Armageddon Heights (a thriller) (9 page)

Villiers eyed Levoir, his face deathly pale even under the flattering light of the lamps. ‘Hi,’ he said.

‘When I say treat him with respect, I mean shake his hands,’ Napier growled.

Villiers did as he was told with alacrity. But there was something like distaste towards Levoir moulded deep into his expression that he couldn’t hide. The handshake was limp and lacklustre. Levoir knew at once that what Napier had said was true; this man was not to be trusted.

‘So you were with CSL at the start,’ Levoir noted, reflecting the distaste back at Villiers through his words.

‘I didn’t stay,’ he said.

‘Why?’ Levoir asked. He observed Napier watching them from the corner of his eye.

‘Didn’t agree with their aims.’

‘Kicked out by them, more like,’ Levoir remarked. ‘That why you’re angry with them, willing to sell them out?’

‘None of your business,’ Villiers said.

Napier intruded. ‘It’s very much his business now,’ he noted.

With a swallow, Villiers nodded. ‘Yeah, I’m sore, who wouldn’t be? I admit there’s an element of revenge in my motives.’

‘And greed?’ Levoir raised a questioning brow.

‘Why are
you
here?’ Villiers batted back. ‘That greed, too? Is a man not allowed to be greedy? Look, Mr Napier,’ he said, facing him, ‘I don’t need to put up with this shit. You’ll get what you want, I’ll get what’s due to me and we can call it a day. But I’m not putting up with this.’

‘You will put up with anything I say, Villiers. And anything Mr Levoir asks of you. Is that understood?’ It wasn’t said forcefully. In fact it was quite calmly put, but Villiers got the drift.

‘Yes, Mr Napier,’ he said compliantly.

‘So, this wonderful lead you have for us,’ said Levoir. ‘Care to elucidate?’

‘Here?’ he returned, looking about the empty dining room.

‘We can make a start,’ Levoir said. ‘If that’s okay with you, Mr Napier?’

Napier signalled it was fine with his knife and put a mouthful of food into his mouth, swilling it down with a hefty wash of wine. He watched the two men intently.

‘I was one of their IT guys, in the beginning…’

‘Doing what exactly?’

‘I joined a small team snooping around and hacking into Lindegaard’s operation. It became clear very soon that CSL and I were different beasts motivated by different ambitions. I disagreed with some of their principles. See, I was for fleecing Lindegaard, cutting into his territory and making everyone very rich, very fast, a simple cut-and-run affair. But they wanted something different. So we quickly fell out and they dumped me, moved on without me. But I admit the IT stuff eventually got way too complex for me anyhow. Now working for them was a weird affair from the beginning. It was a small set up in the beginning, with people working in pairs – sometimes threes. No names, no ID, nothing like that was shared. You never knew who the other teams were, but each performed a specific function. Some are IT, some became expert at incursions, then there are those that performed external lobbying work through channels that are untraceable to its source. Like their revamped counterpart under Charlie Sharland, they moved around, never stayed in the same place for very long. Pinning them down is like pinning down fog.’

‘Good old Charlie Sharland. Real or not?’ Levoir asked.

‘Dunno,’ Villiers replied. ‘He was before my day. I hear no one has ever seen the man. But if you want my guess I’d say he’s real enough. There has to be a controlling hand there. Its new setup is way too complex and perfect to be run without a clear driving force.’

‘None of this is new, Villiers,’ Levoir pointed out tiredly. ‘We’ve had others that purport to have come from CSL, and they say pretty much the same.’

Napier nodded slowly and deliberately as he listened. He admired the way his recruit had fallen so easily into his new role.

‘Maybe they did,’ Villiers said, ‘but I’ve got something more than that. I’ve got a name.’

‘A name,’ Levoir echoed. ‘Sure, and whatever name you’ve got is going to be the one they want you to know. It won’t be real.’

‘It is, trust me. Before I left I hacked into their system and drew off a few names and addresses.’

‘They wouldn’t have been so careless to have let you do that. And what use are old names?’

‘They thought I was dumber than I am.’ He leant back in his seat. ‘It pays not to underestimate me.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘This name is bang up to date and relevant.’

Levoir caught Napier giving the man a severe glance.

‘So who do you have?’

Villiers tapped his temple. ‘Safely stored away, up here.’

‘Mr Lindegaard vouches for Villiers,’ Napier assured. ‘He must have said something to please the old man. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here now. But if you’re not as good as your word you’re in deep shit, Villiers; I won’t be messed with.’

‘My word’s good,’ he said, a self-assured grin spreading over his face. ‘This contacts will help you get right to the heart of CSL. Right to Sharland.’ He looked about him. ‘Really nice gaff you have here, Mr Napier. How about serving me up some grub? I’m starving.’

