Chasing The Dawn (Luke Temple - Book 2) (Luke Temple Series)

by James Flynn

  Turning back toward where he had been laying, his right leg gave out and he stumbled onto the bottom step. Looking down, he saw the root of the pain for the first time. Jutting out of his upper thigh was a thick splinter of wood; it was about eight inches long and was buried deep. Taking steady breaths Luke looked around the ruins. He saw several pieces of wood fractured and scattered amongst the brick and plaster. He touched his hand onto the protruding part of the splinter; even gently touching it gave a stab of pain, but it was better not to remove it, it was stemming the blood flow for now. Through the ringing he heard a faint muffled cry. He had forgotten about Chung Su in the immediate aftermath, but now he heard coughing and a delicate whimper. He hobbled through the smashed glass and brickwork towards the lounge. The once-high archway separating the rooms was now cracked, but it still held. Chung Su was crouched against the wall, blood running down her cheek. The force of the blast had caused all the pictures to smash onto the floor and the ornaments and glass in the cabinets to shatter along with the windows.

  The immediate priority was to get out of the house, for no other reason than to breathe some fresh air. Luke could hear nothing but the high-pitched ringing and he didn’t have the energy to expend on shouting commands. He positioned himself in front of Chung Su. She looked up with large frightened eyes; she was shaking. He beckoned for her to stand but she made no attempt. With great effort he leant down and tried to lift her up from under her arms. Instinctively, she grabbed both his forearms to help get her to her feet, the grip on his right forearm caused him to wince and grit his teeth with pain, but eventually through joint effort she was up and standing. He edged over to the bay window and checked the bottom of each of the frames. A couple had jagged glass edges still sticking up, but one was completely clear. He looked out of the window into the distance, a voice in the back of his head reminding him to check surroundings.

  As if listening through a funnel, Luke began to hear the distant noise of people screaming and shouting. It was a clear indication that they had overstayed their welcome. Moving back into the lounge, Luke gently manoeuvred Chung Su over to the window. She was like a zombie, moving only because he was directing her. As they reached the window he motioned for her to step outside.

  Chung Su took her position on the small lawn in front of the window and stood there frozen, staring back into the house. It was only at that point that Luke noticed she held the Sig Sauer in her hand; she must have picked it up off the table. And the Beretta? Luke swore at himself for forgetting that he had been carrying the Beretta in the hallway. Now he staggered back off to try and retrieve it. He used his left foot to kick away bits of brick and furniture to try and uncover the pistol. Each kick sent more dust flaming outwards and he began to choke on the harsh particles as they bit at his throat and lungs. Finally he uncovered the weapon. It was intact and only had some scratching around the metal casing. Locking his hand around it, he checked the chamber, before limping back through the lounge and scrambling out onto the lawn.

  He could now see the damage from the outside. He was lucky to be alive. He made some quick calculations and figured it must have been a relatively small device, possibly a plastic explosive, yet the focused detonation and impact was an anomaly, normally explosive would move out at an exponential rate from the blast centre. As he examined the damage he could see that had not happened. The blast had been centralised around the entrance of the property. Sophisticated … but improvised.

  ***

  People in the houses surrounding the professor’s had all come tearing out of their homes at the sound of the explosion. Luke did not wait to interact; he limped, dragging Chung Su, over toward the front gate. His senses were dull but he had the presence of mind to keep checking his surroundings for any signs of follow-up attacks. In his heart he was desperately hoping that it was a hit and run as he was not sure he had the energy reserves to fight.

  With every step he could feel the wood rubbing the muscle and tissue inside his leg. Blood was now soaking through his borrowed jeans. He stopped for a moment as they passed Brun’s old white rust bucket. Luke knew that to get back to where he had left his car would take too much effort. Speed was all–important. The local residents would have called the authorities.

  “Your leg … it is bleeding.”

  Luke did not hear Chung Su’s weak comment, his hearing had not fully returned. He hated having one of his senses lacking, it put him off-balance. However, in these moments his Group 9 training took over.

