Red Mist

by Jan Swick

  Matt kept his speed but dropped a gear. The engine noise increased and Daz used it as cover as he spoke into his radio.

  “Endgame, people. Be ready.”

  South of their current position there was a built-up area, some housing estate. Daz sent Bike 3, already south, there just in case, although a populated place didn’t seem like a likely spot for the Expert to be lurking. East of the Swift's position, either side of the A127 on the Essex side of the junction, the map showed two large plots of land that were interesting. An industrial estate on the south, a quarry on the north, like a pair of butterfly wings off the main road. Bike 4, already north, was told to hang fire and join the M25 if the Swift took it north. Bike 2, ahead, was told to continue east along the A127, although this would take the bike deep into Essex, which they didn’t think likely. Except those plots of land looked so interesting. So the rider was told to prepare to take the exit, so he could either circle the roundabout, ready to follow the Swift if it went south or north along the M25, or re-join the A127 if they continued ahead and into Essex. And if for some reason they took the M25 south, Bike 3 could abandon the estate and join them.

  Behind them, and behind the cop cars racing up, was Bike 1. The rider was ordered to continue following the Swift. In the rear-view mirror, Matt saw Lisa give a thumbs-up.

  Bike 3 came into the estate from the south. It was a place of houses and shops cramped close together with rung-like streets poking off a thick main road. Parked in a bus lay-by outside a mini-mart was a British Telecom van with a guy in the driver’s seat, hunched over a laptop.

  The rider passed the BT van and slid in behind it. Close enough that they were in the driver’s blind spot.

  “Guy in the van,” he said. “Do your slut thing.”

  His pillion was a girl in a short skirt and a shirt under her biker leathers. Her nickname was Siren, because in her past she had made a habit of picking blokes up in bars and then robbing them at knifepoint. She said, “Get real, Alfo, we’re supposed to wait.”

  “He might hit the gas, girl. Go get. Hero time.”

  Actually, hero time sounded good. They quickly worked out a plan and Siren slipped off the bike, slipped off her leathers, and slipped alongside the van. A rap on the window got the driver’s attention. His eyes looked her up and down. Down came his window. She pointed behind his van.

  Bike, she said. Stalled. You must know engines, being an electricity man and all. The driver was happy to help a pretty girl. So back they went, and there was the bike, no rider aboard. He leaned close and had a peek. That was when Alfo rushed in from his hiding place on the other side of the van. Good streetfighter in his day, Alfo. A one-two combination as the driver turned his head to look at the new arrival. The guy went down heavy and smacked his head on the tarmac. Both bikers had their hands in his clothing, ready to drag him into the back of his own van, when the radio squawked.

  “Taking the Junction 29 exit, so it ain’t the estate,” said Daz’s voice. “It looks like the M25, north or south. Bike Four, prepare to join it north. Bike Three cancel the estate and prepare to join the M25 if we go south.”

  “Ah shit,” Alfo and Siren said together. They dropped the innocent guy on his head again.

  They blew up the exit. A coach leading the approaching traffic on the roundabout veered out of its lane and blocked everyone, allowing them to fly across the junction despite a red light. It stopped all but a bike that slipped between two braking cars, veered past the coach and got in front of them. Right in front of them. It was Bike 2, which had already completed one revolution of the roundabout. The pillion turned and looked at them and gave a thumbs-up.

  The first exit was signposted Stanstead airport and would take them north onto the M25, but -

  “Ignore the exit,” said the Expert.

  Daz said, “Bike 4, it ain’t north, ignore northbound. Get south, get down here.”

  Next they came to the slip road delivering traffic from the M25 southbound lane and here the light was green. In the rear-view mirrors, they saw Bike 1 enter the roundabout, ahead of the cops, who were nowhere to be seen. They could still hear the sirens, though, so the hunt was still on.

  The second exit was a private road signposted COBHAM HALL. On the map, this road ran parallel to the A127 and had branches that could deliver drivers to both of Daz's "interesting" places, the quarry and the industrial estate, the latter via a flyover. There was an A-frame advertising van parked on a grassy wedge next to the road, its sign proclaiming that you’d be mad not to advertise your business on this van for just a few £s a day. Everyone was mad, apparently.

