by Rob Aspinall
I turned, expecting to see a shooter. I saw nothing but runway melting into a wobbly heat haze.
Where had that bullet come from?
Out of a porthole to a different dimension?
A sniper at a thousand yards?
Didn’t look like the kind of cranial damage caused by a long-range rifle. Their heads were still in one piece. A big, bloody hole in each one and spray patterns over the tarmac, but Philippe had once spent an entire afternoon explaining all the various kinds of mash different bullets could make of your brains. And this didn’t resemble any of his doodles.
There was no time to mull it over or enjoy the sheer bloody relief pumping through my veins. Those SUVs had come packed with plenty more guys, armed to the teeth.
I thought fast through my options. The dead firing squad were thick-set types who’d all fallen on their weapons. No time to roll one over and detach a rifle from a shoulder strap.
The only doable option was the dead MI6 spooks only yards away. First off, they had accessible weapons. Second, they’d left a door open on one of those four-by-fours and I could see a key dangling out of the ignition.
The cavalry were spilling out of SUV doors, machine guns blazing.
But they weren’t firing at me.
I was the least of their worries.
48
Yellow & Black
I heard a pop and a whizz over my shoulder. An object burning orange, swooshing by, leaving a snaking white vapour trail in its wake.
It ploughed into the SUV on the left, whamming into the grille and flipping it up and over onto its roof.
JPAC returned fire, taking refuge behind the doors of the two remaining SUVs.
Caught up in the middle, I scrambled for cover behind one of the MI6 off-roaders. I turned one-eighty, to see a yellow and black dot breaking out of the heat haze.
Moving fast towards me, flashing and cracking.
Within a heartbeat, it came whizzing into full view. A sporty yellow dirt bike. A female rider in black spandex and a lightweight Kevlar vest, raven hair flowing in the wind and eyes hidden behind a cool pair of shades. She cut a straight line towards the JPAC heavies, her assault rifle spitting out automatic bullets through a dampener, hitting any JPAC body parts sticking out from behind of an SUV door.
If the first shot didn’t put them down, the second one did.
The woman slowed the dirt bike and skidded to a sideways stop. It was the assassin from NYC. The same girl who’d poison-darted Teddy Tucker.
She put a bullet in a rising JPAC stooge. But another popped out from a driver door with a rifle in his hands. The assassin was unsighted, but I’d already picked up a weapon from a dead MI6 bodyguard.
Before I could take the shot, she angled her weapon over her shoulder and shot him in the head, using a side mirror on the bike to aim.
I looked at the scene: an SUV on fire, another two riddled with bullet holes. Bodies and blood all over the runway. The chopper shrinking into the bright blue sky. And the dirt bike’s 125cc engine chugging quietly, with a compact, black rocket launcher tucked in a custom-holster on the side of the chassis. Me and Philippe had stolen one not long back; a next-gen, laser-sighted piece of JPAC kit you could load with three small, but high-explosive grenades at a time.
The assassin pulled the launcher from the holster, cranked the next grenade into the chamber and slung it over one shoulder. She aimed it at the chopper; as it pulled high up over the hills.
No way you’ll hit it from this distance, I thought, sounding more and more like Philippe (#weaponsbore).
Reluctantly, the assassin lowered the launcher, flicked a switch on the side and slid it inside its holster.
She sat on her bike and cursed in Chinese. She pushed a finger to her ear and spoke in fluent English, in a heavy Eastern accent. “I missed the target,” she said. “They airlifted him out.”
There was a pause as she sized me up. I had the drop on her with my MI6 weapon, but I hesitated.
“Just the girl left,” she said, pausing and removing her shades.
She pushed the device in her ear again, her sweeping brown eyes locked on mine. Both of us waiting for the other to make a move.
Long strands of glossy, straight hair blew across her young, delicate features. She was stunning all over in a super-stylish assault outfit Not for one minute sweating the Texan heat.
