*
Kaptu could feel the adrenalin flooding into his muscles, but he had to keep calm and let himself be dragged into the cage. There was no other choice. He had no chance with so many guards around him and with Mas still in the vicinity. On the other hand, he did not know if the odds against lions would be any better. As he lay sprawled out on the dusty floor, he peeked out across at the lions. They were stirred onto their feet, their eyes fixed on him and the strips of meat being thrown in around him. They were enormously powerful creatures and they would dine as they pleased. Kaptu noticed gaps in the roof bars that might just have been wide enough to squeeze through. He exploded to life, grabbing some of the strips of meat and rubbing his body in their fat and sprang up onto the cage wall, just climbing out of reach of a charging lion. With the added greasiness the fat had given him, he was able to squeeze through bars without losing too much skin. He quickly slid along the top of the cage and dived down onto the guards who were preoccupied with pulling more meat from the food chest. Taken by complete surprise, they had barely reacted by the time Kaptu had relieved one of his pistols and turned it on them. He did not leave any of them alive. It was not hard when they had just tried to feed him to a pride of lions.
A dog was barking in the distance. Kaptu knew it was Blast and started running. If the barking had drowned out the gunfire for those on the way to shoot it, he might have the advantage of surprise. But he wouldn’t be able to choose his moment. He feared the next shot he heard would be the death knell not only for Blast but also for Natalie. His legs were not moving as fast as they should have been, weighed down by the remnants of tranquiliser. He pumped his arms, desperate to propel himself around the rusted old shed from which the barking was originating.
And there she was, pulling at the lead staked to the ground, her tail standing bolt upright. Kaptu aimed in the direction she was looking and fired. His bullets ripped into the shed, eliciting a scream from beyond it. Kaptu put another shot that way before the scream had a chance to settle and he spun round and shot the lead off Blast; it came running, low and fast, and it was clear it had been very well trained. Kaptu advanced at the shed, keeping low and he dived through the door into the darkness. Suddenly there was a barrage of gunfire ripping through the far wall above him. He returned fire in its direction, not stopping until all three of his guns were empty. The firing had stopped on the other side of the wall as well.
As Kaptu hurriedly reloaded, Blast came up to him and licked his face. ‘Yeah, I know,’ murmured Kaptu. ‘I taste like dead meat.’
He left the shed and watchfully edged his way around the outside. He took the final corner gun first, cracking off a burst of fire that cleared the three bodies crumpled across the ground. He paused over them. They were wearing the khaki uniforms of the wildlife preservation park and they were badly mangled by bullets. There was a trail of blood leading away towards the domed building. Kaptu clicked his fingers at Blast and pointed at it. ‘Sniff, girl.’
Blast obediently brought its nose up to the blood trail, but did not show any reaction. So, the blood did not belong to Mas. If it was her mother’s, however, the trail might still be worth following. But Kaptu baulked at the idea. Such a task would best be done by a well-armed unit. Although he had one on standby, they were waiting to do something else.
Kaptu had noticed a motorbike in the shed when he first dived into it and he hurried back that way. Being in a fortified compound with armed patrols, it was not surprising that he found it unlocked. It started crisply and he sped out towards the perimetre fence. Clorvine followed his progress through the scope of her long gun, which was protruding into the wildlife preservation through the hole he had cut in the wire. She quickly set about making the hole wider with a laser-blade and was just in time to peel back the wire before Kaptu raced through. The motorbike roared back to her and Kaptu leaned over the handlebars. ‘Good morning.’
‘Are you alright?’ Clorvine asked. ‘You were gone a long time. And then there was the barking and gunfire. You found Mas, didn’t you?’
Kaptu swung off the motorbike and peered back into the wildlife preserve. Blast was running for them, her ears pinned back and her tongue flapping. Kaptu knelt down to meet her.
‘We’ve got to get to the air force base,’ he murmured Clorvine’s way.
‘But I’ve called in reinforcements. Congolese Special Forces. If Mas is not dead, they will want Blast to sniff her out.’
‘They’ll have to do their own sniffing.’ Kaptu stood up. ‘And I’m afraid all they’ll get is the smell of death.’ He smiled into her deep brown eyes. ‘Come with me and I’ll show you where the real action is. We have the fastest intercontinental passenger rocket in the world at our disposal. We will be in Texas before you even have time to think.’
‘Texas?’
Kaptu noticed her hesitation and said, ‘Oh, you’re thinking now.’ He sighed. ‘Don’t worry about this place. What we have here is a world-class snake breeder poisoning the world with the monster of all venoms: Heroin 3. But this is just the tail of the operation. We’re going to cut off the head.’
‘Let’s go then. The hovercraft is behind the trees over there.’ They ran to it and were immediately speeding away. The arid grassland raced by in an eerie silence. Kaptu didn’t like it, he preferred his engines loud. Clorvine fumbled clumsily with the harness in the driver seat. Her eyes had become transfixed on a point in the distance. Her face scrunched up with concern.
‘What is it?’ Kaptu murmured.
‘The cloud five miles straight ahead doesn’t look right.’
