The Last Line Series One Read online

  Isaac instinctively knew what he was seeing, he had seen it before; It was Death.

  Isaac had been in Mumbai in two thousand and eight during the terror attack by the commando group Lashkar-e-Taiba. He was there as an advisor of counter terrorism tactics to the Indian special forces. There were still nights when Isaac woke up in a sweat remembering the aftermath of that train station.

  Now it was happening again.

  Isaac flipped open his phone and hot keyed the office number. He gave his location and as much details about their attackers as he could make out from this height, then grabbed Chambers by the arm.

  “No more time to explain. You need to come with me now.”

  Chambers looked in horror at the carnage below.

  “But this is a terrorist attack. They’re just shooting everybody!”

  Isaac looked out the window at the scene of horror below. People were screaming, running for cover with their hands up in a futile gesture of defence.

  His trained eye honed in on the terrorists.

  He could see something was different about them. His sense of perspective was skewed from being so many floors up but the attackers looked larger than the public they were cutting a swathe through.

  Too big. They don’t move right. Not Human.

  “Come on, we need to leave, the police are on their way but we need to find a service entrance, wherever the deliveries are brought in, do you know where that is?”

  Chambers thought for a moment, wiping sweat from his forehead.

  “Yes, yes we have a service lift. It’s this way.”

  They ran towards the lift, passing by panicking office workers, people grabbing handbags and coats. The lift doors opened and Isaac and Chambers got inside.

  Isaac took out his pistol and readied it, pointing at the lift doors as they slowly descended.

  The lift came to a sudden halt at the ground floor and Isaac braced himself against the back wall, shielding Chambers with his shoulder.

  “When I tell you to move, you move, you do exactly as I say, understand?”

  Chambers gave a small nod at Isaac’s shoulder.

  The lift doors opened.

  Long corridor, multiples doors left and right, low light, no threats present.

  “Move.”

  Isaac grabbed Chambers roughly across the back of his suit and forced him down and forward for maximum control. His gun rested over the terrified man’s shoulder.

  Isaac and Chambers moved down the corridor, past cleaning cupboards, staff rooms and storage facilities. Isaac covered each door as they passed, maintaining a positive walking pace and following the exit signs as he saw them.

  They moved from cleaning staff areas into office spaces, still seeing no threats.

  Suddenly they entered a corridor with a long window running all the way along one side, looking out onto the central ground floor lobby, and that was when they stopped.

  Through the glass was a scene of horror.

  It seemed to happen in slow motion for Isaac, bringing back awful memories of Mumbai.

  Bodies lay strewn all across the floor, some clearly dead, some attempting to crawl to safety. Blood was splashed across the floor and walls like thick crimson paint. He saw a woman in a smart trouser suit cowering behind the main reception, her head in her hands, just screaming.

  Through the main entrance Isaac saw Metropolitan Police armed response vehicles, disconcertingly turned on their side. At least seven police officers lay in front of the vehicles, peppered with bullets. Three officers had taken cover behind one of their vehicles and were returning fire with Heckler and Koch G36 carbines, but they were pinned down and hopelessly outgunned.

  Wading through the bodies and the gore, seemingly without a care in the world and with no fear for their personal safety, strode the attackers. Up close not one of them was less than seven foot tall, and as broad as bears. Each civilian they passed that was still moving they double tapped in the head.

  They were in full combat gear, their faces covered with balaclavas that showed only the eyes.

  That was enough for Isaac to see they weren’t entirely human. The eyes that scanned the room were deep blood red, filled with rage. Nocturnal.

  It doesn’t make sense. Unseelie never attack out in the open like this, exposing their existence to the waking world. These things are something else. Something we haven’t seen before. Jesus they’re big.

  The woman cowering behind the desk looked up, and somehow met Isaac’s gaze through the glass. She fixed him with a stare so terrified that Isaac lowered his weapon and put his hand on the glass, his eyes connecting with her in what he knew was her last moments.

