Ack-Ack Macaque (25 page)

The wind blew colder. The troopers around the helicopter were as immobile as statues, their black, snub-nosed submachine guns trained on the Commodore’s crew.

“My orders are quite specific, Commodore.”

“As is my resolve,
Captain
. Now, I am asking you politely to please leave my vessel.”

Captain Summers lowered his mask.

“You can’t hope to prevail. Your crew will be slaughtered. Please, Commodore, stand down and let me do my job.”

The Commodore frowned. He looked from the soldiers to his own men, then up at the twin helicopters circling the pad; and, for the first time, Victoria saw a shiver of doubt in his eyes. He turned to her.

“Perhaps you should go below?”

She shook her head. She’d be damned if she’d let him fight her battles.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Summers cleared his throat.

“Time’s up, Commodore. Please, stand aside.” He raised his pistol. Behind him, his troopers tensed into firing positions, the barrels of their weapons covering everyone on the pad.

Victoria tasted sick at the back of her throat, and swallowed it back. The Commodore’s men were hopelessly outgunned. The fight would last seconds, and there would be few, if any, survivors. Her fingers squeezed the stock of the pistol in her pocket, but she didn’t dare draw it. To do so would call down the ire of the snipers circling above.

This was going to be a bloodbath.

Summers said, “I’m going to count to three.”

As the sun moved ever lower, the sky behind him had taken on a purple aspect.

“One.”

Victoria transferred her weight from one boot to the other. If she overclocked herself again, could she draw her pistol fast enough to make a difference? Paul’s image cowered in the corner of her eye, nervously chewing the fingers of one hand.

“Two.”

She felt the wind against her exposed scalp. Even this far up, it smelled of the sea.

“Thr—”

“Halt!”

The voice was Merovech’s. He climbed from a hatchway at the edge of the pad and strode forward, between the two opposing forces.

“Tell your men to stand down, Captain.”

Summers lowered his gun and threw the prince a stiff salute.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir. My orders are detailed and specific, and—”

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yes sir, of course, sir. But my orders are to get you on that chopper. Right away, sir.”

Merovech thrust his chin forward. “And if I refuse?”

Summers raised his pistol again.

“Then I’m afraid I’ll have to insist, sir.”

Victoria saw Merovech blink in surprise, eyes trying to focus on the end of the gun barrel. For a split second, Summers seemed to be about the pull the trigger.

And then everything changed.

Gunshots rang out. One of the orbiting helicopters dropped away, bullet holes stitched across its windshield, the pilots slumped forward against their controls. Victoria threw herself forward onto the pad’s yielding rubber surface. She heard cries, and saw members of the Commodore’s crew scattering, running for cover. But the troopers weren’t firing at them; they had other things to worry about. In amongst them, cutting through their ranks, came a blur of incandescent jungle fury.

Frustrated by its inability to dampen the adrenalin in her system, the gelware kicked her into command mode. In slow motion, she saw a hairy arm swat a trooper aside, breaking his neck and twisting his gas mask askew. One of his comrades took a bullet through the lower jaw, spraying bone shards and gristle into the faces of his companions. And at the heart of it all, Ack-Ack Macaque whirled, meat cleaver in one hand, huge silver revolver in the other. Used to fighting superhuman German ninjas, the monkey seemed to be making short work of the lumbering British commandoes. In front of her, she saw Summers turn, ready to fire at the creature, and brought her quarterstaff scything around at ankle height. The blow jarred her shoulder. The SAS Captain yelled and fell, hands wrapped around his right ankle. Victoria raised herself to her knees and pulled the pistol from her pocket.

“Stay there,” she ordered.

The burning helicopter had disappeared, leaving only a dirty trail of black smoke against the sunset to show where it had spiralled out of sight. The second moved erratically, more concerned about avoiding incoming fire than harassing the people on the
Tereshkova
’s pad. She looked around for the Commodore. The old man seemed to have fallen awkwardly. He was using the cutlass as a stick to pull himself upright. She watched as he clambered painfully to his feet and brushed down the front of his white tunic. Then, with obvious effort, he limped to where Summers lay wrapped around his pain, and brandished the tip of his sword in the younger man’s face.

