The Chimera Vector (2 page)

Damien didn’t need it, but he turned it on. ‘Yeah, thanks.’

‘Fuck me how you motherfuckers see without it.’

The staff drummed his fingers on his rifle in time with the beat from the Hummer’s CD player. Sophia noticed his M16 was shorter than it should’ve been. It wasn’t an M16 at all, but an M4 carbine. Strange, she thought. Only marine officers carried M4s. Something about these marines didn’t seem right.

‘Let’s move.’ The staff started walking back to the Hummer.

In unison, his marines—also carrying M4s—shouted a guttural ‘Uh-rah!’

One of them pushed the woman into the back compartment of the Hummer. Sophia caught a glimpse of her face. She wasn’t Iranian Special Forces. She was just a girl, no more than ten years old. She hadn’t been on the street during the assassination at all. How had Sophia mistaken a ten-year-old girl for a woman on the street in Tehran?

She looked back at the Citroën, at the torn, ripped faces in the front seat. They hadn’t been on the street either. They weren’t the Takavar guard unit. No wonder they’d been so easy to kill.

She turned to Damien. His fingers were white over his rifle. His thick eyebrows pressed together, his teeth clenched. Something was wrong, and it wasn’t the marines’ taste in music.

Sophia heard a faint click. The discharge of a suppressed weapon.

The staff stumbled and fell face-first onto the dirt road. Hard. Sophia heard the air rasp from his throat. He scrambled to his feet, snatched his rifle. Spun around, eyes wide. Saliva, thick with tobacco, oozed down the staff’s chin and neck.

Two marines—the younger version of Jay, and an African American with a square jaw and a permanent scowl—rushed in to help him.

‘Mother . . .’ Sweat poured from the staff’s face.

Square Jaw moved in closer. ‘Staff?’

The staff shoved him aside. ‘Take cover!’ He ripped off his modular tactical vest, then the buttons from his uniform. ‘Some raghead motherfucker just fuckin shot me!’

His eyes rolled up and he dropped to his knees, then his hands. His elbows buckled. His face hit the dirt.

The two soldiers rushed to him again. Square Jaw checked his carotid pulse, then saw the blood-soaked patch over his stomach. The other three marines—faces confused—dropped to their knees, rifles ready, snapping their night vision on to search the desert around them.

All was flat and featureless. There was nowhere for the enemy to hide. The marines wouldn’t stay confused for much longer.

Sophia dropped to her stomach, not bothering with night vision. She bent her right leg, giving her lungs room to breathe. Wind howled past, filling her nostrils with gasoline and the coppery tang of blood. With her peripheral vision, she could see Damien lying prone and holstering his suppressor-equipped pistol. He put both hands back onto his rifle. She’d realized what he’d done. She just couldn’t believe he’d done it.

‘Bring it, ya dirty son of a whore!’ Square Jaw yelled. ‘I’ll put a bullet right between ya fuckin eyes!’

Sophia figured it would only be a few minutes before they figured out there were no insurgents. There was only one way out of this now.

She raised her compact P99 pistol and squeezed off two rounds. Square Jaw’s rifle dropped. His mouth opened like a purse. Blood gushed down his neck.

The other marines took aim—not at her but at the invisible insurgent they thought had opened fire.

A marine’s head exploded.

The three remaining soldiers turned to Sophia’s team, rifles aimed. They knew they’d been had. They returned fire. Rounds cracked past Sophia. One broke the sound barrier inches from her head with the snap of a bullwhip.

From the Cruiser, Jay pinned the marines with heavy supporting fire. They dropped flat on their stomachs and shifted their arc of fire. Their rounds smacked into Sophia’s vehicle. Above the gunfire, the female singer informed everyone of the heat coming from the beat.

Jay’s Minimi continued its barrage. Sophia shifted on her elbows and found herself in line with one of the marines. Before she could squeeze off more shots, he folded into himself like a plastic toy. Damien had beaten her to it.

She rose into a crouch. All the marines were down. She got to her feet.

Damien was on his feet beside her, uninjured. With his trademark thoroughness, he swept his rifle over the dead marines a few times. There would be no survivors.

Sophia turned to check on Jay. It didn’t look good. The Cruiser was peppered with bullet impacts. None had penetrated the vehicle’s armor, but it was the bullets penetrating Jay that worried her. His Minimi was visible, but he was nowhere to be seen.

