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Chapter 7 Assignment Alpha
A dark
slim figure slinked its way out of Yugorovski’s office.
Sure, it was a mission she could handle. After all,
Yugorovski knew that when she was set on a person, that
person was as good as dead. That, she decided, was what
he was banking on, banking on the fact that it would be
the same as always. She’d get to know the target,
admittedly briefly, for a few days before she’d kill
them. Of course, Vostok had spies following her, but that was given. She knew they had spies working for Yugorovski like she knew Yugorovski had spies working in Vostok. Since she was in Vostok territory she had to be careful, nothing wrong in a slight sense of paranoia. Like they say, ‘just cos I’m paranoid, it don’t mean that I’m not being followed.’ Anyway, she wasn’t going to gain their attention. That was her idea. Unfortunately, the spies from Vostok weren’t going to let her slip by unnoticed. Two guys pulled along side her car, one in a Lamborghini Countach and another in a highly upgraded Dodge Viper. The guy in the Countach unwound his window, “Stop your car, we’re here in the name of the Vostok Institute, you cannot go any further. Go any further and you run the risk of us killing you. You got that?!” Slowing down her car slightly she shouted, “Get out of my face; you want a race to the death? Go ahead, try me for size. The day you catch me is the day hell freezes over!” Suddenly, she floored the accelerator, gunning it down the straight. She screamed in delight at the performance of her car. The other two in their high performance cars followed suit. Of course, if this was a race to the death there was no way the American car would survive, unless it went through the corners at twenty mph. There was no way Carys could tell him that, though. He seemed to ignore the standard law of American cars, and carried on. The guy in the Viper was concentrating intently on his target, he was going to catch her or die trying. Chances are, the latter, heavily modified the car may be but unless the suspension and the anti-roll bars were super-stiff the car wouldn’t be able to turn through the snowy hairpins without suffering impact damage. The guy in the Countach was as exhilarated by this experience as she was. This was the first time he’d had the chance to put his custom car through its paces, and hopefully, not his last. He loved the feel of the car, the tyres rotating down the straight at high speed. “Yaaaaaaaaahoooooiiiiee!!!” he screamed. Intent, the guy in the Viper was concentrating on his victim, it was her or him, and he was going to do everything in his power to make sure she lost, whether he survived or not, he was so pumped with adrenaline that he didn’t care. He pushed his car to the limit, squeezing a little more out of the engine. Slowly he was catching up with her, and making sure she didn’t escape. Carys kept flooring the engine, almost reaching maximum revs before changing gears, only gearing down for the corners; she almost never used the brakes. Like a pro! The other two were following her, the driver of the Viper following her every move, like a predator stalking its prey. Only in this game, the prey and the predator were on equal footing, only skill would determine the victor, and both were well trained in the art of driving fast cars. The guy in the Countach still saw this as a game, and he lost, neither skill nor temprement being up to the task. He went too fast through a snowy hairpin bend. There was no way he or his car could’ve survived the metal wrenching impact with the jagged rocks below. Currently, his car was stationed between jagged infinity and a jagged mountain. His car could be salvaged. His life, however, was done. Now it was a duel, they were both in it for the long haul and weren’t about to give up for anything. Vipey’s eyes were burning with a bright red intensity, a fiery hatred, burning his very soul. She, the bitch he was chasing, had caused the death of his friend, and along with his seeing this as a joke, killed him. Suddenly, he put that V8 engine to full use drawing along side her and swerved into the TVR. What the? He’s trying to t-bone me off the road. Better be ready for a counter, that’s all I’ll say. After about 3 seconds of having their cars touching, metal screeching against metal, the Viper moved back, lining himself up for another attack. With precision timing she countered, taking him by complete surprise as he fought to keep control. He almost lost it, but almost and actually are worlds apart. Sweat was dripping down his brow, his eyes cold and calculating, a savage brutality lay behind his focused stare, a savage brutality that spoke of a desire for vengeance, a cold, almost freezing desire for calculatingly painful vengeance. Grunting with the strain of trying to circulate all of the power, the V8 engine roared, its sound blasting its way beyond the scenery, its almost agonised roar could be heard from miles around. Carys was gunning it too, far beyond her cars sustainable capability, but slowly, he was catching her, and when he was level vengeance would be sweet! Going down the mountainous terrain, the road just a thin slab of tar between control and oblivion, just a thin slab between an almost vertical cliff face on one side, and an almost vertical drop on the other, they would keep control and wrest it from each other. He was gaining through the straights, and losing slightly through the corners, stalemate was the outcome, but for