Effendi

CHAPTER 51 28th October

A window opened in the air in front of Avatar: a sleek black ’copter, blades chopping to a deep bass beat, smoked-glass windscreen and not a decal in sight to say where it came from or who might be inside.

“Floating focus,” said the Colonel. He was talking about the spectacles.

“And the ’copter . . . ?”

“Mi-24x Hind gunship, adapted for three 20mm cannon with Hellmouth, Rattlesnake and Quickdraw rockets—$189.3 million, plus $1.6m per missile. Old model.”

“No,” Avatar said crossly. “I mean, who does it belong to?”

“No idea,” said Colonel Abad. “It won’t tell me. Didn’t want to tell me its model number or price range until I told it you were in the market to buy one. Then the imprinted sales coding took over, always does . . .”

Avatar looked at the tiny machine that floated in front of his eyes. Watching as toy-sized doors blew back and even smaller figures tumbled out, guns ready. Somewhere just above his hearing, sirens wailed and a gun spat, distant as the echo of yesterday’s firecrackers. The black-suited figures were firing over the heads of an unseen crowd.

“I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”

The Colonel thought about this for a split second. “As much as you want and more.” His voice was apologetic. “It was the hidden door,” he explained. “Not an original idea but effective. One of the Medicis did something similar at the Pitti Palace. Of course, the difference is, this one had a silent alarm.”

Even Hani had been impressed. Solder shut every normal door on level Dminus4, then leave an exit through the back wall of a strong room. The safe’s entrance had featured antique defences: tear gas between inner and outer layers, tasers positioned down both sides of the frame, all the stuff that putting a gun to the wounded suit’s head had miraculously disabled. But the trapdoor at the back, that had tripped an alarm satellite in low-earth orbit. And half the intelligence agencies in Europe were busy going ape-shit . . .

It looked like one of them had arrived.

Climbing the first twist of stairs was easy. More so since Colonel Abad showed Avatar how to adjust the spectacles to infrared. The cold the Colonel could do nothing about, except get Avatar back to the warmth of an upper deck as soon as possible. Although, at Colonel Abad’s suggestion, Avatar did empty his rucksack of its handcuffs, pepper gas and rope, and slice a hole in the bottom and another on either side, then invert the bag to wear as a tunic.

“Protect your core temperature,” the Colonel advised him, “if you want to stop your brain from shutting down.” Avatar was slightly surprised to learn his brain could shut down, but he did what Colonel Abad suggested, mainly because he’d been doing pretty much everything the Colonel said since it first suggested he turn on those lights.

“You’re manipulating me,” Avatar said, stopping dead at the thought.

“That’s my job.” The familiar bearded figure smiled sadly, having first popped into floating focus. “Only in the specifications it’s called functional motivation.” With an apologetic shrug, Colonel Abad vanished and Avatar was left staring at riveted steps lit by a dull red gloom.

His skull ached as if someone had nail-gunned a metal band around his head and the only proof Avatar had that his hands were still attached to his wrists was that he could see one of them in the half gloom, wrapped dead and pale round the handle and trigger of his Taurus.

Another endless twist of stairs, then another, and still Avatar was waiting to recognize the door that led through to the ripped-out deck with the frozen pipes. So he kept climbing, breath ragged in his throat and his jaw too numb to do more than mangle his words.

“Sweet fuck . . .”

He was swearing for the sake of it, for the company. Because every time he said something the Colonel flicked into focus at the edge of his vision. Avatar’s serious, sympathetic new friend, iconic with history.

“Sweet, sweet . . .”

“Door’s ahead,” said the Colonel. “But first stop and listen to me.”

“No,” said Avatar, shivering. “Won’t be able to start again.”

“The enemy eat children.”

Avatar nodded. Quite probably. There were some weird fuckers around. One of them had left a dead body on his dad’s beach.

“You need to listen. I mean it.”

Avatar tried.