  The exit rushed at them, but they were not told to slow, or turn. They were going past. No point in rejoining the A127, so it had to be the M25, south, had to be. Daz blurted, “Looks like we’re going south down the M25. Bike 3, join –“

  “Exit now!” the Expert yelled, and Matt tugged the wheel left with almost no time to spare. Taking this exit narrowed the options again. Daz barked a new order into his radio.

  “All bikes, we’re off, we’re off the junction, so it’s the quarry or the industrial estate. Go, go.”

  “Too late,” said Bike 2 as his vehicle whizzed past the exit. “Coming round again.”

  Bike 1, though, had time. The rider saw the Swift’s sudden change of direction the instant it happened. But instead of following, the bike swerved off the road and into the trees before the exit. Seeing this in his mirror, Matt realised the plan. They were taking the quarry, a direct line northeast through the trees. A car would have to make a longer route, down the lane, left, and left again to circle a thick wood and the quarry and come in from the other side.

  Matt angled the Swift down the thin lane. He hit the gas, but the moment he did, the Expert screamed at him to brake. As the Swift ground to a halt just metres beyond the open gateway, the advertising van backed up, blocked the road like a gate closing. The Swift was just a few feet ahead, and hidden. And just inches over the border, two wheels in Greater London and two in Essex. The sound of sirens was loud, but had the cops entered the roundabout in time to watch where their quarry went?

  In his rear-view, Matt saw the growing darkness torn by flashing lights that sailed past. Cops, gone. Swift, unseen.

  “From here it gets easy,” the Expert said. “Well done, gentlemen. Hope you enjoyed the ride. We made it.”

  "Fuck off with the we!" Daz yelled.

  Lisa squeezed Judd’s chest harder as the bike entered the woods and rumbled over uneven ground, snapping dead branches, throwing up waves of dirt and dried leaves. He let out a groan.

  “I kinda need to breathe to stay conscious, sweetie.”

  “Do you know what the hell you’re doing?” she shouted above the roar of the engine.

  Judd leaned aside and pointed at the Satnav clipped to the handlebars.

  “Quarry,” he said.

  In the dark woods, the bright screen was unavoidable. It showed a fat little arrow meant to depict their vehicle floating over a graphic of trees. Northeast of the arrow was a brown expanse with pixelated text saying LIGHTWOOD INDUSTRIES.

  "You can't know it's the quarry!" she moaned.

  And right then their radio: “All bikes, move, move. We’re taking the left turn. It’s the quarry. It’s the goddamned quarry.”

  They were through the woods in fifteen seconds, which was good because Lisa didn’t have the lungs or strength for a longer journey. When they emerged into open land, she breathed and relaxed so suddenly she almost lost grip of Judd and hit the dirt.

  Ahead was an expanse of scrubland, brown and dusty and dead, like a landscape from an old cowboy movie or a sci-fi flick about a blasted earth following a nuclear east-west falling out. In the flick, mutated beasts would rule the lands and whatever humans survived might construct a sanctuary and a bar it with such a fence as faced Lisa and Judd now. It was chain-link, twice a man’s height, and wrapped in some kinds of plastic sheeting that blurred the view beyond. The plastic was tint
ed a pale red, as if from rock dust. Quarry dust.

  The bike slewed to a halt and they both leaped off. Judd leaped onto the fence and stuck there like a cat. He was on top of it in seconds, perched so he could offer Lisa his hand. She slapped it aside and scrambled over.

  In the darkness, the blasted earth scenario reversed itself. No longer for the security of human survivors, the fenced area now seemed designed to keep evil contained. The land fell away from them twenty metres ahead, as if a meteor had landed. They ran to the edge and stared down.

  The ground sloped away from them steeply. Below were dark yellow shapes, not aliens but earth-moving machinery, and darker slices and curves where the machines had cut or packed earth to create makeshift tracks so they could up and down. But there were no cars, and no lights, and no buildings. No sign of a man. No place a man could use to sit at a computer and direct a car chase.

