State of Emergency

by Sam Fisher

  Pete leaned across the control panel and opened a metal box on the wall. Inside hung a soft plastic helmet. It was a synapse-cap, a sophisticated neural-feedback device. Covering the outside of the cap was a matrix of wires set into the plastic. The inside was lined with a dozen silver disks arranged in three rows of four. A patch hung down each side of the cap, and a strip of black plastic joined the patches. Pete pulled on the device. The patches covered his ears and the black strip ran across his eyes.

  With the synapse-cap Pete could control the probe remotely. The sensors inside the helmet read electrical impulses in Pete's brain, and the onboard computer translated these impulses into instructions. This meant he could operate the bomb disposal probe by just thinking where he wanted it to go and what he wanted it to do.

  The probe rolled forward and stopped a foot away from the bomb. Pete glanced at the screen. He had three minutes left.

  A small metal rod descended from the probe's arm and stopped an inch from the metal casing of the bomb. Pete studied the screen above the control panel and then turned his attention to the black strip running in front of his eyes. The strip lit up with an image of the inside of the explosive device. The HBX was wrapped around a micro-detonator, which was hooked up to a timer and a power cell. Pete had seen something like this before – in Afghanistan.

  Without hesitating, he extended a claw from the base of the remote arm and clasped the base of the metal cylinder. Pete instructed the claw to rotate anticlockwise. The metal spun in its casing, and a few seconds later the base of the cylinder had separated from the body of the device. Pete made the probe lower the disk to the floor. Two wires hung down from the opened base of the cylinder – one green and the other red. He directed the probe to extend its claw forward, and it started to move towards the green lead.

  A crunching sound shot though the helmet, so loud that Pete almost fell off his chair. For a microsecond he thought the bomb had gone off, and that he was in some nowhere land suspended between life and death. But then he looked at the holoscreen and realised what had happened.

  The probe stood motionless, its extension arm bent almost double. A lump of concrete two foot square had landed on the probe, crushing the upper part of the device and twisting its base. One of the probe's tracks was buckled. It would never move again.

  Pete could not believe what he was seeing. He glanced at the clock on the screen and felt a tingle of fear run down his spine. The bomb would go off in less than two minutes.

  102

  The sound of falling masonry and steel was deafening. McNally clutched the kids to him and tried to shelter them. The car they were under rocked on its wheels, and for a horrible moment he thought it was going to flip over. But it stayed upright, and the shockwave finally screeched past.

  McNally left it as long as he dared before emerging from under the car. The air was dense with white dust. The kids came out, coughing desperately. 'Here,' McNally said, crouching down and helping them each to draw breath through his mask. Then he stood up, pulled the mask back on and tried to see what state the exit was in.

  McNally pulled Tim and Juney into the adjacent aisle, and then half-dragged them 50 feet onwards, towards the slope. It was only as they approached closer that they saw the way was entirely blocked.

  Phil's voice came through McNally's radio. 'Boss? Boss? Are you there?'

  'Are you okay, Phil?' McNally replied.

  'We're fine. But you're sealed in.'

  'You two get to the surface. I'll find us another way out.'

  'Jim –'

  'Do it, Phil! There's no time – just get the fuck out!' McNally turned to the kids. They knew nothing about the bomb, but they were terrified enough.

  'We can't get out!' Tim cried. He rubbed at his sore eyes, succeeding only in pushing more grit into them.

  'We'll find a way,' McNally replied as reassuringly as he could. He looked at his watch again. It told him they had two minutes.

  'Why do you keep looking at your watch?' It was the girl, Juney.

  McNally ignored her. Looking around, he tried to figure out what they could do. He tried to remember the exact layout of the CCC. He had studied the diagram on the laptop coming over from Skid Row. The ramp was useless – he knew that. It just went down. There were emergency exits at each of the four corners of the car park. He looked over the cars towards the north-east exit. It was shrouded in smoke, and he could see flames lapping up to the ceiling. A twenty-foot-wide arc of fire stretched along the car park running east to west, blocking the way.

