by Hammond, Ray
Steffanie pushed herself up onto her knees but, as she did so, a silver data recording pen that had been tucked into the top pocket of her white tunic, slid out. It bounced on the walkway’s aluminum flooring and, in what seemed like slow-motion, fell over the edge of the walkway floor and down, down into the Accelerator Hall.
Floyd was watching the object fall, already on his feet. The silver pen hit the ground just behind one of the HFDA soldiers standing near Poliza. The man spun round, looked down, then up.
With a shout he raised his automatic rifle and fired a burst into the darkness above the giant tungsten lamps. Bullets ricocheted from the concrete ceiling.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Floyd shouted to Steffanie.
The CERN researcher pointed urgently towards the far end of the walkway and, with Floyd in the lead, they ran across the swaying metal bridge – bullets ricocheting all around them – until they reached the far side and the opening to another service stairwell.
*
There was absolute silence as President Brabazon, the members of his global crisis committee and their virtual assistants watched Alexander Makowski’s newly uploaded webcast for the third time.
On the first viewing the Humans First leader’s demands had been greeted with derision by some of the junior aides gathered in the Situation Room. As they watched the recording for the second time, those voices became more muted as the virtual assistants had identified the missing CERN scientist Professor Bo Lundgren to be among the group. Now, as the message to the West was played one more time, nobody said anything. At the end of his broadcast Makowski had issued a stark warning.
‘We are aware that under the influence of machine advisors, cyborg leaders will attempt to take extreme measures to protect the ascent of machine intelligence,’ Makowski told them. ‘If you make any attempt to attack this facility the fail-safe mechanism will ensure your complete destruction.’
When Theodore froze the image of Makowski after the third playback there was only a disbelieving silence around the table.
Eventually the President spoke. ‘If we take what he says at face value, perhaps I should be packing, getting ready to leave the White House.’
‘He must know there’s no mechanism in the constitution to install a new president without a democratic vote,’ said the Secretary of State. ‘His demands are ludicrous.’
‘Correct,’ said Theodore. ‘There is no mechanism.’
Several of the heads at the table turned to each other, nodding their agreement.
‘Theo, what are the odds that Makowski and all his people would actually commit suicide in order to secure their goals,’ asked Robert Brabazon.
‘I estimate over seventy per cent,’ said the virtual assistant. ‘They have already destroyed a large part of central London and would also have destroyed Silicon Valley. You are dealing with the most dangerous terrorist on the planet – and now he’s boxed himself in for a final stand.’
There was a silence in the Situation Room once again – a silence that persisted so long that the hum of the air conditioning seemed almost to become deafening.
Then Theodore spoke once again. ‘Humans First have just published the name of the politician they wish to see installed as president.’
An image of an slender middle-aged man in a beige lounge suit appeared on one of the main wall displays.
‘Benjamin Pace,’ read the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs out loud. ‘Chairman of the Humans First Party, Nyack Chapter.’
‘Nyak, that’s upstate New York, isn’t it?’ said Mike Ryan. ‘I can have him picked up by the local police immediately.’
‘No need, he’s already here in Washington,’ said Theodore. ‘He’s staying at the Comfort Motel on Rushton Drive.’
‘I presume he’s waiting for his invitation to the White House,’ said President Brabazon.
*
Federal Agent Nicole Sanderson did not normally carry her agency-issued handgun on routine domestic investigations. But on instinct she had packed her LiteFrame carbon-fibre .45 automatic for this trip to Europe.
Now she held the weapon in the braced two-handed stance she had practiced so many times as she heard feet thundering down the corridor towards the room where she, Marcel Toussaint, the two CERN security guards and the limousine driver from the American consulate had taken refuge. Both CERN guards had also drawn their pistols.
There’s two of them, said Carl. She repeated his auditory analysis for the benefit of her companions.
They had beaten the HFDA force to the lower levels by only a few minutes and Toussaint had stopped the elevator two floors above the main accelerator hall.
‘I know a safe place,’ he had said as they raced along a deserted corridor – the ceiling lights automatically flicking on ahead of them as they ran.
They had arrived at a steel door set into the wall and Toussaint had swiped his staff pass and urged them into what turned out to be a large store-room full of laundry products and cleaning supplies.
Now the running feet stopped outside the door.
‘They can’t open it without a staff pass,’ hissed Marcel Toussaint.
Suddenly an LED on the inside door lock glowed green and the door swung inwards. A white suited, white faced young woman was framed in the doorway.
‘FEDERAL AGENT. STOP. I WILL FIRE!’ yelled Nicole pointing the weapon directly at the young woman’s forehead.
Behind her, said Carl
Nicole saw the armed man in battle fatigues and she swung her pistol, starting to squeeze the trigger as she did so. The two security guards trained their own pistols on the soldier.
The man’s hands shot high into the air.
‘I am a British agent,’ the soldier shouted back at the woman with the gun. He had an English accent. ‘I have just rescued this woman from the HFDA.’
