by Mark Lingane
“We do now. And I’m a damn amazing shot.”
Chambers ran up. “Whoa. Everyone calm down. What’s going on?” His eyes swiveled between the confrontational pair.
“He says I can’t use my phone,” Hanson said.
“And you want to shoot him over that?” Chambers raised his hands toward her.
“Not specifically. But he’s an American, so any excuse will do.” Still staring at the soldier, she said, “Look at him, overpaid, overfed and now ov—”
“Phones can explode out here,” Chambers said.
“What? How?” Her eyes flicked over to Chambers.
“Aviation fumes are everywhere. Can’t you smell them? If you turn on your phone, the battery could short and we’ll all become fried chicken.”
“What if the battery’s built in? There are no terminals to short across, so there’s no spark.”
“Your choice. But if you kill us all, you’ll owe me more than a few drinks at the pub.” Chambers gave her a smile. She sighed. “The danger is just in the immediate crash zone, and the wind’ll blow it away soon enough. But for now, let’s be safe rather than sorry.”
“Fine. I’d hate to cause a scene.” She raised her pistol, turning it sideways. She held out her phone in the other hand and said to the soldier, “Which one do you want me to put away?”
“The phone.”
“Really? Most of the world would rather die than give up their device … but I’m not one of them.” She holstered her gun, turned off her cell phone, and slipped it into her back pocket. She turned away and focused her attention on Chambers.
The soldier stood where he was with the barrel of his own weapon hovering between Hanson and Chambers.
“Don’t mind him.” She clicked her fingers in front of Chamber’s distracted face. “Have you heard of this before?”
“Eh? What?”
“This U.S. soil-and-drones issue?”
“Er, no.” Chambers watched the soldier as he slowly lowered his weapon. He let out a sigh of relief, realizing he’d been holding his breath.
Hanson turned to the soldier. “You, pudgy, what’s this rubbish about sovereign soil?”
“Drones are only used over soil that’s under the jurisdiction of the United States of America,” the man said.
“I see.” She turned to Chambers. “It’s bureaucracy gone mad. Call Central London, get the chief to call the commissioner, and get this idiot fired.”
Chambers gave her a quizzical stare. “Is something wrong with you? Have you got Asperger’s or something?”
“No, why would you say that? I’m perfectly normal.”
After a few moments of hesitation, he raised his eyebrows and let out a sigh. “No reason.”
Hanson searched for and spotted a five-story building. She indicated for Chambers to follow.
“Except most people don’t go around feeling the need to declare how normal they are,” he muttered as he trailed behind her.
A few minutes later, Hanson and Chambers stood on top of the building, which overlooked the destruction zone. Hanson stared out at the devastation as Chambers struggled with the Central London call center.
“Are you through yet?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I could be in Mombasa for all I know. Figuratively speaking.”
“Give me the phone.” She wrestled it out of his hand and punched in a sequence. “Whom am I speaking to? … Never heard of you. This is DCI Tracy Hanson; connect me with the chief inspector at Central, now.” She gave Chambers a brief smile. “Chief, some American soldier’s being difficult … don’t know the name. Fat idiot. That’s a technical and accurate description. He’s denying us access to the drones. Some rubbish about the site being declared American soil so drones can fly over it. Call the commissioner. Thanks.”
She ended the call and threw the phone over her shoulder to Chambers, who scrambled to catch it. “Fixed,” she said.
“This is my own phone, you know,” he said, “not a work one. And I’ve still got seventeen months left on the contract.” Chambers cleaned the glass on the front of his cell and slipped it into his pocket.
Hanson put her hands on her hips and looked out over the site. She took a couple of deep breaths and pointed to the fuselage. “Okay, plane’s here … how long would you say the crash zone is?”
“I’d guess about a mile.” Chambers cocked his head as he thought. “Maybe a bit less.”
“We’ll have to assume this was a terrorist hit. The plane was on descent into Heathrow and, what do you think, they launched a ground-to-air missile like in Ukraine?”
He shook his head. “Something’s bothering me. Have you noticed something odd about the crash?”
“Many things,” Hanson muttered, distracted. “Why?”
“The plane was flying at about two hundred miles an hour,” Chambers said. “The pilot would’ve tried to glide the plane down as gently as possible. The crash zone should be way longer than a mile.”
“Yeah, totes way.”
Chambers glanced sideways at her before continuing. “Or why not crash in the river? It’s like the plane just fell out of the sky and bounced a couple of times. Mathematically, that isn’t right.”
“Interesting point,” Hanson said. “Get the tech guys, no, call Dan Holloway at Central and get him to build a model. He’s our best. It might give us some clues about where the plane was hit.”
She glanced at her watch. “We crack on. I want you to be my secondary eyes and ears. Set up subgroups to scour the area. Snowflake it out so we get complete coverage. Communicate at fifteen-minute intervals. Set up a database of observations. You’re giving me a strange look.”
“I’m thinking I should’ve let the guy shoot you.”
“This is London. You need to be good to make it here.”