“Call off your men.”

Merovech came up beside him.

“That’s an order,
Captain
.”

Summers looked from one to the other, lips tight against clenched teeth. For a moment, his eyes burned with defiance. Then, as his men let forth fresh screams, Victoria saw acceptance of the situation steal over him. He raised a gauntleted hand to his throat mike.

“All units, stand down.” He spoke the words as if they were rotten to the taste. “Now call off the monkey.”

The Commodore sheathed his cutlass. He put a hand on Merovech’s shoulder for support.

“Can you, my boy?”

Merovech pulled a SincPhone from his pocket.

“K8? We’re all done here. Can you put the big fella back on his leash?”

If a reply came, Victoria didn’t hear it. A loud bang came from below, and the skyliner shuddered like a truck on a cattle grid. She staggered, but managed to keep her footing.

“The engines!” cried the Commodore. “We’ve been hit!”

Thrown off-balance, he clung to Merovech as the deck began to tip.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

DIRTY BOMB

F
ROM THE
T
ERESHKOVA
’S
bridge, the situation became distressingly clear. Through the great curving forward window, Victoria saw smoke billowing from one of the starboard engine nacelles. The blades of the impeller had been blown back and twisted so that, in the last orange rays of the setting sun, they resembled the curled legs of a dead spider. Above the nacelle’s smouldering remains, the fabric of the hull had been gouged and torn by shrapnel. Ribbons of material flapped free.

At their respective workstations, the Commodore and the pilot fought to maintain control, throttling the port engines back to compensate for the sudden lack of starboard thrust.

“We’re losing pressure in hulls four and five,” the pilot said, reading data from his screen. Already, as the damaged hulls bled away their buoyancy, the
Tereshkova
had begun to wallow to the side.

In his chair, the Commodore scowled.

“Well, if we are going down, we are not going down without a fight. Increase power to the port engines, and give me full rudder.”

“Aye, sir.” The pilot was a gangly Muscovite with thick glasses and a spreading paunch: more of a computer programmer than a pilot in the old and accepted sense of the word. “But what about the passengers? If we ditch in the water...”

“Get our helicopters in the air. I want all non-essential personnel off the ship. And get a team over to the damaged sections, see if there is anything we can salvage.”

“Aye, sir.”

“And tell them to take Geiger counters, for heaven’s sake. That was a nuclear engine, and I do not want anybody to take stupid chances if there’s been a containment breach.”

He turned his attention to Victoria.

“I do not suppose there is any point in ordering you to leave?”

She shook her head.

“I’m a member of your crew now, remember? Besides, I don’t have anywhere else to go.” She glanced back to the window, and the engine belching smoke and, possibly, radioactive fallout.

“Was it a missile?”

The old man shook his white-haired head. “A missile could not have penetrated our defences without detection. This must have been a bomb. Deliberate sabotage.”

“Was it the commandoes?” She found that hard to believe. Who would purposefully detonate a nuclear engine? She knew the units used on the skyliners were designed to survive crashes intact, and so she wasn’t worried about a nuclear explosion; but if the bomb had torn a hole in the engine’s fuel containment, the effect would be similar to the detonation of a terrorist “dirty” bomb, spreading airborne radioactive contamination across a wide area, blown on the wind.

The Commodore pursed his lips and brushed his moustache with a crooked fingertip. “They never got further than the landing pad. This must have been someone else. I don’t know who but, right now, I have more important matters of concern, such as keeping us airborne.” His fingers danced across the pad before him, making adjustments to the Tereshkova’s trim and pitch.

“Any casualties?” she asked.

The pilot looked up. “Mostly minor injuries at this point, but we still have two passengers unaccounted for. At least our transmissions are being jammed no longer. If we go down, we can call for help.”

“Anything I can do?”

The Commodore waved her away. “We do not need you here. We can manage. It will be dark soon. Go find Merovech and the monkey. Follow the plan.” He tapped in a command and snarled something in Russian.

Victoria hesitated. This could be the last time they spoke face-to-face. She felt she should say something, but nothing came. Events were spiralling too quickly.

“Go,” he said. And so, she went.

