by Jaspre Bark
Simon Peter kicked the motorbike into life and jumped on.
He took off after the escaping biker and caught up with him a mile down the road. The man knew how to ride and Simon Peter was only on him because he'd taken a lot of stupid risks. As he began to draw level the rider turned into a side road which led to a wooded copse. Simon Peter followed.
He pulled out his pistol and let off a few shots. The biker zig-zagged across the road and Simon Peter tried for his tires but didn't have any luck.
The rider took his bike off-road and tried to lose Simon Peter by taking sharp turns through the trees. Simon Peter took a gamble on the biker's next turn and drove straight at the point he thought the rider would hit. He was spot on and ploughed straight into him at nearly fifty. At the last minute he leaped and caught hold of the biker around the waist. They went straight into a tree trunk. The biker caught the brunt of the impact. Simon Peter fell backwards and the man landed on him. A sharp pain shot up his spine and he kicked the biker away.
He sprang at the man and tore his helmet off, then punched him twice in the face before he noticed the ribs sticking out of the biker's chest.
"Who sent you?" he screamed. "Who are you working for?"
The man just shook his head and coughed up blood.
Simon Peter punched him a few more times, but the biker couldn't have talked even if he wanted to. Simon Peter was so pissed at him after chasing him all this way that he just walked away and left the man to die slowly. He wasn't going to put the son of a bitch out of his misery.
Half an hour down the interstate he found Colt and the other men. Colt wasn't too pleased when he heard what Simon Peter had to say. He remained ominously silent for about five minutes then said: "We don't need no confirmation. He'll deny it of course, but we know who sent those men to kill us. And he just signed his own death warrant."
CHAPTER FOUR
Linda had never ridden with anyone as irritating as Greaves. For a guy who had survived the worst plague in history he sure was allergic to a lot of things.
Every five minutes he was either taking some pill or sucking on some inhaler. The huge greatcoat he never took off was an Aladdin's cave of pharmaceuticals. It had a million pockets and each one of them rattled with some kind of medication. Shame it stunk worse than a flatulent skunk.
"Ah, New Harmony," he said as they passed a bullet- riddled road sign. "Site of America's only socialist community. Founded in 1825 by Robert Owen."
"Wasn't he a blues singer?"
"A British industrialist actually," said Greaves, missing Linda's bored sarcasm. "It didn't last long. Socialism never caught on in the States. It's one of those European things."
"Like soft cheese and not bathing?"
"Quite."
Wherever they drove he'd come out with these gems, straight out of some 'Big Boy's Book of Facts'. Greaves was a walking almanac. Still, that did prove useful at times. He could scavenge them just about anything with what he knew.
As soon as they hit Indiana, Greaves took them to the waterfront on Lake Michigan. He blew a lot of hot air about how it used to be one of the industrial centres of the world. Then he lead them to an underground fuel depot with enough gas to fuel an army of Berthas. They drove away with enough gas to get them all the way to Montana.
God knows how Greaves knew where all these things were. It was like he never forgot anything he read or heard. He was obviously one of these freakishly intelligent mutant types you hear about. The kind of guy that can only form relationships with cyber-porn. Greaves probably hadn't had his pipe cleaned since the Internet disappeared. No wonder he had to keep swallowing so many pills.
After fuelling up, he had taken them south in search of some cave complex, even though it was miles out of their way. They followed the River Wabash south for a while then headed out on the highway to Kentucky. Greaves directed Linda west as they hit Crawford County. Only then did he tell her they were looking for the Wyandotte Caves.
That was his way of keeping control of everyone. He told them just enough to keep them going where he wanted them to, then found them just what they needed, hidden somewhere no-one knew about.
All except for Anna. Greaves treated her differently, like some bashful kid in the company of royalty. He really tried hard to be gentle with her, this wasn't something he was used to. Not from the way he acted with everyone else. Watching him around Anna was like watching someone who'd read a book on kindness without ever having been shown it.
All Anna did was snivel mostly. Occasionally she'd start praying in that strange 'olde worlde' language she used, sounding like she was a refugee from the Little House on the Prairie.
In the two weeks or more that Linda had been travelling with the three of them she hadn't seen Anna do anything to justify Greaves' strange belief that she was going to save humanity. Maybe it was just a little quirk he had. Like those otherwise normal people who believe their dog controls the weather.
Still, it was an easy job and the rewards seemed to be good. She'd drop Greaves and his little band in Montana, let them save the world or whatever, and make off with her payload.
First Greaves wanted to go exploring caves though.
Cortez was sleeping when the motor-home pulled up. He could drop into a deep sleep for five minutes and wake alert and refreshed, it was a technique he had learned in the jungles of El Salvador during his time in the Mano Blanco.
Cortez had learned many things in the Mano Blanco, like what made a real man. The men he had run with knew what real men were and wasted no time in showing him. Many of them had been part of the paramilitary Organizacion Democratica Nacionalista, or Orden for short, before the government shut it down in '79. This hadn't stopped General Medrano, its founder. He knew how to keep his country in line. He simply streamlined the organisation and turned it into an even more lethal machine: the death squads of the Mano Blanco.
