The Edge of Armageddon

by David Leadbeater

  He trudged in the middle of the line, ignoring the frightened faces all around. After an hour they slowed and Marsh saw a rolling, sandy plain ahead, dotted by straggles of trees, cacti and little else. The entire group crouched down.

  “Good so far,” the leader whispered. “But now is the hard part. Border Patrol cannot watch the entire boundary constantly but they make spot checks. All the time. And you—” he nodded at Marsh “—have requested the Diablo crossing. I hope you are ready for it.”

  Marsh grunted. He had no idea what the little guy was talking about. Soon though, men started disappearing, each with a small group of immigrants, until only Marsh, the leader, and one guard were left.

  “I am Gomez,” the leader said. “This is Lopez. We will see you safely through the tunnel.”

  “And those guys?” Marsh nodded at the departed immigrants, effecting a fake American accent as best he could.

  “They pay only five thousand per head.” Gomez made a dismissive gesture. “They take their chances with the bullets. Do not worry, you can trust us.”

  Marsh started at the sly smile fixed firmly upon his guide’s face. Of course, the entire journey had progressed far too smoothly to expect it to continue. The question was—when would they jump him?

  “Let’s get into the tunnel,” he said. “I can feel prying eyes out here.”

  Gomez couldn’t stop a flash of worry flickering across his face and Lopez scanned the darkness all around. As one the two men ushered him in an easterly direction, at a slight angle but toward the border. Marsh blundered along, deliberately misstepping and appearing inadequate. At one point Lopez even reached out to help him along, a helping hand which Marsh catalogued for later, logging it as a weakness. He was by no means an expert, but a bottomless bank account had once afforded him many things beside material trappings, the experience of world champion martial artists and ex-Special Forces troops among them. Marsh knew a few tricks, rusty though he may be.

  They walked for a while, the desert stretching out around them and almost soundless. When a rolling hill appeared ahead, Marsh was fully prepared to start climbing, but Gomez stopped and pointed out a feature he otherwise would never have seen. Where the sandy ground met the sloping foothills a pair of small trees met a tangle of brush. It wasn’t toward this arrangement that Gomez walked, however, it was a careful thirty paces to the right and then ten more up the steepest slope. Once there Lopez scanned the area with infinite care.

  “Clear,” he said at length.

  Gomez then scrabbled around for a length of buried rope and began to pull. Marsh saw a small section of the hillside rise up, displacing stones and brush to reveal a man-size hole that had been hewn out of the living stone. Gomez slipped inside and then Lopez waved the barrel of his gun at Marsh.

  “You now. You too.”

  Marsh followed, ducking his head carefully and watching for the trap he knew was only moments away from being sprung. Then, as an after-thought, the man with two sides switched channels, deciding to inch back out into the darkness.

  Lopez was waiting, gun up. Marsh slipped, boots scrabbling down the stony slope. Lopez reached out, weapon dropping, and Marsh brought a six-inch blade swinging around, burying its point in the other man’s carotid. Lopez’s eyes went wide, and a hand came up to staunch the flow, but Marsh was having none of it. He punched Lopez between the eyes, wrestled his gun free and then kicked the dying body down the slope.

  Fuck you.

  Marsh dropped the rifle, knowing Gomez would catch on quicker than necessary if he saw it in Marsh’s hand. Then he re-entered the tunnel and quickly made his way down the initial passage. It was rough and ready, held up by shaking timbers, dust and mortar dribbling down from the roof. Marsh fully expected to be buried at any moment. Gomez’s voice reached his straining ears.

  “Don’t worry. That is just the false entry to scare any who might stumble upon this tunnel. Come further down, my friend.”

  Marsh knew exactly what would be waiting for him “further down”, but he did now have a small element of surprise. The tricky part would be disabling Gomez’s weapon without sustaining a nasty wound. New York was still thousands of miles away.

  And it seemed much further, stood as he was under the Mexican desert, feeling the drip-drip of dirt down his back, and surrounded by the stench of sweat and vegetation, his eyes stung by dust.

