State of Emergency Read online

  Josh was finding it hard to engage. He didn't know many people here, but it wasn't that. It was the news on the radio as he drove to the museum. The city of Charleston, South Carolina, was facing the worst storm ever seen that far north. Hurricane Nell was hours away from the city and showing little sign of losing its potency. The Ashley River was at an all-time high and the levee was about to break. A city of over 700,000 people was facing imminent disaster. It was New Orleans all over again, Josh Thompson thought, as he made his way to the edge of the small crowd clustered around the podium.

  Anna Fitzgibbon was a real pro, but Josh had never been interested in the minutiae of painters and painting. In many ways he was a down-to-earth character with simple tastes. When it came to art, he could appreciate a good picture for its own sake. He didn't have much time for what his army buddies would have called 'arty-farty rubbish', and he couldn't care less how the artist had arrived at his or her revolutionary technique or what drugs were consumed while they painted their masterpiece.

  Josh surveyed the room, the well-fed tuxedoed, the smug and the sequined. He drained his glass. Right now the waves will be smashing into Old Charleston, he thought. The authorities would be doing their best to evacuate people. Brave volunteers would try to stand up to the unimaginable power of nature. At this very moment, people are dying.

  Later, after the speeches and the toasts and the backslapping, Josh found himself sitting alone on the front steps of the museum. It was an unseasonable balmy evening. From all around came the hum of the city, car horns, sirens, the pulse of millions of individual lives.

  He suddenly felt very lonely. The press of those millions of people made little impression; it passed like a shadow. He'd always been comfortable with solitude – especially since Maggie had left him four years before. She always claimed that the SAS had ruined him, had turned him into an obsessive individual married to the army. But he knew this was only partly true. He was indeed an obsessive, but he hadn't been married to the army, he had been married to his specialisation – cryptography. He was a multitalented man and had excelled at many things, but what really obsessed him was the study of codes and ciphers, the arcane mathematical roots of the discipline.

  And now he found previously unimagined pleasure in bringing that deeply intellectual work to the world through his popular books. It was a shame, he thought for perhaps the thousandth time, that Maggie never understood that side of me. Or perhaps it had been his fault for not illuminating his true drives and ambitions. He had a sneaking feeling his ex-wife would have liked being married to a bestselling author more than an SAS major.

  'Gets a bit much after a while, doesn't it?'

  Josh turned to see Tania Boreman, a writer friend from years back, lowering herself onto the step beside him.

  'What's that?'

  'Oh, the whole self-satisfied 'I love me' vibe. You know what I mean.'

  He laughed and leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. 'It's good to see you again, Tan. What've you been up to?'

  'You know. Still looking for the perfect man. Still trying to write the Great American Novel. The usual.'

  'Well, you're not going to find either here.'

  'Now really, what makes you think that?' She tilted her head to one side. 'Impress me, Josh Thompson. Take me somewhere cool and inspirational.'

  Ten minutes later they were in a tiny subterranean bar called See Emily Play on 48th Street. They found a booth in a corner. The place had a 1960s mood to suit its name, complete with subdued lighting, big cushions on the floor of the booths, low tables, sounds courtesy of Soft Machine, Cream and Pink Floyd. A beautiful long-haired, long-legged waitress in a miniskirt and beads took their order.

  'You seem troubled, Josh. Not your usual ebullient self,' Tania said, as their drinks arrived.

  He shifted uncomfortably in his beanbag. His large and powerful frame was not well suited to squatting on a cushion.

  'No, I'm fine,' he said, fixing Tania with his intelligent brown eyes.

  She gave him a sceptical look, but Josh didn't change his expression.

  'I don't feel I can talk about it.'

  'Oh God! That's not fair. Now you have to tell me!'

  He laughed, flashing his white teeth, and small wrinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes. 'Let's just change the subject, yeah?'

  'Wimp!'

  'Maybe.'

  They had another drink and he started to relax. He enjoyed Tania's company. They had met at a writers group soon after he moved to New York, three years ago. They hooked up occasionally for drinks, dinner, sometimes for sex. No strings attached.

