Viper Nine Read online

  ‘There are other militaries unaffected,’ President Utkin remarked.

  ‘The Saudis could help us out on that one,’ Secretary of Defense Danbridge added. ‘From their point of view it would make for very good PR.’

  President Williams leaned into the debate. ‘An airstrike is out of the question. And I’m not making deals with the Saudis. Not based on a single satellite image. And not without confirmation that Kovac is in the compound.’

  ‘How about a ground invasion?’ suggested Budge.

  ‘Only if we know Kovac is there,’ the British Prime Minister said. ‘And only if it’s an allied response.’

  ‘And how’s that gonna happen when our communications are still down?’ General Budge asked.

  ‘We’ve got to act now,’ Utkin insisted. ‘Before they claim the ransom.’

  ‘And if we do that, they could activate the warhead,’ Ambassador Hill argued, sharing a sly nod with Gilmore. ‘Kovac doesn’t seem the kind to bluff.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is why they haven’t cashed the cheque yet,’ President Williams said, rubbing the stubble forming on his chin.

  ‘My officer reports he disabled the power supply to the base,’ Gilmore said. ‘Though he’s stopped communicating.’

  ‘Is the power still down?’ Williams asked.

  Schneider shrugged. ‘Hard to say.’

  ‘Well if this agent of yours can inflict further damage, perhaps there’s a window of opportunity for an assault,’ the Chinese President said.

  ‘That’s a big if,’ Williams countered.

  ‘I motion that we prepare anyway,’ President Utkin replied. ‘But I’d suggest we keep it quiet, under wraps.’

  ‘Perhaps we each mobilise a force,’ Danbridge suggested. ‘Special forces only. Small enough not to draw any attention. Most of us present have units close by.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ President Williams said. ‘Any objections?’ His question met with silence from all parties. ‘Then let’s ready a response,’ he continued. ‘If we get control back of our infrastructure, we’ll be ready to take action.’ The President turned to Gilmore. ‘Do we have anyone working on that?’

  Gilmore squirmed in his seat. If he didn’t reveal more of the operation, he couldn’t help bring down Kovac. Yet if he did, what would it mean for Wildcard?

  ‘Mr Gilmore?’ Williams prompted.

  ‘Uh, yes, Mr President. We currently have a team in Hong Kong.’

  ‘What’s in Hong Kong?’ General Budge asked.

  ‘We believe it could be the source of the attack on our agencies and militaries. Though it’s unverified at this stage, which is why we haven’t shared the intelligence up to this point.’

  ‘That’s our territory,’ the Chinese President remarked. ‘Who have you got out there?’

  ‘I’m afraid we can’t share that information,’ Schneider replied, jumping in. ‘It’s classified, I’m sure you can understand.’

  ‘Your people in Hong Kong,’ Williams said. ‘Can we rely on them?’

  ‘Rest assured,’ Gilmore replied. ‘They’re among our top operatives.’

  Chapter 38

  Munich, Germany. Three Years Earlier.

  ‘The new titanium casing won’t just prolong the life of your machine. It will make it bulletproof.’

  Mo stood with his arms folded and a finger to his chin in the cramped aisle of the computer store. It was one of his favourite haunts – always with that new motherboard smell.

  Plus, it was an independent store, with assistants he could have a half-intelligent conversation with.

  Like Mo, they custom-built their own machines and could source all the parts you needed to create your own from scratch.

  But they were a business. And Hans, the pimpled assistant with the braces and thick black glasses was pushing to bump up the total of the order.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mo said. ‘I’m not sure I see the benefit.’

  ‘You drop it off a roof, it won’t make a dent,’ Hans replied.

  ‘Yeah, but it adds extra weight. Not good if you’re on the run.’

  Hans seemed confused. ‘When are you going to have to run?’

  ‘Uh, you know, for the bus,’ Mo shrugged, not wanting to admit it might be fleeing his studio apartment. If the authorities were to trace some of his more high-profile Black Hat activities, he might have to step out of a window at a moment’s notice.

  ‘Well the beautiful thing about the casing is that it’s not bulky like the old ones,’ Hans continued. ‘It’s woven with graphite to maximise strength, but with half the thickness.’