  Then one of the terrorists towered over her and without hesitation fired two rounds into the top of her skull. Isaac watched her eyes go dim, and then looked up at the hulking figure with an expression of pure disgust.

  Behind him Chambers was weeping in disbelief.

  “I know her, that’s Agnes, she’s worked here since we started. What’s wrong with these people? What the hell is wrong with them?”

  Suddenly Isaac saw two heavily armed police officers advance through the doors and open fire on the huge attacker, giving him everything they had. The giant figure buckled and staggered under the impact of the 7.62 rounds thumping into his centre mass. The police did not stop firing, they had seen too many colleagues fall, and emptied their magazines into the killer.

  The giant terrorist fell back onto the reception desk, shattering it under his weight.

  As the dust settled, the two police advanced, keeping their weapons trained on the body.

  What they did not see was the six figures that dropped quietly from the ceiling around them, large as gorillas but quiet as panthers. They were surrounded in a matter of seconds.

  Isaac shouted out and banged his pistol on the glass, but it was too late. The two officers were battered to the ground with rifle butts. They tried to curl up into foetal positions to avoid the strikes but the masked monsters rained blows down on them until they were just bruised and broken bags of skin.

  Isaac took a step back and fired off two rounds into the glass, bringing the whole wall crashing down around them. He delivered Mozambique drills into the two closest terrorists, and was relieved when he saw the pink mist cloud around their balaclavas. If there was one thing Isaac always had no matter how tense the situation, it was an inhumanly steady hand. Even if everything else was shaking. He braced himself to run, expecting the returning fire to be catastrophic. Yet the remaining terrorists just stood there, watching him with their red eyes.

  Isaac knew he had acted impulsively, his first priority was to protect the principal, but he could not in all good conscience allow those civilians to die without being represented in a fight.

  Now here he was in a Mexican standoff with inhuman terrorists.

  In his peripheral vision all Isaac could see were bloodied figures crawling on all fours, trying to find an exit through the smoke. Broken glass was everywhere, littering the floor and cutting each tentative hand that tried to find an escape.

  Now Isaac really started to feel the fear coursing through his veins. His heart was pounding and he realized he was bleeding from a cut to his arm.

  The terrorists stood quite still, just looking at him, weapons lowered. Then to Isaac’s horror the one that had been shot with at least twenty rounds started to stand up. It dusted itself down and joined its brethren.

  Isaac could hear sirens approaching in the background, and the dull thud of helicopters. He raised his pistol and braced himself, Chambers cowering behind him. Then the risen terrorist produced something in his hands and held it up in front of Isaac, his balaclava wrinkling in a smile.

  Isaac finally felt his hands start to shake and his mind work at light speed.

  Isaac glared at Chambers.

  “See what happens when you get into bed with the wrong people?”

  Isaac took a step backwards and realized that a service lift was beh
ind them. Without looking he fumbled for the button. Agonizingly long seconds passed before the bell sounded and the doors opened.

  Then the huge commando threw the bomb at them.

  Isaac grabbed Chambers and threw him into the lift, diving in himself and hitting the first button his fingers could find.

  As long as he lived Isaac remembered watching those lift doors slowly closing as being the most terrifying time of his life. Staring at the bomb that lay on the floor only six feet away, huddled as far back into the elevator as he could get, trying to push through the wall. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, imagining the shrapnel tearing into him.

  Then the doors closed, there was blinding light, the lift was falling, and he remembered nothing more.

  Darkness.

  Isaac sat up shouting, his pistol still in his hand.

  He was half buried under rubble and coated in dust. As he sat up a coughing fit took him and he vomited.

  Wiping the dust from his eyes, he gingerly stood up. There was hardly a part of him that didn’t hurt. His arm was bleeding and he had pins and needles in one hand. One knee could barely take his weight as he fumbled for a mini Maglite from his jacket and cast a beam across the basement.

  His torch shone its light over a face, dead eyed and crushed beneath a steel girder.

  Chambers. Poor bastard.