  There was a lull in the conversation, and Josh suddenly said, 'It's Charleston – I can't stop thinking about it.'

  For a moment, Tania looked lost. 'The hurricane? You serious?'

  'Of course I'm serious. Why wouldn't I be?'

  She shrugged. 'I didn't mean to sound . . . God, insensitive, I guess. It's just that it's the last thing I expected you to say.'

  He felt anger rising and forced it away. Calmly, he said, 'Now you know why I didn't want to say anything. Forget I mentioned it. Another drink?'

  'No. Yes – I mean yes to the drink. But Josh, don't get me wrong. I'm just a bit taken aback.'

  He had regained his equilibrium. 'I know. It's dumb. I . . . I don't really know how to put it. It's just, sometimes I find it hard to simply . . . get on with things. Sometimes, I feel . . . I don't know . . . the weight of it all. The logical, hard-nosed part of me says, "Forget it – these things have nothing to do with you, just deal with your own problems." There're plenty of those, for Christ's sake!'

  There was a silence between them for a moment. A Beatles track – 'Being For the Benefit of Mr Kite' – came on the sound system. Tania studied Josh's face as he looked into the middle distance, tapping a foot to the beat of the music. She had a lot of time for him. If it had been up to Tania, they would have taken their relationship a lot further a long time ago, but she always sensed that Josh was completely self-contained. He flirted and seduced, and he loved being popular. He was great fun to be around and he had an attractive energy, a joie de vivre that she found very sexy, but some sixth sense told her that no one could get really close to him, that he had higher priorities than intimacy or commitment to a woman. 'I understand,' she said at last.

  'I'm not sure I do. I sound like a lunatic.'

  'No, you don't.' She touched his hand and he wrapped his fingers in hers.

  They had another drink and paid the cheque. Josh left his car in the lot and they hailed a cab on 5th Avenue. He had a small apartment in the East Village above a shop that sold designer shoes. Josh made them a coffee, but they both knew they would not be sleeping much that night.

  As they made love, he felt strangely disconnected, as though he were looking down upon himself. Then, when they finally drifted off into unconsciousness, it was only a half sleep. He could hear voices. He could make out the odd word, but none of it made sense.

  A silvery light was beginning to filter through the blinds when Josh finally snapped into the waking world. Tania was asleep beside him. She lay on her side, her pale, naked form beautiful and vital in the pre-dawn. He slipped out of bed and went through to the living room. He switched on the TV with the sound down. Charleston had been hit bad, worse than anyone had feared. He watched the news report, feeling cold and numb. Then he dressed and scribbled a note for Tania.

  Out on the cold pavement, the sun was coming up. Shadows cut between the buildings like shards of dark glass. Josh sat on a bench in Union Square, watching the joggers pass. A dog cocked a leg and pissed against a tree. The world continued revolving on its axis and moved a little further in its orbit around the sun. A flock of birds flew low overhead, the beat of their wings breaking the stillness. Slowly, his thoughts fell into place. What he should do seemed obvious. It had been obvious ever since he had returned from Tintara a few weeks earlier. Pulling out his cell phone, he dialled the number Mark Harrison had given him.
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  11

  Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles

  The truck was a blue Ford Ranger, a late model. 'Ace Pools & Maintenance' was written in white lettering across the doors on each side. In the cargo box at the back lay a neat arrangement of metal trunks containing water filters, chemicals and flexitubes. Alongside these was a chlorinator in its box, a rolled-up pool blanket and a barracuda suction-cleaning head.

  The truck pulled up outside 19234 Sheoak Boulevard, a hacienda built in the 1950s. The house had once been owned by a now long-forgotten starlet. Apparently, two of the Mamas and the Papas had met there at a party, and Lenny Bruce once vomited on the doorstep.

  The driver killed the engine and looked through his aviators at the vanilla building. It was a huge property, at least 10,000 square feet. The lawn stretching from the walls to the road was an immaculate lush green, and a quaint stone path wound up to the heavy studded-oak door. A line of bay trees ran across the front of the house between the ground-floor windows. The curtains were all closed, but even from the street the thud of a bass drum and the crunch of guitars from a cranked-up sound system somewhere at the back of the house cut through the warm air.

