Silver Sable in…

ONE WAY OR ANOTHER

By Meriades Rai

Mankind’s voracious appetite for global exploration was well documented, but there were some regions on Earth that remained uncharted even in the 21st Century. One such location was the Libyan Desert in North Africa, a vast, 600-kilometre stretch of uninhabited plains and volcanic mountains. Throughout this belt of bleached stone and relentless sand and scrub there were precious few landmarks to distinguish the terrain; there were gigantic dustbowls – craters formed by ancient meteor strikes – and numerous, gleaming rock formations lurking black and alien amidst the dunes, but these sites were so plentiful they tended to add to the overall sense of isolation rather than offer anything in the way of identity.

There were probably people who could appreciate the beauty of such an austere landscape, but Silver Sablinova wasn’t one of them. In her considered opinion, as she plough her bullet-riddled jeep through a shallow basin at a reckless sixty miles an hour in a desperate attempt to outrun the heavily armed militant unit that was dogging her like a desert fox, Libya was a desolate, godforsaken hellhole that was in urgent need of renovation.

“Pfft. My kingdom for just one tiny hint of luxury,” Silver murmured, her sultry purr sharpened with a dark accent that brought to mind a hint of Bela Lugosi: creepy or erotic, depending on one’s predilection, but distracting either way. She adjusted her aviator shades as automatic gunfire raked a sequence of black rocks away to her right flank, showering her with stone splinters as the jeep hurtled past. “Just a smidgen,” she persisted, caustically. “A quantum of solace, if you will; a bed, a satin camisole, a pair of cozy slippers… and a bath! God, yes, a bath. Honestly, don’t you renegade types miss your creature comforts when you’re on the run?”

The old man who was trussed up in the back seat of the jeep unleashed a stream of expletives in Spanish. Silver sniffed. Pfft indeed. No decorum. This modern world, it really did leave so much to be desired…

Ten years ago César Canizarés Almar had been a key figure in the unofficial paramilitary death squads of Bolivia, during the reign of President Hugo Banzer Suárez. Since Suárez’s enforced resignation Almar had become an international fugitive, wanted for trial on numerous counts of torture, rape and murder, and other atrocities. In the past three years alone he’d almost been apprehended on separate occasions in Honduras, Cuba and Columbia before fleeing overseas… but Canizarés was a slippery customer. Reaching a financial agreement with a Libyan militant unit he’d long considered himself untouchable out here in the desert, secreted away in a labyrinthine network of caves, and the truth was he may well have remained hidden if not for one terrible, unbreakable addiction:

Television soap operas.

People were creatures of habit. They were also habitually stupid. Specific Internet torrents, even when meticulously guarded with encryption, could be digitally tracked – with the correct technology – and the source location eventually pinpointed so effectively that it was equivalent to a target jumping up and down among the sand dunes with signal flares protruding from his buttocks. Now, bound by maximum strength nylon cord and bundled into the back of a jeep by a platinum blonde with a penchant for guns and high velocity rally driving, it occurred to Canizarés that it may have been prudent to have given Coronation Street a miss. Hindsight was such a wonderful thing.

“I’ll see you screaming for this, woman!” the renegade shrieked in English, wriggling about on his seat like a worm spilled from a bottle of tequila. “I’ll have your hands and feet removed and hang what’s left from a hook! I’ll-”

“Hush now, small and objectionable man,” Silver admonished. “If I’d known you were going to be this intolerable I’d have found time to gag you when I was dragging you out of your bolthole. That, or cut out your tongue.”

“You have a death wish, yes?”

Silver grimaced. “Don’t flatter yourself, señor. I’ve eaten betyár gulyás in Castle Doom. Victor cooked. And, trust me, there’s a reason he calls himself Doctor and not Chef Doom. Compared withthat example of recklessly risking one’s life, this is a Sunday stroll along the bank of the Dâmbovita…”

The woman’s demeanor was immaculately cultured. Behind her shades her eyes were deep, cobalt blue, her full mouth was darkened with a daringly gothic hue of lipstick, and that ice blonde hair – almost titanium white in bright sunlight – was cut in a ragged bob of such violently careless déshabille that the alluring face it accentuated was as artistic as it was beautiful. Most media reports compared Silver Sable to a modern-day Marilyn Monroe, but recently one particular European fashion magazine had preferred to liken her to 1978 Parallel Lines era Debbie Harry. Silver had been delighted by that, and now could often be heard humming her favorite song beneath her breath as she went about her business.

