BLOOD GURKHA: Prophesy (James Pace novels Book 5) (23 page)

Sarah had eventually told Pace all about the brief moment when the two of them had kissed and how, in her grief when she'd thought him to be drowned in the frigid waters off of the Antarctic, that it may have turned into a more passionate evening. Charlene still clearly had a crush on his girlfriend but their friendship was a genuine one and Sarah had assured him that the crush would pass soon. Charlene would protect Sarah fiercely and had done so already.

'I've just spoken with Baker,' he said. 'He mentioned there being a few people at my place, looking after Sarah. Who else is there?' The phone seemed to go dead. 'Hello?'

'Hello James.' A new voice came on the line. Male and instantly recognisable to Pace, his light smile deepened into a broad grin. 'I couldn't leave Charlene to take care of Sarah all alone. As soon as I heard about what happened, I made sure I was around and I hassled McEntire himself to let me come. I hope you're okay with it?'

'Thatcher? Good to hear your voice.' Thatcher had been instrumental in their successful escape from Scott Base, in Antarctica. A rugged, tough scientist, he had proven himself to be good in a fight, Together with Stacey Mortos; another of the base scientists, he had signed up to join the McEntire Corporation the previous month, after finally recovering from the ordeal in the snow. Both scientists, like Charlene, had been snapped up by Doyle McEntire to add capacity to the darker activities that his business required. All three, Pace knew, could be trusted.

'Stacey is here with me too.' That made Pace even happier. 'Look, James. Please don't worry about Sarah. She is sleeping like a baby and we are all closely watching her. All three of us have now been issued with a .25 Colt, with some kind of special bullets?'

'Hollow points,' Pace explained. 'Even a small calibre bullet like that is devastating, especially at close quarters.' Good, so they were all armed. 'If you need anything bigger, I have a small collection of weapons there. Feel free to use whatever you need.'

'Thanks, I will, but I don't think we will need to shoot our popguns at anyone. Just the look of those men who are guarding the woods down below us should be enough to frighten any intruder to death. They look terrifying.'

'McEntire has an arrangement with the SAS,' Pace said slowly. 'Serving members of the regiment are loaned out to the Corporation for a range of duties and operations. It ensures that our security teams are the best trained in the world and, when these soldiers decide to hang up their boots, they come straight over to Baker and start working security operations for us full-time.'

'They're armed to the teeth so you have nothing to worry about,' Thatcher repeated his message. 'I don't know where you are, just that you're doing some flying on your current assignment. Focus on staying in one piece and I promise to get Sarah to call you when she wakes up, if you can be disturbed?'

'Definitely. I won't bore you with the details of what's happening at my end. We can catch up about it when I get back to England, with Max, over a glass of Jack.'

'Oh, and Deborah's here too,' Thatcher suddenly seemed to recall. 'I believe Doyle McEntire is not too sure that her journalistic instincts won't resurface and expose you all to the glare of public scrutiny. He's decided that she's better off here, with us lot keeping an eye on her.' He had a jovial tone to his voice and Pace heard a very pleasantly delivered curse coming from somewhere at the other end, where Deborah decided she wasn't taking the joke lying down.

Deborah Miles had been to hell and back, mentally scarred by the terrible indignity inflicted upon her. Physically, the scars would heal but her mind had been permanently injured. If he and Hammond were not successful in finding Josephine, and retrieving her reproductive organs, Deborah would likely end up either in a mental institution or on a mortuary slab.

'Okay, stay safe and I hope to see you all soon.' Becoming increasingly aware that his attention was being distracted from the very real risk of imminent death at the hands of a ten-foot primate, Pace finished the call. Slipping the phone in the pocket of his snowsuit, he checked the holster on his hip and was pleased to see that the Webley remained snuggled up beneath the Velcro flap.

He had already killed the Maglite and head torch, preferring to allow his eyes time to adjust to the dark rather than sit in the centre of the room, lit up like a beacon for a hungry Yeti to see. He was not physically cold; his snowsuit was designed for mountaineering exploration and he felt warm enough but his spirit cried out for a fire to soothe his troubled mind. Strangely, his stomach chose that moment to grumble that it was hungry.

