E-Branch - Invaders Part 42

'Just a fortnight/ Harvey was on his feet now. Tm taking my summer break. So what the h.e.l.l's wrong?'

But 'suddenly' Bygraves became aware of the people gathering to watch the show. And he leaned closer to Harvey, bending down to whisper in the smaller man's ear.

'What?' Harvey yelped.

'But haven't you heard the news, read the newspapers?'

Bygraves looked astonished, and more than ever worried. 'You say you've been up here for two weeks? Then it's here. It has to be here! Have you seen any rats? Have you noticed any other people with these marks?

Jesus, it could be in the water!'

'Plague?' The word burst loudly from Harvey's mouth. 'Hey, did you say plague? But how in h.e.l.l can I have-?'

'Don't say it!' Bygraves cut him short, glancing anxiously at the concerned faces all around. 'Listen, we have a serum. It isn't that serious if you get it seen to early - but I do mean right now! All of the medical facilities in this area have been supplied with the antidote. Unfortunately I don't have any with me, and this isn't a registered medical centre. So I can't give you any shots that will help here in Xanadu, but-' As he set off in a hurry, with Harvey in tow, back around the pool to his sunbed, a small, anxious crowd began to follow on behind. Harvey caught up, grabbed his arm and said: 'But?' His jaw was beginning to flap. 'But what?'

Bygraves picked up a briefcase, went to open it and 'accidentally' spilled some of its contents: pamphlets describing the symptoms of Asiatic Plague, a new strain of bubonic. They fluttered to the crazy-paved pool surround and were quickly picked up by the gathering crowd.

And looking hopeless, frustrated, Bygraves said, 'Look, I think we're probably too late to stop it spreading through this place, but you are already short on time.' Pulling on a pair of shorts over his swim trunks, he said. 'I have to get you out of this place now. And as for the rest of you people/ he glanced at the milling, gawping faces all around. 'This thing will work its way through 471.

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this place like wildfire! So pa.s.s the message: you should all get out, go home, report to your hospitals, doctors, medical facilities - and you should do it now!' Then, to Harvey: 'My car's this way.'

'But my clothes ...!' Harvey, whose clothes were in fact in their vehicle, started to protest.

'It's your clothes or your life!' said Bygraves, pushing a way through the crowd. Ten minutes later they were out of there, and fifteen minutes after that the general exodus began. And Red Bygraves was right: the thing worked its way through Xanadu like wildfire ...

By that time Ben Trask and David Chung were at the observation point. They were on hand to greet WO II Bygraves and Jimmy Harvey when they came tearing down the road from Xanadu in a cloud of dust and heat-shimmer, pulled into the lay-by and braked to a halt behind the ot her car.

'How did it go?' Trask was anxious; he sluiced sweat from his brow, glanced up and down the road. Up there the mountains, and down below the coastal plain reaching to the vastly curving horizon of the South Pacific. Normally it would be a beautiful, exhilarating view, but Trask had no time for that right now.

'Some people were piling into their cars even as we pulled out of the place,' Jimmy Harvey said, keeping well down and out of sight inside the car. The dust was still settling. 'I think we made a good job of it. Thank G.o.d for amateur dramatics, eh?

Would you believe I once played Romeo?'

Trask looked down at him and couldn't help but smile. 'No, but I'd believe a munchkin!'

'Eh?' Harvey grimaced as he pulled a blob of purplish cosmetic putty from under his left arm.

' The Wizard of Oz,' Trask answered. 'Probably before your time. How about the place? How did it look?' 'Like a resort.'

'Nothing odd about it?'

'No.' The other shook his bald dome of a head. 'Unless you consider all those well-heeled people and all that tanned flesh odd. But me? I felt like a right whitey from Blighty!'

Trask shook his head, chewed on his upper lip. 'Why is it I'm not happy?' he asked of no one in particular. 'Why is it so quiet? I don't know ... but something doesn't feel right.' And to Jimmy: 'Time you got some clothes on, and wear a hat. We're out of here as soon as people start to exit the place, or we'll get snarled up in the traffic. That is, if people start to exit the place!'

The locator David Chung was at the side of the road. Lowering binoculars from his eyes, he called out, 'Ben, here they come!

A whole stream of cars on the high zig-zag up there. Ten minutes and they'll be here.' He came at a run across the lay-by's gravel surface.

WO II Bygraves had changed his T-shirt, put on a baseball cap and sungla.s.ses. He slid out of the driver's seat and Trask got in. Now Bygraves would take over as the commander of this sub-section, making its numbers up to four. And they'd be here until they were ordered on up to Xanadu. There were sufficient armaments in their vehicle to start World War III.

