Kirill turned and continued to walk. Dillon followed.
“Ramus — the creator of fear!” Kirill cackled, and the sound was cold; chilling; nightmare turned real.
Moving down the wide corridors now, Dillon felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He kept thinking that he was passing through an area of the catamaran where perhaps unspeakable torture had taken place. There was something dreadfully wrong with this place, and with these Assassins who had been hunting him for so long, these killers who had wiped out a number of key Scorpion squads and the individuals they had been protecting… But he could not put his finger on it.
Kirill halted.
A door slid open and he gestured Dillon through and onto a massive control deck. Computer servers lined the walls, their status lights flickering incessantly. Display monitors were set up on benches, showing every global satellite position of every nation on the planet. And there, in the middle of the deck, was Tatiana!
“Tats!”
“Dillon!” She leaped to her feet, sprinted towards him and they fell into one another’s arms. Dillon kissed her passionately, then pulled away and stared down into her tear-filled eyes.
“They took me, Dillon. Took me from that airfield and plucked me from the brink of death,” she sobbed. “I haven’t told them anything, Dillon; I promise… they said that I was their insurance policy, that you would do what they want as long as they could kill me…”
“So touching,” snapped Kirill. He strolled over to one of the terminals and placed the Glock on an alloy bench. He flicked a switch; there was a whirring of fans and then a part of the front panel opened to reveal the optical disc drive. “Behold,” said Kirill. “This is Chimera. Are you impressed, Mr Dillon?”
“The Master Copy on optical disc, wow. That’s so not impressive.”
“What it lacks in size and impressiveness, I can assure you it more than makes up for in ability. Thank your saviour, Mr Dillon.”
“My… saviour?”
“Ask yourself this question — why did we take Tatiana and ensure that she stayed alive? Why didn’t I simply shoot you back there? You think I give a flying fuck about your answers to these questions? You think I care about sparing your miserable life after what you did to me in Scotland? No… But Ramus is puzzled by you, Mr Dillon. You worry him, and that worries me. He thinks that there is something strange about you, Mr Dillon, something dark insideyou that makes you uniquely dangerous. And he is going to tear that secret from you — even if it kills you.”
Kirill smiled, and it was not a nice smile. “I, however, am sceptical; I simply want you dead. But Ramus has other plans… He believes that he can play with your soul.”
Kirill turned and ran his fingers over the top of the glistening processor housing.
All around them there was a gentle humming.
“So what are you waiting for?” Dillon said softly. “For me to shoot you again?”
Kirill turned; a fluid whirl. He smiled at Dillon. “Let me warn you, it is Ramus who wishes you alive, and not I. Do not antagonise me or you may push me beyond my limit. Now that we have Chimera operating at 100 % effectiveness, that copy you have is no longer required. You’ve already witnessed what the programme is capable of
— but soon, you and your sorry excuse for a government will see the full extent of our plans.”
“What, to take control of the entire planet?” Dillon sneered.
Kirill laughed then. “You really are quite naive, Dillon. So very, very simple. In your world everything is in black and white; not so in mine. We systematically destroyed your government’s secret weapon against terrorism — Scorpion. Well their time is well and truly over… It disgusts me that they had the opportunity to make a real difference, but all that happened was, nothing. Evil men walk the world with guns and bombs, andpoliticians become more and more corrupt. We live in a world that is warped beyond belief, Dillon. Scorpion was supposed to make a difference: once I actually thought that this highly trained task force would make a difference- allow ordinary people to sleep easy in their beds at night. But no, they were weak, Dillon — weak, because the politicians would not allow them to do their jobs properly and with a free hand. Now is the time for change… It is time for the strong to rule with an un-swervable belief that the world will then be a far better place — once we have erased every corrupt government and dictatorship from it. God will be proud of humanity for this.”
He stepped away from the processor and picked up a tablet processor.
Kirill tapped his instructions into the device.
A hologram appeared suspended mid-air in the centre of the room. A spinning, almost perfect representation of the world; colours merged and flowed as land mass was separated by the deep blue of the oceans. Major cities appeared and around this virtual globe spun satellites.
Dillon glanced down at his Omega. Time was fast running out…
The door opened. A huge, athletic bodyguard entered, followed by a much smaller figure in heavy dark robes, its face hidden, its shoulders rounded. The bodyguard nodded to Kirill, who smiled once again. It was with unease that Dillon noted the hooded figure facing him.
“Mr Dillon, let me introduce to you, Ramus.” The mysterious figure moved towards the virtual globe, took the flat tablet from Kirill, and skimmed his long fingers over the touch-screen. Satellites repositioned themselves, and the dark figure chuckled, a deep melodious sound.
“So we meet at last, Mr Dillon.”
“We meet at last, Mr Ramus.”
“Just Ramus, Mr Dillon. I have to say, that you have been an exceptional adversary.”
“And you’re the one in charge of this snapping terrier called Kirill.”
“Yes. Let me show you what we can do here,” came the voice of Ramus from within the robes.
Suddenly, one of the virtual satellites moved into position directly over Poole.
Ramus typed in new instructions and loud speakers all around them came alive with a live news stream.
“You are extremely privileged indeed, Mr Dillon, to witness this moment…”
Ramus rapidly typed in more commands, and script started to flow across the monitor screens of each terminal at lightning speed.
Tatiana gasped. “He’s instructing Chimera to do it…”
Dillon watched coldly as — Chimera took control of the satellite weapons system; locked onto the target, initiated the arming sequence, confirmed the target, awaited the launch command.
Ramus tapped the screen once.
Outside, the fight in the air above the stealth ship was going badly. The JetRanger was holding its own, and the programme that Vince had up-loaded to each of the helicopters to evade the missiles, was working perfectly. But, it was running low on ammunition and missiles, and just when it seemed that things couldn’t get any worse, the Priest and Lola looked up to see a bolt of white laser light shoot through the low cloud. Fire exploded from the heavens and hit the Royal Navy destroyer that was standing a mile off the Dorset coast in readiness. The laser cut through the mid-ships, blasting the ship into glowing splinters of steel that rained down into the English Channel.
The Priest swallowed hard. He blinked and crossed his chest. And his faith was shaken.
Dillon watched the monitor closest to him in disbelief. It showed the devastating power of the laser from the hi-jacked
Chinese military satellite.