by Sam Fisher
'Gentlemen,' War said, his eyes half-closed. He took a sip of his mint julep made from 60-year-old Kentucky bourbon. 'I hope I haven't called you away from anything important.' He chuckled and his chins wobbled. 'Only we have a problem.'
'What sort of problem?' Death asked. The wood panelling of his Washington DC office could be seen in the background.
'It appears our friend is still alive.'
The men on the screen stared at War impassively. They were not easily rattled.
'How can you possibly know that?' Pestilence asked. He was high above the Atlantic Ocean aboard a Hawker 400XP private jet.
'Communications are my business, remember? My people have picked up two separate cell phone calls from his private number.'
'Anyone could be using his phone.'
'Possible, but unlikely. Especially as the second call was to his wife.'
'So, the Dragon's work is not complete,' Conquest said, his black eyes surveying the others. He was in the back of a limousine being driven along Birdcage Walk in central London. It was four am, the streets wet with rain.
'I have instructed him to hold his position. Naturally, he is itching to complete his task.' War giggled like a child. The girls rubbing his neck smiled inanely. He bent forward on the lounger. 'A little lower,' he snapped at one of them. The other three Horsemen caught a glimpse of tanned breasts and, in the foreground, War's rolls of fat spilling over his skimpy trunks. 'I assume you agree he should move in,' War continued, raising his eyes to the screen.
'Of course,' Death said matter-of-factly. The other two were nodding.
'There is one other thing,' War added after a pause. He was relishing knowing things the others were unaware of, and he wanted to string it out as much as possible.
'Stop being so damn melodramatic,' Pestilence snapped.
War giggled, but hatred lay behind his wrinkled cheeks. He would love to have Pestilence's head in a vice, and to slowly tighten it until it split open like a watermelon. 'There is some strange group of rescuers at the site.'
'Rescuers?' It was Conquest, his face expressionless.
'My people report the presence of odd-looking aircraft at the CCC appearing out of nowhere. They're a small group, but they have technology no one's ever seen before.'
'What sort of technology?'
War gave a little shrug. 'I have no specifics.'
'Can you get images, video footage?'
'I'll try.'
'Where are these people from?' Pestilence asked.
'No idea.'
'What are they there for?'
War shrugged again. 'I just received the news myself.'
'This smells bad,' Conquest said grimly.
'Yes, I agree, it does,' Death responded. 'But we are in far too deep to back out now. The Dragon must proceed. And,' he added, glaring out of the flat-screen monitor, 'we must get everything we can on these "rescuers". You never know, gentlemen. We may acquire more from this operation than the removal of a nuisance like Senator Kyle Foreman.'
58
The four-way link with Washington, London and the mid-Atlantic cut out, and War ordered the girls to wheel his lounger into the shade. His second mint julep of the day stood on a silver tray beside him, along with a heaped plate of buffalo wings. The computer sat on the trolley beside the lounger.
War tapped at the keyboard and a set of images appeared. They were useless, shapeless blurs. He passed the pictures through an enhancement software package, but it did no good.
With a curse, he opened a video link to his contact on the ground close to the CCC in Los Angeles. His own image and voice were scrambled, so the recipient of his call had no idea of his true identity. The face of a young man appeared on the screen. His name was Jeremy Nichols, an English photographer for The LA Times. The tiny camera on his laptop distorted and fractionally delayed his image. Nichols had dust in his hair and his shirt was soiled. He had two state-of-the-art digital cameras around his neck. When he spoke, his voice was shaky with nerves and the trauma of what he had witnessed. 'What can I do for you?'
'What can you do for me? What can you do for me? You're a photographer, right?'
The young man said nothing and simply looked back at the scrambled image on his screen.
'You're a professional photographer, right, Mr Nichols?'
'What's wrong?'
War giggled. Through the distortion, Nichols could see flesh vibrating. 'The images of the aircraft. They may as well be snaps of a blancmange at a kid's fucking birthday party. That's what's wrong.'