  Then they noticed it.

  To their left the land rose slightly, so that by the time the rim of the crater had curved a quarter circle, it was fifteen feet above where they stood. There the land had flattened out and they could see the top of some kind of square building set far back from the edge.

  Lisa ran uphill, followed by Judd. Like something birthing from the ground, a large shipping container exposed itself the higher they ran. Soon they were on flat ground and seeing everything. Seven or eight such containers raised on low stacks of bricks, a door and window cut into each with a set of metal doorsteps. They were dark and dead, except for a tiny red light winking from each. A burglar alarm. Offices and utility units for the quarry workforce.

  Here, a good place to hide.

  She turned as light entered the world. Twin elongated triangles cutting through the night way down below. A car entering the quarry. Matt’s car. The interior light was on, too, which puzzled her, because why would Matt announce himself as so?

  She ran for the containers.

  Matt wouldn’t have chosen to announce himself as so, not at all. If the choice had been his, he would have gone in with no headlights, either. But the Expert had said, “Now turn on your main beams and the interior light, then make a left.”

  "You want us naked as well?" Daz had said.

  The left was nought but a gash in the trees, like a wooden tunnel with a leafy roof. Down the land sloped. The ground was laid with packed mud to allow easy passage for wheeled heavy machinery. Through the tunnel they went, lighting up everything, feeling exposed.

  “What are you doing?” the Expert said. “What are you saying to him?”

  “Insider joke,” Daz said. Then to Matt, "Left a bit.”

  A couple of hundred metres along, the trees ended and the quarry lay before them. Daz described it for Matt. They were at the foot of a large hill and the quarry was like a great bite taken out of it. The headlights showed them a chain-link fence dead ahead that curved away to left and right and made its way up the rising land. The high shelf of land at the top of the hill contained nothing they could see, which Daz found puzzling. If the Watchdog was here, surely he would be watching them from a high point. But apart from the moon, the only high point was that shelf of land, like a cliff edge, and there was nothing up there.

  Which meant he must be in one of the earth-movers scattered around like big sleeping dinosaurs.

  “Gate’s open,” the Expert said. “Nudge it open. X marks the spot.”

  “Forward ten feet, slowly,” Daz said to Matt.

  “Why are you talking like that?” the Expert said.

  “I boss my employees around,” Daz answered.

  Matt touched the gate with the Swift’s nose and it moved. A harder push swung it open with a creak. In they went at a crawl, like a nosey cat. He turned left and right so his headlights would wash everything, and then Daz said he could see the X. In a flat bit of land away from machinery there were two planks laid in a cross-shape. Matt drove over them and stopped when Daz said so.

  “No, don’t get out,” the Expert said when Matt reached for the door handle. Matt froze, but not because he had been ordered to stop. He froze because he had not opened the door, which meant there had been no sound of a door opening, which in turn meant the Expert could not possibly have known Matt was about to exit the car. But he had.

  Which meant he could see them somehow.

  Lisa and Judd went to the door of the first container, found it locked.

  “Don’t try the handles,” she said. “If he’s in there, he’ll know someone’s here.”

  So they went to the window and peeked in, even though that was risker because if the guy was here, then surely the window was where he’d be, so he could watch the car. Only the car was at the bottom of the quarry and you couldn’t see the quarry from here. She looked around. There were high trees some thirty metres behind the line of containers, but a man would have to be right at the top of one, perched in the branches, and that wasn’t going to happen. Some guy balanced in a tree with a laptop and other paraphernalia? No.

  Judd tried the radio. Called Daz. Got only static. Lisa didn’t like that.

  The next container. Dark, empty, dead apart from that little flashing red light to deter thieves. They moved onto the next at a jog.

  Between containers three and four, they saw it. In the trees, a road, and parked in there was a car. Dead and dark and empty like the rest of this place, though. But a vehicle, and that might just mean someone was here. Somewhere.

  “So now what?” Daz said.

