The Priest stepped forward. From his own pack he took out a small metallic device; he checked it over and inspected the clamping mechanism.
“You brought one of those new climb assist gizmos with you?” The Priest nodded, and pulled out two more of the tiny devices, handing one each to Alix and Lola. He then picked up one of the Daewoo K7 sub-machine gun, unclipped the magazine and checked that it was fully loaded, and then slung the lethal weapon across his shoulder. Alix did the same and then went over to stand beside Lola who was checking over her Heckler & Koch MP5. A moment later and the Priest was attaching the small climb-assist device to the base of the thick cable just above the wicker basket.
“How convinced are you, that these are the bad guys?” Lola asked the Priest.
He gave her a sideways glance and nodded “On a scale of one to ten, I would say ten and a half. If it transpires, as I think it will; then this facility is now under the control of those other than professor Kirill, and that they are planning, according to intelligence reports, what will almost certainly be a global computer Armageddon. This place makes an ideal base for that sort of operation — mostly because it is so easily defended. Anyone who knew about the SAS Stage School facility would know that much of the equipment that was left behind could easily be utilised, even with a modicum of military expertise.”
“Well, we’ll soon be finding out,” said Alix. He pulled a black balaclava over his wet face, and the others did likewise; now, all in black and carrying the K7 silenced SMGs and regulation issue Glock pistols, the three of them looked truly terrifying.
“Lola, you stay down here. Keep your comm. open at all times, and yourself out of sight. We’ll be banking on you to make surethat we don’t get any nasty surprises at the back door.” The Priest said. Lola nodded and immediately moved off to her position inside the timber building.
The Priest was checking the mountain for any activity through his night-vision binoculars. He was agitated, annoyed at what he was viewing. “There’s far too much activity up there, two more helicopters have just left, and one more has just landed. It would appear that we’ve chosen a busy time to visit, but it would account for our approach run not being questioned. They obviously assumed that we were just another in-bound.”
“Good,” said Alix. “This means that they’ll be too busy to see us coming.”
“Maybe,” the Priest said looking through the binoculars again. “We’ll just have to go see, won’t we?”
Alix smiled grimly from behind the black mask. “Now you’re talking my language. Let’s go do the Lord’s work.”
“Alix, you’re now talking my language. The Lord will surely show us the way.”
The Priest slipped the looped strap of the climb-assist unit around his wrist. Made a last minute adjustment and ensured that the device was tightly locked around the winch cable. He looked briefly at Alix, and then pushed the tiny button to activate the servos, motors whirred, and the next moment he was lifted up into the air, as the device pulled itself up the thick winch cable.
The wind howled, snow had turned to sleet, lashing down in torrential proportions. Alix stepped up to the basket, attached his own device to the winch wire with a click. Its servos whirred as it settled into place around the thick cable and a tiny red light flashed, then went out. Alix slipped the looped strap around his wrist and looked up into the darkness and the storm. The cable was slapping around in the gusting wind, he swallowed hard, braced himself, and a moment later he was on his way up the wire towards the winchhouse. The Priest was gone, swallowed up by the total blackness. As he neared his destination, he looked down. Deep below, falling away into nothingness, was a valley of snow covered rocks, a place where nothing lived, nothing survived. Ever…
It would be a long, long fall… followed by a gravity induced death.
Alix breathed deeply. He spotted the Priest up above him, he was just below the winch-house, about to go inside through the trap door. He nodded back at Alix, had his Glock 9mm pistol in his hand as he disappeared up through and into the timber building.
Alix waited a moment before moving again, waited for the sound of gun shots but only the howling wind was there with him, buffeting his watering eyes as he soared up into the winch-house.
Kirill came awake suddenly, cursing the wounds that he had received during his recent visit to his home in Cornwall. Dillon would pay for not dying, as planned. His time would come, as sure as there was fire in hell. He scowled as he ran a hand through his hair and sighed softly. He got out of bed, stood up, stretched his arms up above his head, and then headed for the wet-room. He could smell himself, his own body stink from a restless, sweaty, sleep.
Kirill hated feeling dirty. Hated the thought that his body had produced such a sour odour. The comm buzzed. Kirill halted, caught between the need to wash the stink from his skin and the need to answer the internal comm; he knew that it would be important. It had to be important, for someone to invade his personal time. A lot of bad stuff was currently going down. “Damn.” He walked back to his office space, reached his desk, and pushed the comm button. “Yes?”
Outside, beyond the false environment of his apartment and the cam-link images of the highland landscape, the extreme weather from the previous evening had blown itself out, and the sun was rising over the mountain range. Golden light danced across the distant snowcapped peaks, wind lifted fresh powder snow in waves, rolling down the sheer slopesto fade away through the cloud base. But on this sourtasting morning the incredible and magical sight of dawn delivered via high-definition optics did little to calm Kirill’s sense of foreboding.
“Ezra is dead.”
“Good. What about Dillon and the girl?”
“Dillon and the girl are another problem.”
“So the Assassins failed to terminate them?”
“I’m afraid it is much worse than that; Dillon is now much more informed, has now experienced the Assassins on two separate occasions — and survived. Most disturbing of all, is that I think he has discovered what the missing link is. That it is required to complete the Chimera Programme.”
“Does he know that I am still alive?”
“It is a possibility,” said Ramus softly.
“I want that bastard dead,” said Kirill. “And I want him dead right now!” Kirill’s voice had suddenly risen to become almost hysterical.
He stood, sweating profusely, his heart pounding in his chest, hands slippery against the polished quartz top of his desk.
“Calm yourself,” said Ramus, his voice low.
“I’ll calm myself when Dillon is well and truly dead,” hissed
Kirill.
“Now, now you are forgetting yourself,” whispered Ramus, his voice easy, like a razor sharp blade cutting through soft skin tissue. Kirill paused then; he caught the sinister undercurrent of danger in Ramus’ voice. You did not fuck with Ramus.
He curbed his tongue. He closed his eyes for a brief moment, and then said, forcing his voice back into its more usual urbane tone which completely contradicted his present lack of civility. “What
I mean to point out, is that Dillon has proved himself to be an extremely capable adversary — an extremely dangerous and well trained individual. He has outsmarted and out-paced both the Assassins and ourselves all the way to Santorini and beyond. If he knows that I am alive then he may come to find me. You didn’t see him in Cornwall, Ramus; I have never seen a man move so fast — kill so many. It was like being in a bad dream with no way out. It was terrifying.”
“Kirill, your priority now is to move quickly towards the completion of Chimera. Nothing else is important. We have twentyfour hours, and then we start the process. Mr Dillon is my problem and I can assure you that I do not intend to fuck about with this man.