The Nemesis Program

Ben poked the barrel of the submachine gun around the corner of the house and let off a sustained blast of return fire at his unseen enemy. The row of cement bags burst apart. The tape holding together the stack of bricks parted, and it toppled over in a cascade onto and behind the section of low wall. There was a yell. The shooter scrambled out from behind the wall and started scurrying towards the houses behind him. Ben chased him with a stream of bullets, but then his magazine was suddenly empty. The man darted out of sight.

Ben swore and rammed in his last mag. He scanned the buildings where the man had disappeared. There was no sign of him.

Silence.

Ben’s mind worked fast. Having been caught out once, there was no way he was about to try again to cross the open ground to the gates. But he was just as reluctant to retrace their steps in the direction they’d come, and find out the hard way that the shooter had doubled back on himself to head them off.

Ben had a decision to make. And the wrong choice could kill them in a second.

He chose a third option. If in doubt, head for higher ground. ‘That way,’ he said to Roberta, pointing up at the scaffolding attached to the house. Most of the feeling had returned to his left leg now, and with it the ache from the bullet impact. Ignoring the pain, he guided Roberta to the vertical ladder that led up to the scaffold and stood guard as she clambered up to the first level, then climbed up to join her on the rickety planking. A second ladder led to the next level up, where the builders had been fitting the A-frames for the roof.

Ben led the way as they skirted around towards the back of the house. The scaffold was enclosed with a wire mesh safety barrier. Through it Ben could see where the builders had poured the footings for the neighbouring house. Judging by the slick, shiny surface of the wet concrete, like grey porridge that had been scraped smooth with the back of a knife, it had been their last job of the day.

‘Did I ever tell you how I feel about heights?’ Roberta said, clutching the railing and not looking down.

Ben said nothing. He surveyed the ground below. Thirty feet up, there was a much better view of the building site, but still no sign of their opponent. He moved silently along the planking, his eyes picking out every possible hiding place among the houses and garages and construction equipment. Nothing.

Roberta’s sudden gasp made him wheel round in alarm.

The man hadn’t doubled back to flank them. He’d done exactly the same thing Ben had done, move to higher ground and work his way around the back of the house to creep up on them from behind. He had one arm around Roberta’s throat, his squat, muscular body pressed up against hers to use her as a shield and the fat tube of his MX4’s silencer pressed hard into the side of her neck below the ear.

Ben froze with his gun half-raised.

‘Drop it,’ the man said in a flat voice.

‘Shoot him, Ben!’ Roberta yelled. The man clamped a hand over her mouth and ground his long submachine gun barrel harder into her flesh. She wriggled wildly in his grasp, but it was tight. His expression said clearly, ‘I’m not messing about.’

Ben already knew that. He held his Beretta out at arm’s length, pointing down at the planking. He let it slip from his fingers.

‘Kick it over the edge,’ the man said.

Ben nudged the weapon with his toe. It tipped through the gap between the planks and the safety rail and disappeared. He heard it glance off the scaffolding poles, then clatter to the ground thirty feet below.

‘Nice one, father,’ the man said with a crooked grin.

Ben could see the gun’s fire selector switched to single shot. Could see the man’s finger tightening on the trigger, and the angle of the muzzle that would direct the bullet under her ear and upward through her brain.

‘You pull that trigger, you die,’ he said.

The man’s grizzled features broke into a grin. ‘Better say a prayer.’

His grin evaporated into a look of surprise as Roberta gave a sudden heave that ripped her free of his grasp. With practised speed she raked the heel of her shoe down his shin and onto his foot in a hard stamping kick and simultaneously twisted his gun arm away from her in a painful lock that made him cry out.

The gun went off. The bullet went wide of her body and ricocheted with a howl off the wall behind the scaffold. As Roberta was about to knee him in the groin, still grasping his gun-arm, he head-butted her savagely and she sprawled down to the planking, almost falling through the gap below the safety barrier. With bared teeth the man thrust the gun down at her to shoot point-blank into her face.

But by then Ben had raced along the scaffolding and was on him. He drove the man’s arm violently against the safety barrier, knocking the gun out of his hand. Before it had splashed into the wet concrete thirty feet below, Ben delivered a vicious elbow strike to the man’s throat, then another. The man reeled, but he was tough, and within seconds the two of them were grappling violently against the railing. Roberta was trying to scramble to her feet, but the blow to her face had dazed her.

A powerful fist caught Ben in the ribs. A flash of pain ripped through him, then the greying stubble of the man’s crown was coming hard and fast at his face.

