Ghost:

by James Swallow

  ‘That’s all you’ve got? A flare gun?’ Madrigal shouted back at him, then turned away, ignoring him as she moved to grab on to the cabin before it rose out of reach. ‘Get rid of them!’ Madrigal barked out the order and hauled herself into the SCIF, climbing inside as it rose up through the ragged gap in the ceiling.

  Marc saw the split-second decision in Fox’s expression as the gunman evaluated and then chose which target he was going to kill first, and, as Marc had gambled, the DPRK assassin swung the gun toward Lucy. She was the trained Special Forces soldier, she was the one Fox would have been briefed on as the greater threat, armed or not.

  But Marc Dane was used to being underestimated. Instead of aiming the EFL like a regular pistol, he fired off the first two cartridges in a shallow angle at the concrete floor, and the rounds skipped off where they hit. Bursting into searing bright points of crimson fire, the flares ricocheted away on trails of chemical smoke. Fox could only recoil from the dazzling flames and his shots toward Lucy went wild.

  The third cartridge spat from the launcher rocketed across the chamber, fired as Marc burst into motion through the haze, the rain and the Halo’s rotor wash. He heard a high-pitched, mewling cry as the flare struck the double agent in the chest, burning through his white shirt. The man had come storming toward Marc, gun raised, and run straight into the shot. Screaming, he clawed wildly at his torso as a thousand-degree fireball burned through flesh and bone into his chest cavity.

  Marc caught sight of Lucy diving for cover toward one of the other SCIF cabins as Null and the others opened fire, bullets whistling through the choking, smoke-wreathed air. Marc threw himself in the other direction and out of the line of attack, running, stumbling, determined to survive.

  Overhead, the Halo and its cargo slipped away into the grey sky and vanished, the thud of the rotors swallowed by the rainstorm.

  SEVENTEEN

  The chemical smoke from the flares seared the back of Lucy’s throat as she gulped down breaths of air. She fought against the reaction of her body, smothering the urge to cough. Skidding out of the line of fire, she heard the snap of bullets deflect off the corner of the nearest SCIF cabin. Fox had her in his sights, but Marc’s diversion gave Lucy vital seconds to break for cover before the North Korean assassin could end her.

  The question of where the flare gun Marc used had come from, and of what that meant about Kara Wei’s betrayal, did not have time to fully form in Lucy’s thoughts. She couldn’t waste a moment on worrying about who to trust. Right now, her focus was on the next sixty seconds, then the minute after that and the minute after that. The other shit I can deal with later.

  She heard shouts and more braying snarls of gunfire. Lucy weighed the empty M4 carbine in her hand. With no rounds in the magazine it was nothing more than an inert lump of metal and plastic, but like her instructors in Basic had drummed into her, in times of crisis anything and everything could be used as a weapon.

  Lucy flattened herself against the side of the number four SCIF, hiding in the shadows of the far corner so anyone who thought to drop to their feet and look below it wouldn’t see her boots. She twirled the carbine around and gripped it by the handguard and the lower receiver, the muzzle pointed at the floor.

  Shouts rebounded off the concrete walls and crimson light from the burning flares danced, casting jumping shadows in all directions. A gun barked again and she wondered about Marc. If either of them tried to make a break for the doors leading out of the SCIF chamber, they would be cut down. Lucy wanted to believe that Dane wouldn’t be that reckless, but where the impulsive Brit was concerned all bets were off.

  She heard boots thudding as someone came racing up around the side of the cabin. Without hesitating, Lucy rocked off her heels and rushed to intercept them, bringing up the carbine in a motion like swinging an axe.

  The punk thug with the metalhead tattoos rounded the corner and Lucy belted him as hard as she could with the M4’s buttstock. Plastic splintered as she caught Null across the cheek, hitting the man with enough force to break his nose. Blood smeared his lips and he staggered back, fumbling for his own weapon and missing. She kept up the momentum, giving him no time to recover, hitting Null as hard as she could.

  He was ready for her this time, and he brought up his hands to deflect the broken rifle away. Null took blows to the face and neck, and he bellowed angrily, swearing at her in gutter German. Lucy jolted back, wary of over-extending, but he was on the move, surging into her. Null smacked the M4 out of her grip and clawed at her chest, gaining purchase on a handful of her webbing vest and the black jumpsuit beneath.

