by A J Marshall
In full flight he made off down the street. The incline began to steepen. He slipped and skidded on the wet surface. There was an alley and he darted to his right but almost fell, saving himself only by grasping some iron railing. Forget the alley, he thought, and he looked back. He couldn’t see them, but he heard their footsteps not far behind and their echoing seemed to be upon him; the narrow street contained and amplified it. He passed a few people; they watched aghast as the pursuit heightened and one, a woman in her twenties, screamed hysterically as a brief sighting of Richard brought a hail of gunfire from the assassins. People cleared the street. Richard kept tight to the wall where the cobbles were more even. He didn’t look back again.
After rounding another corner, the pâtisserie came into view. Richard approached it quickly, running pell-mell. He attracted the attention of many well-wishers who had spilled into the street. People were casually chatting and stopped to watch him, until, with panicked expressions, they hid indoors – after first hearing shots and then seeing the pursuers.
Richard at full tilt, coat flailing, felt the glass down his back. His face was wet with sweat and washed by the drizzle. He drew a rasping breath that slowed him down near a shop and saw, against the railings, an opportunity? The bicycle, a ladies model, with Christmas tinsel wrapped around the frame, inexplicably drew his eye – perhaps because it was pointing in the right direction.
People moved aside as Richard ran past. He had no time to return their looks of surprise, disdain and fright. A teenager remonstrated loudly as Richard snatched his bicycle while passing, scooted with it for a few strides and then mounted it. Other cries of protestation followed him down the street, but he would not have understood their meaning had he the time to listen. Then, suddenly, as Richard disappeared uncomfortably down the hill, the verbosity of the objections that initially seemed plain enough adopted a very different nature, for the first of several sublets whizzed past his head. A curve in the street saved him.
There was no need to pedal and even maximum braking had little effect in the wet. But this was perhaps opportune, as Richard’s precarious progress soon had him at the edge of the village and with no sign of his pursuers. As the last buildings approached, Richard skidded to the right and ducked into a narrow opening. It led, after twenty metres or so, into an untidy, deserted farmyard. The main entrance, together with a rusty tractor, was to his left and beyond lay open countryside. A creeping wintry mist was already rising over the darkening scene. There was a small barn with broken doors opposite and Richard discarded the bicycle inside. He gingerly surveyed the area. It was clear and quiet. I’ve lost them, he concluded, but he deliberated on how he could possibly get back to Paris.
Richard unzipped the inside pocket to his coat and withdrew his telephone. He pondered for a moment on the security implications but decided to call London in any case – a helicopter pickup was perhaps the only option. Despite his intentions to distance himself from MI9 over the last year or two, Peter Rothschild’s number remained a preset. The signal was weak but just enough.
“Peter, it’s Richard,” he whispered. “Listen, there’s been some trouble . . . Yes, I’m not far from Saint Mary’s . . . They lost contact with the driver . . . ? Really – that’s because he’s dead! Yes . . . but . . . that’s not possible now . . . no . . . forget it. Peter, I need a pickup from here. You’ll have to get the bloody helicopter over here . . . What do you mean diplomatic permits . . . a world heritage site? Listen, I’m not in the clear yet, they are still here, somewhere in the village, and they mean business . . . Okay, you have my position . . . good. It’s not a secure satellite signal. I know that, but what else am I to do? Wait, I hear a car! I’ve got to go . . . No, Peter, listen why don’t you? I’m unarmed. I would really appreciate that pickup . . . okay! I hear something, I’ve got to go!”
Richard crouched nervously and replaced his handset. He buttoned his coat and turned up his collar. Several tiny pieces of glass fell onto the trampled hay underfoot. He heard a car door shut and slunk back into the darkening interior of the wooden building. “Shit!” he scolded, under his breath. “I’ve brought them down on me . . . idiot!”
