by Sam Fisher
Pete looked up and saw the hole where the concrete had been and felt a sudden stab of anxiety. 'Tom,' he said into his comms. It was the first time he had spoken since entering the devastation of the hall.
'Pete.'
'You saw that?'
'Yes.'
'Do we need to realign?'
'Give me a second.'
Pete scanned the ceiling. A new network of deep cracks had appeared overhead. He could see beyond the plaster and concrete clear through to the floor above. Some white fabric was flapping around. Suddenly the upper half of a man in a white shirt, his tie still knotted perfectly, flipped over and tumbled through the hole. A drop of blood spattered onto the blast-proof window at the top of the Cage as the man hit the floor of Hall A. His dead eyes stared towards Pete.
'Tom? Speak to me, man.'
'We're in luck, Pete. Sybil reckons just a minor adjustment will bring us back to the original level of stability. Place the third stabiliser three feet closer to number two, and reduce the angle to 54 degrees. Got that?'
'Loud and clear,' Pete responded. He retraced a couple of steps then moved left towards a huge hole in the floor of the hall, its edges ragged. Great chunks of concrete lay all around. Over everything lay a fine powder – insulation from a large water tank on the floor below had been thrown upwards and pulverised. Settled across the debris, it looked like orange snow. A fountain of water jetted upward from the tank, splashing across the lip of the crater.
Pete picked his way around the edge of the hole, reaching a point directly opposite. Two strides further, he reached the desired spot. It was then that he heard a low moan.
He tried to figure out where the sound was coming from but it stopped as suddenly as it had started. He forced himself to concentrate on the job in hand. He could not allow himself to be distracted. He knew there could be dozens still alive in this devastated room, but he couldn't drag them all out from the rubble. He could save lives by propping up the ceiling.
He quickly got the third ground stabiliser in place and was extracting the ceiling stabiliser from its bracket when the sound came again. A low moan, then a single word mangled by pain. 'Help . . .'
Pete paused for a second, the stabiliser unit poised a few feet short of the ceiling. Holding his breath, he strained to hear. Where the hell was the voice coming from?
Two yards away he saw a small arm poking from under a pile of chairs. It was moving. He didn't stop to think. One pace and he was beside it. The voice came again, pleading.
'Okay,' Pete said softly into his comms. The sound spilled from a speaker on the outside of the Cage. 'Lie still. I'll get you free.'
Pete's fingers darted over the control panel and a holographic representation of the pile of shattered wood and metal appeared. A thermal filter showed the body inside the mess. It was small, a child. The image glowed red and orange with life. A few more taps on the virtual keyboard and the computer had ascertained the correct order to remove the debris burying the child.
Pete lowered a grappling arm, lifted a row of three seats and placed them on the floor behind him. Turning back, he saw the child staring up at him, terrified.
'It's okay,' he said again. 'Lie still.'
He plucked up a steel strut as though it were a toothpick, then pulled aside a sheet of corrugated iron, a length of plastic piping and a rectangle of wood. The child, a little girl of about six, was uncovered.
'What's your name?'
The child was too terrified to speak.
Pete forced a smile. 'I'm here to help you. What's your name?'
'Consuela,' the girl said.
'Can you move, Consuela?'
The girl tried to move a leg, but nothing happened. She shook her head and started to cry.
'Consuela, listen to me, lass.'
The girl tried to stop sobbing.
'Consuela, this machine can pick you up and get you outside. But you have to trust me. You understand?'
The girl nodded.
'You just stay right there. I'm going to extend a metal arm. It's a very friendly arm. It won't bite.' He smiled again. 'I'll tell the metal arm to lift you very gentle, like, and then we'll turn round and go. You got that, Consuela? Is that cool with you? Great. Okay. Ready? Here we go.'
With the stabiliser still suspended above him, Pete used the second arm. It was red, could extend almost ten feet and had splayed 'fingers' at the end. Moving as fast as he could, but with great care, he eased the arm forward. The little girl recoiled. Her face was bleached with pain and fear. She had witnessed things no six-year-old should ever see.
