Vengeance

by Brian Falkner

  The walls were solid concrete, with nothing that might indicate a panel or a door. The only doorway was the double-width one that led in, and that was no help.

  Furniture and some plastic boxes were scattered around the room. Chisnall and Brogan moved a couple of desks in case they concealed anything, but to no avail.

  The room was bare.

  Price’s coil-gun made a soft phut and the Nzgali staggered, trying to raise his gun towards her with muscles that refused to respond to commands from his brain. He sank to his knees and toppled forwards onto the floor. She had taken out four others in this part of the gallery.

  Two more, Price thought, but even as she thought it, a mule kicked her in the back, and her coil-gun went flying from her grasp. She had unhooked it from the holster spring for silence and freedom of movement, but now that proved to be a mistake. It skittered across the floor out of reach.

  She tried to get back to her feet, but a second shot, crashing, reverberating around the pillars, kicked up chips from the floor tile just by her head.

  She stayed where she was, spreading her hands so they could see she was unarmed.

  Two shapes stood over her and a heavy boot was pressed between her shoulderblades, pinning her to the ground.

  “Cuff her and check for others,” a Bzadian voice said. “Nokz’z wants them al–”

  He never finished the sentence. Price heard the sound of a coil-gun, once, twice, and the two figures above her dropped, choking and retching, to the ground on either side of her.

  She rolled onto her back to see Wall standing over her. He extended a hand and helped her to her feet.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Someone had to watch your back,” Wall said. “Is that all of them?”

  Price nodded.

  “Then let’s go,” he said. “Chisnall’s made contact. They’ve got Azoh and are heading for the tunnel.”

  Monster and Barnard were waiting in the hallway behind the gallery when Price and Wall emerged. Price gave them both the thumbs up.

  “Back to the tunnel,” Price said.

  Wall looked suddenly at the doors at the far end of the hallway.

  “What is it?” Price asked.

  “Get down. Now!” Wall said.

  Price hit the floor with the others just as the doors exploded, showering the room with broken glass and twisted fragments of metal. Smoke billowed into the room as the black-suited Nzgali appeared, dark shapes in the haze, muzzle flashes lighting the smoke around them. Not two squads this time. This was an army. A river of black pouring in through the shattered doorway.

  “Smoke grenades and covering fire!” Price yelled.

  The Tsar was having bad thoughts. Bizarre thoughts. That was nothing new; all his life he’d had bizarre thoughts. Like what would happen if all of his bones suddenly disappeared. Or what if he could turn himself inside out, so that all his organs were on the outside of his body?

  When he was young he had told his mother about the bad thoughts and she had said that all people had odd thoughts, sometimes bad thoughts, but only bad people acted on them. She’d said that every time you had a bad thought it was like there was a little devil sitting on one shoulder whispering in your ear. But if you listened carefully you would realise that there was an angel sitting on your other shoulder, whispering good things, and that the first thing she was telling you was to give the devil the flick. So that was what The Tsar did. He imagined himself reaching up to his shoulder and knocking the devil whisperer off with a well-aimed flick of his fingers. That almost always worked, and then he could focus on what the angel was saying.

  But not this time.

  “Get Goezlin,” he said. “Tell him I’ll talk.”

  There was no response from the guard.

  “You, dumbass, I said I’ll talk.”

  Still no response.

  “I’ll tell him exactly what he needs to know, but if I don’t tell him in the next ten minutes it’s going to be too late.”

  The guard was staring at him now, but remained silent.

  “Ten minutes, you got that? After that it’s all over, and it’s going to be on your shoulders.” The Tsar raised his voice. “Unlike your head, which is going to be on a stake in the garden.”

  The guard looked uncertain.

  “Nine minutes,” The Tsar said.

  Chisnall was pacing out the floor of the room, searching for what he had missed, when Price’s voice came on the com.

  “We are Oscar Mike to your position.” She sounded short of breath and the background was full of the sound of gunfire. “We’re coming in hot.”

