*
The waiter clearing the dirty dishes from the Meltman’s table was jittery such that a champagne flute tumbled off his silver tray and smashed on the floor. ‘Sorry,’ he gasped in horror, kneeling down to pick up the shards.
The vibrant conversation had stopped dead, all eyes upon him. The waiter cowered like an abused dog fearing another kick. His fingers were getting badly cut in his haste to clean up the glass. He hurried back to the kitchen, leaving behind a trail of blood upon the carpet. There was a chuckle amongst the diners.
‘Is that how they wash the dishes around here?’ the Meltman quipped. ‘By using their blood for dishwater?’
‘He thought you were going to kill him,’ said Natalie, playing with her dessert spoon beside him.
‘I don’t kill the people that are afraid of me. It is the people who aren’t scared that I prefer to send to their graves. The sad part about that is sometimes fearlessness is a characteristic of real talent. Such as the good generals here. And your mother of course. It can be worth the risk keeping them alive. The chef is another case in point. The duck l’orange was superb, was it not? And the chocolate soufflé we are about to experience is the best in the world without question. He has such control over the fusion of his ingredients that he could make cyanide mouth watering. I pay him well and see to it that he wants for nothing simply because I cannot resist what he serves. It the same rationale that has seen these men at the table promoted to generals. They are hardened brutal killers one and all and, like chocolate soufflé, are a guilty pleasure.’ He toasted them and smashed the glass on the floor with a spearing throw. ‘When the waiter returns, I will have him pick that up too.’
There was drunken laughter from amongst the generals. One of them drained his wine glass and smashed it on the floor, too. They might have all gotten into the act if not for the ping of an arriving elevator catching their attention. Tagger, the Head of Security, squeezed out from the opening doors with an intense look upon his face. He hurried to the Meltman and said in a tremulous voice, ‘Security has been breached. We believe it to be a subterranean raiding party.’
The Meltman frowned. ‘You believe?’
Tagger dry swallowed. ‘Communication above the thirty metre depth has been lost.’
The Meltman suddenly pulsated with anger. ‘Broken down?’
‘They are not responding.’
‘The only people entitled to ignore me underground are the buried. There is an army between me and the surface. Talk to someone.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Tagger hurried back to the elevator.
The Meltman turned to Natalie and tried to smile away the anger lines upon his face. ‘Shall we dance before dessert, my lovely?’
Natalie smile right through him. Her eyes were searing. ‘A dance is a wonderful idea.’ She leaned closer. ‘Especially while you smell so good.’
There was a muffled barking of dog, seemingly emanating from behind the steel wall. Mario jumped that way, unslinging his snubbed-nosed laser-acid shooter. ‘What the hell is that?’
The Meltman’s face went blank. ‘Through that wall are one thousand Cobra Xs. It’s a Heroin 3 snake pit.’
‘Do your snakes bark?’ exclaimed Shally, pulling out a pistol from her thigh holster.
The barking was incessant and coming closer. Just on the other side of the wall. Shally fired a probing shot that way. For a moment there was silence, and then the wall exploded. The steel tore open into a gaping hole, the accompanying shockwave throwing them off their feet. Stun bombs followed. Kaptu and John Leroy Scope ran into the dining room first, guns at the ready. ‘Don’t move!’ Scope screamed.
In the next instant, however, he was thrown backwards by a bullet thumping into his chest. Tagger came running out of the elevator, turning his gun on Kaptu in a wild spray. Kaptu dived below a table and did not appear again until he sprung out from the side putting a pistol round between two generals and into the chest of Tagger. Although knocked backwards, Tagger’s life was saved by his body armour. Kaptu ran at him, just managing to get hold of his arm before he could get his gun back up. He lifted a sharp knee into his stomach and slung him through the hole in the wall into the snake pit. A hideous screen came a moment later.
McRaven entered the dining room with two Peace Keepers at this side. He went to the keeled over Scope and patted him on the back. ‘You can take your time getting up. The guy that shot you is already dead.’ He turned to the Meltman, savouring the sight of him being handcuffed. He wouldn’t have been surprised if his wrists shattered, for judging by the force the Meltman’s general had gone flying into the cobra pit, Kaptu Z’s blood was well and truly up. The Meltman, however, was too consumed by the fury of being caught to acknowledge any physical pain.
‘You are all dead men,’ the Meltman spat.
