by Mark Lingane
She sniffed her coffee, mainly to mask the smell of paint. The decorators had finished the redesign of the Maida Vale apartment a month ago, but the scent still lingered. Her eyes flicked over to the closed door of the small room, currently empty. Inside held high expectations and an empty cot. Her smile disappeared.
A disembodied voice mumbled from the bedroom. Her heartbeat increased.
“Yes, I won’t forget the clinic,” she called back. “I won’t get involved. I’ll tell them I’m busy and take the day off.”
She switched off the television just as a breaking story about yet another plane disaster scrolled across the bottom of the screen. She finished her coffee and scooped up her keys from the ceramic bowl she and her mother had made when Hanson was eight. It sat on a small table by the door beneath a grim picture of her father, the stern brigadier, in uniform, decorated and distant.
“I’ll see you there at two,” she shouted as she closed the front door.
Her cell phone rang. It was HQ. They could wait until she was in the office. She pressed ignore. She managed to take two paces before receiving her first text. Sixty more came in during the next minute.
Rolling destruction rained down as the airplane smashed into the ground. The collision was almost graceful as the gigantic craft folded like a dying swan. A great cloud of debris billowed up as the buildings shook.
The sniper cowered in the zone outlined in chalk, his arms over his head in a futile attempt at protection. Terror gripped him as the catastrophe unfolded. The horror was unimaginable; the sound so loud it had become solid. Buildings collapsed and the ground shook as the dismembered airplane came to a shuddering halt.
The towering council housing estates full of sleeping people, unaware of the oblivion that had claimed them, tumbled to the ground. Fire roared through the streets in an incomprehensible display of force. The decimation continued for an eternity.
When the noise had abated, he was still alive. Tears rolled down his face as the relief of survival flushed through him. His building—the poor tactical choice—had endured, barely, with pieces of it smashed out by flying chunks of fuselage. The chalk outline was all but gone. A thick cloud of dust obscured everything, cutting visibility to a few feet.
How did they know? Haze clouded the device and its eerie display. He glanced at the number. It didn’t read zero as they said it would; it displayed the number one. Had he made a mistake? Was it the wrong time?
Zero. One. Was there any difference when you looked at the scale of the things to come?
One. Zero. Zero. One. The numbers had started in trillions.
One. Zero. Zero. One. Why would a countdown end at one?
He stared at the numbers as they rocked endlessly between the binary. He had never been told what the device did, but he was beginning to get the feeling that it wasn’t counting down, but rather measuring. But measuring what?
One. Zero. Zero. One. One. Zero.
The first sirens slapped the sniper back to reality. He packed away the weapon and made his way down the fragile structure of the building, but with the disaster going on around him he was unsure if he had taken care of everything.
One.
“Tracy,” Chief Inspector Percy Booker barked, as Hanson bustled into his small office. “I’ll brief you later.”
Hanson was surprised to see that the department heads had been called together. Her fellow inspectors huddled inside the room, crowded to an almost comical level. She ignored the few errant, barely audible comments about her bothering to turn up, and sat down between Dan Holloway, the department’s tech support, and the chief. She took off her trainers and replaced them with office shoes. Holloway made gagging noises as she invaded his space to tie up her laces.
“Dan, and the rest of you, this is serious,” Booker said. “We have to appear somber and dedicated. Commissioner Stanley will appear shortly on all media to give a statement. We have to be able to say that at least we’ve started investigating, even if we don’t have any results.”
“Is there anything we can tell families and friends?” asked one.
“We have procedures for this,” Hanson said to the questioner over her shoulder. “No one talks.”
Booker stood at the front of the room, frowning at Hanson. “Last time I checked, DCI Hanson, I was the chief here.”
Someone snickered behind Hanson and she looked down at her shoes, pursing her lips.
“Official line is no comment,” Booker told them. “The commissioner will do all the talking. No one here, and let me be very clear about this, no one is to speak to anyone outside of this office.”
Holloway looked around. Several of the room’s inhabitants were glancing in his direction. “Do you mean me? Because IA’s cleared me.”
“I’m telling everyone to be tightlipped. The press hyenas will be ten times craftier—”
“Deceitful.” Holloway threw a screwed-up piece of paper into the waste-paper basket on the other side of the room.
“—and ten times more desperate.” Booker raised his hand, palm sideways and straight. “We’re the thin blue line, front and center, no more, no less.”
“Do we have to be in uniform?” someone asked.
“Yes, if you’re dealing with the public. Get them out of mothballs. It’s protocol.”
There was a collective groan.
“Last time I was in uniform, people kept abusing me for being a parking inspector,” Holloway said.
“We’re the police, and never more so than today. The uniform’s important.” Booker looked down at the small chart on his desk and pointed to Holloway. “Dan, sort out the logistics for the emergency services, in and out. Brief the tech team. They’re going to be doing a lot of numbercrunching today. Tracy, you’ll be our man, er, person on site—ground zero—for the day. We’ll need you in close.”