In fact, I felt like a frumpy-dumpy pig-bag by comparison, with my chlorine-stiff hair and sunburnt skin.
After a brief, tense moment, the assassin twisted a gloved hand on the accelerator of the bike, lifted a black desert boot off the floor and took off across the runway, leaving a dust trail behind her as she hit the desert floor.
This time I didn’t hesitate. I jumped in the nearest four-by-four, slid my handgun on the passenger seat and turned the key in the ignition. I accelerated after her, closing the driver door as I went.
The big wheels of the four-by-four rumbled off the tarmac and on to the sand, the ride bumpier than a camel’s back.
I cranked up the air con and followed her dust trail between patches of brown scrub and rising piles of rock. The dirt bike was way ahead when it came to agility, but the four-by-four had raw power on its side.
The assassin looked over her shoulder and saw me giving chase, before sliding into a series of sharp turns between rock formations jutting awkwardly out of the ground.
I just about stayed with her, drifting between rocks and thick, wiry shrubs.
Still, she got enough of a jump to pull away into the distance. I rolled up and over a hill, the wheels leaving the ground and bouncing down again, as I tried to cut down the distance. I followed her into a valley, where she took a narrow dirt track through a vast sea of green cactus plants.
The land flattened out and the cacti thinned as the assassin zoomed through a gap in a half-open wire gate warning against trespassers, taking a sharp right onto a long stretch of straight highway empty of cars.
I slid the four-by-four onto the road and gained some ground on the flat tarmac. She veered to the right, heading straight for a white box truck, parked by the side of the road with its rear door open and a ramp into the back.
The rear tyre of the dirt bike smoked as the assassin braked hard and steered up the ramp. I came to a screeching halt a stone’s throw behind, grabbed the handgun off the front passenger seat, checked the chamber and opened my door. I left the engine running and climbed out into a blast of desert heat; eyes squinting in the sun. I approached slowly with my weapon raised. The assassin dismounted the bike and strolled casually down the ramp.
She stopped in front of me, but didn’t go for the pistol on her hip.
I lowered my weapon to my side. “If you’re not JPAC,” I asked. “who are you?”
The assassin didn’t answer. She stood impassively as a man climbed out of the driver’s door of the truck; a lean arabic guy in his mid-twenties, dressed in dark denim and a charcoal tee.
The exact same guy who’d beat us to the punch in Uzbekistan.
He walked around to the back and glanced in my direction, before sliding the ramp back into the truck.
I then noticed a girl around my age. Mixed-race with a clump of bright red hair on an otherwise shaven head, dressed in khaki combats and a grey vest. With tatts running over her arms and chest and a silver stud in her left nostril, she chewed on a stick of gum and leaned casually against the righthand side of the truck, the sole of a trainer resting on a rear tyre as she tapped away at a mobile.
The guy from Uzbekistan reached up and pulled down a shutter door on the back of the truck, hopping onto the tarmac and locking it in place. He banged a fist twice on the side of the truck, walked around to the front and jumped in to the driver’s seat.
The front cabin had two doors either side.
Out of the front passenger door, climbed a woman; a tall and athletic figure in a white vest and pale blue jeans. She stood by the door, blonde and tanned. Somewhere in her thirties.
WTF?
As sand hissed across the road in the breeze, the assassin broke off from our little staring contest and skipped around the left of the truck, climbing inside the door behind the driver. The girl with the mohawk did the same, peeling herself away from the truck and her phone and opening the rear passenger door. She jumped inside, but left the door open.
The truck engine rumbled into life, ready to go.
I looked around me. At the empty desert. The endless highway. The stolen four-by-four ticking behind me, with how much fuel in the tank? I’d spent my last peso in Mexico City and left my bank card on another continent.
I turned back to face Inge.
“Well,” she asked, a hand on the front passenger door. “Are you coming?”
