The Three Secret Cities

by Matthew Reilly

  Two police cars sped by outside.

  Jack looked out the window. It was 7:00 a.m. and the sky was beginning to lighten. Despite the early hour, he saw people pointing and hurrying toward the Thames in large numbers.

  In the distance, ominously, he heard the thump-thump-thump of a helicopter.

  Worried, Jack flicked on the television.

  The BBC came on. It showed live footage of London, specifically the River Thames in front of Big Ben.

  A stocky Black Hawk military helicopter hovered above the river, with something dangling from it, from a cable of some sort.

  ‘Is that a car . . .?’ Lily said.

  It was.

  The TV news camera zoomed in on the car hanging from the helicopter and Jack saw that there were people inside it, four of them.

  Jack stared in horror at the image.

  The vehicle looked like a van of some kind, a red civilian minivan. Oddly for a van, it had a number painted on its side like the number on a racing car.

  The number 55.

  ‘Holy shit,’ Julius said from behind Jack, his face going pale. ‘That’s Lachie’s car.’

  Suddenly the television cut to hash and Jaeger Eins appeared on it, just like he had before.

  The Knights had hacked the airwaves again.

  ‘Hello, world,’ Jaeger Eins said from the screen. ‘And hello again, Jack. We warned you. We really did. I understand you are somewhere in London, so you cannot be far from this.’

  The image cut back to the TV news footage of the red van hanging from the helicopter in front of Big Ben.

  The Black Hawk helicopter, Jack now saw, had grey-painted windows: the telltale sign of an unmanned drone-conversion being flown remotely.

  Then the shot zoomed in again on the minivan to clearly show two adults in the front—Lachlan Adamson and his wife—and two children in the back, all duct-taped to their seats.

  ‘You must think we are monsters, Jack,’ Jaeger Eins’s voice said. ‘Yes, we are monsters.’

  Then, shockingly, the red van dangling from the drone chopper exploded.

  Julius lunged at the television set.

  ‘No!’ he cried.

  The minivan’s windows blew out in gouts of fire, its doors flung open by the violent force of the blast.

  And then the van dropped from the cable attaching it to the helicopter and plunged into the River Thames.

  No-one could have survived it.

  Jack stared, stunned, at the television. That these assholes had killed a friend of his was terrible enough, but his family, too: his wife and young children.

  ‘No . . .’ Jack breathed. He rushed to Julius’s side and threw an arm around him. Lily did the same.

  Zoe put a hand to her mouth.

  Mae just stood there, frozen.

  And then Jaeger Eins appeared on the television again.

  ‘I told you, in time you would come to us, Jack. Come out and face us now, on Westminster Bridge in front of Parliament and Big Ben. We can kill more of your friends if we have to. Or perhaps we will test their loyalty . . . and kill their loved ones. Like, for instance, the residents of 14 Honeyfield Street, Wellington, New Zealand.’

  At the mention of the address, Sky Monster looked up.

  ‘Oh, God,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Jack asked.

  ‘That’s . . .’ Sky Monster said. ‘That’s my parents’ address.’

  ‘After we lost you in Venice, Jack, we sent one of our men there.’

  And suddenly the image on the television changed . . .

  . . . to show a little weatherboard house on a quiet street in Wellington, New Zealand . . .

  . . . with two figures crucified to its front walls.

  It was a man and a woman, both with grey hair. Their arms were spread wide, nailed to the front wall of the house with their heads bent.

  ‘Oh, Jesus Christ in Heaven,’ Sky Monster said. ‘That’s my parents . . .’

  Jack spun from the TV to Sky Monster, his face white with shock.

  And then—boom!—on the television, the entire house exploded. Glass and rubble were thrown outward and the two crucified figures disappeared in a cloud of fire and smoke.

  ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are, Jack,’ Jaeger Eins taunted. ‘Face us. Now. Westminster Bridge. And bring your daughter, too.’

  Jack spun to face Lily, his mind reeling.