Trask spoke to Chung. 'What do you make of it?'

'He's up there, definitely,' said Chung. 'At this range I can't be mistaken. Mindsmog, and dense. But it's so steady - I mean, it registers like steady breathing, you know? - that at a guess I'd say he's asleep. Which at this time of day shouldn't come as a surprise. But Ben, hear me out: I think there's more smog than just his.'

Vampires!' said Trask, e mphasizing the plural. 'Lieutenants? Thralls? How many?'

'Him, and maybe two others. I can't be sure. But they're weak, too weak to be lieutenants. Again I'm guessing, but I'd say they're raw recruits, thralls.'

Trask shook his head. 'It still feels wrong. Too easy. I have this feeling he knows about us, that this whole scenario is - I don't know - a lie?'

Chung shrugged, but not negligently. 'That's your department, boss. I can't help you.'

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Trask gave himself a shake, tried to tell himself he was wrong.

And anyway, there was nothing he could do about it now.

Tonight was their window of opportunity, and it had been 'foreseen' by lan Goodly. So from now on it was all go, go, go.

'David,' Trask said. 'I won't be seeing you until I come in with Chopper One, after dark. Take care to stay tuned, old friend.

And lead these people right to their target, right?'

'You've got it,' Chung answered, as the first car out of Xanadu sped in a cloud of dust past the lay-by and on down the often precipitous road.

'You'd better be on your way,' Chung nodded. 'Good luck, Ben.'

But then a strange thing. A car coming in the other direction, up the mountain road, pulled in sharply onto the lay-by's gravel surface and skidded to a halt.

The driver cursed out of his open window, said, 'Did you see that? If it wasn't for this lay-by I'd be over the f.u.c.king edge! I mean, G.o.d d.a.m.n it to ...!' He had been forced off the road by someone trying to overtake the lead cars in the exodus from Xanadu. 'What the f.u.c.k is going on up there?'

Trask stared hard out of his own vehicle's window at the speaker - at his angular, somehow spidery figure, that seemed crammed into the seat of his battered, blue-grey, Range Rover- styled vehicle -and for a moment knew a sensation of deja vu.

The man wore an open-necked shirt and a wide-brimmed hat, and the way he crouched over the steering wheel like that, he had to be pretty tall.

Tall and spidery, and his v ehicle was ...

Trask stared harder, and the tall thin man stared back - but only for a moment. Then his eyes went wide and the back of his vehicle fishtailed as he slammed her in first, revved up, and slewed back out onto the road.

And: 'd.a.m.n!' Trask shouted, getting out of his car as the dust of the other's departure drifted back to earth. 'Deja vu nothing! That car, and that man - they fit Liz Merrick's description of the watcher at the airport where we came in!'

Even as the suspect car had fishtailed out onto the road, so the SAS type with the guitar had yanked open the boot of the observation post's vehicle and hauled out an evil-looking piece of artillery. Quickly a.s.suming a firing stance behind a stunted pine, he rested the rifle's long barrel on the gnarled stump of a branch. And sweeping the steeply snaking road, he made adjustments to the telescopic sights. Then: 'Mr Trask,' he shouted. 'Up there where the road zig-zags. I can take him out as he rounds that last bend. The range isn't too much, maybe five hundred yards, and this weapon is lethally accurate to fifteen hundred. That's to a.s.sume a stationary target, of course. But I'm qualified with this gun and won't miss. Once he's over that ridge, though, he's gone with the wind. You have maybe thirty seconds to think it over.'

Trask thought it over. He knew he was right - but what if he was wrong? What if the spidery man was an innocent? But then again, why had he taken off like that? And the look on his face - probably shock as he'd realized he was face to face with his master's enemy. In which case he'd be on his way to make report to Malinari even now. But if Trask was wrong... how to balance one life against the security of a world?

The man with the sniperscope yelled, 'He'll be coming into view any time now!'

And Trask thought: The die is cast. We've got Nephran Malinari trapped up there. He can't come out until sundown, and Lan Goodly has forecast s.h.i.t and h.e.l.lfirefor tonight, the night of the full moon. So w hat differ ence does this make one way or the other?

What was it that the precog was always saying - something about the future being as immutable as the past? 'What will be has been,' and all that? Yes, that was it... but it was always coupled with, 'There's no way of telling how it will be, that's all...'

Trask started towards the marksman's position, and in his mind's eye he saw the knuckle of the man's finger turning white on the trigger. As if that were some kind of invocation, the marksman called out, 'I have him in my sights now, Mr Trask.'