Inside his backpack, Pace knew he had a small cooker and packets of soup but now was not the time to set up camp. Choosing instead to make do with a few swallows of water and a couple of ginger biscuits, he resigned himself to a fractious, sleepless night. He tried not to think about Hill but the man's sightless eyes, staring up at him from the bloody snow, kept popping back into his mind's eye.

Pace shuddered as the thought of the archaeologist's corpse being torn apart, probably at that very moment, as the creature feasted on his flesh.

The footfall outside the window was so light that he nearly missed it. The wind chose to drop momentarily, which is the only reason his straining ears latched on to the sound. Barely a crunch but it was there; the sound made when something pressed down in to deep snow.

Already sitting upright, cradling the Mauser, Pace's heart leaped into the back of his throat; its beats trebling within a single breath. The sound came again, more pronounced, right outside the shutters that he'd recently jammed closed with Hill's small shovel. There was no heavy breathing, snarling or growling but the creature was clearly treading very delicately, hoping to surprise him.

Pace lined the rifle up on the shutters and curled his finger tightly, taking up the minuscule amount of slack in the trigger. At any moment, he expected a huge Yeti to come crashing in through them, smashing them aside as if they were made from matchsticks, reaching those huge arms inside to kill him.

Slowly, something tested the shutters from the outside. A very gentle pull until they were stopped by the shovel.

'Let's be having you,' he whispered to himself, fixing the window down the iron sights; his eyes now well accustomed to the gloom. 'I'll put a bloody bullet between your eyes.'

Then came a harder pull, with the shutters groaning under the pressure until the wooden brackets holding the shovel started to splinter. On hearing the sound of the wood giving, the pulling force from the outside increased and the shutters exploded outwards, heralded by the noisy clattering of the shovel falling to the wooden floor. In the dark silence of the room, the sound jarred painfully on Pace's ears.

A figure was framed in the window, still with the edges of each shutter in its hands. Pace could see it silhouetted clearly against the lighter blackness of the night sky. A perfect shot.

But he did not fire. Instead, he sprang to his feet and lunged at the window. Reaching his arms through, he grabbed hold of a handful of clothing and yanked for all he was worth. Stunned by the unexpected move, he met no resistance and found himself falling backwards on to the hard floor, bringing the figure crashing down on top of him, winding them both.

Just in time, he brought a hand up and cupped it firmly over a pair of small, female lips.

'Don't scream,' he commanded. 'Move off me. We need to close those shutters again.'

The figure immediately complied, pulling away from his hand without making any sound, rolling off his chest and allowing him to scramble rapidly to his feet. Pace half expected to see the creature at the window but it remained filled only with sky.

Placing the Mauser quickly on the floor, he leaned out and pulled the shutters closed again. With no way to jam them, they would have to rely on the stiff wooden hinges to prevent them blowing open in the dying breeze.

Stepping back to the centre of the room, Pace eyed the stranger cautiously, not taking his eyes off the shape while he leaned down and picked up the rifle. Clicking the Maglite on, the powerful beam lit up the entire room, causing both of them to blink painfully.

'Who are you?' he asked coldly.

'I could ask you the same thing?' replied the quiet voice. There was no sense of aftershock; she had recovered her senses immediately.

'I asked first and I've got the gun,' Pace added, snapping at her sharply. 'I don't have time for games.'

'Do you always drag people into buildings by the scruff of their necks?' Her English was fluent and clear but she had an unmistakably European lilt to her tones. German.

'I won't ask you again.'

'Then I'd better answer,' she said agreeably. 'My name is Shilan.'

The enormity of the name; at the heart of the terrible crime perpetrated against Deborah Miles by Josephine Roche, exploded in his mind. His eyes widened with recognition and instant fury as he internally reeled from shock. It was such an odd name but she fitted the bill, especially with her German accent. Could this really be her?

'Dr Shilan?' Shilan nodded, seeing the sudden wildness in the man's eyes and recognising danger there. 'Does the name Josephine Roche mean anything to you?'

Shilan's stomach, barely recovering from the surprise at being plucked through the window, iced over with dread at the mention of that name. She did not reply immediately, trying to size him up. What did he want her to say? She noted that his finger was resting on the trigger of the old rifle he was now levelling at the floor between them, to reduce the brilliance of the Maglite a little.

