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  BATTALION

  ADAM HAMDY

  was born in London in 1974 and read Law at Oxford, and Philosophy at London. He spent a number of years working as a management consultant before embarking on his career as a writer. His debut feature film, Pulp will be released in 2013 and he is currently working on his second feature. His critically acclaimed debut graphic novel, The Hunter (2007), has become one of the most widely read independent titles in recent years. His second graphic novel series, Starmaker: Leviathan (2010) was described by IndieComicReview as ‘lightning in a bottle’.

  Adam Hamdy lives in the UK with his wife and three children.

  Also by Adam Hamdy

  GRAPHIC NOVELS

  The Hunter

  Starmaker: Leviathan

  BATTALION

  A Dare Book

  Published by Dare Books, a division of Dare Productions Limited 2012

  Copyright © 2012 Dare Productions Limited

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 0 9565020 0 1

  Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.

  - SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

  PROLOGUE

  The man in the shower was supposed to die today. The Agency had put a fifty thousand dollar bounty on his head, and the Nazi Lowriders were coming to collect.

  Scott Pierce hid in the alcove that housed the boiler unit and watched the corrupt prison guard exit through the door at the other end of the shower block. Rahim’s two personal bodyguards did not even notice the uniformed man’s departure. They stood either side of the tiled entrance to the communal shower and stared vacantly into space. Men hired for their muscle, not their competence.

  As he waited Pierce thought about the man he had come to jail for: Idris Rahim, a drug dealer whose two-year sentence for tax evasion masked far more heinous crimes. Good behavior would see him out in one. And even that one year would be passed in relative comfort; privileges such as showering alone were expensive but Rahim could afford them.

  The shower block door opened and five huge, menacing figures entered. The sleek domes of their shaven heads reflected the low-level lights as they moved silently and purposefully towards the two dozy bodyguards. The Lowriders efficiently overpowered the bodyguards and opened their guts with a couple of shivs. Both men crumpled to the floor, bleeding and screaming.

  Their howls alerted Rahim to the presence of danger and the naked Somalian stepped tentatively out of the shower. Dillon Williams, the leader of the Lowriders, gave Rahim a macabre smile, unveiling two rows of filed teeth with which it was rumored he liked to rip out his victim’s jugulars.

  Pierce stepped out of his hiding place, catching Dillon off guard.

  “This doesn’t concern you,” Dillon snarled.

  Pierce saw the Nazi hesitate, as he tried to work out how to deal with this unknown quantity. Since his arrival a year ago, Pierce had failed to slot into the neat social hierarchy of the jail yard. He had a reputation as a loner who knew how to handle himself.

  Pierce stepped forward and placed himself between Rahim and the five skinheads.

  “We can kill two as easily as one,” said Dillon, shrugging at his comrades.

  Take out the leader, Pierce thought as he came in low and hard, and the rest will fall. His knuckles connected with Dillon’s solar plexus, and there was a satisfying crack. The big man tried to bring the shiv up, but Pierce blocked the blow, fracturing Dillon’s wrist in the process. He disarmed the Lowrider, then stabbed him in the gut, and turned to face the other four men, who came at him as one.

  Pierce sidestepped a second shiv swipe, and planted his own blade in the swiper’s neck. The man’s curdled screams unnerved his fellow Nazis and gave Pierce a moment’s edge. He stepped inside the reach of the third Lowrider and quickly speared the man in the thigh and under his arm; both non-fatal blows designed to cause maximum pain.

  The fourth man had heavy fists, one of which connected with the back of Pierce’s head. He span round and tried to keep his vision focused, as the heavy fists came at him again. Pierce dropped to the floor and caught the man in a scissor kick. As the fourth Nazi fell, Pierce plunged the bloody shiv into the man’s abdomen, just above the groin.

  The talentless do not recognize the talented at work and ascribe any success to luck, which is why the fifth Lowrider did not have the sense to run. When the man kicked him in the face, Pierce simply stepped back for a moment to spit blood on the floor and then turned his attention to this final piece of business. Number five came in high, flinging his fists wildly. Pierce punished the man’s inefficiency, ducked and moved inside to plant three holes in the man’s chest. It took a split-second for the man’s disbelief to turn to agony, but Pierce saved him from prolonged pain by punching him in the face and knocking him unconscious.

  Pierce grabbed the only towel and hurled it at the stunned Somalian.

  “We can’t be caught here,” he cautioned.

  Rahim stared at his injured bodyguards and the five fallen Lowriders. He was struggling to come to terms with his close call, but Pierce did not have time to indulge him.

  “Let’s go!”

  Pierce grabbed Rahim and hustled him out of the shower block. As they stepped through the door, Pierce dropped the wet shiv. Every fiber of his being had wanted to thrust it into Rahim’s heart. But the satisfaction of seeing an evil man die would have to wait for another day. Saving Rahim was business and whatever else had gone wrong in his life, when it came to business, Pierce still considered himself to be a professional.

  “You have done me a great service,” Rahim said, as they hurried towards the safety of the main prison complex. “God sent you.”