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There was no time left, and Trask skidded to a halt shouting, 'Do it! Take him out!' But: 'Skit!' said the other. His finger went slack on the trigger, and beads of sweat sprang into being on his forehead. Letting his weapon slump, he said, 'Cars out of Xanadu, a f.u.c.ki ng convoy! They were in my way, shielding him. Ordinary civilians. No way I was going to risk firing on them.'

Trask had been holding his breath. Now he let it out in a long 'Phew!3 and then said, 'Take it easy. It isn't your fault, and it wasn't meant to be. The future can be like that.'

'What?' said the other, relieved but frowning. 'Some kind of fatalism?'

'Forget it,' Trask told him. 'But tonight, if you see that car or its driver in the resort, then you can fire on them with all you've got. And ditto should they try to come back down out of there.'

Then it was time for a final word with Bygraves and Chung, before the downhill traffic got too heavy. Even now the thunder of fleeing vehicles was becoming deafening.

'It looks like our little scheme is going to work,' Trask told Bygraves. 'Stay on it, and when the traffic thins out flag down a car. See if you can get some idea of how many people are still up there. As for that fellow who slipped through our fingers a moment ago: don't let it worry you. I'll do the worrying for all of us. And anyway, what can he tell Malinari other than what he's already figured out for himself- or will figure out just as soon as he pops up from his hidey-hole?'

Then he turned to Chung. 'David, stay tuned. If that mindsmog gets active, starts moving about, let us know at once. But whether it does or doesn't, and unless something really drastic happens, we'll probably be going in as planned. Okay?'

After the WO II and Chung had nodded their understanding, Trask got back into the car with Jimmy Harvey and drove to the side of the road. There he waited for a break in the stream of traffic, gave a final wave and set off downhill.

The vast bulk of the exodus was still to come ...

And in a Xanadu that would soon be empty of entirely human life, there were just three and a half hours of life-giving, or wn- life threatening, natural light left. Then the sun would dip westward, the shadows of the mountain range would lengthen, and Xanadu's lights would blink on one by one, holding the darkness and the long night to follow at bay.

Or at least, that was how it would be under normal circ.u.mstances ...

It was some eighty miles back to the safe house. Along the way Jimmy Harvey radioed ahead to give the people back there their ETA. He also pa.s.sed a brief, coded message concerning Liz Merrick's watcher, and likewise pa.s.sed on the locator David Chung's expert opinion that Lord Nephran Malinari was indeed in Xanadu. At which the team at the safe house held a final o-group, then went into action to ensure that everything would be fully operational and ready for Trask on his return.

Radio messages went out. With the exception of the Xanadu observation post, the various SAS units began converging on the flying club where Chopper Two had been checked over, refuelled, and was warming up for the long flight to Gladstone.

The other machine stood idle for the moment; its flight to Xanadu would be of much shorter duration. Meanwhile, in the harbour at Gladstone, a fully-fuelled coastguard vessel and pilot had gone on immediate standby. And every man who formed a part of the team was fully aware of the details of the job in hand ...

5:15 p.m. in Xanadu, and for more than t hree hours now private eye Garth Santeson h ad been trying to get to see his employe r, Aristode Milan. But Santeson wasn't the only employee, and the two well-built young men who saw to Milan's privacy in daylight hours had been proving obstinate. For three hours and then some Santeson had prowled the casino and watched it emptying of punters, hostesses, croupiers and their overseers, and finally and most tellingly the tellers. For when the people who handled the 476.

477 cash moved out, then you knew for sure that something was about to go down.

Half an hour ago, turned back yet again by Milan's single- minded minders from his daytime sanctum sanctorum, Santeson had gone out from the almost deserted Pleasure Dome into the resort proper. By then the pools had been empty and the last cars were straggling out through the departure gate. The private investigator was no fool; he had lo ng since found out what th e alleged problem was, but he'd also made the connection between that and what he'd b.u.mped into on the mountain approach road. And it was just too much of a coincidence. So how come Milan - who had definitely been on the alert for unfriendly visitors and suspicious activities for as long as Santeson had been with him - how come he wasn't up and about, checking things out for himself?

Or was he simply unaware that there was a problem ... ?

The trouble with Milan's goons was that they had insufficient grey matter between them to realize they should at least be doing something, if it was only to let their dodgy employer know what was happening here. This was Santeson's opinion, anyway, which seemed borne out by the dumb, unswerving obstinacy of the pair.

Normally he would have been able to contact Milan by telephone; the photophobic, night-dwelling boss of the resort would usually accept calls through the dark hours from four- thirty or five in the evening until nine in the morning, but not tonight And when Santeson had tried to impress something of the urgency of an audience with Milan upon his watchdogs - the fact that he must see him, that his information was of the utmost importance - it had seemed to him that they couldn't care less! He'd simply been informed of Mr Milan's instructions: that he wasn't to be disturbed under any circ.u.mstance until 6:30 at the earliest And that had been that.