neither was it desired. Finally, after what seemed hours of gaining and losing, gaining and losing he got up with her, along side before an Arctic truck, hogging the road came leisurely around the corner. All desire of vengeance escaped from his mind as he veered left, just managing to keep control as his car went almost vertical, the right hand side pointing ponderously at the ground, doing a barrel roll before landing, with some relief, on all four wheels. It seemed like an eternity before he regained control. She veered right, her suspension complaining as it rode on loose shingle. Scraping along the barrier for what seemed like an eternity, the bodywork screaming as it ground against the metal barrier designed to stop her going off the mountainside. Her survival instincts told her much. Just as she got back on the road her power-mad assailant landed after doing a barrel-roll, still not quite under control. She decided she had to avoid him so she gunned her car into the ever narrower space. Unfortunately that space closed as the other person’s car clipped her rear before spinning itself. Both cars were out of control, both were heading for oblivion on a straight where no-one had anticipated there would be an accident. Both cars fell off the edge of the road, a large chasm waiting to swallow both them, and their drivers whole. Carys woke up later, must've been hours, and still in her car. Trying to get up, she looked around her vehicle doing an assessment of the damage. Tricky from the inside but she knew what to look for. Her door was dented in massively, the window completely broken. She tried to open it but it was jammed. She didn’t even need to look outside to see the damage to the front of her once magnificent beast. The engine was almost totalled; there was almost no way she’d get it going again. She opened her other door, to try and see the damage on the outside. Slowly, she checked her leg, to see why she had such trouble standing. The damage was obvious, while not completely broken it would be out of operation for a long time. She crawled out of the car, her face a mask of pain, dragging her leg out of the open door. There was a rock wedging her car in place, and a fifteen metre drop, give or take on the way down. She ripped off a bumper and grabbing on to it she slid the rest of the way down. Her left arm complained about this sort of treatment, sending a massive jolt of pain up her shoulder, straight to her neck, she had broken something in her arm. From outside of her car the damage was all too visual. The windscreen had been decimated; a shower of glass covering what was left of the bonnet. Both front light covers were missing, the lights just sparkling on and off as the battery malfunctioned, itself just a barely functioning heap of scrap. The right door was dented in beyond what crash test cars had to endure, ending in a medium sized hole in the middle. The grille was wrapped around the rock, smashed beyond all recognition. Her pride and joy was utterly destroyed, there was no way TVR could replace this one, all of their cars were hand-made, all unfortunately unique. Choking back the tears, Carys decided to try and see what happened to the person in the Viper. She didn’t have to look long, the Viper was once the pride of both Dodge and Chrysler, but now it was long in the tooth. She was looking at the remains of a metallic sea-blue coloured Dodge Viper, a 2001 model. It was upside down, and she didn’t have to look inside to see that the driver had met a bloody end. The roof was mangled and twisted beyond all recognition, the anti roll bars twisted right out of shape. It was dented by impacts and holes running along the entire roof section, and the windows hadn’t fared much better, they were smashed, warped and twisted, lying beside the car, except for the small left rear one, which was still hanging on, damaged though it was. As for the front of the car, you could see that’s what took the brunt of the impact; it was almost totally crushed, the car crumpling to its maximum design specs, then a bit more. She nodded in acknowledgement, crying her silent tears, two beautiful beasts destroyed, and one life involuntarily ended. He had won, she knew it, he had won the battle, had won the battle that cost him the war. He wasn’t ever going to let her beat him, but his actions already meant she had. Suddenly, her vision went black and she slumped silently on the floor, the sound of a helicopter coming to land just filling her hearing, until that went too. She woke up, inside a converted Apache helicopter, one of Yugorovski’s she presumed. A guy walked over to her, a guy she vaguely recognised, Yugorovski’s medical tool, Giordino Boccielli. A quick hand with a syringe, but even quicker with a shotgun. Last time he’d seen her, he’d almost killed her. “Lady Perry, I’m so pleased you could drop in like this, I didn’t realise it could go so well for us, for the team at Vostok…” “What, when?” “Patience my girl, all will be delivered in due course. Oh, yes, on one of our senior mechanics requests we have salvaged all three cars, it’ll be tricky to get them fully back to how they were but we have a team of Brits, Americans and Italians jointly working on each one.” “Actually, that was my idea,” said a slightly miffed German, nineteen years old, ah yes, Gustav Horst. “So why has Yugorovski sent you after me, eh? Is it because he can’t deal with his own filth? He needs to send an incompetent to trail me?!” There was hatred in his eyes, a fierce