Warhead (29 page)

‘I was having big toilet problem,’ said Mongrel, speaking slowly, clearly. ‘I started lose lot of weight—ha, which I know you think is good thing for fat old Mongrel, hey? But I started needing toilet, sometimes ten times a fucking day! It not comfortable when you on mission with machine gun and keep needing a shit, I tell you, boy-o!’

He gave the signs:
I have sent a squad to lift your boy from New York. You must trust me—and detonate the nuke only when I give the signal.

‘What are you telling me?’ said Carter softly. ‘You are dying from terminal excessive toilet exposure?’

I will trust you, Mongrel. Just don’t get my fucking son killed!

‘No. I have the cancer,’ said Mongrel gently.
Your boy will be fine. I have sent Roxi. She is the best in the business. And we have our own people infiltrated into the Nex. We will get him out, Carter. I promise you.

Carter’s mouth gaped in amazement at both revelations.
OK,
came his flickering hand signals.
But the cancer story is just a cover, right?

Mongrel shook his head sadly. ‘No, Carter, I really do have cancer. Just a few months to live, doctors tell me. It is too far gone to cure: a man can’t live without a fucking stomach, or entire fucking bowel—or so old Mongrel been told.’

Carter was stunned. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Don’t even fucking think about
Get Well?
Mongrel grinned and slapped Carter on the back, his eyes gleaming. ‘Don’t worry, Carter. Everything turn out just fine—you will see, laddie.’

Carter nodded, breathing slowly, and allowed Mongrel to lead him from the toilet block. ‘Come on,’ said Mongrel over his shoulder. ‘It’s time to move out. We’ve got job to do.’

Outside, the snow had stopped falling. A cold, bitter wind was sweeping across the city, piling the snow in drifts.

The Spiral operatives left the buildings in staggered groups of twos and threes, walking swiftly down deserted roads beside the Thames which was crusted with a layer of ice.

Carter, Mongrel and Rogowski walked in silence, guns hidden in their packs and long coats covering their military clothing. Additionally, Carter carried the heavy MicroNuke.

Wintry sunlight shown down from a clear blue sky. Carter, with his collar turned up against the cold, his breath steaming, followed Mongrel who was in the lead, and Rogowski, who was coming up close behind. Rogowski dropped back a little, out of earshot of Mongrel who pretended not to notice. ‘You ready for this, Carter?’

‘I’m ready.’

Rogowski sneered nastily. ‘Don’t fuck this one up, boy. A lot rides on it—including the lives of your child and yourself. Don’t be a dick—just do the job and do it right.’

Carter grinned. ‘You need to shut the fuck up, Rogowski. Or maybe I’ll shoot you in the fucking skull and detonate the bomb without you. I’ll still pacify Durell, keep my kid alive—but you’ll be fucking worm food.’

‘Big words from the big man. You have a reputation Carter, but I have the experience. When this is all over, I would like to dance a slow waltz with you.’

‘The pleasure will be all mine,’ growled Carter. ‘Anybody who turns traitor against his friends, condemns them all to die—well, he deserves everything he fucking gets. I am going to fuck you up bad, compadre. You can rely on
that.’

Rogowski sneered again, then jogged forward to catch up with Mongrel.

The Browning felt good, holstered against Carter’s hip. And for the first time in a long while Carter felt cautiously positive. Yes, everything might turn to rat shit—but he would give it his best shot. And he would be strong. He couldn’t ask more of himself than that.

The groups were travelling to the Concrete Arena via different routes, some on foot, some by SmutCar, some by the GRID. Mongrel had elected to lead his tiny entourage on foot—and they moved through narrow alleyways and back streets, occasionally making a dash across major roads.

It took them an hour. All three men were rosy-cheeked from the cold as Mongrel led them through a series of large yards surrounded by abandoned tower blocks, and deeper into a complex of yards and large concrete sheds, warehouses and low buildings. There were old cranes reaching for the sky, and high metal walkways stretching between towers and buildings. Some, though, ended in—nothing.

‘What is this place?’ asked Carter.

Mongrel shrugged. ‘We use it as munitions depot, and to store FukTruks. Mongrel think it once used to build first-generation tugs, in the infancy days of ChainStations. Now it long derelict; it good meeting place, hey?’