She marched towards the Cruiser, fingers trembling. ‘Jay? Call out!’ she yelled. ‘Call out!’

Jay’s Minimi almost fell out as he kicked open the door. ‘Yeah, I’m good,’ he said.

She watched his boots hit the ground. ‘Injuries?’

‘I said I’m good.’ He brushed dirt from the Minimi’s feed tray. ‘But this needs a clean.’

Sophia returned to Damien, who was busy checking the pulse of every marine. Jay stormed past and inspected the staff sergeant’s body. He rolled him onto his back and pried his clenched hands from the vest buttons.

‘I guess that’s the last time we let Damien run the show,’ Jay said.

Damien either hadn’t heard him or chose not to respond. Considering his enhanced hearing, it was probably the latter.

Sophia spotted movement at the edge of her vision. It wasn’t the girl. She was sitting in the back of the Hummer, still and breathless. Someone was in the front seat. They’d missed a marine.

He reached for a weapon. Sophia broke into a sprint, closing the gap. The marine was on the driver’s side. He wasn’t reaching for a weapon, he was reaching for a radio.

No time to draw.

He noticed her approach and drew his pistol. His arm leveled across the Hummer’s window. He would’ve had her too, if she’d been a step behind. She smashed his forearm down on the window frame. Bone shattered through the inside of his elbow. She cracked the stock of her pistol into the side of his neck. It struck his carotid sinus and sent a sudden surge of blood to his brain. In an instant, his body’s self-defense kicked in, slowing his heart rate and dilating blood vessels to drop his blood pressure. She watched him slump forward, unconscious, forehead hitting the steering wheel. The horn blared.

She reached in, cut the volume on the CD player. The girl sat in the back of the Hummer, trembling. Sophia opened the rear door and the girl scrambled away, lips quivering.

Sophia’s nostrils burned with the smell of sweat and urine. She opened her mouth but nothing came out. She wasn’t here to save the girl. She thought she’d killed a unit of Iranian Special Forces, but she’d killed a family and orphaned a terrified little girl. What the hell was going on?

‘Soph!’ Jay yelled over the horn.

A marine was standing two meters behind her. She couldn’t believe she’d missed another one. His carbine shifted in blood-coated hands. Rounds from the firefight had cratered the boron carbide plates of his vest, but hadn’t penetrated his flesh. He’d survived by playing dead. Damien hadn’t made it that far to check his pulse.

Before the marine could shoot her, he hunched over abruptly, eyelids twitching. Saliva dripped from his chin. He collapsed.

Jay was standing behind him, teeth clenched, breathing heavily. He looked like he was in pain. Sophia checked him over. No blood. His hands were empty. The marine’s flesh smelled burnt, as though he’d been roasted with a taser. But Jay was more effective than any taser. He’d touched the back of the marine’s neck and discharged a high-voltage electric shock. His enhanced ability came in handy once in a while.

She checked her own hands. She was still holding her P99. Their situation wasn’t looking too hot. Their presence in Iran had been compromised only hours after she’d slotted the Minister of Defense, and—

‘We just slotted a whole bunch of marines,’ Jay said. ‘That can’t be good.’

‘I thought they stopped issuing M4s to marines. The sand jams them too easily,’ Sophia said. ‘These look new.’

Damien kneeled to inspect the toasted marine. ‘They like to keep their weapons well oiled, I guess.’

‘Or they were deployed at short notice.’ Sophia nodded at the pistol near her feet. ‘With Heckler & Koch pistols.’

Jay chewed his lip. ‘Right, you have a point. So who the fuck are they? Private security? Special Forces?’

Sophia shook her head. ‘Whoever they are, I think we’ll need both IEDs after all.’

‘Too late for that,’ Damien said. ‘We have incoming.’

Sophia tracked his gaze to the west. Saw three vehicles crossing the Iraq–Iran border. They would’ve seen the firefight from there.

‘Orders?’ Jay said.

When she didn’t answer, he grabbed her shoulder. ‘Hey!’

His touch jolted her, but she stared through him. Her attention was riveted to the three vehicles. There was no time to escape.

‘Great,’ Damien said. ‘These guys probably saw us slaughter the marines through their night-vision.’

‘So either they shoot us or take us into custody,’ Jay said. ‘I’d like to think the latter.’

The screech of brakes. A spotlight splashed over them. The girl screamed from the back seat of the Hummer.