  “I guess we’d better get off our asses and find that tunnel,” Brogan said.

  Chisnall made no comment. They had explored every centimetre of the wall and the floor without finding any sign of a tunnel entrance.

  No wonder the Bzadians had missed it, despite ten years of using this building.

  If it even existed.

  “It’s not here,” he said.

  “Then where is it?” Brogan said. “We have to find it, and fast.”

  “Let me think,” Chisnall said, desperately scanning the room one more time. What if this was not the right room? In that case the tunnel could be anywhere. They didn’t have time to search the entire complex.

  Azoh stood calmly in the middle of the room, beside a dusty table. She had made no attempt to escape. The boy stood in front of her, his arms folded across his chest, as if protecting her.

  She spoke now. The first time since they had left the bunker.

  “Do not think,” she said. “Feel.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Brogan asked, but Chisnall somehow knew. In the same way he felt the strangeness when bad things happened, that he had known Brogan would not betray them, that he had felt the warmth in the throne room. That was what Azoh meant.

  He looked at her and Azoh nodded.

  How? he thought. How did you feel your way to a secret tunnel entrance? He closed his eyes and cleared his mind. Trying to blank out everything except his own emotions. It was not easy. He could hear the others breathing, the sound of his own heart, the brush of cool air on his skin.

  The brush of air?

  For there to be air movement there needed to be ventilation. He looked up, noticing a white plastic grill set into the ceiling. It was too small to be an entrance.

  But the ceiling?

  They had examined the walls and floor. It had never occurred to him to look upwards. Tunnels went down, everyone knew that.

  Yet here, deep within the building, they were already well below the surface of the earth. Could the tunnel be above them?

  “We’ll be at your location in about twenty seconds.” Price sounded unsettled. That was understandable.

  “The ceiling,” Chisnall said.

  “Where?” Brogan asked.

  That was the question. The ceiling was covered in white panels. Any one of them could be an entrance. But what use was an entrance if you could not reach it?

  You could climb up with a ladder, but somehow Chisnall doubted that was the answer. In an emergency situation, which the tunnel was for, you could not depend on having a ladder handy.

  There was a way to get up and it was in this room. The furniture and boxes did not count. They could easily be removed.

  There was nothing permanent in the room. Concrete walls, a doorway with a wooden frame, a light switch by the door.

  A light switch!

  Suddenly he knew. He didn’t know how he knew, but the light switch was the answer.

  He ran to it and flicked it off. The room plunged into darkness. He turned it back on. Off and on. Some kind of a pattern, was that it? If so, he was stuck, because they didn’t know the code.

  Brogan was with him now, pressing the two plastic-covered screws that held the switch to the wall. Nothing.

  Chisnall tried to lever the switch panel from the wall. It would not budge.

  “Ten second
s,” Price cried on the com. “We’re coming in real hot.”

  The sounds of the running battle echoed around the corridor outside the room.

  Chisnall tried to clear his mind as before. He turned the light off one more time. He turned it on, this time noting the slight sponginess of the switch. It actually depressed further than it needed to, before springing back slightly. He pressed it hard, as far as it would go and held it there.

  Nothing.

  He was about to let go when there was a slight sound from above him.

  “Chisnall!” Brogan said.

  A small gap had appeared in one of the ceiling panels.

  Chisnall kept pressure on the switch and the panel began to descend, the base of a metal staircase extending, concertina-like, to the floor. A thin metal handrail unfolded on one side.

  “Brogan, get up there and look for a switch to raise it back up,” Chisnall said.

  She nodded and leaped for the bottom rung, before it had even touched the floor, disappearing up through the gap in the ceiling.

  “Got it,” she said. “Get up here.”

  The instant the bottom of the staircase touched the floor, Chisnall let go of the switch, gesturing to Azoh. She ran up the staircase, the boy still in front of her, half-enveloped in her flowing robes. She steadied the child with a hand as he stumbled on one of the steps. Chisnall followed.