  McNally spun around and looked towards the slope again, and then on to the south-east corner. That exit was closer. He could just make it out over the car roofs. The sign was out, but he could see a white glass box with an E and a T. 'This way,' he shouted to the children.

  He ran as fast as he could, dodging between the cars and checking every few seconds to see if Tim and Juney were keeping up with him. They passed the last row of cars and could see the exit ahead. It was completely blocked.

  McNally felt his heart sink. He stopped and gasped for breath. He bent down, his palms on his knees. He glanced again at his watch. One minute and 24 seconds. He turned back towards the main body of the car park, controlling his terror, if only for the sake of the two young kids.

  'Think, McNally. Think!' he said aloud. But there was nothing. What could he do? He looked at the two kids, their lathered, filthy faces, their desperate expressions. Juney started to cry. McNally pushed the front of his helmet back an inch and ran his fingers over his grimy forehead. There was only one way to go. One final, crazy hope. Although it was blocked by fire, they would have to try to reach the north-east exit.

  103

  Josh and the others stood well back as Mark and Stephanie punched a hole into the drain.

  'We've no way of telling how close we are to the bomb,' Stephanie said, lowering her drill. Mark emerged from the hole behind her. They were both caked in dust and soil.

  'But it's near enough,' Josh replied.

  'There's only just enough room in the opening for the stretcher,' Mark said, taking the drip from Mai. 'We'll have to crawl into it. Steph, you get the other end.' He attached the drip to a nylon cord around the neck of his cybersuit, turned away from the stretcher and crouched to grasp the metal poles. Ducking low, he and Stephanie carried Marty into the hole. Dave, Josh, Mai and Kyle Foreman followed close behind them.

  'Steph. You take the Mole,' Mark said as they emerged into the larger opening created by the machine. 'You'll have to drill your way out at the end of the drain. Once you get a few yards into the soil you'll be safe from any explosion. The Bullet is pretty tough anyway.'

  Stephanie stepped into the back of the Mole and went straight to the control panel and prepped the vehicle. Marty's stretcher was laid along the length of the Bullet, between the bench seats. Mark slung the two Sonic Drills onto the floor beside the stretcher, retreated and closed the door. Stephanie locked it from the control panel, then slowly reversed out of the twenty-foot-long hole. The drain was just wide enough for her to do a U-turn, and she eased down on the throttle.

  The others ran along the drain, watching the Mole speed off around a bend. Josh glanced at his wrist. They had just over 90 seconds to get as far away as they could. They reached the small opening that led up to the surface and saw that the Mole had gnawed its way through the wall of the drain, its back end already a couple of yards into the soil.

  The chute to the surface had been mangled beyond recognition when Mark had come down from the surface in the Mole. But the ladder Stephanie had used was still hanging, its final rung two feet above the floor. The ladder was made from carbothreads and was incredibly strong.

  Mark helped Foreman onto the rope ladder. 'How's the arm, sir?' he asked.

  Foreman gave him a wry smile. 'You want me to pitch you a few balls?'

  'I'll hold you to that, Senator. But right now I just need you to get up the ladder as fast as you can.'

  Foreman gave
Mark a salute and pulled himself up onto the bottom rung. Ignoring the pain in his arm, he clambered upwards.

  Mai was second up, followed by Dave then Josh. Mark glanced at his wrist. Thirty seconds. He pulled himself up onto the ladder and started to climb.

  104

  Pete punched at the control panel and the rear door of the Mole slid open. He checked his suit. It was functioning normally, except that normal comms were still down. Crouching as he moved along the low-ceilinged gantry between the seats of the Bullet, he jumped out of the Mole, his feet crunching on the encrusted concrete.

  It was eerily quiet. Even the crackle of fire and the constant drip of water from broken pipes had ceased. The proverbial calm before the storm, Pete thought as he dashed around the back of the machine and caught sight of the bomb.