  This was happening too fast.

  He looked at Julius and Sky Monster as his brain tried to make sense of it all.

  By doing what he did, he assumed the risk of crossing unpleasant people and facing potential death. So did his team.

  But not their families.

  It had never occurred to him that someone would do this: attack the families of his friends and thus test their loyalty to him and the greater mission.

  And suddenly all thoughts of secret cities and immortal weapons and even saving Alby flew from his mind.

  He looked at Lily and Zoe, their eyes filled with tears.

  ‘I don’t have any choice. I have to go out there.’

  ‘We have to go out there,’ Lily said. ‘He wants me, too. And as far as we know, they need me alive, so maybe if I stand in front of you, I can keep you alive a little longer.’

  Jack pursed his lips. ‘Like I’m going to convince you otherwise.’

  He hurried into the other room and quickly grabbed some clothes.

  Until then, he had been dressed in simple jeans and a white t-shirt. He put a shoulder holster on over his t-shirt and jammed a Desert Eagle into it. Then he threw on his canvas miner’s jacket over that.

  He looked at his fireman’s helmet on his bed, thought for a moment . . .

  . . . then grabbed it and put it on.

  ‘You’re taking too long, Jack,’ Jaeger Eins said from the television in the other room. ‘Perhaps we can motivate you and young Lily to hurry up a little.’

  Screams and shouts from outside made him spin.

  It had come from the people on the streets: regular folk who had come out to watch the drone chopper that was still hovering above the spot where the exploded minivan had dropped into the river.

  Jack ran to the flat’s front window. Through it, you couldn’t see Big Ben or Parliament but between two buildings across the street, you could glimpse Westminster Bridge.

  And in a fleeting instant, Jack saw it.

  A large olive-coloured vehicle. Rumbling across the bridge.

  ‘What is that?’ Lily said.

  ‘That,’ Jack said, ‘is a tank.’

  It had come out of a classified emergency bunker.

  It was one of ten such vehicles kept in the bunker, a block away from Parliament, for use in the event of a terrorist emergency or an attack on the British centre of government.

  With its wide tracks, armour plating and imposing turret-mounted 120-millimetre cannon, it was a 62-ton behemoth designed to intimidate and destroy anyone who dared oppose it.

  It was a Challenger 2 main battle tank.

  The massive tank rumbled out onto the middle of Westminster Bridge and abruptly stopped.

  The drone Black Hawk helicopter still hovered over the river not far from the bridge.

  After several terrorist incidents in recent years, London’s finest were there in minutes. Police cars blocked off either end of the bridge. SWAT vans arrived soon after. Given the hour, there were few cars about to stop. Two police boats secured the river in either direction.

  The TV news vans turned up next, their occupants leaping out and filming the scene.

  The tank just stood there—ominously still—in the centre of the bridge.

  And then it fired its cannon.

  The first shot hit the London Eye, the colossal ferris wheel on the bank of the Thames just north of
bridge.

  One of the Eye’s pods blasted out into a thousand fragments and fell off it, tumbling into the river.

  Of course, the tourist attraction wasn’t open yet, so the pod had been empty. Nevertheless, screams and gasps burst from the crowds on the riverside paths.

  In the apartment, Jack spun at the booming sound of the shot.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he breathed.

  Out on the bridge, the mighty tank’s turret rotated and it fired again.

  This second booming shot hit Big Ben.

  Bricks and glass rained down onto the street below. The historic clocktower groaned . . . and swayed.

  More screams.

  But what could the police do? It was a fucking tank.

  In the apartment in Vauxhall, with Lily beside him, Jack raced frantically for the door—only for Zoe to step in front of him, stopping him.

  ‘Hold it,’ she said. ‘What are you going to do? Do you have any kind of plan?’

  Jack’s eyes were wild, darting this way and that.

  ‘A plan? No. I just . . . I just have to stop this. I can’t let’—his gaze drifted to Julius and Sky Monster—‘I can’t let any more innocent people die because of me.’

