Night Strike

by Chris Ryan

  The further up the stairs they ran, the more muffled the sound of the alarm became. Now it was a low, timid squeal. Gardner said between long in-breaths, ‘She won’t be able to use the freight lift. I set the alarm to go off in the maintenance stairwell. That automatically disabled the lift. She’ll be using the steps in the old access shafts they built to help people get to different levels of the city.’

  ‘And there’s a lot of these shafts?’

  ‘It’s an underground city – there’s a lot of everything. But we can get to her before she reaches the bunker.’ He glanced back at Bald and grinned. ‘As long as you can still hack the pace, John.’

  ‘Never lost it, mate.’

  Up and up, until they had gone through so many revolutions that Bald was beginning to feel disorientated. He didn’t know how many steps he’d scaled, or how fast. He was only conscious of the sound of his own breathing, the thump of his heart, and the sweat washing down his chest and back.

  And then they came to the top of the staircase, and Bald saw there was no door, but an overhead metal grille fixed a couple of metres above the landing. Gardner reached up to the grille, digging his fingers between the metal bars. Then he pushed upwards on the balls of his toes and the grille easily sprang up, which told Bald that Gardner had loosened it on his way down. Gardner gestured for a lift, and Bald boosted him up to the surface. Then Gardner hauled up Bald. He emerged into another drab corridor soaked in red light. This one looked like the engine room of the city. The area that kept everything else ticking. Drums of pungent chemicals lined the passageway, and beside them were fire extinguishers. Bald noticed exposed electrical cables and lead pipes, thick as tree trunks, with corroded valve wheels.

  Then he saw her. Twenty-five metres away. She was carrying an orange Pelican box by her side.

  His first thought was that Xia had clocked him and Gardner, because she was belting away from them.

  His second thought was: the ID.

  ‘Stop, stop, stop right fucking there!’

  Xia ignored Bald and ran even faster. Bald lengthened his stride. He was breathing hard, like he’d just donated a fucking lung. He chased Xia along the corridor. He glanced over his shoulder: Gardner was five metres back now, and bringing the Five-Seven to bear. Ready to pop a round out of the snout.

  ‘I said, fucking stop and put the box down.’

  Xia kept on running.

  A distinctive ca-rack. At Bald’s six o’clock. He twisted and saw a tongue of flame licking out of the Five-Seven’s muzzle: Gardner unloading a single round at Xia. He heard him shouting, ‘Stay right where you are. Don’t fucking move.’ He looked back at Xia. Two more ca-racks splintered the air. Rounds flashlit the corridor and ricocheted off the ceiling in a sharp one-two, dying somewhere in the distance.

  Xia stopped in her tracks.

  Bald was thirteen metres short of her.

  ‘Give me the dust,’ he shouted.

  Xia said nothing.

  ‘Hand it over, or I’ll turn your face into a fucking pot noodle.’

  ‘Let me go,’ she said. ‘You can keep the dust but not me.’

  ‘Sorry, love,’ said Bald. ‘You and the dust come as a package.’

  Suddenly an industrial clang sounded. The red lights were killed. Bald was plunged into a morbid, midnight darkness. He could hear the slow death of the distant generator.

  ‘Can you see her?’ he said.

  ‘No. Can you?’ said Gardner.

  Neither of us has a bead on the bitch, Bald thought.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ said Gardner.

  Light seared into Bald’s face, instant and harsh. Like being hit with a snowball made of ice. It stunned him. He shut his eyes but he could still feel the light behind his eyelids, bleaching the lizard part of his brain. Then he sensed the far-off hum of power returning to the generator.

  He opened his eyes a sliver.

  Xia had vanished. The lights further along the corridor weren’t working. Bald could see thirty metres ahead, and beyond that was the flat darkness that she had evaporated into.

  ‘Where’s she gone?’ Bald shouted at Gardner.

  ‘There’s an emergency lift at the end of this corridor.’

  Then Bald noticed the Pelican box. He raced over and knelt down beside it. It was a Storm model. The shell was injection-moulded and built from high-performance resin. There was a pressure relief valve on the front to let air in and keep water out. There was a press-and-pull latch fixed either side of the flexi-grip handle. Bald laid the box flat on the floor and flipped a button. The latches flipped.

