Dillon coughed, writhing in agony for a moment. “Hell that hurts. Have you any painkillers?”
“We’re completely out, sorry, Dillon.”
“That’s okay. We need to get going anyway. We’ll get Alix and the Priest back to their Apache, and hopefully Lola will be there already. We’ll then make our way back to Vince at the SAS depot.”
“That sounds good to me.” Alix said nodding. The Priest looked up at the dark brooding sky and then back at Dillon. “Yes, we should make haste.”
Tatiana helped Dillon to his feet, and he stood panting for a moment in the early dawn half-light.
Then, with great effort of will, he grunted, and climbed on board the quad bike. Tatiana jumped on behind him and the Priest and Alix jumped onto the wide mud-guards either side of her, and he fired up the powerful engine. Dillon closed his eyes for a moment as he composed himself — not just for the journey ahead, but for the realisation that Kirill was actually dead: and that the quest, as it was the fucked-up journey, he had to make.
It was not over.
It was far from over.
The quad bike moved off, bumping along the dirt track and then racing out down the valley towards the loch…
“Ramus,” muttered Dillon. And, grimacing, he screwed the throttle round viciously.
Claudia Dax rode the off-road trails bike hard and fast. The 750cc machine was powerful and sped through the darkness, the suspension absorbing the bumps with ease, the headlight scything the pre-dawn light.
I’ve done it, she thought triumphantly.
I’ve got away.
I’ve bloody well got away with the Chimera blue-prints. The ability to create the most powerful programme of all time, the most vicious piece of malicious software the world has ever seen. And she had the only script that would be able to run at one-hundred per cent efficiency.
Claudia Dax smiled; and then decided that there might be someone following her and the smile fell from her face as she checked her mirrors. But only blackness swept across the highland valley behind her, deep and impenetrable. Before her, blood smears on the front faring of the powerful Yamaha trials bike did nothing to calm her racing heart-beat.
Claudia wiped rain from her face with a gloved hand; and then remembered the blood. She glanced down at the crimson streaks and her stomach turned. And then she remembered her friends and colleagues who she’d worked with, and got to know over the last two years who had been murdered in their beds, and her stomach did a double flip. She swallowed hard, suppressing her fear and the sourness of bile rising in her throat. She was free.
She could now make a difference…
She could flood the world with the Chimera code; only her version would have the anti-virus element to the programme. She could stop a global computer melt-down.
The British Government would be implicated as the source of Chimera. Implicated, blamed and, damned by everyone… She could blow the whistle on the other bad stuff that Kirill had been working on.
Claudia needed to get to a powerful computer, and she realised the danger of her predicament. She was going to ruin their plans; they would want her dead… But then they wanted her dead anyway. Did they know that she had the only copy of Chimera that could run at one-hundred per cent efficiency? She doubted it — after all, they had been about to blow the top of the mountain — and surely that had been the purpose of the bomb-to stop any possibility of anyone pirating the programme. But then she could not rely on that, she could not rely on anything… She had to assume that they knew she had the copy of Chimera.
But something confused Claudia Dax. Why should the British Government and Scorpion — who she had always thought of as a brilliant organisation to work for — so why would they kill a large group of their own employees? And why would they destroy their own secret facility that had cost hundreds of millions of pounds of tax-payers money to construct and maintain? Why would they blowup the Chimera project?
Something in the reasoning was flawed. Something was not quite right — like Kirill and the bombs, like the appearance of the black-clad and hooded Assassins roaming freely through the corridors of the mountain complex.
She could not understand why Kirill would do such a terrible thing.
Unless the Government and Scorpion had been betrayed!
Claudia opened the throttle wider, and the powerful trials bike surged forward, off-road tyres biting into the tarmac of the Highland road. She focused on the winding road ahead, but in the back of her mind, she was thinking about just how serious these people were — whoever they were. They knew that she was alive; they would have airports and seaports covered for sure… So how the hell was she going to get away withher life intact?She knew that whoever it was involved, would have limitless resources if they really wanted to find her. She racked her brains. What to do?
Focus. She had to stay focused, she thought.
Get out of Scotland. Get as far away from the facility, as quickly as possible.
Get rid of the trials-bike as soon as possible.
Find a suitable disguise.
The four-stroke engine stuttered, just briefly. Claudia felt the slightest vibration travel through the bikes frame. She looked down at the gauges and the orange light that indicated that she was out of fuel…
“What? You pile of junk,” she muttered, tapping the fuel dial with a gloved finger. “How is that possible?”
The engine stuttered again, and then stalled. She coasted to a halt, pulling over to the edge of the road, tyres squelching on the water-logged grass verge. She sprang off the machine, letting go of the handle bar as her boots hit the soft ground, the bike falling heavily into the ditch.
“Shit. Shit!”
She looked around at — wilderness. She reached into her rucksack and retrieved a metal canister, taking a swig of the refreshingly cold water inside.
“At least I won’t die of dehydration,” Claudia muttered sourly. She picked up her small rucksack, and pausing for a moment to take several deep breaths and to brush a few specks of mud from her jacket, she bit the bullet of panic and set off down the road. The tarmac road surface made the going easy, and as she walked, she cursed herself for not checking the fuel level before she had roared off down the valley. She also cursed for such bad luck and, most of all; she cursed herself for ever working for Kirill in the first place.
The Priest returned from the outcropping of rock, the Heckler in one hand, a canteen of water in the other. He yawned.
“How are you feeling now, Dillon?”
Dillon smiled, wincing at pain emanating from various locations around his body. He glanced up at the Priest; the last few days had taken its toll on him, lines around the eyes appeared much deeper and the bruises seemed to have darkened.
“I feel like I’ve been run over by that quad bike a few times. What about you? You look wasted.”
“I’m fine, thank you, Dillon.” He smiled. “I need to return to my flock, I’ve a sermon to give this Sunday coming.”
“Yeah, I could do with getting back home. I’ve got a small castle to repair when I get back.” Dillon said with heavy sarcasm.
“Yes, I heard they messed up your place pretty bad. But look on the bright side, Dillon. You’re still alive, to fight the good work, another day…”
After a brief break, and making sure that they were not being pursued, they all climbed wearily back onto the quad bike and once again set off. Forty minutes later and they found the Apache helicopter, and Lola, who appeared from her hiding place, once she was certain of who it was.