headboard.
‘Take my hair,’ she said. He heard the arousal in her voice, and his right hand took a firm hold of her hair, making her gasp. He nibbled at one of her earlobes, feeling her shudder of delight. His chest pressed against her back, and he felt the hot sweat between their skin. Then he took her again.
Up until now, he’d been taking his time with Alix, reading her responses as his cues until she came. As incredible as it had been to be making love to her again, part of him had remained detached, bringing the same cool precision to sex as he did to death. But this time his only concern was for his own pleasure. He was going to fuck her, and that was the beginning and end of the matter.
‘Do it,’ she said.
Now there was no teasing, no variation, no great subtlety. Now he just went at her in a hard, steady, driving rhythm. As he grew more excited he covered her neck and shoulders with kisses whose fierceness increased until he was biting at her skin with quick, sharp little stabs of his teeth. Her moans became louder and higher, and Carver gave a deep animal groan as he felt himself swell still more inside her. He knew she felt it, too, by the way she responded, pushing against him, wanting more and more of him.
Carver felt his orgasm build inside him, the feeling becoming stronger, surging through him, closer and closer to the edge, until at last, with an explosion that felt like someone had just fired a bullet of pure sensory euphoria through his head, blowing his brains out of the back of his skull, he came.
33
They lay in bed, their bodies still slick and glowing, grinning in postcoital smugness. Alix felt as though she had been defined anew by the experience of being with Carver again. ‘This is who I am,’ she thought, ‘and where I’m meant to be.’ No one else had ever been able to make her feel this way. And yet the fear still gnawed at her that they had not been able to make their relationship last before: why should this time be any different? She should be wise, and get out now, and yet she could not help wanting him more than anything she had ever wanted in her life. Having him next to her only reminded her of the emptiness of her life without him.
She began to say something, trying to express how she felt, but then stopped herself.
‘What is it?’ Carver asked.
‘Oh… nothing,’ she said.
He looked at her again, and then kissed her face with infinite tenderness. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I know.’
They kissed again. He stroked her cheek, then ran his fingers through her hair. ‘I’ve got to go soon,’ he said.
‘More business?’ This time there was only understanding in her voice.
Carver gave a rueful grimace. ‘Afraid so… It’s nothing too serious. I have to go to some ridiculous anti- terrorism summit.’
‘Is this anything to do with that woman — the one you were asking me about?’
‘Not directly, but there is a connection.’
Alix propped herself up on one elbow, a serious look in her eyes. ‘What kind of connection?’
Carver wondered what he should tell her. He trusted her implicitly. Yet she was supposed to be living with one of Zorn’s investors. She might have divided loyalties. On the other hand, she might also know something about Zorn, something that would help unravel the mystery of the American’s true intentions.
‘She works for a guy called Ahmad Razzaq. He’s Malachi Zorn’s security chief, but it’s not clear where his real loyalties lie. There’s a lot that’s not clear about Zorn.’
‘I agree,’ she said, surprising him. ‘I assume you know I’ve been living with Dmytryk Azarov.’
‘Sure… but it really wasn’t any of my business-’
‘It’s OK, you don’t need to be defensive. That’s over, anyway. I don’t think I’d be here if it wasn’t.’
‘So what ended it?’
‘That’s what I was coming to. We argued about Zorn. And I agree with you. There’s something wrong about that guy. Did you know that none of his fancy offices have leases longer than three months?’
‘Maybe he’s worried his business won’t pan out?’
‘Ha! Have you met Malachi Zorn? That man isn’t worried about anything. Every cent he earned he got by backing his judgement against the world. So if he’s only got short leases-’
‘It’s because he’s not planning to stick around. He’s only renting his house here, too.’
Alix nodded, relieved that Carver had taken her point. His trust in her judgement was an affirmation of the bond between them.
‘You and me,’ he said, shaking his head in wonder as if reading her mind. And then again, ‘You and me.’
‘Mmm…’
‘You think it can work this time?’
She smiled, thrilled that he, too, was thinking about their future. ‘I don’t know, Sammy… maybe we can be smarter this time.’
‘You know I don’t let anyone call me Sammy.’
‘You let me.’
‘Yeah… I do… but then, you’re not just anyone, are you?’
He kissed her again, and then, before she could stop him, got up out of the bed.
‘I really do have to go,’ he said.
Waygal Valley, Afghanistan: two months earlier
Corporal Chico Morales, a section leader in C Company of the 502nd Infantry Regiment, did not claim to be any kind of expert on theology. But he knew one thing: if God had been on the side of the Islamic insurgents in Afghanistan, he would sure as shit have taught them to shoot straight. Since he’d begun his tour of duty in the Waygal Valley in eastern Afghanistan, Morales had lost count of the number of contacts with the enemy when the men of ‘the Deuce’, as the 502nd was known, had been outnumbered, outgunned and in serious danger of defeat. And in every case, the single biggest factor in his getting out alive had been the Afghans’ obsession with ‘spraying’n’praying’. They didn’t fight as coordinated units, concentrating their fire on specific targets. They just blasted away in every direction, each man for himself, and hoped to Allah that some of their bullets actually hit an enemy.
Even so, they could still make a damn nuisance of themselves. Give a handful of insurgents a bunch of AK- 47s, throw in some rocket-propelled grenades or a. 50 calibre rifle, and give them a wall or a boulder to hide behind, or a gully to lie in, and they could, at the very least, pin you down for fifteen to twenty minutes.
Then the ‘Punisher’ arrived in Afghanistan. And that changed everything.
Punisher was the nickname that its first awestruck users had given to a device the US Army categorized as the XM-25 Individual Airburst Weapons System. Simply put, the XM-25 was a semi-automatic grenade launcher rifle. But that was like saying that, simply put, a Bugatti Veyron was a car. The truth was, the XM-25 was unlike any other hand-held weapon on earth. It simply removed the concept of cover from the battlefield. And as Morales and his buddies all agreed, it looked frigging cool while it did it, like some kind of mean, black sci-fi ray gun.
The way it worked was this: on top of the rifle there was what looked like a regular telescopic sight, but was actually a computerized fire-control system, accurate up to seven hundred metres. If the insurgents were hiding behind a wall, you just pointed the gun in that direction. The Punisher calculated precisely how far away the target was, and then transmitted that information down the barrel of the gun to a high-explosive 25 mm grenade. But of course, the wall wasn’t the actual target; the insurgents hiding behind it were. So you, the soldier, used a button by the trigger to add a metre or two to the range, and the grenade adjusted itself to that, too. Then you fired, aiming just above the wall, and the grenade shot away, went over the wall, and then exploded in the air behind it, blowing the enemy away. Use an armour-piercing round and you didn’t have to go over a wall or an enemy vehicle; you could go straight through it. Man, it was a beautiful thing to behold.
So far the Punisher was still in its field-trial phase of development. There hadn’t been more than a couple of dozen in the entire Afghanistan theatre of operations. But those guns had been game changers. There were four