Robert Napier chewed quietly on his food, swallowed, gently retrieved his napkin from his lap and carefully dabbed the corners of his mouth. He methodically folded it up and placed it on the table beside his plate.

In an instant he lunged forward and grabbed Villiers by the scruff of the neck. He launched his full weight against him, toppling the surprised man from his seat. Napier’s knee lodged firmly on Villiers’ chest, knocking the wind from him. Levoir shrank back as Napier’s quick fingers plucked his knife from the table and he made a swift slashing motion with it across the top of Villiers’ right ear. There was a loud screech of pain as Napier rose to his feet, smoothing down his trousers and jacket sleeves. He tossed the knife away.

Villiers sat upright, clutching his ear which bled profusely. ‘You cut me!’ he screamed. ‘I’m bleeding!’ His eyes widened even more in horror as he realised there was a tiny piece of pink flesh on the ground. ‘You cut off a piece of my ear!’

Napier took the napkin and threw it onto the floor beside Villiers.

‘So now you’re a regular Van Gough,’ he said. ‘Mop up the blood before it gets on the carpet,’ he said, controlling his breathing. ‘And get out of my sight. Now!’ he bellowed. And Villiers half crawled, half stumbled to his feet and made for the door. ‘Remember who it is you’re talking to. And that’s just a taste of what’s in store for you if you don’t come up trumps, you snivelling little toad!’

Levoir blinked, his eyes wide, his mouth suddenly very dry.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Napier after Villiers left the room and closed the door. An awkward few seconds passed. ‘Something wrong with your food?’

‘Well did you find him?’

Naturally it was the businessman who Wade predicted would be first to greet the returning search party.

Wade nodded gravely. ‘Yeah, we found him alright.’

The air was stifling inside the bus and growing ever more so by the hour without the air conditioning working, but it was preferable to being outside where the temperature seemed to be soaring. The businessman had stripped his suit off and had his shirtsleeves rolled up; his chest was awash with sweat, his hair wet. It was plainly obvious how everyone else were beginning to feel the heat. They were starting to bake like beans in a tin can, sitting out here on the open road. The businessman eyed Amanda Tyler’s and Martin Bolan’s faces. It didn’t take him long to realise something was wrong.

‘Where is he? Can he get us out of here?’ he persisted.

‘We need water,’ said Wade. ‘It’s blistering out there and we stayed out longer than was safe. Has anyone got any water?’

‘So where is the damned bus driver?’ the businessman said.

‘Keith…’ his partner said quietly, trying to calm his down.

He turned on her. ‘Just keep out of this, Cheryl. You want to get out of here, don’t you?’ She nodded meekly. ‘Then keep quiet and let me deal with this.’ He grabbed Wade by the arm. ‘Something’s happened to the slacker, hasn’t it?’

Wade yanked his arm free, glowered at him.

‘Is it true?’ said the old woman called Phyllis. ‘Has something happened to the poor man?’

‘He’s dead,’ Martin Bolan said, flopping into a seat exhaustedly. ‘Anyone got any water?’

‘Sure,’ said the young man with the headphones. ‘I’ve got two bottles in my bag.’ He pulled a black holdall from the overhead locker. He was about to hand a bottle over to Bolan when Wade stepped up and took the bottle from him.

‘Okay, first things first,’ Wade said, ‘we need to conserve water. Everyone, take out any bottled fluids you have with you and we’ll collect it all up to see what stock we have between us. Amanda and Martin here need a sip or two after being outside, but beyond that we need to be careful. We don’t know how long we’re going to be stranded out here.’ He gave the bottle of water to Amanda who took a couple of careful swigs before handing it over to Bolan.

‘Stranded?’ The young man who had been late for the bus came forward. ‘You can’t be serious. We’ll have been reported missing and someone will come and look for us.’

‘You said the driver was dead,’ the businessman butted in. ‘How did he die?’

‘He’s dead, that’s all you need to know for now,’ Wade returned.

‘You can’t leave it at that. We’ve got a right to know.’

‘Later,’ Wade insisted.

The businessman’s partner, Cheryl, began to sob. ‘This is sheer madness! This is a bad dream!’ she said shrilly. She put her hands to her temples, thumped them rhythmically with her palms, lowered her head and started to moan loudly.

‘See what you’ve done?’ the businessman growled. ‘She shouldn’t be upset. She’s ill.’

‘You’re all in my nightmare,’ Cheryl cried. ‘All of you!’ She tore through the press of people crowding the aisle and bound for the bus doors, the businessman trying to grab her, but his fingers clawed uselessly at the material of her blouse as she slipped by him.

