Chimera Code (Jake Dillon Adventure Thriller Series)

by Andrew Towning

  “Damn these people - whoever they are...” Alix said aloud.

  At the end of the street, cars were grid-locked queuing to get out of a junction blocked by road-works. The bike screamed as Alix braked hard and spun the machine around, he let out the clutch and the bike lurched forward, mounted the pavement and started back along the route he’d just come from. He used parked cars for cover as pedestrians screamed and jumped out of the way as the powerful bike accelerated at high speed. Wheels spun, Alix slung the bike to the left, off the pavement and back onto the road again, the suspension dipping as he braked hard again to miss pedestrians who dived for cover.

  Alix opened the throttle and the bike surged down the road. He braked hard at the entrance to a large building site, the rear wheel slewed round and a moment later Alix was racing through the gates and over rough ground, churning mud and heading for the exit on the opposite side of the large site. He hit the brakes, ending in a long mudslew skid, and jumped free at the last moment as the Suzuki collided with a large earth moving machine. The fuel tank impacted against the heavy metal and exploded into a fireball. Alix looked around and spotted a black Mercedes Sprinter van parked just outside the exit of the site, ran across and climbed casually in through the side door.

  “Step on it, Lola - it’s time to leave.” Bullets slammed into the rear door panel from behind as the Mercedes wheel spun and joined the late evening traffic, and then the glass of the rear windscreen exploded into millions of tiny fragments. In the back of the van Alix ducked low onto the floor as bullets ripped through the side panels. Ragged holes appeared and the hi-tech surveillance equipment and weapons held in the metal racks were being destroyed.

  “Fucking hell, Lola! Get this pile of junk moving?” Alix growled, adding. “Get us out of here - now!” Alix eyes were wide, mouth dry as he eyed the bullet holes.

  Lola veered the van to the left, mounted the kerb and smashed into oblivion one parking meter after another all the way to the end of the street; the van’s engine roared and the bullets faded behind.

  They drove through back streets and through deserted industrial estates.

  Alix, sweating now, slumped in his seat and ran a hand over his spiky hair.

  “Was I right?” Lola asked bluntly.

  Alix met the woman’s intense gaze in the rear view mirror, and nodded. “You were right. They definitely wanted me to lead them to you. Bad enough to kill anyone who got in their way.”

  “What now?” asked Lola, her sultry South American tones for once edged with a kind of panic so unlike her usual well-trained stability that it brought a frown to Alix’s youthful face?

  He shrugged. “We have to warn the partners of Ferran & Cardini and whoever is running the show at the Ministry of Defence.”

  “I can’t use my Scorpion G8 unit - I’d say that’s how the bastards have been tracking us,” said Alix with a snarl. He checked that there was a full clip in the Glock and switched the safety to off on the Heckler & Koch MP5 machine carbine in his hands and grinned - that nasty grin he made just before the shooting started.

  “We could of course just try this Pay as You go phone, that I carry around for such emergencies?” Lola called back.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. You’re a tricky one.”

  “Comes with experience - lots of experience.” Lola said amiably, and then added. “We’ve got no other choice than to use it. I’ll send a message to Ferran & Cardini. Let them know that we’ve got a leak somewhere inside Scorpion HQ or at the Ministry Of Defence, and that they were laying in wait for us.”

  “That’ll stir things up. There’s no way they could have just happened upon us. Bastards knew exactly where we were.”

  “It’ll be like waving a red rag at a black bull.” Lola said, and laughed.

  “Those bastards messed up my trousers andmy new overcoat. The bastards. Lola, get us out of this shit-hole city. Then we’ll see if we can dump this van - it’ll almost certainly be tracked.”

  Lola pulled free her phone. Tapped in a number of digits and the device came to life and as quickly it went blank and died. She frowned

  - and tried it again.

  “Damn thing won’t work, Alix.”

  “Let’s take a look at it.”

  “Bloody gizmos - never was very good with technology,” complained Lola.