  Marsh ventured forward, crawling at one point and dragging the backpack behind, a strap looped around his ankle. It’s full of clothes, he thought at one point. Just clothes and maybe a toothbrush. A nice cologne. A sachet of coffee . . . he wondered where the Americans might station their radiation sensing devices, then began to worry about the radiation itself. Again.

  Probably something you should have checked before setting off.

  Ah, well, you live and learn.

  Marsh made himself laugh just as he emerged from the narrow tunnel and into a much larger one. Gomez was bending down, holding a hand out to help.

  “Something funny?”

  “Yeah, your fucking teeth.”

  Gomez stared, shocked and disbelieving. That sentence it seemed, was the last thing he expected to hear at this point in their journey. Marsh had calculated that it might be. As Gomez tried to compute, Marsh rose, twisted the gun in Gomez’s hands, and rammed the butt into the other man’s mouth.

  “Now do you see what I mean?”

  Gomez wrestled hard, pushing Marsh away and bringing the barrel back toward him. Blood sprayed from his mouth as he bellowed, and teeth fell to the floor. Marsh ducked under the long barrel and came up with a hard punch to the jaw and another to the side of the head. Gomez staggered, eyes betraying that he still couldn’t believe this odd duck had gotten the better of him.

  Marsh wrenched the knife from a sheath around the Mexican’s side as they grappled. Gomez flung himself away, knowing what would happen next. He collided with the rock wall, smashing shoulder and skull with a heavy groan. Marsh threw a punch which glanced off the Mexican and then hit rock. Blood seeped from his own knuckles. The gun came up again, but Marsh levered himself so that it rose between his legs, the business end now rendered useless.

  Gomez head-butted him, their blood mingling and spraying the walls together. Marsh staggered but turned away from the next strike, and then remembered the knife still held in his left hand.

  A powerful shove and the knife scraped Gomez’s ribs, but the Mexican had dropped his gun and planted both hands on Marsh’s knife arm, thus arresting the force and stopping the plunge of the blade. Pain twisted his features but the man had manage to halt certain death.

  Marsh immediately concentrated on his free hand, using it to punch again and again, seeking out vulnerable areas. Together, the men struggled hard, inching up and down the tunnel, striking wooden beams and shuffling through mounds of dirt. Runnels of sweat hit the sand; heavy grunts like rutting pigs filled the man-made space. No quarter was given, but no ground was gained. Gomez took every punch like the hardened street fighter he was, and it was Marsh who started to weaken first.

  “Look . . . forward to . . . cut . . . cutting you . . .” Gomez panted, eyes feral, lips bloody and flared back.

  Marsh refused to die in this lonely, hellish place. He yanked the knife back, twisting it out of Gomez’s body and then stepped back, giving the two men a few feet of separation. The gun lay on the floor, discarded.

  Gomez came at him like a devil, screaming, rumbling. Marsh brushed the attack off as he had been taught to do, turning a shoulder and allowing Gomez’s own momentum to slam him head first into the other wall. Then Marsh kicked him in the spine. He wouldn’t use the knife again until the end was a foregone conclusion. He had also been taught that the most obvious weapon wasn’t always the best one to use.

  Gomez peeled his body off the wall, head hanging, and turned around. Marsh stared into the blood-red face of a demon. It fascinated him for a moment, the contrast of the crimson face and the white-fleshed neck, the black hol
es where yellowed teeth had once nestled, the pale ears sticking almost comically out to either side. Gomez swung a punch. Marsh took it on the side of the head.

  Now Gomez was wide open.

  Marsh stepped forward, head spinning, but retaining enough cognizance to thrust truly with the knife, sending its blade up into the other man’s heart. Gomez jerked, breath whistling out of a shattered mouth, and then locked eyes with Marsh.

  “I paid you with fair intentions,” Marsh breathed. “You should have just taken the money.”

  These people, he knew, were traitorous by nature and no doubt by nurture too. Betrayal would be their second or third thought of the day, after “why is there blood on my hands?” and “who the hell did I end up killing last night?” Possibly a thought to the after-effects of a cocaine-blast in there as well. But Gomez . . . he should just have taken the money.