Ben dodged the head-butt and used its momentum to steer the guy’s skull full-force into a scaffold pole with a resonant clang and an impact that made the whole structure judder under their feet. Ben grabbed the man’s beefy head by both ears and smashed it off the pipe again, leaving a smear of blood on the metal, then with all his strength piled a knee into the muscular paunch of his stomach.

The man staggered backwards into the safety railing. The wire mesh buckled. A joint gave way and a whole section of the barrier swung loose from the scaffolding. Ben punched him in the mouth and felt teeth cut into his knuckles.

Streaming blood, arms flailing for balance, the man wobbled on the edge of the planks for an instant and then fell backwards with a cry. But as he went, his grasping hands gripped hold of both of Ben’s sleeves.

Ben felt himself being pulled over the edge. The wet concrete seemed to rush up towards him. Then a violent jarring pain all the way up his right arm to his shoulder as his fist closed on a scaffold pipe, arresting his fall. His legs kicked in empty space as he dangled precariously from one hand, reaching desperately with the other for a grip on something solid. He heard Roberta scream out his name.

The squat man turned a somersault and belly-flopped into the wet concrete. The smooth, gleaming surface erupted in a sludgy grey explosion. For a moment he lay there, stirring weakly as if on a soft bed; then the glutinous morass began to draw him down, legs first. He began screaming and thrashing in panic, reaching for the edge but finding nothing to hold onto as he quickly sank. The concrete sucked at his chest, then at his chin. Then his upturned face disappeared under the surface and his scream died as his mouth filled with concrete. The last thing to go down was the agonised claw of his hand.

‘Ben!’ Roberta screamed again. She scrambled to the edge of the planking and looked down in horror. Seeing him dangling there by one arm, she reached hers out for him to grab, but it was too far to reach. ‘Ben!’

For an instant, Ben thought his grip on the slippery steel pipe was going to fail. His fingers were at breaking point. He dug deep into his last reserves of strength and groped wildly around with his other hand.

Suddenly he had a grip on a hanging section of the safety railing. With a grunt of pain and effort he hauled himself higher until he was able to kick a leg up to the scaffold and hook a knee over the edge of the planking. Roberta seized his arm and helped him, dragging him away from the edge. They were both breathing hard.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked, sitting up. Her left cheek and jaw were inflamed from where the man had butted her, and his gun muzzle had left an angry red circle on her neck.

‘Sure,’ she said, gingerly touching her face and inspecting her fingertips for blood. ‘It’s just like old times.’

‘Don’t joke about it. Whoever you’ve managed to piss off this time, they’re not kidding around.’

‘That’s what I have you for,’ she said with a bitter smile. ‘Reverend.’

Ben ignored the jibe and got to his feet. His left leg was stiffening up from the bullet impact and there was a lancing pain in his right side from the punch he’d taken in the ribs.

‘Don’t think we’ll be seeing him again,’ Roberta muttered, peering down over the edge. There was no trace of sympathy in her eyes as she watched the surface of the wet concrete smooth itself out, with hardly a ripple left to show for the man’s body under it.

‘Not for a few centuries,’ Ben said. ‘But maybe his friend can tell us what the hell’s going on here.’

Chapter Nine (#ulink_5b19b010-32b4-5c53-b7e2-dc308372f889)

Ben and Roberta made their way down from the scaffold. The gun he’d tipped over the edge was scuffed from its impact against the ground, but weapons of war could take the odd knock or two. He dusted it off and kept it ready, just in case, as they headed back towards the building where they’d left the younger man lying unconscious.

When they reached the spot, Ben saw with a sinking heart that the worry that had been growing inside him was proved right: the house was empty. All that remained of the gunman was a thin trail of blood where he’d picked himself up and managed to escape. Where he was now was anybody’s guess.

‘It’s my fault he got away,’ Ben muttered in self-reproach as they left the construction site behind and hurried back across the field towards the park. ‘I didn’t hit him hard enough.’

‘Hey, any harder, you’d have killed him,’ Roberta said, then added glumly, ‘Either way, we’d still be back to square one. So what happens next?’

‘You got what you came for,’ Ben said. ‘Me. And I want to know more about all this physics research stuff.’

‘I told you just about all I know.’

‘Then we’ll have to figure it out the hard way,’ he said. ‘Bit by bit, one piece at a time. How’s the ankle?’

‘Hardly hurts anymore.’

‘Good, because we’ve got some travelling to do.’