The Martyr’s Curse

Chapter Sixty-Five

With the buggy speeding up the final stretch of tunnel before the exit ramp, Streicher was just minutes away from escape. He knew he would never return to the bunker, but it no longer bothered him. His work here was done. The plague canisters were nestled safely beside him in their crate, and the thrill of success was firing his blood.

Now the exit lay dead ahead. It only remained to open the hatch and get to the chopper, and he’d be gone before anyone could stop him. Streicher reached into his pocket for the remote and used his thumb to punch in the security code.

It was as he was about to key in the sixth and final number that he felt the hard steel press against his temple, and froze.

Anton Lindquist reached down with his other hand and plucked the key from the buggy’s ignition. The power shut off, they coasted to a halt in the tunnel.

Lindquist was sweating from the nausea of the antitoxin, but also from fear. ‘I’m sorry, boss,’ he said in a hoarse, strained voice. ‘But I can’t allow you to go through with this. We’re going back to the lab, and we’re going to incinerate every last molecule of what’s in those canisters.’

The gun muzzle felt cold against Streicher’s skin. He gulped and tried to sound genial. ‘Anton. What are you saying? It’s almost as much your creation as it is mine.’

‘Which gives me as much right to decide what happens to it,’ Lindquist said, sounding more determined now. ‘Every night I’ve lain awake thinking about the innocent lives we’d destroy if we went ahead and released those agents. It somehow never seemed quite real before. Now it is, I can no longer be a party to this insanity.’

‘Anton—’

‘Please throw down the remote, boss.’

Streicher hesitated and thought about trying to lash the gun out of Lindquist’s hand. But that Beretta had a light trigger. Any sudden moves and the shot could go off, taking his head with it.

Streicher heaved a deep sigh and tossed the remote. Keeping the pistol pointed at him, Lindquist got out of the buggy and walked up to where the device lay on the floor. Then he aimed the gun downwards and fired, missed, fired again, three times, and his last two shots blew the remote control apart.

While the gun was pointed away from him, Streicher saw his chance. He leaped out of the buggy and hurled himself at the Swede. Lindquist was lightly built and went down hard with Streicher on top of him. Streicher knocked away the gun and punched him twice in the face. Lindquist’s glasses broke. Blood specked his nose and lips. Streicher hit him again, then fastened both hands around his throat and strangled him to death.

Breathing hard, Streicher stood up and recovered his pistol. The remote was a hopeless mess of shattered plastic and circuit board. His only hope of leaving here was to get hold of the other remote, now in the hands of the enemy intruders.

This would not stop him. No setback, no obstacle, no man born of woman could deter him from the future that was written for him.

Streicher leaped back into the buggy, pulled a tight U-turn and raced back in the direction he’d come. As he made his way deeper into the bunker, his ears pricked at the sound of distant gunfire. He headed towards it.

A withering storm of machine-gun fire had Ben pinned behind the cover of the gun racks, sparks cracking off the steel framework and bullets pinging all around him. He’d survived numerous firefights by remaining calm, and he was calm now as he counted off the seconds before the two shooters would inevitably run their weapons dry. Because as exhilarating and empowering as it was to try to hose your opponent into submission by sheer mass of firepower, all good things came to an end sooner or later. Specifically, about 6.66 seconds when it came to emptying a hundred-round magazine through as hungry a weapon as an MP5.

Ben’s count was off, but only by a second or two before he heard the pause, and rolled out of cover to let off a sustained return blast. A snaking line of bullet strikes chewed up the floor and the wall and sent the two shooters into a hasty retreat behind the storage units left and right of the centre aisle.

‘You okay?’ he called across to Silvie. She’d crawled in deeper behind the stack of ammo crates and he could no longer see her. Her hand appeared above the stack, giving him the thumbs-up and gesticulating towards the enemy position. He understood her signal. She was going to try and make her way through the narrow space between the gun racks and the curvature of the tunnel wall, and outflank them. Smart move.

In the meantime, things were set to get noisy. Ben ditched his near-empty submachine gun and unslung the FAMAS. High-velocity rifle bullets could punch their way into places where the nine-mil stuff just couldn’t reach. He fired into the shelving units the two men had disappeared behind, right and left, a steady stream of single shots to keep them busy while Silvie worked on her surprise manoeuvre. Debris flew. Craters exploded out of the walls. The noise of an unsilenced battle rifle in such an enclosed space was punishing. His ears were ringing after five shots and hurting after ten. A splat of return fire told him the two men had reloaded and were back in the game. He saw movement as the shooter on the right ducked behind a row of boxes that covered a lower shelf. He fired straight into the boxes, figuring that whatever was inside them was unlikely to stop a 5.56 NATO round dead in its tracks.

The boxes erupted in a violent flash of blue flame and an explosion louder than the rifle, cardboard bursting apart and bits of twisted metal ricocheting everywhere. There was a scream, and the shooter who’d been hiding behind the boxes staggered out and fell into the centre aisle. His left arm and shoulder and one side of his head were on fire, and there was blood on his face. Ben swivelled the rifle, fixed the sights on him and without hesitation shot him twice through the chest. At the same instant, he heard the loud report of Silvie’s FAMAS from the left side of the tunnel. Three rapid percussive blasts, BANGBANGBANG, and the second shooter came spinning out from cover, dropped his weapon and collapsed in a dead heap just a couple of metres from his companion.

The fire was spreading fast up the shelving unit. Ben spotted an extinguisher on a bracket, tore it down and sprayed foam over the flames. They died back almost instantly, leaving just guttering smoke. He looked at the tattered, singed remains of the box that had exploded and saw the legend CAMPING GAZ.

‘That’s what comes of hoarding hazardous materials,’ Silvie said.

Ben looked down at the body of the man she’d shot. ‘Self-defence that time?’

‘He was aiming at you.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Tomasz Wokalek,’ Silvie said, prodding the body with her gun barrel. He didn’t move. ‘The other one was Rutger Zwart.’

‘I’m counting ten so far,’ Ben said. ‘Including Breslin and the two we didn’t have to kill.’

Silvie nodded. ‘Looks like Streicher didn’t call up reserves, after all. The Army of the Prepared are getting a little thin on the ground.’

‘It’s not over until it’s over,’ said a voice behind them. ‘To think otherwise would be a fatal mistake.’