The young man looked confused. 'But that's impossible.'
'Didn't you look at them before you sent them?'
'No . . . I knew you wanted them fast so I emailed them straight over.'
'Look,' War said.
And the photographer stared at his screen, where one of the images was now visible.
'Oh.'
'Yes, oh. I think you'll agree they're not worth much to me, Mr Nichols.'
The photographer didn't seem to be listening as he studied the image on his screen. 'They're using some sort of distortion system,' he said to himself.
'What?'
'They have something that confuses the camera.'
'Oh, bullshit!' War exclaimed. He clapped his hands together and laughed loudly. 'That technology doesn't exist.'
'Well, it evidently does,' Nichols said, forgetting himself for a second.
War's face fell.
'If you had seen their aircraft,' Nichols went on quickly, 'you'd believe they could do anything.'
'Well, I haven't been able to see their fucking aircraft, have I?' And War burst out laughing again.
Nichols could think of nothing to say. War filled the silence by muttering to himself. 'So, they have image-distortion technology, do they? Well, that is very, very interesting.' After a moment he looked up at the screen. 'Okay, Nichols. You can fuck off now,' and he laughed so much he made himself cough. Then he broke the link.
'Image-distortion technology. I like that,' War said quietly. He drained his mint julep and chuckled. 'I really like that.'
59
California Conference Center, Los Angeles
The text arriving down the secure line to the Dragon's cell consisted of two short words: 'Move in.'
From a kitbag on the back seat, he removed a dark suit, a white shirt and a brown tie. He pulled them on with slow, deliberate movements, placed his soiled fatigues in a plastic bag and double-knotted it. Next he pulled on a pair of latex gloves, removed the top from a jar of Vaseline, dipped his finger in and smeared some along his hair line, down his temples and across the back of his neck. He then took a lump of black rub-in dye and worked it into his hair. After applying four handfuls of the gloopy material, he combed back his hair, ran a couple of handy-wipes around his hairline to remove the barrier of Vaseline, pulled off the gloves and placed all the detritus into another, smaller plastic bag and double-knotted that.
The process complete, the Dragon studied his reflection in the vanity mirror inside the sunshade. Tightening his tie, he pinned a name badge to his lapel and was about to step out of the car when another text arrived. It read: 'Target is on B3.'
The Dragon pocketed his Smith & Wesson and the Yarygin PYa and pulled a bag over his shoulder. It contained four M67 fragmentation grenades and a state-of-the-art micro-gasmask. Then he buckled on a concealed belt that held his sheathed Fairbairn-Sykes commando knife. Now outside the car, he leaned against the door as he reset his GPS tracker and waited for Kyle Foreman's location to appear.
The Dragon had always been a technophile. He had met the lab guys who worked for the Four Horsemen. He knew the level of sophistication of their surveillance technology. Foreman had been their number one target for two months, and preparations had been thorough. They knew he changed his cell phone and number every three weeks, but they had still been able to plant a microscopic bug into each of the phones the senator used. It allowed the tech guys to triangulate Foreman's po
sition from his phone, even when it was not in use or the battery was flat. And they could transfer that information to the GPS system the Dragon now held in his hand.
A moment later, the data began to download. After a few seconds a red circle appeared on the screen of the GPS, showing that Foreman was moving east from the elevators on B3. The Dragon felt a ripple of excitement run through him. 'Beautiful,' he said aloud. Then he reached into his shoulder bag, removed a grenade, pulled the pin with his teeth, tossed it through the driver's window of the car and strode towards the road that circled the CCC. He didn't flinch as the car exploded behind him and he felt the heat from the blast on the back of his neck.
60
Josh, Stephanie and Mai entered B1 through the emergency exit door that led from the stairwell in the rear east corner of the CCC.
B1 was almost as badly damaged as the ground floor, especially in its western half, which was as smashed up as the auditorium directly above it. The second bomb had been planted here, inside an air-conditioning duct in the ceiling.
