Chimera Code (Jake Dillon Adventure Thriller Series) (2 page)

There was the distant rattle of Russian-made sub-machine gun
fire.
The guards who had come running in from their sentry posts
outside had all exchanged worried glances as they surveyed the five
corpses in the room.
“How did he open the digital locks? I was told that they were
foolproof. Infinite fucking combinations or something.”
“Over here,
Comrade
.”
The two other guards lumbered towards the gaping window,
saw the footprints in congealed blood and glanced down into the
sprawling valley below...

Within the damp dungeons, deep beneath the mountain top
fortress, something barely visible had been attached to the constantly
dripping stone ceiling. A single red light, glowing faintly, an omen of
death and devastation.

The bomb detonated. The explosion, savage, fire and destruction
screamed whiteheat through the passageways up to the building above,
wrenching it apart with the force of unleashed chemical annihilation.

In the valley below, there was a spattering of small stones into the
fast moving river, followed by thunderous splashes of heavy chunks
of granite and timber cascadingdown through the early morning mist.

South China Sea - off the coast of Hong Kong:
The tropical
rain storm beat violently across the South China Sea; heaving, beating
waves towards the dark rusting hulk of the grounded oil tanker, unlit
and abandoned, pounded and abused by the elements. The tanker had
run onto the jagged rocks that lurked just below the surface of the
water many years before. Had been left to rot by one of the world’s
largest petroleum corporations. The huge engines, that no longer
thundered and beat with life, had long ago been dismantled and taken
for scrap, as had anything else of any value including the bridge,
stripped of everything and was now just a shell, empty and devoid
of life. The bow was a tangle of fused rusting steel being gradually
eaten away by the sea spray, and the enormous ship was a cast-off -
discarded, abused, raped, bled dry and forgotten.

