Quake Read online

  QUAKE

  ANDY REMIC

  SPIRAL Book 2

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Hachette Digital

  ISBN: 9780748133680

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2004 Andy Remic

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  Hachette Digital

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.hachette.co.uk

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to my brother Nick – for showing me how to clean spark plugs many years ago and instilling in me a love of all things mechanical, for his invaluable and humorous help when I destroyed my first car and for being the best brother a man could have.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you to Sonia and Joe, for giving me glittering diamonds of light through some very hard times.

  Thanks must also go to my test readers, my agent Dorothy and especially to Tim Holman – for his faith.

  And finally thanks to my mum, for endless Sunday morning bike breakfasts and her very special homemade soup.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue Internal Combustion

  *Ad. Feat

  PART ONE

  THE BOOK OF REVELATIONS

  Chapter 1 Game on

  Chapter 2 Body and Soul

  Chapter 3 Search and Destroy

  Chapter 4 Severance

  Chapter 5 Black Planet

  Chapter 6 Foundation stones

  *Ad. Feat

  Chapter 7 Breed

  Chapter 8 Scorpnex

  Chapter 9 The Hunt

  Chapter 10 Worldscale

  PART TWO

  LITTLE FLAME

  *Ad. Feat

  Chapter 11 Infiltration

  Chapter 12 Warhost

  Chapter 13 Rendezvous

  Chapter 14 Brawl

  Chapter 15 Egypt

  Chapter 16 System Shock

  Chapter 17 Quake

  Chapter 18 Austria

  Chapter 19 Endgame

  Chapter 20 Natasha

  *Ad. Feat

  PROLOGUE

  INTERNAL COMBUSTION

  The Tennagore Valley

  Chile, South America

  Carter’s head snapped violently left, eyes narrowing as Kade’s honey-treacle voice whispered a warning. There came a zip and something brushed Carter’s ear. He flipped himself to the right, hitting the ground hard and smashing into a low concrete wall with a grunt. His hand came up, feeling warm slick blood smearing the lobe of his ear, and his teeth clenched tight in a sick parody of a grin - one that had little to do with humour.

  ‘It’s a fucking sniper ...’ It was the voice of Kade again. Carter frowned, closing his eyes for a moment, pain stabbing through his brain.

  ‘Leave ... me ... alone!’ he snarled.

  A battle-scarred 9mm Browning HiPower appeared in Carter’s fist and, his heart pounding, he checked its magazine. A sniper: that meant he had been spotted ... At last a guard with more than a single brain cell! But no alarms had sounded audibly ... which meant he had almost been taken by surprise.

  Almost: a razor-fine boundary between breathing the cold mountain air and lying sprawled in a blood-pooled hollow with no face and an empty skull, entry and exit wounds bone-ringed.

  Carter slammed the mag back into the sturdy weapon and crawled to his knees, wind buffeting from the moonlit cratered mountainside above. Shadows swirled in twisting black veils, plummeting and falling down from the high mountain passes and dancing delicately across the massive expanse of the dam.

  Carter moved stealthily along the narrow concrete walkway and halted, shielded by a low, rough-rendered wall and glancing down at the shadowed KTM LC7 757cc motorbike, a special custom-built Spiral Stealth Edition packing 289 b.h.p. and a torque rating of 174 lb-ft. It squatted, camouflaged in the darkness and shadows, concealed behind huge steel drums and taunting Carter not just with its proximity but with the knowledge that to reach it he would have to pass once more in front of the cross-hairs of the infinitely patient sniper’s scope.

  He could see his escape route.

  Compromised.

  ‘It’s not going to be easy,’ Kade growled at the back of Carter’s mind.

  ‘You don’t fucking say,’ muttered Carter. His eyes scanned the layout before him, heart-rate increasing slightly at the prospect of the coming fight.

  The dam sat high in the mountains, spanning the narrow rock-walled Tennagore Valley. Its highly advanced and masterfully engineered structure had been built at great expense by the Seckito Syndicate in collaboration with a corrupt section of the SNI - the Chilean secret police - in order to irrigate plantations of coca plants, the basic source of cocaine. This refined product was in turn smuggled to the few countries that still prohibited hard drugs, where it commanded prices that were used to finance illegal heavy-duty military arms purchases by the Seckito Syndicate - who then handed the weapons out like candy to the eager grasping paws of the terrorist organisation JWKA and Spirits of Blood, located on opposite sides of the globe but ultimately having the same aim: civilian soft targets and high-profile media coverage.

  Spiral had decided that it was time to smash the Seckito Syndicate with a blunt hammer. Seven operations were in progress. Carter’s mission was to blow the dam, destroying the coca crop and pushing the Seckito Syndicate into an already-brewing private war against its untrustworthy arms suppliers. This would coincide with the assassination of several key figures, the destruction of three terrorist and corrupt SNI-protected drug factories and strikes by ZZ-guided long-range cruise missiles from HMS Thunder, moored over a hundred miles away in the Pacific Ocean.