49
Epilogue Part I
SOMEWHERE IN THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE
The G450 carrying Nathan Moore and two other JPAC employees to their connections, touched down on a smooth stretch of tarmac under heavy skies. Nathan stepped down off the private jet and lingered on the damp concrete, feeling cool spots of fine drizzle on his face.
Never had he appreciated a rainy day more. It made a refreshing change to the searing heat of Mexico and woke him from the fog of multiple time zones. Directly across from the jet, another, larger, private aircraft with a silver undercarriage sat idling, pointing in the opposite direction as if ready to depart, but with its stairwell door down.
A tall, bald man in a dark suit and beige raincoat stood in the space between the two aircraft under a black umbrella. He beckoned Nathan forward and on to the next plane.
The last thing Nathan wanted now was another connection to an unknown destination, but he trudged forward regardless, in a fresh set of clothes that were far too formal for his tastes. He fiddled with the neck of his white shirt and his pale blue tie, frowning as his polished black shoes pinched him with every step, feeling trapped in a dark blue suit that was stiffer than a frozen corpse.
He’d have to get used to the new corporate JPAC. They’d tightened up the structure and the dress code.
What else had they tightened up on? He thought. Expenses? Reporting?
Let it slide. You’re alive and back in the fold. Get your feet under the table first. Then you can kick off your shoes.
The man in the raincoat pointed Nathan towards the stairs of the next private jet. He climbed the steps into a grey leather and walnut colour scheme.
Nadia resembled a young girl, sat in a fat passenger chair; her legs crossed in a cream business suit, in stark contrast to her dark skin tone.
Nathan remembered her well from the day he was recruited. She was a kid at the time. Now, she sat scrolling through an iPad like she was queen of the universe.
Her. The boss of him. A temporary indignity, he reminded himself.
Nadia looked up as Nathan approached in squeaking shoes, along the centre of the aisle.
“Please,” she said, extending a hand to the seat directly opposite.
Nathan undid the button on his suit jacket and took the empty seat, noticing a plate on a side table by the window, with a pair of tantalising pastries.
Nadia rested the iPad on an arm of the chair and extended a hand, “I’m Nadia Mishra.”
“Nathan. Nathan Moore.”
“I wanted to meet with you personally,” Nadia said, releasing Nathan’s hand.
You wanted to size me up, more like it, Nathan thought. He reclined in his chair and glanced over Nadia’s shoulder at a foursome of men and women in sober suits. They huddled close around a laptop, talking in hushed tones.
To Nathan, they looked more like number crunchers and pencil pushers than field agents or operational analysts.
“New graduate scheme?” he was about to ask Nadia, before biting his lip.
“I know the last few days can’t have been easy,” Nadia continued.
“I’ve got the bruises to prove it,” Nathan said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
“It took skill and courage,” Nadia said, with a sincere smile. “Which is why you were selected … I knew no one else could have pulled it off.”
Nathan looked again at the plate of pastries. An iced danish swirl resting against a jam pastry roll.
He snatched the danish off the plate and took a bite, spilling crumbs all over his new suit and speaking with his mouth half-full. “Must be all those years in the field,” he said, freeing his top button and loosening his tie. “No substitute for experience.”
Nadia nodded and smiled some more. “Well, I’m glad to have a man of your expertise on my team,” she said. “Snowfall was regrettable, of course. But a crack in the ceiling is no reason to tear down the Sistine Chapel.”
“Agreed, agreed,” Nathan said, between bites. “Especially now Vasquez and the girl are out of the way.”
“Actually,” RunRabbit is missing,” Nadia said.
Nathan almost spat out the pastry. “That bloody girl,” he said. “She’s a cat with nine lives.”
“She had help,” Nadia said. “That’s the next job on the list. But not to worry, we can handle it.”
“Of course, of course,” Nathan said, in no hurry to warn Nadia what a banana skin Lorna Walker was.
Nathan took another bite of the danish, savouring every mouthful. “So what do you have in store for me?”