Wade blocked her exit and brought her up short, holding her fast by both her arms. ‘You can’t go out there – it’s not safe.’

She became hysterical, attempting to tear herself away from him, her long painted nails lunging at his face. ‘It’s not real – none of it is! Let me wake up! Please, God, let me wake up!’

Her mounting hysteria infected others in the group, who were already wound up so tight Wade could almost hear the atmosphere squeak with the tension. He fought to hold onto her.

‘That’s right – this has gotta be a bad dream…’ said the young man with the headphones. ‘This is madness – you can’t suddenly disappear from a motorway and end up in a desert. It’s a bad dream.
My
dream!’

‘That’s right,’ said the elderly man called Paul, ‘this sort of thing can’t happen…’ His face was pale, a look of undisguised terror filming his wide eyes. ‘We should have taken the bloody train like I said!’

‘Paul, take it easy,’ his wife said to him.

‘Oh my God!’ he exclaimed. ‘We’re dead! We all died in a motorway accident – the bad weather, poor visibility, caused some kind of crash.’ He spun on his heel to face the window. ‘And that place out there – it’s Purgatory!’ He crossed himself quickly, his mouth falling open, his expression one of sudden hopelessness.

‘Well I sure as hell don’t feel dead,’ said the businessman, putting an arm round his partner, who buried her head into his chest and sobbed uncontrollably, pleading with him to take her away from all this.

‘Paul,’ sit down…’ Phyllis said quietly to her husband. But she glanced at Wade, her eyes begging some kind of answer.

In fact all eyes were now trained expectantly on Wade. He sighed heavily, massaging his closed eyes with his finger and thumb. ‘Look, I don’t know what’s happened to us – I wish I did. I’m as confused and as scared as the rest of you. But getting all panicky about it isn’t going to help us. We need some kind of plan. The bus driver’s dead, we’re stuck in the middle of an unknown desert – ‘

‘Could be New Mexico, though,’ said Martin Bolan.

‘Maybe, maybe not. This place is unlike anything I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a few of the world’s most hostile places in my time.’ Wade asked everyone to take a seat. Cheryl had to be eased gently down, but she didn’t raise her head and instead kept it buried against the businessman’s damp shirt. ‘I don’t feel dead – does anyone else feel dead?’ Wade asked, trying to deflate the tension with the sharp pin of levity. Everyone remained silent, their eyes studying him closely. Frightened. Looking for reassurance. ‘So, at least we’re not dead, which has to be a good thing, right? And we’re all in this together. If we keep calm, think things through rationally, we’ll all get out of this. Whatever
this
is. First, let’s go through names so we know who we all are.’ He pointed at Amanda.

‘I’m Amanda Tyler,’ she said.

‘And I’m Martin,’ Bolan said. ‘Martin Bolan. I’m a rep for an engineering firm…’

Wade pointed at the businessman next.

The man frowned. ‘What is this? Some kind of goddamn half-arsed team-building exercise?’

‘Name, please,’ said Wade patiently.

The man huffed, feeling awkward under the press of so many gazes. ‘Keith Hartshorn. This is my wife, Cheryl.’

Wade nodded at the young man, who was fiddling with his earphones, looking like he was about to burst into tears at any moment. ‘Steven Lindsey. Steve…’ he said. ‘I’m going back to university. I’m in my second year…’ He swallowed. ‘I said I’d let my mum and dad know when I got there.’ He had a mobile phone in his hand, which he was rubbing like a set of worry beads. ‘But it’s useless – nothing’s working anymore. My parents will get worried sick, I know they will.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Wade assured, ‘we’ll get you home.’

Keith Hartshorn gave a grunt. ‘Yeah, right. Don’t get your hopes up, kid.’

Wade glowered hard at Hartshorn and the man went back to patting the shoulder of his wife, Cheryl.

‘I’m Phyllis Kennedy,’ said the older woman. ‘And this is my husband, Paul. We’ve got family in Northampton – a daughter. She’s having a baby. We wanted to be there when it was born.’

Her husband nodded dumbly, the wind knocked out of his sails, his face still as pale as Parian. ‘Maybe we should have taken the plane…’ he murmured. ‘But the cost…’

Finally it was the turn of the young couple. The woman who had been reading the newspaper that got Wade all worked up, and her partner who arrived late. They were looking pretty calm, all things considered, Wade thought.

‘I’m Jack Benedict,’ the man said. ‘This is my girlfriend Lauren Smith. We just got engaged to be married last week. We’re off the Edinburgh for a week. Celebrating.’ Lauren held up her left hand for all to see. A diamond ring caught the sunlight and sparked like a miniature sun.

‘Great,’ said Hartshorn, ‘now we’re all introduced maybe we can think about getting out of this mess.’

