The Edge of Armageddon (2 page)

Marsh made the next leg of his journey under cover of total darkness. This was where everything would be won or lost; the unknown factor being raised an inestimable amount by local cartel bosses being introduced to the mix. Who could guess the minds of such people? Who knew what they would do next?

Certainly not them . . . or Julian Marsh. He was transported ignominiously, along with a dozen other people, in the rear of a truck bound for the border. Somewhere along the way this truck veered off the track and vanished into the blackness. No lights, no guides, the driver knew this route blindfolded—and it was good that he did.

Marsh remained aloof in the back of the truck, listening to families prattle and fret. The scope of his plan loomed before him. The moment of his New York arrival couldn’t come soon enough. When the truck ground to a halt and the rear doors swung open on oiled hinges he was the first out, seeking the leader of the armed men who stood watch.

“Diablo,” he said, using the code word that identified him as a VIP traveler, and that he had agreed upon payment. The man nodded but then ignored him, herding everyone into a small huddle beneath the widespread branches of an overhanging tree.

“It is vital now,” he said in Spanish, “that you move quietly, say nothing, and do as you are told. If you do not I will slit your throat. Do you understand?”

Marsh watched as the man met every eye including his own. The march began a moment later, along a rutted track and through stands of trees. Moonlight flittered up above, and the lead Mexican often waited until clouds obscured the brightness before continuing. Very few words were passed, and those only by the men with guns, but suddenly Marsh found himself wishing that he spoke a little Spanish—or a lot, perhaps.

He trudged in the middle of the line, ignoring the frightened faces all around. After an hour they slowed and Marsh saw a rolling, sandy plain ahead, dotted by straggles of trees, cacti and little else. The entire group crouched down.

“Good so far,” the leader whispered. “But now is the hard part. Border Patrol cannot watch the entire boundary constantly but they make spot checks. All the time. And you—” he nodded at Marsh “—have requested the Diablo crossing. I hope you are ready for it.”

Marsh grunted. He had no idea what the little guy was talking about. Soon though, men started disappearing, each with a small group of immigrants, until only Marsh, the leader, and one guard were left.

“I am Gomez,” the leader said. “This is Lopez. We will see you safely through the tunnel.”

“And those guys?” Marsh nodded at the departed immigrants, effecting a fake American accent as best he could.

“They pay only five thousand per head.” Gomez made a dismissive gesture. “They take their chances with the bullets. Do not worry, you can trust us.”

Marsh started at the sly smile fixed firmly upon his guide’s face. Of course, the entire journey had progressed far too smoothly to expect it to continue. The question was—when would they jump him?

“Let’s get into the tunnel,” he said. “I can feel prying eyes out here.”

Gomez couldn’t stop a flash of worry flickering across his face and Lopez scanned the darkness all around. As one the two men ushered him in an easterly direction, at a slight angle but toward the border. Marsh blundered along, deliberately misstepping and appearing inadequate. At one point Lopez even reached out to help him along, a helping hand which Marsh catalogued for later, logging it as a weakness. He was by no means an expert, but a bottomless bank account had once afforded him many things beside material trappings, the experience of world champion martial artists and ex-Special Forces troops among them. Marsh knew a few tricks, rusty though he may be.

They walked for a while, the desert stretching out around them and almost soundless. When a rolling hill appeared ahead, Marsh was fully prepared to start climbing, but Gomez stopped and pointed out a feature he otherwise would never have seen. Where the sandy ground met the sloping foothills a pair of small trees met a tangle of brush. It wasn’t toward this arrangement that Gomez walked, however, it was a careful thirty paces to the right and then ten more up the steepest slope. Once there Lopez scanned the area with infinite care.

“Clear,” he said at length.

Gomez then scrabbled around for a length of buried rope and began to pull. Marsh saw a small section of the hillside rise up, displacing stones and brush to reveal a man-size hole that had been hewn out of the living stone. Gomez slipped inside and then Lopez waved the barrel of his gun at Marsh.