“But we agreed—”
He cut her short. “We need you all day. Today’s a day of organization. People are going to be scared and we need to show them we’re working on a solution. We’ve never faced anything on this scale before. It’ll test everyone to the absolute maximum. Be prepared for the toughest time of your life.”
Hanson folded her arms and looked out the window.
Booker assigned roles to the remaining attendees. “You all have your roles, now go. Most important, be careful until we know what we’re dealing with.”
Hanson remained glued to her seat until the other inspectors had left. “Chief, we discussed this. I had an appointment at two with the … at the …”
“I’m sorry, Tracy. Planes don’t fall out of the sky every day.” He paused. “Over London, anyway.”
“But Rod and I’ve been trying for …” she looked away. Frustration welled up as her effort at coordinating complicated biological events was overridden.
“Look, take support with you. If you’ve got the site under control you can get them to cover while you’re gone.”
The chief inspector’s desk phone started to ring. He gave her a tired look and paused before lifting the receiver. “The Met rang.”
“About my promotion?”
“Not exactly. They’re sending an SO15 ordnance disposal guy. Try and be nice. He could be a way in.”
“Counter Terrorism Command? What do you mean ‘a way in’?”
“There’s no easy way to say this, but the Met’s filling the super role internally. I think your age played a part, and possibly your media saturation. Think about winding back the appearances. I have to take this call, but we can talk later.”
“But it’s not fair.”
“Do you wish to make a complaint, DCI?”
She lowered her head. “No, sir.”
3
RANDEEP SWIPED HIS access card and entered the Candle Fire building. Security guards were staring at the breaking news on the foyer monitors. The first-aid delegate was attending to a guard lying on the floor who had fainted.
A sentry turned to face him as the electronic lock di
sengaged. “Hello, Randy. Bag please.”
Randeep unzipped his backpack and handed it over. The guard shifted around the various items: lunchbox, thermos, phone, physics book, and pulp novel. He pulled out the book.
“Tesla. Is it any good?”
“Meh, mainly for kids. Is he all right?” Randeep indicated the prostrate man on the floor.
“Joe’s grandmother lived on the South Bank. They’d finally convinced her to go into a retirement place, and she was meant to move yesterday except she was sick. So Joe told her to stay in her home overnight. He was going to pick her up after his shift.”
“That’s terrible. We should set up a fund for everyone who’s been affected by the disaster.”
“Let’s leave it to the brass. They can afford it.” The guard smiled and handed back Randeep’s pack.
Randeep nodded and made his way to the elevators. A burst of effervescent noise bubbled behind him. The uber-attractive marketing gang made their entrance, swaggering in with their grande coffees and itchy noses. One of the women giggled and flirted with the security guard. The guard indicated the monitors. She glanced over his shoulder and took in the report, held her hand to her mouth and did her serious face. Then she laughed.
The group barged their way in through the security gate and congregated noisily at the elevator. Clips of inane dialog floated over Randeep as they chatted vacuously about the reality television shows they were currently auditioning for. The alpha male of the pack, resplendent in his oversized suit, pressed the up button. One of the women shot Randeep a glance, and he smiled awkwardly back as he pressed down. The ascending elevator appeared first, and Randeep was left in merciful silence after the group stumbled in. His elevator, arriving shortly after, squeaked open and he stepped onto the perforated metal flooring. As soon as the doors closed, he heard the whir of the electrical field spark up. He checked his cell. No signal.
Five seconds passed and the elevator descended the five floors. The doors opened and he stepped out into a dimly lit corridor. With the deep-red lighting distorting distances, he lurched along the passageway until he reached the end. He pressed a large red button, which looked almost gray in the low light.
The door slid open and he stepped through into Candle Fire’s research laboratory. It was illuminated by dim-blue fluorescent strips, and, as always, made him feel like he’d jumped to light speed.
The security guard on the other side of the doorway coughed.
Randeep handed over his cell.
The guard rested his hands on his bloated stomach and turned on the device. He examined the contents. “Anything to declare?”
“Uh, no.” Randeep shifted uneasily.
The guard looked at him suspiciously as he placed the phone in the small box. “You sure?”
“Do you know what’s happened?” Randeep could feel slight perspiration breaking out on his forehead.
The guard gave him a blank look.
“No one’s told you about the plane?”
The man shrugged, his face looking half-melted in the strange light.
“A plane crashed in South London,” Randeep said.
“Terrorists,” came the gruff reply. He indicated for Randeep to pick up his cell.
“They don’t know yet,” Randeep said.
“Bet it was. We should launch a counterstrike.”
“Against who?”
“The terrorists. It’s those foreigners coming over here. They sponge off the welfare system and take all our jobs, then they attack us.”
Randeep gave him a respectful nod. He walked over to his desk and sat down, slowly and carefully peering around the laboratory. The other lab rats were all occupied. He plugged his cell into his workstation. It made an unexpected beep, which he tried to muffle. Josh, sitting to his right, glanced over, his dark eyes radiating suspicion. Randeep coughed and gave him a wave. Josh frowned and returned his attention to his monitor.
