The Delta Chain

by Ian Edward

  It had been a million to one chance that Kate had retraced his steps and discovered he was the true source of the virus. Nevertheless it showed him he was vulnerable. In the event this was a prank and everyone came back later, he wanted to be certain he’d deleted his trail from the computers, so he hurriedly did that first. He was aware of the people rushing by outside his office, to the exits. He was not aware that Kate and Markham had gone against that flow.

  He finished his deletions and, escorted by the security man who was rounding up the stragglers, left the building. They were half way toward the perimeter when the force of the blast hurled them from their feet.

  Reardon was bruised and stunned, but otherwise okay. It was in the immediate minutes after that, as he worked his way through the crowd, that he came to realise Kate wasn’t there.

  Surely she’d left the building. But if not…?

  He was the one who’d sent Kate here in the first place. It was because of him she’d involved herself so deeply in the dramas surrounding this damn Institute. He’d already lost Rhonda Lagan; he’d only wanted to play a part in digging further into the hidden activities here.

  He spoke to the police officers, listened in on the radio contacts.

  He realised, with dawning horror, that Kate, Markham and Adam Bennett were missing.

  The force of the explosions rocked the lift cavity, snapping the cables. The lift car plunged the remaining distance to the bottom of the shaft with Kate, Hunter and Markham clinging to the top.

  Losing his grip, Markham slid across the roof and over the side.

  His agonised cry echoed through the cavity as he fell between the plunging car and the wall of the shaft.

  Granite showered down from above.

  In the sub-level chamber, flames sprang from the ruined control panels. Water trickled in some places and gushed in others, flowing from the burst pipes, creating tiny rivers that ran through the now misshapen corridors.

  Adam woke and, although groggy, took in the surrounds. Even in the flickering light from the flames he could see the layout of the chamber had changed. Random sections of the ground above had caved in, carving the sub-level labs and passageways into a maze of sawn-off areas, some connected, some not.

  He called out for Elizabeth and Daniel. The shifting of the ground had flung them like rag dolls, separating them in the darkness. He heard the girl call back, then Daniel. He moved cautiously toward the sound of their voices. As his eyes grew more accustomed to the fitful semi-darkness, they came into his view.

  They were both in a state of shock, eyes wide, faces without expression.

  He helped Elizabeth to her feet and Daniel staggered over to join them. Adam saw that the girl had a black eye. Both were covered in blood. He looked down at his arms and through the jagged tear in his trousers and saw blood on himself as well. Water coursed around their ankles and they heard the rumble of further explosions and crashes from overhead.

  ‘What…happened?’ Daniel asked.

  ‘At the very least, I’d say some kind of massive explosion in the building.’ Adam knew that meant the whole area was unstable. He had to get the kids out. But he also knew the sub-level was most likely cut off. Which meant they were buried.

  ‘Wait right here,’ Adam told them.

  The girl was on the verge of hysteria. ‘No! Don’t leave us-’

  ‘It’s all right. I’m just going to check around the periphery of the area here. But I’m going to keep you both within sight.’

  Daniel was already sizing up the ruins. ‘There are ribbons of light, Adam.’

  ‘Yes. Some are from small fires. I want to see if there is light coming from possible exit points.’

  ‘The rear dock,’ Daniel reminded him.

  ‘I know. But right now we don’t know which direction that is, or whether we’re still connected to that section.’

  Adam walked tentatively toward the edges, some of the areas too dark to make out, other spots appearing to alternate between slabs of metal pushed out of shape and fragments of the stone walls, cracked and jutting forward. He was reminded of gargoyles, poised to leap from hidden places.

  Something Daniel had said before the explosion nagged at him.

  A scream erupted. Adam swung round to see an ugly reptilian body thrashing, lunging from God-knew-where, jaws open, practically on top of Elizabeth.

  Daniel had said there were croc pits in one of the chambers adjoining the dock.