With a hollowness inside her, she left the bridge and made her way aft, to the main lounge, where Merovech and his entourage were holed up, recovering from the confrontation on the helipad. K8 was busily applying bandages to Ack-Ack Macaque’s cuts and scrapes, while the monkey chewed at another cigar. Blood stained the white fleece cuffs of his flight jacket.

Julie Girard sat on a chair, her leg propped up and bandaged. She looked pale and scared. In the confusion of the skirmish, she’d been hit in the thigh by a rail gun’s steel needle. Merovech sat beside her, holding her hand. When he saw Victoria, he stood.

“What’s happening?”

Victoria ran a hand back over the fuzz on her scalp.

“We’re evacuating the passengers. What’s happening up top?”

Merovech’s dirty fingernails rasped at the stubble on his cheek. “The soldiers wanted to leave. They were worried about radiation.”

“You let them go?”

“I saw no reason to keep them.”

K8 looked up. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Victoria shrugged. “That depends whether or not you know anything about skyliner systems.”

The girl smiled.

“Do you remember the
Nova Scotia
, two years ago? Somebody hacked her flight computer remotely, and had her flying in circles around the Empire State building for two days before they managed to fix it.”

“Let me guess, that someone was you?”

“Bingo.”

“Go on, then. The rest of you, grab whatever you need and get to one of the choppers.”

“No.” Merovech’s voice was quiet but firm. “I’m staying here. We have to do what we planned. For my father’s sake, we have to go through with it.”

“What about Julie?”

Julie Girard tried to sit up straight. An empty packet of painkillers fell from her lap. “If Merovech is staying, I am staying too.”

“Are you sure? You’re already hurt, and it might not be safe.”

“I do not care.” She looked up at the young prince and reached for his hand. “As long as we are together, that is all that matters.”

The bulkheads creaked.

Merovech’s eyes lingered on her bandage. When he looked up again, Victoria could see the wetness glittering in his eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

Julie tried to shush him.

“It is not your fault, my love.”

“Yes it is. My mother’s responsible for this. For all of it.” He turned to Victoria. “This has gone on long enough. She has to be exposed, whatever it takes.”

The emotion in his voice stilled the room. Nobody wanted to speak. They all looked at each other. Finally, Victoria said, “Okay, whatever you say. In that case, we do what we said before. Merovech, you take Julie. Make her comfortable and record your message. Have it ready to broadcast as soon as we have the media’s attention.” She turned to the door. “Monsieur Macaque, it’s time for you and I to suit up.”

T
HE WINGSUITS WERE
one-piece black garments of lightweight material, with inflatable flaps between the legs and under the arms, and a parachute on the back. Paul claimed to have once dated an extreme sports enthusiast, and said he knew the basics, and Victoria had seen plenty of online videos, and had a fair idea of how they worked. She had also taken a lengthy course in skydiving as part of her preparation for her visit to the South Atlantic—training which had proved useless when her aircraft ditched in the ocean, a few hundred metres from its carrier.

“Okay,” Paul said in her head, “You have to remember to keep your arms and legs tensed. It’s like freefall, but you control the glide using your body. If you get into difficulty, open your ’chute.”

They couldn’t carry much equipment, but had a number of weapons—including her quarterstaff—strapped to their backs, on either side of their parachute packs.

“I’ll cope.” She turned to the monkey beside her. “How are you doing?”

Ack-Ack Macaque had his aviator goggles pulled down over his eyes. Beneath the wingsuit, he wore his fur-lined leather jacket, and he’d shunned a helmet in favour of the leather skullcap K8 had given him.

“Everyone needs to know who he is,” K8 had explained when Victoria protested. “He needs to look the way he does in the game, so they recognise him at a glance. Otherwise, he’s just a crazy monkey running loose.”

Now, standing at the passenger hatchway, just aft of the lounge in the main gondola, Ack-Ack Macaque looked serious and professional.

“Don’t worry about me.”

He had sticking plasters on his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose, but the injuries didn’t seem to bother him. Or maybe they did, and Victoria couldn’t read his body language. Sometimes, she thought, you could almost forget what he was; but, every now and then, he did or said something that threw you, reminding you that deep down, he really was a wild animal with a head full of artificial brains, and not a human being at all.