  ‘And it’s an extra seven-hundred euros,’ Mo replied.

  ‘You said you were building your masterpiece,’ Hans said. ‘You want to make sure it’s protected.’

  ‘I know what you’re saying,’ Mo replied. ‘But that takes it past two thousand already.’

  ‘Well I guess if money is an issue,’ Hans sighed.

  Mo was about to agree that it was. Yet his eye fell on a young woman as she appeared in the aisle inspecting a demo model laptop. She was the most beautiful thing he’d seen since the ninety-three PetaFlop Sunway TaihuLight Supercomputer. A uni-age goddess in denim hot-pants and a white vest. She had long, light-brown hair, the cutest face and pale-blue eyes.

  The girl made eye contact with Mo and offered a dimpled smile.

  ‘Uh no, of course not,’ Mo continued, snatching the titanium casing off Hans. ‘Money’s no issue.’ He again locked eyes with the girl. ‘Money’s no issue at all. I’ll take it.’

  As he stared at the girl, a tall, handsome guy appeared behind her and squeezed her round the waist. She jumped and slapped him on the arm. The guy slung a muscular arm around her neck, kissed the top of her head and led her away.

  ‘Shit,’ Mo said as he watched them go. Now he’d paid seven-hundred euros he didn’t have. He’d have to hack into the credit card company again and wipe out the debt.

  Kowloon, Hong Kong. Present Day.

  Mo watched from the corner as Lim took another hit from the so-called Gigi. His designated bodyguard was getting her ass kicked. And he’d be next up if she didn’t get her act together.

  Gigi must have been some kind of kickboxing champion. As impressive as Lim’s skills were, the larger woman’s punches were like lightning. Huddled against the wall, he flinched at every bone-crunching hit.

  Lim rolled to a stop at his feet and hauled herself upright.

  Gigi spoke to her in Chinese. Mo had no idea what she was saying, but it sounded like the woman was mocking her, circling Lim with the same look in her eye as Mo’s bullies in high school. They’d knock him to the floor, spit on him and ridicule him for being weaker, smaller, darker in skin.

  Bomber. Terrorist. Shit-breath. He’d been called it all, either to his face, or via the graffiti scrawl on his locker.

  Unable to hack Gigi’s computers like he had his schoolyard tormentors, Mo wanted to jump in the way of Lim and rain hell and fury down on the woman.

  But for one thing, he didn’t hit women. And for another, he had a punch like a waft of air.

  She’d kill him with a single blow. And besides, all Lim would do is moan at him to get out of the way.

  So he watched, hugging his laptop bag, hoping for a miracle.

  Lim shook off the cobwebs and re-engaged with her opponent. So far, almost all the Chinese agent’s attacks had resulted in a swift put-down. She’d hurt Gigi, sure, but nothing to put her in trouble.

  Yet this time, Lim didn’t make a move. She kept her mouth shut and her body still in a fixed position, her hands raised and feet planted. The Chinese operative breathed in and out deep. A definite switch of tactics.

  Gigi sniffed, cracked her neck both ways and flew forward to finish her off. But Lim deflected the first punch, the second, third and fourth.

  Mo knew as much about martial arts as he did about picking up women in bars. But these seemed like more traditional moves. Not so much fighting, as def
lecting.

  With each deflected punch and kick, Lim snapped back with a short, sharp counter. Gigi threw a range of combinations to no avail, each ending with a blow from the smaller, faster Lim.

  Gigi tried to give herself some distance. But Lim wouldn’t let her, staying in close. Engaging her in a blur of manoeuvres.

  The triad’s head snapped back. A tooth lost and blood dripping off her chin. She wiped it away and came back for more. This time she surprised Lim with a two-handed punch to the chest.

  The Chinese assassin flew backwards, but twisted to her left and landed with a hand flat to the floor. As Gigi lunged in for the kill, Lim delivered a two-footed kick to the ribs.

  Mo heard the crack of bones. Gigi staggered back, hunched over with a hand to her ribcage.

  Her colour drained in shock. She coughed and spat blood. Now it was Lim’s turn to finish off her opponent.

  But Gigi had other ideas. A claw of nails to the neck and a head-butt to the sternum that robbed Lim of breath.