  Marsh watched the man slither to the ground, then took stock. He was bruised, aching, but relatively unhurt. His head pounded. Luckily, he had thought to pack paracetamol in one of the backpack’s small pouches that nestled alongside the nuke. So handy that. He had a pack of baby wipes in there too.

  Marsh wiped and swallowed the tablets dry. He’d forgotten to pack water. There’s always something though, isn’t there?

  Without a backward glance at the dead body he lowered his head and began the long walk through the underground tunnel and into Texas.

  *

  The hours wore on. Julian Marsh trudged underneath America, a nuclear weapon strapped to his back. The device might be smaller than he’d expected—although it still bulged the backpack—but the internal gubbins were no less heavy. The thing dragged at him like an unwanted friend or brother, pulling him back. It made every step a strain.

  Darkness surrounded and almost overwhelmed him, disrupted only by the occasional hanging light. Many were broken, too many. It was dank down here, the scuttle of unseen animals always painting nightmare images in his brain that played in wicked harmony to the random itches running across his shoulders and down his spine. Air was in limited supply, and what there was, was of poor quality.

  He began to feel weary beyond measure, to hallucinate. Once, Tyler Webb chased him and then an evil troll. He fell twice, scraping knees and elbows, but dragged himself back to his feet. The troll transmogrified into evil Mexicans and then a walking taco, bursting with red and green peppers and guacamole.

  As the miles wore on he began to feel that he might not make it, that everything would turn out better if he just lay down for a while. Take a little nap. The only thing stopping him was his more colorful side—the part that had once stubbornly survived childhood when everyone else wanted him to fade away.

  Eventually brighter lights appeared ahead and he breached the other end of the tunnel, and then spent many minutes gauging what kind of a reception he might receive. In truth, he expected no reception committee—he’d never been expected to reach the land of the free.

  By design, he’d arranged completely separate transport at this end. Marsh was careful, and no fool. A helicopter should be stationed a few miles off, awaiting his call. Marsh removed one of three burner cells secreted around his body and in the backpack, and made the call.

  No words were passed when they met, no comments on the blood and dirt that encrusted Marsh’s face and hair. The pilot lifted the bird into the air and swooped off in the direction of Corpus Christi—the next and penultimate stop in Marsh’s grand adventure. One thing was for sure, he’d have a boatload of stories to tell . . .

  And nobody to tell them to. One thing you didn’t regale the party guests with was how you’d managed to smuggle a suitcase nuke from Brazil to the east coast of America.

  Corpus Christi offered a little respite, a long shower and a quick nap. Next would be a twenty-four-hour drive to New York, and then . . .

  Armageddon. Or at least the edge of it.

  Marsh smiled as he rested face-down on the bed, head buried in a pillow. He could barely breathe but quite liked the feeling. The trick would be to convince the authorities that he was serious and that the bomb was authentic. Not hard—one look at the canisters and fissionable material would make them sit up and beg. Once that was done . . . Marsh imagined the dollars rolling in like some kind of Las Vegas slot machine throwing out money at a rate of knots. But all for a good cause. Webb’s cause.

  Maybe not. Marsh had his own plans to execute whilst the odd Pythian leader was off chasing rainbows.

  He slithered off the bed, landing on his knees before rising. He applied a little lipstick. He rearranged the room’s trappings so that they made sense. He exited and took an elevator to the basement where a rental awaited.

  Chrysler 300. The size and color of a bleached whale.

  Next stop . . . a city that never slept.

  *

  Marsh piloted the car effortlessly as the world-renowned skyline hove into view. It seemed ridiculously easy to take this car into New York, but then who knew any different? Well, somebody might. It had been over three days since he left Ramses’ bazaar. What if news had leaked out? Marsh didn’t change a thing. He was just one more traveler meandering his way through life. If the game was up he would find out very soon. Otherwise . . . Webb had promised that Ramses would provide men willing to help at this end. Marsh was counting on them.