  Stumbling and coughing Isaac made his way to the nearest door. He used the wall for support but still fell twice. As he reached out for the door, he heard a banging from the other side. Suddenly a huge axe smashed through the wood. Isaac jumped back, raising his pistol and trying to stop his hand from shaking.

  Come on then you big bastard.

  Then through the doorway came a figure in a gas mask and fluorescent overalls. Behind him several other fire-fighters were digging their way through the glass and rubble. Isaac breathed a sigh of relief.

  The man extended a hand and Isaac wasted no time in taking it.

  “You ok sir? We’re going to get you out of here, you’re safe now.”

  Isaac staggered and stumbled up into the daylight, emerging up the stairs into the foyer of the building, then out onto the pavement. He was gasping for fresh air, and the sunlight was like gold flowing over him.

  Then he looked around.

  Blood, bodies, broken glass and empty bullet casings. Ambulances, fire engines and police vehicles everywhere.

  So many bodies. As bad a Mumbai, as bad as Kenya.

  Isaac was taken to the back of an ambulance and given oxygen.

  He couldn’t believe what he was seeing here.

  The Unseelie have never been this bold before, they work in the background, in the dark, they don’t carry out commando attacks. The world thinking they don’t exist is how they’ve survived this long. What’s going on?

  The paramedic who had given him the oxygen put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

  “It’s alright mate, you’re safe now. It’s over.”

  Isaac looked around him at the devastation. The adrenalin was subsiding and his emotion rose to the surface.

  All those people.

  “No sir, I’m afraid we’re not safe at all, and it’s not over.” Isaac gritted his teeth. “No way is this over. What happened to the attackers?”

  A firearms officer standing next to the ambulance shrugged and spoke to Isaac.

  “No sign of them. They escaped.”

  Isaac removed the oxygen mask the paramedic had given him.

  “Escaped? The entire Metropolitan Police force is here with air support and I’ve never seen so many AFO’s in one place. Now the army’s turned up. How on earth could a group of red eyed giants slip past? They change hats?”

  The officer was as baffled as him. “We think they may have used the sewer systems. They were…I’ve never seen anything like them.”

  Isaac cursed his luck for getting this job, and wondered where he would get hold of a double headed coin for next time Usher decided to task people on a flip.

  Just a little corporate consultant work, Isaac, follow up a few leads about the Unseelie infiltrating the banking system, you’ll be done by lunchtime. Yadda yadda yadda.

  “I don’t think anyone has, Constable. But don’t worry I’ve got a bad feeling we’ll be seeing them again.”

  The Unseelie Court attacking in broad daylight in the middle of London. Our secret war may be about to become very public.

  He wondered how the rest of the team were getting on in Oman. Couldn’t be any worse than him.

  0800hrs

  Top Secret

  Special Threats Group memo 367:

  Dispatched by General Michael Powell of the UKSF task force

  To STG operational unit.

  Majlis al Jinn, 2nd deepest cave in the world. Located on the Selma Plateau, 1380m above sea level in the Sultanate of Oman.

  Translated to English as “The meeting place of the Djinn.”

  105m deep. To maintain “shock and awe” base jumping will be the preferred MOE.

  NB: For operator safety, parachutes must be deployed no more than 2 seconds after jump.

  Tactical parameters: Recover hostage primary objective.

  Humint requests that any tactical intelligence to be gleaned from hostiles, although this remains secondary.

  END.

  2

  The rising sun cast a pale light across the Omani desert. The sky was beautiful, the colours of lemon and rose Turkish Delight.

  Usher thought it looked like blood-stained piss.

  He lowered his shemagh and glugged from his canteen. His mouth was dry and his temper hot.

  Ahead of them, something fast streaked across the sand, cutting waves either side of it up into the sky. It reminded Usher of childhood Roadrunner cartoons, when the bird would leave the coyote in its wake.

  Usher didn’t want to be the coyote.

  In the midst of the sand cloud, a figure writhed and struggled as it fought for breath. Struggling was good, thought Usher. Struggling meant alive. No one got tea and medals for rescuing dead hostages.