  With a sudden, lightning fast thrust, Daniel pushed her aside, twisting and flinging his own body after her. But the jaws clasped down on his arm, arresting his sideways movement, wrenching him back. Through a fine mist of half light, smoke and dust, Adam saw the mass movement of other eyes and other ridged hides, gliding in on the rising, rushing flow of water.

  O’Malley watched as teams of SES workers cordoned off the disaster site, examining the rubble and assessing the extent of danger. The area had to be stable before the clean up could begin. Team leaders were conferring with their operations chief, a bulky character named Harradin who had the loudest voice O’Malley had ever heard.

  Megan Shorter ran toward him, switching off her cell phone as she reached him. ‘Inspector, I’ve got some very interesting intel from our Defence people.’

  ‘Can it wait for the debrief?’

  ‘No, this affects us here, now.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes. We knew the Institute site was once an old food processing plant. But Canberra have said that during the Second World War, the plant was seconded to our Defence Department’s Coastwatch unit. They built underground barracks and tunnels with surveillance slots cut through to the lower cliff face.’

  O’Malley knew of the coast watching done by the military during the Second World War, particularly along the north east of the continent. Landings by the Japanese, coming down via Papua New Guinea, had posed an ongoing threat. He tried to visualise the underground barracks. ‘So the infrastructure was already down there for Westmeyer to have his hidden section built.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Megan. ‘Boss, most of the old barracks were simply covered over and left after the War. Which means the tunnels would still be there.’

  ‘A way in to Adam, via the cliff face.’

  The SES man Harradin approached. ‘I’ve got heavy earthmoving equipment arriving in minutes,’ he said. ‘I want to start looking for the man you’ve got down there. But Ron, I still don’t have the A-OK to start digging. The area’s too unstable.’

  ‘There may be another way in. Can we get as many men as possible down on the beach and around to the point where the cliff starts to rise.’ O’Malley then told him about the tunnels.

  The explosion had sent Erickson crashing to the ground. He’d watched in frustration and with a rising sense of fear as great slabs of rock fell, crushing the middle section of the truck. The thin beam of his flashlight cut a swathe through swirls of dust and falling debris.

  At first he thought he’d been sealed in the dock. The entry via the two corridors, at opposite ends of the dock, had been blocked. But casting about, Erickson saw that an enormous fissure had opened up in one of the walls. Large enough for him to climb through, long and deep enough it might lead somewhere. He clambered through, and noticed the ground was quickly being covered by water.

  Kate dropped down beside the crashed elevator car in the near darkness. Markham was wedged there in the small space. She felt for a pulse and, thank God, found one. But it was faint, very faint. Kate saw that a slab of brickwork had fallen across his legs, blocking any movement even if he’d been conscious and able to move.

  She called out to Hunter and he pulled her back up onto the roof of the car. ‘He’s alive but he’s unconscious and wedged tight. Best bet now is to find our way out, get help…’

  ‘Kate…’

  She was already pointing to the sub-level lift doors just over their heads. Wafer thin streams of water were escaping from under the doors and trickling into the shaft. ‘If w
e can prise open those doors enough to squeeze through-’

  ‘Kate, I don’t think we should try and get into the sub-level right now.’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Kate’s adrenalin was pumping faster than ever.

  ‘Kate, listen to me. There are crocodiles in special tanks and walled-in pits up there. The detonations will have sent fissures through everything, snapping everything out of shape. That means all those crocs, there could be a dozen or so, may be free…’

  ‘I know about the blasted crocodiles, Stephen.’

  ‘How…?’

  ‘As I said before, there’s a Federal Task Force that knows they were being captured and brought here. They know it was Westmeyer’s boat that dropped an unidentified girl in the ocean and that a boy was kidnapped this morning and brought here. They were moving in on the Institute when…this…happened. Seems your mystery visitors got wind of the police action. They were already prepping the building for destruction so they rushed ahead with the plan. I know all about it, Stephen.’