Kaptu looked that way. He immediately realised which cloud she was referring to. While all the others were wispy and carried the soft orange glow of the sunrise, this one was black and dense and menacing. ‘You think it might rain?’ he muttered.
Clorvine laughed tensely. ‘Yes, maybe. And it is the kind of rain that will vaporise you. It is not a native Congolese cloud. I would say it is fifty year old German.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Let me show you.’ She took a hard left turn, the hovercraft whipping up a cloud of dust of its own.
The heavy black cloud came alive in a fury, spitting streaks of lightning towards them in a fearsome storm of fire and noise
‘How do you like that for rain?’ cried Clorvine.
‘What the hell is it?’
‘Weaponised plasma cloud. It is considered antiquated in Western countries, too slow moving for anything other than scorched earth warfare. For certain African dictators, however, that is just the kind of warfare that appeals.’
‘Plasma cloud?’ muttered Kaptu incredulously. ‘How do we shoot it down?’
‘We don’t. And if we had been caught directly under the cloud, it would have spelt certain death. At this distance, its missiles aren’t as accurate, but you can bet it’s only a matter of time before it scores a direct hit.’
‘There isn’t a village for a hundred miles.’
‘That wouldn’t change things anyway. These people would annihilate an entire village without a second thought just to get their target.’
‘Well, you seem to be heading somewhere.’
‘Nowhere good, I’m afraid. You’d better keep your gun handy.’
The fireballs around them were far brighter than the fledgling sun, illuminating rooftops and a tall, expansive fern hedge stretching across the brown basin they were speeding through.
‘It is the country estate of the former War Minister Leon Barbi,’ Clorvine said. ‘No place for indiscriminate bombing, even by a current president. It will be heavily guarded. Almost suicidally so if Barbi is in residence.’
‘What a place for a holiday. The middle of nowhere.’
‘If your pastime is torture and murder, the location is just about ideal.’
Kaptu looked back at the cloud. It was fast gaining ground, its explosions pelting the hovercraft with debris. Clorvine held her line for the
Barbi estate knowing that any attempts to dodge and weave would only slow them fatally.
‘We won’t have time to knock on the front door,’ she said and gestured to a leather bag on the backseat. ‘Get that, will you?’
Kaptu wrestled the bag off the seat and peered inside. It reminded him of McRaven’s travel bag but was even more packed with weapons. There were guns and grenades and knives. ‘Not bad for a park ranger,’ Kaptu murmured.
‘It belongs to my boyfriend. He leaves weapons lying around the house all over the place and this morning I tidied them up.’
Amongst the weapons was a pair of binoculars. Kaptu turned them on the Barbi estate. Beyond the hedges there was a towering marble citadel, resplendent with hanging plants that dripped colour from roof to floor. On either side of the citadel there were elaborate fountains shooting garishly coloured water high into the air. Further back in the estate, there was a majestic chateau with tall windows set in grand arches of grey stone and each with an iron balcony adorned with wild flowers.
‘Nice place,’ Kaptu murmured.
‘It is said Barbi modelled his garden on the Hanging Garden of Babylon. I have never been this close myself. And if we were doing it in anything heavier than a hovercraft, we would already be dead. We are travelling over one of the most extensive minefields in the Congo.’
‘That helps to explain why the whole world seems to have turned into a fireball.’
There was an abrupt silence as the rocket fire ceased. Clorvine smirked as she realised why. ‘We’re close enough to the estate that the plasma cloud can no longer risk firing at us. We’re safe.’
‘You must be putting a lot of faith in the hovercraft’s armour plating to be considering us safe.’
‘That’s a fair point. Barbi employs ex-soldiers as gardeners and cleaners. You can surmise from the size of his residence how many gardeners and cleaners are going to be shooting at us.’
The plasma cloud had only just become dormant when it was the hedges turn to erupt into gunfire. The ordinance may have been smaller, but there was a lot more of it. The hovercraft was becoming completely inundated, the glass windscreens cracking and side panels falling off. By the time it reached the hedges, Kaptu was wondering if it would have strength enough left to smash its way through. When the moment came, however, it managed it convincingly, sending a few of the War Minister’s soldiers flying as it did. The gardens meanwhile reveled themselves to be every bit as beautiful as they had appeared in the distance. A true Hanging Garden of Babylon. The gunfire, nevertheless, was unrelenting. A rear window in the hovercraft finally gave, showering Kaptu and Clorvine in glass splinters and increasing the volume of the gunfire to a deafening pitch. Kaptu seized the opportunity to return gunfire, unleashing out the window a firestorm of bullets from the guns of Clorvine’s boyfriend, scattering the soldiers-cum-gardeners that had been converging from every direction. Those who were too defiant or slow to move were cut down by the searing onslaught. Clorvine caught others with the hovercraft bumper bar. Manicured plants were fairing little better as she ploughed across the garden in the direction of a large double-door garage.
‘Get ready,’ said Clorvine. ‘Beyond those doors are some of the fastest rockets in Africa. If you want to travel safely in these parts, that’s the kind of transport that’s required. The former Minister for War is known to have a collection the equal of the Congolese Air Force itself. I trust you can fly a rocket pod.’