“You now. You too.”

Marsh followed, ducking his head carefully and watching for the trap he knew was only moments away from being sprung. Then, as an after-thought, the man with two sides switched channels, deciding to inch back out into the darkness.

Lopez was waiting, gun up. Marsh slipped, boots scrabbling down the stony slope. Lopez reached out, weapon dropping, and Marsh brought a six-inch blade swinging around, burying its point in the other man’s carotid. Lopez’s eyes went wide, and a hand came up to staunch the flow, but Marsh was having none of it. He punched Lopez between the eyes, wrestled his gun free and then kicked the dying body down the slope.

Fuck you
.

Marsh dropped the rifle, knowing Gomez would catch on quicker than necessary if he saw it in Marsh’s hand. Then he re-entered the tunnel and quickly made his way down the initial passage. It was rough and ready, held up by shaking timbers, dust and mortar dribbling down from the roof. Marsh fully expected to be buried at any moment. Gomez’s voice reached his straining ears.

“Don’t worry. That is just the false entry to scare any who might stumble upon this tunnel. Come further down, my friend.”

Marsh knew exactly what would be waiting for him “further down”, but he did now have a small element of surprise. The tricky part would be disabling Gomez’s weapon without sustaining a nasty wound. New York was still thousands of miles away.

And it seemed much further, stood as he was under the Mexican desert, feeling the drip-drip of dirt down his back, and surrounded by the stench of sweat and vegetation, his eyes stung by dust.

Marsh ventured forward, crawling at one point and dragging the backpack behind, a strap looped around his ankle. It’s full of clothes, he thought at one point. Just clothes and maybe a toothbrush. A nice cologne. A sachet of coffee . . . he wondered where the Americans might station their radiation sensing devices, then began to worry about the radiation itself. Again.

Probably something you should have checked before setting off.

Ah, well, you live and learn.

Marsh made himself laugh just as he emerged from the narrow tunnel and into a much larger one. Gomez was bending down, holding a hand out to help.

“Something funny?”

“Yeah, your fucking teeth.”

Gomez stared, shocked and disbelieving. That sentence it seemed, was the last thing he expected to hear at this point in their journey. Marsh had calculated that it might be. As Gomez tried to compute, Marsh rose, twisted the gun in Gomez’s hands, and rammed the butt into the other man’s mouth.

“Now do you see what I mean?”

Gomez wrestled hard, pushing Marsh away and bringing the barrel back toward him. Blood sprayed from his mouth as he bellowed, and teeth fell to the floor. Marsh ducked under the long barrel and came up with a hard punch to the jaw and another to the side of the head. Gomez staggered, eyes betraying that he still couldn’t believe this odd duck had gotten the better of him.

Marsh wrenched the knife from a sheath around the Mexican’s side as they grappled. Gomez flung himself away, knowing what would happen next. He collided with the rock wall, smashing shoulder and skull with a heavy groan. Marsh threw a punch which glanced off the Mexican and then hit rock. Blood seeped from his own knuckles. The gun came up again, but Marsh levered himself so that it rose between his legs, the business end now rendered useless.

Gomez head-butted him, their blood mingling and spraying the walls together. Marsh staggered but turned away from the next strike, and then remembered the knife still held in his left hand.

A powerful shove and the knife scraped Gomez’s ribs, but the Mexican had dropped his gun and planted both hands on Marsh’s knife arm, thus arresting the force and stopping the plunge of the blade. Pain twisted his features but the man had manage to halt certain death.

Marsh immediately concentrated on his free hand, using it to punch again and again, seeking out vulnerable areas. Together, the men struggled hard, inching up and down the tunnel, striking wooden beams and shuffling through mounds of dirt. Runnels of sweat hit the sand; heavy grunts like rutting pigs filled the man-made space. No quarter was given, but no ground was gained. Gomez took every punch like the hardened street fighter he was, and it was Marsh who started to weaken first.

