Exit Alpha (20 page)

The intruder’s scope was also a monocular but its eyepiece-train covered both eyes. Cain backed behind the boxes as the man did his first scan. The floor creaked.

It could go two ways from here. And the more effective alternative was most dangerous. If Zuiden were doing this, he wouldn’t shoot now. He’d let the man check the en suite, then silently kill him.

A silent kill? He had a chance — because the limitation with night scopes was 40-degree peripheral vision and, with a double eyepiece, the man couldn’t look everywhere at once.

Cain, filled with adrenaline, dropped the P90 on its strap, stepped clear of the stack, the loop ready. He didn’t know the current method but the technique he’d been taught relied on the garrotte. If you were fast and strong it sliced like a cheese wire back to the spine, severing nerves between brain and heart. The victim couldn’t breathe or cry out.

The bulk of the man in the bathroom. He looked in the shower cabinet first. His mistake.

Cain got the wire around his neck, kneed him in the back to pull him off balance and hauled on the handles with full strength. The other was helpless in two seconds. Cain held him until the weight came on the wire, then lowered him onto bags stacked in the bath.

Then he was out of there, ready to fire.

The second man was in the room, standing behind the sewing machine bench, waiting for his companion to emerge. His carbine pointed to the door while his left hand adjusted his scope. He looked around, registered Cain’s profile as the same masked and scoped figure who’d gone in, and waved him on. The mistake lengthened his life by 40 seconds.

Cain followed the man across the hall into Nina’s bedroom. The bolster fooled the fellow long enough to have him pulling out a pencil torch.

Cain clamped the man’s material-covered mouth and thrust his knife in from behind. Body armour couldn’t stop a thin, sharp blade. It pierced the layered synthetic and sank deep into the chest. It wasn’t instant or particularly quiet. A knifed heart took ten seconds to die.

Cain clamped one arm around the struggling man’s neck, thrust from an undefendable direction. The snap could have been the crack of a stiff joint.

He pushed the twice-dead carcass over the bed. Zuiden would have marked him ‘pass’ so far. This was kill or be killed between professionals — no place for scruples or qualms. You relied on your training, functioned on automatic. He got back to the door, hoping the old phoney downstairs was on the ball.

He got the scope around the doorframe in time to see the second team. Two figures at the top of the back stairs, coming up to check the other bedrooms.

It gave him the required half second. The confusion factor again. He fired on auto, splitting the silence with the chatter of SS90 ball.

The slugs were small enough to get through armour, unstable enough to tumble in flesh. The lead man staggered against the wall, then fell back downstairs, carbine spitting at the ceiling.

The second man returned fire. But Cain, an instant before it came, had dropped. The heavier rounds zinging above him aerated the end wall. Bullets were fast, reflexes slow. The man was back behind the wall the moment he’d fired.

Noises from the staff wing. People were awake. They’d be trying to switch on lights, and the cook would be telling them to stay put.

Now, the dangerous part — the hall, the checking of rooms. He waited, listening.

The sudden racket of the heavier weapon, then the stutter of another P90. A firefight downstairs. Stromlo had engaged.

It stopped.

So who was dead?

He waited a minute until convinced the second floor was clear, then ran to the head of the back stairs.

A body floating in the pool.

He gave the agreed two-note whistle.

A three-note reply.

Stromlo’s all-clear.

Cain came down, stepping over the body on the stairs and found the priest by the gym entrance — wearing a captured NVG.

Cain said, ‘Two my end. Three down.’

‘Three this end. Took out two.’

‘That’s five. Where’s your second?’

Stromlo jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

The fifth man must have checked the gym on his way in. He was on his knees, dangling from the cord of a pull-down lats machine. The heavy weights on the end of the slide had cut the cord into his neck. His protruding eyes and tongue showed it hadn’t been quick. A small dumbbell was near him on the floor. Stromlo had stunned him with it, then entangled him in the machine and watched the unconscious man strangle.

The priest held up the man’s transceiver. ‘Still must be one man with the transport. Mine,
va bene
?’

‘Be my guest.’

Outside, the first thin light suffused the sky. The vehicle was far down the road — a windowless van with a driver behind the wheel, a driver preoccupied with his earphones and red-light VDU because he wasn’t getting feedback. They discarded their scopes and managed to close without alerting him. Cain covered the rear doors and left the sacrifice to the priest.

When he heard the P90 stutter, Cain strafed the back of the van. Then the Great One fell back and covered him as he went in.

There was no one in the back. Just comms equipment, gun racks, a bench over ammo boxes. Ahead, framed by the blood-soaked windshield was the slumped form of the driver. Arterial blood pumped into the top of his scalp, which was upended like a bowl.

Cain got out of the van. ‘Three-all.’

The priest removed his blood-spattered balaclava. The dark oval around his eyes, now exposed against the pallid face, made him resemble a starved panda. ‘I’ve waited years for this.’

‘But they didn’t kill you. Tough.’

‘All the same. A gratifying night.’

They shifted the bits of the driver into the back, wiped the worst of him off the seats.

Cain wiped a clear circle in the windscreen and drove the van toward the house. Stromlo, sitting beside him, hummed to himself, vastly pleased.

‘Ever seen
Titus Andronicus
?’ Cain glanced at him sardonically.

‘I haven’t had that pleasure.’

‘You’d enjoy it, I’m sure.’

The sauna door was still shut.

Cain called, ‘You can come out now.’ He opened the door.

Jane stood rigid just inside, the machete held high above her shoulder, while the other two cowered in the corner of the topmost bench.

‘All secured, dear ladies,’ Stromlo crooned. He walked to the sprung back door. ‘I’ll tell cook we’re mopping up.’

