by Simon Toyne
Then he waited.
There were only two runways at the airport. Fortunately the cargo flights mainly came and went on runway two, the one closest to the hangar. If the wind was in the wrong place, however, he would have to taxi the long way round to the other strip. The seconds ticked by.
He saw movement, over to his right, two sets of blue lamps spinning lazily above the bouncing beam of oncoming headlights. It was a patrol truck, skimming across the blacktop, parallel to the perimeter fence, heading towards the guardhouse. Gabriel saw it starting to slow.
Time to go.
He pushed the twin throttle levers forward, eased off the brake and felt the plane lurch as the twin props caught the cold night air and pull him forward across the tarmac. Over to his left a big passenger jet was waiting at the end of the main runway. It was pointing in the same direction. This meant the wind was ahead of him, so if he did have to take off without proper clearance he’d at least be heading in the same direction as the rest of the traffic.
The C-123 bounced over the ground, picking up speed as it lumbered towards the head of runway two. The patrol truck had parked now and someone in uniform was climbing out of the driver’s door.
The scratchy sound of a voice snapped him to attention. ‘Romeo — niner — eight — one — zero — Quebec,’ it squawked through the static and clattering engine. ‘You are cleared to depart, runway two. Taxi into position and hold. Over.’
Gabriel felt his hands relax on the steering column. He confirmed the order and pulled back on the throttle, easing the aircraft further away from the drama unfolding behind him.
To his left he could see the passenger jet picking up speed down the main runway. He would be next. He’d left the Inspector lying just inside the warehouse with his badge lying open on his chest. That way they’d find him quickly and call the medics. He had no idea how much Ketamine he’d pumped into him. Too much, probably. The last thing he wanted was the Inspector’s death on his conscience.
The metallic voice crackled loudly in his headset. ‘Romeo — niner — eight — one — zero — Quebec,’ it said, as over to his left the passenger jet lifted off and pulled up its wheels. ‘You are cleared for immediate takeoff. Over.’
‘Roger that,’ Gabriel responded. He released the wheel brakes and pushed the throttle most of the way forward. The sudden thrust pressed him back into his seat until the nose lifted and the wheels let go of the runway with a loud bump. He reached for the landing gear control then decided to leave the wheels down. Now he was airborne he would get to the Citadel well before his mother and the extra drag would reduce his airspeed.
He cleared the perimeter fence and Gabriel dipped the port wing. Over in the distance he saw the Taurus mountains rising up from the plain. Within them he could see a glow bouncing off the underside of the clouds showing him where Ruin was. He continued to climb, describing a wide circle that took him over the mountains until he was approaching the ancient city from the north. He kept the plane steady, fighting the rising winds from the mountain peaks, until they fell away to reveal the shallow bowl containing the ancient city, with the line of the great northern boulevard pointing straight towards a ragged patch of darkness at its centre. He dialled a heading into the autopilot that would take the plane directly over the Citadel and on to the coast beyond. There was fuel for about forty-five minutes of flight time — enough to carry the plane well out to sea before it came down.
He checked his direction one last time then engaged the autopilot, taking his hands off the steering column as ghostly hands took over, adjusting flaps, throttle and rudder to keep the plane on course. He let the autopilot fly the plane for a few minutes, watching the patch of darkness creep closer until it disappeared below the nose of the plane. Finally satisfied that the autopilot was working and the course was steady, he unclipped his seat belt, slid from the pilot’s chair and headed into the hold to prepare.
Chapter 132
Cornelius stepped through the stone entrance and into the chapel of the Sacrament.
After the roaring brightness of the forge it was dark with an unnatural blackness that clung tightly to whatever secrets it held. A few candles flickered in a cluster by the door barely illuminating the shelf upon which they rested, guttering now as the Sanctus guard stepped past and moved through the darkness towards the far end of the room. Cornelius scanned the darkness and saw something lying on the floor in the centre of the chapel. The guard slowed as he drew near and let the girl slide from his shoulder and on to the ground next to it. It was the body of Brother Samuel, his feet pointing towards the dark end of the room, his arms stretched out on either side to form the sign of the Tau.