  Alix smiled. “You’re a prize technophobe, girl. They warned me about you and gadgets, and how you have a nasty habit of destroying them.”

  “That’s a lie,” Lola was smirking, “They only sometimes break. Otherwise they just break-down...”

  Alix played with the phone, and frowned again. “I thought these things were practically bomb-proof?”

  “They are,” Lola called back from the front seat. “I very much doubt whether it has been damaged.”

  Alix looked at a loss, as Lola handed him her Scorpion smartphone. He attempted to bring the device to life, but it refused to boot-up. He shook his head, “Where to next?”

  “We need to contact Ferran & Cardini, and we need to find out what the hell is going on. We need to be alert and remember that a number of Scorpion units have been assassinated.”

  Alix looked perturbed, answering. “No I haven’t forgotten.”

  “Didn’t you think it a little odd that Scorpion made a point of requesting that they brought Dillon in to protect Kirill and his niece

  - and not us?”

  “A little.” Said Alix, lighting a cigarette and laying back, staring at the panelled ceiling, smoke spiralling upwards and escaping through the torn bullet holes making him feel a tad wary. Tension, spinning bullets and a lack of sleep did not fuse together to well. A cold draft whistled in through the holes. Alix started to dismantle and clean his Glock.

  He closed his eyes, thinking back to his last tour of Afghanistan and the random suicide bombers.

  And the bullets...

  And the killing...

  “We need to pay a visit to an old friend,” said Alix. He shivered. And welcomed the darkness of sleep as the van rumbled through the rain swept streets of the city.

  * * * REUTERS NEWS RELEASE. GCHQ INTERCEPT CLASSIFIED HQ1/FYEO-457 - D NOTICE APPLIED. At 7.30P.M.today London city suffered a total loss of electricity - telecommunications and mobile satellite coverage. The black-out lasted for approximately 15 minutes.

  Millions of residential homes and commercial businesses, including Government departments and agencies, hospitals and the police, were left in total disarray as the lights went out and computer systems crashed.

  There have been no reasons given for this failure by the Government or the power companies. Although, one theory is that it was caused by an explosion at a sub-station, which in turn generated a power surge to the grid network.

  GCHQ Transcript 3. CLASSIFIED HQ1/FYEO-457A SPECIAL SERVICES SUPPORT UNIT. MI5 intelligence confirmed that a Cyber-Terrorist attack occurred today. The target: Electricity power supply

  - telecommunications and mobile telephone satellite coverage. The Home Office immediately issued a D-Notice press black-out order. The attack was made by, as yet unknown, terrorist or organised crime syndicate, was registered at 7.30P.M.today for a 15 minute duration.

  All Scorpion and associated personal should go to Code Orange until further notice.

  Chapter 6

  It felt surreal, like a million light years had passed, as if he was on another planet. Dillon lay in the steaming hot Jacuzzi bath, water flowing over his body, massaging his back, easing the tension from his muscles, washing away the spatters and smears of blood. His eyes closed, his head resting on the roll-top bath, his fingertips massaging his temples ever so gently; round and round in tiny circles. It had been a long journey and his weariness had all but consumed him, devoured him whole and spat him out on the other side of the universe.

  Too much had changed in the world since he had opted for the quiet life in the Highlands of Scotland.

  He stepped out of the bath. The towel had been warming on the he
ated rail, and he dried himself in slow-motion, automaton movements. Then naked, he walked through to the master bedroom and collapsed onto the richly coloured, thickly opulent duvet. Sleep claiming him immediately into its embrace.

  Dillon tossed and turned, sleeping a restless and sweaty sleep...