There was a rickety ladder leading up to a hay loft. Richard eyed it and decided on a course of action. Tentatively he climbed it. Outside he heard footsteps. He paused. There was a mumble and an acknowledgement. Richard climbed the last few rungs and flopped onto the hay. A moment later the barn door squeaked. Richard peered over the edge and held his breath. He saw a shadow move. Then he saw a man with a gun held in two hands stepping inside. Jerkily but strategically the figure pointed his weapon in various directions. Richard dropped his head and strained to see. The darkness in the barn was an asset. The man moved silently. Something cracked, like a piece of wood. The noise had come from outside, from behind the barn. He was surrounded.
The gunman stepped beneath the loft; he was no more than four metres below Richard. With one hand he grasped the ladder and Richard heard it shake. Richard dropped his face onto the course hay: blood surged in his ears; his heart raced. The ladder began to move! God no, thought Richard, he’s coming up!
The ladder’s frame groaned under the weight of the man and where it rubbed against the loft joist it squeaked eerily. After a few haunting seconds and quite unable to contain himself, Richard rose up onto on his elbows only to see the man’s head appear. It was silhouetted against the opening and Richard saw him raise his gun; it was a short barrelled revolver. In one desperate move Richard swung his feet around and kicked out at the ladder – it toppled backwards, with the man hanging precariously from the top rung. A muffled shot rang out. Richard scrambled to his feet. He sighted the man landing on his back and, without any thought for the consequences, jumped. He landed with most of his weight on the man’s leg and instantly heard it crack beneath him. The man cried out. Then Richard came down backside-first onto the man’s chest; it served to wind him and an awkward karate chop to his throat gave Richard the upper hand. In near darkness Richard sprang up.
The big man, now severely handicapped, raised his gun and fired indiscriminately. Richard dived for cover and rolled away across the floor until he felt something under his back. He pulled at it; was it anything he could use? The object felt like a broken shovel and a moment later he set upon the man wielding the blade like a crazed Dervish. Unable to stand, turn or defend himself, Richard caught the man with his first blow across the side of his head. And one blow was enough, as the would-be assassin flopped backwards onto the floor. His arms fell limp and he groaned before falling silent. Barely able to see, Richard stepped briskly over to the crumpled heap and scrabbled for a gun hand; he located the weapon close by in the mud.
Richard retreated quickly. Bathed in darkness and with his back to the barn wall he waited. Soon, he heard the crunching of dry straw underfoot over to his left. One step, and then another, and then another, as someone came to the entrance. Fleetingly he saw a shadow move and raised his newly acquired revolver, but the target disappeared. There was silence – a thick, menacing silence. Then a scrabbling sound in the straw further along the wall attracted Richard’s attention momentarily – must just be a rat, he thought. Well inside the barn and on the other side Richard heard movement again. Then a noise as someone kicked a piece of wood or a random piece of machinery. There was a muted groan. Was this second assailant injured? Perhaps he had stopped some friendly fire.
Richard adopted a prone position; he held his breath and listened intently. A horn beeped in the distance and he could hear the sound of revellers, subdued – but nothing else. He squirmed uneasily and thought a change of location was necessary and began to move to his right, keeping tight against the wall. He felt out each step before putting his weight down, lest he give his position away.
Richard could just see, by the paleness of ambient light outside, some thin cracks between the boards by his right side. At that moment a single shot rang out and the loud crack made him jump. Instantaneously the wood in
front of his face splintered, sending a shard against his cheek. He yelped at his miscalculation and dropped to the floor as another dull thud sounded, and then another, each accompanying hole chasing downwards.
Quickly, commando-style, he crawled forwards a few metres and then scrambled to his feet and, in a kind of crouched run, managed a further five metres forwards. The shots that followed him now were hit or miss, blind attempts to bring him down in the darkness. He felt a large bale of straw blocking his path and he half-tripped and half-dived behind it. Silence reigned again. Richard contained his breathing. Damned fool, he thought. Blood trickled down his face from the splinter and a dribble ran to the corner of his lips. The taste lingered; he thought it indicative of his frailty. He would have to flush this assassin out!