  Hunter stared back at her, blinking rapidly, his breathing still laboured from the exertion and the shock of their ordeal. Wheels began spinning in his mind. He didn’t want to survive all this just to be arrested and charged for his involvement in Nexus’ criminal activities, his career ruined, his dreams destroyed. ‘I’m not like Westmeyer and the others, Kate. That’s why I came down here with you, to help.’

  ‘Save it for the police. That’s if we can get out of this.’

  ‘The crocodiles,’ Hunter repeated, ‘we’re better off waiting here, until the rescuers find us.’

  ‘Find us? They’re not going to find us at the bottom of an elevator shaft beneath the rubble of a demolished multi-storey building.’

  ‘They must know we’re down here. They’ll dig…’

  ‘Whatever’s left up there hasn’t stopped falling. We could still be crushed and we need help for Brian…and Adam…’

  ‘Kate…’

  ‘Are you coming or do I go alone?’

  Hunter rubbed the palms of both hands vigorously over his face. ‘Okay…I guess we can try.’

  He joined his hands together and she used them as stirrups and he boosted her up to the sub-level doors. There was a thin ledge at the juncture where the floor of the elevator car was meant to join with the doorway portal. There was a gap where the two sliding cabin doors met, courtesy of the force that had rocked everything, and Kate was able to use that gap as a handhold, lifting her feet onto the ledge. There was just about enough space for her toes to find some grip and for a moment she hung like a fly on a wall.

  ‘Can you give me a hand up?’

  ‘Give me…a moment.’ She was close to hyper-ventilating, and she felt sharp shivers and shakes through her bruised limbs. She held herself in place, took in deep breaths, willed herself to be strong.

  ‘Why crocodiles?’ The question had been at the back of her mind all along and now it resurfaced suddenly. This was hardly the time for questions and answers but why obey the laws of logic and normalcy now? There may not be a ‘later.” That simple, cruel fact was dawning on her in fits and starts, depositing its strange chill in layers, one strip at a time.

  ‘For their haemoglobin. The project, started long ago by Westmeyer and developed into its more advanced stages by the both of us, was the splicing together of human and crocodile blood DNA.’

  Kate recalled the conversation on which she’d eavesdropped. ‘This is the project you call Delta Chain?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why Delta Chain?’

  ‘Kate, your foot’s starting to slip.’

  She steadied herself. ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘Can you give me a hand up?’

  ‘No. I’m barely balancing as it is. I’m going to try and prise the doors open far enough to get through, there’s already quite a gap there.’

  ‘Just take it slowly, okay?’

  She firmed her toes against the ledge, pushing her body as far against the wall as she could to maintain position. Gripping the edges of the doors, she attempted to push them further apart.

  ‘They-won’t-budge. Blast it!’

  ‘Look, you’ve tried, Kate. You’ve tried.’

  ‘Must…be able to…’ Her toes slipped out from the ledge, her grip lost, and she fell.

  CHAPTER SIXTY EIGHT

  There had never been so many people on this remote stretch of coast.

  Constables John Harrison and Ken Morgan had joined Arthur Kirby to assist in the search. A number of local men, aware of the commotion, had also come forward to offer their services in the search for Adam. It was clear to all the leaders that neither Kate nor coroner Brian Markham or the kidnapped boy had been seen in the aftermath. They’d either perished in the demolition or they’d been trapped on the hidden, lower level.

  O’Malley prayed they were still alive.

  Kirby had taken charge of the “unofficial” group comprising his constables and the town men. He coordinated their search, working alongside the Task Force detectives and Harradin’s SES team.

  They had all been fully briefed, standing on the open beach, buffeted by the powerful winds, rain spitting, with the full force of the storm almost upon them. They were looking for anything resembling an opening along the sloping cliff face. Caves, holes, fissures and rifts that disappeared back into the rocky surfaces. The opening they were looking for was most likely overgrown with weed or fern. And across a coastal stretch like this one there would be dozens of openings that would be false alarms. But all had to be brought to the attention of the team co-ordinators. All had to be thoroughly investigated.

  O’Malley had moved onto a bluff that overlooked the shore. Harradin joined him. O’Malley saw that A.B.C.S. boss Reardon had joined one of the search teams.