He could still be HFDA, Carl warned her.
Nicole kept her .45 trained directly on Floyd’s face. The two were only five feet apart.
‘Take his guns – be careful,’ Nicole said to the younger of the two security guards
‘I work for the Counter-Terrorism Unit – for Ray Fox,’ added Floyd.
Nicole remained rigid for a few seconds as the guard lifted the two weapons from Floyd’s shoulders and up over his raised arms.
‘Prove it,’ demanded Nicole, her .45 pointed directly at the soldier.
‘Which agency are you with?’ asked Floyd, holding his arms rigidly erect.
‘ATA,’ snapped Nicole.
‘Long enough to remember Operation Fourth Base?’ asked Floyd. ‘I was in Manhattan.’
The HFDA would know all about that, advised Carl.
Nicole still held her gun pointed straight at the soldier’s head.
‘He’s just killed three men to save me,’ blurted the young woman who stood beside the man in the doorway. ‘I’m a CERN research assistant,’ she added, waving her staff pass.
‘I’ve seen her around,’ confirmed Toussaint.
‘Who’s Fox’s number two?’ Nicole asked.
‘David Evans,’ said Floyd. ‘And Fox’s VA is called Sue.’
Good enough, said Carl.
Nicole nodded and, with a sigh of relief, slowly lowered her weapon.
Floyd dropped his arms. ‘Shut the door,’ he told Stef.
As the Frenchwoman did so the British agent advanced into the room.
‘I’m Floyd,’ he said. As he spoke he saw a red wall phone. He ran over and snatched the handset from the cradle.
‘It’s no good,’ Nicole told him. ‘I’ve already tried. It’s only internal. And my VA’s got no network access down here.’
Twenty-four
‘This is Geneva. Identify yourselves immediately,’ ordered an angry voice in the headset.
Flight Supervisor Ian Marshall, commander of the US Air Force Ninth Bomber Wing, glanced at his co-supervisor and shrugged. The twelve long-range stealth bombers had been ordered into the air only an hour before with instruc
tions merely to circle the target at a distance and altitude which would not interfere with local commercial air traffic. Accompanying the American bombers were six R.A.F. F-44 fighter aircraft – planes which would need regular in-air refuelling if they were to remain on station for very long.
Most significantly for all of the bomber supervisors, ground engineers at U.S.A.F. Fairford had loaded four nuclear-tipped, thirty kiloton, satellite-guided bunker busters into each of the twelve aircraft. Like the others in the wing, Captain Ian Marshall had not been told officially why there might be a need to drop up to forty-eight penetrating nukes on a target that straddled the French/Swiss border, but he had seen the newscasts on the TV in the mess. He knew that members of the Humans First Direct Action had taken over a giant particle smasher that was buried deep underground.
‘This is Geneva. Identify yourselves immediately,’ repeated the angry voice in the headset. ‘Fighters will be scrambled if you do not respond.’
Shall I respond? asked virtual Flight Manager VX-21.
Flight Supervisor Marshall, shook his head. He and the rest of the squadron had told their virtual pilots to make gentle eighty-kilometre circles at an altitude of 62,000 feet – way above the ceiling of commercial air traffic. But the short operations briefing had made no mention of an angry local air traffic controller nor local fighters. The air-base commander had merely said that all local air traffic control centres would be informed of the Wing’s route.
‘I wonder what they’re seeing?’ Marshall said to his co-supervisor. All of the bomber supervisors in the Wing knew that their radar signatures were so slight that it was almost certainly the fighters’ thermal profiles that were being picked up by Geneva air-traffic control.
Suddenly a klaxon warning blared in the cockpit and a blue light stared to flash on the Air-Defense Display panel.
Ground missiles now seeking a lock-on, reported VX-21, switching off the sound alert.
‘This is Geneva,’ crackled the angry voice again. ‘Identify yourselves immed–’
There was an audible interruption in the radio transmission and the two supervisors exchanged glances.
‘This is NATO air traffic control in Brussels,’ said a completely new voice, a voice with an American accent. ‘We have taken command of air traffic control in the Geneva sector. The Ninth is to enlarge the radius of it’s holding circle by three degrees. Do not come closer to the target than fifty kilometres.’
Transmission authentication code received, confirmed VX-21.
Ian Marshall nodded.
‘Affirmative,’ the virtual pilot responded to the NATO air controller. ‘We are expanding our turn by three degrees. We will stand off the target by fifty kilometres.’
Then the VP closed the transmission. Ground missile radar no longer active, he reported to his supervisors.
*
‘This is an office for visiting researchers,’ Steffanie told Floyd and Nicole as they ran into a small scruffy room with a single large table in its centre. The table was covered with documents, drawings and what looked like old sandwich wrappings.
‘Here,’ said Steffanie as she lifted up two bulging ring-binder files to reveal an old-fashioned grubby white telephone. ‘Maybe this one has an outside line.’
