by Hammond, Ray
The knife clattered across the tiled floor of the landing and Floyd dived onto it and rolled over to grasp it with his bound hands. Resigo had hit the wall heavily but he was now pushing himself back onto his feet.
Floyd sawed with the knife at the tape binding his wrists. As he did so he saw the guard that he had kicked recover his breath and draw a pistol from his belt.
As his hands came free, Floyd grabbed the weapon, kicked the guard between the legs again and pushed him down the steps onto the soldier who was just climbing back up. Raising the pistol he shot both men as they were still falling, the reports ringing deafeningly from the tiled walls.
Before he could turn to face Resigo, the Colombian delivered a blow to Floyd’s right kidney that produced such a searing pain that the British agent dropped to his knees. Both gun and knife fell from his hands and bounced down the stairs. But even as Resigo grabbed at Floyd’s hair to deliver the chop that would be the coup de grace, the British agent smashed his elbow up into the centre of the sergeant’s face, breaking the man’s nose in turn.
Resigo staggered backwards with a howl of pain and Floyd ran into the small office where he had been held. As he turned he saw Resigo crouching and advancing towards him crabwise across the floor, blood streaming from his nose.
Behind Resigo Floyd spotted an automatic rifle leaning against the door frame. But either the sergeant didn’t realise it was there or he wanted to settle things with his bare hands.
With a sudden leap the FARC combat trainer aimed another chop at Floyd’s right side, but Floyd turned, grabbed Resigo’s hair, kicked his feet from under him and slammed him to the ground.
The Colombian went down heavily, but he managed to roll out of Floyd’s grasp and sprang to his feet. As he turned he saw the rifle. He grabbed the weapon and trained it on Floyd’s chest.
Floyd straightened up and stared into his adversary’s eyes. Blood was streaming down the lower half of Resigo’s face. Floyd saw the man’s eyes tighten and he knew his life was about to end.
In the small room the long burst of automatic rifle fire seemed almost deafening.
Resigo was lifted off his feet by the cluster of shots and thrown forward to land face down beside the British agent. Floyd stared down at the body. Twenty or thirty rounds had ripped into his back and a pool of blood was spreading rapidly from both sides of his torso.
In the doorway, Nicole Sanderson lowered her smoking weapon.
‘I couldn’t get to you earlier,’ she told Floyd. ‘There were too many of them.’
Thirty
‘APMs ready, sir’ said Sergeant Truman from inside his all enveloping gas-mask. ‘Air burst canisters ready.’
The allied group of special forces was in the darkness three hundred yards away from the second CERN access shaft they had visited that night. But now they had been joined by a dozen members of an American SEAL platoon had recently arrived from Frankfurt by VTOL supersonic scram-jet.
As before, all was still in the countryside and around the shaft access building. Penetrative thermal imaging had shown at least twenty men to be inside and Truman knew that at the first sign of an attack the HFDA soldiers would be likely to set timers to detonate the explosives. But Truman also knew that under no circumstances must they be allowed to do so.
It had taken almost forty-five minutes for the allied force to drive through the slumbering countryside to Access Shaft Number Two and establish a base. But even as they were doing so a local force of COS troops had carried out a covert assessment of the resistance forces at the shaft and had seen nothing moving in the fields outside the shaft entrance.
Four SEALs now lying flat in the damp grass had rocket launchers over their shoulders. Each was armed with a single, top-secret self-propelled 40 mm armour-piercing mini-missiles that they had brought with them from Frankfurt.
Inside each hollow APM was a compressed payload of a toxic nerve gas developed by scientists at a covert American chemical warfare establishment decades before. After entering its target the gas, known only as WX2D, would be dispersed by a small internal charge and would be instantly fatal to anyone who breathed in even the smallest quantities.
The highly classified gas contravened all the world’s guidelines, agreements and treaties on chemical warfare weapons, but for the SEALs, and for their allies – the French commander had agreed quickly to its use in the present circumstances – it was a useful weapon of last resort.
Also lying in the damp grass were eight more SEALs, each armed with rifle-propelled air-burst canisters containing more payloads of WX2D. All of the Americans wore all-enveloping gas masks. But success would depend on how the terrorists were dispersed within the access shaft. If they were all within the upper levels, the nerve gas would take them down before they could trigger their explosives. But if even one man was at a deeper level, he might survive long enough to trigger a short-delay detonation. It was a calculated risk for very high stakes.
‘Attack when ready,’ Captain Walker ordered over the network.
‘Make sure you put those missiles through the steel doors,’ Truman told the American SEALs over whom he had been given temporary authority. ‘Ready?’
Every man on the network responded positively.
‘Fire!’ Truman ordered.
*
Armed with two Chinese-built T-94 automatic rifles, six spare magazines of ammunition and a nine-shot automatic pistol (with seven rounds remaining in its magazine), Harry Floyd crept along a narrow pedestrian tunnel towards the main Accelerator Hall. Behind him crept Nicole Sanderson. She also carried two rifles, an automatic pistol and extra ammunition.