The guard reached down, grabbed Samuel’s arms and dragged him over to the far wall, where he dumped him without ceremony, before turning his attention back to the girl. He dragged her feet round to point down into the darkness at the far end of the chapel, took her arms and stretched them out until she formed the shape her brother had so recently held.
‘Thank you, Septus,’ the Abbot said. ‘You may leave us now. But stay close by.’
The monk nodded and sent the candles fluttering again as he swept from the chapel.
Cornelius felt the Abbot take his arm and lead him forward. ‘Come closer,’ he said.
Cornelius drifted along, his eyes fixed on a spot ahead, where the darkness was beginning to take form beyond the figure of the girl. He took another step and felt his wounds start to itch, as if ants were crawling along the sliced edges of his flesh. He looked down and saw the skin closing up, like hot wax running together. Looked up again. Saw the thing in the darkness at the end of the room solidifying into form with every step he took, rising up from the altar, a shape both familiar and strange. Then he saw something else, something so unexpected that he stumbled backwards at the shock of it.
The Abbot gripped his elbow tighter. Steadied him. Leaned in closer. ‘Yes,’ he whispered ‘Now you see. The Sacrament. The greatest secret of our order, and our greatest shame. And tonight you will witness its end.’
Chapter 133
Bright headlamps swept across the grey concrete wall of the multi-storey car park as Kathryn turned into the alley. At the far end she could see the medieval wall, marking the boundary of the old town, rising up above the modern buildings.
She pulled to a stop by the heavy steel shutter and reached out through her open window, swiping the electronic key card Gabriel had taken from the dead monk. She waited, listening to the low throb of the van’s engine echoing down the night-blackened walls of the alley. Nothing happened.
She glanced up at the thin rectangle of sky framed by the high walls of the multi-storey car parks. Her son was up there, somewhere, heading this way. An image of Oscar’s twisted body flashed into her mind and she screwed her eyes shut to push it back. Now was not the time to grieve. She was in shock, she knew that. She also knew it was all going to come crashing down on her at some point — but not now. She had to be strong, for the sake of her son. Her actions now would help him stay alive. He had to live. She couldn’t lose him.
She jumped as a loud clang sounded inside the steel door and the shutter started to rise, creeping upwards like the opening mouth of a grave. When it reached the top it clanged to a stop, echoing again against the low rumble of the engine.
She glanced up one last time at the dark patch of sky then slipped the van into gear and entered the tunnel.
Chapter 134
The empty hold of the C-123 felt like it was shaking itself to pieces as Gabriel pulled himself along the ribs of the plane towards the point in the floor where it angled upwards. He reached it and hooked his right leg and arm into the cargo net lining the fuse-lage, then braced himself for the suction and hit the red punch button to lower the ramp.
A loud clunk punctuated the thunderous clatter of the engines and a thin horizontal crack appeared at the back of the plane pulling the air from the fuselage as the ramp started to lower. Gabriel held on, felt t
he howling wind tug at the flaps of his wing-suit until another loud clunk told him the ramp had locked fully open. Outside he could see the reflected glow of the city on the underside of the tail. He pulled the skydiver goggles over his eyes and crawled towards the edge. He peered over the side and through the arctic blast of outside air. Below him, nearly two miles down, was the city of Ruin, the four straight lines of the boulevards converging like crosshairs on the darkness at its centre.
He’d done airdrops from this plane before, but never at night and never at this altitude. It was a useful way of getting round red tape when governments dragged their heels over visas while the people on the ground desperately needed help.
He unhooked his leg from the net and shuffled round until he lay centred on the ramp, his feet pointing back towards the howling night. He did a final pre-flight check on the packs strapped to his front and back then edged backwards towards the lip of the ramp, his hands clinging tightly to the cargo net and straining against the pull of the slipstream.