'It's alright, Consuela. Lie still, love. Relax.'
Pete tucked the fingers of the grappling arm under the girl and lifted her slowly above the rubble. She could only move her head. Her eyes were wild and staring around her.
'Easy,' Pete reassured her. 'No probs, Consuela.'
Pulling the child close to the Cage, Pete swivelled the larger grappling arm up to the ceiling, sucked the air from the pad and left the final unit in its proper place.
'Tom – we are go,' he said into his comms.
'Copy that, Pete. Slick work, man. Now get the hell out of there.'
55
Fire Chief Truman Maclenahan was alone in the rear of the ops centre when his phone rang. It was Mark Harrison.
'Sir, I'm grateful for your cooperation,' Mark said. 'What's the situation with the shooter? You'll understand I'm concerned about my people going in there.'
The fire chief quelled his irritation. His people were in just as much danger. But, he recalled, these guys were helping him. 'Not a lot I'm afraid, Mark. The SWAT team-leader was killed. Booby-trap.'
'I heard. No sign of the perp?'
'No.'
'We have people here running scans on the area using a sat system, but we have no idea who we're looking for. Do you have forensics on the gas station roof?'
'Mark, I think you're forgetting we have a major incident here. Every resource I have is stretched –'
'I do understand.'
'If you did, you wouldn't be asking me.'
'Sir, with respect. My people – and yours – can't help anyone if they're shot through the head.'
Maclenahan stared around the room and sighed.
'Okay, what do you want from me?'
'Someone from the FBI will be up there imminently, yes?'
'I guess so.'
'This shooter's a pro. He and the bomber may well be the same person. I imagine he was extremely careful with his prints, his DNA.'
'Yes, I imagine he was.'
'The FBI, being the FBI, will commandeer the evidence,' Harrison went on. 'But they could miss plenty that my people could spot. You have to spare someone to get me anything useful from that roof. I have a pilot still there after dropping off one of my team. He can get that evidence to me within half an hour. Can you help?'
56
There was only so much the Big Eye could detect. Tom did everything he could to filter out noise and to scan through the full electromagnetic spectrum in an effort to work out the best way for the team to get down to B3 or B4, but there was only so much he could do too.
Stephanie, Mai and Josh were kitted out. Their cybersuits were skin-tight, each a matt copper-bronze colour. At their waists hung utility belts containing a high powered halogen torch, a small laser cutter and a 50-metre length of super lightweight cord made from carbon threads. Alongside these high-tech devices they each had a pouch containing some old-fashioned back-ups – matches, a whistle and a Swiss Army knife.
The cybersuits would protect them for short periods from temperatures between –300 and +475 degrees Fahrenheit. They wore skin-tight helmets, and each carried a backpack only an inch thick made from almost weightless carbon-iridium fibres. This could supply them with oxygen for up to 24 hours. A chamber adjoined to the oxygen production tank could provide water and essential nutrients that could last a week. As well as these, the suit was fully integrated with their implants and
had super-fast digital comms.
They were emerging from the Big Mac when Tom opened a link. 'This is the situation,' he began. 'We've ruled out the western emergency stairs. They're still too unstable. The elevator must have been a desperate choice. BigEye reckons your best option is the eastern rear emergency exit. I'm not sure why the senator didn't try it, but I guess they felt getting across the Main Concourse was too hazardous.'
'Okay, Tom. You got anything from BigEye about access?' Stephanie asked, leading the other two towards the ravaged front of the CCC. It looked like the stabilisers were holding up well in Hall A. Emergency workers were everywhere. Paramedics emerged bearing stretchers, and firemen were heading back into the hall with heavy lifting equipment and oxygen tanks on trolleys.
'Not much, to be honest. It's going to be a case of taste it and see.'
'Alright. Keep in touch, Tom.'