  Price burst into the room below him as he reached the top. She wasted no time, asked no questions, leaping for the staircase and hauling herself up, firing through the open doorway as she went. The other Angels were at her heels.

  Monster was last and, even before his foot touched the bottom step, the staircase began to retract, bringing him with it.

  Two Bzadian soldiers dived and rolled into the room below, firing from the hip. More gunfire came from the doorway, the bullets punching holes through the light metal of the staircase.

  “Move it, move it, move it!” Price yelled.

  The area above the ceiling was low and dark, but rapidly growing brighter as automatic fire punched rows of holes in the ceiling below them. Monster staggered a couple of times as bullets glanced off his body armour, but he kept coming.

  A walkway led them to a tunnel cut into the face of a rock wall, and ten or twenty metres inside the tunnel was a heavy metal door. Chisnall stayed at the door, helping and urging the others through. As soon as Monster dived through the gap, just ahead of a hail of gunfire, Chisnall slammed the door shut.

  It was pitch black inside. Flashlights flicked on almost immediately from the Angels’ helmets. Chisnall examined the door. He could see no way to lock it.

  “That won’t stop them for long,” he said.

  “This might slow them down,” Monster said. He produced a C4 charge from his belt pack and busied himself, rigging it to the door as the others hurried onwards.

  Rough-hewn stone stairs led down deeper inside the hill, arriving at a T-intersection with a long, straight tunnel, which had a rounded ceiling.

  “Left to the US Embassy, right to the museum,” Price said. “We’re going left.”

  They ran. Azoh picked up the child and ran with them, without question or complaint. His arms were tight around her neck, his face concealed by the flowing fabric of her cowl.

  “What’s up with this chick?” Price asked. “She doesn’t seem at all concerned about being kidnapped, shot at and dragged through tunnels.”

  “I don’t know,” Chisnall said.

  Monster caught up with them as the tunnel took a sharp turn to the left and began to slope downwards.

  “All set?” Chisnall asked.

  “They open door, they will regret,” Monster said with a laugh.

  It was Jazki who found the switch to the ceiling staircase. While her soldiers were assembling ladders she was examining the room.

  Nokz’z left her alone. She was smart and competent, and would be soon due for a promotion, if he had anything to do with it. And he would. After rescuing Azoh and capturing her abductors, he would be a hero of Bzadia. There would be a ceremony, a sash presented by Azoh herself. Surely a promotion, perhaps a chance to lead troops into the Americas.

  But even without that, his name would go down in history. He would be the rescuer of Azoh, and he would share the glory with those who helped him achieve it.

  His phone rang.

  “Is it true?” a tight voice asked. Goezlin.

  “They have Azoh,” Nokz’z said. “They somehow gained access to the bunker and gassed her guards. When backup arrived Azoh was gone. But they will not have her for long, nor will they have the opportunity to harm her. My troops will see to that.”

  “Two squads of your troops are currently staring at the ceiling of a hospital ward,” Goezlin said. “Do not assume confidence that you have not earned.”

  “And what information have you learned from your prisoner?” Nokz’z asked. “What is their plan? Where does this tunnel lead?” Goezlin was not the only one who could play that game.

  Goezlin did not deign to answer.

  Troops were at the top of ladders, hammering at the ceiling with the stocks of their weapons when Jazki said, “I have found it.”

  A mechanical staircase began to lower from the ceiling.

  “Nzgali, Nzgali, Nzgali!” Jazki shouted, the rallying cry of the fearsome warriors, urging her soldiers up the staircase before it had even reached the floor.

  Two squads raced up, with Jazki right behind them. Nokz’z put a foot on the staircase after them. He kept one hand on the handrail for stability as he climbed. He was halfway to the ceiling when there was a hand on his arm, stopping him. He looked back at the stern face of his Vaza.

