“You seem a little on edge,” he said at last, after a long brooding pause.
“Let’s see both hands, Alix. Dillon said, and Alix could see there was no humour and no compassion and no give in the man he had called a friend for many years. Alix removed his other hand from the jacket pocket and spread his fingers wide. Dillon frisked him from head to toe, retrieving two automatic pistols, six hand grenades, three knives and a length of piano wire.
“So talk to me, Dillon. What’s going on?”
“Where are Lola and the Priest?”
“Outside.”
“Where, I didn’t see them out front.”
“Most likely skulking in the shadows.”
“Let’s take a walk; you first. And don’t make me shoot you in the back, Alix. Because it would be a fucking bad ending to a really good long friendship. Unfortunately, recent events have conspired to fuckup my sense of who I can and who I cannot trust. And that includes you, Alix. Assassins are everywhere.”
“But, Dillon. We’ve gone to hell and back since Hereford,” Alix said, his voice hoarse.
“I know, we did. And in a few moments we’ll either be having a drink or you’ll be on your way to hell, my old mate. I thought I knew Ezra, but a son-of-a-bitch who looked just like him still tried to kill me.”
They covered the distance across the hanger quickly, moving out through the main doors to be confronted outside by a stiff wind blowing in from the south-west. Alix zipped up his flying jacket, Dillon walked carefully behind the other man, aware of how fast he could move and how deadly he really was. He might have a glib tongue and a wickedly charming way with the women, but he was a deadly killer. Very deadly.
They walked around the corner of the building.
The Priest was sitting on a stack of wooden pallets and Lola was leaning against the side of a rusting cargo container smoking a cigarette. They both turned as Alix, Dillon and Vince appeared.
“You okay, Alix?” Lola purred, moving away from the building, her hand straying towards her gun.
“No worries,” said Alix softly, waving for the sylph-like young woman to relax.
Dillon holstered the Glock. Alix turned, gently placing his hand on the shoulder of his old friend. “You really can be a paranoid fucker sometimes, Dillon, you know that?”
“Sorry mate,” said Dillon, moving over to greet the Priest and Lola.
“You pull a gun on him, Dillon?” Lola asked.
Dillon nodded.
She shook her head. “You’re one mad dog — he’s here to help.”
“So he said. But when I saw him on his own in the Apache, I suppose I thought I smelt a rat.”
“Dillon, you’ve known Alix years. Why think that?”
“Nassau. Had some joker impersonating Ezra who wanted to terminate my contract with life. The latex prosthetics were so good that I wouldn’t have known, until he slipped up that is. Threw him a trick question just to make sure, then I knew. But that bastard very nearly succeeded in killing me. So forgive me for being paranoid, but these bastards will stop at nothing to get what they want.”
“Wow. You’re forgiven.”
“Thanks.”
Alix jogged back into the hanger and retrieved his weapons, reappearing moments later. “Right then — to business, now that Dillon has it clear in his mind that I am for real. I presume you know what’s going on with Scorpion?”
Dillon nodded. “I know that the organisation has been destroyed, most of the field units have been murdered by Assassins whilst on assignment, which I find disturbing in itself. Why?” Dillon mused for a moment before continuing. “These highly skilled and well equipped killers are part of the Ramus group who had professor Kirill moonlighting for them. They now have the Chimera virus programme that is so powerful and so intelligent, that it’s capable of taking control of any computer it enters, which in turn, would cause a global internet Armageddon within the blink of an eye. And, nothing or nobody would be excluded; military, banking and government computer systems — private individuals — anybody. No matter how sophisticated their protection, Chimera intuitively learns, adapts, and enters without even a trace of evidence, that it was ever there. And here we are now — Kirill, we know is dead because we were all there when he was blown up in Scotland, which leaves only Ramus roaming around and unaccounted for.”
“Yeah, that sums up just how bad things are,” said Alix, grimacing. “They’ve certainly shown the world what they’re capable of and what is likely to come. But what I don’t understand is — why? What is it they want? After all, they’ve not even made a blackmail demand, so what do they want? What we do know is that they’ve used Chimera to hack into a number of mainframes, including; Scorpion, the UK Government, and the Bank of England. They’ve already got the world’s most powerful governmental administrations sitting up and paying attention. The world’s media are already reporting on this and it won’t take long before some clever-dick journalist works out how all of these events are linked.” He took a breath and his eyes were wild, sparkling with fury. He lit a cigarette, then pulled out a pack of rations from his backpack, and ripped open the packaging from a bar of chocolate.
“Yeah, we found out much the same with the help of one of my sources at GCHQ, and the Priest had one of his Whitehall spooks do the same. Ezra worked with Kirill, way back, in the early days of what was to become the Chimera project — although no one seems to know much about this stage of the research and development. Ezra pulled out, butKirill carried on his work until the Government started talking about the withdrawal of funding and moving him from Scotland back down to London. But in the meantime, Ezra had joined Ferran & Cardini International as a station co-ordinator, although his real role and sole purpose was to develop counter-intelligence and covert ops software for the Government. The facility he had on Santorini was ideal because it positioned him in a perfect geographical location for any covert ops being carried out over in that neck of the woods by the SAS. So, there it is…”
“So where did these Assassins spring from and why are they involved?” Dillon spoke the words softly.
“Well, we’ve been talking to Interpol and they’ve been on the trail of an extremist occult group calling themselves, The Black Dawn. And get this, from the case file that Interpol sent to me, these really are Assassins.” Alix lit another cigarette, inhaling deeply.
“And…” Dillon prompted.
Alix grinned nastily. “We started to work on finding out just where they’ve run to.”
“But?”
“Yeah, there’s always a but, Dillon.” Alix said, blowing smoke. He grinned at Dillon; the two men held each other’s gaze for a brief moment, smoke trailed from Alix’s nostrils.
“MI6 have been tracking you since you left England with Tatiana. Apparently they had a special interest in you — fucking spooks poking their noses in where they’re not wanted. They initially used satellites and Tatiana’s F&C smart-phone to keep tabs on your position, but then they lost the GPS link and that was that. But credit to you, Dillon. You always kept them one step behind you — they had trained squads chasing after you, but you kept them guessing. They turned up in Nassau to find dead Assassins everywhere and total devastation.
“What else did they find in Nassau?”
“Apparently you stole a power boat from one of the nastiest drug dealers on the island. Man, you’ve got a big pair of balls.”
“Did the spooks go up to Scotland?”
“Yeah, they found a whole lot of mess: the remnants of the research facility. But no Kirill.”
“You watched me shoot him. His body would have been burnt to a cinder with all of that explosive he’d planted.”
“But there was no sign of his body. Even though he was in the middle of the explosion, they had a full team of CSIs and these guys were using state-of-the-art scanners. There were no genetic traces — in fact, no traces at all. Somebody, Dillon. Somebody must have gone back for his corpse.”