  Lucy fired a shotgun double-punch into his broken nose, feeling the bone grind and crunch as she landed the blows. Her knuckles came back bloody as Null kept advancing, raw rage driving him on. His other hand drew across Lucy’s neck and she couldn’t stop him from twisting her about, drawing her close into a violent embrace.

  She felt his chest heaving with effort against her back as his arm tightened around her throat. Lucy’s hands became talons and she clawed at the exposed skin of Null’s face, tearing his flesh, trying to gouge out his eyes.

  Breath stalled in her throat and her lungs turned leaden as she gasped for air. The sensation was horribly familiar. More than once an assailant had tried to take her out this way, and each time it was as terrible as the first.

  She saw movement from the other side of the cabin. The female DPRK assassin swept around and caught sight of them locked in their struggle. The woman raised her rifle, unconcerned that Madrigal’s thug was in her sight picture as much as Lucy.

  Lucy shot back her elbows into Null’s gut and he reacted, momentarily easing his grip on her neck. As Cat squeezed the trigger of her weapon, Lucy let her weight shift and deliberately sagged forward, pulling the big man off-balance. Null twisted and Lucy dragged him sideways before he could arrest the motion, turning so he was between her and the muzzle of Cat’s rifle.

  A burst of fully automatic fire stitched a line up Null’s back as he briefly became Lucy’s human shield, and he choked out his last breath into her face.

  *

  Marc sprinted down the narrow gap between two of the SCIF cabins as shots screamed through the hazy air. Sparks flashed orange-yellow as Fox came after him, bracketing Marc with paced shots from his weapon.

  He blind-fired the compact flare gun over his shoulder, aiming to disrupt the assassin’s attack and gain the time he desperately needed to escape amid the smoke and the rain streaming in through the ruined roof. Marc wanted to believe there was still a chance he could get out of this in one piece.

  The signal flares cracked from the blunt muzzle of the launcher, bouncing off the floor and the flanks of the nearest SCIF. Each one was a tiny, blinding sun of searing crimson, sputtering as it produced streamers of grey-white smoke. Marc felt the last flare leave the device and the hammer fall on the empty magazine. The cartridge struck the ground behind him, close enough for the heat of the discharge to make him flinch as it burst into a fountain of dazzling ruby fire.

  Dropping the empty launcher, Marc slipped around the back of the SCIF to his right and grabbed at a handhold welded into the frame. He had only seconds to react, and it took a flood of adrenaline to push him up and on to the top of the metal cabin, sliding low across the corrugated steel surface.

  Holding his breath, willing himself to be invisible, Marc flattened his body as much as he could, hoping that the shadows and the smoke would conceal him, if only for a few moments.

  From the far side of the SCIF chamber he heard a clatter of metal and plastic and a man shout out in pain. Lucy did that. He grinned, in spite of the dire situation. Knowing she was still alive, still fighting, gave him the impetus to do the same. Not dead yet, he told himself.

  Fox moved past below him, waving a hand in front of his face to waft away the acrid smoke from the hissing, sizzling flares. Marc stole a glance over the lip of the cabin and saw the assassin looking the wrong way, aiming his rifle into t
he darkness.

  He knew he wouldn’t get another opportunity. Marc coiled his legs and leapt from the top of the SCIF, diving at the gunman. Fox must have seen the motion of shadows in the red light, because he turned quickly, but not fast enough to avoid Marc slamming into him in a blunt, forceful collision.

  The rifle went off with a flat crack, the barrel knocked away and the round pinging harmlessly along the low ceiling. Marc’s attack sent Fox into a reeling backward tumble, putting the assassin down on the concrete floor with a crash, the two of them wrestling with one another as they fell. Still, the North Korean was not on the defensive but chose to attack, flicking the skeletal wireframe stock of the weapon up to strike Marc across the chin.

  Marc’s head snapped back with an eye-watering jolt and before he could recover, Fox punched him hard in the ear. Fresh pain sang through his skull, knocking him off balance and costing him vital split seconds of reaction time. The moment of shock and surprise he had torn from Fox was gone, burned away by the assassin’s resilience and grit.