The Main Concourse was still ablaze. Material had fallen from the roof and this had fuelled the flames. The insulating material – which, according to Californian law, was supposed to be a fire-retardant – was not holding up too well. Lengths of fibrous material, insulation and plastic piping had tumbled through great gashes in the ceiling. They burned all too easily, filling the air with noxious fumes.
The Main Concourse had taken the worst of the blast. Very few people had been in the area but the explosions had gutted the inside of the CCC. Huge expanses of marble flooring had been ripped up in milliseconds and hurled through the air. They had smashed into the ceiling, bringing down concrete, steel, wood and plastic. With these had come human beings, many ripped to shreds, and computers, chairs, desks and filing cabinets. Papers were still fluttering down from a storeroom on Level 1. The marble and concrete and steel and wood had also blown outwards. The front of the CCC was barely standing. The doors and windows had gone, the lintels had collapsed. But the furthest point from the two blasts, the eastern wing of the complex, had suffered the lightest damage.
It took Stephanie, Josh and Mai several minutes to get to the far side of the Main Concourse. Picking their way through the devastation, they saw things that would remain with them forever. Raw dereliction, a remorseless stripping of humanity that would long haunt them at night.
Pete was waiting for them in the Cage at the emergency exit. He was manoeuvring a steel girder that had been lying across the door, picking it up as though it were a twig. He swung the grappling arm round and slammed it against the door. It disintegrated inwards and they could see a stairwell beyond.
'You're on your own now, guys,' Pete said. 'Good luck.' And he turned to the main doors.
They dove into the narrow passageway beyond the smashed door. It was pitch black. Powerful lights built into their helmets instantly flicked on. A stairway fell away to the right and twisted upward to the left. The air stank, a blend of fumes, incinerated plastic and the acrid smell of spilled chemicals. A pink-tinged smoke hung in the air.
Stephanie tapped at the keypad woven into the wrist of her suit. A small screen lit up and a few seconds later an image appeared – coloured bars and chemical symbols. 'Nasty,' she said. 'Sulfuric acid, hydrogen halides. Probably from foam insulation and glue. Come on.'
She led the way down the stairs then stopped so suddenly that Josh and Mai almost fell over her. At Stephanie's feet lay a body, face-down. Josh helped her gently turn it over and they crouched opposite one another over the prone form. The young man had asphyxiated, his face blue and contorted in a horrible grimace. He had one hand at his throat. His fingers were covered with dried blood, and some of them looked broken.
'I think he must have tried to get out through the emergency exit,' Mai said, 'but the girder Pete moved was too heavy. Must have been overcome by fumes, poor man.'
Stephanie straightened, exhaled heavily into her helmet and turned away.
Another turn of the stairs and they reached a door marked B1. Stephanie was about to try it when they all heard Mark Harrison's voice in their comms. 'Guys? We have an update on the senator and his companions.'
'Go ahead,' Josh replied.
'Looks like they're on their way out of the elevator onto B3.'
'That's good news.'
'Suggest you go straight down the stairwell and see if it's possible to get in through the emergency door. If not, we'll have to figure out something else.'
'Wilco.'
Mai was nearest to the stairway and she led the way. The fumes were growing worse. It looked as though a fire on a lower level was the source of the trouble. They ignored the exit into B2 and continued down. It was growing warmer as they approached the fire. Halfway down the stairs between B2 and B3, they could see orange fingers of fire slithering under the door into B3. Mai checked her wrist computer. The air temperature in the stairwell was nudging 180 degrees Fahrenheit.
They reached the door. The frame and the rim of the door itself was beginning to warp. 'There must be quite a fire the other side,' Josh commented. 'These are fire doors, designed to withstand temperatures up to about 250 degrees Fahrenheit. They're not going to last much longer.'
Stephanie was tapping at her computer and adjusted a micro-filter on her visor. Thanks to the nano-implants behind her eyes, she could view the door with her vision enhanced at either end of the visual spectrum. 'The stress lines look very bad,' she said. 'There's no way we can get through there.'
Josh peered down the stairwell. It was completely blocked with rubble. 'The only way is up,' he said.