Cortez was just a young hooligan from a coffee plantation when he joined. He was good at hurting people and it didn't worry him. The Mano Blanco hardened him, focused him and taught him everything he'd ever needed to know.
Such as not questioning your employer when he wants to go exploring caves. This was something that the whore did not realise. She knew how to fight he'd give her that, but she didn't know her place or when to keep her mouth shut.
"So," she said as they stood outside a fissure in the rock face that Greaves said was a secret entrance. "You mind telling me why I've got to crawl down this hole in the ground?"
"There are twenty-three miles of passages down there," Greaves told her. "More than half of them were used covertly by the CIA. There is a weapons cache, a Black Ops archive and nearly a quarter of the entire Colombian annual cocaine export hidden down there."
"Well why in hell are we wasting our time chatting?" said Linda and crawled into the hole.
"What about the girl?" Cortez asked Greaves. "It is not safe to leave her alone in the vehicle."
"Go get her. She'll have to come with us."
"The passage splits here. We need to take the left fork. It goes down for a little way then comes out onto a proper walkway."
Linda was glad to hear that last part. She'd crawled nearly half a mile on her hands and knees so far. As she took the left fork Greaves put his hand on her butt. "You might wanna find another hand hold. Or you won't have any hand left to hold it with."
Greaves snatched his hand back and dropped his torch. It was the only one they had. Everything went black for a minute and Linda heard Anna whimper behind them. Then Greaves fumbled the torch back on.
Sure enough they did come out onto a walkway. "Down this way," said Greaves. They followed him through a series of tunnels for about ten minutes until he came to a stop. He bent down and started to mess with what looked like a fuse box. There was a loud clunk and lights came on. "Auxiliary generators still have some juice in them."
They were standing inside a stone corridor lit by strip lights. There were two metal doors in the
wall up ahead of them. "This area was specially built," Greaves said. "It's where all the admin was done. We need to get into these offices."
"Is this where the coke is?" Linda said.
Greaves shook his head. "We'll get to that later. This is more important."
Greaves had Cortez shoot off the lock on the first door. Linda could tell he still missed his skeleton key. Behind the door was an office with a few desks and some filing cabinets. Greaves began to turn the room upside down.
"What you looking for?" asked Linda. "Maybe I can help."
"I need to find a certain memory stick. It has a specific serial number on the side."
When they'd checked and re-checked every inch of the room and turned up nothing Cortez shot the lock off the other door. The office behind that was pretty much the same as the last, with the exception of the corpse at the desk.
The first thing that hit Linda was the smell. The body had rotted down to the skeleton in most places. It was still wearing a sharp black suit and most the back of its skull was gone. A rusted pistol sat in its lap. This guy must have known what was going to happen to him when The Cull hit, even down here. So he chose the quick way out.
Greaves didn't even seem to notice the corpse. He just went about his frantic searching. Cortez on the other hand picked up a Zippo lighter from the desk and stared fiercely at it. It was the first time Linda had seen him register anything like an emotion, other than when he was bowing towards Mecca five times a day.
Cortez put the lighter down and began frisking the corpse, going through its pockets until he found a wallet. "You won't find anything there," said Greaves. Cortez ignored him. He stood still, looking at the wallet. Linda couldn't imagine why.
"Thank God," said Greaves bending over a drawer. "It's here."
He stuck the memory stick in his pocket. Linda stepped out into the corridor with Anna to get away from the smell of rotting flesh. Away in the distance she heard footsteps echoing through a stone chamber, and voices calling to each other. Linda looked over at Anna. "Did you hear that?" Anna nodded.
Linda stuck her head back into the office. "Guys, I think we've got company."
"Impossible," said Greaves. "This place was above top secret. I'm the only living person who knows about it."
"Well I just heard voices and footsteps nearby."
"Stay here and look after the girl," Greaves said to Cortez. Then he turned to Linda. "We better go and investigate."
It was John Tannenbaum. In the name of the Prophet, thought Cortez. This is what happened to the son of a bitch.
He paid little attention to Greaves and Linda as they tooled up and went out into the corridor to search for the intruders. He paid even less to Anna as she crept into the office and hid behind the filing cabinet. Cortez was thinking only of Tannenbaum.
So this is how he ended up. Holed up like a rat in a cave, hiding from the plague. And when he found that he wasn't safe from it miles under the ground, he bit down on his gun barrel like a coward.
When Cortez had realised who the corpse was, he couldn't believe it. A man he never thought he'd see again. A man who had such an impact on his life.
It was the lighter that gave the bastard away. It had been the first thing that caught Cortez's attention when they met all those years ago. '92 had not been the best time for Cortez. The civil war had ended and El Salvador was preparing for its first election in decades. The military chief of staff Colonel Rene Ponce had made sure no-one in the death squads would be brought to trial for what they did. That didn't change the fact that Cortez was out of a job. For years he'd been part of something, had purpose. People had been scared of him. He was powerful.
Then it was all over. He was faced with being a simple shit-kicking peasant again. A know nothing nobody who had to stand in line like everyone else.