'Unfortunately, yes. I do know that name,' she admitted carefully.

'What about Deborah Miles? Do you remember her?'

Shilan knew, at that moment, the man was going to kill her. Deborah's name burned into her as if she'd been physically cut with a razor. She also knew, in a moment of stunning revelation, who the man was. She had been forced to listen to Josephine Roche bitch about him often enough.

'You're James Pace,' she blurted but had no further time to say anything else, or even begin to explain herself.

Bringing the Mauser up instantly to his shoulder, flooding the room immediately again with the full glare of the Maglite, Pace fired the rifle.

The heavy bullet was on target, in time to the thundering explosion of its discharge within the dusty room.

Shilan tensed her belly against the searing agony she expected to feel but the ringing echoes of the shot faded, leaving her alive and intact. A split-second later, a thunderous roar of pain erupted from just outside the shutters, through which Pace had just fired his shot. Not planning to go anywhere near the window, he squeezed off the last three shots in the rifle, evenly spacing them around the area of the shutters but was not rewarded by any more sounds of impact.

Dropping the empty weapon on the floor with a clatter, his hand blurred to his hip, rising a moment later holding the Webley. Bringing his other hand around to create a two-handed shooting stance, the hammer was cocked back with audible authority and he aimed the handgun at the shutters, waiting.

The silence would not last for long.

25

Unlike her unfortunate archaeological colleague, Sadie Monro's expedition had been highly successful, despite the Chinook's satellite phone jumping off the hook a few hours after they had arrived on site. The news, of Prior's death and the deaths of several other staff at the facility they'd only just left, led to inevitable questions regarding her possible involvement. Why had she and her team left in the middle of the night? Had they seen or heard anything?

The questioning, not surprisingly, did not come from any official authority. No policeman's voice spoke to her on the telephone. The security manager of the facility was running an initial investigation. The police would be notified shortly, she was assured, but Sadie knew that was unlikely.

She was not aware of his involvement with ARC's fugitive boss but the nature of the job, and the secrecy insisted upon, were all the clues she'd needed that this was a private business situation. Unscrupulous to a fault, she was only concerned with getting on with the work, having a healthy injection of cash into her bank account and finding time to regularly befriend a bottle of the nearest booze.

They had barely made it up into their target valley before the weather had closed in completely. Sitting at fifteen thousand feet, thinly forested and thick with fresh winter snow fall, the pilot had performed a herculean task in setting the massive aircraft down in one piece.

The frenzy of activity upon landing, taking well over two hours to disembark all the passengers and equipment, had barely been completed before the first of several phone calls came her way. Promising to search the Chinook for possible stowaways, she had given the order. Nobody was found and her team were very thorough.

Barely five minutes after touching down on the mountainside, Shilan had seized her moment and slipped out of her hiding place, through the cavernous rear door which had now been opened, running down the ramp that led outside invitingly.

Having no idea where they had landed because she'd spent the entire flight fast asleep, Shilan only knew she had to escape. The helicopter had landed on the top lip of a steep, ice-encrusted ravine which was barely wide enough to accommodate it. She had to acknowledge the skill of the pilot, who had navigated the descent with barely feet to spare. If the Chinook had clipped its rotor blade tips, they now would all be dead at the base of the narrow ravine, several hundred feet below.

She had not stopped to scope out the area all around the helicopter; she purely focused on the terrain that was directly in front of her; a gentle snowy slope that fell away for twenty metres, ending abruptly in a thin line of small pine trees. Snow was falling fairly hard, angled slightly by a tugging easterly wind that rose in time with the sun. It was the snow, a watery dawn and everybody else's fixation on their own jobs, that allowed Shilan to make it to the trees unseen.

Once through the first line, she wove in and around several others, where she quickly became lost from the view of anybody unloading the Chinook. The snow was very deep, plunging Shilan up to her waist every few floundered, struggling steps. Desperate to put some distance between herself and the others, she opted to roll down the slope instead, utilising the larger surface area of her prone body and the natural application of gravity to do the trick. It carried her down the slope for a hundred feet before she felt safe enough to stop. Dizzy; barely able to stop herself vomiting, she had to pause for a minute until the world stopped spinning.