  Without wasting a second he ran to the end of the drill bit. The cylindrical bomb lay on a pile of concrete. Three-quarters of its length was exposed, where the probe had pulled away the plastic bag in which it had been wrapped. The base that the probe had unscrewed lay to one side, and Pete could see the two exposed wires.

  He crouched down and stared at the device. Suddenly he was eight years in the past and half a world away. He and his 'bomb buddy', Matt Stevens, had been sent into a market in Kabul. The Taliban had planted a timed device in the main square, but British intelligence had discovered it before it could be detonated. The army had taken a consignment of the new Cutlass robot bomb disposal devices, but none had been commissioned yet and the nearest Wheelbarrow robot – the type they'd used since the 1970s – was 30 miles outside Kabul. They had to go in themselves.

  The bomb had been small but powerful, four ounces of HBX in a tin box. A toy elephant sat on top of it. The explosive had a killing radius of at least twenty feet. Pete had sensed something bad about the device as soon as he saw it. Something was not right, but when Matt challenged him he couldn't offer anything tangible. It was just a gut feeling.

  'Well, with respect, mate,' Matt had said, 'I'm going to go by what my brain tells me, not your gut!' And he had laughed good-naturedly, his hand on Pete's shoulder. Then he bent down to unscrew the top of the device.

  Inside, the bomb had looked just as it should, just like the dozens of others they had neutered. 'We'll need the microdriver,' Matt said. Pete went to pluck it from his pocket, but it wasn't there.

  'Bugger!' he'd exclaimed. 'Left it in the bag. I'll get it.' He ran back to the edge of the square where they'd left their kit by a low stone wall. Then he'd heard the click from across the 50 feet of dirt between him and Matt – he'd known what it meant in a millisecond.

  With lightning reflexes Pete had dived behind the wall. The boom from the device had rendered him deaf for a month, and he'd spent six weeks in hospital. His ankles had been shattered because he hadn't made it behind the wall in time.

  Pete's body had been relatively quick to mend but his mind had never really healed. He could never forgive himself for Matt's death. He could have stopped him, been more vocal about his misgivings. On top of this was a huge helping of 'survivor guilt'. Pete had only been saved by his own inefficiency. By rights, he should have been blown to pieces along with his friend.

  All of this flashed through Pete's mind as he looked at the wires. And at that moment he had a bad feeling about this bomb – precisely the feeling he'd experienced eight years earlier in Kabul.

  Pete was breathing hard, making the cybersuit work overtime, and he could hear his own heart racing. A small tube extended from his wrist – a miniature laser cutter. He leaned forward ready to cut the green wire. In the corner of his eye he glimpsed the screen on his wrist and saw the numbers click by – 31, 30 . . .

  Suddenly Pete felt preternaturally calm. The world around him seemed to vanish. He held his breath. Glancing at the counter on his flexiscreen, he saw the number change to 27. He knew what to do. He shifted his hand and sliced through the red lead.

  The clock stopped at 26 seconds. Pete could hardly believe it. Something had told him that the wires were reversed in this device. He had no idea what it was – instinct, maybe – but he had made the right decision.

  Then he heard a click. A thin disk of metal dropped inside the steel cylinder. Pete saw it fall, saw it come to rest above the lump of plastic material next to the timer and the detonator. The disk settled into a groove just visible above the explosive, and the clock flicked to 25.

  Pete twisted round and sped back to the Mole. He had never moved so fast in his life. The Maxinium shell of the machine flashed past as he dashed towards the Mole's back door. He did not see the oil slick running beside the vehicle and hit it at top speed. His boots lost their purchase and he went over onto his back. For a second he struggled like a dying fly before he managed to twist around in the slurry and find his footing. He dared not look at his wrist. The only thing he could do was keep moving. Keep running until he reached the door of the Mole, or be blown to vapour by the HBX.

  Pete grabbed the rim of the Mole and propelled himself into the Bullet, pulling the door shut behind him.

  A flash came first, followed – a microsecond later – by the blast and the thunderous roar. Millions of newtons of energy, along with tons of concrete and steel, slammed into the Mole, sending it spiralling through the air.