  Accuracy was essential.

  The shit had to hit the fan - with perfect feculent timing.

  Carter pulled free his ECube; the tiny black-alloy device vibrated softly in his hand and he thumbed a delicate sequence across its surface panel. Digits flickered at him, ghostly blue in the darkness. Three minutes, fourteen seconds until detonation ... And Carter had initiated the Anti-Intrusion Filter on the bomb. Which basically meant that the explosion and subsequent destruction was unstoppable ... the dam doomed within the next few minutes ... the drug crop lost ... the Seckito Syndicate smashed—

  ‘But I’d rather get out alive,’ he muttered.

  Think!

  Sniper: location?

  Carter whirled, eyes scanning, calculating the angles and velocities involved; if he could climb down to the bike and fire the engine on remote using the ECube, then—

  ‘Hey, Mestizo, what is this stinking bike doing here? It not look like one of ours ...’

  ‘I have no idea, hombre.’

  The two guards were standing loose, one scratching his lank-ponytailed head, the other’s face illuminated in a circle of orange from a home-rolled cigarette pluming lazy grey spirals of smoke into the cold mountain air.

  The alarms sounded, shrill bitch screams, and both men sprung into immediate action, cocking Kalashnikov JK49s and glancing around with urgency and vigilance ... ready for action and blood.

  ‘There must be a gringo here ...’

  Carter heard more guards leap from their restful watches, fired into alertness by this sudden screech of intruder alarms.

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Do something,’ growled Kade.

  Below Carter lay a spread-out collection of pai
nted concrete buildings; and away from their scatter stretched the dam itself, its summit a metre-wide length of smooth gleaming concrete veering away in a slight curve for over half a kilometre. To the left, the choppy waters of the reservoir lapped, reflecting the shadowy peaks of the snow-capped mountains rearing above. To the right the dam fell away almost vertically, several wide channels gushing with white foam and dropping into the colossal open valley below.

  Carter’s eyes narrowed as he focused on the exit at the far end of the dam’s ridge. His stealth bike had cruised in unseen. And now there was only one - nastily compromised - way out...

  He took a deep breath and leapt from the parapet, landing in front of the two startled guards whose eyes went wide, cigarettes tumbling from lips moist with fear spittle. Their JK49s twitched but Carter’s Browning boomed in his fist once, twice, and both guards were kicked from their feet, brain slop and shards of bone splattering against the steel drums.

  The bodies folded to the ground but Carter was already moving; a bullet zipped past his face, then another past his knee. He leapt, rolling and skidding to the opposite side of the steel drums and their unavoidably thin-walled protection—

  ‘There! The fucking gringo!’

  Machine guns opened fire and bullets howled around Carter. His Browning came up over the drums, thumping against his hand as he emptied a full magazine across the stretch of concrete and kicking another two guards from their feet in mushrooms of blood-mist. One fell into the reservoir with a splash, and was immediately lost.

  Carter slammed his back against the drums and changed mags.

  ‘I told you so,’ said Kade smugly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I told you this was a bad idea. I personally would have used a series of automated rocket launchers. But no, you had to do your fucking James Bond bit and sneak in here like a throbbing gold-speckled peacock on heat...’

  ‘Kade,’ growled Carter in the depths of his subconscious, ‘we haven’t fucking got automated rocket launchers - and this was supposed to be a low-key covert mission ...’

  ‘Well, you’ve fucked that up then, haven’t you? Every man and his bitch is out to shoot you now ...’

  Carter turned, sharp eyes spotting the sniper’s position high up in a shadowed bunker on the mountainside. Bastard, he mouthed. He hated snipers. Fucking hated them.

  Carter suddenly stood, sighted along the top of the barrel of the Browning HiPower held uncannily steady in both hands, and fired a full thirteen rounds at the tiny firing slot barely visible in the face of the deep-set bunker. He saw spurts of stone-dust leap from the edges, and waited ... No return fire came. He changed magazines again, then leapt across to the KTM LC7, firing the bike into life and scanning ahead. His ears picked out the sounds of guards approaching ... He checked the ECube. Two minutes.

  ‘It’s going to be tight,’ mused Kade darkly.

  Tight? I’d love to get my hands tight around your throat...

  Carter holstered the Browning, stamped the bike into first gear and flicked free the stealth exhaust mods; the bike could run silently, but silence leeched power. Now Carter needed the power more than he needed to remain undiscovered ...

  He screwed the throttle all the way round. The front wheel jerked into the air and the KTM screamed, LVA exhausts spewing from high-level pipes as the back wheel spun, leaving melted tread across the concrete. The bike shot like a needle bullet into the night from its suddenly hazardous hiding place.