More Peace Keepers stormed the room both through the wall and out from the elevators. Blast came with the elevator party. Her head was up and her tongue was out. She looked happy. McRaven had never owned a pet or felt any real affection for an animal, but he couldn’t help but smile now. This gamely little dog had just helped crush one of the world’s most insidious criminal organisations. And there was perhaps more to come. McRaven walked over to Kaptu and patted him on the shoulder. ‘Nice work. The Hurt World isn’t so shabby, after all.’
Katpu pulled the Meltman to his feet. ‘Let’s not get too excited. It’s still a long way back to the surface.’
‘That’s true.’ McRaven turned to address his team. ‘We’re going back via the elevators. Secure the prisoners. If we are ambushed, we shoot them. Especially the Meltman. A hundred metres beneath Asylum City, this is his turf and we play by his rules.’ He pulled the Meltman out of Kaptu’s hands. ‘Kaptu, you go back through the snake pit. The vessel you wanted tracked, the Kudos, has just been spotted by Rojas Hose. The man can find anything from his bathtub.’
‘Where is it?’ queried Kaptu.
‘The Artic. There is a rocket pod at the Turkish Embassy that has been made available to you. Clorvine is already there doing the leg work to get it released to the United Nations.’
Kaptu nodded and took a parting glance at the Meltman – Asylum City’s most notorious gangster still looked stunned, as though the bomb’s shockwaves. Kaptu wanted to introduce him to Blast, but he was distracted by the sight of Natalie being handcuffed. He fought back the urge to intervene. The lawyers could free her without having her involvement in the Meltman’s arrest revealed. He turned back for a final taunt of the Meltman, but he was already away, being driven by McRaven to the elevators.
Blast jumped up onto him, wagging her tail. Kaptu gave her a pat. ‘You can afford to wag your tail now, your mission is done and I hope they give you a very big bone as a reward - perhaps one of the bones of the people that have been hunting you. That’s where I come in.’ He looked to the soldier holding Blast’s leash. ‘Hold on tight. Don’t let her run loose in this place.’ He ran out through the wall’s impact hole onto the snake pit’s gantry. Three metres above a sea of slithering deadly snakes. He headed for the catacombs of the Turkish Embassy.
25 The rats
‘Are you sure it was the Kudos you heard?’ murmured Rojas to Kaptu Z, peering out the magno-chopper window at the distant vessel cutting through the icy grey waters below. ‘There is a town in Mexico called Ludoz where drug smuggling is said to occur. And there is a hotel in Argentina called the Cutos. Maybe Mas is taking a vacation there.’
‘I doubt it,’ replied Kaptu.
‘But you can’t be sure. After all, you were drugged and being dragged by the hair towards a cage of lions when you overheard the name.’
‘I was being dragged by the arms,’ Kaptu corrected, sitting casually with a sniper rifle on his lap in the back seat of the magno-chopper.
‘Well, we’re nowhere near the Mexican badlands or Argentinean hotels,’ said Clorvine from the pilot’s seat. ‘So, let’s just work with what we’ve got.’
Katpu, Rojas and Clorvine were the only occupants in the magno-chopper and they were flying high above the massive desolate expanse of the Arctic Ocean. Even with the sunshine of a clear afternoon, the Earth’s crown was revealing itself to be an icy grey ocean whose jewels were a sprinkling of barren islands. And judging by the amount of blood that had been spilled over it during the Artic Wars, the crown was priceless. Directly beneath the magno-chopper, the restored Kudos was punching through the rolling waves in a relentless battle against wind and currents. Rojas was using high powered binoculars to gaze over the rusty hulk that was so stubbornly refusing to betray any signs of life or reasons for being. An ancient cargo ship sitting low enough in the water that it seemed its rows of containers were still full with whatever contents it had been charged with delivering so many decades earlier. An unlikely scenario in Rojas’s mind. Surely a boat adrift for so long would have long since been stripped bare by the salvagers and pirates that infested the globe. Rojas tried once again to make radio contact only to be met with the same unwieldy silence. ‘I’m not sure why we haven’t already turned back for Alaska,’ he murmured disconsolately. ‘I’m afraid to admit this rust bucket is all that I’ve dragged you out here for.’
‘But we haven’t turned back,’ said Clorvine. ‘There is something that has got you thinking, isn’t there?’
Rojas nodded despite himself. ‘These waters don’t look like much but they were heavily fought over during the Great Artic War. Many thousands of lives were lost and a very shaky truce was the only thing to show for it. So, maybe it is the kind of place to find the likes of Mas, after all.’