‘Why’s it called the Concrete Arena?’

Mongrel gave a nasty smile. ‘When two Spiral men of bad reputation have an old falling-out, then this is place they sort it out.’

‘What, with guns?’

‘With fists,’ said Mongrel, eyes gleaming. ‘Good old-fashioned way. Guns never solve problem, Carter; guns only good for putting something down. No, no—guns have no pride, no honour. They are like GPS—only for pussies. A real adventurer, he not need these machine aids ... This is about
living,
Carter, about
striving...
This honour must be earned with real effort, and blood, and pain. And nobody die as a result. Well, not often. You see?’

‘I see, all right,’ said Carter, rolling his shoulders under the pack.

‘You OK, Carter?’ asked Rogowski. ‘You want me to carry that for you? Take the weight for a while?’

‘I’m just fine, Ro. You leave it with me. I carry my own burdens.’

‘Ooh,’ said Mongrel. ‘Bit touchy, aren’t you, Carter? You two girls been fighting? Well, we in the right place if you need to settle something, that for sure, or Mongrel not like fat women with cheese feet!’

They entered a small side alleyway, and as they advanced along it Mongrel disappeared behind a pile of metal grilles. There came a grinding noise and behind them the alleyway was blocked by a wall of steel which descended from screeching pulleys overhead—huge thick slabs of metal dropped into place, each with a pitted and slightly rusting surface.

‘Wouldn’t want to get followed.’ Mongrel grinned. ‘Bombproof to HighJ rating of 3.7. Take moron long time to cut through
that
baby with blow-torch!’ They moved out into a vast yard. Buildings circled them. The brickwork looked old, almost Victorian, with many bricks sporting black and crumbling surfaces. The place had a heavily industrialised look.

To one side of the yard was a huge steel structure, vertical girders rising from deep under the concrete. Flimsy-looking ladders were bolted to rust-streaked struts, and high above the men—perhaps two hundred feet overhead—several gantries straddled the huge concrete yard. Some were crane supports, others braced huge iron H-sections whose purpose was not immediately evident.

Mongrel got to work getting an enormous pan of water on for brews as more and more Spiral men and women started to arrive. Some came through the SpiralGRID, sideways-shifting into shimmering existence in a blur of silver and pink. Many of them looked queasy as they stepped from the SpiderCARS and gratefully accepted Mongrel’s huge mugs of sweetened tea.

Carter sat down, balancing the MicroNuke across his knees carefully and sipping at the hot and incredibly sweet brew. It was then, from inside the pack, that he detected a barely audible
click.

The MicroNuke had been primed.

A terrifying thought then occurred to Carter: what if
Durell
detonated the nuke automatically? What if they had used Carter merely as a delivery boy and had decided to cut him out of the loop?

‘Then we’re all dead,’
came Kade’s crackling laughter.

More and more Spiral agents arrived, until nearly three hundred of them stood in the yard and Carter felt more and more nervous. I feel too much like a pawn, he thought. A fucking victim. And he didn’t like that feeling ... Carter was no victim—Carter was the hunter, the man who called the shots. But not this time ...

The Priest started to talk, addressing the gathered Spiral operatives who sat on their packs, guns on their laps and brews in their hands. All faces were serious, all demeanours businesslike. Spiral was facing extinction; and they knew it.

‘Psst. Carter.’

Carter glanced round to see Mongrel and Simmo beckoning to him. He stood, shouldering the MicroNuke, as the other two ducked down behind a jumble of corrugated metal screens. Carter joined them, crouching and looking at a small active optical screen. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Watch.’

Whatever was sending the signal to Mongrel’s screen was airborne, some kind of spy insect relaying back a constant video stream. Carter felt suddenly nauseous as he watched thousands of Nex creeping silently through the surrounding streets. They were accompanied by large Mercedes trucks, TT56 tanks and V3 HTanks—all using stealth mods and exhausts so that they could steal up on the gathering of unsuspecting Spiral soldiers.

‘We’ve only got a few minutes,’ said Mongrel softly. ‘They’re approaching the edge of the blast radius. Rogowski
must
make his move soon.’