  The North Korean agent was fifteen, perhaps even twenty years his senior, and he was every inch the career killer that Marc was not. As their eyes locked for one brief instant, all Marc saw behind them was a cold void, the utter non-existence of empathy. Fox was the DPRK’s ultimate killing tool, a man trained from childhood to serve Party and nation in the business of secret murder. Marc looked into those eyes as the two of them struggled against one another, the rifle trapped between them. It was this man who killed Crowne at the house, who shot Lex Wetherby in Malta and as many others as his masters in Pyongyang commanded.

  Then the instant shattered as Fox jerked his arms forward and savagely slammed the rifle frame into Marc’s face, knocking him back and away.

  *

  Null literally became dead weight as the life faded from his eyes and his body went slack in Lucy’s grip. Before the big man’s mass could slump forward and knock her down, she braced her feet and shoved him the other way, giving out a cry of exertion.

  The bloody, bullet-riddled corpse lurched back toward Cat and caught the other woman off-guard. Null’s body slammed into the slight North Korean and she lost her balance, staggering under the unexpected impact.

  Lucy saw her opening and flew at her, jack-knifing in a jump kick off the wall of the SCIF to give her height and velocity. She led with her good right cross and punched Cat in the middle of the reddened, swollen patch of her face where she had been scalded. As the dead man crumpled in a heap on the floor, already forgotten by both the combatants, Lucy whipped her other arm around to deflect the assassin’s rifle. The strike knocked the weapon from Cat’s grip – or perhaps she let it go deliberately, it didn’t matter.

  Cat brought up her hands and unleashed a wave of sharp, fast hits, each one punctuated by a high-pitched yell. They traded blows, repelling most, some landing with precise impact on soft tissues and other vulnerable spots.

  Lucy made a cutting motion, the blade of her hand falling across Cat’s forearm, deliberately striking at the point where the assassin’s limb had been dislocated in their earlier fight at the house. The strike landed, but Cat seemed to barely react to the hit, fighting on, breath hissing through her gritted teeth.

  Lucy saw her eyes were contracted to dark pinpoints, and the assassin’s lack of response immediately made sense. Whatever painkillers Cat was dosed up on, they were potent ones. Any punches that Lucy landed had to feel like love-taps.

  Cat hit her, a lightning-fast blow to the nerve cluster below Lucy’s right shoulder. A rolling shock of pain rippled down her arm, a bone-deep sting making her joints twitch and stiffen.

  Bright metal glittered in the weak light through the broken ceiling and the combat dagger that Cat had pulled in Hite’s house emerged once again. The blade flickered and swam in the wet air, cutting at nothing. The assassin wanted this rematch. She wanted to finish off what had been interrupted back in Sydney. Lucy had no choice but to oblige her, instinctively backing off to open the distance between them.

  Cat lunged and slashed at her face. It was a feint, a big and showy move designed to make Lucy react more than to injure her. Before, Lucy had disarmed Cat by letting the assassin’s overconfidence get the better of her, making her extend too far into the fighting space. This time, the assassin would not fall for the same trick, and she kept up her speed and motion, shifting from foot to foot, never staying in one place long enough for Lucy to make a grab for her.

  Cat dodged away each time Lucy tried to blindside her or step inside her guard and go for the weapon. With every failed attempt, she left Lucy with a shallow cut across her hand or forearm, slicing through the palm of her glove or the sleeve of her over-suit.

  Each stinging wound leaked bright blood and sent fresh fire down Lucy’s nerves, and part of her screamed at herself to get in there and finish this quickly, before Cat cut across an artery.

  She fought down the impulse and weathered the attacks, knowing that there would only be one chance to defeat this woman. Cat had been driven to participate in this mission even though the swollen joint of the arm Lucy had dislocated should have benched her. But fighting an enemy pumped up on sense-deadening drugs was nothing like engaging with a clear-eyed opponent. The predictable, rational patterns of attack and defend, strike and riposte, became irrelevant. If Cat’s pain receptors were cloaked in a chemical fog of opiates, then she would not respond as she had before. Lucy could break bone, tear flesh, and the assassin would barely feel it.