  Marsh drove blind, not knowing nor particularly caring what would happen next. He was cautious enough to stop before entering the great city, finding a night’s refuge on the other side of the river as the sun began to set, adding to the unsystematic route of his journey. An L-shaped motel sufficed, though the bed linen was scratchy and undeniably unclean, and the window frames and floors edgings were inches thick with black grime. Still, it was unremarkable, unplanned and pretty much undetectable.

  Which was why, around midnight, he sat up straight, heart pounding, as someone knocked at the door of his room. The door faced the parking lot, so in truth it could be anyone, from a lost drunken guest to a prankster. But it might also be the cops.

  Or Seal Team Six.

  Marsh arranged knives, spoons and glasses, and then brushed the curtain aside to peer outside. What he saw rendered him momentarily speechless.

  What the . . . ?

  The knock sounded again, light and breezy. Marsh didn’t hesitate, but opened the door and allowed the person to step inside.

  “You have surprised me,” he said. “And that doesn’t happen too often these days.”

  “I’m good that way,” the visitor said. “One of my many attributes.”

  Marsh wondered about the others, but didn’t have to look too far to spot at least a dozen. “We have only met once before.”

  “Yes. And I immediately sensed a kinship.”

  Marsh straightened his frame, now wishing he’d taken that fourth shower. “I thought all the Pythians were dead or captured. Apart from Webb and I.”

  “As you can see,” the visitor spread her hands, “you were wrong.”

  “I’m pleased.” Marsh offered a smile. “Very pleased.

  “Oh,” his visitor also smiled, “you’re about to be.”

  Marsh tried to ward off the feeling that all his birthdays had come at once. This woman was odd, maybe as odd as himself. Her hair was brown and cut spiky; her eyes green and blue just like his own. How spooky was that? Her outfit consisted of a green woolen pullover, bright red jeans and dark blue Doc Martins. In one hand she held a glass of milk, in the other a glass of wine.

  Where had she gotten . . . ?

  But it didn’t really matter. He liked that she was unique, that she somehow understood him. He liked that she’d turned up out of nowhere. He loved that she was entirely different. The forces of darkness were pushing them together. Blood red wine and bleach white milk were about to mix.

  Marsh relieved her of the glasses. “You want to be on top, or on the bottom?”

  “Oh, I don’t mind. Let’s see how the mood takes us.”

  So Marsh positioned the
nuke at the head of the bed where they could both see it, seeing an additional spark flash comet-like through Zoe Sheers’ eyes. This woman was powerful, deadly, and perfectly bizarre. Probably mad. Something that suited him no end.

  As she stripped her clothes off, his dual mind wandered away to peruse what was to come. The thought of all the excitement promised for tomorrow and the next day as they brought America to its knees and played happy with the nuke made him perfectly ready for Zoe as she tugged his trousers down and climbed on board.

  “No foreplay?” he asked.

  “Well, when you placed that backpack just so,” she said, watching the nuke as if it might be watching her. “I realized I didn’t need it.”

  Marsh grinned with happy surprise. “Me too.”

  “You see, lover?” Zoe sank down onto him. “We were made for each other.”

  Marsh then realized he could see her slow-moving, extremely pale ass in the reflection of the mirror that hung on the wall just above the old dresser, and past that the backpack itself nestled among the bed’s pillows. He stared into her well-tanned face.

  “Damn,” he blurted out. “This ain’t gonna take long.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Matt Drake readied himself for the team’s wildest ride yet. A nasty nauseating feeling thrashed in the pit of his stomach, and it had nothing to do with the bumpy flight, simply the product of tension, anxiety and disgust at the people who might try to perpetrate such horrendous crimes. He felt for the people of the world who went about their everyday business uninformed but contented. They were the people he fought for.

  The choppers were chock-full of soldiers who cared and put themselves in harm’s way for the people who made the world a good place to be. The entire SPEAR team was present, with the exception of Karin Blake and the addition of Beauregard Alain and Bridget McKenzie—aka Kenzie, the katana-wielding, artifact-smuggling, ex-Mossad agent. The team had departed Ramses’ devastated last bazaar in such a hurry that they had been forced to bring everyone along with them. Not a minute could be wasted, and the whole team was prepped and informed and ready to hit New York’s streets running.