onto the warehouse floor. ‘Go on down. I’ll follow you.’ He stepped brusquely across to the workbench and helped himself to a Maglite.
‘Jesus and Mary!’
Abi hurried after Oni. ‘What is it? What have you found?’
‘Come down here and take a look at this.’ Oni had located a light switch. The whole of the newly-revealed cellar area was now bathed in strip-lighting.
Abi ducked down the trapdoor staircase. He straightened up and then tossed the unused Maglite onto a nearby table. ‘Holy shit.’
Thirty industrial-sized vats took up a full third of the available cellar space. Another third was taken up by a forty-foot long by ten-foot wide pile of shrink-wrapped plastic bricks – some were packed in shiny green polythene, some in white, some in blue. The remaining third of the floor-space was taken up by an armour-plated Hummer H1 Alpha and a massive display case containing a series of gold-plated sub-machine guns, diamond-and emerald- encrusted pistols, and about a thousand platinum-jacketed slugs. Some of the pistols had images of the Virgin Mary tooled into their grips, while others had fake Versace logos.
‘This is no arms dump, Abi. This is a crystal meth factory.’ Oni was crouched down over one of the polythene-covered bricks – he had his knife out and was tasting the powder. ‘This is first-grade pure ice.’ He shivered as if someone had just walked over his grave. ‘Must be a ton and a half of the stuff here. Worth maybe five million dollars out on the streets.’ He stood up. ‘The narco-bling is probably worth an extra half mill on top. And how the hell did they get that Hummer down here? Must have a jump switch linking this place to the surface. Must have.’ He began checking around, like a child searching for Easter eggs. ‘Yeah. Here. Look.’ He hit the switch. A section of the roof began to fan open – a separate, driveable section unravelled itself like the outstretched palm of a hand and came to rest with its rubber shock absorbers onto the concrete surface of the floor. Daylight streamed in from outside. ‘Now that’s cool. That’s really cool.’ Oni was caressing the built-in servo-control mechanism as if it were a woman. ‘This is better than a thousand-dollar whore, Abi. We can truck this stuff out in the Hummer and stash it wherever we want. We’ve hit pay dirt at last.’
Abi shook his head. ‘No we haven’t. The watchman you killed lied to us. The bastard must have known all about this. His bosses weren’t ever up at the border on any fucking arms deal – they were preparing for a major methamphetamine shipment. Look at this.’ He pointed to a gold plaque screwed into the wall – the mountings were decorated with diamonds. ‘Listen to what it says. “It is better to die fighting head on, than on your knees and humiliated; it is better to be a living dog than a dead lion. We don’t kill for money. We don’t kill women. We don’t kill children. We don’t kill innocent people, only those that deserve to die. Know that this is divine justice.” Look. They’ve even made up their own personalized copy of the Bible, with extra pages tipped in – and I don’t like the look of the leather it’s bound in.’
‘What? You don’t think it’s made of human skin?’
‘It could be pig, but I’m not betting on it. The bastards who made it are probably waking up just about now after a night out on the tiles in Cancun. One failed call to our friend Pepito and they’ll be over here like a pack of ravening wolves. We get out of here, Oni. And we get out now.’
‘What? And leave all this?’
‘You can take a brick for your own personal use. How about that? But the rest stays put. What do you want to do? Rot your teeth out?’
99
The heavy machine guns opened up just as Abi reached the top of the stairs. He shook his head in mute acknowledgment of the instantly transformed status quo.
Asson straightened up from his perusal of the packing hoist’s block-and-tackle system. He had Calque’s arms stretched out behind him, and had already begun winching him partway up.
‘Leave the bastard hanging, Asson. We’ve got trouble. There’s enough crystal meth down those stairs to launch a spaceship. Berith. Rudra. Oni. You three go with Asson and arm yourselves. Dakini. Nawal. This is going to get very messy indeed. If you want to light out, then light out now. Crawl through the agave if you have to. Go straight to the airport any which way you can. Take the codex and the skull with you. Don’t wait for us and don’t look back. Nobody will think the worse of you for it. We’ll stay in touch by cell phone.’
‘We’ll stay and fight with you. You’ll need the extra guns.’
Abi stared at his sisters. Then he nodded. ‘Okay then. We’ll sort out the rest of this shit later. You’ll all need grenades and sub-machine guns and pump-action shotguns. Pistols won’t come into this. If they get that close to us we’re dead anyway. When we leave the building we charge straight at them, giving them everything we’ve got. Vau and Alastor will cover us with the heavy machine guns. If we get into a siege situation, we’re done for. They can call up reinforcements anytime they want and swamp us. So we have to sort them now. Before they know how few people they’re really facing.’
100
As soon as the Corpus made their sortie from the warehouse, Sabir crawled directly underneath Calque so that the Frenchman could rest his feet on his shoulders.
‘Christ Jesus! I couldn’t have held that position much longer. My shoulders were about to dislocate.’
‘Well you’re going to have to hold it again. I intend to go and get you that chair. Then we’re going to have to cut ourselves free. I have a funny feeling that any minute now this place is going to be riddled with incoming fire.’
‘You’re not going to leave me hanging here again, Sabir?’
‘I’ve got no choice if we want to get out of here. Now tense your muscles. Keep your arms in as close to your back as possible. If you loosen them your shoulders are going to pop out of their sockets like a stick puppet.’
‘ Oh putain!’
Sabir eased himself away from Calque. He needed to get up on his feet. He rocked onto his knees and then surged forwards, like a sprinter at the start of a race. At the third stride he missed his footing and fell headlong. He was unable to protect himself because his hands and arms were securely tied. At the very the last moment he twisted his head to the right, so that only his cheek and ear slammed into the concrete. It still felt as though he had been blindsided by a steam iron.
‘Get the chair, you damned fool. My arms are going.’
Sabir rolled over and over towards the chair. He shunted it hard, using both his legs like a scythe. The chair came to a stop just in front of Calque’s swinging body.
‘Quickly, damn you.’
Sabir rolled back the way he had come. He kicked the chair the last few feet.
Calque fished at it with one foot, and then pulled it towards him. He tottered for a moment, as if he was about to fall sideways, and then he somehow managed to regain his balance. ‘Oh God. Oh God. I think my right shoulder is out of its socket.’
Sabir rolled over onto his knees. This time around he gathered himself for a moment or two before trying to rise to his feet. He stood up, rocking in place like an emergent jack-in-the-box.
‘I can’t hold this position for very long.’ Calque was shouting in an effort to be heard over the gunfire.
The barrage from outside had redoubled in energy. Stray bullets began to thump into the warehouse. The ones that found their way in through the windows zipped and twanged through the warehouse’s interior space.
Sabir went in search of a knife. He tried the kitchen area first. A stray bullet smashed through the window in front of his head, showering him with glass.
He turned his back to the chest of drawers and began feeling around behind him. Third drawer down, he struck lucky. He got his hands on a serrated bread knife with a fair edge to it. He hurried over to Calque.