  “Your leg is bleeding!!” Chung Su raised her voice.

  Luke turned to her, tears were in her eyes but she was not crying. With the sun falling behind her Luke was momentarily transported away. Her silhouette faded into a familiar outline, sound retracted into silence and stood in front of him was a dark shadow so perfect that it brought butterflies to his stomach. The excitement and emotion was overwhelming. Everything else fell away.

  “Mr Reid … Mr Reid … Mr Reid!”

  The silhouette vanished and Luke was stood again on the front drive of Professor Brun’s house. Chung Su was still frozen to the spot but she was shouting his name and looking out past the gate. Luke could not grasp what she was trying to show him. He turned his head to follow her gaze but saw nothing.

  “Sirens …”

  Luke could lip read. Moving as fast as he could he drew level with the driver’s window and threw his elbow through, smashing it. In an instant the door was unlocked and he was leaning under the driving column, pulling off the plastic casing and rearranging the wires.

  Chung Su finally moved, running around to the passenger side as Luke unlocked the door. She sat timidly in the seat and could not stop herself from scanning Luke’s body.

  Sensing her worry, Luke forced himself to sound calm. “Luke … my real name is Luke … It’s ok, it all looks worse than it is.” He had no idea why he had given his name, but it felt right to tell her, they were now very much in this together. “Let’s go, and we can sort ourselves out elsewhere. You ok?”

  She nodded. She didn’t feel ok, but she nodded.

  Luke threw the battered Peugeot into reverse, backing right up to the furthest point of the drive. He waited for a moment, shaking his head a couple of times to try and rid himself of the ringing. As Luke smashed his foot into the floor, the tired machine laboured in its response, but eventually the wheels span and they took off, both shooting forward violently as the Peugeot smashed into the green gate. Luke screamed in pain but kept his foot down. The gate gave out and he swung the car up the hill heading north, climbing away from the house.

  50.

  The small province of Battaglia was nothing more than a few empty country roads and a smattering of Abruzzo-style villas and buildings. Even with the sun slipping away and the cold early evening taking over there was still a simple country beauty to the area. Delvechi steered his car into a quiet side street. He had expected there to be a lot of activity from the locals. Finding dead bodies could not be a normal occasion, but there was nobody in sight. According to the phone call the bodies had been found just around the corner, so Delvechi started in the direction he had memorised. After a few minutes of climbing he came upon a small alleyway running down to his left. Stacked high along one side were a range of cardboard boxes, wet and sunken. A few metres in front Delvechi could make out a man stood with his back to him.

  “Bonjourno Signor,” Delvechi projected loudly and the man turned to face him. “My name is Officer Delvechi, are you the man who phoned the station?”

  “Sì, thank you for coming out so quick.”

  The man’s age surprised Delvechi. In fact, he was no man at all. He couldn’t have been older than eighteen.

  “Where are they?” Delvechi asked

  The teenager walked across to two large green industrial bins stood on wheels at the rear of a building. The young man then put a white rag to his mouth and pushed open the large slide-back lid.

  The smell engulfed Delvechi; he turned his head awa
y and coughed, fighting back the retching. The teenager offered him another rag that he had produced from his pocket. Delvechi took it and clamped it to his mouth. Leaning over the bin his eyes were watering. Inside there were flies zipping about, hyperactively crossing over a large blue sheet. Delvechi thanked the Lord that it was winter, or the number of flies would have been quadruple. Without being asked, the youngster lifted the sheet with his spare hand to reveal two dead bodies.

  Delvechi had been through the training, but to be presented with two heavily decomposing bodies was still an intense shock. He had to take deep breaths through the rag. Only the heads and torsos were visible and the skin was a strange off colour, the cheeks were sunken and decomposing and one of the victims had yellow-tinged eyes staring skyward. Trying to take in detail quickly, all Delvechi could really make out was that one body was visibly shorter than the other, and even though heavily decomposing it was clear the taller of the two had a longer thinner face … the smell was overpowering. Leaning into the bin he pulled back the sheet a little further, revealing the legs. Both victims were fully clothed and there were no exterior signs of trauma. The bodies held no obvious clues to what had killed the men. He would have to call for forensics to take a closer look. One thing was certain; the two men were of Asian descent.