With no food, water or idea which way to go, she had decided that downhill offered the path of least resistance and the likelihood of finding local people at some point. Pausing only to pull a sorry looking branch from the trunk of a tree, to use as a walking stick, Shilan had set off and hoped for the best. Having to leave the gun behind in her haste, it would also double as her only weapon.

Walking, sliding, rolling and sometimes having to climb down sheer faces of rock, she had travelled for several miles before darkness fell. The snow had fallen intermittently all day long but the green snowsuit she had stripped from the dead guard kept the worst of the chill away from her skin. As the light failed, her throat felt dry and she was developing a raging thirst that was only partially quenched by taking the occasional mouthful of snow and letting it melt inside her cheeks.

It had been dark for about half an hour when she heard the unmistakeable crack of a gunshot, shattering the quiet of the thickening forest all around her, snapping her from the monotony of repeated steps instantly. Alert, heart racing, she had stopped. The direction of the shot was over to her left, where the trees appeared to be a little thinner. With no sun or stars to guide her, she had no idea which compass heading that was on. But, she had reasoned, a gun meant people.

She had not heard a helicopter, which she was sure she would have done if the Chinook had been flying anywhere nearby. The likelihood of the shot coming from one of the archaeological team seemed remote so she had made the decision to head in its direction and see where it led her.

It had taken the best part of ten minutes to make her way downhill, still moving between a myriad of tree trunks but she suddenly found the trees opening up onto a narrow trail of pure white snow. It was moving quite steeply downhill, in exactly the direction of the shot, so Shilan made good progress for the next five minutes, where the trail ended at a wide expansive clearing. A single building stood in its centre, in total darkness.

Shelter, at last.

The last thing she expected, when testing the first set of old wooden shutters, was to find anybody at home. The place had clearly been deserted for a long time. She tried pulling them a couple of times; hearing the welcome sound of creaking wood as she pulled harder. A final tug and they had sprung open in her hands but her elation at the idea of being able to get inside instantly turned to shock when she had been grabbed by something in the darkness and pulled bodily inside.

That brought her right up to date; standing in the room with Pace, while the madman was shooting holes in the shutters that he had only closed a few moments earlier. Something had roared outside, true. Possibly a snow leopard or even a tiger; which she knew prowled these mountains. Shilan did not understand why he needed to shoot at all. Nothing would try and get inside; animals were not wired to act that way around human beings.

She was about to challenge him when she realised that his caution was horribly justified. Not one but three of the surrounding windows started to grunt and growl at them. Whatever Pace had been firing at was not alone. In the light of the Maglite, she caught his eye. His face was set rigidly with determination and acceptance.

Pace had feared that the creature might not be on its own. To so brazenly attack Hill, he'd wondered whether there might be a family to feed, lurking somewhere within the bosom of the forest.  There was no time to ponder, or prepare. Pace had emptied the Mauser and had not yet had time to feed in another stripper clip of five bullets; several of which sat inside his backpack.

'Run!' he ordered, snatching up the rifle and slinging it over his shoulder before grabbing her by the hand. His other hand was still holding the Webley so he drew back one foot and kicked his backpack as hard as he could; pleased to see it skitter across the old wooden floor towards the stairs, falling over the lip and banging down to the ground floor below them. By the time Pace and Shilan reached the top step, all three windows exploded inwards in a simultaneous assault of splinters, teeth and muscle.

Not pausing to look back, they took the dusty stairs two at a time. The empty rifle stayed on his shoulder for now.

When they reached the final step, Shilan pulled her hand forcibly from Pace's grip and grabbed the Mauser's webbing strap, sliding it off Pace's shoulder before he could protest.

'Where are the bullets?'

Spinning on the spot at the base of the stairs, he raised his pistol, aiming back up the steps as he spoke. 'In my pack, somewhere.'

'Stripper clips,' Shilan stated knowledgably. 'Five shots per strip?' Pace nodded. 'Try to hold them off for a few seconds, whatever
they
are.'

'This is a powerful handgun but I don't think it's going to cut it,' admitted Pace, heart pounding but his shooting stance steady. From the upstairs, ear-splitting crashing told him that the creatures were now inside.