  “Two squads of Nzgali against a few scumbugz children.” Nokz’z laughed with a quick glance at Goezlin. “You think I could be in danger.”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, dear Vaza,” Nokz’z said. “You win again. But in the meantime I want a plan of this tunnel.”

  “Nobody knew it existed, until now,” the Vaza said.

  “The scumbugz knew,” Nokz’z said. “Plans must exist somewhere. In the old human records. Find them.”

  The Vaza did not reply. Or if she did, he did not hear it. His ears filled with a sound so loud it seemed solid. He was flying into the Vaza, embracing her, and now they were both spinning and falling in a whirlwind of rock and dust and smoke.

  A TOOTHLESS DOG

  [1020 HOURS LOCAL TIME]

  [BENEATH BZADIAN CONGRESS, CANBERRA]

  “Get down!” Price shouted, grabbing at Azoh’s arm. She pulled her to the floor, and Azoh covered the boy with her own body. The roar of the explosion was followed by a wave of heat and dust, channelled by the narrow confines of the tunnel. It gushed over them. The boy screamed and covered his ears with his hands.

  When it had subsided, Price said, “Monster, get back and check on the damage. Everyone else, keep moving.”

  The boy had lost his glasses and obviously could not see well without them. He replaced them, stood and, with trembling hands, brushed dust from Azoh’s robes and face. She let him do it, smiling, then took his hand. Something about her very presence was reassuring. Price felt it, and the boy clearly felt it too, as his trembling subsided.

  “Hurry,” Price said, with a glance behind them, and they all began to move.

  This part of the tunnel was long and mostly straight. It angled downwards but only slightly. It flattened out at a point where the tunnel widened and the flat roof gave way to a high jagged ceiling. A natural cave. On the far side was the opening of another tunnel.

  They had reached a staircase leading up, just a narrow series of cuts in a steep rock face, when Monster caught up with them again. “Tunnel goodly blocked,” he said.

  “How blocked?” Price asked.

  “Side tunnel to Congress, she is complete gone,” Monster said. “Roof collapse.”

  “Good work. What about the main tunnel?” Price asked. “The one that leads back to the museum
?”

  Monster nodded. “Many rubble, but okay.”

  They came to another large metal door studded with bolts. In the centre was a heavy wheel about the size of a car steering wheel. Price turned the wheel until it clicked, then eased the door open, just a crack, peering through to ensure the room beyond was empty before ushering the others through.

  The room was small and sturdy-looking. The walls were utilitarian, concrete and metal. There were no windows. There was only one other entrance into the room, a large sliding door set into a solid metal frame.

  At one end of the room were a few rows of simple plastic chairs. They looked dusty and unused. At the opposite end were rows of control desks with built-in computer screens and keyboards. A row of large video screens covered one of the walls.

  Monster, last to emerge from the tunnel, turned and pushed the door shut. There was a matching metal wheel on this side. He spun the wheel to lock it.

  “Where are we?” Wall asked.

  “It’s a secure area,” Barnard said. “Like a keep in a castle. In the event of an attack on the embassy, the staff were supposed to retreat to this room and then use the tunnel to escape.”

  “Somebody figure out how this equipment works and get me Daniel Bilal on the phone,” Chisnall said.

  “Also see if you can tap into the Puke coms,” Price said.

  Wall and Barnard sat at consoles and began experimenting. Almost immediately the video screens on the wall sprang into life, showing scenes from throughout the building and outside. There was a constant flurry of activity through the corridors.

  “Seems a good a place as any to stay,” Chisnall said.

  “I agree,” Price said. “I don’t think the Pukes know this room exists. And if they find us, we can retreat back into the tunnel.”

  “Unless they manage to dig through the rubble,” Wall said.

  “Don’t even think about that,” Price said.

  “We got some fancy weapons systems here,” Barnard said. “This building was supposed to be able to defend itself.”

  “What have you got?” Price asked, walking over behind her.

  Barnard indicated various screens. “Automatic machine guns with motion sensors. Built into pods in the grounds.”