  Carter gritted his teeth, holding on tight and clamping himself to the broad tank as the front wheel touched down and the cold mountain air tried to smash him from the saddle. The KTM LC7 hammered through the night, a tiny black bullet skimming across the dam’s metre-wide walkway; Carter could smell the fresh water to his left, could sense more than see the fearsome drop to his right.

  Carter focused. On the narrow ridge of the dam.

  On his road to freedom.

  Water was gushing, roaring all around him. He accelerated, speedometer needle bouncing against the redline, the bike howling as it hit 220 m.p.h. The world flashed around Carter in a series of stuttering, splashing bright images.

  ‘Guards,’ hissed Kade in warning.

  Carter palmed the Browning and blew the three guards from their feet before they even lifted their weapons. Two hit the ground, and one fell and toppled down the front of the dam, bouncing and flailing like a tumbling rag doll until he was smashed into a battered purple pulp-drenched carcass in the darkness far below.

  Carter dipped the clutch and the KTM’s front wheel kicked into the air again, the rear wheel ploughing through one of the corpses, losing traction for a moment in a supple compress of flesh and kicking the bike violently sideways. Carter felt, for a terrifying moment, his loss of control as the massive drop to the right tore his eyes from their target and fear rammed its fist down his throat. Then the KTM’s front wheel touched down and the bike stabilised. Carter piled on the speed once more.

  ‘We’ve done it!’ crowed Kade. ‘We’re there ...’

  Carter frowned. His eyes narrowed and he touched the brake, shaving speed out of instinct more than anything he could actually see or hear, his mouth opened, tongue darting against dry wind-chapped lips, and he realised that—

  Hell, he thought.

  It’s a fucking tank.

  The war machine squatted at the end of Carter’s personal runway. Even as realisation hit, guards swarmed from behind the tank’s protective armoured flanks and opened up with machine guns. 7.62mm rounds screamed like tiny tortured insects buzzing around Carter’s face as he squeezed the brakes and left metres of tyre smeared against the dull white concrete. He kicked the bike around, wheel-spinning in a cloud of stinking burning rubber, then wheelied back the way he had come, ducking low over the tank as bullets howled past. Several slapped against the bike’s exhaust pipes. It was a miracle no metal raped his flesh.

  ‘You’ve got one minute, Carter.’ Kade’s voice was no longer filled with humour, or arrogance, or mockery. There was tension there. An edge of fear that chilled Carter to his very core.

  ‘I - fucking - know ...’ hissed Carter through gritted teeth.

  Up ahead, more guards had gathered.

  Suddenly, he grabbed the brakes and twisted the KTM left; it shuddered to a halt, front wheel hanging over the terrible descent. Carter glanced down and Natasha’s words came back to him.

  You’ll come back to me, won’t you?

  It’s not that dangerous, he had lied.

  I don’t want to be left a widow.

  But we’re not married! he’d protested.

  All right, then ... I don’t want you to leave your new child without a father ...

  But we haven’t got a—

  Actually - Natasha’d smiled weakly - I’ve got something to tell you ...

  Oh.

  Their lovemaking had been gentle, teasing and soft - a merging of flesh and sex - and in the warm afterglow, bathed in the iridescent flickering light of the candles, Nats had tickled her tongue down his neck and whispered in his ear, ‘You make sure you come back to me, you reckless fucker ... You make sure you come back to us…’

  Now, Carter gazed at the vertical drop; 7.62mm rounds screamed around him and the world had descended into a blood-red insanity. His lips compressed in a grim line. Kade was screaming at him to turn back and he was counting, internally, the seconds left until the heavy HighJ detonation and subsequent shock waves cracked the dam, allowing the hugely titanic pressure of the reservoir to force its way violently and unstoppably to freedom—

  He revved the KTM.

  Revved it real hard, popped the clutch and allowed the bike to dip and fall over the edge—

  Darkness and the world rushed towards him, gulleys of foaming white smashing to either side in an insanity of bubbling, roaring noise. The bullets were gone, fallen far behind ... the bike was an insane bucking metallic bitch straining and heaving beneath him, trying its utmost to launch him from the saddle—r />
  The tachometer’s needle danced, bouncing against the redline, and Carter’s teeth ground against each other as he grabbed the front brake and left a trail of rubber hissing down the concrete face of the dam ... Then a string of detonations began to go off deep within the bowels of the dam ... Carter felt them smashing through the wheels and suspension of the bike and he focused his eyes on the distant curve at the dam’s base and the dense trees beyond - as the bike’s speed peaked at just over 250 m.p.h.

  Kade screamed in Carter’s head, words of anger and words of insanity: pure hot curses of hatred—

  —With a terrifying monstrous lurch the concrete dam moved ...

  —It heaved—

  And, with a violent animal moan, exploded.

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