  The street-fighting Gigi flipped her wounded opponent into a headlock. They dropped to their knees, Lim scrambling to break the hold, her face turning red and eyes sealed shut in pain.

  Mo found himself frozen in panic. Unable to flee the scene. Unable to intervene.

  But a voice spoke to him from the past. It was Hans, the sales assistant from the computer store, extolling the virtues of the titanium laptop casing.

  He recalled the blue eyes and dimpled smile of the girl in the store. The knee-jerk decision to buy the casing. And the fact that hacking into the credit card company to cancel out the extra debt was the act that saw him caught by the authorities.

  Without the titanium casing, he’d never have been here in Hong Kong at all. So maybe it was meant to be…

  Mo opened the flap on his bag and took out the laptop. He ran a hand over the smooth, solid titanium and before he knew it, he was stepping out of his corner, a firm grip on both sides of the laptop. He approached the ongoing struggle from behind, on legs ready to buckle.

  Neither Gigi or Lim saw him coming as he raised the laptop over one shoulder.

  He hesitated as Gigi looked up in surprise. Then he swung with all he had.

  The base of the machine cracked heavy on the base of the woman’s crown.

  She slumped senseless on the carpet, while a wheezing Lim crawled away and collapsed on the floor. Were either alive? It was hard to tell.

  Mo examined the base of the laptop and smiled. ‘Not even a dent.’ He stood over the unconscious Gigi, as if she was one of his high school bullies. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘No one fucks with Super-Fly.’

  As soon as the words slipped free of his lips, he knew he was about to eat them.

  Gigi stirred on the carpet, shook her braided head and shot Mo a glare that could cut steel. As he backed away, she flipped to her feet in a show of strength.

  Mo took a gulp. He shrugged and let out a weak, apologetic laugh. With a murderer’s smile, Gigi stepped forward to exact her revenge. She followed him around the carpet like a lioness about to pounce on a stricken antelope.

  ‘Mo,’ a familiar voice said. ‘Get out of the way.’

  Mo took a step to the left, Gigi’s attention drawn.

  Lim came out of nowhere with a running side-kick to Gigi’s chest. It was so hard the woman flew backwards through the tall window of the foyer.

  Gigi fell through the crashing glass as Lim stood with her leg out straight in the air.

  Mo hurried to the window’s edge and peered over the side. Gigi’s broken body lay on top of an overflowing steel bin in the alley below. He caught a mist of warm, fine drizzle on his face as Lim joined him at the window, bloodied and bruised.

  ‘Man, that was tiring,’ Mo said to her. ‘I’m exhausted.’

  She looked at him in apparent disbelief, but could only breathe heavy in response, as if too tired to speak.

  Mo accompanied her to the doors to the penthouse. ‘Technically I didn’t hit a woman, right? The laptop hit the woman.’

  Lim ignored the question and pulled on the handles of the doors. They were locked.

  Mo pointed to a fingerprint scanner on the wall.

  ‘We need a hand,’ Lim said, looking around the foyer.

  ‘I don’t think anyone’s in a position to help,’ Mo replied.

  ‘That’s not what I mean,’ Lim continued, trudging off across the carpet.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Mo asked, an ominous feeling inside. ‘You can’t mean—’

  Mo trailed her into the stairwell. She stood over one of the dead bodies, grabbed a knife handle and pulled it from deep inside of a triad. Blood slid off the blade and dripped to the carpet, turning his stomach queasy. He averted his eyes and gagged on air as she wiped the blade off on the man’s shirt tail.

  Lim joined Mo back in the foyer and crouched next to the man in the yellow T-shirt, his eyes rolled white in the backs of their sockets.

  She called Mo over. ‘Here, hold his hand.’

  ‘Hold his – a dead man’s—’

  ‘Just do it,’ Lim sighed.

  Mo dropped to his knees and took the triad member’s cold, lifeless hand in his. It gave him the heebie-jeebies, but there was worse to come as Lim lined the blade up against the man’s wrist.

  ‘Oh no,’ Mo said, his stomach contorting.

  She began to carve. Blood seeped out and the blade soon hit bone. Mo turned away and squeezed his eyes closed. The sound of the serrated metal sawing through the man’s limb was unbearable. How could any sane human do that?