  To his employers, the man in the truck was known as the Dragon. In their private universe in which they were the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, it fitted perfectly. Of course their favourite assassin should be known as the Dragon – a pseudonym for the devil, a name, like theirs, lifted from the Book of Revelation.

  The Dragon glanced at the printout in his lap. It carried the face of a young man, the latest to cross the Four Horsemen. He scanned down the page, taking in the details. The Horsemen had used a contact in Switzerland to convince the head of a national bank to open a particularly precious vault. The vault had contained a box. In the box had been a single CD-ROM. The disk had been removed, and this simple action had given the Horsemen the green light to call in the Dragon. Now here he was outside 19234 Sheoak Boulevard, ready to remove a fly from the ointment.

  Gordon Smith believed he was the luckiest man in the world. At school he had been the head nerd, bullied by the jocks and teased by the hot girls. Now they would all be laughing on the other side of their faces – he had posted his big news on Facebook and MySpace, along with suitable photos, just to make sure they would know.

  A month earlier he had hit the jackpot. Aged 24, he had become the first to develop what he dubbed Ecofuel, an alternative to petrol he had formulated in his parent's garage in Spokane, 230 miles east of Seattle. Ecofuel could be produced without oil. It gave double the mileage of conventional gas at half the price, and produced only one-tenth of the atmospheric pollution. But there was something even better – the fuel could be used in conventional engines, so there was no need for expensive refits, no time lag until new cars hit the market.

  Gordon was a bright kid – very, very bright – and he knew what he had discovered, the wonder of it, and the danger. He knew he was holding a gun to the head of the fuel industry, and that once the secret was out the oil companies would be really, really pissed. So he knew he had to tread carefully. He contacted a specialist New Jersey-based PR company, Nero Holdings, and explained his work to them. They were quick to see its potential. And it was Nero Holdings who had secured him a $25-million deal – silence money.

  But Gordon knew he could trust the oil companies about as far as he could spit a goat. He placed a copy of all the data associated with his work in a Swiss bank vault and, through Nero Holdings, emailed every contributor towards his big pay cheque, stating that if anything should happen to him or his family, the secret of Ecofuel would automatically be released to the media.

  The enormous house in LA, with its pool and celebrity connections, had come first, then the Porsche and top-of-the-range black Hummer, the Harley, the speed boat, the gold Rolex and the smaller house for his mother and father in a prissy Vegas suburb of their choosing. And now here he was, reclining in the hot tub, Fall Out Boy very loud on the expensive stereo a few feet away. And, snuggled up to him, one each side in the bubbles, were Crystal and Sophia, naked, their perfectly enhanced, perfectly tanned breasts bobbing on the hot water. Just above his shoulder, beyond the edge of the jacuzzi, lay a mirror with three fresh lines of the best Bolivian. He pulled the mirror towards him, plucked a hundred-dollar bill from under a crystal paperweight, and stuck his nose in the trough.

  Gordon Smith was a happy man. He had no idea he had precisely two minutes and 22 seconds left to live.

  The Dragon stepped out of the Ford. He was wearing a blue boilersuit and a baseball cap with 'Ace Pools' emblazoned above the peak. In his left hand he carried a metal toolbox. He strode up the winding path to the front door of 19234 Sheoak and pushed the buzzer.

  For several moments there was no response. Then a voice came through the intercom – female, foreign accent. 'Yes? Who is it, please?' the voice asked, straining against the noise from out back.

  'Pool man. Ace Pools,' the Dragon shouted back.

  There was a click, the door swung inwards, and a tiny Puerto Rican woman stood on the mat. She was wearing an old-fashioned light-blue maid's uniform, clumpy trainers, her greying black hair tied back in a severe bun. 'The side gate's locked,' she said. 'Come this way.'

  The maid turned and the Dragon stepped into the entrance hall, dropped the metal case on the carpet and grabbed the woman, one hand around her neck, the other hard across her mouth. With an expert twist, he snapped her neck between her C1 and C2 vertebrae. She slumped to the floor like a water-filled balloon.