  Bald opened the box.

  It was empty. He stared vacantly at the honeycomb-shaped interior for several long seconds and felt his head clouding with rage. Then he stepped away. Gardner was at his shoulder, saying, ‘John? What is it?’

  Bald didn’t answer. He shot upright and broke into a run. Towards the emergency lift. He was running on adrenaline, and the stuff was effective fuel, powering his legs like turbo-diesel. Soon Gardner was flagging, falling further and further. Bald had always had the edge, fitness-wise, over him. Lights glimmered and winked forty metres down the corridor, at the lift. They yielded up Xia. She was twenty metres from the lift. The same distance from Bald. He tore along at full pelt. He felt the air corroding in his shrivelled lungs like battery acid. His adrenaline tank was almost empty. His body was begging him to stop; his mind was imploring him to keep fucking going. Xia was twelve metres ahead. Ten from the emergency lift. He looked back: Gardner was lagging far behind him now.

  Fuck it, he thought. Gonna have to finish this on my own.

  Eight metres to Xia.

  Six to the lift.

  Then Xia was stepping into the lift. It was no bigger than a phone booth. Bald forced a last desperate sprint, pushed through the open door and lunged at Xia before she could press the button. His outstretched right hand grabbed her by the shoulder and sent her into a spin. She went through a one-eighty arc, then suddenly Bald found his eyes drawn to her left hand. It was bunched up into a fist and twisting at Bald. He saw a ring on her middle finger. Connected to the ring was a dagger blade that ran the length of her hand and up into the sleeve of her Mao suit. The dagger’s tip was a couple of inches from the joint on the ring and looked menacingly sharp. Bald had enough time to realize this. But not enough to dodge the sharp tip.

  It perforated his right shoulder, grinding its way through sinew and muscle. Bald did what all fighters are trained to do, and absorbed the pain. Focused on his own game plan. He dug his fingers into Xia’s shoulder and sent her crashing against the metal wall of the lift. In the next half-second he launched a palm strike at her left wrist and she dropped the dagger. Xia tried to jerk a knee up at his balls but Bald stamped on her toes. She screamed. Her screams echoed off the walls of the corridor. Now Bald snatched a clump of her satin hair and smacked the back of her head against the lift wall repeatedly, until Bald heard the hard crack of her skull splitting open. He threw her to the floor. He tugged her hair back and drove her face into the ground. She was kicking and fighting and flailing, but Bald was in control of the situation. Xia was in his world now. And she was about to find out just how dark a place that was.

  Her face made a satisfying thwack as the bones in her nose fragmented like broken china. Bald made her kiss the floor a second time, grinding her face into it. Her legs stopped bucking. She was submitting.

  Bald wasn’t finished.

  He rolled Xia onto her back. He wanted to choke the life out of this fucking evil bitch. He wanted to see the look on her face when she drew her last breath. A splinter of her nose bone had dislodged and was prodding out of flesh beneath her right eye. Her nostrils had deflated to a couple of pin-prick holes, like tyre punctures. Bald seized her neck with both hands. Pushed his thumbs in on the cartilage of her thorax. Xia couldn’t breathe.

  Then she did a funny thing.

  She smiled a mutant smile.

  Bald relinquished his grip a little.

>   ‘What’s so fucking funny?’ he said.

  Her smile mocked Bald. Gnawed at his bones. At his dignity and self-respect.

  All this way, all the bloodshed and the sweat, and all she gives me is a fucking smile.

  Xia’s mouth was a soup of bloodied gums, brutalized lips and shattered teeth. Her nose was obliterated. The whites of her eyes were blood-red. Her cheeks were swollen and cut. Bald shook her and lifted her head. Blood spewed out of the back of her skull and splashed onto the floor.

  ‘The dust,’ said Bald. ‘Give it to me.’

  ‘You’re too late,’ she said, her voice sounding like a gag reflex.

  Bald grabbed a fistful of Xia’s hair and tugged it until the roots were ripping out of her scalp. She responded with a fit of giggles, flashing her mangled mouth with its graveyard of broken teeth. Blood seeped from her gums and streamed down her chin. The giggles turned throaty and her nose was making a slurping sound, like milkshake sucked up through a straw.