The ship was a ghost, deserted. Almost...
The figure moved out into the twilight from somewhere in the
bowels of the ship, wearing a tight-fitting black garment and a rolledup balaclava. Gloved hands wrapped around a rusting rail and the
man looked up, gasping as the wind rocked him almost off his feet
and over the side of the rail.
He grinned and revelling in the wild roller-coaster ride feeling,
pulled out a cigarette and shouldered his MP5 submachine gun as he
searched for his lighter.
“You’ve got more chance of falling over that rail, than you have
of lighting that thing.”
“You may be right - but then again you may be wrong, my old
son.” The accent was broad east end of London. Pulling free the
Zippo lighter, he cupped the cigarette in an attempt to defeat the
torrential rain that was beating down. Miraculously, the end of the
cigarette glowed, a bright spark against the gloom. White smoke
swirled around the young man’s face and he inhaled deeply, closing
his eyes and enjoying the nicotine rush.
“Pete, this is the most shite gig, man.”
Pete merely nodded, turning his back on the stocky muscular
man with the heavily scarred complexion and gazing out into the
black churning waters. “Go get us some strong coffee, mate? And
check on our North Korean friend while you’re at it.”
The thick-set man - recently recruited to Scorpion 4 - stomped
off down the gangway to the lower level which had been converted
back to sleeping and living quarters as well as the galley for the
duration of their stay.
Pete took his time smoking his cigarette, gazing out over the
rolling waves of the South China Sea that hid the bright lights of Hong
Kong. He wondered idly what it would be like, working on a tanker,
living on a ship so big that you need a scooter to get from one end
to the other. His mind drifted; he pictured the tanker carrying many
thousands of tons of crude oil, the speed and force that it would cut
through the ocean and the vast amount of distance needed to stop a
ship that was so big. And he thought about himself: Pete; twenty-five
year old Scorpion veteran; two tours of Afghanistan and then head
hunted by a spook from MI6 to join one of the Government’s most
secret and elite units and given one of the softest gigs ever devised
by the shadowy Scorpion planners. To protect Zhu De Chung, anticommunist rebel sympathiser and professor of mathematics at the
Peking University, Beijing, China. Zhu De was a hunted man - he
was hunted because of the highly classified secrets he held. Pete was
simply tired; and he wanted to go home. Wanted to be far away and
preferably out of this game. He had been killing people far too long
and just wanted a quiet life.
Pete laughed to himself, and leaned out over the rail. It moved
under his weight, the metal creaked, the noise lost in the wind as he
gazed down into the black water far below. His fear of drowning,
close at hand.
The quiet life. I thought only old men got tired, his inner voice
taunted him.
I thought you were a professional soldier. A fighter - not a quitter
- you wussy.
He had seen enough blood and gore in Afghanistan to last most
men a lifetime and then some.
Levi was right; he thought as he moved to the stairwell and
braced himself against the wild wind. This really is a shit gig; a full five
man team locked away on this cursed rusting pile of scrap metal for a
whole ten days with Zhu De, a slightly crazy North Korean professor.
He had defected from the communists and now wanted sanctuary in
Britain, but while this was being organised, he had to be hidden away
and baby-sat.
Pete flicked his cigarette butt over the rail and went down the
stairwell to the lower deck gangway. The howling wind and rain beat
against the slab side of the tanker and the emergency lighting that
had been rigged and hung untidily from the low ceilings swayed and
thrashed around with each fearsome gust. He sauntered on towards
the galley and canteen, his boots hammering the metal, his torso
twisting and turning to fit through the narrow watertight doorways.
“Wakey, wakey, you lazy bastards. You got that coffee on?” Pete
grinned as he stepped into the canteen. The smile was immediately
wiped from his face. There were dead bodies strewn across the floor,
blood pooling on the rusting metal. Blood was spattered up and
across the walls, across the stainless-steel worktops, dripping from the
low ceiling. Levi was sprawled on his back over a table, mouth slack,
dead eyes staring as the flickering fluorescent tube above him flickered
over his corpse.
Pete didn’t move; slowly, very slowly, he unslung the MP5 and
flicked off its safety. He quickly scanned the room, first to the left. His
breathing had become unconsciously labored through clenched teeth
and he could taste bile in his mouth.
What the fuck
screamed his brain.
Gavin was dead, trailing backwards off a bench, blood covered
fingers clasping the webbed strap of his MP5. Chris lay face down
against the iron-studded flooring. And Slider, arms fully outstretched,
face contorted in wretched agony, a wide gash across his throat,
looked unseeing up at the ceiling.
Come on - focus. You must
think
...
There had been no sound of gunfire; the Assassin - Assassins
- had used silenced weapons. The poor fuckers - Levi and the others -
hadn’t even known what had hit them. And that meant the Assassins
were - quick!
Something raced across the edge of Pete’s vision and he
instinctively pulled back. Silenced bullets sprayed through the open
doorway and up the iron wall, splashing white hot sparks that burnt
his face. Pete hit the deck, rolled onto his front and squeezed the
trigger of his own weapon. The gangway on the other side of the
doorway was filled with a deafening roar of gunfire, and ricochets
peppered the stairwell with hot bright metal flashes as Pete picked
himself up and sprinted for his life in the opposite direction.
His booted feet pounded along the gangway and the blueprint of
the oil tanker flickered back into his brain; gangways, ramps, stairwells,
