LITMIR.BIZ

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pink, as blood soaked up from beneath it.

      Admiral Seward almost tripped over the first corpse.

      It lay in front of the empty doorway, the body of a man who could have been no more than nineteen or twenty. He was covered in snow, and Seward ordered the men to clear the man’s body. They knelt and brushed the snow away with their gloved hands, uncovering the dark grey SPC uniform inch by inch.

      There was a gagging sound from one of the men working at the man’s waist, and Seward stepped up next to him. The man turned away, his hand over his mouth, and the Admiral felt his gorge rise.

      The soldier had been pulled in half.

      Below his waist there was nothing but an enormous quantity of blood, covering the floor in a thick pool.

      Admiral Seward split the rescue team into two groups, and addressed the first.

      “Clear this room,” he told them. “I want these men taken out of here. The rest of you, come with me.”

      He left Major Turner overseeing the recovery of the bodies in the control room and led the rest of the men deeper into the base. They walked slowly along a wide grey corridor, and into a lift that was standing open at the end. Seward pressed the button for the first underground level.

      “Search this building floor by floor for survivors,” he said. “I don’t want anyone left behind.”

      There was a ringing noise, and the doors slid open. The Operators filed out, split into two-man teams, and started checking the doors that ran along both sides of the corridor. Seward watched them until the lift doors closed in front of him, and he began to descend again.

      The Director of Blacklight pulled a triangular key identical to the one General Petrov had used little more than two hours earlier from a chain on his belt, and inserted it into the slot below the numbered buttons. The lift swept past the -7 floor, and slowed to a halt. The doors opened, and the long rows of heavy vault doors stopped him momentarily in his tracks. Seward had only been here once before, shortly after he was appointed to the position of Director. Yuri Petrov, a man he had fought side by side with on several occasions, in some of the darkest corners of the globe, had escorted him down and taken him through the vaults one by one, a personal guided tour of the most secret artefacts the Russian nation had collected over the course of its long history. For a moment he was overcome by the loss of the SPC men who had died in the control room, the latest casualties in a long, bloody war that the public could never know was being fought. Then he shook his head to clear it, and hurried onwards.

      The corridor was slick with gore and splattered with chunks of scarlet meat, and Seward held his breath as he stepped around the carnage; the air was thick with the scent of blood, and the foul stench of the vampires who had spilled it. He forced himself onwards until he was at the door marked 31, where he found General Petrov staring at him from the empty table inside the small metal room.

      His severed head had been placed upright, his dead eyes pointing towards the door. Blood had run down the metal pillar and pooled at the base, drying black. The face itself was almost unrecognisable; long ridges of purple bruising criss-crossed the skin, the nose and jaw were broken in several places, and the mouth was swollen to huge proportions. But the eyes were clear, and full of defiance.

       Petrov was Spetsnaz when it meant something. I bet they tired before he did.

      Seward walked round the pillar, checking every corner of the vault. He knew it was futile, but he did it anyway; he would not dishonour Petrov’s memory by missing something obvious. But there was nothing in the vault apart from the Russian General’s head.

      He walked back out into the steel corridor, stepping carefully around the remains, and pulled his phone from his pocket. He dialled a number, and held it to his ear. “It’s gone,” he said, when the phone was answered. “Yes, I’m sure. I’m standing in the empty vault right now.”

      There was a long silence.

      “I understand that,” he said, eventually. “I need a list of anyone who accessed encrypted SPC content on the Blacklight mainframe in the last forty-eight hours. Yes, I’ll wait.”

      He paced up and down the corridor, waiting for the information he had requested. After almost a minute, the voice told him there were no records of anyone accessing the information he had requested.

      “Re-run the search, overriding the security protocols. Use my access code, 69347X. Do it quickly.”

      Almost instantly a single name was read to him.

      Seward swore. “I need an immediate current position,” he said. “Run his chip.”

      Agonising seconds passed. Seward had stopped in the middle of the corridor, and was holding the phone to his ear with knuckles that were gradually turning white.

       Not him. Please not him.

      The voice on the end of the line reappeared, and described a location.

      “Any other Operators with him?” asked Seward.

      The voice answered.

      “Thank you,” said Seward, and hung up. He swore heavily under his breath, dialled a second number, and waited for Cal Holmwood to answer. The Operator picked up after the third ring.

      “Cal?” Seward said. “It’s Henry. I need you to bring Mina to Russia, immediately. To SPC Central Command. Apologise to the Americans and take off, right away. We’ve got trouble.”

      Holmwood sounded surprised, but immediately told the Director that he would do as he was ordered. Seward thanked him, hung up, and dialled a third number. He was about to punch the CALL button when the phone rang, vibrating in his hand. He looked at the screen and saw the same number he had been dialling. He pressed ANSWER, and pressed it his ear.

      “Listen to me,” he said, interrupting the voice on the other end. “I need you to tell me where Jamie Carpenter is. His life may be in danger.”

      There was a pause, and then the voice answered him. The colour drained from Seward’s face.

      “He’s walking into a trap,” he said. “Call—”

      But the person on the other end of the line was gone.

      Chapter 42

      UNHOLY ISLAND

      The picnic area at the end of the causeway that linked the island of Lindisfarne to the mainland was deserted. The last tourists had packed up their blankets and hampers the previous evening, climbed into their cars and caravans and left, leaving behind overflowing rubbish bins and drifts of litter, floating lazily in the damp mist that covered the ground like a funereal wreath. The wooden tables and benches were empty, and the children’s playground was dark, the swings creaking back and forth, the carousel revolving gently.

      A low rumbling noise punctured the silence.

      Anyone standing in the picnic area would have felt it before they heard it, a trembling beneath the ground, gathering strength as it approached from the southwest. Then it became audible; a steady thump, regular as clockwork, that grew louder and louder until it would have sounded like they were standing beneath a hurricane. The wind picked up, and the litter sped around the picnic area in rapid circles. One of the bins toppled over, depositing its collection of polystyrene containers, drink cans and empty crisp packets on to the grass, where it was sucked into the spiralling air, creating a miniature tornado of rubbish.

      Two blinding white lights pierced the night sky, illuminating the picnic area. The beams were wide, and bright, and they grew as something descended from above, their circular fields spreading until they merged into one, until, with a bone-shuddering roar, an EC725 helicopter emerged from the mist, sending the wet air spinning into columns and tunnels as it was displaced by the aircraft’s rotors.

      The black helicopter descended quickly, its huge wheels bouncing hard on the worn grass of the picnic area as it touched down. Then a door slid open in the side of

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