“Oh, one way or another,
I’m gonna find ya,
I’m gonna getchya-getchya-getchya-getchya!
One way or another…”

The arid desert climate was unbearably hot and Silver was currently dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and khaki shorts that left her arms and legs tanned and bare. She had great legs; a superbly toned body overall without question, svelte and athletic, but great legs in particular. She was only five-foot-two, hence the frequent Marilyn comparisons, but those legs accounted for a lot of that. She also wore brown hiking boots and leather gloves, a belt about her waist with a clipped cell phone and a CZ-85B semi-automatic pistol, and a white kerchief tied about her throat. She possessed other guns – a lot of other guns, more sophisticated and with a greater range offirepower, many of which were slung into an open holdall cache on the passenger seat of the jeep beside her – but having a simple pistol close at hand had saved her life more times than she could count and she never went anywhere without one. Her full name was Silvana Lúcia Rosamaria Sablinova, but it was a long time since she’d answered to anything other than Silver. A lot of people called her Princess, mistakenly marking her as royalty by either blood or designation, but in truth Silver represented her homeland of Symkaria – a small Balkan state bordered by Hungary, Romania and Latveria – in an altogether different role.

Silver Sable was an international mercenary and bounty hunter who specialized in bringing absconded war criminals to justice. To her, men like César Canizarés were more than just unpleasant news stories. They were her life’s work.

“Whatever Evo’s regime is paying you to bring me in, I’ll double it,” Canizarés declared, his manner suddenly less confrontational and bordering on obsequious. “Or more. I’m a rich man, even now. How much? How much to see you release me…?”

President Juan Evo Morales Anya had been elected President of Bolivia four years previously. He was intent on abolishing the nightmarish memories of preceding governments by bringing to justice all members of Banzer’s inner circle, especially the blood-soaked Canizarés and his ilk. Evo had hired Silver personally. Her fees were high, but that was because she was the best. Canizarés had been a fugitive for eight years; with her connections and personal expertise Silver had tracked him down in eight days. She was worth every zero on every check, but she didn’t do what she did for the money.

“No deals,” Silver murmured, without even glancing back at her prisoner. “I signed a contract, and my word’s worth more than anything you could possibly bargain with. Besides, how could I sleep at night knowing I’d let you go free? All those innocent people who suffered at your hands, all that blood and pain and shame… a bad man must answer to his crimes, señor Canizarés. I exist to make sure that happens.”

The staccato chatter of automatic gunfire raked the air once more and the bleak terrain directly ahead detonated in a series of abrupt explosions. The bullets disgorged clouds of sand and rock shrapnel that engulfed the jeep and caused Silver to instinctively shunt her body into a hard right, yanking on the wheel and urging the vehicle to seek a clear path. A second strafe of gunfire scored along her left flank as she weaved, closer than the first. Silver looked on grimly, eyes narrowed behind her shades, as she glanced in her side mirror to see a dark shape looming out of the dust behind her. Another jeep, larger than hers. And faster. She couldn’t outrun it, not even at full speed.

“These friends of yours seem to value your money more than I do,” she said. Canizarés snorted.

“Pah! I spit on your rotting corpse!”

“Charming. No need to be gratuitously macabre, I was just making conversation…”

Silver whipped the wheel to the left and the jeep veered away from its original trajectory, just as another flare of gunfire sparked in the desert sun. The pursuing vehicle followed her course, wheels thundering over flat, bleached rock. It was still gaining. Two men, militants in headscarves and battle fatigues, were hanging out of the back of their ride, struggling to maintain their balance at high speed and also aim their M16s.

“Friends or not, they’re a little excitable,” Silver noted. “They’ve as much chance of hitting you as they have me. Or the gas tank, come to that.”

“Those obliged to me are under explicit instruction not to let me be taken alive under any circumstances,” Canizarés snarled, his swarthy face split by a livid grin. “My former countrymen are weak, treacherous snakes. I would rather die in the heat of the desert, free, than be subjected to public execution.”

“Of course,” Silver sighed, already tired of the conversation. “The coward’s recourse, the renouncement of responsibility…”

She glanced up as she heard a sudden explosion of sound overhead – a churning whup-whup-whup, rapidly escalating in intensity, accompanied by a savage swirl of sand kicking up all around in a howling storm. Her eyes narrowed behind her shades. There was a black blot against the sun, just distinct enough to be recognizable: an approaching helicopter, its snub nose angled towards her and its body afire in a coruscating blaze of gleaming steel. The chopper was of an elegant design, with a chin-mounted gun turret directed straight at Silver’s vehicle. She scowled.

“French-made Tigre HAP,” she declared, raising her accented voice to be heard above the din. “Standard Eurocopter gunship; fast, medium-weight, curious configuration in that the pilot’s berth is located at the fore rather than the aft, whereas in the majority of attack craft that’s the gunman’s position. There’s Gallic perversity for you. Still, nice model. Stolen?”