“Oh, later,” Nadia said, waving the question away. “Get yourself some rest first. Talk to your family. I’ve arranged a hotel suite for you as an overnight layover. Someone will be in touch about next steps.”
Nathan deposited the remaining third of his pastry back on the plate, clapping the crumbs off his hands.
Nadia leaned in close and looked Nathan in the eye. “I’m an extremely loyal person,” she said. “But I expect absolute loyalty in return. Before we work together, I need to know, Nathan. Can I count on you?”
Nathan leaned forward to meet her eye. “Absolutely,” he said. “One hundred percent.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Nadia, smiling and standing out of her seat.
Nathan shook the crumbs off his suit as he rose. “Thank you again for the opportunity.”
“Don’t be silly,” Nadia said. “You’ve more than earned it.”
Nathan was shown off the jet by the man in the raincoat and escorted across the tarmac to a waiting car; a polished, black Mercedes saloon. He looked over his shoulder as he climbed in the backseat, the steps to the jet already retracted and the wheels beginning to roll.
The uniformed driver steered the car out of the private airfield without a word. Nathan watched the rain spot the window, removing his tie with glee. As with any new boss, it was best to mark your territory early and see where the boundaries lay.
Wherever Nadia was headed, she was headed there with a floor full of crumbs and the best pastry on the plate already eaten.
Nadia wouldn’t be a problem. Just like that pastry, he ate suits like her for breakfast.
The hotel was plush. No expense spared. Nathan checked into his suite. A large, open-plan space on an upper floor with a generous balcony looking out across the city skyline. He hadn’t arrived with anything but the clothes on his back, but found a small, black travel case waiting for him in the living area, resting on its wheels by a pair of caramel sofas.
He wheeled the case into the bedroom and lifted it on to the white duvet pulled tight across a king-size bed. He ran the zip all the way round and opened it up.
“Now that’s more like it,” he said, sifting through the contents of the case.
He lifted out a pair of brown trainers. Khaki combats. A pale blue shirt. And a lightweight utility jacket in navy-blue. Nathan also took out a passport and a new wallet full of cash and cards.
A new identity. After the Mexico job, it made sense.
Nathan kicked off his shoes, wriggled his toes inside his socks and walked into a cavernous en suite with a walk-in shower. He turned on the shower head and stripped to his black bo
xers in the mirror, touching the healing cuts and yellowing bruises covering most of his body.
“What a weekend,” he said, with a chuckle and a shake of the head.
After a three-course meal in the hotel’s renowned steakhouse, Nathan returned to his room and made a call on the latest version of an iPhone, given to him by JPAC.
“Yes darling,” Nathan said, pacing around the living area in shirt, combats and trainers. “I’ll let you know when I get settled in my new post. I’ll explain everything when you and the girls come out. In the meantime, just hang tight, okay?”
Nathan paused and smiled. “Yes, I love you too. Tell the girls I’ll see them soon. I’ll talk to you tomorrow when I know more.”
Nathan ended the call, removed the temporary SIM he’d picked up in the hotel gift shop. He reinserted the JPAC-issue SIM that came with the phone, leaving the handset on a side table.
After sitting on the bed and flicking through the channels on a flatscreen that rose out the end of the bed, Nathan poured himself another whiskey from the drinks cabinet and strolled over to a large glass balcony door, which slid open to let in the sounds and smells of the city.
It was a cool night, but not unpleasant, the breeze refreshing rather than unsettling and the balcony tiles soothing the raw soles of his feet.
Nathan walked the few steps from balcony door to railing. He looked out from the thirty-seventh floor across the twinkling, buzzing city. A world away from the cartel safe house he’d spent the last month or so hiding out in. And a damn sight better than the Mexico City slums.
He took another sip of whiskey, looked at moving traffic below and up at the rolling black skies above. He breathed deep in relief, a smile growing from ear to ear. He lifted his glass to the night, as if in a toast.
“It’s good to be alive,” he said.
