Truly Deadly: The Complete Series: (YA Spy Thriller Books 1-5)

by Rob Aspinall

  “Yeah, I get the picture,” I said.

  “I was going to say eyes.”

  “Sure you were,” I said, pulling the neck of my top away from my skin to let some air in.

  “Anyway,” Nathan said. “She pulls up a stool next to me and asks me if I’ll buy her a drink.”

  “Clearly a hooker,” I said.

  “No,” Nathan said. “The pros working the hotels were ten a penny and neon-signed. No, she was different. Her name was Melissa. She was Australian. We got talking and next thing you know, she’s inviting me back to her room.”

  “This isn’t gonna get X-rated is it? Because I’ve already been there. I mean, with a blonde and … I’ll stop talking now.”

  Nathan shook the confusion from his face and carried on. “Anyway, she takes me back to her room. Puts on a CD.”

  “God, how long ago was this?” I asked.

  “Do you want to hear the rest of the story, or not?” Nathan said.

  “Sorry, go on.”

  Nathan continued. “So she pushes me on the bed. Crawls on all fours over me, and whispers, stay right there, honey bear.”

  I pulled a stinker of a face, as if licking piss off a lamppost.

  “What?” Nathan asked.

  “Dunno. Just can’t imagine you being anyone’s honey bear … No offence.”

  “None taken,” Nathan said, sarcastically.

  “It’s just that, y’know, it’s just a bit urgh. I mean, you’re forty-seven, or something.”

  “To be fair, I was thirty-one at the time,” Nathan said, laughing.

  “Exactly,” I said. “Old.”

  Nathan shook his head and continued the story. “Melissa returns to the room in red underwear and stockings. Absolutely drop-dead stunning. She tells me to close my eyes. That she’s got a little surprise for me.”

  “Ew. Are you trying to make me do some sick in my mouth?”

  “I’m trying to tell the bloody story.”

  I interrupted a lot. It annoyed people. But I couldn’t help it.

  “Copy that,” I said. “Proceed with the de-pantsing.”

  “Well that’s just it,” Nathan sighed. “I wait a full minute, thinking she’s being a tease. When I open my eyes, Melissa and her little black dress are gone. Instead, I’m looking at a bald man with glasses sat in a chair across from the end of the bed. And this tiny, dark-skinned girl, stood next to him, who looks about fifteen. Melissa returns to the room, back in her dress and heels. The bald man has a German accent. He asks me if my name is Nathan Moore. I say, ‘who wants to know?’ fastening my pants and sitting up on the bed. ‘I’m Walter,’ the man says ‘This is Nadia. And you’ve already met Melissa.’

  “Ooh, cock-blocked,” I said.

  “Tell me about it,” Nathan said. “This Nadia girl hands Walter a thin green file. He takes a look through it. Turns out it was my resume. Next thing I know, the guy’s offering me a job.”

  “So that’s how they get you,” I said.

  “We’re either all ex-private sector, university, or sometimes younger.”

  “I guess recruiting from government is hard when you’re supposed to be secret,” I said.

  “Yup,” Nathan said, sipping on his water. “Besides, it’s hard to iron out the creases in intelligence agency training. Better to start fresh and teach better habits.”

  I laughed to myself. “I bet you don’t tell your wife that story.”

  “Oh, this was before I met Nicola.”

  Suddenly, I saw my chance to have a dig. “And what do you tell your wife when you get home at night? Hey honey, I committed three acts of genocide today. Phew, Mondays, eh?”

  “Okay, I had that coming,” Nathan said. “But no, you tell her you’re an international troubleshooter for a pharmaceutical company and your job involves lots of travel.”

  “What were you gonna say when the big re-pop plan kicked in? Yeah, billions are gonna die horribly. But you, me and the kids’ll be okay.”