The lights were dead, but with their powerful helmet beams the corridor beyond was lit up pretty well. This was the main administration level, dominated by a U-shaped corridor with a warren of offices clustered around it. The reception area in the centre of the level was directly below the Main Concourse.
It was eerily calm. They could hear sounds coming from the western wing, the crackling of flames and cascading water, but they seemed far off. Most of the doors to the offices had been smashed to matchwood. From close by came the fizz of strip-lights ripped from the ceiling and still tingling with ionised gas and stray electric current. They were moist and deadly. The carpeted floor was sodden. The sprinklers had gone off, then the pipes had ruptured.
Five paces down the corridor, they almost fell over a woman in a business suit. Her body lay spread-eagled, with her head beside her. Her torso was drenched from the sprinklers, and her blouse pink with diluted blood. The cream carpet beneath her was now the colour of salmon flesh.
Most of the offices were deserted. Only a handful of people had been working down here when the bombs went off. It seemed unlikely anyone could have survived.
They advanced slowly along the corridor, then west towards the central reception area and the elevators. No more bodies. No one alive, either. Reaching the foyer, they saw the extent of the damage on the western side. Josh checked the temperature – it was over 180 degrees Fahrenheit. Without the filters in their helmets, the fumes would have been deadly. Flames were lapping along the corridor leading from the west wing to the central foyer. It was completely impassable.
'Our best hope was to get through to the west wing,' Mai said, an edge of despair in her voice.
'Damn it!' Josh snapped. 'And the main elevators are obviously out. Any bright ideas?'
'The air-conditioning ducts. They link up the floors.'
'Okay, but we know B3 on this side is ablaze around the emergency exit.'
'So we use the ducts to get one level down, to B2,' Stephanie said. 'Then we just have to hope there's another way down from there.'
'Doesn't sound encouraging,' Mai replied.
'Well, any other suggestions? This would be the time.'
Josh sighed. 'No, I don't have any. Mai?'
She shook her head.
'Right. You two stay here. I'll go and see if it's even possible,' Stephanie said confidently.
They chose the third office along the bottom of the U-shaped corridor. It seemed like a sensible choice – it was some way from the emergency exit, which meant that if the fire near the exit on B3 had reached the area directly above it, on B2, the air-con ducts this far west should still be alright. It was also some distance from the main area of devastation on the western side of the CCC. Josh radioed Base One and informed Tom what they were planning, and he set to work finding a schematic of the air-con system for the complex.
There was a good solid desk on one side of the room. They slid it across the floor until it stood directly under a metal grille in the ceiling, which was just wide enough for a person to get through. Emptying a couple of metal filing cabinets, they heaved them up onto the desk and placed a chair on top.
Stephanie climbed up. The grille was held in place by four wing-nuts, one at each corner. She spun them loose, eased the grille out and handed it down to Mai. Stephanie heaved herself up through the gap and into the air-con duct.
The duct was a narrow square-sided channel, and Stephanie had to half-crawl, half-slither along the smooth metal surface. To her left, the duct led to another channel that ran above the main corridor. To the right, it curved away to the rear of the building.
'Base One,' Steph said into her comms. 'Do you have that schematic?'
'Just got it,' Tom replied. 'Sending it over.'
Steph looked at the flexiscreen on her wrist. A miniature version of the air-con schematic appeared, a complex mesh of coloured lines. Mai and Josh received it at the same time, and a much larger version was displayed on the wall of Cyber Control at Tintara.
'You're here,' Tom said, and a red dot appeared among the tangle of lines. 'You need to turn right. This will lead you to a point close to the elevator foyer. From there the duct splits. One channel goes up to the Ground Level. But from the BigEye image, it looks pretty smashed up. Another channel goes down to B2. There's no way of telling what you'll find there.'
'Copy that, Tom. I'm taking the right turn.'