“Look . . . forward to . . . cut . . . cutting you . . .” Gomez panted, eyes feral, lips bloody and flared back.

Marsh refused to die in this lonely, hellish place. He yanked the knife back, twisting it out of Gomez’s body and then stepped back, giving the two men a few feet of separation. The gun lay on the floor, discarded.

Gomez came at him like a devil, screaming, rumbling. Marsh brushed the attack off as he had been taught to do, turning a shoulder and allowing Gomez’s own momentum to slam him head first into the other wall. Then Marsh kicked him in the spine. He wouldn’t use the knife again until the end was a foregone conclusion. He had also been taught that the most obvious weapon wasn’t always the best one to use.

Gomez peeled his body off the wall, head hanging, and turned around. Marsh stared into the blood-red face of a demon. It fascinated him for a moment, the contrast of the crimson face and the white-fleshed neck, the black holes where yellowed teeth had once nestled, the pale ears sticking almost comically out to either side. Gomez swung a punch. Marsh took it on the side of the head.

Now Gomez was wide open.

Marsh stepped forward, head spinning, but retaining enough cognizance to thrust truly with the knife, sending its blade up into the other man’s heart. Gomez jerked, breath whistling out of a shattered mouth, and then locked eyes with Marsh.

“I paid you with fair intentions,” Marsh breathed. “You should have just taken the money.”

These people, he knew, were traitorous by nature and no doubt by nurture too. Betrayal would be their second or third thought of the day, after “why is there blood on my hands?” and “who the hell did I end up killing last night?” Possibly a thought to the after-effects of a cocaine-blast in there as well. But Gomez . . . he should just have taken the money.

Marsh watched the man slither to the ground, then took stock. He was bruised, aching, but relatively unhurt. His head pounded. Luckily, he had thought to pack paracetamol in one of the backpack’s small pouches that nestled alongside the nuke. So handy that. He had a pack of baby wipes in there too.

Marsh wiped and swallowed the tablets dry. He’d forgotten to pack water.
There’s always something though, isn’t there?

Without a backward glance at the dead body he lowered his head and began the long walk through the underground tunnel and into Texas.

*

The hours wore on. Julian Marsh trudged underneath America, a nuclear weapon strapped to his back. The device might be smaller than he’d expected—although it still bulged the backpack—but the internal gubbins were no less heavy. The thing dragged at him like an unwanted friend or brother, pulling him back. It made every step a strain.

Darkness surrounded and almost overwhelmed him, disrupted only by the occasional hanging light. Many were broken, too many. It was dank down here, the scuttle of unseen animals always painting nightmare images in his brain that played in wicked harmony to the random itches running across his shoulders and down his spine. Air was in limited supply, and what there was, was of poor quality.

He began to feel weary beyond measure, to hallucinate. Once, Tyler Webb chased him and then an evil troll. He fell twice, scraping knees and elbows, but dragged himself back to his feet. The troll transmogrified into evil Mexicans and then a walking taco, bursting with red and green peppers and guacamole.

As the miles wore on he began to feel that he might not make it, that everything would turn out better if he just lay down for a while. Take a little nap. The only thing stopping him was his more colorful side—the part that had once stubbornly survived childhood when everyone else wanted him to fade away.

Eventually brighter lights appeared ahead and he breached the other end of the tunnel, and then spent many minutes gauging what kind of a reception he might receive. In truth, he expected no reception committee—he’d never been expected to reach the land of the free.

By design, he’d arranged completely separate transport at this end. Marsh was careful, and no fool. A helicopter should be stationed a few miles off, awaiting his call. Marsh removed one of three burner cells secreted around his body and in the backpack, and made the call.

No words were passed when they met, no comments on the blood and dirt that encrusted Marsh’s face and hair. The pilot lifted the bird into the air and swooped off in the direction of Corpus Christi—the next and penultimate stop in Marsh’s grand adventure. One thing was for sure, he’d have a boatload of stories to tell . . .