  “Truth is, I hadn’t worked that part out,” Nathan said. “I’ve done some terrible things. I know that. But when I took the job, I was told I was fighting against the madness; war, genocide, dictators. That’s how they get you. They look for your weakness and exploit it. When I first learned the endgame, I was a new father. When you have kids, all you get caught up trying to protect them. You slowly start pushing back that moral line in the sand, until one day-“

  “There is no line,” I said. “I get it. I’m not saying I forgive you-”

  “Good,” Nathan said, finishing his water. “Because I don’t forgive myself.”

  Amazingly, I could see his point. I mean, he’d been fighting for what he thought was a better future for his wife and daughters. I’d been fighting JPAC for the same reason. Were the two so different? Suddenly, I realised I might be more like Nathan and his ex-cronies than I thought.

  I was forever reminding myself I was doing all this for the right reasons … the right reasons, sure. But did that make it the right thing? Had me and Philippe started our own mini-JPAC? Flying around the world spreading worldwide death and destruction?

  Like all uncomfortable thoughts, I pushed it out of my mind.

  Nathan leaned forward and turned off the fan. He checked his fat commando watch; lighting it up neon-green in the darkness. “It’s time,” he said.

  34

  Night Strike

  The air was hot and close. The night alive with automatic gunfire cracking in the distance, as gangs cut each other to ribbons for a piece of city turf. The slums were edgy enough during the day, but at night it seemed more like a war-zone waiting to happen. Dodgy characters on every corner. The smell of a fire burning somewhere. And bodies lying in the street. Unconscious or dead, I couldn’t tell.

  The good news was, it was dark. Very few lights out in the barrios. But lots of shadows cast by buildings in the pale moonlight.

  We stuck close to the buildings as we jogged slowly, sparing our energy. We came to a three-storey building with a metal ladder up the side.

  “Up here,” Nathan said, stepping up the first few rungs, his cotton bag of bottles clinking over one shoulder.

  I followed him up the ladder, my own bag weighing heavy. We trod soft and low to the edge of the building, where we could see beyond a few blocks to where federal police gathered at an intersection. They’d parked a pickup truck on all four corners. Each one had a frame built on to the back, designed for carrying troops.

  A pair of officers stood in front of each pickup, looking one way and the other, large assault rifles resting easy in their arms. They were kitted out in full Kevlar armour; helmets and ski masks over faces. Only the Mexican flags printed on the shoulders of their dark blue tactical suits hinted at any colour. Between our position and theirs, I could make out a few gang members milling around with weapons of their own. A mix of pistols and machine guns.

  I whispered to Nathan. “Are you sure this is gonna work?”

  Nathan surveyed the scene, held a hand out flat and wobbled it side to side.

  “Thanks for the confidence boost,” I said.

  Nathan pointed out a young guy in jeans and a plaid shirt, leaning against a wall on a street corner, idly smoking a cigarette.

  “Let’s get this over with,” I said.

  We crossed the roof, descended the ladder and dropped quietly into the street. I left my bag of bottles with Nathan in a dark alleyway and crossed the street. I stuck tight to the wall, only a few feet around the corner from the smoking man.

  He didn’t see me coming. Wouldn’t have even felt anything as I struck him on the back of the neck with the point of my hand. I caught him as he fell and lowered him into a sitting position against the wall, cigarette hanging from his lips. I checked both ways along the street, reached inside his jeans pocket and took out his lighter.

  I scurried into the alleyway.

  “Get it?” Nathan asked.

  “Got it,” I said, flicking open the man’s stainless ste
el lighter and testing the flame.

  I pocketed the lighter and hauled my bag over one shoulder. We moved with near silence between shadows; the only sound, the gentle tinkle of bottles in the heavy duty bags we’d found in the tool shop and the shuffling of our feet across the littered streets of the slums.

  Nathan was right. The searches in our immediate area seemed to have dropped off. Replaced by night watches and perimeters, left in place as a precaution. We skirted around the streets and stopped a couple of right turns away from Team Corruption.

  We eased our bags off our shoulders and opened them out. We each tied one of the rags tight around mouth and nose. We then took two bottles apiece in hand, leaving behind a couple of spares. I lit the end of both rags in Nathan’s bottles. He ran low and fast, out to his position across the street. I lit my own and took the near-side.