  Zhenya - the look of utter disbelief. And then the silenced spitof the gun - everything in slow motion. A bullet spinning through the air, slamming into her shoulder, cloth tearing as the hollow-point bullet bore through skin and muscle, smashing bone. Kirill, face covered in blood and saliva, eyes unfocused as he lay in a state of shock - dying. But it was Dillon who took the bullet, felt his flesh tear and the searing heat as it entered his body and looking down, watched blood soaking through his shirt. Could see Kirill’s face staring down at him as he was lowered into the shallow grave and Zhenya throwing flowers on top of him as they started to shovel the soft earth in and he wanted to shout, shout; “I’m still alive. I’m not dead...”

  * * * He awoke suddenly in the darkness, a cold sweat covering his body, shivering with flashbacks of his past cascading through his mind. Dillon pulled the heavy duvet up around his neck, groaning with tired and aching muscles. A moment later he rolled from the bed and pulled on navy blue jogging bottoms and a thick woollen pullover, much too large but really soft and comfortable, just the way he liked it. He went barefoot down to the kitchen and made himself a cup of tea as the first weak rays of sunshine were filtering over the summit of the mountain range on the far side of the loch.

  Dillon went through to the living room and stretched his spine, then unlocked the French doors and stepped out onto the terrace. The cold hit him like a slap in the face and he gasped, revelling at the shock. Wind lashed his unruly hair and he leaned over the stone balcony, gazing out across the snow covered lawns. In the distance he could see woodland, snow-laden and picturesque. The lane snaked into the distance, between hills, and beyond it all; the mountains over lording the valley and watching over mere mortals far below.

  God, this is such a beautiful place , he thought. The phone rang. He stepped back inside and picked up the handset. “Hello.”

  “Dillon, its Tatiana.” She sounded serious.

  “Tats - I need a servere word in your ear, my lovely. Have you any fucking idea what happened to me in Cornwall?”

  “No time, Dillon. There’s something very bad going down, here in London. I just wanted to let you know that I’m coming up.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes. I’m on my way now, should be with you in about three hours. Do not use the mobile phone that I gave you. In fact, I doubt whether it is even connected at present.”

  “Why”

  “It’s the Scorpion units. It looks like three of them have been assassinated - wiped out. Look, I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

  The line went dead. Dillon went back inside and picked up the mobile phone. He checked the signal strength, which was usually strong, nothing, not a single bar; the screen showed that the satellite network was temporarily de-activated. Tats had called him from the secure phone system built into the Mercedes SL55 on-board computer system. She had obviously not wanted anyone to listen into her call...

  Dillon ran open fingers through his hair, her words troubling him. He shrugged to himself, pushing this worry from his mind temporarily. He would just have to wait until Tatiana arrived and wonder in the meantime what the hell was going on - and what her words of warning really meant - but it wasn’t that simple. Why had he not heard from Vince Sharp or Edward Levenson-Jones at Ferran & Cardini? What the hell was going on?

  He changed into a dark blue tracksuit and pulled on a battered old pair of Nike running shoes and trotted down the stairs and out through the front door. Dillon stood in the middle of the drive already feeling the invigorating effects of the bitterly cold morning air and fresh snowfall under foot. A moment later, he set off across the vast lawn leading down to the water’s edge, and at a steady pace followed the contours of the shoreline around the Loch, as wariness and bad images of the assignment down in Cornwall flickered through his mind with each stride.

  The early morning sunshine and the silence welcomed Dillon into its embrace and he groaned internally at the effort of such vigorous exercise and yet he felt the need. The need to work, to be doing something, to feel the exhilaration and power that only came with hard exercise; to feel the trail beneath his running shoes, to feel the burn of lactic acid, the strain of muscles, the tearing of strained lungs...

  Soon, with leg muscles burning, he turned in-land and headed up a hill towards woodland. He crested the first rise and entered the woods. Frozen gorse crackled and snapped under each heavy footfall as he pushed himself to the limit and five minutes later he cleared the woods and was heading up to a rocky out-crop that offered a spectacular view across the valley right back to the modest size castle he now called home.