“Better,” said the voice. “Look, I don’t have time to make you me . . . Tempting though it is.”

“You?” Avatar muttered. “Why the fuck would I want to be you?”

“Then who do you want to be?”

“Me,” said Avatar. “DJ Avatar.”

Colonel Abad sighed. “Failing that,” he said, “and it will fail, who else?”

It seemed an odd question. No, Avatar decided, fighting the cold for long enough to reach a conclusion, it was an odd question. “Raf,” he said, not having to overthink his answer. In the past he’d always dreamed of being Hamzah, but not since that night with the kidnappers, when Raf appeared. Raf was different. Raf was . . . Everyone else thought the bey was a trained killer, one of the Sultan’s best, but Avatar knew different . . .

Raf was weirder than that. Way weirder.

“You know about Lilith?”

Adam’s first wife had been bounced from Eden for refusing Adam. Well, for refusing his suggestion that she spread them. When Adam got bounced in turn, Lilith fucked him against Eden’s outer wall and got pregnant, while Eve was still sulking (this was before Adam repented). After Adam got Eden back, Lilith fucked the snake and gave birth to the djinn.

Like her, not having eaten of the fruit, her children never died.

Avatar had seen the vid nasty several times.

“He really is . . .” Avatar felt the need to stress that, just in case Colonel Abad thought he meant Raf was one of those kindergoths and candyravers who haunted the clubs behind Place Orabi, where the dress options were sun-sucking black or ghetto ghastly.

“Really?”

“Too right,” said Avatar. “Raf can see in the dark and hear things better than a bat. Kills like an animal when necessary, without conscience . . .”

“You like this man?”

“Oh yeah.” Avatar nodded his head, heavy though it was. “He was meant to marry my half sister . . . They’d have been perfect.” Realizing what he’d just said, the boy laughed but didn’t quite recognize the croak that forced its painful way between his teeth.

“So what would this . . . son of Lilith do?”

“With the enemy? Take no prisoners.” Avatar could see it in his head, the way Raf would slide up to the door ahead, all set to kill the lot of them, never putting a foot wrong. Except, of course, Raf was some place unhelpful, trapped in El Iskandryia. A city without . . .

“Turn off the ship’s lights,” Avatar demanded.

“There’s a problem with that suggestion,” said the Colonel. “I can only override components of the electrical infrastructure in an emergency . . .”

“This is an emergency,” Avatar said, putting a space between each word. “Anyway, I thought you ran this ship?”

“Routine tasks only. Engine maintenance and supply systems. Onboard security and oceangoing navigation. The behavioural locks are solid and the parameters tight.” The Colonel’s voice was dry, almost matter-of-fact. “Believe me,” he said, “I looked . . .”

“The lights,” Avatar said as firmly as his shaking teeth would allow.

“To cut those,” said Colonel Abad, “I’d have to kill the ship’s entire electrical system.”

“Then do it.”

“The entire system . . .”

“Sure,” Avatar nodded. “I understand.”

The first thing Avatar saw was a tiny dance of light in the far distance, descending from the ceiling in a ragged two-step; slide and stop, slide and stop. A second firefly joined the first, followed by a third, their dance taking them towards the deck.

Not fireflies, Avatar realized, his enemy, far off across the hangar, working their way down open steps in practiced formation. The fireflies nothing but a faint splash of warmth between the bottom of a half-face night mask and the buttoned collar of a standard-issue jumpsuit.

“How many in total?” he demanded.

All he got was silence.

“How many?” Avatar hissed.

Again silence, cold as the darkness. The Colonel was gone, along with the distant strip of lights. The cold pipes strung just above the deck no longer rattled. And the riveted plate below Avatar’s feet was still, missing its heartbeat from the engine room beneath. Only the fireflies kept coming from far away across the deck.

Sliding himself through the open doorway, Avatar stepped rapidly sideways several times until he ended up behind a steel pillar. When he leant against it, the pillar felt no colder than his arm.