Despite his recent punishing ordeal, Floyd was fully alert as he moved along the tunnel. He was gripped by an icy rage.
‘I have to put the fail-safe and the collider out of action,’ he had told Nicole immediately after she had dealt with Resigo.
The bright lights of the main hall glowed brightly up ahead and Floyd and Nicole pressed their backs against the side wall of the tunnel as they inched towards the opening that led onto the hall.
Across on the other side of the cavernous room Dr Sergy Larov and two of his scientific assistants seemed to be in agitated discussion. They were standing beside one of the large fairings that housed equipment attached to the huge collider bore. Inching still further forward Floyd and Nicole looked to the left and saw that at the far end of the hall two HFDA soldiers were guarding the group of CERN staff who had been taken captive.
The remainder of the Accelerator Hall appeared empty. There was no sign of either Poliza or of Makowski.
The distance across the floor to where Larov and his assistants was standing was about fifty metres, Floyd estimated. He glanced down at the HFDA guards again. Both men had their backs towards the main hall, their weapons trained on their prisoners.
‘Cover me,’ Floyd hissed to Nicole.
Easing his spare rifle across his back, Floyd raised his main weapon and sprinted out into the Accelerator Hall, running straight for Larov and his helpers. The loud humming noise of the collider’s powerful electromagnets drowned out the sound of Floyd’s running feet. He was halfway across the open space before one of Larov’s technical team turned and saw Floyd’s bloodied form hurtling towards them.
With a shout the man pointed and alerted Larov to the danger.
The HFDA’s chief scientist turned but, as he did so, Floyd fired a long burst and Larov staggered and dropped to the floor. Still running Floyd squeezed the trigger again and hosed a jet of snub-nosed lead bullets through both of the technical assistants’ bodies.
From the corner of his eye Floyd saw one of the HFDA guards at the far end of the hall turn and begin to raise his weapon. Then he heard Nicole open fire behind him. The soldier went down and, as Nicole continued firing, the second HFDA man guarding the group of prisoners ducked and ran for an exit at the far end of the hall.
Then Floyd was amongst blood and bodies. Larov and his team were unmistakeably dead
. Floyd ducked behind the metal housing attached to the main collider pipe and changed his rifle’s magazine.
Dropping to his knees he peered around the edge of the housing and into the hall. All of the captives were now lying prone on the floor but there was no sign of the second HFDA guard. He’s gone to get help, thought Floyd.
Crouching with her weapon held at the ready, Nicole ran across the hall to join the British agent.
‘O.K., I’m killing this thing now,’ Floyd said as she arrived. ‘Watch the entrance at the far end of the hall.’
Pulling open the main door of the housing, Floyd fired a sustained volley of bullets at the steel and glass containers that were attached to ports on the side of the accelerator pipe – the containers that held the anti-matter Zilerium 336 nuclei in suspension. Glass and metal flew everywhere as the complex induction systems shattered and a powerful blast of compressed gas washed out into the Accelerator Hall as the Xenon gas and isotope was released. The loud humming noise in the hall began to fade as the collider shut itself down automatically. After a few seconds all was silent.
Floyd turned and stepped back out into the hall. A white-suited man was running towards them from where the group of captives were lying prone.
With an automatic reflex Floyd trained his rifle on the man, but then he realised it was Professor Bo Lundgren.
‘It’s O.K.,’ Floyd told Nicole. ‘He’s one of their prisoners.’
From behind the instrument panel Nicole swept her weapon over the rest of the hall. There were no HFDA or FARC soldiers in sight.
Lundgren arrived panting. He opened the doors to the large metal housing and took one long look inside. Then he turned to Floyd with shining, moist eyes.
‘Thank you, thank you, whoever you are,’ he said grabbing Floyd by his shoulders. ‘You’ve destroyed all of the anti-matter isotope!’
Bullets slammed into the metal housing beside Floyd and Nicole retuned fire. Floyd turned to see a group of HFDA soldiers running into the hall from far end, near to where the prisoners were trying to find cover.
‘Quick, behind those cylinders,’ Floyd shouted to Lundgren. He pushed the professor towards a pile of steel cylinders that had been brought into the hall by the HFDA technical team.
Nicole leaped out from behind the instrument housing and returned fire as she ran over to join Floyd and Lundgren where they crouched behind the barricade of empty metal canisters. Bullets hammered into the steel all around them.
‘Give me one of those,’ demanded Lundgren nodding at the spare rifle across Floyd’s back.
‘If you know how to use it,’ shouted Floyd, pulling the weapon from over his shoulders.
Floyd flicked the safety off and Lundgren took the weapon.
‘I’ll soon learn,’ Lundgren said then he stuck his head up over the steel canisters and fired a wild volley of shots towards the HFDA soldiers.
*
Captain? The atmosphere in the cockpit had grown strangely quiet and now VX-21 was addressing his flight supervisor formally. Arming codes for the N-DEPs have matched successfully. Permission to enter them.