Nicole had decided to split her trapped party into two groups. With the CERN security guards to provide protection, Toussaint, the female CERN research assistant and the consulate driver would escape the complex if a safe route out could be found, otherwise they would find a more secure hiding area. Nicole wanted to get the civilians out of harm’s way while she lent assistance to the British CTU agent. But Steffanie Dubois had refused to go with the non-combatants. ‘You will need someone to guide you,’ she told Nicole. ‘I know this place like the back of my hand.’
After leaving the cleaners’ supply room the three had run through what seemed like endless corridors in the underground complex. Every one of them had been under the surveillance of CCTV cameras and Floyd had wondered out loud whether their images were now allowing the HFDA to track their progress.
Now Floyd grabbed the phone, dialled nine and heard an outside dial tone. He punched in the first of the three international numbers he had memorised and a male voice said, ‘CTU Operations.’
‘This is Floyd,’ he almost shouted, his breath coming in heaving gulps. ‘Get me Fox.’
There was a delay. Floyd unslung his weapon and put it down on the table of the brightly-lit meeting room. Nicole had the second automatic rifle slung across her shoulders and she stood at the door, her ear pressed against the metal to detect any sound from the corridor outside. Carl had boosted her hearing by twenty per cent.
‘Floyd?’ It was Fox.
‘Yes, sir. L4, B22, H91. Did you get my email?’
‘Yes – and recording you now,’ said Fox, ‘and I’m also going to patch in Ryan from the ATA. Just a moment.’
‘There’s no time,’ said Floyd still panting. ‘I’m underground at a place called CERN. They might be on us at any moment.’
‘We know where you are,’ said Fox. ‘Go ahead. Washington’s patched in.’
‘You’ve seen Makowski’s new video?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve broken away from the main party,’ Floyd told his growing number of distant listeners. ‘I’m on the run – they know I’m the enemy. Most of the activity in centred on the main Accelerator Hall where they are preparing to turn the Large Hadron Collider into a particle weapon.’
‘Understood,’ said Fox.
‘They’ve taken over the Security Centre in the campus,’ Floyd continued. ‘They opened up access points to the tunnel out in the country to allow their forces in, but now they’ve locked down all entrances again and laid explosives in the shafts. But if more than two of the access shafts are blown, the air conditioning system down here can’t work and the collider automatically starts to shut down. They say that will trigger the fail-safe mechanism they’ve installed which will immediately create a black hole implosion. If it wasn’t for that I could attack the collider bore myself.’
‘Understood,’ Fox said again.
‘I’m with —’
Nicole threw her badge to Floyd.
‘Agent Nicole Sanderson of the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Agency,’ he read. ‘I’m – we’re – going to try and take out their chief scientist – a man called Sergy Larov and get to the fail-safe device.’
‘Negative,’ said Fox quickly. ‘Do not engage in combat on your own. Special forces are already outside. We need your help to get them in. Can you defuse the explosives in an access shaft?’
‘I know how they rig their explosives,’ Floyd said. ‘They use C6 Plus.’
‘Good. Now, can you get yourselves to Access Shaft Number Three?’ asked Fox. ‘The SAS and COS will be waiting for you.’
‘Can we get to Access Shaft Number Three?’ Floyd asked Steff.
‘We’ll need a vehicle,’ she told him. ‘The shaft is six kilometres away. But there’s a transport garage one level below us.’
‘We’ll get there, sir,’ said Floyd.
‘Get there by three a.m your time,’ ordered Fox.
*
The men crouching in the field wore high-tech armoured black battle dress, black fireproof balaclavas and black night scopes. All were mind linked in a battlefield secure network. The night was moonless and they were almost invisible.
‘That access building has one pair of electrically operated double doors, and there will be explosives on the inside,’ Captain George Walker said quietly over the connection to his band of international special forces soldiers. ‘We’ve got to wait until one of ours on the inside deals with the explosives.’
Sergeant Reginald Truman was crouching beside his captain. Although the French special forces were in nominal command, it had been agreed that Truman would lead the group which would enter and secure the access shaft for the 80 SAS men and the 120 members of France’s COS. All would then have to load motorcycle
s into the elevator to be carried down to the main tunnel. Only sixty motocross bikes had so far arrived at the assault site but more were on the way. It was the only method of motorised transport they could take down to the long tunnel via the elevators sited in the countryside.
‘The man on the inside is a CTU agent,’ the captain informed his men.
‘He’s one of us,’ Truman added for the benefit of his own regiment. ‘Transferred to the CTU some years ago.’
‘He’s with a female American federal agent,’ continued Walker. ‘They’re on their way now to meet you at Access Shaft Three. If we can take care of the HFDA soldiers, they’ll disarm the explosives and open the doors for us. They’ll be there at…’ the Captain glanced at his watch, ‘at three a.m. – in an hour.’