With an idea, Richard felt for the overall length of the straw bale. It was less than two metres long, but enough to give him cover. At that moment his foot inadvertently struck a bucket – or some similar farmyard implement. Simultaneously a sublet pinged over his head, only to ricochet off a metal object on the opposite wall. The metal sang with a single tone like that from an amplified tuning fork, and with it, like good harmonics, Richard had an idea. He reached for the implement – it was a bucket.
Richard lay spread-eagled on the ground, sheltered behind the straw bale. He adopted such a position so as to be able to move quickly – in a spinning motion – from one end of the bale to the other. Silently he drew a deep breath and then he poked the revolver around the left-hand edge of the bale and fired a volley of three shots across the barn. Then he lifted the metal bucket, albeit a little awkwardly, with his other hand and tossed it as far as he could in the direction from where he had come. The bucket flew through the air for a few metres, crashed to the ground and then clattered across the floor until it collided with the wall and finally came to rest. A hail of gunfire followed in its wake.
Simultaneously Richard spun around on his stomach and pulled himself into a firing position at the other end of the bale. The opaque blackness on the far side of the barn was momentarily illuminated by the assailant gunning down the bucket. In the ensuing disturbance, Richard would have one attempt before giving his own position away. His shot had to count, and Richard took quick but careful aim at the opposing flash and squeezed the trigger. The revolver had heavy recoil but he was aware of it this time and supported the butt with his right hand. There was a ruffling noise on the other side and then silence. Richard darted back behind the straw bale and lay motionless on his back for a few seconds, but his stomach was tensed and he made ready to fire again.
After a minute or so Richard rolled over and climbed cautiously to his knees. He pivoted the weapon with both hands on the prickly grass of the bale and scanned as best he could the area opposite. After a while he became convinced of a kill and so, keeping low, he moved quickly to the side. Eyes wide he strained to see, but the final soft glow from the sunset did little more than faintly illuminate the barn’s doorway. He held his breath and listened again. There was nothing – not a sound in the vicinity – only some far-off Christmas revelry. Avoiding making a silhouette, Richard slipped silently outside.
Richard made it to the tractor and paused. He eased around it, senses keen – then over to the gate where he crouched behind a sturdy post. Still nothing; silence; anticipation. He dared to hope that the accomplice had fallen during the mayhem of arbitrary shooting. He loitered for a few moments and, still not hearing anything, took off at speed down the road away from the village. He ran another kilometre until he was exhausted. And there in the undergrowth he crouched and rested.
Richard replaced his telephonic pager with the revolver he had acquired and zipped close his coat pocket. On the small, back-lit screen he typed and sent an abrive to Peter Rothschild:
All clear.
Triangulate this signal.
I am waiting for a pickup.
ASAP – S'il vous plait.
Richard watched and waited until almost simultaneous with the distant, but irrefutable sound of a single rotor helicopter, he received an abrive from Rothschild. It was in a secure, scrambled format and he typed in his personal code to decipher it:
The helicopter will take you to Saint Dizier, a French Air Force base east of Paris. You have a fighter and escort to Egypt. We have cooperation. Destination is an Egyptian military base close to Alexandria. Transport in hand. Go to Mubarakar while we still have him. Learn what you can. Commercial being organised for return home. Cyber-attack increasing, something is afoot.
Above all, exercise extreme caution.
PR
“Seasonal greetings to you, too,” Richard muttered to himself, singularly unimpressed. He looked eastwards towards the dull glow of the Paris conurbation and saw the strobe lights of the helicopter flashing in the night sky as the machine homed in on him. “So, it starts here . . . the final showdown,” he whispered ominously.
CHAPTER 9
Red Sky in the Morning
Elysium Planitia – 26 December
06:38 Martian Corrected Time
“Where are you now? I mean the exact coordinates,” enquired Andy Baillie impatiently.
“Cross coordinate four, four, nine, North East Sector. Close to the no-go zone. Anyway, you should know that from your display.”