“And a major pain?”
“Deal with it, Chambers. It’s called efficiency.”
He gestured that this was open to debate. Twice, when she turned her back.
“I don’t need to see you to know what you’re doing,” she said. He hid his hands behind his back. “Have you got the Citrix link into the HQ database?”
Chambers nodded. He pulled out his phone again, swiped the screen and opened the application.
“Okay,” she said, “give me the people stats.”
After a moment, the figures started to flick onto the screen. “Home to about seventeen thousand people,” he said. “Three hundred thousand commute to work here. And about half a million pass through on their way over there.”
He nodded toward the north side of the Thames River. Smoke and dust drifted over the river, enveloping Westminster in a dense cloud. Big Ben had completely disappeared, leaving only a disconnected hourly chime.
“I wonder if the pollies know how lucky they’ve been,” Hanson said. “A mile to the north and no more government. Bet they’re already bickering about something else.”
“Maybe next time, if we’re lucky,” Chambers muttered. “Something like this should galvanize them, common foes and all that.”
“But it’s more important in their eyes that politicians survive. Where there are people, there’s power. And where there’s power, there are people playing political games. It’s best if we keep them in one building.” Hanson turned back to the rubble. “What’s the worst-case scenario?”
“Everyone’s dead.”
“That’s not the worst.” She checked her watch.
“You mean if they’re all undead, like some zombie apocalypse that invades London?”
“No, I mean if we suddenly have a hundred thousand survivors from all the demolished buildings. Where would we put them?”
“That’s a bit heartless.”
“It’s being practical. Dead people are easier to deal with.”
“Not if you’re the one who has to tell their families. Or if there’s a zombie apocalypse.”
“Let’s get back to ground zero and start setting up the teams.”
<
br /> Hanson glanced at her watch. She had traversed the crash site from front to rear. Time: 1:40. Heart rate: 140. She let out a sigh of relief. Sweat lined her face, which was coated with grime. She wiped the back of her hand across her forehead, smearing a trail of black soot. From her vantage point on top of the collapsed regional branch of B&Q, every DIY addict’s dream, she mentally ticked off the task forces.
The mapping and coordinates team had made it all the way across to the other side of the crash zone. She wondered what they would be using if they hadn’t had battery-powered equipment. Steam-powered theodolites? She smiled at the mental image of large brass telescopes being towed by immense steam vehicles, with men in top hats and tails working industriously. Well, supervising industriously anyway, since she knew their wives would be doing the real work in secret.
The wind had picked up, dispersing the fuel fumes and allowing the teams to toil on.
“Chambers, you got it sorted?” she shouted. “I’ve got an important meeting to get to.”
Chambers waved back, giving a thumbs-up. “Must be the most important meeting in the world.”
Hanson slipped out her phone and called the number. “Yeah, it’s me. I’m all clear. I’ll see you at two, maybe a little aft—”
There was a shout, and Hanson’s head snapped up. She hung up and ran.
5
RANDEEP SAT BACK, thinking about the results of his scan, idly flicking the mouse between his fingers. The printer hissed out a sheet of paper with the findings. The numbers didn’t make any sense. Einstein’s general relativity equation couldn’t allow for this. But, as Tesla said, if you substitute mathematics for experiments, then you have no relation to reality. Maybe they’d been relying too much on equations lately.
“Josh,” he said, “I’m going down to the chamber to perform some tests on One.”
Josh mumbled a response without taking his eyes off his monitor.
Randeep picked up the printout and made his way over to a large and heavily secured iron grating. He swiped his card, taking a quick peek back over his shoulder as the grate unlocked, stepped into the chamber, and shut the grid. The light above the entrance changed from green to red.
The large round door in front of him was two feet thick and five feet in diameter. He ducked as he stepped through the opening. The door closed slowly behind him, accompanied by repetitive beeping.
Lights flickered on, illuminating a massive metal spiral staircase. He made his way down, following the safety instructions and keeping his hand clamped to the handrail. The beeping stopped by the time he reached the base of the staircase, and he heard the onerous clunk of the round door above him closing, then the grinding of metal on metal as bolts slid into the walls.
Lights shone down on Ministry of Defense insignia and security reminders. The stress had Randeep sweating. The tunnel ahead of him was a partitioned area of an abandoned underground train line that had been cleared of existing civil remains, dug out to be significantly larger, then filled with military machinery.
Randeep made his way through the collection of oversized weapons. Great surface-to-air missile launchers pointed lifelessly toward the curved ceiling, towering over tanks from recent wars. He squeezed his way through the enormous ordinances to a silver box as large as a double-decker bus. His hand swept over the shiny metal. The letters CF-1, painted red, were embossed on the side of the huge box. He pressed a large green button on the side. A small panel slid open in the metal sheeting, revealing another swipe point and a numeric keypad. He swiped his card over the small plate and typed in a code.