  Bald pounded her face. Over and over. Until his knuckles were red raw and her whole face collapsed and the giggles curdled and died.

  Footsteps pounding at his six.

  Bald gave Xia his back. Gardner was racing towards him, Five-Seven lowered by his side. His eyes settled briefly on Xia. Then he levelled his gaze at Bald. Kept the weapon at his waist.

  ‘Shit, John. What have you done?’

  Bald didn’t answer.

  ‘Where’s the dust?’

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  Gardner’s face hardened. ‘Christ, you killed her before she gave up the dust plans?’

  Bald didn’t answer.

  ‘You stupid fucking idiot, John. You just screwed the mission.’

  fifty-three

  2117 hours.

  ‘We need to find the dust,’ said Gardner.

  ‘It’s gone. We’ll never find it. And if we can’t, no one at the Firm can. We’ll just tell Land we burnt the plans. By the time he realizes we sold him a lie, we’ll have cashed our cheques and sodded off out of the country.’

  But Gardner had tuned out of the conversation. He was quiet for a few moments and then he shot Bald a wide-eyed look and beat a rapid path back down the corridor. Away from the lift.

  ‘Joe? What the fuck’s going on?’

  ‘Just follow me and do as I say.’

  A hundred metres on, Gardner stopped by the door of a utility room. He gave the knob a twist and gestured for Bald to enter. But Bald gestured for Gardner to go first. Gardner gave him a dirty look, then stepped into the room. Bald followed close behind. He couldn’t stop thinking about how Land had trusted Gardner with the underground city blueprints. There was only one reason no one had shared that int with him, he knew, and that was because he was a rogue. A renegade. Whereas Gardner was a corporate stooge. He had his head shoved firmly up Land’s arse. This wasn’t the first time, either, Bald told himself. In Rio, in Gibraltar, in Serbia, he’d done Land’s bidding. Been his bitch. Gardner didn’t have an independent bone in his body, and that enraged Bald.

  The utility room was as small as a bachelor’s wardrobe. It reeked of antiseptic. Attached to the wall were signs bearing hazard symbols. Metal shelves were stacked with industrial cleaning agents and tools. A larger shelf unit held a dozen canisters of propane gas.

  Gardner grinned at Bald. ‘Propane gas explosion,’ he said.

  ‘You’re thinking . . .’

  ‘Blow the whole city up. It’s the only way of making sure the dust is destroyed for good. There’s a generator powering this fucking place, so there has to be a fuel source somewhere.’

  ‘We could use that as a liquid accelerant.’

  ‘This much gas, we could bury this chunk of the city for ever. Xia said it was sealed off anyway.’

  ‘The Chinese invented gunpowder, right?’ Gardner said. ‘So let’s give them a proper display, Regiment-style.’

  He began unloading a canister from the rack. The big, grey canisters were covered with dents and rusting from being knocked around. Gardner propped the first canister upright. Meanwhile Bald returned to the corridor and scouted both directions for guards. A minute later Gardner came out and headed for a firehose unit mounted on the wall. He smashed the glass front with his elbow, removed the hose and hauled it inside the utility room. No sign of any guards. Bald peered through the door. Gardner was checking that the valve of the canister was shut off by rotating the handwheel clockwise. He removed the valve’s protective plug and, taking the end of the hose, fitted the female connector over the valve.

  ‘Give me a hand, John.’

  After a final check in both directions along the corridor, Bald removed the cover from the wall-mounted air duct, grabbed the nozzle end of the hose and jimmied it into the hole. Bald knew that a secure underground facility needed two things in constant supply. Oxygen and power. The air ducts would be powered by a fan system somewhere along the line. Now they would help flood the city with the propane. But the explosion of canisters by themselves wouldn’t be sufficient to destroy the city and with it the Intelligent Dust. For that, they’d need to generate a much bigger explosion. The propane would be like a lighter striking a length of det cord. It would be the initial spark, leading to something much more noisy.

  ‘Like the good old days, mate,’ said Gardner.