‘We need to get a few things straight first,’ Wade said.

‘Like exchanging birthday details? Give it a rest, will you? Anyhow, who the hell do you think you are to be dishing out orders?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘I can’t remember you giving us your name. Who are you?’

‘Everyone has to empty their bags of bottles of fluid for starters,’ Wade said, ignoring Hartshorn. He tipped out the contents of young Steven Lindsey’s holdall onto a seat. ‘Put the bottles in here, as well as any food you have.’

‘Is that an evasion tactic?’ Hartshorn persisted.

‘It’s a tactic that will help us stay alive,’ he returned.

Hartshorn sniffed. ‘No one’s going to die. You’re making a bad situation worse with all your scaremongering. Look at everyone – you’re scaring the shit out of them with your doomsday scenario. What are you, some kind of goddamn survivalist in your spare time?’

Amanda Tyler stepped up. ‘It makes sense. We don’t know how long we’re going to be stuck out here. It’s hot and desolate out there, and getting hotter by the minute. And then there are the wild animals…’

She realised she’d said more than she should have and bit at her lower lip, glancing at Wade.

‘Hang on – what wild animals?’ said Hartshorn. ‘No one said anything about wild animals.’

Steven Lindsey was in the process of gathering up the small pile of possessions from his holdall. He looked up, his face draining of blood. ‘Is that what killed the bus driver?’

‘What kind of animals, lady?’ Hartshorn snapped at Amanda. He saw her looking at Wade for direction. ‘Ignore him – he’s a nobody with big ideas, a regular Captain Mainwaring. What kind of animal are we talking here? Lions, bears, hyenas, what?’

‘They don’t have lions in New Mexico,’ said Martin Bolan quietly. ‘But something big and powerful attacked the bus driver, that’s for sure. There wasn’t much left of him when we found him.’

The sultry silence was palpable.

‘So when were you going to tell us this Mainwaring?’ Hartshorn said to Wade.

‘I didn’t want to frighten anyone unduly,’ he said evenly. ‘But yes, we’ve got some kind of animal out there, hunts in packs by the looks of it. It made short work of the bus driver. What kind of animal it is I don’t know yet. But you’re safe here on the bus. What we’re not safe from, however, is this desert sun. We don’t know how long we’ll be stuck here, so we need to harvest what little food and water we have to get us through this. The bus is already beginning to overheat and pretty soon we’ll be fried like eggs in a billycan if we don’t get the bus started and get the air conditioning cranked up.’

‘If we move from here then the search parties may not find us,’ said Jack Benedict, holding tight to his girlfriend’s arm.

‘I somehow doubt there are any search parties looking for us way out here. They’ll have no idea where to look, for one thing, and this isn’t exactly a breakdown on the motorway between service stations is it? I think we’re out here alone, if you want the truth.’

‘Oh God,’ whispered Phyllis Kennedy. ‘You really think so?’

Wade nodded. ‘I reckon it’s down to us to get out of this. Waiting around is just going to use up precious resources. We have a vehicle, we have a road and, provided we have enough fuel we can get a couple of hundred miles further down the line.’

‘Further down the line?’ Hartshorn said. ‘Where the hell is further down the line? It could be even more bloody desert!’

‘There’s a chance we could also get a signal for our phones and tablets,’ Wade said. ‘The reception may improve.’ He pointed at Steven Lindsey. ‘Gather up the food and drink and put it in the bag for me, will you?’

The young man rose and took the bag.

‘Put that down,’ Hartshorn ordered. ‘He ain’t in any position to be giving anyone orders.’

‘What he says makes perfect sense,’ said Phyllis Kennedy.

Both Jack Benedict and Lauren Smith gave their silent nodded assent.

‘It’s true, Mr Hartshorn,’ said Amanda Tyler. ‘He’s been in the army. He knows these things.’

Wade was taken aback. ‘I never said that.’

‘It was obvious from what you said and did when we were out there. It’s true, isn’t it?’

Sighing, Wade nodded. ‘Yeah, it’s true.’

‘Great, a
real
Captain Mainwaring!’ said Hartshorn. ‘So being in the bloody army doesn’t make give him the right to order us about. I lead a company with eight hundred employees – I’m as qualified as anyone to give orders if I so wish.’

‘There’s no competition here, Mr Hartshorn,’ Amanda observed.

Paul Kennedy had gotten over his attack of the terrors and stood up to face Keith Hartshorn. ‘Give it a rest, will you? You’re starting to irritate me and everyone else aboard this bus.’

‘Can it, old man, or I’ll can it for you,’ Hartshorn burst, seeing the weight of opposition against him growing and feeling cornered with it.