Two dozen marines poured from the newly arrived Hummers, barely silhouettes in the night. Whether they were real marines or dress-up marines, their spotlight made Sophia squint. Someone yelled at her, Damien and Jay to drop their weapons.

Sophia was the first to raise her hands. She showed her finger was nowhere near the trigger of her pistol, hit the decocking block and the magazine-release catch. The magazine fell out, landing by her feet. The marines kept their rifles trained on her as she placed the pistol on the ground and stepped back, her hands up.

In her peripheral vision, she saw Jay—who’d left his Minimi in the Cruiser and his pistol in his thigh holster—raise his hands in the air. Damien was out of her field of vision, but she heard him place his rifle and magazine on the dirt.

The marines rushed forward, rifles fixed on the trio. M4s.

‘Shit,’ Sophia whispered.

Two marines threw her against the side of the Hummer. There was no hesitation, no questions. They’d seen what had happened. She couldn’t talk her way out of this.

The girl screamed again.

‘Shut her up,’ someone yelled.

A marine pulled the girl out of the vehicle and put a bullet through the back of her head.

Chapter 2

Sophia looked away from the ceiling to find her body in one piece. She was lying on a hospital bed. Her vision blurred and her head spun. She felt as though she had a lifetime’s supply of hangovers in one hit. She tried to move her limbs but they refused to obey. She opened her mouth. Her throat burned and her tongue felt swollen. She could barely swallow.

Beyond her feet she saw a pair of military police sergeants standing in the doorway. One of them had a long, crooked nose and pencil-thin lips. The other was five inches taller and as white as the ceiling tiles. They stepped outside the room to get a better view of the television Sophia could hear in the opposite ward.

The ward was empty, save for two beds on her left. She managed to turn her head in that direction. Beside her was a young, unshaven man in his early twenties. He had pale olive skin, dark hair that hadn’t been brushed in weeks and a nose slightly too big for his face. Damien. He looked like a young, ethnic version of James Dean.

As Damien leaned back against the bedhead, Sophia was able to see the patient on the next bed. With even shorter hair, higher cheekbones and darker olive skin, Jay was hard to miss. There were quite a few Hispanic operatives, but Jay was Pardo: half Portuguese and half African. At a stretch, he could pass for Arabic, which made him a popular choice for Middle East operations.

‘They said Iranian missiles could hit the States in 2015,’ the MP sergeant on the left said, speaking softly. ‘Fucking hell.’

The sergeant on the right laughed. ‘That’s a slow fucking missile.’ His voice sounded like gravel.

Sophia tried to move her fingers but felt nothing. She could hear the news reporter talking on the television.

‘The United Nations representative for Human Rights was killed in a suicide bombing last night. The US Secretary of State said the bombing underlines the absolute moral bankruptcy and brutality of those who planned and executed it. A previously unknown terrorist group, the Holy Jihad Brigades, issued a statement claiming responsibility.’

Suicide bombings by ‘previously unknown terrorist groups’ were a great way to cover up assassinations. Sophia wouldn’t be surprised if the real culprit was an operative just like her.

Her blood iced up.

It was her.

Her memories shifted like a prism. The face of the person she’d shot flickered before her. It wasn’t the Iranian Minister of Defense. It was the United Nations representative.

‘No mention of our killing spree in the desert last night. Which is interesting,’ Damien’s voice croaked from beside her. He was listening too.

She remembered everything now. But it was all different. The faces were different. The people were different. Even lying down, she felt dizzy. This wasn’t just an operational failure, this was catastrophic.

She opened her mouth, pulling her dry lips apart. ‘Where are we? Iraq?’

Damien nodded. ‘Looks like Camp Anaconda. Or Joint Base Balad as they call it these days.’

‘Why did you kill the staff sergeant?’ she said.

Damien’s gaze hardened. ‘Why did you shoot the marines?’

Her arms and legs tingled. ‘I don’t know.’

Whatever sedatives she’d been given, they were starting to wear off. Her fingers flexed when she told them to. The fog was beginning to clear from her mind and something inside her was convinced she had to get away from here.

Struggling to sit upright, she looked at the vital signs monitor beside her. It was measuring her pulse rate, blood pressure and respiratory rate. She knew as soon as she detached the wires from her body it would start beeping, alerting the MPs. She looked over at the ward entrance. She could only see one elbow, but she knew they were both still there, the television informing them of the latest celebrity breakup.