His feet hit the edge and he slid them over into the freezing air, continuing to work his way backwards until his hands were the only thing still holding on. He was in the air now, his body stretched out horizontally from the back of the plane, held up by the fluid roaring rush of the night. He held on tight, staring straight down at the city, watching the patch of darkness creep closer. He fixed his left eye on it and closed his right, as though sighting down the barrel of a rifle.
Then he let go.
The plane was doing a little over eighty miles an hour when he dropped into the churning, frozen air of its prop wash. The moment he cleared the turbulence he opened his legs and arms, flaring the Parapak membranes stretched between them and inflating the wing. The combination of airspeed and the shape of the suit generated instant lift and he felt himself being pulled upwards. He adjusted his arms, leaning one way then another, his open eye never leaving the dark target below as he flew down towards it.
Wing-suit training had been the last course he’d completed before mustering out of the army. They were the latest development in HALO jumps — the High Altitude Low Opening drops that were the cornerstone of covert ops deployment. The theory went that by jumping at high altitude the delivery aircraft could stay well out of range of surface-to-air missiles and by deploying a chute at very low altitude it minimized the risk of being spotted by forces on the ground. A man in freefall is also too small to be picked up on RADAR. It was the perfect method of inserting highly trained troops quickly and covertly into enemy territory. It was also the perfect way of getting into a mountain fortress no one had ever breached.
Gabriel checked the altimeter on his wrist. He was already below four thousand feet and dropping at eighty feet per second. He leaned over and began to turn in a tight circle, watching the darkness grow as he spiralled down towards it, searching its dark centre for the garden he knew was there.
Chapter 135
Kathryn spotted light ahead of her in the tunnel and her fingers tightened around the steering wheel. She reached over to the black canvas bag on the passenger seat, slipped her hand inside and pulled out her gun.
She thought about the pause, out in the alley, after she’d swiped the card, before the steel shutter had started to rise. Maybe they were expecting her. Perhaps she was now heading straight into an ambush. If so, there was no point in stopping. The tunnel was too narrow to turn round and reversing would be too difficult. Besides, running wasn’t going to help Gabriel. So she kept her foot on the accelerator and her eyes on the patch of light, growing brighter beyond the wash of her own headlights. She brought the gun up over the dashboard just as the van cleared the top of the rise. The headlights cut down through the dark revealing a cavern and a car. Lights on. No one inside. Driver’s and passenger doors open.
She jerked down hard on the wheel, bringing the front of the van round just in time to clear the rear bumper of the parked police car. She slammed on the brakes, bringing the van to a crunching halt, brought her gun round, and scanned the cavern for movement. She noticed the closed steel door in the wall in front of her, but apart from that there was nothing.
She reached over and killed the van’s engine but left the head-lamps burning. The sudden silence was oppressive. She grabbed the black bag from the passenger seat, opened the door and slipped out, taking the long way round the car, gun first, checking there was no one hidden behind it. Still nothing. She moved to the back of the van and wrenched open the rear doors.
The contents had shifted around a little on the journey but the pile of fertilizer, sugar and smoky combustibles was still pretty much intact.
One giant smoke bomb, Gabriel had said. With enough explosive power to blow out every door in the lower part of the mountain.
She carefully placed the black canvas bag down on the metal floor next to a large cardboard box wedged against the rear wheel arch. Inside the box was a hurricane lamp and two of the sheet sleeping bags they used in hotter countries. She lifted out the lamp, set it on the floor and knotted the sheets together to make a long white cotton rope. She dropped one end in the box and fed the other under the door towards the petrol cap.
She noticed the camera as she rounded the end of the van, set high in the back wall, red light burning steady by the lens. She fumbled the key into the petrol cap, twisted it off, and turned her back to the camera while she carefully fed the other end of the rope down into the fuel tank, leaving the middle part looped under the door and trailing on the floor. She ducked round to the back of the van, grabbed the hurricane lamp and unscrewed the reservoir cap at the base. She doused the length of the cotton rope with kerosene splashing a generous puddle where the middle section draped on to the cavern floor.