But now, with the time approaching 6:00 p.m. and the resort already dark, cooling under the swift onset of a Tropic of Capricorn night, Santeson was determined to have his way.

He had last tried to call Milan just ten minutes ago from the deserted booth at the monorail boarding stage close to the casino's entrance ... but the phone had only buzzed annoyingly at him, because by then there had been no receptionist to transfer the call! And now Santeson was very angry, for as the minutes had stretched into hours his sense of urgency - the anxious frustration of knowing that while something was definitely and dangerously out of kilter here, still there was nothing he could do about it - had increased in commensurate degree.

Garth Santeson had his own ideas as to what was happening or about to happen; it seemed obvious to him that the long arm of the law was reaching for Milan, and his oh-so-shady employer was about to get himself arrested (probably for skimming casino profits); in which case Santeson's monthly and more than adequate pay cheque would disappear with him. It therefore followed that the longer he kept the boss out of trouble, the better hischances of collecting his next cheque, due in a few days' time.

Which in turn meant he must speak to Milan about the people he had seen on the approach road, at least two of which he'd recognized from the party that had flown in a few days ago in those paramilitary jet-copters.

Santeson knew where Milan was - his approximate location, anyway - but couldn't get to him. On any ordinary night Milan might be found in the casino for an hour or two, but much preferred the privacy of his rooms in the solar-panelled bubble on top of the dome (which on rare occasions he would also use during daylight hours). Santeson had a special elevator key, given him by Milan, which would take him to those topmost rooms when he was summoned into the man's presence. But generally, during the day, Aristotle Milan stayed well out of sight, down in the subterranean bowels of the place. Santeson understood that his employer had private apartments down there, to which he wasn't and never had been privy. To his knowledge, only Milan's goons had ever got that close- -Well, until tonight, anyway ...

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CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.

... Before The Storm It was almost as dark inside the casino when Santeson re- entered the place. Some electrical failure, which had taken out most of the lights, and no one left to fix it. But even if it was black as night in there he would know where to find Milan's minders. Surrounding the Pleasure Dome's central spindle, six elevators formed a hexagonal tube of gla.s.s and stainless steel. Four of these serviced the casino's upper levels, excluding Milan's bubble. The fifth was for the use of casino personnel only and gave access to the bas.e.m.e.nt and the almost literally bomb- proof Fort Knox-like accountancy vaults. As for number six: that was exclusive to the persons of Milan himself, his minders, and anyone else who he might choose to entertain, either in the bubble or in certain unknown regions in the belly of the place.

But a.s.sociates? Visitors?

Huh! d.a.m.n few of those! Santeson thought as he approached the central area where, sure enough, Milan's bouncers were waiting to intercept him.

Flanking an elevator door marked PRIVATE (the door to Milan's elevator, of course), they were seated in pink-marbled leather armchairs beside slender, urn-shaped ashtrays. But as Santeson came hurrying between the unlit rows of sullenly silent slots, so the minders came smoothly yet indolently to their feet, and stood side by side, their arms folded on their chests, like a matching pair of eunuchs.

Their expressions remained blank, but the positions they had adopted said it all: they were blocking the elevator doors.

Santeson shook his head, wondering, What is it with these two? Apart from Milan himself, they were the only ones who had keys to that subterranean level housing what Santeson supposed would be sumptuous apartments. His key would only take him up, not down. But in any case he wasted no time in argument; these zombies always reacted precisely the same way no matter who it was who approached these doors.

'I have to see Mr Milan,' he told them. 'And I have to see him now. So don't go f.u.c.king me about, because it's too important.' They looked at him, then at each other, and back to Santeson.

And he looked at them.

They could be twins, he thought, and changed his mind. No, it wasn't that they looked like brothers but that they had like looks. The way they stood there - smartly outfitted, well-built six-footers in their mid- to late-twenties, with sallow complexions that looked sort of grey in this indoor dusk - they could almost be tailor's dummies, motionless yet somehow threatening. Only their eyes moved, and their eyes ... were weird!

Santeson was sure he'd never noticed it before, but now he saw a kind of yellowish, almost feral luminosity in those eyes. It must be the light, or lack of it, and he was further galvanized by that thought.

'Look,' he said, 'all s.h.i.t could break loose any time now, and Mr Milan has got to be told about it.

Now, I don 't want to see him on my own ... hey, boys, if you're that concerned over security, you can escort me! I mean, you'll have to go with me anyway, 'cos I don't know where he is or how to get there. But you do. And believe me, if you don't take me to him right n ow, tomorrow you could be out of work ...'