containment tanks, derricks - all now seemed a blur and Pete halted,
slowed his breathing, and took a quick glance behind him. He stepped
sideways behind a doorway and waited, his breathing suddenly calm,
his professionalism kicking him into - reality.
Nothing, no sounds of pursuit, and… the black-clad figure
glided into view, its attention focused on something ahead, it sensed
rather than saw Pete at its side. The head, no more than twelve inches
from the levelled MP5 submachine gun, snapped left - and Pete found
himself staring into the ocean blue eyes of a killer...
He squeezed the trigger.
Everything happened at once; the world seemed to explode as
the Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun hammered in the confines
of the gangway. The Assassin was snatched and thrown up against
the iron wall and drilled with the entire magazine of bullets whose
impacts held the body upright, dancing and twitching, until the ‘dead
man’s click’ reverberated in Pete’s brain and abruptly brought with
it a sudden echoing silence. Pete pulled out a fresh magazine from
his jacket with gloved hands covered in brain and gore, trying not to
look at the pulped goo that covered his arms, trying not to gag on the
cordite reek that filled his nostrils and throat.
The corpse slithered to the metal deck and lay in a crimson pool
of its own blood.
He firmly clicked the fresh magazine into place, and then
breathing slowly and heavily through blood spattered lips - looked left
and then right. He was temporarily deaf from the thunderous roar
created by the weapon and could only hear a ringing in his ears.
What the
fuck
is going on, he thought.
He stepped over the corpse, then headed towards the steep
stairwell ahead. Warily, firmly gripping the rail, he climbed towards
the night. Outside the rain was still pounding, driven by the high
winds off of the South China Sea. Above, Pete could see nothing but
darkness and the diagonal slashes of sheeting rain.
Carefully, and with all his senses on full alert, he pulled free his
Matrix G8 communicator and, placing his forefinger on the biometric
reader to activate the device, initiated the emergency mayday signal.
But instead of the usual flicker of blue lights the G8 failed to respond.
Pete stared at the futuristic looking device in disbelief. Since joining
the Scorpion unit a G8 had never failed him. Unlike conventional
civilian devices the Matrix G8 had been developed by Government
boffins exclusively for the Scorpion units. These compact devices
encased in titanium do not conform to normal rules of physics; signals
can bypass electromagnetic interference, and the devices allow nearly
always instantaneous communication at the most extreme distances
from any point on the planet without the need for satellite links.
“Bollocks.”
He drew in a deep breath.
Calm
, whispered his racing mind.
Focus.
Zhu De Chung: Pete knew that he had to reach the North
Korean. Had to protect him; save him. Get them both off thisdesolate
rusting graveyard.
The only escape craft that the squad had were inflatable ribs,
moored at the stern of the tanker on the starboard side. But the most
pressing question now was:
How many Assassins were onboard?
Had he killed the only one? Or were there more waiting for him?
However many there were, they had killed five members of a
Scorpion Unit. It had to be more than one.
Had
to be. Which meant -
the game was not yet over.
Pete gingerly peered over the edge; the tanker, at eye level, was a
rusting bucket of twisted metal, slippery like ice, stretching away into
apparent infinity. Pete glanced along the gangway, towards theforward
deck and the storage tanks, which seemed to descend into nothing.
It’s not far.
But not far is always
too far
when someone is firing hollow point
bullets at your heels.
What to do? Run or sit tight?
Pete crept up to the open doorway until he was crouching on
the platform; the rain stung his face and the wind howled as it drove
into him, finding its way into his tight military clothing, and soaking
him to the skin. His eyes followed every contour that the weak gloomy
light could reveal. He searched for every possible sniping position. He
racked his jangling brain for the best place to lay an ambush.
He decided it would best to move around to the other side of the
ship. This might allow him the time to sneak down to the lower deck
where Zhu De’s quarters were located. Hopefully, the fucker would be
there, waiting, ready to sprint to the safety of the boats... Pete smiled
to himself, craving the nicotine hit of a cigarette.
He suddenly froze to the spot, more out of instinct than anything
else.
And then it was there, his worst nightmare.
Cold metal, pressing against the back of his skull.
“Fuck,” he whispered.
He started to turn, but a hard warning jab stopped him. Slowly,
he crouched and placed his MP5 on the deck.
“Get up and move.”
Pete started to walk... everything ahead of him was starting to
blur and he realised that he was weeping - not from fear, fear was no
longer an option, but from sheer frustration. Of all the ways to be
caught, of all the fucking ways to die.
The
crack
echoed dully against the howling wind.
A limp lifeless figure toppled over the rail and disappeared into
the black boiling cauldron of sea far below.
Ocean blue eyes watched coldly as it fell.
And, in the next instant, the Assassin was gone.

Buenos Aires - Argentina:
The air was so still and the heat so
intense it felt as if it were pressing down with a force that was almost
physical. The robust contours of the scarred government building
glittered in the sunshine. It stood defiant and majestic against the
elements themselves. The recent bombing had left one of the front
wings between floors six and thirteen now exposed, water cascaded
down the side of the building from the sprinkler system, and trailing
cables hung from what used to be service shafts. The Argentine
Ministry of Defence building was wounded, torn, betrayed. To the
people of Argentina it was a symbol of their world gone berserk.