaid trying to help them.

  He’s stalling for time, thought Marc, and that could only bode ill. He stuffed the CZ 75 into his jacket and found the damaged sat phone, turning it over in his hand. The digital camera on the back of the handset was still operating and he toggled it to a live view. Holding it at an angle so he could use it to peek out around the edge of the stone support, Marc extended a little of the phone’s length out of cover and took snapshots of the chamber beyond.

  He glanced at the images. There was part of a boot visible by the side of the tumbledown wall on the right. The shooter was there, concealed by the cover, and dug in hard. Marc tried the trick again, holding out the phone, this time turning it so he could get a different angle.

  The gunshot and the pain came in the same instant. Perhaps it was light glittering off the camera lens, or maybe a flicker of movement, but the sniper saw the object and instinctively shot at it. The phone was blasted out of Marc’s grip and he cried out as the splintering glass and the broken aluminium case lacerated his hand.

  He hissed in pain, closing the hand into a fist, and in the dying echo of the rifle shot he heard another distinctive sound. An oiled snap as a receiver locked open, followed by the soft click of metal on metal.

  Reloading. Lucy had been right. Five shots, and the shooter had emptied their magazine. In seconds, the rifle would be ready to fire again and this tiny fraction of opportunity would be gone.

  He was running. Marc wrenched the Czech pistol from his jacket with his left uninjured hand and fired at the low wall as he hurtled across the last twenty metres toward it. All the wounds and contusions, bruises and strains he had earned over the past few days now worked in concert against him, a force of drag trying to pull him to the ground before he could get close enough to take out his target.

  The shooter saw him coming and swung the long rifle around, yanking back the slide to charge a round into the weapon’s chamber. So close, he didn’t need to use the scope, pulling it into his chest to aim by instinct.

  But Marc was already firing, marching the last rounds from the pistol up the stone wall and onto the rifleman’s torso as the gun’s recoil pulled up the muzzle.

  A shot hit the rifleman in the sternum and another cut across his neck. His arm jerked with a wild nerve impulse and he fired the SVD into the dirt, even as the slide on Marc’s pistol locked back and the gun ran dry.

  Marc’s headlong momentum sent him over the low wall, mantling the stonework and coming down hard. He brought the spent pistol down like a cudgel and cracked the rifleman across the face with it, blood flicking up as the two of them reeled back. The shooter gasped and coughed up blood as Marc stamped on the rifle, feeling the pressed-metal frame distort under the heavy blow.

  Behind the wounded man was the same steel case Marc had seen a dozen times over. In the images from the NATO Exile intercepts, the snapshots in Jalsa Sood’s workshop, in the trunk of the fleeing Mercedes, Ramaas’s threat videos and the rusting space of the kill room. The same silver bulk, scuffed and dented, promising destruction.

  He sank to his knees next to the case and with bloody hands, he felt for the latches to open it. Marc felt that terrible, inexorable pressure inside his skull once again, as if he were somehow sensing the apocalyptic force contained in the device, desperate to break free.

  The case opened easily and revealed the workin
gs inside. The timer mechanism was already active, the numbers on the digital display spooling down toward zero and detonation.

  Marc saw 275 on the clock. Less than five minutes remaining until the trigger point. He fumbled for the arming key Simonova had given him.

  A shadow fell across the open case, and droplets of blood spattered on the sandy ground. Marc whirled, barely fast enough to avoid the keen tip of a diamond-shaped kunai blade burying itself in his back. The rifleman was a mess, bleeding profusely from the wounds on his chest and face, but he was still alive, still coming at Marc on pure rage, the hollow fury in his eyes stark and wild.

  Marc rolled away from the case as the rifleman slashed at the air between them, trying to force him into a corner. He lost the key as he desperately backtracked, and the rifleman trod it into the sand, ignoring it.

  The blade came at him in a sideways arc and Marc grabbed the man’s wrist, struggling to hold him back. His attacker was wiry but strong, and driven by adrenaline. The man brought up his other hand, flipping a second dagger into his grip by the iron ring at the end of its shaft, and swept it up. The tip scraped across Marc’s armour vest and cut into his undershirt as he tried to block the second blade’s advance.

