Alex Scarrow - A thousand suns

The hut.

Buller looked towards the open door of the hut and saw a flash of movement from within. The door to the hut slammed shut with a bang.

‘Someone inside!’ he shouted.

One of his squad, Bergin, rushed the door and kicked it violently open. From inside Buller heard several shots being fired and Bergin dived back out of the doorway.

There were another three shots that followed the direction Bergin had thrown himself in and ragged holes appeared in the flimsy wooden wall of the hut, one of them inches above his head.

Screw this.

‘Down!’ Buller shouted at Bergin and swung his MP-40 towards the hut. He emptied his magazine at the wall at about waist height. The rest of the squad followed suit while Bergin hugged the ground as a shower of wood splinters fluttered down onto him.

The firing ceased a few seconds later, their ears rung from the noise. The wall of the hut looked like a cheese grater.

Buller took a few steps forward and kicked at the door. It swung in quickly and bounced off a desk inside with a flimsy rattle. Buller raised his weapon and sidestepped into the hut.

As the acrid smoke cleared he could see the body of the third guard slumped over the crackling, hissing remains of a radio. The body slowly slid to the floor with a thump. One hand still holding tightly to the radio receiver.

‘Shit… I think we’re in for some company.’

It was a good five miles along the coast road before Mark eased his foot off the pedal and another one before he was happy enough to slow down and pull over. He brought the Cherokee to a standstill down a slip road hidden from the main coastal interstate and applied the handbrake. He left the engine running, though.

‘You going to tell me what’s going on?’ he managed to calmly ask after a while.

‘Jesus, Mark. Those bastards were going to kill me!’

‘I noticed.’

Chris shook his head. ‘My God, if you hadn’t come in when you did

… Jesus.’

‘Yup,’ Mark answered drily. There was anger bubbling up in his voice. ‘You sure you’re telling me everything, Chris? Because all of a sudden, this has escalated from being an interesting find to being, well… I’ll be honest here, a fucking hazardous situation!’ He took a deep breath to compose himself once more.

‘You’re right, there’s a little more that’s gone on, Mark. I’m sorry, I should’ve kept you in the picture. But then, I honestly didn’t expect something like this to happen. I mean, for crying out loud, whatever happened with that plane out there, it was over half a century ago! Why the fuck does someone want to kill us for finding it?’

‘This is America, Chris… not good old England. The goons over here don’t box by the Marquis of Queensberry rules, if you know what I mean.’

‘Shit, yeah, I noticed already.’

Both men sat in silence for a moment, both still recovering from the experience.

‘So you going to tell me what’s been happening, then?’ said Mark finally.

Chris told him as quickly as he could about the call from Wallace, the old man on the beach, McGuire, and then the two men he’d seen down by the jetty. The disjointed events over the last few days, each on their own, had seemed much less disturbing in isolation, but putting them together now for Mark’s benefit, they tied together in a chilling way.

‘Jesus, Chris, it sounds like we’ve stumbled on something we probably shouldn’t have.’

‘I know, and I’ll be honest, this is really making me shit myself. Who do you think those guys were working for?’

Mark scratched his beard. ‘I dunno. CIA? Some other government agency?’

Chris looked out of the window at the blackness of the night, trying in his mind to colour the whole picture in. But there were so many gaps. It seemed they knew just enough to present a threat to somebody out there, but not enough to know what to do next.

‘There’s something in that wreck down there that opens a whole can of worms for… for someone. And it’s that very same someone who’s sent in these fucking psychotic hitmen.’

‘That’s great, Chris, but that isn’t telling us a whole lot.’

Mark was right. They were going to need to find out more than they already knew if they were going to walk away from this in one piece. For a start, they needed to know what was in that plane wreck that was so damned important, and maybe then, if they could find that out, they’d have an idea of who the hell had released the rottweilers on them.

He realised there was only one thing they could do right now. ‘We have to go back for this guy Wallace,’ said Chris.

‘No way am I heading back down that road to Port Lawrence. No fucking way,’ Mark answered adamantly.

‘It’s the only way we’re going to find out who’s after us. I know that wily old bastard knows far more than he let on this evening. I mean, he was really twitchy, like he knew someone was closing in on us. He knows who those guys work for, Mark, I’m sure of that. He knows who they work for, and what’s out there under the water.’

Mark drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel. ‘So what do you suggest we do?’

‘I know where he’s staying. We drive right back in and grab him, and then we run like hell.’

‘I see. And we happen to run into these guys again?’

‘I’ll kill them both with my death-ray eyes.’

Mark nodded. ‘Great, well that’s that covered, then.’

Chris grinned nervously. ‘We’ll get that old boy… and then he’s going to spill it all even if I have to pull his fingernails out to get him talking.’

A thought occurred to Mark. ‘They may have already got to him.’

And if they had, Wallace surely would already be dead. If Chris, with the little that he knew, was a liability worth silencing, then Wallace most definitely was.

‘We’ve got to try, though, Mark. I can’t think of anything else to do.’

‘We could go to the police.’ Mark puffed out air. ‘This is some heavy-grade shit you’ve walked into, Chris.’

‘Don’t I know it.’

They sat in silence, the only sound the waves from the sea pounding the beach a few hundred yards away, and the gentle idle of the Cherokee’s engine.

‘And anyway, I’ve still got this,’ said Chris, lifting his hand up so that Mark could see from the moonlight what he was holding.

‘Sheesh! You got the safety on?’ said Mark, reaching out for the weapon and tilting it away from his head. ‘That’s a Heckler and Koch you got there, and — ’ his fingers sought out the safety control lever on the left-hand side ‘- now the safety is on.’

Chris drew in a gasp. ‘It was off? Shit, I’ve been fondling the bloody thing since we left my room. Lucky I haven’t shot a hole through my bollocks.’ He laughed anxiously.

Mark nodded. ‘Very lucky. HKs have a light trigger.’

Chris looked at the gun in his hand, wondering if he had the guts to use it. He hadn’t fired back at that hitman in the motel, but then he hadn’t even been aware that he’d still been holding on to it until now.

Mark must have read his mind. ‘No point taking it unless you’re prepared to use it. You wave that thing around in front of guys like that, and they will take you down in a heartbeat.’

Chris felt the cold, dead weight in his hands, and the odd, overpowering sense of comfort it gave him. ‘I’ll use it if need be.’

‘You ever trained with weapons, Chris? Ever fired a gun?’ Mark asked. ‘I’m not sure this is one of your better ideas.’

Chris flicked the safety lever upwards and downwards. ‘Okay. Safety on… safety off… right… that’s me trained up. We should go now, before I chicken out.’