bitterness that was directed at her and at Yugorovski. “He can’t send people with skill after me? Yeah, I’ve read your report. Do you expect me to believe it? And the fact you were so easy just proves my point!!” Now it was her turn for the offensive, “The idiot driving the Lamborghini couldn’t have taken me even if he tried!! And as for the driver in the Dodge, sure, he was good, but, given enough time I would’ve beaten him. The only reason he beat me, and lost his life, was some Sunday driver in artic lorry.” “Too bad about the cars though,” he muttered, “bloody good ones and all. We’d only finished the modifications on the Viper last week, and the Lamborghini, it beat every ponce in a V8 it came up against, and the driver, the best that street racing had to offer. Three wreaked cars and two beaten drivers. “Both of those guys had a long life to follow, I just hope that the families won’t be too distraught at their deaths. The Viper driver, name of James Sanderson, had a wife and four kids.” At this points he shook his head and shrugged, resignedly, “Hope that they can cope without a dad, I know I did. Point is, I never knew my father, these people did, and he was happier around them then he was anywhere else, even driving fast cars. He cared.” His eyes shone with moisture and he rubbed his hand over them to get rid of them. “The driver of the Lamborghini, the idiot as you call him, was his brother, name of Chad. He had a beautiful girlfriend and was going to tie the knot next week. By the way, she’s going to be the mother of his first, and alas, his only child which he’ll never get to see.” He clenched and unclenched his fists and with a great sadness uttered his next words, “Nobody should’ve died on that mission, but instead of the expected results we lost two guys and narrowly risked losing you. How you survived the crash I’ll never know.” Carys was touched by his caring, “You cared about them yet they died trying to get me to your side, and yet, you care about me too, even though you haven’t known me for five minutes, and I was the one who involuntarily sent the dagger through both of their hearts.” “Believe me, I’ve known you for years, even if you don’t remember me. Frankly though, I’m shocked, you befriended me, you even kissed me, we went out and then you disappeared; now you say you don’t remember me?!” He shook his head in wonder of how humanity survives and yet manages to forget people who’ve impacted on their lives in such an important way. “Well I remember you, and so does he,” he said, pointing at Dafs. “Carys Perry, the silent hunter, people are so afraid of you. Here you come, ready to stick the knife into the most unsuspecting people, the most undeserving, working for people who don’t even have the humanity to deserve to be called people. I was a spy, I admit it. There’s no honour gained by admitting it, I lost mine years ago. I was doing it to help my friends stop him, but you were there, as per bloody usual, for monetary gains for yourself. “You’ll go so low as to help scum like him? I was working as a hindrance, a hindrance that the fool trusted. I snagged my ties with him years ago…” “Weeks ago,” “Whatever, I snagged my ties with him to help my friends and am glad I did. You think I’d trust him, his inhumanity. He’s a psycho, a cold hard calculating SOB who deserves to get his head kicked in. He’s evil, and to be perfectly honest, it scares me just to think of what he’s capable of doing next.” “And he’s already sentenced us to death, to be looked after by forty incompetent soldiers. Present company accepted Eugene.” From the back he heard a flat denial, “I swear I was only sent to look after those malcontents last week. They were looked after by General Ooberchov, a Latvian who prized himself for being the best, while in my opinion he was the worst. Second of course to UN High Command.” At this point a new voice came in, “Yeah, have to agree even though I met Ooberchov once while in prison. How he became a general I’ll never know. How he advanced beyond Corporal I’ll never know.” He laughed at this point, “High Command was worse, how he even got accepted into the army baffles me.” “Hear, hear, Terrik, hear, hear.” “Anyway Eugene, take me to hospital, I need to get checked up on. I’ll tell you about Spyro’s continued healing once I get back.” Dafs said, his mood hardening, his icy stare morphing beyond freezing. “Keep a watch on her, Gustav, I don’t trust her, and if she tries anything to help the slime, well let’s just remind her of what a cold calculating SOB can really do.” Carys noticed his icy glare was aimed at her. She edged away, her leg stopping her from doing more. Fear tinged her logical thoughts. Right in front of her was someone who’d been at the right place at the right time, and still barely getting out with his friend alive. Almost dead, but not quite. Almost dead at the hands of her current employer. “There’s a lot of bad history between us, Carys I don’t trust you and yet, I want to, I really do. Don’t kill us all with a bad gambit to Yugorovski. He’s evil, and once he’s finished with you, he’ll want to kill you, just like he wants to kill us. Betray us, and you’d better wish he’s the one who’ll kill you.” A friendlier smile emerged, a smile full of regret, a shadow of what could’ve been between them, and a mirror of his desire to beat her at something, “See you on the racetrack. The cars should be primed real soon. Hope you’re ready to race. I know I am.”
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