This is your fuse, Gabriel had explained.
She emptied the last of the kerosene into the box in the back of the van then reached into the bag and took out two grenades, their dark green surfaces now buried beneath multicoloured layers of rubber. It was the sum total of every single elastic band she had managed to find in the warehouse office. She placed them carefully in the centre of the kerosene soaked box.
These are your detonators, Gabriel had said.
Do not arm them until the very last minute.
She took the first grenade, slipped her finger through the ring, then stopped. She was getting ahead of herself. She put it down again and reached over for the last thing Gabriel had hauled into the van before sending her on her way.
The lightweight trail bike slid out of the back of the van and bounced on to the stone floor. The helmet was threaded through the handlebars, but she left it there, mindful of the security camera and the ticking of the clock.
She leaned it against the tailgate and picked up the grenade again. There was a small snicking sound as she pulled the pin then she carefully laid it down at the bottom of the kerosene-soaked box.
If the spoon springs open after you pull the pin you have six seconds to get away.
Gabriel had told her.
Her eyes bored into the metal arming spoon as she slowly forced her fingers to let go of it.
The lever didn’t move. The rubber bands had held it in place.
She blew out a long stream of air, picked up the second grenade and pulled its pin before her nerve failed her. She placed it in the box next to the first then pushed the whole lot further into the van until it rested against the fuel cans and the sacks of fertilizer. She pulled a large box of matches from the black canvas bag — the last piece of the bomb.
Kathryn slung her leg over the bike, reached into her pocket for the swipe card and jammed it between her teeth. She struck a match, fed it into the open box and dropped the whole lot on to the puddle of kerosene just as the matches flared inside the box. The kerosene whumped alight and bright yellow flames scuttled up the soaked cotton rope, one way towards the fuel tank, the other towards the grenades.
From lighting the fuse you’ll have about a minute to get out, Gabriel had said.
Maybe
less.
Kathryn turned the front wheel of the bike towards the dark mouth of the tunnel, twisted the throttle and kicked down hard on the starter.
But nothing happened.
Yellow light from the spreading flames brightened around her as she pumped the throttle some more to feed in fuel. She stamped down hard a second time.
Still nothing.
She released the throttle, terrified of flooding the engine, heard the soft roar of fire behind her, pushed hard with her legs, away from the flames and toward the dark of the tunnel. The trapped air whispered past her ears as the bike rolled forward into the dip. She flicked on the headlight and saw the bottom ten feet in front of her. She knew she’d get just one chance at this.
She pulled on the clutch and stamped on the foot pedal twice to put the bike in second gear as the bottom rolled closer. The bike jerked beneath her as she released the clutch. The engine coughed as it dropped into gear and the momentum of the bike turned the engine. It spluttered once then roared into life. She twisted the throttle and grabbed the clutch with her other hand to stop it stalling. The chainsaw buzz rattled down the tunnel as she gunned the engine to clear the fuel lines, then she eased off the clutch and felt the bike jerk forward as the gear engaged and the wheels pulled her across the uneven stone floor and mercifully away from the burning van.
Chapter 136
The darkness continued to grow in Gabriel’s vision, spreading like an ink stain over the brightness of the city as he fell towards the Citadel.
Round the edges he could now see individual lamps on the deserted streets of the old town lighting up store fronts, and shuttered souvenir shops, and swinging signs hanging below the sloping sides of steepled rooftops. He could also see shapes rising up from the dark mountain as he fell towards it. He could see the highest peak, from which Samuel had fallen, sheer on one side and dropping steeply away on the other. It flattened to a ridge and ran round the lower part of the mountain, curling around the impenetrable dark in the middle like a noose. He still could not see the garden.