  They struggled against one another, neither man gaining or retreating. Marc let out an angry yell and slammed his head forward, butting the rifleman in the face where he had hit him moments before. His assailant hissed in pain but his death-grip didn’t slacken.

  Marc was afraid to look away to the case, afraid to see the number on the countdown timer, afraid he would give the rifleman the opening he needed to stab him through the heart before the nuclear fire claimed them all.

  Then a suppressed pistol chugged twice and the other man stiffened in shock as two bullets hit him squarely in the back. All resistance fled from his body in an instant and he tumbled to the floor, leaving Marc to rock back against the stone wall.

  ‘Fuck that guy,’ growled Lucy, the smoking SRS semi-automatic in her hand. Her face was slick with sweat and she was clutching her side, clearly in great pain as she shuffled across the tunnel.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Marc took a step toward her, but then his brain caught up to him and he crouched, digging the arming key out of the dirt.

  ‘Vest took most of the impact,’ she explained. ‘Might have broken some ribs . . .’ There was blood on her hand. ‘Ah, man. Popped my stitches too.’

  ‘If this doesn’t work, that’ll be the least of our problems.’ Marc crouched over the open case and felt across the workings of the nuclear device. His fingers brushed the metal cylinders of the core and Jalsa Sood’s dying words echoed in his memory. Right cylinder, nine rods. He counted the components and found ten rods on both sides. Any lingering doubts he had about the device in front of him faded.

  Marc found the control panel mounted in a shock-resistant frame in one corner. He located a cover latch and flipped it open with his thumb. Beneath it was a slot for the key.

  The countdown clock showed the numerals. 153. 152. 151 . . .

  Marc turned the key over in his hands, and now that the moment was on him he was frozen. What if it was rigged? Could Ramaas have done that, booby-trapped the bomb so it would go off no matter what happened?

  Was there one last lie above them all?

  ‘Do you have a good reason for waiting until the last goddamn minute?’ Lucy snapped. The effort of the words drained her and she slumped against the stone wall.

  Marc’s heart thudded in his chest as he held up the key. The sliver of metal had been bent slightly when the rifleman had stood on it. ‘This . . . may not work.’ But Lucy was right – he had no time to waste. Marc inserted the key and it went in halfway before jamming. He tried to turn it, but it wouldn’t rotate.

  The timer was at 110.

  ‘For cryin’ out loud,’ puffed Lucy. ‘You disarmed bombs before, right? I know you did. I was there.’

  ‘Kind of. But those weren’t nukes,’ he corrected absently.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  Marc had to fight down the adrenaline rush cracking though his hands, willing them to stay steady. In less than two minutes, the Exile device would initiate nuclear fission and then nothing that they had done up until this point would matter. Marc’s struggle to prove himself right about the Kurjaks, Rubicon’s race to isolate Ramaas and his ‘piece of the sun’, all of it would be erased by the murder of hundreds of thousands of people and the slow, lingering poisoning of thousands more. One man’s arrogant belief that he had been chosen by his God as a tool of vengeance would be all that remained.

  ‘I do this wrong, we’re dead. Everyone is dead, Lucy.’ Admitting it hollowed him out.

  ‘I trust you, Marc,’ she gasped. ‘C’mon. Be lucky. For everyone this time.’

  ‘Not luck,’ he told her. ‘It’s a calculated risk.’ And then before she could reply, Marc slammed the heel of his hand into the key with every bit of strength he could muster. Metal twisted and rivets popped, making Lucy flinch back by reflex, but the key went all the way in. Marc twisted it hard, glaring into the weapon’s innards, daring it to defy him.

  With a buzzing click, the clock turned dark.

  ‘I take back what I said,’ Lucy offered, breaking the silence that followed. ‘You’re not lucky. You’re off the goddamn chain.’

  *

  ‘It wasn’t a punch,’ he insisted. ‘I didn’t punch a nuclear bomb.’

  If it hadn’t been for the steady, throbbing pain that was wrapped tight around her chest, Lucy might have actually laughed at that. ‘Whatever you say.’

