Thermals

by Evan Currie

  “Yes Sir!”

  “And someone go tell Tavish that I want my radio!!,” Then the Major turned back to Anselm and Gwen, “Now let’s figure out what the hell we’re going to do about this mess…before someone else shows up and disturbs us.”

  The two cops nodded, Gwen’s eyes roving over to the bodies at the door as the two SAS men began to clear them away.

  “Yeah.” She said softly, “Wouldn’t want that, now would we?”

  Malcolm smiled wryly, but pointed her attention back to the schematics of the tower facility. “Do you know where we might find an expert on these? Someone we could trust?”

  She opened her mouth to speak, then paused and grimaced. “Major…I don’t know who to trust anymore.”

  He nodded grimly, noting that Agent Gunnar was also nodding in agreement.

  "Right. Well then, we’ll have to make do. We know they’ll guard the usual entrances, monorail, vehicle.. How about around the edge?

  “It’s mostly open,” Gwen said seriously, “but it’s quite a hike from here if we don’t use any of the main entrances.”

  “Hikes we can handle,” Major Malcom said thoughtfully, “But what about cover?”

  “None to speak of between the edge of the greenhouse and the city.”

  “Now that could be a problem,” he sighed, “alright. Another problem, what can we do once we get inside? That might affect how we plan to get there.”

  “I’ve been thinking about this,” Anselm replied, pointing to a section of the schematic. “What about shattering the glass around the inner ring? That should short circuit the process, keep the hot air from being focused in the tower?”

  Malcolm nodded, but frowned, “I see where you’re going, but it’ll still distribute the virus. Can we predict how much altitude it’ll get? If we have prevailing winds pushing this toward a major city, I think we’ll be in the same boat…and if it still reaches the Jetstream we might actually spread it further.”

  “I’m not sure,” Anselm admitted with a sigh, “But I think that we should consider it, at least if the winds look favorable.”

  “Maybe,” Malcolm conceded, turning to Gwen, “Any idea what the material in use there is?”

  “Carbon fibre reinforced plexiglass,” She told him, “same as the entire facility.”

  “Lovely,” He sighed, shaking his head. “Just this side of indestructible.”

  Gwen nodded in agreement, “It has to be, just in case of severe storms.”

  “Perfect,” Malcolm muttered, “Alright…we have some blasting compound, but if we use that in the wrong place it’ll bring every Tango for miles right down on top of us.”

  “There’s another problem,” Gwen put in, shaking her head.

  “Oh?”

  “That inner ring is almost two hundred acres of glass,” She told the group grimly.

  There was a moment of silence as the group were confronted with the sheer scale of the project facility, and Ian Malcolm shook his head. “We didn’t bring that much compound.”

  Anselm chuckled harshly, “Major, if you had, I’d be worried.”

  The men grinned a bit at that, but shook it off quickly, the situation was a little too grim for anything more than a moment’s levity among them.

  “Before we can make any hard plans, we’re going to need to talk with HQ, but let’s keep getting thing laid…” Malcolm was cut off by a portable on a nearby desk humming against the polished surface. He looked up, and around, and frowned, “I thought our portables were jammed?”

  Anselm automatically checked for his own, but it was in place, and then he remembered where he had gotten that particular device.

  “I think we may have a line to the outside world after all,” He said, picking up the computer and flipping it open. “Agent Gunnar here.”

  *****

  Natalie Cyr sighed in relief when the calm voice answered the portable, and she nodded at the screen while allowing a very slight smile at the Agent. “I’m very glad to hear your voice, Agent Gunnar. When we lost the computer link, we got a little worried.”

  Anselm Gunnar nodded in return, “We have a bit of fun here, but we’re still operating. The STRT unit arrived, and they brought along some help. We’ve got a twelve man SASR team here as well.”

  Natalie closed her eyes and let out a whistling breath, genuinely smiling, “That’s good news.”

  “Here’s the bad,” Gunnar went on grimly, “We’ve lost network connection, radios are jammed, and Abdallah has begun luring people into the tower facility. The clock is running down, Madam Cyr.”

