The Cassandra Sanction

Chapter Twenty

Ben pointed through the study, towards the door that led through to the base of the dome. ‘That way,’ he said, and hurried Raul through into the bare block-built square that supported Catalina’s observatory. There was no other way in or out and no windows, making it invasion-proof as long as Ben had the door covered. Or as long as the ammunition held out. It was the best tactical retreat he could come up with, in the circumstances.

He told Raul to stay still while he ran back into the living room and grabbed Kazem’s prone body by the collar. Kazem was still alive. Ben couldn’t say how long for, but he wasn’t going to leave him alone out there. He snatched the roll of tape they’d used to bind him up earlier. Then dragged the young guy through the doorway, slammed and bolted the door securely behind them and propped him against the big round steel pillar in the middle of the space.

The blood trail across the floor was thick and shiny. Kazem’s clothes were black with it. More blood spurted from his lips when he tried to speak and began to cough. The wound in his neck was drawing air with a terrible wheezing noise as he fought to breathe. Raul stared at the blood and looked about to throw up.

Ben used the kitchen knife to slash material from Kazem’s shirt, and stuffed it into the wounds to try to stem the bleeding. ‘Put pressure on here,’ he told Raul, pointing to the chest wound. Ben did the same for Kazem’s throat wound, trying not to choke him. Blood welled up between his fingers and soaked the shirt material. Ben pressed a thicker wad of it against the wound, tore off a strip of tape and fastened it into place, but the tape wouldn’t adhere to the blood-slicked skin. It was hopeless.

The gunfire had stopped. Either the bad guys had packed up and left in defeat, or they were just regrouping. Ben didn’t think they’d gone. ‘You’re going to be okay,’ he lied to Kazem. ‘Hold on. Keep looking at me. Listen to my voice.’

Kazem blinked and tried to focus, but his eyes kept fading. His head lolled. Blood bubbled out of his mouth and ran down his chin. Ben glanced back towards the door. Still nothing happening outside. It wouldn’t remain that way for long. That was for sure.

‘Stay with me, Kazem. You’re going to make it through this.’

The Iranian slowly raised his head and looked at Ben. His red, glistening lips moved a fraction and he managed to rasp some indistinct words out that took Ben a couple of seconds to understand.

‘She… is… alive.’

Raul jumped as if he’d been shocked with a cattle prod. ‘Have you seen her? Where is she?’

Kazem managed to shake his head that he didn’t know, but it seemed to cost him almost all his remaining strength. He mustered up what was left to croak a few more words, crimson bubbles forming at the corners of his mouth.

‘I… am… sorry… I… lied… to… you… She… tell… me to…’

‘She told you to lie,’ Raul said.

Kazem nodded weakly, then coughed and spat another gout of blood. It was bright red. Arterial. Not good.

‘She… knew… they… come… for… her… She… have… to… dis…’

‘Disappear?’ Raul said. He turned to Ben. ‘She was running from them. It’s what we thought.’

Now Ben understood the real reason why Kazem had taken flight when he’d seen the two of them arrive earlier. He’d mistaken them for whoever was after his former employer, believing they’d come for him too.

But that was all he had time to think before he heard the fast steps on the other side of the door. The men were back.

Gunfire exploded from the living room and splinters burst from the inside of the door. The attackers knew where they were hiding, and they were intending to shoot the door down. A few shotgun blasts, and it would separate into firewood. Then they’d be inside.

Ben ran to the door and pressed himself flat against the wall next to it. Thick, solid stone, impenetrable to any kind of small arms fire short of a big fifty-calibre. He reached out to his side and jammed his pistol against the splintered wood and squeezed the trigger, then again and again until his ears were ringing badly and the gun muzzle was smoking hot and the wood was smouldering.

The gunfire fell silent again. He seemed to have driven the attackers back for now, but it had cost him every round in his pistol. Ben tossed it. All he had now was the submachine gun with one magazine. Thirty rounds wasn’t as much as it sounded in a weapon that spat out thirteen of them every second.

Kazem coughed more blood. Raul was right beside him, clutching his hand. His trousers were soaked red to the knee.

‘What do these people want?’ Raul was asking. His tone was urgent but he seemed oblivious of the shooting and the danger. He seemed hardly to notice the blood any more. Kazem was slipping fast, and what he knew was everything that mattered to Raul at this moment. ‘Kazem, talk to me. Why is she in trouble?’

Kazem raised a bloody arm and extended his finger towards the dome above. He was pointing at the observatory.

Ben understood Kazem was trying to say that it had to do with Catalina’s work. But that was impossible. Her work was studying space. By definition, there was no less worldly occupation. Detached from all human concerns, from politics, from money, from religion, from everything.

Kazem bubbled red from the mouth and a croak came from his lips that to Ben’s ringing ears sounded like ‘core sheet’.

Then Ben realised that Kazem had reverted to his native tongue as his life ebbed away. It wasn’t ‘core sheet’. It was the Persian word ‘khorshīd’.

Khorshīd was Persian for the sun.

The sun, which had been the main focus of Catalina’s work. Kazem’s fluttering, bloody hand was pointing up at the dome where he’d helped her carry out her solar observation work through the specialist Lunt solar telescope.

But how could that be?

Ben wanted to ask him. He didn’t know if the dying man could reply, but he opened his mouth to ask him anyway.

His question was drowned out by the shotgun blast that exploded like a grenade the other side of the door. Wood shards blew into the room and a hole the size of a grapefruit appeared in the shattered planks. Then another, and the hole elongated and the door came loose at its top hinge.

Raul threw himself behind the steel pillar for cover. Ben spun towards the attackers and hosed a stream of automatic fire at the door, turning what was left of it into a colander of nine-millimetre holes. Thirteen rounds a second. Ben kept his finger on the trigger maybe a second and a half. Long enough to drive the enemy back again. Long enough to deplete most of his only magazine.

Now there was little left to fight with, and only one place to run. Up into the dome.

Cornered.