  The Expert said, “Did you get your money’s worth, Mr. McKinley?”

  Daz and Matt looked at each other.

  “Sure,” Daz said. “Very good. Worth every penny. I owe you the other half, of course. Are you here? Got a computer I can use?”

  The interior light turned the windows into mirrors. Nothing could be seen beyond. Matt grew apprehensive. The guy could be standing right out there and they’d never know.

  Daz spoke into his radio. Quietly. No engine noise to cover it this time, but the risk had to be taken. Matt covered the microphone with his fist.

  “Who’s close? Update?”

  “Not this time,” the Expert said. “I let you get away with that for a while. Now your signal is blocked.”

  Matt reached for the handle again, but again the Expert told him not to move. “Wondering, of course, how I can see you? It's called a Nightforce Beast. That's a tactical rifle scope, fellows. The first thing you ever did on this planet was climb out of somewhere. Want it to also be the last thing you ever do?"

  He knew. Matt sensed it. They knew everything.

  “It was nothing personal, you know,” the Expert said. “I understand your commitment to your sister, and I applaud how far you got. We only worked it out today. You got close. Normally, I’d be a man who’d let you get your way. Get your revenge. I like seeing people get revenge. Hell, it's probably the main reason I do what I do. But of course I’m one of the guys you need to kill, so that can’t happen in this case.”

  The headset uttered a click that both men, experienced army guys who’d handled guns, recognised instantly. A weapon being cocked.

  In a quick move, Daz snapped off the interior light. And Matt opened his eyes. He had kept them closed since a moment before the interior light went on. To save his night vision. Hence why Daz had had to direct him. Now, when they snapped open, his retinas quickly adjusted and he saw the world outside in cool clarity, like a cat. Big yellow machines, starkly displayed, and the rocky land rising high above beyond them. His eyes ran around the rising edge of the quarry, quick. It was a neat curve, nothing there. But then he saw it, along the flat top of the quarry: a little blip in the line, an arc downwards, a little half loop or half-pipe shape or u-shape, whatever you wanted to call it. And nestled in there, a slight illumination from the world above, where the bright moon hung. A reflection of the sky. Glass.

  He had followed the rush of his eyes with his hand, tracking their movement with the thing he held in his fingers, pointing it where his vision
lay, and now he clicked the little button on that item and it sent a beam of red through the dark window and through the dark world.

  Lisa and Judd felt they were on a wild goose chase when it happened.

  “There,” Judd said, and they rushed towards it.

  On the black window of container five was a wavering dot, like a red firefly.

  Lisa grabbed a rock as they closed in. Judd rushed to the door. She lobbed the rock at the window. It bust through with a massive crash as Judd raised a foot and kicked in the door.

  Just before she passed the window, meaning to follow, bright light pricked her eyes. She turned, facing the quarry, and saw something that explained everything. Everything. A thin channel in the land, sloping down, like a furrow caused by a fragment of the meteorite that might have opened the earth. Shallow at the top, just feet from her position, and fifteen feet deep when it reached the sheer edge. Rugged and rock debris-lined, though, as if a natural collapse of the land rather than something engineered.

  And it allowed line of sight from the container to a small portion of the quarry below. Where, like a target in a reticule, the Swift sat facing slightly away from them. Even in the dark she could see the shapes of two men inside. And she could see the beam of the Matt's laser pen, a straight line from car to target along that channel, as if the laser itself had burned through the land.

  She rushed into the container to find Judd on the floor and a man standing over him. Felt a wave of guilt, for her pause outside had allowed the standing man to gain the advantage. He wore a suit, but over it wore a plastic outfit, like some bio scientist in a quarantine zone. It covered his hands and his feet and even his head, the hood pulled tight by a drawstring. Her eyes took everything in in half a second. A desk and file cabinets, and maps and papers stuck to the walls. On the desk, two computers, their screens throwing enough light to show her all this. And on the floor, lying near the rock and amid broken glass, was a rifle attached to some kind of bracket. Something remote controlled, she guessed. Arranged at the window, ready to fire down the channel in the land and kill.