A man in a straw gardening hat jumped in front of the hovercraft with a mobile missile launcher in hand, taking aim at the front windscreen. He was a step too late, however, and merely became a part of the hovercraft’s impact with the garage doors. Kaptu turned away from the grisly sight. He noticed immediately the rank of shiny dark blue rocket pods, positioned on launch ramps at a forty five degree angle. The possession of such machines in Asylum City was illegal punishable by death but simulators were commonplace, allowing long suffering residents to at least roleplay the act of escape.
‘Yes, I can,’ he finally replied.
‘Then prep one. Its systems require one minute to fully activate. I’ll keep our friends away in the meantime.’
Kaptu handed her the bag of weapons. ‘A useful boyfriend to have.’
‘Before you get too carried away with gratitude, you might want to know he is a commanding officer in the Weaponised Cloud Squadron. She dropped down from the hovercraft’s side hatch and ripped into the first soldiers appearing through the decimated doors. ‘Texas in twenty minutes is too long for my liking,’ she yelled and edged closer to the doors with her guns on rapid fire. ‘These can do it in ten.’
Kaptu ascended the ramp of the nearest rocket pod and swung inside the narrow doorway. The controls were familiar enough that he did not need to pay much heed to the French instructions. He inputted the coordinates for Texas and as the engine began to stir and the launch ramp rise into position, he took the opportunity to make radio contact with Renaissance.
‘This is Kaptu Z,’ he said. ‘Search for the sea vessel Kudos. Suspected location somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Top priority.’
The launch hatch was opening to a colourful sunrise and the dark edge of the emerging sun and Kaptu was glad Texas was that way. The plasma cloud, however, was hovering in between, far lower than all the other clouds and as menacingly dense as ever.
There was a series of explosions from the garage’s main entrance, the whole structure shuddering. Clorvine came diving into the rocket pod. ‘I just emptied the gun bag,’ she said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘You’d better buckle up,’ said Kaptu. ‘Your boyfriend is still loitering out there in his cloud. And I get the feeling some hot rain is in the forecast.’
The rocket pod’s door slid closed just in time to deflect a burst of angry gunfire from the soldiers of the former War Minister.
‘Well, no one said breakups are easy,’ said Clorvine as the harness-restraints pressed her back against her seat.
With a massive jolt that had their chins pressing against their necks, the rocket pod shot into the sky. The plasma cloud instantly came to life, spitting out a string of missiles in a spectacular display of blue flame that belied its deadly purpose. The rocket pod evasively accelerated through the fast closing trap leaving a massive explosion in its wake as the warheads detonated en masse. Like a mosquito eluding a swatting hand, the rocket pod was away. And seconds later it was within the stratosphere. Pinned to his seat by the powerful G-forces, Kaptu’s eyes drifted down to Renaissance’s reply message flashing on the control screen. Search for the Kudos initiated. But understand that the Pacific Ocean is a very big place.
24 Assault on the Meltman
The surgeon stood with his arms tightly folded in his white hospital garb. He was old, obviously highly experienced and was nervous despite himself - far more used to the fading gaze of a patient receding into death than the raw, wildly alive gaze of someone he suspected was extremely dangerous, possibly even a killer, and a real killer at that, not one of those pitiful drug addicts lost within a raging paranoia and a kaleidoscope of hallucinations. This woman confronting him in the Emergency Admissions waiting area was lucid and sharp. The doctor was relieved he had good news to impart. His eyes shied away from her intimidating stare and he smiled meekly. ‘Your mother is going to make a full recovery.’
Mas did not even blink. ‘She’ll be happy to hear that.’
The surgeon glanced at those around them in the waiting area, wanting to be comforted by the normal: a mixture of industrial, farming and household injuries. That was a typical day at the Anchorage Central Hospital. La Pack had been an exception, her shoulder ripped open by gunshot. Seriousness enough for her to be moved to the front of the queue without Mas having to make it so.
‘She will, however, need to rest her shoulder a couple of weeks. We’ve had to replant her circulatory system in that region.’
‘I see.’
The surgeon frowne
d. ‘I’ve waited until her condition stabilised before raising the subject but the wounds are consistent with gunfire and so it is mandatory that the authorities are notified.’
‘Her condition may have stabilised but the situation certainly hasn’t,’ replied Mas with a scowl. ‘By getting involved in that matter, you may only be creating more work for yourself.’
The surgeon stiffened and there was a nervous twitch in his cheek. Mas did not view harshly those so easily threatened. She couldn’t see a world running particularly well if everyone was like her. She patted the doctor on the shoulder. ‘My advice, Dr Francotti, is to send her on her way as quickly as you can and dismiss anything she says or does as the bitterness of old age.’
The surgeon swallowed a lump. ‘I will keep that in mind. I can allow you three minutes to see her, if you’d like.’
‘That won’t be necessary. I’ve seen her enough.’
Mas left the hospital quickly, already late for the appointment that really mattered.