‘Something occurred to me. What if they remotely detonate the bomb? They don’t need Ro for
that.’

‘Shit. Mongrel not think of that!’

‘Mongrel!’ hissed Simmo, chewing his cigar savagely. ‘What now, Sarge?’

‘Rogowski trying to do a runner.’

‘You sure?’

‘Aye, The Sarge never wrong. Look, there is furtive bastard, trying to slime his way out of crowd like a big ol’ slug—over there. Come on, let’s cut him off.’

Mongrel and Simmo, with Carter close behind, moved around the outskirts of the gathering. Rogowski saw them and stopped. He gave a nasty smile, looked around for another way out, then turned and moved to the only exit available to him—the bolted ladders, leading up the steel-beam towers. From there a brave man could traverse a dangerous, vertigo-inducing network of ancient metal beams—towards the sloping roof of a battered warehouse ...

Rogowski started to climb.

Mongrel reached the ladders first, followed by Simmo and then Carter. They climbed frantically after Rogowski. All three men were thinking, where the fuck is this madman going? Does he fancy himself as a tightrope walker? But then they heard the distant poundings of a chopper’s rotors.

An airlift. ‘Bitch,’ said Mongrel, panting as he heaved his bulk up rung after rung—a heavy-sweat pursuit of the fleeing Rogowski. As he climbed, he suddenly shouted down, ‘Carter, you still got your little toy?’

‘I got it,’ bellowed Carter.

‘Good. We be needing that soon.’

They kept climbing. Below, The Priest’s sermon petered to a halt as the Spiral ops turned their collective gaze to the action above them. Several aimed submachine guns as they tried to work out just what the hell was happening.

Rogowski slammed his boots onto the level top of a gantry, which swayed a little against its rusted support struts. He levelled his H&K MP5 down through the hole. Mongrel’s sweat-stained red face appeared.

‘Goodbye, Mongrel,’ snarled Rogowski. And pulled the trigger.

There was a dull click. Mongrel threw an overhead punch, which slammed against Rogowski’s kneecap with a sickening crack and dropped him, yelping in pain and shock. Rogowski fell backwards, scrambling away as Mongrel, his dark eyes narrowed, hoisted his bulk onto the treacherous gantry. There came a tiny squeal of stressed metal. Again, the gantry swayed.

‘Mongrel had thought of removing bullets from your mags,’ rumbled the big man, cracking his knuckles as Simmo, and then Carter, appeared behind him.

All three stared at Rogowski with loathing as the traitor backed away.

‘Why did you do it?’ Carter asked.

Rogowski laughed, a low cackling sound, scrambling even further back to where the metal ledge narrowed to a precarious ten inches in width. He glanced up, searching for his airlift as he licked at lips beaded with sweat.

‘You want simple answers, so you can all neatly tie up your fucking loose ends? Well, fuck you. I ain’t talking. And your knowledge is irrelevant anyway, because soon you will all be dead.’

Mongrel lifted his weapon and levelled it at Rogowski. The sounds of the chopper were coming close and Simmo turned, directing his own weapon over at the high buildings surrounding the Concrete Arena.

‘Talk.’

‘Fuck you.’

There was a dull
blam
and blood spurted from Rogowski’s leg. The man jerked and went white, both hands moving protectively over the wound. Within seconds his hands were covered in pumping crimson liquid.

‘Talk,’ repeated Mongrel.

‘Fuck—you!’ snarled Rogowski, his eyes narrowed.

There was a second shot, and this time the bullet smashed through one of Rogowski’s knuckles, gouging a furrow through the flesh of his forearm before exiting in a spray of fine red mist. This time, Rogowski screamed.

‘Talk, fucker.’

Rogowski started to laugh, blood pumping from the two wounds in time with the pounding of his heart. He tried to shuffle backwards, further down the narrow gantry. It rocked and shook in warning.

‘You don’t understand!’ he hissed, eyes rolling wildly. ‘You think I’m the contact? You think I’m the mole inside Spiral? You boys are so fucking predictable ... I am just the messenger. There is another among you, somebody in direct contact with Durell... you just can’t see the fucking wood for the trees. You are sitting fucking ducks.’