  105

  McNally was just about to turn towards the north-east emergency exit when a flame shot up from a puddle of oil ten feet away. He recoiled, but as he moved his head back he saw a momentary flash of light to the far left of his visual field. He turned and saw the steel metal plate of a maintenance hatch. It was open, the door pinned back against the wall.

  Without another thought he dashed to the hatch. Peering in, he saw the tunnel leading away into darkness. 'Over here!' he screamed, beckoning frantically to the kids.

  McNally helped them up into the opening. 'Crawl forward as fast as you can,' he yelled, and he scrambled up the wall and levered himself into the hole. He knew they had only seconds. 'Move, move . . . Come on, we've got to go, guys!'

  Without slowing he managed to catch a glimpse of his watch – nineteen seconds to go.

  He heard the little girl yelp. 'Ow! I cut myself.' She began to cry.

  'Okay, Juney, keep going, sweetie. I'll check it out when we get to the other end.'

  But the girl had stopped. Her brother had reached her.

  'Move, Juney,' the boy hissed.

  She started to cry harder.

  McNally caught up with them just as the bomb went off. They felt the walls of the maintenance shaft shake. Both children screamed, but the sound was drowned out by the roar of the explosion. McNally fell forward, pulling the kids down with him, and waited for the shockwave to hit.

  The blast roared down the tunnel, a great plug of air sweeping dust and debris ahead of it. The force of it propelled the three humans in the passage forward. They crashed into the sides of the shaft and tried to clutch onto anything they could. The children rolled and turned head-over-heels, while McNally was knocked from wall to wall.

  McNally thanked the Lord he had kept his helmet on as his head was smashed against the sides of the tunnel. He screwed up his eyes, covering his face with one arm and putting out the other to help break his fall. He felt himself crash uncontrollably against a bundle of cables. He made a grab for a loop of wire, but it ripped away from the wall. Then he felt a sharp pain in his back as he collided with a metal box. Tim's foot caught him in the neck and the boy's shoe smashed into his face.

  And then suddenly they were falling, as though they had tumbled down a well.

  McNally felt his neck spasm as he landed on a smooth metal surface. He could taste blood in his mouth. Then he heard two dull thumps as the kids landed close by.

  106

  Mark and the others were halfway up the ladder when the bomb went off. The roar was muffled by the solid earth between the blast site and the access chute. Then a second reverberation shuddered outward from B6 and along the drain.

  At the epicentr
e of the explosion the wave-front moved at a speed of 23,947 feet per second, and the air around the blast had a mean temperature of 8378 degrees Kelvin. But by the time the wave-front ripped through the storage rooms and the outer wall of the CCC and smacked into the blockage in the drain, its impact was reduced by over 50 per cent.

  The blockage, 30 feet thick, acted as a giant muffler. It absorbed 97 per cent of the kinetic energy from the blast and put a giant brake on the expanding gases. But the blast also blew the barrier apart and propelled the fragments west along the drain.

  The three E-Force members, along with Dave Golding and Kyle Foreman, were some 40 feet up the air-conditioning duct as the material from the barrier crashed along the inside of the drain. The sonic boom – created by the explosive gases hitting tons of material in the blockage – was ear-bursting.

  The majority of material from the barrier shot along the drain, gradually losing energy as it went. But some of it flew up into the escape chute. Mark, who was closest to the drain, could see a great cloud of dust and debris advancing up the hole. 'Don't look down!' he screamed above the roaring of the explosion. 'Press against the wall and keep your eyes shut tight!'

  The material hit them like a giant wave crashing onto a beach, slamming them against the rock and soil of the churned up chute. The ladder swayed violently. Mark could just hear Dave yelling in terror above the screeching torrent that flooded over them. Then, shockingly, the noise stopped. But only for a second. The backdraft was even more powerful than the blast. As air was expelled from around the blast site, a vacuum was created and material was sucked in to fill the void. Everything that had crashed past them in the chute whooshed back down. Soil and lumps of rock cascaded onto their heads.