The Assassin turned the outer dial on its watch face and instantly the small explosive device attached to the glass detonated. It leaped up to the opening and glanced down at the valley far below. Fresh morning sunlight bathed the scene and then the figure was gone, leaving only bloody footprints outside on the stone parapet.
There was the distant rattle of Russian-made sub-machine gun fire.
The guards who had come running in from their sentry posts outside had all exchanged worried glances as they surveyed the five corpses in the room.
“How did he open the digital locks? I was told that they were foolproof. Infinite fucking combinations or something.”
“Over here, Comrade.”
The two other guards lumbered towards the gaping window, saw the footprints in congealed blood and glanced down into the sprawling valley below…
Within the damp dungeons, deep beneath the mountain top fortress, something barely visible had been attached to the constantly dripping stone ceiling. A single red light, glowing faintly, an omen of death and devastation.
The bomb detonated. The explosion, savage, fire and destruction screamed whiteheat through the passageways up to the building above, wrenching it apart with the force of unleashed chemical annihilation.
In the valley below, there was a spattering of small stones into the fast moving river, followed by thunderous splashes of heavy chunks of granite and timber cascadingdown through the early morning mist. Black smoke billowed up towards the sky, blocking out the new dawn sun.
The tropical rain storm beat violently across the South China Sea; heaving, beating waves towards the dark rusting hulk of the grounded oil tanker, unlit and abandoned, pounded and abused by the elements. The tanker had run onto the jagged rocks that lurked just below the surface of the water many years before. Had been left to rot by one of the world’s largest petroleum corporations. The huge engines, that no longer thundered and beat with life, had long ago been dismantled and taken for scrap, as had anything else of any value including the bridge, stripped of everything and was now just a shell, empty and devoid of life. The bow was a tangle of fused rusting steel being gradually eaten away by the sea spray, and the enormous ship was a cast-off — discarded, abused, raped, bled dry and forgotten.
The ship was a ghost, deserted. Almost…
The figure moved out into the twilight from somewhere in the bowels of the ship, wearing a tight-fitting black garment and a rolledup balaclava. Gloved hands wrapped around a rusting rail and the man looked up, gasping as the wind rocked him almost off his feet and over the side of the rail.
He grinned and revelling in the wild roller-coaster ride feeling, pulled out a cigarette and shouldered his MP5 submachine gun as he searched for his lighter.
“You’ve got more chance of falling over that rail, than you have of lighting that thing.”
“You may be right — but then again you may be wrong, my old son.” The accent was broad east end of London. Pulling free the Zippo lighter, he cupped the cigarette in an attempt to defeat the torrential rain that was beating down. Miraculously, the end of the cigarette glowed, a bright spark against the gloom. White smoke swirled around the young man’s face and he inhaled deeply, closing his eyes and enjoying the nicotine rush.
“Pete, this is the most shite gig, man.”
Pete merely nodded, turning his back on the stocky muscular man with the heavily scarred complexion and gazing out into the black churning waters. “Go get us some strong coffee, mate? And check on our North Korean friend while you’re at it.”
The thick-set man — recently recruited to Scorpion 4 — stomped off down the gangway to the lower level which had been converted back to sleeping and living quarters as well as the galley for the duration of their stay.
Pete took his time smoking his cigarette, gazing out over the rolling waves of the South China Sea that hid the bright lights of Hong Kong. He wondered idly what it would be like, working on a tanker, living on a ship so big that you need a scooter to get from one end to the other. His mind drifted; he pictured the tanker carrying many thousands of tons of crude oil, the speed and force that it would cut through the ocean and the vast amount of distance needed to stop a ship that was so big. And he thought about himself: Pete; twenty-five year old Scorpion veteran; two tours of Afghanistan and then head hunted by a spook from MI6 to join one of the Government’s most secret and elite units and given one of the softest gigs ever devised by the shadowy Scorpion planners. To protect Zhu De Chung, anticommunist rebel sympathiser and professor of mathematics at the Peking University, Beijing, China. Zhu De was a hunted man — he was hunted because of the highly classified secrets he held. Pete was simply tired; and he wanted to go home. Wanted to be far away and preferably out of this game. He had been killing people far too long and just wanted a quiet life.
Pete laughed to himself, and leaned out over the rail. It moved under his weight, the metal creaked, the noise lost in the wind as he gazed down into the black water far below. His fear of drowning, close at hand.
The quiet life. I thought only old men got tired, his inner voice taunted him.
I thought you were a professional soldier. A fighter — not a quitter
— you wussy.
He had seen enough blood and gore in Afghanistan to last most men a lifetime and then some.
Levi was right; he thought as he moved to the stairwell and braced himself against the wild wind. This really is a shit gig; a full five man team locked away on this cursed rusting pile of scrap metal for a whole ten days with Zhu De, a slightly crazy North Korean professor. He had defected from the communists and now wanted sanctuary in Britain, but while this was being organised, he had to be hidden away and baby-sat.
Pete flicked his cigarette butt over the rail and went down the stairwell to the lower deck gangway. The howling wind and rain beat against the slab side of the tanker and the emergency lighting that had been rigged and hung untidily from the low ceilings swayed and thrashed around with each fearsome gust. He sauntered on towards the galley and canteen, his boots hammering the metal, his torso twisting and turning to fit through the narrow watertight doorways.
“Wakey, wakey, you lazy bastards. You got that coffee on?” Pete grinned as he stepped into the canteen. The smile was immediately wiped from his face. There were dead bodies strewn across the floor, blood pooling on the rusting metal. Blood was spattered up and across the walls, across the stainless-steel worktops, dripping from the low ceiling. Levi was sprawled on his back over a table, mouth slack, dead eyes staring as the flickering fluorescent tube above him flickered over his corpse.
Pete didn’t move; slowly, very slowly, he unslung the MP5 and flicked off its safety. He quickly scanned the room, first to the left. His breathing had become unconsciously labored through clenched teeth and he could taste bile in his mouth.
What the fuck screamed his brain.
Gavin was dead, trailing backwards off a bench, blood covered fingers clasping the webbed strap of his MP5. Chris lay face down against the iron-studded flooring. And Slider, arms fully outstretched, face contorted in wretched agony, a wide gash across his throat, looked unseeing up at the ceiling.
Come on — focus. You must think…
There had been no sound of gunfire; the Assassin — Assassins
— had used silenced weapons. The poor fuckers — Levi and the others — hadn’t even known what had hit them. And that meant the Assassins were — quick!
Something raced across the edge of Pete’s vision and he instinctively pulled back. Silenced bullets sprayed through the open doorway and up the iron wall, splashing white hot sparks that burnt his face. Pete hit the deck, rolled onto his front and squeezed the trigger of his own weapon. The gangway on the other side of the doorway was filled with a deafening roar of gunfire, and ricochets peppered the stairwell with hot bright metal flashes as Pete picked himself up and sprinted for his life in the opposite direction.