“Satellite tracking is out of sorts this morning, Paul. Too much sand in the lower Maronosphere. Listen, can you see the sensor array in that sector? From your position the line should be quite close – say, one and a half clicks south?”
“The visibility is about five clicks here . . . Yes, yes, I can see them, I can see the terminals.” Paul Carr captured the image and then lowered his grid-enhanced binoculars. He pressed the button under his right thumb and downloaded the image into the PTSV’s navigation computer. Then he touched the screen of the adjacent monitor, made a selection on the keypad and displayed what he had seen. Pressing lightly on the screen and with a spreading motion of his fingers he magnified an area of particular interest. A distant row of radio masts loomed towards them on the screen and another selection digitally enhanced the image until their latticed construction – a design akin to electricity pylons – was clear and sharp. Set approximately three hundred metres apart and connected by a number of drooping cables, the masts stretched away into the distance in both directions. “Okay, okay, here we go . . . one-point-five-two-two kilometres to be precise – not a bad guess.”
“Good. I’d like you to run the line. Check something out for me – particularly the SR15 to SR27 terminals?”
Paul Carr selected another page on the touch-sensitive monitor screen and emboldened SR15 from a list with the cursor and then pressed the enhance key. Immediately the image skewed off to the right and focused on the mast in question. “Yes, sir, I have it, bearing one, six, niner – range, three-point-three-five. We can take a little drive over there and run the inspection no problemmo. Get back to you in an hour – anything special?”
“The annual inspection of this sector is due next month anyway, so run the full integrity check please Paul, and make a recording.”
“Will do. I’ll get back to you.”
Paul Carr, a thirty-something astronaut who had majored in physics at Stockholm University, but who originally hailed from the north of England, glanced across at his driver and smiled. “Okay, Lesley, let’s go to it,” he said, engagingly. “Three more days on the road and we go home. Tell you what, when we get back to Osiris, I’ll take you for a steak in Stargazers – first night. What d’ya say?”
Also English, Lesley Oakley stared blankly back at the service vehicle commander. He had climbed into the cockpit and now sat beside her in the observer’s seat with wide eyes seemingly in anticipation of a definite acceptance of the invitation. Lesley shook her head, breathed a long sigh and looked away with an expression of mild contempt. She began aligning the navigation display with the target coordinates transferred from the stored image. There were three other scientists in the forward compartmen
t and one of them silently attracted the attention of her colleagues by waving her hands. With hunched shoulders she pointed forward towards the cockpit and mouthed, “He’s asked her out.” The other two women stifled giggles.
Lesley Oakley, seemingly ignoring the proposal, made a few other selections and then engaged the autopilot. A cue flashed green on her instrument panel. Her finger hovered over the drive button and then she looked up. “Three weeks on station in this twenty-by-four tin can, listening to your jokes and being subjected to your pathetic attempts at cooking – when you weren’t attempting to skip the catering roster – and then that snoring every night . . .” She paused and looked the dark-haired man in the eyes. “And you have the audacity to offer me a veggie burger?”
Paul Carr nodded a slightly gormless confirmation; there was hope in his eyes.
“Okay . . . I accept!”
The vehicle pulled away with a jolt.
The large Alpha-type Personnel Transport and Service Vehicle kicked up billowing clouds of red dust in its wake as it drove along the eighteen-kilometre line of radio masts. There were a number of other similar sensor systems installed circumferentially around Osiris Base, at varying distances. As well as being joined by cables to form a long-range array, each mast bristled with aerials, microwave dishes and radar scanners that provided the Scientific and Meteorological Departments in Osiris Base with essential physical and climatic information that was used for both daily planning and long-term research. The radar system was sensitive enough to track isolated sand squalls and moisture pocklets across the planet’s surface, the movement of which aided in forecasting the infamous Martian dust storms that were so debilitating to machines and exposed mechanisms. And ultra-sensitive underground sensors positioned at varying depths beneath each mast correlated seismic activity and tracked Martian tectonic plate movement.