  They trudged up the stalled escalator to the ticket hall of the Dante Metro station and the two GRU agents Simonova had left at the van were waiting for them. One of the men gestured urgently toward the exit.

  Marc, Lucy and the Russian were clustered together, each supporting the others, although Simonova had insisted on personally carrying the defanged suitcase nuke up from the old tunnels. She pushed herself away from them and spoke to her men in a harsh, rapid tone.

  ‘How is this going to get covered up?’ muttered Marc. ‘Whole bunch of dead guys in the caverns under Naples? The Italians aren’t going to be pleased about that . . .’

  Simonova heard him and turned to give Marc a cold stare. ‘It is a better trade-off than a radioactive pit where their city used to be. My agency will talk with theirs . . .’ Then her manner shifted and Lucy saw what was coming next. Simonova nodded at her men, and the other two agents turned their guns in their direction, still holding them close to their jackets. ‘The Russian Federation and the Intelligence Directorate thank you both for your assistance in recovering our property. However, you will need to accompany us for a debriefing.’

  ‘Seriously? We told you everything back on the sub,’ Marc shot back. ‘There’s nothing else.’

  ‘That ain’t it,’ said Lucy, with a frown. If the GRU decided to consider the two of them as loose ends in need of tying off, this would not end well.

  ‘Move,’ growled one of the agents, gesturing with his gun. His comrade came in and snatched the SRS pistol Lucy had taken, prodding her roughly in the shoulder when they didn’t walk fast enough.

  ‘We started this mess in a black-site prison,’ said Lucy in a low voice. ‘Really don’t want to end it in another one.’ But Marc shot her a sideways look and something in the Brit’s manner gave her pause. ‘What?’

  ‘We’re not done yet,’ he said wearily, and as much as she wanted to believe him, they were both nearly dead on their feet.

  If it came to fight and run, she wasn’t sure how far they would get – but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try.

  They emerged from the Metro’s north entrance and the VW van was parked a short distance away on the edge of the piazza, engine running, and the driver staring straight ahead. Simonova’s men hid their weapons and came in close. If any of the shopkeepers, tourists or pedestrians passing by on the pavement saw anything troublesome, none
of them remarked on it.

  When the group was two metres from the van, the sliding door on the side opened to reveal a pair of policemen in dark blue tactical gear and balaclavas, each holding an MP5 submachine gun. They were NOCS officers, members of the Polizia di Stato’s elite SWAT division.

  ‘Arrenditi!’ shouted one of them, jumping down to train his weapon on the Russians. The other cop spoke into a radio mike clipped to his gear vest and suddenly blue and white patrol cars flooded in from all directions, disgorging more armed officers. Ambulances and police vans blocked off the ends of the road in a chorus of hooting horns.

  The Italian cops surrounded the group in moments and Lucy raised her hands, shooting Marc a look. ‘Why am I thinking you had something to do with this?’

  ‘I made a call,’ he admitted. ‘I reckon someone heard.’

  An armoured van from the Polizia’s bomb disposal squad halted at the kerbside as the regular police fanned out, pushing back the civilians to a safe distance. Lucy saw Marc’s shoulders sink as a dour-looking man in a smart jacket climbed out of the vehicle and strode toward them. A second guy, doughy and thickset, trailed after him, blinking in the sunshine. As he approached, the man fixed an identity pass to his jacket and Lucy glimpsed a United Nations logo on it.

  ‘You know those two?’

  Marc gave a weary nod. ‘We used to work together.’

  ‘Dane,’ said the man in the jacket. ‘You never cease to disappoint. You couldn’t just follow the orders you were given, for once?’

  ‘I did quit,’ Marc retorted. ‘Didn’t you get the memo? But a thank you would be nice, de Wit. Because I’m about to give you the prize of your bloody career.’ He looked across at the other man. ‘Jurgen. I got something for you.’ He jerked a thumb at the steel case on the ground.

  De Wit’s face froze and it took him a moment to re-gather himself. As the NOCS officers demanded the Russians surrender their weapons, figures in HAZMAT gear hovered nearby, aiming particle detectors and other handheld sensors at the case.