Matt Hilton: Blood and Ashes

A klaxon sounded, the alarm like the shriek of an animal, and fire sprinklers jetted into life. It only made matters worse, spreading the flaming rain even further. Underlying the rise and fall of the fire alarm and the hiss of water, the dying roar of the explosion was a dull reverberation throughout the structure. Something clattered and bounced, fell past and I recognised it as a misshapen hunk of blackened metal — probably whatever receptacle the petrol had been in — and wished it was Gant’s gun. Better still, Gant’s head.

The man was somewhere above me and by the thrashing and howling he was having a devil of a time smothering the flames that had ignited his clothing. There was another noise, Rink yelling from down below. Some of the flaming petrol had spilled all the way down through the structure on to the lowest level. I hoped that Rink had made it to safety before the splash hit the floor and it wasn’t my friend shrieking in agony. Over Gant’s roars of anger and pain, I searched for Rink’s voice again. My friend’s words came back, measured, controlled, but tinged with anxiety. ‘Hunter, Hunter, you OK up there?’

All thought of keeping Rink’s presence a secret was pointless now that the dynamics of the exploding bomb had changed everything.

‘I’m OK, Rink. What about you?’

‘I’m fine, but there’s a goddamn wall of flame between us, and all this water ain’t helping. Don’t know how you’re gonna get down.’

‘I’ve still got something to do up here first.’

‘What about the radiation?’

Rink had a point. There was no way of knowing if I’d been drenched in the poisonous stuff, but it was highly likely in this confined space.

My silence said it all. If the plutonium had got me, coming down wouldn’t help. Fatalism struck. If it wasn’t going to kill me immediately, I might as well make good use of the time left.

If Gant was in full charge of his senses he would expect me to flee downwards. So I went up. And I went at speed, dodging pools of flaming fuel, leaping over others. I clanged up the last few steps and on to a platform. Off to the left was the hollow tube forming the upraised arm of Lady Liberty. Burning petrol spilled from above, a mini-cascade that made the tube an unreachable escape route. I spun to the right, feeling heat scorch my features. If I hadn’t already been wet then my hair would have spontaneously combusted. The heat forced me to move back a pace. Just as I did a writhing shape burst out of the smoke in front of me.

His clothing smoking, Gant came at me like a maniac, teeth bared in a rictus snarl. He fired the machine pistol, and I had to lunge away, almost going over the railing. I fired from the hip, and the bullets struck Gant in the body. The man staggered at the impact, but it didn’t stop him. I rebounded from the railing and launched myself at the skinhead’s gun hand. Gant tried to swing it on me, but I knocked it aside with a forearm, smacked Gant under the chin with the butt of the SIG. We went chest to chest, grappling each other’s gun hand. We were so close I could see the eight-eight pattern on the other man’s face: one of them as a bullseye for my forehead.

The blow stunned Gant, and I used the moment to turn him. I arched him over the rail, my knee jamming between his thighs. Gant exhaled sour breath in my face.

‘You fucker!’ I snarled at him.

‘Traitor,’ Gant snapped back.

‘I’m a traitor? You’ve just blown a bomb in the fucking Statue of Liberty!’

‘Liberty? This is a symbol of everything that’s gone wrong with this country.’

There wasn’t time for argument, this was all about fighting. We wrestled and jostled and Gant managed to knee my injured thigh. I ignored the pain and rammed my own knee into Gant’s groin. We both fell to the platform, and ended up perilously close to the edge. Gant kicked with both legs, and I had to snatch at his feet to avoid going over.

Gant brought round his gun. It was do or die, and I wasn’t ready to breathe my last. I fired the SIG, uncaring where the target was, only that it deflected Gant’s aim. The bullet struck the man’s left shoulder. Gant yelled in agony and tried to scramble away. I got a hold on one of his boots, but it was loose and slipped off, and almost spilled me off the platform to a sure death. I clutched at one of the supports, but my legs went over the edge. A drip of molten heat seared the back of my neck.

Gant came up to his feet. ‘I got a look at your friend down there. The Nip. You’re consorting with the fucking enemy, you asshole.’

‘Rink’s an American,’ I grunted as I swung my legs back on to the platform. ‘He’s a hero who has fought all his life for his country. You? You’re just a piece of white trash who wants to sit on your lazy arse and have everything handed to you.’

Gant flicked the lever on his gun to fully automatic. He laughed, jerked his head upwards. ‘Does that look the work of a lazy man?’

‘It looks like the work of a crazy man.’

‘No. No. No. I’m not crazy. I know exactly what I’m doing.’

‘Do you?’ I laughed. I’d wondered what Kwon had meant when he’d said, ‘You don’t understand.’ Well, now I’d an idea why the Korean had been so sure of himself. He’d demanded to talk with the CIA… was that because he knew there was nothing tangible they could hold against him? ‘Your bomb up there? If you’d cared to check you’d have found that the flasks didn’t contain plutonium-isotope. It was just heavy water. Enough radiation to set off a Geiger counter, but anyone who knows about these things would have realised it was a very low yield. Your fire will have vaporised it in the initial explosion.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Carswell Hicks bought nothing more dangerous than dishwater.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘Why would I?’

‘Because you’re an agent of a lying government.’

‘No.’ I stared up at the man’s gun, challenging him. ‘I’m not.’

Gant’s face shadowed as my hastily formulated theory struck. Everything he’d done was for nothing? The flames, though intense for now, had no fuel, and the splash of petroleum would do little more than singe the inside of the statue. A quick clean up and the Statue of Liberty would be open for business as usual.

‘Ain’t life a bitch?’ he asked sarcastically. Then he swung his gun at my face. ‘But don’t worry; you don’t have to suffer it any longer.’

Engaging Gant in conversation wasn’t an effort to explain the skinhead’s failings, it was to give me an opportunity to fight back. Hanging precariously over the edge of the platform I had no hope, so I’d taken the opportunity to squirm up on to the deck, keeping my gun out of view. Gant thought I was at his mercy, but I didn’t expect mercy. From a prone position I fired along the deck, and the bullet struck Gant’s unguarded ankle. Gant shrieked, his gun exploding into life, but his arms had also reacted to the agony in his shattered foot and his bullets spanged along the platform in front of me. Ricochets whizzed everywhere, as hot as the falling rain. Something scorched my scalp, whether it was dripping petrol or a fragment of a bullet I didn’t know or care.

Gant couldn’t take his own weight on his shattered ankle. He began to buckle.

Swarming up, I caught the tattooed man’s gut with a shoulder. Like a prop on a rugby field, I drove with my feet, then at the last second thrust out with both hands and propelled Gant back and into the opening to Lady Liberty’s upraised arm. The skinhead disappeared into the darkness on the far side of the molten fluid that still sheeted down the wall.

Gant’s shrieks were horrendous. It was no clean death for him, but the intense agony of immolation. I stepped away from the sickening sounds of thrashing limbs and crackling flame.