  “When did you find them?” Delvechi asked.

  “Just before I phoned.”

  These were not fresh bodies; taking into account the weather which would have slowed decomposition, we were talking weeks not days.

  “Are you telling me that no one smelt this? And why the hell has this bin not been emptied?”

  The teenager became solemn. “I am sorry Sir, but … it’s just that ... look.” The boy banged on a large wooden door on the building, then showed Delvechi that the windows were boarded up. “This has been a very long time, no one here, no one here, so we don’t check.”

  Delvechi needed to sit down, and not just because of the smell. He moved across to an empty crate opposite the bins.

  The boy was in awe of the uniform. “Sir, I am sorry, we thought they had gone home.”

  Delvechi looked up. “Say that again?”

  “We thought they had left.”

  “You know them?”

  The teenager was not sure how to answer. He was weighing up what he felt was the right answer. “Yes Sir, they were staying with us. My family owns the hotel two roads over. These men came to stay with us, then they disappeared.”

  Delvechi frowned in thought. “Who are they?”

  The teenager again hesitated. “Well I do not know really, but we have their names. They were with us a long time, the longest guests we had. They worked over at the Laboratory, very exciting.”

  The information hung in the air. Delvechi rolled it around, he had to process it a few times, worked over at the laboratory? He jumped up. “These two,” he pointed at the bodies. “Where were they from?”

  The boy looked hesitant. “Erm … I am not sure.”

  “Come on, you said they were with you a long time, you must have known where they were from?”

  “I … I … it was a … I don’t remember. Some place East.”

  Delvechi pressed, “Was it Korea?”

  The boy’s eyes lit up. “Yes! That’s it … how did you know that? But not just Korea … there was something else … erm …”

  Delvechi turned away, saying the words more to himself. “North Korea.”

  The boy jumped around energetically. “Yes … yes, North Korea, they were from North Korea, working at the laboratory. Their work was very secret they used to say.” The boy moved around in front of Delvechi. He had a smug look on his face. “But I remember what they worked on … OPERA.” The boy flexed on the grand reveal. “Not so stupid, huh?”

  Delvechi had a rush of adrenaline. Two North Korean scientists working at the laboratory on the OPERA experiment ... murdered. Chung Su. Delvechi would have to be an idiot to see it all as a coincidence. Vittorio’s disappearance? Chung Su’s arrival? Her capture by a mystery man? Delvechi felt queasy; the smell of the bodies and the enormity of what he may be facing was a nauseating mix. He sat back on the crate. What on earth is the connection? He barely noticed the cold seeping into his trousers. What did it all mean? Delvechi did not know, but in that moment of silence he thought back to Brun’s speech at the gala, the way it had been received with such awe, such shock. From that point on the world had spun out of control.

  Looking at the green bins, the final resting place of the two Koreans, he was pretty certain that Vittorio would not be found alive.

  “Where is your hotel? I need to speak with your family.” Delvechi stood and turned to go back down the alleyway. He knew he would have to phone in the bodies officially and get the forensic teams out, but instinct told him to keep things close, to allow him and Beltrano to get the jump on it. They were part of the Special Task Department, and he needed to prove his worth.

  “Do we have to?” The boy became agitated. “Am I in trouble?”

  “Not yet, no.”

  “I am worried my parents will get angry.”

  Delvechi started down the street. He had images of Chung Su and the bodies flashing through his mind.

  “Don’t worry; I just want to ask your family a few questions. I am not accusing anyone but this is a very serious crime.”

  The boy nodded. “I know, I know … it’s just they will be angry, because they said they didn’t want the police around again. They said they had answered enough questions about those two to last a lifetime.”