Cold was good if you got shot, according to the Colonel. It reduced internal bleeding. Of course, it also slowed your concentration, which made it easier to get hit in the first place.

Three in here, how many more outside?

Avatar tried to call up the picture Colonel Abad had shown him of that tiny helicopter just after it landed, doors popping open and dark-suited toys spilling out onto the deck. Six soldiers in all, maybe seven. Or was that eight . . . ?

Avatar shook his head, to free up his frozen thoughts, and knew that if he didn’t act soon, the fireflies would be here and there’d be no time left to unravel that one either.

Until he knew where the rest of the enemy were positioned, silence was more or less the only real weapon he had. Silence and surprise. Silence and desperation. Or how about silence and being too cold to care?

No one was going to argue with that one.

Back hard to the pillar, Avatar flipped open the revolver he’d stolen from the Khedive. Seven fat brass circles evenly spaced in a ring, one of them already used. As he pushed the cylinder back into place, Avatar realized this was it. Whatever that actually meant.

The hammer pulled back with a muffled click, an internal lever spinning the cylinder so that a fresh brass case presented itself under the hammer’s fall. Extending his shivering arm and gripping his right wrist with his left hand, Avatar sighted along the barrel at a firefly.

They were close now. Closer than he’d realized.

Time slowed and in the gap between the flash of the revolver’s muzzle and its sharp bark, the vacuum of a passing slug dragged a man’s voice from his ruptured throat. The man Avatar killed was at the back, the last of the three. It was luck, not skill. He’d been trying for a body shot.

Instinct made the two remaining fireflies turn in horror to stare behind them. By the time the first man glanced back, Avatar was pulling his trigger again. This time Avatar’s slug took the man under his chin, deflected slightly on the inside of his jaw and ripped apart his tongue, before liquidizing the man’s cerebellum. What was left of his occipital lobe splashed against the back of his helmet. For all that, the soldier still landed on his knees, then crashed forward to head-butt the steel deck.

The reek of shit mixed with the stink of cordite.

Roll, Avatar told himself, suddenly aware of the aftertaste of vomit in his mouth. That was what he should do. Avatar rolled, barely feeling the rivets that ripped into his shoulder. Then he rolled some more, stopping only when he clanged hard against a snaking pipe, the noise so loud it rang through the open area like a bell.

Instantly, a muzzle flared to his left, three quick flashes that sparked off the deck close to Avatar’s leg, way too close. Rolling up and over the pipe, Avatar scrambled along its edge until he had thirty seconds of blind panic between himself and where the bullets had landed.

Adrenaline was flooding his body and for the first time in hours Avatar felt properly awake. Maybe that was what it took, what he should have done from the start; get someone to shoot at him . . . Now if he could just get them to give him their combat rations as well.

The gun the other man carried was squat, with a long magazine that curved away from him. Its barrel was the length of Avatar’s thumb. Colonel Abad would have known the make, rate of fire and market price. Avatar just knew it looked dangerous.

Three shots, then another three. Each blip of the rifle’s trigger registered in three fire fountains as the soldier swung his gun at random and bullets ricocheted in tight triplets from the floor. The man’s big problem was that, despite the bug eyes of his official-issue combat mask, he fired blind. Avatar was just too bloody cold to show up on screen.

“So maybe I should be grateful,” thought Avatar sourly. Then he decided not to waste the energy and rolled back over the pipe. All he had to do was keep going towards the stairs. Twenty paces later, Avatar stopped to look back and again changed his mind. The soldier was still there, facing away from Avatar and staring intently at nothing much.

Avatar’s options were keep crawling or else do the deed. Only he couldn’t do that when the man’s back was to him, though it was hard to know why turning round to die might be an improvement.

“Hey . . . behind you.”

Bursts popping through the darkness above Avatar’s head. Different fireflies. When the man’s clip finally hit empty, Avatar clambered to his knees and took a shot of his own.