  ‘I’ve seen this sort of thing many, many times,’ Harradin said. ‘People come out of the woodwork, prepared to do anything to help. I often wish the general public got to experience this the way my men and I do. It’s not a bad thing, seeing the best brought out in people. And it’s mainly in a crisis like this you get to see it.’

  O’Malley grunted agreement. He’d been a professional too long to be personally affected by mission failures. But he couldn’t shake the sense of responsibility he felt toward Adam Bennett and Kate Kovacs. He feared more and more he wouldn’t see them again. And he was largely responsible. This was his team, his case.

  ‘The local sergeant’s doing a slap up job too,’ Harradin observed.

  ‘Kirby. Probably feeling guilt,’ said O’Malley. ‘Do him the world of good.’

  ‘Guilt?’

  ‘Kirby’s an old time city man with a chip on his shoulder when it comes to Gen X detectives. I’ve known him on and off for years. Never made the detective grade himself, but he’s good at what he does.’

  ‘He and Bennett didn’t hit it off?’

  ‘I believe the relationship was uneasy. Kirby kept his distance from Adam, and always found plenty to criticise. But he’s no fool, he knows Bennett was a damn good cop. Right now I’d say he’s feeling a zillionth of an inch tall.’

  ‘Right now it doesn’t matter, as long as all these efforts help us find the man.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ said O’Malley.

  All four men in the black sedan stiffened when they heard the siren.

  Tannen was driving. Asquith, Donnelly and Westmeyer were in the car. The other members of Asquith’s team and Erickson’s hunting party were in other vehicles, further along the highway.

  Asquith’s main concern was hoping that none of those vehicles were stopped or their occupants questioned. He didn’t know what had happened to Stephen Hunter, who’d failed to join them as they’d hurriedly left the Institute. That was just one of the many wild cards forced on him by the crisis.

  Tannen flashed a concerned look at Asquith.

  ‘Pull over,’ Asquith said. ‘We’ve no need to run from the police. Remember, we don’t know what’s happened back at the Institute. We
left for our flight to the U.S. before anything happened.’

  Moments later a police patrol officer with a short, solid build looked through their side window. ‘I’m looking for a Mr. William Westmeyer and a Mr. Jackson Donnelly.’

  ‘I’m Westmeyer.’ He stepped from the car, followed by Donnelly.

  ‘Bad news I’m afraid, sir. Your Institute has suffered severe damage and we were asked to intercept you with the news. Your admin officer advised us you’d left in hire cars, headed for Brisbane, to catch a flight to the States.’

  Damn, thought Asquith, watching from the back seat. Damn. He hadn’t allowed for the local police moving this quickly. He’d intended to be out of the country while the task force and the local cops were still floundering about. The use of rental cars had been meant to make their departure appear innocent and coincidental.

  It had proved to be a miscalculation.

  ‘Has anyone been hurt, officer?’ Donnelly asked.

  ‘Uncertain, sir. Apparently your security people received a warning and it seems an evacuation was completed before the explosion.’

  ‘Good Lord.’ Westmeyer’s shoulders slumped. He was still as good at play-acting as he ever was. ‘This is…dreadful. A disaster.’

  Asquith alighted from the car, shaking the hand of the patrol officer. He introduced himself. ‘I’m organising the think tank that Mr. Westmeyer and his colleagues have been invited to attend.’

  The patrolman nodded.

  Asquith turned to Westmeyer. ‘An incredible shock, William. I understand, of course, if you can’t travel to Chicago with me at this time.’

  ‘Mr. Westmeyer,’ the patrolman said, ‘we’ve been asked to escort you back to Northern Rocks. A special task force is looking into this and will need to interview all your staff, including yourself and Mr. Donnelly.’

  ‘Of course, of course.’

  ‘You can easily delay heading to the seminar for 36 hours,’ Asquith said helpfully. ‘So you can always decide to attend at that time, should you feel that’s still possible.’