Quickest way to prematurely empty your clip.
He'd been sent in on point, I guessed. He and his mates stationed at the airport, waiting for flights from who-knew-where-else to disgorge their cargo and head back home for more. London, Paris, Madrid… Where else had the Neo-Clergy set up base?
'You got ten seconds! Ten, asshole! You hear?'
Oh yeah, the cargo…
No wonder they were pissed off with me. Not only had I fucked their plane, I didn't stop to load-up with the usual freight.
Blessed are the Children…
I caught an ugly mental image of the same spinning, whirligig plane crash – sparks and metal storms spiralling in every direction, smoke venting like haemorrhaging blood – albeit packed to the gills with terrified youngsters. Crying out for parents they'd left in London, screaming and sobbing as windows shattered and shrapnel spun. Never quite making it to the 'rediscovered dawn' they'd been promised.
'That's seven fucko!'
Yeah, yeah.
The man I'd killed lay at my feet, a deflated skinbag oozing congealing fluids. I'd dragged him all the way down from near the cockpit, and with a raging narcotic hangover and some major blood loss issues, it hadn't been much fun. From what little I could see of his gung-ho colleagues, through the murk and smoke of the crash site, they were dressed the same: grey robes, black army-boots, heads shaved with military precision and M16A2 semi- automatic rifles clutched lovingly to their chests. I guessed the Apostolic Church of the Rediscovered Dawn got its fingers into the military on this side of the Atlantic as easily as the other.
The dead man had a scarlet ring tattooed around his left eye. It made him look lopsided. Sinister and ridiculous, all in one.
The loudmouth on the speaker got down to 'five'. It was a fair bet they'd punch in through the front and sides of the wreck shortly before the countdown finished. Take the sucker by surprise.
That's what I'd do.
Time to go to work.
I picked up the dead man, arms looped under his shoulders, and pressed my head into the small of his back. His lungs wheezed somewhere deep inside, more bloodpaste gathering on his lips. I folded myself carefully onto the floor (formerly the plane's left flank) and arranged the stiff so his cloak covered the more obvious extremities of my body. Something warm and damp dripped onto my chin.
Lurking in the lee of a battered service area, where hostesses had at one time heated their plastic meals and bitched about unruly passengers, I was nothing but a shadow beneath a corpse. I rested the gun against the guy's hip, flopped his sleeve across its stock, and curled a finger beneath the trigger guard, waiting.
The combat conditioning folded in again, running it all in slowtime, making an abstraction of everything, highlighting details. I was getting sick and tired of the insides of this fucking plane.
A whisper of cobwebbed aggression moved deep down in the calluses of my old brain. I was a caveman with an Armalite semi-automatic rifle, and a shield made of meat.
The grin came up unbidden.
'Two!' the loudspeaker snarled, voice dripping impatience and (the conditioning told me, senses tuned to a level far subtler than any I could detect alone) genuine fear.
They're not used to this.
Too fucking bad. I am.
Somewhere in the shell of the plane, noises dampened by the corpse's weight, glass shattered and booted feet struck the felt floor. In fuzzy half-vision, glimpsed in the acute angles of the robe, I could make out figures crawling sideways from the breached hold, slipping down from fissures in the fuselage further up the aisle, creeping forwards from the cockpit.
They had their weapons held ready, but too low, too macho, too seen-it-all-in-movies. They kept stopping and starting, listening for threats, fighting to keep the shakes out of gloved hands. They poked into every corner. They paused when they got to Bella and talked in a low whisper-murmur that no self-respecting covert op would touch with a bargepole.
A pair of booted feet stopped near me.
'Fucker got Garson…' he said.
Moron.
I relieved him of his face with shot number one. Not easy to aim from underneath a dead guy, but it did okay. Caught him broadside of the ear, flipped him back, shouting. Skull-flecks and a popped eyeball. I put another one in his chest somewhere, just for good measure.
Let the grin widen a notch.
Pushed poor old Garson out the way.
Sighted down the aisle. With care. No rush.
The others were panicking. Reacting to the gunshots, looking for targets. Shouting, arguing, crouching in that idiot combat-posture that looks like constipation. Narrow space, men standing one behind the other. No room for covering fire.
Begging to be killed.
One shot at a time. Nothing flashy. Aim, fire, aim, fire, aim, fire.
Muzzle flash, serpentine smoke. Quiet clods of blood and flesh, knocked astray from pale robes, like melons beneath sledge hammers. One guy got off a shot in return, but desperate, off target. A convulsive squeeze, like pre-emptive rigor mortis.
There were eight in all. Four down already; dead or disarmed. Three more diving for cover (I caught a fourth as he fell, once in the ribs, again in the leg) and shuffled myself upright. Let Garson tumble to the floor, slippery.
Kept firing. Kept the other arseholes ducked down. Got lucky and caught one on the foot. He hadn't hidden from sight. Watched the boot fragment like a leather mine, his gun tumble away.
I was shouting, I realised. An unintelligible rush of animal sounds and half-formed words. Speaking in tongues. Heh.
Behold the Holy Spirit, coming upon him…
I kicked Garson through the mangled tail, letting him spoon outwards onto the tarmac like a man tripping on the edge of a cliff. Kept firing. Started shuffling back into the fuselage.
Outside the plane, whatever was left of Garson was ripped to shreds, silenced munitions plucking frayed tatters off his robes like feathers from a pillow. A trigger-happy sniper, then, somewhere out on the airport side of the strip; getting overzealous. Probably the same guy with the loudspeaker.
Moron.
Two guys left inside. I kept firing. Deliberately off-target. Let them think I didn't know where they were. Let them sweat. Let them pluck up the courage to 'Asshole!'
The first one came up like a gofer from a hole. Pistol in each hand – fucking cowboy – shouting and cursing like a trooper.
Which, let's be quite clear, he obviously was not.
He got off a couple – misses, obviously – and went back down with an expression of ultimate bewilderment. The top half of his head was missing.
Good shooting, soldier.
I stopped firing. Stayed ready. Knew exactly where number eight was.
I could hear him crying.
'Oh god…' he kept saying. 'Oh god oh god oh god…'
I wondered, distantly, if he was playing the same trick I'd played. Get me off guard, then turn with a savage smile and a slicing edge.
No.
The subconscious analysis came online. Bone-deep, beyond thought or effort. Animal instincts peeling back layers of information with scary accuracy.
No, he's terrified. It's in his voice. He knows he's going to die.