  The two Supacat HMT 400 Surveillance and Reconnaissance vehicles ploughed through plumes of sand thrown up from their passing. Dark fins cutting through the undulating desert. This team was in a serious hurry. The kind of hurry only a terrorist with the means of starting a war provokes.

  Usher wiped the dust from his desert goggles and tightened his shemagh around his head.

  Djinn were dangerous. This one they hunted had killed over seventy people, and left a supposedly secret munitions factory devastated. One thing in Usher’s favour was that the instant any agent of the Unseelie Court crossed over to our world, with the right technology, it could be hurt. Usher was relying on that.

  When Usher had been recruited from the Special Reconnaissance Regiment seven years prior he had imagined ancient spell books and candlelit rituals as the primary means of combating the Unseelie Court.

  Nothing could have been further from the truth. Usher and his team were what were known as blunt instruments. Heckler and Koch G36k, Sig P229, and a Remington 870 pump action shotgun. Those were the earthly tools he used to eliminate unearthly insurgents, along with a few interesting developments in ballistics. Painted in white correctional fluid on the back of his ballistic helmet were the words Bustin’ Makes Me Feel Good, from the titular song of the movie Ghostbusters.

  The Supacats ground to a halt in a cloud of dust. The engines turned off and the only sound left was the moan of the desert wind, whispering warnings and peppering their skin with hot sand. Usher signalled the team to move to the lip of the cave. A column of light shone down into the darkness, creating a milky pool on the cave floor. One hundred and five metres straight down.

  In the shadows that surrounded that pool of illumination, anything could be waiting.

  The team readied themselves at the edge, waiting for the attack signal. It was no easy task, the jump alone could kill them, but they needed to follow the Special Forces principles of s
peed, aggression and surprise. It was the only hope of keeping the hostage alive.

  The team were using modern ram-air parachutes to take them down. Body positioning was all important. They didn’t want to fall straight down and risk plummeting into the rock face.

  Usher gave the signal.

  The sudden lurch of his stomach as there was no more ground beneath him, all air taken from his lungs, adrenalin fired right out to his fingertips and toes, rock walls rushing past him in a blur, parachute deployed, wrenching his frame, then the rapid ground rush, faster and faster.

  Falling.

  He landed with a soft crunch of gravel beneath his combat boots and his chute crumpled behind him. Around him his team landed quiet as autumn leaves.

  New environment. Stale air, deep hush, and the oppressive heaviness of millions of tonnes of rock all around.

  The team jettisoned their parachute harnesses and formed a tight diamond, weapons outwards, tactical torches on. Three hundred and sixty degree awareness towards any threats out there in the gloom.

  “Control this is Empire One. Breached locus, advancing to contact. Confirm?”

  A crackle of static then a calm tinny voice through Usher’s earpiece.

  “All received Empire One. No further information on threat assessment, believed to be a solitary subject. Continue and update.”

  Usher snapped a military grade light stick and threw it out into the dark. The thin glass vial of hydrogen peroxide broke and flowed together with the dye solution and phenyl oxalate, creating a subterranean faerie-glow.

  Ahead in the gloom, an outline of the entrance to a tunnel could be seen.

  Usher tapped the top of his ballistic helmet with a cupped hand, indicating on me.

  When he felt the tap on the shoulder from his teammate, he advanced to the tunnel mouth, covering any areas of threat on the way.

  The cave system had long been associated with the Djinn, as well as being a tick-box for extreme sports enthusiasts. It was a haunted place, a “thin-spot” where denizens of the Court could sometimes crawl through. Not a good place to be searching for their enemies, thought Usher. The Intel said one subject. The Intel was usually bullshit. Djinn were creatures of rock, sand and fire. Usher and his team were at a disadvantage and they knew it, but they could not allow the Court to take valuable hostages. The British Government and its allies had a strict no barter policy with terrorists, including non-human ones. Usher and his team were last resort enforcers of policy and they were here to state their case.