  The distant engine noise indicated a large vehicle. It could just be passing by but Dillon had a bad feeling about it as no one ever came in his direction unless invited. Ever since the events in Cornwall only hours before and the low flying race back home to Scotland... The pursuit had ended without event but Dillon still felt drained after those bloody unexpected events at Kirill’s country residence

  The powerful diesel engine changed pitch. Dillon ran back down through the woods, staying just back from the tree line as he heard the vehicle turn up towards his property. He reached the rise just in front of the imposing building and gazed down at the battered Mercedes van, pumping diesel fumes from an engine that had run its last mile.

  A Mercedes van? It had to be...

  Alix and Lola, Dillon smiled.

  He ran down towards the main gate and, ever careful, paused to watch the van pulling up outside the front doors of the castle and the visitors disembark. Alix and Lola stepped down from the Mercedes, both grumbling and stretching after the obvious effects of a long journey. Dillon stayed where he was for a moment longer - nobody following - then jogged slowly up the drive to greet his two old friends whom he had served with during his army intelligence days.

  “Dillon!” Yelled Alix, and embraced the sweating man. They clasped hands, patting one another on the back. Lola smiled warmly. “I hope you’ve got whisky, Dillon? Lots of it...”

  “You Lola, have a wicked mind, and at this time of the morning. I still haven’t forgotten the last time the three of us started on the whisky!”

  “It wasn’t my fault Alix got thrown into the Thames! And it’s never too early for a wee dram...”

  “Lola, it was you who threw him in the river!”

  “It was nothing, just a little fooling around! It’s great to see you again, Jake.”

  “Come on in”, said Dillon smiling. “I’m just about ready for a cooked breakfast, if I can entice two of my oldest friends to join me?”

  “I’m up for some of that.” Alixsaid, as he followed Dillon inside.

  “And me,” Lola called as she stepped down from the back of the van with a holdall full of weapons.

  “It must be two or three years since we all got together. And with so many holes in that van. I assume there is a reason?” Dillon’s eyes were hooded, his mouth a grim line. Recent events having removed much of his humour, and this unannounced visit felt somehow ominous.

  “I’m afraid there is,” said Alix softly. He lit a cigar, rested his head back and rubbed at tired eyes. “Something bad is going down, old buddy. Have you logged on with the Ferran & Cardini server recently? Checked out the encrypted fodder on your adventures down in Cornwall?”

  Dillon shook his head. “No, not since I got back, I’m not really interested to be honest.”

  “Something just doesn’t add up, Jake. Scorpion HQ has no answers as to how the security was breached at the facility in Cornwall and how the SAS and MI5 protection squads were eliminated with such ease. And Kirill - our friendly Government computer nerd and creator of the all-powerful new programme - has disappeared and is pres
umed dead. They pulled the char-grilled corpse of his niece - along with the bodies of allthe guests from the party - from the burnt out ruins of his mansion once the fire service had managed to get the blaze under control. But mysteriously, no sign of professor Kirill. Strange that, considering you put a bullet in the fucker? I’m finding it just a little disconcerting that no one is able to answer the simple question of what the hell is going on - after all, their surveillance and technology budgets must exceed all the others put together.”

  Dillon shrugged. “Have you thought - just for a moment - that they might not know what is going on? After all, it might not be so bizarre to think, that what happened to me and from what you’re saying has happened to you - may have something to do with someone trying to obtain or destroy Kirill’s new software programme? After all Kirill seems to be the common denominator here.”

  “You’re dead right, Jake,” Alix said tucking into a plate of eggs and bacon. “Go on, Lola, tell him about the other Scorpion units.”

  Lola sighed, and took a swig of her whisky, and Dillon caught the resignation in the young woman. Strange, for sure, because they had survived some of the worst and most dangerous hot-spots on the planet together as serving officers in army intelligence. They had infiltrated terrorist networks throughout Europe, assisted humanitarian relief agencies in the most devastated areas of Africa and South America, and partied from dusk to dawn in a few dubious bars and clubs from London to Cuba.