  ‘Mates,’ said Bald. ‘Yeah.’

  Gardner twisted the valve on the canister anti-clockwise. There was a sputter and then a brief squirt, and finally a rapid hiss as highly pressurized gas flooded through the hose and gushed into the air duct. Bald could smell ethanol in the air as it filtered through the underground city. Silent, invisible death.

  ‘Hurry it up,’ said Bald, checking his Aquaracer. ‘Eight minutes left.’

  ‘That’s hardly any time. Look, I’ll pump this little lot out. Get your hands on that accelerant so we can get this thing nailed once and for all.’

  ‘Roger that.’

  Bald exited the utility room and carried one of the gas canisters two-handed down the corridor as he followed the trail of the overhead fuel pipes. They led him a hundred metres further down the corridor. All the way the generator’s noise was building to a tremendous hammering din. Bald could hear distinct parts of the generator shaking and grating. He knew he was getting close. Then another fifty metres on the pipes swerved right, and Bald chased them around the corner, and found himself facing the generator.

  Bald placed the gas canister next to the air duct nearest to the generator. Arranged in a snooker triangle next to the generator were four large fuel drums. With his hands free he wrenched the lids off each drum and knocked the drums onto their sides. Heavy, slick diesel fuel spilled out onto the floor. He rolled the drums around to make sure the fuel covered a wide area. Then he cranked the valve on the canister and let the propane seep into the air duct. His eyes began to sting. Powerful fumes filled his throat, like swallowing paint stripper.

  2125 hours.

  Five minutes to get their shit together. Get on that fucking emergency lift.

  Bald powered back down the corridor. He found Gardner in a small kitchen two doors down from the utility room. Gardner had emptied the contents of half the cupboards onto the floor. Plates, cutlery, pans, kettles. From this carnage he had picked up a toaster. Bald saw a couple of thick dossiers lying on the table beside the toaster. Gardner plugged the toaster into the mains. He had stood the final propane canister next to the toaster. The valve was already open, hissing out lethal fumes. The kitchen seemed eerie. But there was no dust, as you’d expect in a place that hadn’t been used since the invention of Internet porn. Everything seemed clean and polished. Maintained.

  ‘All set,’ Bald said to Gardner’s back. ‘There’s enough fuel back there to make Hiroshima look like kids messing around with a box of matches.’

  2128 hours.

  ‘Two minutes,’ said Bald.

  Gardner nodded. ‘Let’s do this.’

  The dossiers were almost too thick for the slots
in the toaster, but Gardner managed to wedge them in. Bald had to admit the paper was shrewd thinking on his old mucker’s part. The dossiers would take time to heat up before catching fire. Perhaps as much as a minute. They would use that time to bug out via the emergency lift before the fire ignited the propane.

  The light on the toaster flared orange. The timer was set.

  Sixty seconds.

  Gardner hurried out into the corridor, Bald alongside him. They ran at breakneck speed towards the lift. The migraine was brewing again in Bald’s head, but this wasn’t the time to slow down.

  Forty seconds.

  As soon as the dossiers caught fire, the propane gas would ignite. The explosion from the gas would channel through the corridors and into the rooms, into every corner of the underground city that had an air duct. All the way to the generator unit. That initial explosion of propane would trigger a second, much more violent explosion as the diesel fuel caught ablaze and acted as an accelerant. Bald pictured it spreading ferocious, skin-meltingly hot flames through the city, incinerating everything in its wake.

  Xia. The Intelligent Dust. The underground city.

  Thirty seconds.

  Bald and Gardner raced on, each forcing the other to demand more of himself. They saw the emergency lift twenty metres up ahead. One final push. Do or die. Bald ran at full pelt, he and Gardner hitting the lift with twenty seconds to go. Now Bald thumbed the button and the mechanism growled and the pulleys sighed and the lift shook itself from its stupor, and at last they were shuttling upwards. Away from the gigantic homemade bomb beneath their feet.

  Fifteen seconds.

  Then it was ten seconds till party time and they had risen just ten metres above the shit, and Bald willed the lift to rise faster.

  Five seconds.

  Twenty metres clear.

  Three. Two. One.