“As I said, woman, I am a rich man… and wealth can buy solid defenses.”

“Yes. Well, just my opinion, but if you’re that rich then you should have gone for an Apache. The Tigre’s maneuverable, but it has its disadvantages – such as reduced visibility when confronted with a fast moving target…”

Silver wrenched the wheel of the jeep once more then, a second before automatic fire from the chopper rained down like volcanic detritus. She executed a clean 180-degree-turn then floored the gas, causing the vehicle to kick up a cloud of dust as it lurched forward. The Tigre curved effortlessly overhead, attempting to line up another strike, but in doing so it dipped a little lower into the rim of the basin than it had intended and immediately sucked the whorl of sand into a miniature cyclone, momentarily obscuring the action down below. It disgorged another strafe of bullets, more in petulance than anything else, but even blind it almost managed to tag its quarry. Silver breathed sharply and swerved left and right, snaking through the dust storm, then suddenly cutting across the pursuing jeep, much to the astonishment of the gunmen dangling from the side. One of them snatched at his MP16, but the proximity and angle of the two vehicles didn’t allow for him to launch any kind of salvo; in stark contrast, Silver was brandishing a smaller weapon, an MP5K fished from the holdall beside her, allowing her instant aim.

The MP5K SMG barked out a slash of bullets and the gunman juddered, slamming back against the frame of the jeep then buckling forward, blood erupting from his mouth and back. Silver yanked the wheel, forcing her jeep alongside the other in a squeal of metal so that the dead man landed with flailing limbs alongside her. She then nosed ahead, bringing the stub-muzzle of the MP5K around in a tight arc, and executed the other gunman and the driver with a single burst. Overhead, the Tigre had regained its elevation and the desert was beginning to settle, exposing its prey. It wouldn’t miss again.

Moving quickly, Silver drew up her long legs and jammed the steering wheel between her bare knees as if it were a frisky and disobedient lover, thus freeing her left hand whilst cradling her gun in the crook of her right arm. She then reached across to the bullet-riddled corpse that had fallen alongside her, grabbed it about the scruff of the neck, and shoved it down into the well beneath her feet. She ignored the unavoidable blood spray as she stamped down on the dead man’s skull, wedging his head and shoulders between the undercarriage of her seat and the gas pedal and causing the jeep to buck with renewed acceleration.

“Much obliged,” she said dryly, reaching down between her spread thighs to pat the soldier’s shredded back. “Believe me, some men would pay a small fortune to find themselves where you are now. Except for the being dead part, obviously…”

Silver squirmed up and backwards in her seat, twisting at the waist, and slithered over into the rear berth of the jeep where Canizarés was observing her every move with wide eyes, his bravado now fully overwhelmed with terror. Grimacing, Silver locked one strong arm about her prisoner’s throat and wedged her right shoulder against his ribs, then tipped him sideways without pause, hurling him over the flank of the jeep as it sped along, ejecting a funnel of sand in its wake. Canizarés screamed as he tumbled. Silver leapt after him, weapon clutched to her breast. The whole maneuver took no more than five seconds, but even this was cutting it fine – at the precise moment she threw herself clear so the Tigre opened fire once again, a hail of bullets grating parallel lines through the jeep’s chassis and filling the air with shards of hot metal. A second later the vehicle detonated in a fireball, tires bursting and flipping forwards over its nose, shedding burning gas and shrapnel as it spun.

Twenty meters back, Silver grunted as she hit ground and instinctively rolled, protecting her neck and joints and taking the brunt of the impact on her upper back. It hurt – high-speed ejection always hurt a lot – but it could have been worse. César Canizarés Almar, for example, was not versed in such athletics; that was why he was now shrieking in agony and flailing his hands in the direction of his left leg, which was twisted at a wholly unnatural angle beneath his body. A jagged shard of bone was protruding from the sleeve of his trousers halfway down his shin, and blood was flowing freely from the wound. His ankle was also wrenched sideways. Silver rolled her eyes.

“Oh, be quiet,” she snapped. “It’s a clean break. And anyway, it’s not like you’ll be needing your legs when they drag you out in front of the firing squad. They can prop you up with a stick or something…”

The Tigre was still circling overhead. If those piloting it believed that their enemy had perished in the jeep then they were going to realize the truth as soon as the dust and smoke began to clear. Silver snatched at the cell phone clipped to her belt and flicked open the casing.

“Anna!” she barked into the voice-pad. “Change of plan. Rendezvous aborted. I need on-point extraction now. Put your knitting down, woman, and lock on to my position!”