'Try,' was all she managed to reply before she busied herself stepping over to where the pack lay, a few feet away from the bottom step. Upon reaching it, she knelt down and her fingers got to work rummaging inside for the ammunition.

Pace expected to see the beasts appear at the top of the stairs at any second so only spared her the briefest of glances. The light from his head torch, which he quickly flicked on, was no match for the powerful Maglite cable-tied to the Mauser's barrel but, as it swept back from Shilan to the stairs, something caught Pace's eye that sent a glimmer of hope lancing through the depressive gloom of impending death.

'Stop,' he shouted. 'Over there. Quickly, Shilan. Check it out!' He pointed the wavering beam of light back to a section of floor in the very centre of the dark room. Shilan spotted it immediately, nodded excitedly before bolting over to it like a gold-hungry Olympic athlete released from the starting blocks.

What the light had flashed up was what appeared to be a trap door, set into the floor. Only large enough for a single person; perhaps two feet across, a small metal ring was secured in its centre invitingly. The moment she reached it, her hands were stretching; the rifle and pack forgotten where she'd dropped them.

Strength flooded her, alongside a sense of calm; both driven by the desperate need to survive and the years of medical practise that had taught her the necessity of remaining cool under pressure. In the event, she tugged so hard that the trap door flew upwards with barely a squeak out of the wooden edges, revealing a deeper depth of blackness from the hole beneath it.

Pace heard them moving towards the stairs, seeing the solid old floorboards above his head sagging dangerously and disgorging showers of dust from between the boards with each thumping, crushing footstep. Two-handed, his hands steady and purposeful, the Webley waited in its master's grip, hungry for something to get its teeth into.

Thankfully, Shilan shouted out for him to come just before their unwelcome visitors came into sight. Sparing a head twist in her direction again, he was just in time to see her disappear down inside the hole.

'Come on!'

Pace did not need to be told twice. Salvation beckoned him but he also had no intention of leaving without the Mauser or backpack, which sat discarded where Shilan had been looking for the bullets. Some of the contents of the pack lay spread on the old floor where she had been hurrying but he was determined to salvage what he could.

He ran like a man possessed, on a curving trajectory, reaching the backpack and rifle just as the floor boards above gave way with a shriek of protest and the world above came crashing down on top of him. The massive weight of three huge animals was simply too much to bear for the old boards, which splintered in disgust.

Pace was stunned by the explosion of dust and dirt but he stayed focused on the trap door. He sensed the chaos all around, accompanied by an instant stench of rotting flesh and damp fur that made him want to gag but scooped up his belongings before flinging himself, head first, towards the hole.

The creatures were as surprised by a section of the floor giving way as Pace was, which was the only reason he made it, sliding the last few inches before falling down inside the hole, pulling the rifle and pack after him. Luckily, neither item got stuck to impede his fall, which was far greater than he'd expected. Tumbling eight feet, he crashed painfully onto compacted dirt at the bottom, the wildly dancing light from his head torch jigging around maniacally.

Winded, he felt female hands tugging him off to the left. Clawing his fingers into cold soil, Pace half crawled and was half dragged out from the bottom of the shaft, into a side passageway barely wide enough to accommodate his broad shoulders.

Shilan, who had dropped feet first down the hole, was in far better shape than he was. She had no idea where the passage led because she had no light source and had simply discovered it by feeling around with her hands. Now, with the benefit of Pace's torch, the subterranean detail was brought sharply into view.

Roughly dug, permeated with the stink of damp earth, the side tunnel cut away in a straight line for several metres before curving off to the right slightly. The tight confines meant they would need to move in single file.

Pace's breath was beginning to return, in laboured gasps. Pausing to slip off his head torch and pass it over to Shilan, he put the Webley back in its holster and took a second to secure the ties of his backpack.

Shilan slipped the head torch on and led the way down the tunnel, which curved several times but remained level. She had no idea where it went but that did not matter because they had managed to leave the danger well behind them. No sound permeated down the tunnel and the trap door was too small to allow a tiger or bear to follow them. She still had no idea what they had just escaped from.

After crawling for ten metres, the narrow tunnel ended at the base of another constricting, vertical shaft. Shilan stood up but Pace had to remain in the side tunnel; there was no room for them both.