‘Well, we’ve come all the way to the Artic,’ murmured Kaptu. ‘I might as well go down there and take a look.’
‘No, I’ll go,’ voiced Rojas, picking up his jetpack from the floor of the magno-chopper and slipping into its shoulder straps. ‘Keep your sniper rifle at the ready.’
‘You’re an analyst,’ said Kaptu incredulously. ‘If Mas is down there it’s not something you’ll be able to survive by analysing.’
‘This is the only option. The insurance agents have banned you from entering the United States.’ As Rojas finished tightening up the jetpack, he pointed towards a small barren island sitting alone on the horizon. ‘That is Alabama Island, a United States protectorate. Less than twenty miles and closing. We are in US territorial waters and that is as good as Washington DC in the eyes of international law. The Great Artic War Treaty allows one military installation per island and the major players have done the best they can with what is permitted. That will include state-of-the-art surveillance. You can bet the government will be watching us. So, you stay here, and wish me luck. Boarding a fifty year old abandoned wreck in the Arctic Ocean in search of a poacher from Africa might be difficult to explain if the poacher is not there.’
‘And you may be dead if she is.’
‘That is another reason why it should be me that goes. I have already sent one soldier to his death in the hunt for Mas. It is time for me to do some of the dirty work.’ He put on his helmet and gave a thumps up. ‘Let’s see what’s down there.’ He slid open the magno-chopper’s side door and rolled backwards into freefall.
Kaptu leaned out after him, training his sniper rifle in that direction.
‘Brave,’ said Clorvine.
‘I hear he hadn’t left his office since his man got blown up in Las Gabos. Maybe this will get it out of his system.’
‘I’ll bring us closer,’ said Clorvine, manipulating the joystick, ‘just in case he runs into some trouble.’ She picked up the hand grenade belt lying on the seat where Rojas had been sitting. ‘For someone so interested in insurance, he should have taken this.’
Rojas was descending fast despite the windy conditions. It was gnawing at him being dismissed as merely an analyst by Kaptu. He had been a field agent in the Brazilian Military Intelligence. He had the training, experience and mettle to handle the situation and he would show those who cared to watch. He landed on the deck, barely acknowledging the bucking of the waves as he threw off his jetpack. He walked the deck with his pistol drawn and his senses attuned. ‘Hello,’ he shouted. ‘Is there anyone here?’ He was not expecting a reply. The deck underfoot was spongy with rot, the paint on the cabins and containers worn through to rust. Rojas considered it quite possible no one had been on the boat for a good fifty years after all. A plutonium cell would power the engines a hundred years and even a rudimentary hazard-evasion system could keep it roaming the ocean without ever touching dry land. Rojas, however, had known all these things from the safety of the magno-chopper. It was below deck that he had come to see. He pointed his life detection unit at the cabin door and looked for readings. The sensors, however, were not penetrating the thickened steel. Rojas needed to get beyond the threshold at least. He fired a series of shots into the door lock. He tried the door handle to see if it was giving. Yes, the door was ready to open. ‘I am going inside now,’ he said into his collar mike.
‘Alabama Island is five miles dead north,’ replied Clorvine into his earpiece. ‘Shall I contact the Americans? They will be wondering who we are.’
Rojas glanced past the ship’s cabins to the distant shoreline gradually taking shape. It seemed closer than five miles, the crisp Artic air so crisp and pure. ‘Hold off a moment,’ he said. ‘It won’t take long to find out if it is merely an abandoned boat from another time or a poacher’s up to date hideout.’ He pulled the cabin door fully open and peered into the dark narrow passageway. There was a pungent gamey smell that immediately had him spinning away. ‘Woah. Even locking myself away in a closet for weeks at a time didn’t prepare me for a stink like that.’ He clipped a flashlight attachment onto his pistol and stepped back into the doorway. The small, intense beam of light cut deep into the darkness of the passageway, revealing closed doors on both sides and a stairwell at the end. A rustle of movement caught his attention and he flicked the torchlight down in its direction. Hundreds of sharp angry eyes were staring up at him. He recoiled back in horror, his hand fumbling for the door. It was too late. The rats pounced as one, furiously tearing into his flesh, too strong and heavy to be ripped off, too hungry to stop.
Kaptu and Clorvine watched on stunned. Kaptu aimed his long rifle out the door, seeing Rojas disappear underneath a mound of feasting rats.