'Agreed. Let's go,' Stephanie replied, and led the way back up the stairs. She was talking into her comms as she ran. 'Mark – B3 is hopeless and the stairwell down from there is impassable. We're going to see if we can get into B2.'
A moment later they were back at the B2 emergency door. Josh took the handle, turned it and pulled. It was stuck fast.
Crouching down, he surveyed the area around the lock. 'I'll try blowing it,' he said. 'Step back.'
He tapped at the keypad on his wrist. A fine tube slid from the cybersuit just above Josh's wrist. It was about two inches long and made from a carbon-nanotube composite, super-strong and super-light. He stepped close to the door, leaned back and pointed his hand a few inches above the lock. An intense blue light shot from the end of the tube. Josh slowly moved his wrist down, and there was a loud crack from the lock. The blue light snapped off and he grabbed the handle.
The door flew into the stairwell, sending Josh with it. He landed heavily at the edge of the stairwell and scrambled away as rubble cascaded through the opening. He leapt onto the handrail just ahead of the avalanche. Something caught his arm as he jumped and he felt a sharp stab of pain in his side.
Stephanie and Mai were standing a few steps up the stairs leading to the floor above. Stephanie reacted quickly, grabbing Josh's arm as he flung himself onto the rail. Josh hardly dared move as they watched the slurry tumble down the stairs.
Scrambling up the handrail, Josh kept a few feet away from the detritus flowing through the doorway, and landed with little grace a step below Mai and Stephanie. The pain in his side shot through him but he forced himself to ignore it. Between them, the two women managed to haul him up the stairs. Reaching the next turn, they could see down through the doorway. The cascade had almost stopped now, but the door was sealed. B2 was beyond reach.
'I need to stop a second,' Josh said, his voice pained.
'You're hurt,' Stephanie said and crouched beside him.
He was clutching his side. She felt the area gently and Josh almost jumped out of his suit when her fingers found a certain spot.
'I think you've broken a rib,' she said. Then, into her comms, 'Base One – Josh is injured. Please activate Conus, five mils. Nanobots need to be directed to left vertebro-sternal rib five.'
'Sybil's onto it, Steph. What's your status?'
'Door to Level B2 is impassable. Apart from Josh's injury, we're okay.'
'What's the plan?'
'We'll proceed to B1. See if we can get in that way and try to get down to B3
via an alternative route.'
'Roger.'
As they spoke, Sybil activated the nano-implant in Josh's brain stem, secreting the correct dose of painkiller into his bloodstream. At the same time, the computer ordered 35 million nanobots to make their way to Josh's damaged rib. It would take an hour for them to mend the break, but the painkillers would keep him mobile and able to cope.
The painkiller kicked in almost instantly. Made from a toxin found in the sting of the deadly cone snail Conus victoriae, it used a protein called ACV1, which quickly binds to pain receptors in the brain and shuts them down.
As soon as the toxin started performing its magic, Josh got to his feet. 'I love this stuff,' he said with a grin. 'So, what are we waiting for?'
Mai led the way up the stairs back to the emergency door on B1. 'What do you reckon?' she asked the other two as they met her in front of the door.
'I reckon it's our last chance,' Stephanie said grimly.
57
The Maldives
9.00 am
War was seated on the deck of his $50-million yacht Rosebud when he made the call to the other three Horsemen. Rosebud, which he had christened in honour of his favourite movie, Citizen Kane, was moored off Naladhu, in the Maldives. Powered by twin Bentley Marine gas turbines, the yacht boasted six luxury suites, each overlooking the ocean, an open-floor main deck 120 feet long, and a top-deck lounge with an electro-hydraulic retractable roof served by elevator. It could cruise comfortably at 40 knots.
The twenty crew members were all female and were forbidden to wear tops while on duty. Two of them were massaging War's massive neck as he lay on a lounger in the bright afternoon sun. His huge gut was glistening with suntan lotion. A trolley with a flat-screen computer had been wheeled beside him. Each of the other Horsemen was in a separate panel on the screen.