  ‘Jack, please . . .’ Zoe said.

  ‘Jack,’ another voice said softly but firmly.

  He turned.

  It was Sky Monster. Due to his recent wounds, he looked pale and drawn, but there was an evenness to his tone.

  ‘Buddy, listen to me,’ he said, his voice calm. ‘We’ve been through a lot together, you and me. Flying into dangerous places under fire, running through challenges in that godforsaken Underworld. But now . . .’

  He paused, bowing his head. There were tears in his eyes.

  ‘Now, you have to keep your head and keep going. You can’t let these assholes rattle you. Right now you’re rattled, and I’ve never seen that before.’

  His red eyes bored in Jack’s. ‘And please know this, because it’s important: you are not responsible for my parents’ deaths.’

  Sky Monster’s level stare brought Jack back, made him calm down a bit.

  ‘I repeat: you’re not responsible. I am. They’re dead because I chose to go with you. It was my choice.’

  ‘Sky Monster—’

  Sky Monster held up his hand. ‘Jack, you’re a first-class, grade-A, gold-minted hero. I’m not. I’m just a dumb-ass pilot. But when I fly with you and get you out of tight spots and help you do great things, a small amount of your hero-stuff rubs off on me and makes me a hero, too. I made my choice to run with you, and it was my choice that got my parents killed. I have to live with that, but you don’t.’

  Jack was silent for a long moment.

  Then he nodded. ‘Thanks, Monster. Let me go and make this right.’

  After taking a few seconds to gather his thoughts, Jack said, ‘Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. Zoe: find a perch overlooking that bridge. You’re our sniper—’

  The cocking of a gun made everyone turn.

  It was Julius.

  He was gripping a pistol. His eyes were like steel. ‘Those bastards just killed my brother and his family. I’m going, too.’

  Jack gazed at Julius, sorrow in his eyes. ‘Julius, no.’

  ‘I’m going.’

  ‘You’re not thinking straight.’

  ‘They just killed my—’

  ‘I know.’ Jack glanced at Zoe. ‘How about this: you go with Zoe. Be her spotter.’

  Julius thought about that and acquiesced, nodding silently.

  Zoe said, ‘Jack, I don’t have a sniper rifle. Just a few pistols.’

  ‘You’re the best marksman I know,’ Jack said. ‘You can make the shot if needed. Sky Monster, can you drive with that shoulder?’

  ‘I can manage.’

  ‘Then you’re our ride.’

  ‘Jack, wait,’ Iolanthe said, observing all this from the side.

  She reached into her bag and pulled out a laminated identification card.

  A label on it read ‘C-9’.

  Jack had seen ID cards like this before: they were used by intelligence agencies like MI6 and the CIA. They designated their holder as a government agent who was not to be detained by the police under any circumstances. They were known in the trade as ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ cards. A C-7 card told the police to let you pass without question. A C-9, two levels above that, was the highest classification in the entire British government system.

  ‘Take this,’ she said. ‘It’ll get you past the police.’

  Jack took it.

  ‘And Lily, here.’

  Iolanthe handed Lily an ornate little pistol with a pearl handle. ‘Just in case.’

  Lily jammed the gun into the back of her waistband.

  ‘All right,’ Jack said. ‘Let’s go out there.’

  The tank was still standing on Westminster Bridge when Jack and Lily arrived at the police cordon at its eastern end.

  Jack showed his C-9 ID card to the cops and said, ‘I’m Jack West. The one they want. She’s with me.’

  The dumbstruck cops let them pass.

  Jack and Lily strode out onto the wide bridge, approaching the massive tank.

  It stood before them like some kind of huge metal beast, tensed and ready to attack.

  To the north, the London Eye was a smouldering ruin, one of its pods gone. At the opposite end of the bridge, Big Ben gave off a plume of rising smoke, wounded in its middle.

  And the drone Black Hawk helicopter just kept hovering above the river a short distance to the south of the bridge, robotically still.

