The Accident Man

63

Part of Carver wanted to confront Trench and ask him what had really happened, why he’d acted the way he had. But even if the old bastard told the truth, he wouldn’t say anything Carver couldn’t work out for himself. Whoever had been hiring Carver for the past few years must have already put Trench on the payroll while he was still commanding the Service. It made sense. He was the perfect recruiting officer and Carver had been the perfect candidate for an assassin’s job: capable, well-trained, and sufficiently angry and disillusioned to get his hands dirty for the right price.

There was no point feeling sorry for himself. He’d been bought and paid for. Once he’d outlived his usefulness, Trench had planned to dispose of him, just like any other redundant piece of gear. It wouldn’t be the first time Trench had sent men on suicide missions. Any commanding officer had to be willing to sacrifice lives for the greater good. Carver could moan all he liked about betrayal, he could play the wounded child wondering why Daddy was being so beastly, but Trench hadn’t asked to be his surrogate father even if he’d been happy to exploit the feelings Carver projected onto him.

In any case, Carver concluded, he’d spent his entire working life being paid to kill people. He wasn’t in any position to complain if someone wanted to kill him.

But he didn’t have to let them get away with it.

There was a deep pocket in Carver’s waterproof jacket. It was sealed by a vertical zipper, and it ran right down the left side of his chest. In it were two plastic tubes a little less than a foot long. They were colored red at their base, then lightened via an orange band to a yellow top, decorated with a silhouette of an archer standing on top of a logo that read “Ikaros.” At the bottom of the tube there was a red plastic tag.

Carver took one out and moved to the side of the ladder. He reached up and pulled the hatch open with one hand, letting in a blast of spray-soaked air and the crashing, pounding noise of the storm. Then he lifted up his other hand, holding the tube horizontally, level with the deck outside. He pulled the tag. There was a sudden propulsive “Whoosh!” like a firework being launched, then a man’s shout of alarm, the scrabble of ricochets on the side of the cockpit as the tube shot to and fro, and finally, less than a second later, the explosion of a distress flare.

As thick red smoke roiled through the open hatch, Carver hurled himself up the ladder, through the opening, and into the hellish scarlet fog. Ahead of him he could just make out the outline of a man. He saw his arm being raised, then came the flame of muzzle flashes and the crackle of small-arms fire as Trench fired into the smoke, toward the hatch. Three rounds slammed into the wooden door frame, somehow missing Carver on their way, and then Carver crashed into Trench’s midriff, pushing him backward onto the bench at the back of the cockpit.

Carver drove his right fist as hard as he could into Trench’s groin. His left hand reached out for Trench’s right, driving it against the side of the cockpit in a desperate attempt to knock the pistol from his grasp. The two men were fighting the smoke as much as each other, almost as if they were underwater, unable to breathe, desperate for oxygen, lost in a primal struggle for survival.

At last, Carver felt Trench’s grip slacken on his gun. Ignoring Trench’s desperate attempts to hit him with his free hand, and the swiping of the older man’s legs, he forced his right hand between Trench’s fingers to grab the handle of his gun. He caught hold of one of the loosened fingers and bent it back, making Trench cry out in agony as the lowest joint was dislocated.

The gun fell to the deck and skittered away across the bucking, rain-slick surface.

Carver scrambled to his feet, his chest heaving and eyes streaming with tears. Trench was sitting in front of him, holding his wounded hand, coughing and gasping for breath. The older man tried to get up, but Carver hit him twice, left and right to the face, putting the full power of his shoulders behind each punch. Then he grabbed a handful of Trench’s gray hair and smashed his head against the wooden rim that ran around the top edge of the cockpit’s perimeter, three savage blows that left Trench semiconscious and bleeding.

Carver grabbed the front of Trench’s jacket and hauled him into an upright position on the bench.

“Sit on your hands,” he commanded.

Wincing with pain, Trench forced his hands under his thighs.

The flare was still spewing out smoke, though the relentless gale was now blowing it away in a billowing red plume. For a second, the air around Carver cleared and he was able to drag some pure, clean sea air into his burning lungs.

“Where is she?” he snarled.

Trench looked at him through bleary, unfocused eyes. “Where’s who?”

Carver slapped him once, hard, to the side of the face.

“Alexandra Petrova, that Russian girl of mine you were going on about. Big mistake, that. Gave yourself away. Now, where is she?”

“Christ, her… I haven’t a clue.”

This time Carver caught him with a backhander.

“I mean it,” Trench insisted. “I knew nothing about the Russians. They weren’t my idea.”

“So who’s idea were they?”

A weary, battered smile appeared on Trench’s face. He was leaning slightly forward, his mouth hanging open, still struggling for breath.

“I taught you everything you know about resisting interrogation. Do you seriously think you’re going to make me talk now?”

Carver looked Trench in the eye. “No,” he said. “I don’t.”

“So now what are you going to do?”

The question took Carver aback. He realized he did not have an answer. And in that fraction of a second’s indecision, Trench struck, drawing his knees up to his chest and then driving his legs forward into Carver’s body, catapulting him across the deck.

At that moment a wave hit the Tamarisk amidships, spraying the two men with foaming water and bucking the deck upward and sideways. As he staggered backward, Carver lost his footing and fell helplessly to the deck.

His head landed by a small black object lying on the cold, wet wood. As the boat lurched again, he realized that it was Trench’s gun and it was sliding past him, back across the deck, back to the man who wanted to kill him.

Carver’s old commander – his teacher, his role model – picked up the gun with his one good hand and swung his arm around to take his shot. His eyes glittered with fierce, gleeful triumph, then widened in a momentary flicker of shocked surprise as Carver fired the second emergency flare.

The rocket hit Quentin Trench in the face, the plastic tube driving up through his palate into his brain and sending him sliding across the narrow stern deck and over the side of the boat before the flare itself detonated, blowing his skull apart in a starburst of blood, brain, searing light, and bubbling smoke.

And as the flare cast its gory light across the water, illuminating everything in its path, Samuel Carver saw the gigantic bow of the Scandwave Adventurer bearing down on him, an unstoppable wall of black steel, as vast and irresistible as an avalanche.