Ian Marshall glanced yet again at his co-super and friend. How often the two of them had speculated about how they might feel if they were ever called on to authorize the use nuclear of weapons for real?
But the flight supervisor felt only a kind of emptiness now.
‘Permission granted,’ said Marshall.
N-DEPs are live, reported VX-21.
*
There was very little cover in the Accelerator Hall. Nicole, Floyd and Professor Bo Lundgren were keeping the HFDA terrorists pinned down.
But Floyd now had a new imperative; he had to let the British and, more importantly the Americans, know that the collider was out of action. He was terrified that despite his warnings – and despite Makowski’s public threat of a fail-safe detonation – the United States military commanders would now be gearing up to attack the complex with all the force they could muster. Perhaps even with nuclear force.
‘You’re sure that thing’s completely out of action?’ Floyd shouted at Lundgren as the professor ducked down from firing a burst. He nodded at the now silent steel bore behind them. ‘There’s no way they could get it working?’
‘You’ve destroyed all the anti-matter isotope they have,’ Lundgren said earnestly. Floyd saw an excited gleam in the man’s eye. He was pleased to be fighting back after so many weeks of captivity. ‘It’s all over for them.’
Floyd glanced to his right towards the end of the hall and the large opening of the main collider tunnel. It was about two hundred metres away. He popped his head up and fired another short burst over the cylinders. HFDA terrorists were crawling on their bellies, attempting to fan out around the sides of the hall. A burst from Nicole’s weapon’s hit one man and the others stopped moving.
‘I have to get back to that phone,’ Floyd shouted to Nicole. ‘Your people have to know this thing’s out of action.’
‘Go,’ said Nicole. She fully understood what the British agent had to do. ‘We’ll cover you.’
Floyd took two spare magazines from his combat jacket and threw them on the floor beside Nicole.
‘Go,’ shouted Nicole again and she popped her head up again and fired another short burst.
Floyd slung his rifle over his shoulder and sprinted towards the tunnel entrance as fast as he could go. Behind him he heard Nicole firing, then Lundgren fired another burst.
Bullets sprayed all round Floyd’s fleeing form, ricocheting off the stainless steel of the accelerator bore as he ran. With a giant leap, Floyd heaved himself up onto the top of the pipe and then over onto its far side, away from the bullets. Now his movements were necessarily slower as he clambered over the collider’s frequent supporting struts, but within thirty seconds he was safely inside the main tunnel.
He stood on one of the bore’s wall bracket supports and glanced back into the main hall. The gun fight was still raging, but no one was following him.
Floyd leaped back over the bore and set off running into the tunnel. His breath came in short gasps as he tried to work out which direction he should take to find the room with the working telephone.
Thirty-one
‘Where are they now?’ asked Robert Brabazon.
The wall screen refreshed and a map of the Geneva area appeared on the central screen. Then a group of red blips appeared as an overlay.
‘The Ninth has just crossed over the French border,’ Theodore told the President and the other members of the Global Crisis Committee. ‘They’re flying at just over two hundred knots, the optimum speed for launching the DEP’s.’
‘How long till they arrive?’ asked Brabazon.
‘ETA 7.653 minutes,’ said his VA.
Brabazon sat back in his chair. ‘What’s happening on the ground?’ he asked.
‘The special forces are now attacking the second remote access shaft to the Large Hadron Collider,’ Theodore told the men and women gathered in the Situation Room. ‘They are deploying a nerve gas, to disable the defenders. But, even if they succeed in gaining entry it will take them twenty minutes to get to the main accelerator hall. At any point Makowski could detonate the weapon.’
‘Is everything ready for the nuclear drop?’ Brabazon asked.
‘Fully armed, sir,’ said Edwin, General Diamand’s VA.
Brabazon considered again, making repeated drum rolls with his fingertips on the tabletop. Nobody else in the meeting spoke.
Brabazon had not told the French president or the Swiss premier that he was considering using nuclear weapons over their territories. There was no time for explanation or negotiation.
‘Review our options for us Theo,’ he ordered.
‘If you authorize the deployment of the N-DEPS between twenty-two and thirty-four thousand people living in the Geneva area will die of radiation poisoning in the first forty-eight hours,’ said Theodore. ‘Between three and four hundred thousand additional people are likely to
die in the following five years as a direct result of radiation-provoked disease. The prevailing wind direction is currently from the West and radiation will be blown across Germany and on into Poland. Cancers, birth defects and other forms of serious illness would downgrade the lives of the people in its path and their descendents for generations to come. The Swiss economy, although normally robust, would be devastated by an attack which left Geneva uninhabitable. The Swiss stock market would close and the Euro zone itself would be severely affected. My best estimate is that in the first year Euro GDP would fall by 21.772 per cent’
There was a silence following this grim assessment.
‘Are the N-DEPs likely to prove effective against a target that’s buried so deeply?’ asked Brabazon.