  Jack stopped ten metres from the stationary tank.

  Suddenly, loudly, Jaeger Eins’s voice blared from a loudspeaker on the tank.

  ‘People of the world! Meet Captain Jack West Jr. I told you once that he was a hero. Now let me call him something else. Dangerous. He is a danger to all of you.’

  Jack called out, ‘We came! What do you want us to do now?’

  ‘Come and join us in the tank, Jack,’ Jaeger Eins’s voice said over the loudspeaker. ‘You and Lily.’

  Jack stood his ground, cautious.

  ‘I said, come and join us in the tank,’ Jaeger Eins said.

  In his heart, Jack knew that to step inside that tank meant death.

  ‘People of the world. I told you.’

  And then Jack heard it.

  The sound of another helicopter—louder than the first one, a deeper thump-thump-thump.

  Jack turned.

  A huge twin-rotored Chinook chopper thundered into view over the buildings to the south and zoomed up the river toward his bridge.

  Like the first chopper, this one also had painted-over windows. It was another drone. Also like the first chopper, it had a vehicle hanging from cables beneath it.

  ‘Fuck me . . .’ Jack whispered when he saw what the vehicle was.

  ‘You have got to be kidding . . .’ Lily gasped.

  It was the most quintessentially London thing.

  A red double-decker bus. Hanging from the underside of the helicopter.

  And it was filled with people.

  The Chinook pulled into a hover right in front of Westminster Bridge, barely ten metres out from it.

  The bus suspended from the helicopter was so close, Jack could see the frightened faces of the passengers inside it.

  ‘Give yourselves up now or we drop the bus into the river. Captain, your continued existence has been responsible for six innocent deaths so far. Do you really want to add the poor souls on that bus to that tally? As you have seen by now, we do not bluff.’

  Jack’s mind reeled.

  He didn’t know what to do.

  This was totally surreal.

  Here he was, with Lily, in the middle of London .
. . standing on a bridge . . . with a tank beside them . . . facing a chopper . . . that was holding a London bus hostage above the river.

  And that wasn’t even mentioning Big Ben and the London Eye—both smoking—and the cop cars, media and crowds gathered on the shoreline, watching it all play out.

  Zoe observed the scene from a rooftop on the eastern shore of the Thames with Julius by her side.

  ‘Why are they doing this?’ she asked. ‘What’s their plan?’

  Julius said nothing in reply. He just stared off into space.

  Out on the bridge, Jack was thinking the same thing.

  Why are they doing this? Why go to all this trouble?

  Think.

  First, Lachlan. Then the bus. Two choppers. Both drones.

  Drones . . .

  His eyes fell on the tank.

  ‘There’s nobody inside that tank . . .’ he said, realising.

  As if in response, Jaeger Eins’s voice came over the loudspeaker again.

  ‘Too late,’ he said, and to Jack’s disbelief, the Chinook released the bus . . .

  . . . and, in horrifying slow motion, the big red double-decker bus fell through the air before, with a gigantic splash, it plunged into the waters of the Thames.

  Chaos took over.

  Onlookers screamed.

  The police boats on the water immediately moved in toward the bus now bobbing on the surface—only to be driven back by ruthless bursts of machine-gun fire from the two drone choppers hovering above it.

  ‘We have to save those people!’ Lily yelled to Jack above the din. ‘We’re closer than anyone else!’

  She was right.

  The bus bobbed in the water fifty feet below their bridge, a short way out from it. It was too far from the shore for anyone else to swim to, even if they could get past the choppers with their guns.

  Lily drew her pearl-handled pistol and yelled to Jack. ‘I’ll get those people out!’

  ‘I’ll take care of the choppers!’ Jack yelled back.

  And so they split up: Jack sprinting toward the tank, Lily dashing toward the railing of the bridge.

  Jack raced for the tank, scrambled up onto it, sliding beneath its cannon and in through its forward driver’s hatch.