‘Oh my God,’ cried Clorvine. ‘What can we do?’
Kaptu looked for any movement beneath the sickening mound of gorging rats and when there was none he opened fire into it. His bullets had virtually no impact.
‘You don’t have enough ammunition to shoot all of them,’ said Clorvine murmured.
Kaptu finally pulled the gun away. ‘It wasn’t the rats I was shooting at.’
‘Attention, Mango-chopper TO18,’ came a voice over the radio. ‘This is United States Marine Base, Alabama Island. You have entered the five kilometre no fly zone as proclaimed in the Artic War Two Peace Treaty. Identity yourself at once.’
Clorvine went straight to the mike. ‘This is TO18. We are Hurt World officers investigating the cargo ship Kudos for criminal activity. The vessel is infested with rats and is on a direct path for the south coast of Alabama Island.’
A warning alarm lit up on the cockpit console. Clorvine reflexively yanked on the joystick, screaming, ‘That’s the weapons system detector. We’re under attack.’ Her vein-bursting turn squeezed the magno-chopper past the main concentration of fire streaming out of the twin rapid-fire guns that had emerged on swivel bases from the top of a centrally positioned container. The guns followed the magno-chopper as it dived and spun in a wild series of evasive manouvres until it was out of range.
‘It’s an old anti-piracy weapon system,’ said Kaptu, peering at it through his sniper scope. It has probably been sitting dormant for fifty years and it didn’t take five minutes for you to set it off. Nice flying to get away from it though.’
The magno-chopper shuddered before he had even finished say
ing it. More alarms sounded and then there came the pungent fumes of acrid smoke.
‘You might have spoken too soon,’ said Clorvine, fighting with the joystick to retain some semblance of control. ‘The tail-rotor just got shot off.’
‘How much time do we have?’
‘Emergency thrusters have been activated. Enough time for a crash landing on Alabama Island.’
‘That’s good, but we’re not going to Alabama just yet.’
‘What?’
‘Take a wide sweep of the island. Let’s see if there is anything out there.’
Clorvine wrenched her gaze away from the chaotic controls to look at him hard. ‘You mean Mas?’
‘Could be. Rojas mentioned in his report on the Las Gabos operation that there had only been rats on the industrial site. Very big rats.’
Clorvine pondered this a moment before cajoling an already screaming engine into gaining more altitude. The thick black smoke trailed behind.
‘Attention Mango Chopper T018,’ came a new, harder voice over the speaker. ‘This is Major Mark Emsly. Your identity has been verified. Emergency landing on Alabama Island is granted.’
‘Granted?’ returned Kaptu. ‘Your island is not as safe as you think. The Kudos is on a direct course with a bio-weapon on board.’
There was a pause. ‘What kind of bio-weapon?’
‘Thousands of human-eating rats.’
There was an even longer pause. ‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because our colleague just stepped aboard the Kudos and got ripped to the bone. These are no ordinary rats. I fear they have been bred with the sole purpose of consuming every living thing upon your island.’
‘Can you sink it?’
‘We’re a United Nations peace keeping magno-chopper with our tail shot off,’ snapped Clorvine. ‘No, we’re not going to sink it.’
‘In fact,’ added Kaptu, ‘it seems we’re going to take up your offer and crash into that island of yours.’
Clorvine flicked off radio contact and looked at him anxiously. ‘Do you really think that is what’s happening? An army of rats?
‘Why not? Soldiers mean governments and declarations of war, whereas rats are just rats. Nasty and dirty but as a tool very clean.’ Kaptu could see on the horizon to the south east the specs of a fleet of boats. ‘I’d like to sink those boats too.’
‘Do you think they’re involved?’
‘Let’s put it this way, from a legal point of view, an island is considered uninhabited if everyone on it is dead. So, I don’t those boats are drifting as aimlessly around the Artic like the Kudos is supposedly doing.’
The engines sputtered and the magno-chopper began to lose altitude.
‘The thrusters are spent,’ said Clorvine. ‘We can ditch in the sea.’
‘We won’t float. There are too many holes. In such icy water it will be certain death. The island is at least a chance. The American base may even have bunkers. It’s a protectorate after all.’
‘Let’s ask.’ Clorvine went back to the radio but was stopped by a large explosion emanating from the island. It was the military base, flames spitting high into the air.
Kaptu shook his head. ‘A bomb and an army of rats. Mas is definitely here.’
Clorvine pointed the magno-chopper that way. ‘Alright, to hell with it.’