  ‘Have you done this before?’ he asked her.

  ‘You mean a hand, or body parts in general?’

  ‘Any body part,’ Mo said.

  ‘A couple of times,’ she replied with the casual air of a psychopath.

  At the snap of ligaments, Mo dared to look. The knife slid through the other side of the wrist and the hand came away in Mo’s. He shrieked at the sight of it and tossed it to the floor.

  Again, Lim wiped off the blade, this time on the dead man’s T-shirt. She picked up the hacked-off hand like it was a sock off the bedroom floor – not a flinch or a wince at the prospect.

  Mo felt dizzy as he got to his feet. ‘Did you really have to do that?’

  ‘Can you lift eighty kilos of dead weight off the floor?’ Lim asked, returning to the penthouse entrance.

  ‘Guess not,’ Mo uttered, hearing the sudden beat of music from behind the doors. ‘Sounds like they’re having a party in there.’

  Lim put an ear to the door and the triad’s severed hand against the scanner. It recognised the print of each finger, blue circles lighting up at the touch of each digit.

  Mo grabbed the handle on one of the doors. Lim nodded, knife at the ready. He pulled on the handle and followed her into the penthouse.

  Inside, it wasn’t as he expected. Far from a converted space full of equipment, desks and monitors, it was a large hotel suite. The opening beat of ‘Burn This Disco Out’ by Michael Jackson blasted through a stereo.

  He exchanged confused glances with Lim as he stayed close to her side. They moved through a living area that appeared far more plush and modern than the rest of the building. As if it had been pimped out, with a big white L-shape sofa, a giant TV and a gaming chair placed in front.

  Against the far wall lay an office area with a large graphite desk, sporting a laptop, a water-cooled tower and twin monitors.

  To the right was a bedroom with a made king size behind a half-open doorway. To the left, a marble kitchen area with a young, solitary guy around Mo’s age, dancing with his back to them as he made himself a sandwich.

  He sang to the music in a baggy red T-shirt and jeans falling halfway down his ass. Digging his hand in a giant glass bowl of M&Ms, he created a miniature mound on a thick slice of white bread, slapped another slice on top and pressed down hard.

  Lim put a finger to her lips as they approached, creeping across the carpet towards the kitchen. The guy sung li
ke someone had cut off his balls and took a bite from the sandwich. As he washed it down with a mouthful of cola from a bottle, Lim and Mo stopped a few feet behind him.

  The chubby young occupant wore glasses, with a thick mop of unkempt black hair and white socks that shuffled across the kitchen tiles. He plucked a blue M&M from the bowl, threw it high in the air, spun one-eighty and yawned wide open.

  But as he caught the M&M in his mouth, he jumped at the sight of Lim and Mo. His hands went to his throat, face turning purple as the M&M lodged in his throat. He choked and spluttered, desperate to cough it up.

  Lim rolled her eyes and slapped the dead man’s hand in Mo’s. He leapt out of his own skin and fumbled it to the floor.

  While the occupant of the penthouse continued to die, Lim hurried to his aid. She wrapped her arms around his abdomen and gave him a good, hard Heimlich.

  The man convulsed. The M&M shot out of his mouth like a bullet, hitting Mo hard in the right eye.

  He cried out and bent over double, a hand to his eye, sure it was the worst physical pain he’d ever endured.

  Nightmare scenarios mixed in with the blinding agony. Would he lose the eye? What kind of surgery would that entail? Would he need an eye patch?

  Actually, that would be pretty cool. But the thought of a scalpel scooping out his eyeball – the thought was too much to bear.

  Through his remaining good eye, Mo straightened up and saw Lim grab a remote off the kitchen counter. She shut off the music and asked the recovering M&M-lover if he spoke English.

  The guy nodded with a rasping voice.

  ‘Where can we find Attack Dog?’ she asked.

  Taking a moment to gather himself, the young guy regained his breath and straightened his glasses. ‘You’re looking at him,’ he wheezed.

  Chapter 39

  Saudi Arabia

  Driver hit Wells with a glare as cold as ice water. She planted the toe of her boot hard between his ribs.

  ‘I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,’ she said, as he doubled over in pain.

  Kovac seemed to enjoy it.