The family crept out to see the hunched shape in the reddening pool, the garrotted man’s purple-blue face, the bloodied figure sprawled on the stairs.

The sisters shrieked. Nina screamed, crouched, covered her eyes.

The surface of the pool heaved. The body floating in it was inert but not the water. What looked like a long ripple began at the far end then advanced, growing in height, making the dangling carcass bob. It gathered in strength until it slapped against the tiles beside them. Water rose up, slopping over the rim. Cain watched incredulous. There had been nothing to cause it at all.

He said to Eve, ‘Get her into the lounge room. Stay there till we’ve cleaned up.’

‘She’d be better in her room.’

‘I wouldn’t go upstairs.’

She looked aghast.

It took an hour to get the bodies in the van — and EXIT alerted for the pick-up.

The blood-covered Cain clumped back into the dining room to find the family huddled over the fire beside empty mugs of tea.

He said wearily, ‘All back to normal.’

A wrenching sob from Eve.

Jane glared up at him. ‘Normal?’

‘Well, until they regroup and try again.’

‘Just . . . get us
out
of here.’

I
t was a week since the switch. As usual the transition was uncanny. The people at the dinner table seemed the same, even to Cain.

There were subtle differences certainly. The new Eve couldn’t quite match the original’s satin voice. The new Nina acted sulkily pubescent but at heart was rather prim. The new Jane was identical but lacked her counterpart’s practicality.

They didn’t talk shop, kept the conversation general, discussed the mess in Yugoslavia, the skinheads in Germany.

After the meal came the evening routine. Stromlo handled the sked while Cain checked the grid alarms. Their function was now different — not to protect the duplicate family but to make it seem nothing had changed.

Cain strolled to the priest’s room. He was used to the old fraud now, even fond of him. ‘Still no word?’

The Great One shook his head and packed the headset back into the radio. ‘I hope they haven’t forgotten us because, without advance warning, we’re dead.’

‘Right. Next time they’ll probably have a thermal imager. We have to be gone before they come.’

They knew their base was compromised. As they discussed the sabotage of EXIT again, Stromlo felt under his bed for a wrapped bottle. ‘Would you care for a little . . . ?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t mind if I go ahead?’ He didn’t bother with a glass.

‘So, you’re positive the Vatican’s not behind it?’

‘Yes. The Curia needs the
status quo
.’

‘Is the CIA after Stern?’

‘They don’t
know
we have the pope or Stern.’

‘So tell me about Stern.’

The priest swigged again. ‘There was a certain organisation doing typhus inoculations in Manila. They added hormones to the injections. Also a trial done in Angola. Stern was involved. But his new project . . . You’re trying to pump me, Ray. I’ve said enough.’ He frowned and changed the subject. ‘The duplicate Nina’s . . . effective, don’t you think?’

Cain smiled. ‘Great arse. Fancy her?’

A pained look. ‘Celibacy is the Church’s gift.’

‘And misogyny the nature of the priesthood?’

‘No. Because the Church is the bride.’

‘Ah!’ He enjoyed these jousts. ‘So Latin American priests commit adultery?’

‘Your facile mind will hang you yet.’ Stromlo’s heavy sigh. ‘John Paul himself said that we have made of sex the only sin — when it could be the least of sins.’

‘Wonderful. He said that?’

Stromlo nodded sagely. ‘”Where does the bedroom end and the stars begin?” I quote the great Drummond de Andrade. What a pope I destroyed! God forgive me!’ He rocked with remorse. ‘What a pope! God! Oh God!’

‘I’m sure you’ll be forgiven. After all, they say God’s a Brazilian.’

‘
Deus caritas est
. So what else could he be?’ The priest-assassin shut his eyes. ‘Still, my best hope is annihilation — that afterwards there’s nothing.’

‘Life isn’t simple. Why should death be?’

Stromlo’s tortured look. ‘Why are you cruel to me? I crave
not
to believe. And you still
do
?’

‘Goodnight, my friend.’ He gripped the man’s shoulder, walked thoughtfully back to his room.

So it wasn’t the Vatican. It wasn’t the CIA. He went to bed still thinking about it, hoping to wake in a whole skin.

Something roused him. A sound?

He put his hand out for the P90, then checked the perimeter alarm handset by his bed. The backlit indicator blinked CLEAR.

He sat up slowly, freeing the bedclothes from the gun, slid out of bed, grabbed his flak jacket, got it on. No time for pants, or boots. He stood up in the dark room, breath suspended, listening, then edged out into the hall.

Broken plastic under his bare foot.

He looked up.

The hall skylight — shattered — open to the stars.

Something stung the inside of his throat.

The last thing he knew was the flesh of his cheek dragging back as it slid down the cold wall.

C
ain felt as if he were being cut apart. He tried to open his eyes but had to shut them against the glare.

The next time he knew himself, he was feverishly cold and the unbearable pain remained. When he opened his eyes he saw red-streaked gauze. He gulped air as if he couldn’t get enough. Then he seemed to be floating.

Later they described what they’d done to him.

First, the laparotomy. Bleeding points were ligated and, after peritoneal lavage, damage was assessed and the intestine resected. The surgeon performed an elegant midline opening and single-layer anastomosis of considerable facility.

The neurosurgical team shaved his shattered head, incised his scalp, drilled burr holes through the intact bone near the damage, then nibbled the bone away. The tangential bullet had caused a gutter fracture, subdural haematoma, contusion, and driven fragments into the brain. There hadn’t been time for fancy tests. Relieving pressure was one thing. Finding fragments was another. As bone doesn’t resist infection, debridement had to be complete.