  Nathan threw his flaming cocktails hard and high, before ducking behind a corner and watched them hit their intended targets.

  By the time one of the cops had spotted the bottles, they’d already struck both pickups on the two street corners furthest from me. They smashed against windshields and went up in ferocious balls of flame, thick smoke engulfing the space around them.

  Now my turn.

  My throwing arm had improved since the incident with the spear and the drone dogs. But it wasn’t half as good as Nathan’s, so I had to get closer. Luckily, the swirl of chemical smoke and flames distracted all eight cops; enough for me to get closer without being seen.

  I hurled my bottles, one after the other at the remaining two pickups. One missed, but hit the street close enough to do its job. The other landed plum in the rear of a pickup.

  The cops couldn’t help but back off from the blaze, away from each other, coughing on the wall of smoke in between. The one nearest to me was a woman around my height.

  Bonus.

  I got her in a sleeper hold and rotated her over my right thigh, on to the floor, where I crouched with her until she went bye-bye, my foot pinning her rifle to the road.

  I dragged her limp body into a dark side street. It was hot and heavy work, especially in the humidity. Even a decent distance from the smoke, it was stinging my eyes, so I slipped the woman’s goggles on first before yanking off her boots, rolling her on to her side and detaching her Kevlar vest. I had to work fast, but this wasn’t my first time stealing a uniform. Nathan’s either, by the looks of it. He joined me in full tactical gear of his own; rifle and helmet in hands. He pulled on his ski mask and pushed his goggles over his eyes, coughing out a wisp of smoke.

  Fully suited and booted, I jogged behind him to where we’d left the spare bottles. Nathan put them together in one bag and threw it over a shoulder while I strapped on my rifle and checked the ammo. I gave Nathan the thumbs up. He gave me a thumbs up back and we moved, shortcutting between low-rise apartments.

  TV laughter, music and chatter coming from the rooms above, residents seemingly oblivious to the fresh chaos outside.

  We stopped at the end of the alley, where it broke out into a main street a couple of blocks from the police checkpoint. I took a look around a corner and counted five La Firma heavies gathered together in the middle of a downward-sloping road.

  I turned to Nathan and nodded, holding up four fingers and a thumb.

  He nodded back and took out the remaining two Molotov cocktails. I lit the ends, before stepping out into the main street and opening fire at the feet of the gang members.

  I let them see me, before darting back into the alleyway and drawing their return fire, running fast with all five guys hot on our tail, sweating like a pig in a butcher’s, inside the heavy tactical gear.

  Well, I guess it was one way to torch that stubborn belly fat.

  We hung a couple of rights before Nathan handed me a bottle. We split again, just like before. More cops had arrived at the intersection. A couple with fire extinguishers, putting out the blazing pickups.

  Nathan hurled his remaining bottle before cutting across the street behind me. I threw mine as he ran, so that the pair of them landed at much the same time.

  On this occasion, we threw them short, so that they’d smash and smoke in front of the cops. We wanted to draw their attention to further along the street, where those five La Firma boys were just about rounding the corner, weapons at the ready and tempers blazing like those police pickup trucks.

  I backed into the alleyway where I’d left the female cop on the floor. She was waking up, still groggy. We ignored her and looked out on to the street. La Firma hurled insults at the cops, opening fire.

  Within seconds, the street was lit up in an all-out firefight between cops and cartel. We withdrew into the alley, stepping over the drowsy woman, stripped to her white sports bra and shorts, leaving La Firma to do battle with the police. Both sides thinking one had attacked the other.

  Yet all we’d done so far was light the fuse. Now it was time for some real fireworks.

  35

  Found Out

  It wasn’t getting any safer on the mean streets of Neza-Chalco-Izta. But at least we had Kevlar and automatic weapons.

  We moved in tandem, using textbook moves right out of the JPAC kill manual. As the closest either of us got to being a Type A, I took the lead, with Nathan bringing up the rear.