She then stabbed at a button on the cell pad, prompting a blinking red light in the handset, an indication that a homing transmitter had been activated. Canizarés was still screaming. Silver continued to ignore him, glowering up at the lurking copter that was now adopting a pose of maximum threat. She’d been spotted. She stood tall, bare legs and arms gleaming in the sun, her icy white hair positively coruscating. She aimed the MP5K with defiance, seemingly undaunted by the ridiculously superior firepower of the Tigre…

…and both opened fire at once.

Predictably, the flare of the SMG was little more than a gesture at this range. More surprisingly, however, the fact that Silver was standing her ground rather than scurrying for cover seemed to cause the pilot of the Tigre a moment’s uncertainty. The copter flinched, and the strafe of bullets unleashed from its mounted turrets weaved about its insolent target rather than carving directly through her; splinters of rock flecked her face, drawing blood, and she coughed on a lungful of sand, but otherwise Silver remained unharmed. Canizarés caught two bullets, one in the hand and the other in his damaged leg, and this lash of new agony caused him to shriek once more then collapse in a faint.

Overhead, the Tigre steadied itself once more, ready to for the kill. This time… this time…

Silver grimaced. She made no attempt to run. She’d never run from anything in her life, and she wasn’t going to start now, regardless of how desperate her situation seemed. She breathed deeply… and then, in that moment, she glimpsed a dark shape suddenly wheel across her peripheral vision high overhead. Before she could focus the sky erupted in a blinding display of firework-flash, accompanied by an abrupt escalation of rotor howl – and then there was an explosion, bright and loud, expelling concentric shockwaves that caused the desert sands to surge up in a new cloud, hammering Silver back off her feet. As she landed on her rump with a grunt she glanced up to see a huge, black shadow flicker amidst the dust storm, followed by a rain of fire and hot metal in her general vicinity. She curled into a protective ball, arms about her head, and held her breath.

Thirty seconds later, when the last of the Tigre wreckage had fallen, she slowly raised an arm and peeked out from beneath her elbow, her aviator shades askew on her cheek. She was still alive. She’d be washing sand from all manner of unmentionable places for the next two weeks, but she was alive. She’d always been a brave girl; perhaps more importantly she’d always been a lucky one too.

When the dust cloud faded it revealed a black helicopter circling overhead, far larger and sleeker than the Tigre that had just been reduced to crispy flakes by an on-board guided missile. Silver grinned, adjusting her shades and scrambling to her feet. “As I said,” she declared, happily. “Should have gone for an Apache. After all, I wouldn’t travel anywhere without mine, least of all wide open enemy territory like this.”

Silver strode over to where Canizarés lay, half submerged in disturbed sand. A two-meter stake of scorched metal protruded from his shoulder like a pin through a butterfly’s wing. Silver removed her glove and checked the pulse in his neck, then smiled ruefully and clucked her tongue. “Just not your day, is it César?” she said. “Still, considering some of the atrocities you committed in your time I’d say you got off quite lightly.”

She then gave the stake a hearty kick and nodded in satisfaction as Canizarés bucked back into consciousness with a breathless scream, eyes bulging and jaw locked wide.

“Perfect timing, Anna, dear,” Silver declared into her cell, raising her gun and waving it at the Apache. “Now how about escorting me from this hellhole so we can take that Caribbean vacation I’ve been promising you? I think we’ve earned it…”

“I’m sorry, madam, but Miss Sablinova is currently away from the office. Far away, in fact.”

The brunette with the smoldering eyes clenched her teeth in frustration as the gentleman sat behind the foyer glass offered her a wan smile. “I’m sure she’ll be returning to Symkaria in the next few days,” the man continued. “Perhaps you’d like to make an official appointment, Miss…?”

“Gêmeos. Vera Gêmeos.”

The brunette stepped back from the counter, still glowering.

“I don’t have time to make appointments,” she snapped. “Time is fleeting. This… this is a matter of life and death, understand?”

The man persisted with his thin, unsympathetic smile. Miss Gêmeos felt inclined to kill him then and there, but such indulgence would obviously be counter-productive. No, as much as it needled her soul, she truly had no choice.

She would wait.

But she and Silver Sable would meet, soon, and they’d forge a pact that would see the mercenary engage in one of her strangest and most perilous adventures. Before too long, Silver Sablinova would be in service to Vera Gêmeos…

…one way or another.

COMING SOON : Follow the further adventures of Silver Sable – and begin to unravel the mystery of Vera Gêmeos – in Agents Of Gemini by Steve Seinberg and Meriades Rai, debuting next month!