He was in a bar getting drunk when he caught sight of the lighter and someone watching him. It was Tannenbaum. The lighter was Marine special issue. Even without it Cortez knew Tannenbaum was American. The American military worked real close with the death squads. They trained them and provided intelligence. Tipping the squads off to which teachers, labour leaders or even priests had leftist sympathies and ought to disappear. Cortez had met a hundred Yankees at that point. He even liked a few.
Tannenbaum approached him with a bottle and a job offer. Seemed he'd been checking out Cortez's credentials and liked what he'd heard. Tannenbaum worked for the CIA, he referred to it as 'The Company.'
Things might have gone quiet in El Salvador but there were a lot of other places in Central America where a man of Cortez's talents might prove useful. His trial run was abducting an American journalist who was getting too close to things she wasn't supposed to know about. He passed with flying colours. No-one ever found the body.
For nearly a decade Cortez ran Black Ops for the Company. He became an expert in torture. They trained him up, but he got so good that soon he was training others.
Then in the new millennium Tannenbaum told him that no one was interested in commies anymore. Marx had had his day. Now it was Mohammed they were worried about. They had a bunch of prisoners being held on non-American soil. That meant they could practise 'enhanced interrogation techniques' on them without worrying too much about the Geneva Convention.
It sounded like another routine assignment. What Cortez didn't know was that his whole life was about to change.
Linda had never seen Greaves so agitated. He was such a control freak. Everything had to be planned out meticulously in advance. Everyone had to be told what to do, but only when the time was right. If anything or anyone deviated from this, then he got mighty antsy.
They were lying down on a ledge that overlooked a central chamber. They'd gotten there by a round-about route that Greaves took to keep them out of sight. They'd passed a stash of high explosives on the way and Linda had even helped herself to a little something when Greaves wasn't looking. After all, a girl never knew when she might have to kick things off with a bang.
There were stacks and stack of crates in the main chamber. A party of about seven men with torches were tearing off the lids and drooling over the weapons they found inside.
"See Frankie, I told ya," said a scrawny looking guy with a limp. He looked like a scav and most of the fingers on his left hand were missing. "There's caves and caves of this stuff. You've no idea the things I could direct you to."
"Ya done good this time Vinny," said Frankie. He was taller and broader than any of the others. He looked Italian and acted like he was some kind of Klan boss. "I might even let you live when we're through with you."
"Aw come on Frankie. Look at the size of this haul. This has got to make us quits. Way I figure it, you probably owe me now."
Frankie grabbed him by the front of his jacket. "Don't push your luck dickwad." He threw Vinny to the floor and wrinkled his nose? "Jesus you stink. When's the last time you took a bath."
Vinny giggled nervously and waited until Frankie's back was turned before he got up and brushed himself down.
Linda was just about to get up herself when she heard a voice say: "Don't either of you fuckers move!" A shotgun barrel was pointed right at her head and another at Greaves.
Five minutes later they were kneeling in the middle of the chamber in front of Frankie and his boy with their hands on their heads.
"Good thing I sent two men out to case the joint ain't it?" Frankie said. Then he turned to Vinny. "I thought you said no-one else knew about this place."
"They don't," said Vinny, starting to shake. "I swear to God I'm the only one."
"They was armed too boss," said one of the men who'd got the drop on them.
Frankie didn't look happy. "I swear to God Vinny, if you were trying to double cross me."
"No Frankie no. I could never... how could you even think... "
"Cut it out Vinny," said Linda. "The games up. He's on to us. I told you Frankie was too smart.
"Oh, so it all comes out now," said Frankie
, smacking Vinny across the face with the back of his hand.
"Frankie, on my mother's grave. I don't know who these people are. I have never seen them before."
Frankie raised his fist. "Still you lie to me, right to my face you lie!"
While Frankie and the rest of them were distracted, Linda stood up and took her hands off her head. "That's enough," she said in a commanding voice. "Now I want all of you to drop your weapons and lie face down on the floor."
Everyone pointed their weapons at her. Frankie was non-plussed. He turned to Linda with a smile of bemusement. "And do ya mind telling me why we'd want to do that?"
Linda lifted her top to reveal the belt of gelignite she was wearing. "'Cos I'll blow everyone of you to hell if you don't."
Cortez heard a scuffle behind him. It was Anna behind the filing cabinet. She was praying. He went over to where she was hiding and bent down. "Are you alright?"
"Are you going to sacrifice me to Satan now?" she said.
Cortez was stunned by the question. "Why do you think I'd want to do that?"
"Well that's who you worship isn't it? That's who you're talking to when you do all that praying on your mat."
Cortez shook his head and laughed. There was something so child-like in the way she asked the question that he couldn't take offence. "No. I abjure Satan and all his works. I worship God, just as you do."
"But don't you hate Jesus?"
Cortez shook his head. "Muslims recognise Jesus as a great prophet. We revere his teachings. We also believe he will return in the last days, transported bodily down from heaven to slay the Anti-Christ at the gate of Ludd in the Holy Land."
It was Anna's turn to look shocked. Cortez recognised that look. He knew what it was like to re-think all your prejudices about Islam. He'd been there himself.
When he first worked for them, Cortez had a lot of respect for the CIA. Without them he'd have been nothing. They killed all that on his last assignment though.