  We moved in bursts between streets, police radios turned low, chattering quietly away. From what we could hear, they’d reacted exactly as we’d hoped, dispatching a couple of units deeper into the slums to help fight a growing mass of angry gang members, putting their differences to one side and joining forces with La Firma against the might of the federal police.

  The only tricky part was we were now dressed as cops. Which meant we were a target for just about every ne’er do well in the slums. And speak of the devils, here they came. A pair of shooters with bandanas tied around their faces. Both with submachine guns. They spotted us as we crossed a stretch of moonlight. As the bullets flew, we took cover behind a parked car that would have been ideal for cutting down the time and distance to the next blockade, but was quickly torn to shreds by high-calibre bullets.

  I let the shooters get close, before dropping and rolled on to my back. They’d be expecting my head to pop out over the roof of the car. Not from behind a rear tyre. With a double-tap shot, I put the first one down, the assault rifle kicking like a mule in my hands.

  Nathan broke out from behind the car and blasted the remaining guy to hell. He pulled me up by the hand and we ran fast away from the scene. I tugged the ski mask away from my mouth, finding it hard to breathe.

  Salty sweat dripped off the tip of my nose on to my tongue. My legs felt the weight of the heavy equipment and the gradual incline of the surrounding streets.

  A couple of blocks further on, a pickup swung around the corner with a small mob of gang members on the back, catching us in its headlights.

  There was no way in hell we could fight all of them off. Not while conserving ammo. So we lured them off the truck and into a maze of alleyways; running, turning and firing.

  I counted six guys plus the driver following us in. By the time the fight spilled out on to the next street along, there were three of them left. Heavily armed, too.

  We caught a break as we crossed the road looking for the next alleyway. A toasted pickup from the intersection battle slammed on the brakes; a pair of SWAT on the back. The second our chasing pack emerged from the alleys, the cops gunned them down in cold blood.

  It wasn’t so much dog eat dog in the slums, as dog rip the other dog in two and poo it out the other end.

  “Where are you headed?” one of the cops asked us.

  “The next checkpoint,” Nathan said, in Spanish. “We got cut off from our unit.”

  “We’re heading back there now,” the man said. “We got fucked over by La Firma. Firebombed out of nowhere. Lost two of our team.”

  “Shit, we heard,” Nathan said.

  “Jump on, we’ll give you a ride,” the cop said.

&nbs
p; Me and Nathan climbed on the back of the truck. The bodywork was burnt to a crisp, but it drove out of there fine. And fast too, flying over intersections and bumping up and down on the lumpiest roads in the world.

  There were two cops on the back with us. The taller and more talkative one and a shorter one who didn’t say much. They stood facing right, while we faced left, rifles at the ready, watching out for gangs.

  I guess it was around half a mile into the drive when the bad news came over our radios. They’d found the officers we’d stolen the uniforms from. Blanco and Rodriquez.

  “Look out for two suspects impersonating police,” a man said over the radio. “They’ll likely be male and female.”

  The two cops turned our way.

  It was obvious.

  They knew.

  36

  Light A Fire

  It was a stand-off.

  Their weapons trained on us.

  Our weapons trained on them.

  “Remove your helmets. Show us your faces,” the taller cop said.

  “You show us yours,” Nathan said, as if for one second they were going to take their fingers off the trigger.

  “The suspects are a man and woman,” said the shorter one. “We’re both men. Now drop your weapons.”

  “We’re not dropping anything,” Nathan said. “Other than the two of you, if you don’t back the fuck off.”

  “You talk kinda funny for a Mexican,” said the short one. “Kinda like you’re from Spain.”

  “If you’re not the suspects,” the tall one said to me, “then let’s hear you talk.”

  I cleared my throat and channelled my inner Barry White, putting on the deepest, manliest voice and the most convincing Mexican accent I could.

  “Here,” I said. “I’m talking.”

  Pretty convincing, if you ask me.

  “As I thought,” the tall one said.