  She grimaced, but nodded, “Alright. Keep the portable close, Agent Gunnar. I’m going to sound the mother of all alarms.”

  “I’ve been hoping someone would,” Anselm smiled grimly.

  “I’ll be back to you shortly, Agent.” She promised. “Just hang tight.”

  “We’re hanging here alright,” Gunnar replied dryly, “just rather not be hanging by our necks.”

  “I’ll do what I can to cut you down,” She half smiled, nodding at his dry humor, then disconnected the satellite link before reaching over and opening a direct link to the DCI’s office. “Carl, it just hit the fan. You better call the Aussies and the President, we’ve got the beginnings of a damned nightmare about to kick off.”

  *****

  The first of the Chinese Type 105 Anti-aircraft weapons rumbled out of the garage, wrapped in tarps and towed behind the powerful, and locally illegal, diesel engine trucks. Abdallah had carefully mapped out their positions, ordering his men to set them up in the city at key points where they could be tied into a unified command network.

  Above him, mounted along the outside of the tower about a hundred meters up, Abdallah knew that his people were installing the central control radar for the Skyguard system that would be their primary layer of defense against the military air threat that would come.

  In one way, the number of people left in the city would actually work in his favor, Abdallah realized as he pondered what was to come. The air units that would arrive first could do little more than deposit infantry troops, because if they tried to assault the anti-aircraft units that were moving out now, they would risk killing hundreds or thousands of their own citizens.

  The umbrella he was building against air incursion would force them to land dozens of miles out in the desert and walk or drive in, giving his men the advantage from where they held the only high ground that existed.

  Abdallah smiled slightly, imagining the chaos that was about to erupt, knowing that what happened locally was only a small, minuscule part of what he was sowing to the world.

  *****

  “He’ll have the tower manned, Sir.”

  Malcolm looked up, noting Trooper Mackenzie as the man approached. “Have something to add?”

  “The tower is high ground sir,” Mackenzie told him simply.

  “I was thinking the same thing, Mac.”

  “Pardon?” Anselm looked confused.

  “The tower is high ground,” Mac repeated, “If this Abdallah fellow has any military mind at all, he’ll be using that to his advantage.”

  “He’s right,” Malcolm agreed, “In fact, our man Abdallah, holds a rather enviable position from some standpoints. He’s got high ground, surrounding an area with no cover to speak of…With the right forces he could hold off any ground assault with a lot less than parity in forces.”

  “Air attack will still nail his ass, Sir.” Mackenzie said simply.

  “No…I don’t think so, Mac. We can’t just call in an airstrike on a hundred thousand civilians…” Malcom said, shaking his head, “I think he’s going to be a right bitch to dig out of there.”

  Anselm scowled, “Somehow, I think that’s the understatement of the decade, Major.”

  Malcolm nodded, but was distracted from replying when Trooper Tavish appeared around a corner, yanking a fiber optic cable out of the wall with gusto.

  “Hey!” Gwen yelped, “What are you doing!
?”

  “Sorry,” The Trooper said over his shoulder as he gave it another pull, detaching it from a network connection buried deep inside, “We didn’t bring enough cable to run from the roof, and the short range RF systems are all being jammed.”

  “This is coming out of my salary, I can just see it,” Gwen moaned softly.

  The men and women of the SAS and Interpol STRT teams chuckled, but Malcolm just nodded back to the schematics.

  “Alright, now focus people. We’ve got to figure out a way to get those people out of danger, and we have to do it fast,” He told them, “We’ve got thousands of people going to die inside unless we move quickly, and maybe even if we move quickly. Let’s not let that number grow for no reason, ok?”

  “Right Major,” Anselm said, noting a system highlighted in the tower and pointing to it, “Gwen, any idea what this is?”

  She shook her head, but one of the Interpol STRT team came forward and tapped a query into the system quickly.

  “Fire extinguishers.” He said after a moment, “See? There’s the legend.”