Randeep unscrewed the lid of his thermos and poured himself a cup of coffee. He stirred the drink with a pen and took a long sip. Reaching for a tissue, he wiped his lips and removed the SD card from his mouth, drying it and slipping it into his cell. He loaded it into a scrambled partition and re-encoded the video.
Images of the plane streamed from his cell to the monitor. He watched them again and again, tracking them back and forth around one particular point where the plane seemed to hiccup. He advanced frame by frame. The plane moved pixel by pixel. Right. Right. Right. Left. Right.
He double-checked. There was no mistake. The plane had been hit by something. He overlapped the two frames and ran a delta analysis. He blinked.
“Josh?”
“Hmm?”
“Have you finished the algorithm for the EM pulse cannon?”
“Hmm. Ah, yeah, sort of.”
“Can you tell me where it is?”
“Filed. Under 23984–slash–350 EMP beta two. From root. Have you got cert-three access?”
“Er, yes … I do.”
Josh glanced over at him, lingering momentarily before returning his focus to his screen.
Randeep waited until he was sure Josh was engrossed in calculation analysis before flicking down through the directory structure. The fearsome alert sign appeared on his screen, along with the usual flashing question mark demanding a password.
He gave his co-worker another quick glance and typed in Josh’s password. It hadn’t been hard to guess. He dragged the script to his own desktop, duplicated his footage of the plane, and ran the copied video through the code. Then he overlaid the original and encoded copy, and ran a difference calculation.
And there it was, staring at him as clear as daylight: the familiar blue and red of an EM pulse, but in dense intertwining ribbons. He sat back and blinked in disbelief.
4
IT WAS A mess: a whole suburb decimated by the massive aircraft. The plummeting wreckage had destroyed a mile of high-density housing, throwing a huge dust cloud into the morning sky and casting a dark shadow over the southern housing estates. Flames erupted from broken gas lines. There was no human movement other than the emergency services attending to the drama as quickly as the difficult access allowed. Confusingly, the army was arriving, but not UK forces.
Hanson knew that at a time like this they should be grateful for any assistance being offered. Still, the absence of the UK military was a disappointment. Search-and-rescue drones, painted in military colors, swooped in low over the site.
Her heart sank. This unexpected development put her two o’clock appointment in jeopardy.
Police and emergency vehicles had established a recovery zone at the closest accessible point to the disaster. They had erected barriers of yellow-and-black tape, set up a major checkpoint, and were rapidly constructing a fence. A prominent sign told people to turn off their cell phones for safety reasons. As always, Hanson’s understanding was that the sign referred to others.
The cockpit of the plane lay several dozen yards away, shiny but battered. She could hear metal being cut open.
“Who are you?” Hanson said to the young detective approaching her.
“Detective Inspector Chambers from the Met, Reggie.” He held out his hand. Hanson ignored it. Self-consciously, he placed it back in his pocket.
“I’m DCI Hanson.”
“I know. I’ve seen you on television. A few times.”
Hanson ignored the sarcasm and focused on the task before her. “Can we requisition one of those drones?” She indicated the humming craft slowly hovering over the area.
“Er, no. They’re military.”
“Fine. Organize a chopper so we can scout the area from above.”
Chambers blinked at her abruptness. “I’ll radio HQ with the request.” He gave her a cold smile and headed to a police vehicle.
A large crowd of onlookers was beginning to gather on the other side of the fence. She sighed. This meant petty theft could now be added to the list of disruptions. As Chambers strode back toward her, she
took out her phone and raised it to take a photograph of the scene.
A man wearing a U.S. military uniform ran toward her. “No phones,” he shouted. He pointed threateningly at her, his other hand hovering over the pistol holstered on his belt.
“I’m police,” she shouted back.
“No phones,” he repeated. He stood staring at her, his hand remaining near his weapon.
She walked closer and raised her finger at him. “This is not Homeland Security, and you’re not on American soil. This is my jurisdiction, so back up, cowboy.”
“Ma’am, you’re about to step onto sovereign declaration, and I’ve been given full permission to repudiate any incursion into American freedom and liberty. These drones are U.S. property and only operate in the fifty states, federal districts, and constitutional territorial acquisitions.”
“What?” She placed her hands on her hips. “Is this attitude part of your Manifest Destiny? Listen, you moron, you see that great big building on the other side of the river? That’s Big Ben, and next to it is a little place called Westminster. And up the road is another little place called Buckingham Palace, home of the queen, the supreme leader of two-point-five billion people making up the Commonwealth of Nations and this country in which your over-proportioned backside, accompanying legs, and diminutive mind are standing.”
She took a step forward. The man whipped out his pistol and leveled it at her. She slowly raised her warrant card.
“And the queen gave me this card to protect the people of this great city from the enemy, which at this particular point in time is … you.”
With blinding speed, she pulled out her so-new-it-was-still-shiny pistol and leveled it at him. A bullet was in the chamber and the hammer was cocked. The sunlight reflected off the gleaming chrome into his eyes.
“British police don’t carry guns,” he said. Sweat was forming on his brow. He hadn’t read the procedure covering this eventuality.