The lights in the tunnel dimmed and a low hum emanated from the silver box, then began to increase in intensity. Randeep made his way through the weapons until he reached the far end of the tunnel. He unlocked the gate to a cage that enclosed a small control room and stepped in. Locking the gate behind him caused a small generator at the base of the control room to power up the room, making the floor vibrate gently.
He glanced at the emergency exit. The roller door was up, revealing the heavy fire door beyond. If things went sideways, he might just make it with most of his body intact.
The monitors flickered to life. He sat down and studied them. Someone had written 730 T on a Post-it note and stuck it next to one of the monitors. Randeep wiped the sweat from his palms onto his trousers and started to type.
The humming coming from the CF-1 became louder. He watched the readouts. A number began to build.
400
500
600
He wiped his hand across his forehead.
650
675
He could feel his heartbeat.
700
A small light in the corner of the control room turned from blue to yellow.
720
The yellow light began to flash.
725
740
The light turned red. He typed in another code and flicked a switch behind him.
760
The red light flashed. The metal bars enclosing the control room began to vibrate. He looked out into the tunnel. Some of the smaller weapons were shaking. Nausea rolled over him.
795
799
He threw up into a waste-paper basket.
800
The entire tunnel beyond the cage turned dark red. A siren erupted by his ear. He took off his sweater and shoved it into the alarm to muffle the sound.
810
820
840
860
He heard a loud bang. Rivets began to shoot out of the CF-1. His head was spinning. The cage was shaking violently. He staggered over to the monitor and dumped the readings. A rivet sailed across the tunnel and ricocheted off one of the bars. The readings were pushing well into the red. The equipment was on the verge of exploding, but somehow it was managing to hold together.
He slammed his fist down on a large red button. The siren stopped. The flashing stopped. The shaking stopped. The sickness stopped.
He checked the final reading.
Just below 890 teslas.
He had thrown an electromagnetic beam of nearly one kilotesla, the strongest ever transmitted by a living person. Until today, transmitting that strength of reading over that kind of distance—two yards—while somehow staying alive would have guaranteed him a Nobel Prize.
Randeep checked the printout. The spectrum analysis between the two readings was the same, but the strength had him shaking his head. His delta calculations up in the lab had shown an EM wave strength of two hundred and fifty kiloteslas. No one on the planet had that kind of technology. He was certain of it.
He sat back, thinking about the results of the scan, resuming his distracted habit of idly flicking the mouse between his fingers. The dot-matrix printer noisily spat out the findings. Row after row poured out as the calculations based on the test concluded. A heat map of the intensity rolled out of the LIGO1 machine. It was impressive, but it wasn’t two hundred and fifty kiloteslas.
He felt like a caveman confronted by a space rocket. The image of the intertwined ribbons rose in his mind. It was all about relativity. If he could somehow wrap the beam in a negative field …
Randeep sat in the cage waiting for the electrical storm raging through the tunnel to calm down, staring blankly ahead as he tried to grasp the magnitude of the findings. Eventually the light flickered green, allowing him to unlock the cage and walk absentmindedly back through the tunnel and up the steps.
He sat down at his desk and tapped his fingers idly over the keys. Josh gave him a surprised glance, followed by a deliberate cough. When that failed to get Randeep’s attention, Josh kicked his ankle. Randeep turned and stared straight into the uniforms of two security guards.
6
CHAMBERS HALF RAN, half stumbled over the rubble down the remains of Brunel Street. “We’ve got a survivor,” he shouted.
Hanson quickly caught up to him, bouncing over the hazardous debris. “In this?”
C
hambers clambered onto the top of the remains of a Tesco’s supermarket and pointed down, listening intently on his phone. In the center of the intersection ahead of them at the edge of the crash site rested a small Honda hatchback. The front half the tiny car was destroyed. One indicator was flashing forlornly in the crumpled wreckage, and steam hissed out of the broken radiator.
“Bremmer found the car,” Chambers said. “Looks like a piece of the plane’s wing landed on it, bringing down the comms tower next to them. Said the adults in the front are dead, but there’s a young boy in the back. He’s the only one alive so far.”
“Great, I hate kids,” Hanson said.
“Is there anyone you do like?”
“Rod,” she replied. She nodded as if to confirm this.
“I’m assuming Rod is a person rather than part of your fishing gear. He wouldn’t be a saint, by any chance, would he?”
“Can we keep personal comments out of this?” For a moment, sadness flickered across her face and she glanced at her watch. She was going to miss the appointment and Rod was going to be ‘disappointed’. “Come on, let’s get down there.”
They made their way over the rubble, taking sideways steps, sliding and stumbling and grabbing onto each other for support. The bright yellow tape went from corner to corner of the intersection, tied onto anything that had remained upright. Chambers lifted the tape for Hanson, but she moved further along and stepped under another section.
As they approached the vehicle, they could sense a change in the air. The exploration team was standing back from the roped-off area.
“We’re entering a danger zone inside a danger zone,” Chambers told her. “Is that like a double negative canceling each other out, or does that make it exponentially worse?”
“Why is there wreckage this far from the actual crash?”