  “Fire extinguishers? A klick up in the sky?” Mackenzie asked, frowning. “What for? There’s no offices up there or anything…”

  “It’s a safety requirement,” Gwen said after a moment, “National guidelines. People have to work up there, and the tourist overlook means that fire laws have to be obeyed.”

  “But why water?” The Interpol man, an officer named Pierre Suvole, asked in confusion. “These legend says that the tower facility uses Halon gas everywhere else.”

  “Not everywhere,” Gwen pointed out, “In all the interior offices. You can’t use that kind of gas system in the tower because the halon gas would just be pushed up and out before it did any good. The Tower does provide a near constant supply of oxygen rich air from below, blowing straight up at thirty-five kilometers per hour.”

  “That’s very interesting and all,” Malcolm interrupted, “But it’s not relevant to our purposes. Let’s focus on the ground people…”

  “Hang on, Major,” Gwen said slowly, “We may have something here.”

  Everyone turned to look at her, perplexed expressions on their faces.

  “Pardon? What?”

  “Just something I remember,” Gwen smiled apologetically, “The facility isn’t the only Tower system ever conceived…There’s another type…and I think we may have a way to prevent the release of the gas into the upper atmosphere at least.”

  “How?,” Anselm, Malcolm, and at least two others asked together.

  “We reverse the flow.” She said.

  They blinked.

  “Excuse me?” Anselm asked, more than a little incredulous. “Didn’t the Director tell me that it was impossible? I didn’t hear you arguing then.”

  "He told you that you couldn’t simply stop the flow, and he’s right…“Gwen told them,” But if I’m right, we can reverse the flow."

  “Let me be absolutely certain I understand what you’re saying, Inspector,” Malcolm put in, “You’re telling me that we can turn this blower tower into…what? A suction system? How?”

  “We turn on the fire sprinklers. All of them.”

  “I fail to see…”

  “Major,” Gwen held up her hand, “Please, trust me enough to hear me out. The air that is rising up the tower is warm and slightly moist, at least compared to the ambient atmosphere, but it’s not saturated. If we spray cold water into it, that water will moisten the air and cool it. And cold, wet air, doesn’t rise. It falls.”

  “Jesus, Major…She’s right.” One of the SAS men put in, “She’s talking Wind Shear.”

  The Major paused at that, his mind abruptly switching tracks as two magic words were stated. He knew Wind Shear, everyone who spent time in the skies either did know, or damned well should know, about the dangers of wind shear.

  When a storm front clashed with a high pressure zone the cold rain was absorbed into the warm dry air of the front, causing it to suddenly and rapidly drop. The result was a dangerous zone of sudden downward winds that could swat an airplane, or an SAS man riding a para-foil, right from the skies. If it could be applied to the tower, they could possibly contain any outbreak to Tower City alone, maybe even to the facility.

  “Will it work?” He asked, frowning, trying to work it out in his head.

  “It’ll work if the water keeps up, Major,” Inspector Dougal promised him, “The Israelis were planning on building a tower based on that very principle, they just had other worries side tracking them.”

  “Alright,” He nodded, “Jack,”

  “Sir?” A blond man looked up.

  “Get into the tower specs we’ve got here, give me the full details on her fire systems. If they’re up to the job, we’ve got us a containment plan.”

  “Yes Sir.”

  Officer Suvole raised a finger, “I’ll help out, I’m pretty decent with a database.”

  “Alright,” The Major nodded, “Go to it.”

  The two men nodded, then moved off to another terminal where they started to pull up more information from the depths of the computers.

  Major Malcolm frowned as he checked the schematics again, then shifted the focus on the screen to the exterior facility and the twenty-five thousand acres of territory in which the terrorists could hold their hostages, or hide from any hunters looking for them.

  “In the meantime,” He looked around, “We need to work out hostage rescue and a way to prevent Abdallah from releasing the virus.”

  “Major!”

  Malcolm twisted in his seat, “What is it, Tavish?”

  “We’ve got Comms!”