  How wrong the Somalian was. Pierce was not the righteous hand of some divine force. He had discarded what was left of his morality the moment he had pushed for this mission. Whatever drove him forward had nothing to do with God. The bleak vacancy where he had previously felt a soul suggested whatever initial rage had compelled him to take this vile assignment had long since withered. He no longer felt the furious heat of someone out for revenge.

  In his more honest moments of reflection, Pierce knew what kept him going, but fear that he had a problem - that he might be sick - prevented him from ever holding onto the truth for more than moments. If he could not trust his mind, if he was not in control, Pierce feared losing his grip on reality altogether. Somewhere deep inside he knew what kept him going was a compulsion, a sickness, an addiction. Like a junkie with a thousand-dollar-a-day habit, Pierce took no joy in what he did. Each step nearer his target was a fix, a momentary flash of euphoric understanding that he was a day closer to completing his grim task. His mind, reality, his emotions were all slaves to his mission. Once he had killed the man known as the Spider, Pierce would be free. And once he was free, Pierce could consider how best to join the woman he loved.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Nature had reasserted its supremacy. The only things reflecting off the surface of Lake Michigan were the moon and stars. The silhouettes of the skyscrapers lined the shore like dark sentinels watching over a shimmering beauty.

  Pierce stood at his hotel window watching the moonlight dance across the surface of the lake with the ab
sentmindedness of someone who considers life a distraction. He was hungry for his next fix, but it would not do to arrive early. Keep treading water. Keep passing time. Behind him the OLED screens on the wall were tuned to a panel discussion program. The panelists were talking about the energy shortages and civil unrest for the hundredth time. None of them had anything original to say, but the network had air to fill and advertising to sell so it didn’t hurt to exploit the nation’s fears just one more time.

  “We’ve got energy shortages, the economy is contracting, we’re fighting multiple wars and we’re facing a terror threat greater than at any time in our history,” spat the bald man with hate in his eyes, “I’d like to know when the administration is going to act.”

  “Until we get the nuclear program back on track there isn’t a heck of a lot they can do,” said the blonde woman with the angular face. “We’re paying for the excesses of past generations and their inability to make tough decisions.”

  Pierce switched off the vitriol and turned back to the darkness of Chicago. Movement in a window in the building opposite him caught his eye. Set against the eerie blue light emitted from a low energy bulb, a naked woman toweled herself dry in her bedroom. There was an easy beauty in the unselfconscious way she moved, but even she failed to hold Pierce’s interest. He glanced at his watch: time.

  He had checked his pistol earlier, but habit is the savior of those who live on the edge. Pierce reached a gloved hand inside his suit jacket and pulled out his SIG Sauer P267 machine pistol. He checked the clip and then replaced the weapon in its concealed holster.

  As he crossed the identikit hotel room towards the door, Pierce performed a final visual check. The bed had been unused, he’d left no physical traces, and the black satin gloves he wore ensured there would be no prints. As the door swung shut behind him, Pierce was satisfied the anonymous room would give up no evidence of his existence.

  The ninety-fifth floor of the John Hancock tower offered a tremendous view of the Illinois plain. The city and suburbs that once twinkled like a manmade sea of stars were now dark, the buildings cutting the horizon like black teeth.

  Richard Sullivan checked his watch and rolled his eyes, irritated that his connection was late. He signaled the waiter with casual confidence, and raised his glass to indicate he wanted a refill of wine. With only nine diners in the restaurant, service was attentive, and the waiter instantly set about fulfilling Sullivan’s request. One of the many advantages of having money in these impoverished times, Sullivan reflected, was the eagerness with which people tried to please you. Ever since the second wave of oil price shocks in 2015, few could afford to properly light and heat their homes, let alone stretch to the luxury of a meal out. And dinner in a place like this was the preserve of the rarefied few who were not afraid to continue to flaunt their good fortune. Sure, the ever encroaching tendrils of the Energy Acts had even robbed fine dining of its luster. Table coverings could only be laundered on every fourth sitting, and diners had to reuse their cutlery for each course. Sullivan could live with having to lick his knife clean, and did not mind the residue of other meals on his table cloth. This was his regular table, and with business as slow as it was, the chances were, it was his own detritus keeping him company.

  The waiter brought Sullivan his fresh glass of Chablis. If he took offence when Sullivan totally ignored him, he could not afford to show it; tips were few and far between. As the young man backed away, Sullivan lifted a pair of night vision field glasses to his eyes and leaned towards the window to get a good view of the street.

  Hundreds of feet below, standing in the small park that bisects East and North Shore Drives, was an impatient man. He held a pair of black flight cases and carried out a continuous sweep of his surroundings, alert for the danger of a fool stupid enough to try to rob him.

  “See anything you like?” Pierce asked impassively.

  Sullivan knew Pierce was not slightly interested in the answer; he just wanted to show how easily he had been able to approach undetected. He was annoyed that Pierce had been able to sneak up on him. As he lowered the field glasses Sullivan tried to mask his irritation.

  “You’re late.”

  Pierce was always late for their meetings and never once felt the need to explain himself. Sullivan was not used to such confidence. Most of his associates lived in terror of him and his reputation. Pierce seemed smart enough to have done his homework, and yet he treated Sullivan with no more deference than one might give to a checkout operator.