Without her cybersuit, the task would have been completely impossible. The temperature in the duct was over 130 degrees Fahrenheit, and noxious fumes from the west of the building had found their way into the air-con system. The suit cooled Stephanie's body and filtered out the poisons, but clawing her way along the channel was still exhausting work.
It was a relief to reach the junction. She looked up and saw the channel blocked just a few yards above her head. Looking down, her helmet light lit up the channel. She could see where the down channel met another duct on B2 that ran parallel to the one she had just shuffled along.
'I'm at the junction,' she said into her comms. 'I'm going to lower myself on a wire.'
From her backpack she disengaged a narrow carbon-fibre wire with a pressure sucker at the end. She attached the sucker to the wall of the duct and eased herself over the side. The nanocomputers in her suit released the wire steadily, lowering Stephanie into the void between the floors. It took her just a few seconds to reach the air-con channel on B2. Touching down on the floor of the duct, she released the wire and it slithered back into her pack.
In the light from her helmet, Stephanie saw the channel stretching from north to south, to the rear and the front of the building. She looked at her flexiscreen. She could see that she was now on B2, the first level of the car park, and close to the main elevators. There were fewer outlets for the air-con on this level. The nearest was about 30 yards towards the front of the CCC. She turned into the narrow channel and headed south.
The weakened floor plate in the air-con duct was impossible to see. It had been caused by an exploding gas tank in the car park 30 minutes earlier. The tank had blown into hundreds of pieces that slammed around the car park, shattering car windows and punching great holes in vehicles.
Crawling forward, Stephanie leant her hands on the duct and a panel gave way. She tumbled forward. Her scream echoed around Cyber Control almost 1500 miles away, and in Josh and Mai's comms one floor above her.
61
'Steph!' Mai and Josh yelled in unison. On Tintara, everyone working in Cyber Control froze, hardly daring to draw breath.
Stephanie's reflexes were quick. As she tipped into the hole that had opened up under her, she scrambled to grab at anything solid. Her arms flailed and her suit caught on a piece of protruding metal. The carbothreads of the suit held fast, and with one gloved hand she just managed to grab the edge of the duct.
Below her lay twenty feet of air. This presented no real problem, but what did matter was the mangled pile of metal that car
peted the floor of the car park. Six-inch spikes of glass and coils of charred and jagged steel stuck up like deadly stalagmites. To make it worse, motor oil was burning all around the debris, sending up black billowing smoke and red flames.
'Steph – status?'
For a moment she was too stunned to speak. She just groaned. Then she brought her free arm up to improve her grip on the edge of the hole. The metal of the duct creaked ominously.
'I'm in one piece,' she said in a low, pained voice. 'Just. I've gone through the floor of the duct and I'm hanging on to the rim. Problem is, I can't get down. There's a fire directly below me and the floor is strewn with huge pieces of jagged metal.'
'Okay,' came Mark's voice from Base One. His eyes darted across the holoscreen above Tom's virtual keypad, where he could see the status of each member of E-Force. 'Steph, your suit has held. Are you injured?'
'I don't think so. But I can't get back up and I can't jump down.'
'Steph – I'm on my way,' Mai said. She was already clambering onto the filing cabinets. A second later she had pulled herself up into the opening of the air-con duct.
She moved faster than Steph had, and reached the junction into B2 a mere twenty seconds after entering the duct.
Dangling from the car park ceiling, Steph could feel herself weakening.
'Steph, we're releasing glucose boosters. You cool with that?'
'Sure am.'
Mark was about to speak, when Tom cupped his hand over the mic. 'Mark,' he said quietly. 'There's a micro-tear in her suit.'
Mark felt a spasm of fear shoot down his spine. He stared at the holoscreen and saw it – a rip, no more than a fraction of a millimetre long, in the arm of Stephanie's cybersuit.
'Steph,' Mark said, his voice booming through the comms. 'We have a problem.'
Mai heard Mark's words, and slowed for a fraction of a second. Then her training kicked in and she increased her pace. Whatever it was Mark was about to say, it meant she had to get there even faster.