  Delvechi stopped in his tracks. He turned to the boy. “What? Those two have caused trouble before?”

  “No sir, no, when they went missing a policeman showed up and asked us lots and lots of questions about them. We thought it was strange because we didn’t report it to the police. You see they always paid us a full year in advance so they didn’t owe us any money. We guessed they went home. This man showed up wearing normal clothes, but said he was an officer of the law … some special officer, and he asked us lots of questions.”

  Delvechi grabbed the boy by the shoulders. “What did the policeman look like?”

  51.

  “Careful …” Chung Su demanded as Luke brushed a hedgerow with the passenger-side wing mirror. His driving was a little erratic, his jaw clenching every time he applied the throttle with his right leg, the wound widening with every movement. Chung Su’s horror was etched all over her face. She was amazed Luke could even move let alone drive.

  Without warning, Luke threw the car onto a muddy verge and skidded to a stop; throwing open his door and taking out the keys he kept his leg as rigid as possible as he struggled to his feet. The pain was getting worse and he needed to remove the splinter and stem the bleeding. He hobbled to the rear of the car and opened the boot. Inside were an array of objects including a metal jack, several oil-stained rags and strangely a pack of batteries but nothing to put them into. The batteries were wrapped in bubble wrap. Right at the far end of the boot against the back seats was something that Luke was hoping for, a tow cord. He leant in and retrieved it; both ends had black metal hooks attached. Luke stretched the thick cord to test it. It was designed to take a lot of pressure, and it was perfect for what Luke needed it for. He grabbed the batteries and slammed the boot shut, taking a moment to rest against the car, breathing heavily.

  He limped up to Chung Su’s door and opened it; she looked at him wide-eyed. He tore off the bubble wrap with his teeth and threw the batteries down into the footwell. He handed Chung Su the tow cord. “I am going to need your help,” he told her plainly.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I am going to count to three; on the last count I want you to pull this with all your strength.” Luke indicated the shard of wood.

  Chung Su’s mouth dropped, her eyes went back and forth between Luke’s eyes and the wood. “But what if … perhaps I am not strong enough? What if I make it worse … I don’t want to … why don’
t you do it?” She was starting to panic.

  “Chung Su, listen! I won’t be able to do it in one pull. All you need to do is smoothly pull it, a bit of strength and it will come out.” Luke knew that in films when someone has something sticking out of them they just grit their teeth and pull, but the reality was very different. The body would fight itself, it would take someone else to pull with no regard to the pain.

  “Do it!” Luke insisted.

  Chung Su nodded and turned so her feet were out of the car and she was sat at the right height to yank out the shard. She lightly placed both hands on the wood.

  “One, two, three!”

  Luke raised his voice as he said the number three in anticipation of the pain. Chung Su suppressed a scream as she tensed her arms and pulled up. The pain shot up Luke’s leg. Involuntarily he leant over and smashed his palms on the frame of the car, gritting his teeth. Chung Su kept pulling and felt the shard slip and then smoothly move up and out. She fell back slightly as it came free and was presented with a blood-soaked stump. Throwing it out onto the floor she sat with her head in her hands.

  The pain was so intense that Luke was sweating in the freezing air; he had to keep it together as the next part had to happen fast. Without warning, he pulled down his borrowed jeans. The wound would have been barely visible had it not been for the fresh oxygenated blood seeping out; it was a thin wound but very deep. He heard Chung Su make a retching noise behind her hand.

  Luke kept hold of the waistband of his jeans with one hand and placed the bubble wrap on the wound with the other, pressing hard. Sliding his jeans back over the wound awkwardly, he quickly moved his hand back to keep the pressure on. He then motioned to Chung Su to pass the cord.

  “You need a hospital.” Chung Su spoke quietly, as if that would soothe things.

  She was right, the makeshift tourniquet would not be a permanent solution, but he hoped it would stem the blood flow for long enough for him to decide a plan of action. His brain was not as lucid as he wanted, a fog was building.