  As per their routine, Pierce handed Sullivan a brand new I-Phone. The transfer window for the Swiss bank account was already open. All Sullivan had to do was enter the currency, amount and his pass code. Their business was concluded in a matter of seconds.

  “Where oh where does all this money go?” Sullivan asked as he handed back the phone.

  “Alimony.”

  Pierce cracked an emotionless smile, removed a second cell-phone from his pocket and dialed a number.

  “You’re good to go,” he said into the phone.

  Sullivan used the field glasses to check the scene below. His bagman in the park approached the sidewalk, as a silver composite alloy electric car pulled up. Doing business with the unseen occupants of the car, the bagman traded the black flight cases for a pair of silver ones. As the car pulled away, he retraced his steps into the park.

  “Are we done?” Pierce asked.

  Sullivan lowered the field glasses.

  “We’re done.”

  Another rat feasting on the bloated corpse of a once decent society, Pierce thought as he watched the numbers on the elevator display cycle through the descent. Sullivan made his skin crawl, but this was yet another instance where he forced himself to conceal his true feelings. Looking the other way had become an unpleasant habit. If Pierce thought about the number of evil men he had passed on his journey, men who in a previous life he would have been compelled to bring to justice, he felt a vague stirring that might once have been shame. He kept telling himself that people like Sullivan were not his concern; they would be dealt with by others. Pierce’s target was a different kind of evil altogether.

  One of the apes behind him shuffled on the spot. Sullivan was not subtle; when he employed muscle he wanted people to know what it was there for. The shorter of the two men behind Pierce was six feet six and must have weighed three hundred pounds. They concealed their weapons well, but Pierce had no doubt they were armed. He wondered what regular patrons felt when they rode the elevator with two killers paid to neutralize any potential threat. It was a meaningless display. If someone truly wanted Sullivan dead, an apartment on the seventieth floor of the building opposite offered the perfect nest. Sullivan always sat at the same table and a sniper would have no difficulty picking him out, silhouetted against the low level lights of the Signature restaurant.

  The short ape handed Pierce his Sig as the elevator slowed. It was in its holster by the time the doors open with a ping, which was fortuitous, because the Feds swarming all over the lobby might not have reacted well to the sight of an automatic machine pistol. Six FSA agents in lightweight body armor and full face helmets dragged Pierce and the two simians from the elevator. Pinned up against the wall, Pierce knew the routine; a sweep with a handheld detector would find his ceramic gun and a physical search would uncover his phones and wallet.

  “You’re wasting your time!”

  Sullivan got the words out, but from his position, pinned cheek down to the stained tablecloth, he was not sure whether any of the federal goons heard him. If this was their best move, Sullivan almost felt sorry for them. A private citizen out for a quiet meal, they had absolutely nothing on him. Let them inflate their arrest statistics with a pointless collar. Even as his confidence almost got the better of him, Sullivan felt a nagging concern; maybe there was more to this than an empty gesture. As he was led toward the elevator by the faceless FBI agents, Sullivan started to wonder what they knew that he didn’t. He felt the bitter sensation of a
cid coursing over his stomach lining and realized he was afraid.

  The military grade hardware the FSA agents had set up on East Shore Drive had been superfluous. The moment the occupants of the silver car had seen the barricade, the vehicle had come to a controlled halt and the two men had surrendered. They had not even bothered to try to hide the pair of black flight cases, which were now on the hood of a Federal sedan. The agent in charge had one of the cases open and was satisfied to be staring at over ten million dollars in unmarked hundreds.

  The bagman had been ignoring the bad feeling for weeks. August seventeenth was two weeks away; his fiftieth birthday. He had not been busted since the start of the trade crisis in 2021 and felt that he’d been riding the crest of his luck for the past ten years. He knew that wave had crashed the moment he saw the four suits exit the unmarked sedan. The forty keys of heroin in the two cases were probably sufficient to put him away for twenty years. His greatest fear had always been that he would breathe his final breath in jail; a piss soaked old man dying in a rotting bed shadowed by jailhouse gangsters, perverts and murderers. The bagman was not about to let that happen. Thinking of glory was easy when he dropped the cases and drew his Heckler & Koch MP12. When the Federal bullets shredded his abdomen, glory was the last thing on his mind. As he dropped to the ground, the hot metal that tore his vital organs chastened him with excruciating pain. The bagman took his last breath, conscious of his embarrassment that tears were running freely down his face.

  Pierce knew they would be in there talking about him. He stared through his reflection, trying to penetrate the optical illusion of the one way mirror. It was a trick he had not yet mastered, although he had heard it was possible. To the police officers either side of him, Pierce was aware that he probably looked like a smug suspect, confident that they had nothing on him. They would never know the truth. As far as Pierce was concerned, two people in on a secret was one person too many. He risked too much every day to ever see it compromised. Pierce considered what words were being spoken in the adjacent room. He had been held for longer than usual. They usually tossed him the moment the paperwork was complete on all the real targets. Perhaps someone had finally woken up to the danger Pierce presented.