  That was what Lucy would use to beat her. Despite the drugs in her system, Cat was still a product of her training, a lifetime of techniques drilled into her by whatever teachers the DPRK had employed to make the woman an executioner. The painkillers were making her feel invulnerable, a sensation Lucy had experienced herself in a darker part of her past, but they also affected Cat’s judgement. Her mind would move a step behind the old, ingrained reactions of muscle memory. Lucy watched for the fractional delay she knew was going to come, deflecting the blade over and over, taking cut after cut. And when it happened, she moved without hesitating, letting her own deep-rooted experience take control.

  Cat saw what her instinct identified as a gap in Lucy’s defences and lunged forward, leading with the arrow-sharp tip of the combat dagger, intent on burying the blade to its hilt in the other woman’s breast. The knife would go into Lucy’s heart, tear it in two, end her.

  Lucy had been waiting for the stab to come, inviting it. Cat’s moves from the fight in the house were there in her mind, ruthlessly broken down and countered, each step in the dance ready to be turned back against the assassin.

  She caught Cat’s wrist as the dagger came in, gripping and twisting, applying pressure to joints and nerves so that her opponent couldn’t maintain the impetus. In a flash of reflected light, the blade was torn from the assassin’s numbed fingers, spun around, its axis reversed.

  Putting all her strength behind it, Lucy stabbed Cat through the eye with her own weapon. She pushed the knife through the socket and into her opponent’s skull with a jerk, making the kill with ruthless precision.

  *

  Marc scrambled wildly to haul himself up off the damp, rain-slicked floor of the chamber, knocking aside fallen fragments of roof supports and jagged pieces of glass skylight. Fox raised the assault rifle in his hands, drawing out the moment by taking careful aim at his head.

  Marc’s hands rose up in front of him, as if the gesture could somehow ward off the killing shot. ‘Wait—!’

  Fox glared down the iron sights and his finger tightened on the trigger, but there was no fatal shout of discharge, no final bullet. In the struggle between the two men, part of the rifle’s mechanism had become unseated and fouled the shot. Irritably, the assassin pulled hard on the slide to eject the bullet in the breech and rack another.

  As the dud round pinged from the ejection port, Marc exploded into motion. He skidded as he fell forward, his rough and clumsy attack fuelled by the energy of sheer despera
tion. For the second time, he body-checked Fox with every effort he could muster and snatched at the rifle, forcing it back so the muzzle aimed toward the SCIFs and away from his face. There was no artistry or elegance to this ugly engagement, and it devolved into a mad flurry of push and pull as the two of them fought over the weapon. Fox slipped against a chunk of broken masonry and Marc shoved him harder, trying to get the upper hand before his fortunes reversed once again.

  All the violent experiences Marc had gone through – dust-ups on the streets of a South London council estate as a youth, training to fight with the Navy and later with the Security Services, months of endless sparring with a Krav Maga instructor during his time in Croatia – none could prepare you for combat against someone who would stop at nothing to end your life. Each time it happened, whether there were punches raining down on him or bullets screaming through the air, the raw animal need to live through this was the impetus that kept him moving.

  Leaning into his opponent, Marc pressed the frame of the assault rifle into Fox’s neck, trying to choke him. He had the height advantage but the assassin showed hidden reserves of stamina, gripping the barrel of the gun and fighting back, struggling to push it away.

  It seemed like the stalemate between them lasted for an eternity, the muscles in Marc’s arms twitching with effort. He knew he would lose this contest if it went on any longer, he could feel the fatigue spreading through his limbs. His bones felt like lead. He had to finish it.

  Marc dug deep for a last burst of energy and shoved forward, kicking out at Fox’s leg as hard as he could. The assassin twisted, letting the blow slip uselessly off his shin, the effort wasted, but his boot came down on another piece of rubble and it cost him a second of balance, his eyes widening in surprise.

  A wordless shout escaping his lips, Marc pushed harder and Fox stumbled. Locked together, the two men fell, and Marc pressed his body weight into the motion, letting gravity give him the extra force he needed.