  *****

  “Get me those supplies over to the blackhawks now goddamn it!” The man with the Lieutenant Colonel Brevets growled over the sound of the rotor wash, waving some men by as the base around him buzzed in a state of controlled chaos.

  “Colonel!”

  “What is it, Corporal!?” He yelled again, cupping an ear against the noise and leaning into the other man’s personal space.

  “The Old Man wants you in his office!”

  “What!? Now!?” The colonel couldn’t believe it, “I’m in the middle of a rush deployment here!”

  “Now, Colonel!” The Corporal yelled back nodding, “Major Malcolm just called in!”

  The Colonel cursed, turning on his heal without another word and double timing it out of the loading area and back toward the base. He grabbed a Sergeant on the way, hooking the black man’s uniform by the shoulder and yanking him close enough so they could hear each other over the roar of rotors, engines, and hydraulic pumps.

  “Get these birds loaded, McKenna!” He growled, “I’ll be back ASAP.”

  “You got it Colonel!” The Sergeant nodded, saluting him, and the Colonel let go of his uniform and clapped him on the shoulder as he took off again.

  “You heard the Colonel!” Sergeant McKenna yelled over the rotor wash as he strode into the man’s wake, “Get these Hawks loaded!”

  Crossing the compound to the Officers HQ took only a couple minutes and a Land Rover ‘borrowed’ from a passing Private, leaving Lt Colonel Pierson a few quick moments to roughly brush away the dust and dirt from his fatigues in a most likely vain hope of also beating away some of the diesel fumes that tended to cling to a man’s hair, clothes, and skin.

  The secretary, a female Warrant Officer Class One, waved him right in without saying anything or giving him the chance to even present himself. Inside, the Brigadier was talking earnestly into his phone as he nodded and waved Pierson in from over his computer screens.

  “Hang on, Major,” Brigadier Genalde said quickly, "Colonel Pierson just walked in, I’m switching over to parley.

  Genalde pressed a button, shifting the conversation over to a combination data-sharing/conference mode the military simply called ‘Parley’, and Major Malcolm’s voice instantly came over the link.

  “…right, Brigadier, Sir.”

  “Alright, Son,” Genalde
said grimly, “You’re on with the Colonel and I, why don’t you go over it again?”

  “Yes Sir,” Malcolm said over the link, “We have a confirmed terrorist incident brewing here, Colonel. I’ve already told the Brigadier the details, so I’ll just give you an overview if that’s alright?”

  “Are the details logged into our computers?” Pierson asked quickly.

  “That’s affirmative, Colonel.” Genalde assured him.

  “Well then, that will be fine, Major.”

  “Well Sir, it looks like an unknown number of Tangos in possession of a biological that they apparently intend to use. Confirmed numbers are now in excess of sixty tangos, and estimated to be considerably higher. Weapons and equipment are unknown, however they are well dug in to the local infrastructure.”

  “Do we have a threat assessment of the biological?” Pierson asked grimly, noting that the Major’s information was slightly more defined than that which had come down from the brass when they ordered him and his teams up.

  “Exact numbers are theoretical, but we’re looking at a worst case scenario of sixty to eighty percent fatality locally, plus the potential of Global delivery of the Vector.”

  That caught Pierson’s attention.

  “Could you say again, Major…”

  “I say again, potential exists for global delivery. The Tower here creates a thermal plume which extends into the Jetstream. If the biological reaches the Jetstream, it will be delivered on an easterly vector at four hundred plus KPH.”

  Pierson’s eyes flickered up to look at the Brigadier, wondering if this was a training mission after all. It sounded a little too fantastical to be real somehow. Genalde just nodded once, in grim agreement with the Major’s assessment.

  “Understood, Major. I am deploying with my team in twenty minutes. That’s Two Zero minutes. Expect us to arrive to provide backup and support in less than one hour. Confirm, please.”

  “That’s confirmed, Colonel. One Hour.”

  “Can you hold on?”

  “We dare, Colonel.” Malcolm responded instantly, referencing the SASR motto of ‘Who Dares Wins’.