  The Dragon picked up the metal case and surveyed the hall. It was spacious, all marble and rare woods. Suspended from the ceiling was a huge chandelier. A pair of spiral staircases swooped upwards to a gallery. The thump of the music was louder now. He paced across the marble and opened a door into a long, wide corridor. At the end he could see daylight and the glimmer of Californian sun reflected on water. He walked along the corridor and carefully opened a sliding glass door.

  The garden was huge. A gravel path led to the pool, and beside that was a jacuzzi sunk into the ground. As the Dragon emerged onto the path, three heads turned towards him, a young guy sandwiched between two peroxide blondes. The man looked puzzled, grabbed a small black object just beyond the edge of the hot tub, pointed it at a larger black box a few feet away and the music died.

  The Dragon smiled and gave a little wave then pointed to his cap. 'Ace Pools,' he said jovially. 'You called about the filter?'

  Gordon Smith's look of irritation slid away and he broke into a smile. 'Don't you mean, "You called about the filter, sir?"'

  The Dragon looked down, shaking his head slightly, and smiled. 'Apologies,' he said, looking up. 'That's just what I meant . . . sir.'

  Smith turned quickly to Crystal and then Sophia. 'Fuck, I love this shit!' The girls giggled. 'Okay, dude.' He glanced back at the pool man. 'Go right ahead, do your stuff.' He pressed a button on the remote and a new song burst from the stereo.

  The Dragon walked slowly towards the pool. At one end, a set of three stone stairs led down to the pump housing. He sat on the top step, placed the metal case on the ground next to him, opened the latches and lifted the lid. The box was lined with grey foam. Nestled in the centre was a Magnum handgun, and beside it a silencer. He lifted the gun, pulled on the silencer and twisted it into place. Then he closed the box, stood and walked back towards the pool, the case in his left hand, the gun out of sight in his right.

  As the Dragon approached, Smith turned from where he had been licking an erect brown nipple. He had no time to speak or to even lose his blissed-out expression. The Dragon fired a single bullet at the stereo and there was silence. He then turned the gun towards Crystal and squeezed the trigger. The Magnum bullet hit her between the eyes, and her pretty face froze. The bullet exited just above the nape of her neck, taking with it a chunk of skull and a cupful of grey-red slurry. She slammed backwards against the edge of the jacuzzi and slid under the water.

  Sophia had spun in pa
nic and was scrambling at the side of the tub. Moving the gun a few degrees to the side, the Dragon's next bullet hit her between the shoulderblades. A plume of blood sprayed across the hot water, which already was foaming with red. A second bullet smashed into the girl's neck, almost decapitating her.

  Gordon Smith's face was cocaine-white, his pupils huge. They reflected the image of the Dragon, who was now pointing the Magnum directly at his forehead.

  'You didn't really think you'd get away with it, did you, Gordon?' the Dragon said slowly.

  'We had a deal . . . please –' Smith was shaking. Tears welled up in his eyes. 'I've got money. How much do you want?'

  The Dragon gave him a disgusted look.

  'Please – don't kill me,' Smith pleaded.

  'Don't you mean, "Please don't kill me, sir?"'

  Smith swallowed hard. 'Please don't kill me, sir,' he croaked.

  The Dragon smiled. 'Fuck, I love this shit,' he said, as he pulled the trigger.

  12

  Base One, Tintara

  E-Force training, week three

  'You know the trouble with this place?' Josh Thompson observed, leaning back in his favourite armchair close to the pool table in the main recreation area. 'There aren't enough women working here.'

  'How very socially aware of you, Josh,' Stephanie Jacobs retorted, turning away from the TV, which was showing a rerun of The Sopranos.

  He laughed. 'Steph, you'll come out to dinner with me at the beach bar tonight, won't you?'

  'Sorry, I have to wash my hair.'

  'Ouch,' Tom sniggered.

  There was a sound at the door, and a cheer went up from the five people gathered in the room as Maiko Buchanan walked in.

  'Fuck! It's a Borg drone,' Tom Erickson yelled, wheeling over to Mai. Motioning that she should bend her head down, he quickly inspected her neck. 'Nope, can't see any bolts,' he said.