by Sam Fisher
A chunk of concrete slammed into Kyle Foreman's shoulder. He screamed in pain and let go of the ladder with one hand, swinging out into the black chasm. His legs gave way and one foot slid between the rungs.
Mai heard the senator cry out. She shot a glance upwards and a stream of soil and dust fell onto her visor. She sprung up a rung, and with one arm wrapped tight around the ladder, she thrust out a hand and caught Foreman by his belt. He was writhing around in panic, but the terror energised him. He bent his body at the waist and shook off the stream of debris raining down on them, then caught the ladder with his hand and regained his footing. He shook his head and blood from a dozen cuts in his face splashed onto the carbothreads of the ladder. Ignoring the pain that screamed through his body, Foreman tugged on the next rung and hauled himself up.
Thirty seconds later they emerged into the concrete passageway that led up to the grassy area beyond the northwest corner of the CCC. The night was ablaze with reds and yellows from roaring fires. The air was filled with dust and smoke. Dave and Foreman drew heavily on the oxygen masks that clung still to their faces, then they collapsed onto the scorched grass.
Mark was the last to emerge. He scrambled over the lip of the chute and pulled himself onto the concrete floor of the passageway. His cybersuit was stained and covered with dust.
He strode up the slope towards Dave and Foreman and crouched down. 'Are you two alright? Senator, you took a nasty knock back there.' Mark could see that the remains of Foreman's shirt were ripped to shreds, and a large patch of fresh blood was soaking his left shoulder. The man's face was coated with blood and soil, making his eyes look almost comically white, like a character from a cartoon.
Foreman nodded slowly. His mouth was so dry and filled with dust that he could not speak.
'We're almost there,' Mark said, turning to check on Dave. The young man had clambered to his knees and was nursing his damaged arm. He looked up at Mark and let out a deep sigh. 'Man oh man,' he exclaimed, and slumped his head forward.
Mark helped Dave to his feet, and Josh and Mai got Kyle Foreman to a standing position with a shoulder under each of his arms.
'Mark? Mark? Come in, please.' It was Tom.
Mark could barely believe it – comms were back online. 'Yes, Tom,' he replied.
'Thank Christ! Where are you? The BigEyes can't get a visual from anywhere within twenty yards of the CCC.'
Mark talked as he assisted Dave across the grass towards the Pram. 'We're out. We have Senator Foreman and two other survivors. One with us, one with Steph.'
'Where is she?'
'In the number two Mole with Marty Gardiner. She should be hitting the surface soon. Have you heard from Pete?'
There was a heavy silence from the other end of the line.
'Tom? What's happened?'
'The last message from him was an email. He was going outside the Mole to defuse the third bomb.'
'Oh no!' Mark had stopped in his tracks.
'I can't see how he could have escaped the blast.'
107
Mark was on the flight deck of the Big Mac, where Josh and Mai were at the controls. A big wall screen perpendicular to the control panels showed a view of the area just beyond the ship. The sky was a mucky blend of grey haze and piercing firelight. The CCC had been gutted beyond recognition by the third bomb, and the western portion of the building had collapsed. It looked like a scene from the London Blitz.
Mai and Josh had spoken to the emergency services. Thanks to Tom's quick thinking, they had managed to get their teams to safety before the third device detonated. Only one fireman was missing. None of the rescuers had been below B2 at the time, so there was absolutely no news of Peter Sherringham. It was now over an hour since the final blast, and the E-Force team was beginning to fear the worst.
The door to the sickbay slid open and Stephanie walked onto the flight deck.
'How are they?' Mark asked.
'All asleep,' Stephanie replied, 'and all stable. Mr Gardiner was touch and go. Another five minutes and we would have lost him. He'll need surgery, but I think he'll pull though.'
'And the senator? He was pretty beaten up.'
'Severe acid burns to his left arm, broken nose, dislocated shoulder, two broken ribs and multiple lacerations. But he'll live.'
'And the boy?'
'He got off the lightest of the lot. Burns to his leg, lacerations to his arms and face, but apart from that . . . Anything from Pete?'
Mark shook his head. 'Sybil can't help. She's getting nothing from his suit – no locator beacon, no vital signs.'
Stephanie sighed and threw herself into a chair. She looked utterly exhausted.
'How about I take the Mole down there?' Josh said, spinning his chair around to face the others.
'Too dangerous,' Mark replied. 'That place is like a honeycomb.'
'Well, the Cage then?'
Mark was about to respond when Mai startled the others with a piercing scream. She had been staring intently at the holoscreen above the control panel. 'Close in, Sybil. Close in!' she bellowed. Jumping from her seat, she dashed to the main screen.
'What is it?' said Mark, moving beside her.
'This is unreal!' Mai said, her hands to her mouth.
The four of them were transfixed by what they saw. Sybil had zeroed in on a part of the CCC close to where the main entrance had once been. The area had been reduced to rubble. The doorframes and the entire front of the building had been blown away. As they watched, a human shape emerged from behind a pile of rubble, on top of which lay a huge metal frame of the letter C. It was one of the letters from the neon sign for the California Conference Center, which had once perched proudly over the main doors. The figure was limping and covered in grime and filth. But just discernible across his chest were the words 'E-Force' and, below that, the name 'Pete Sherringham'.
108
As consciousness returned, McNally tried to focus, but there seemed to be something wrong with his vision. He felt something clamped to his nose and mouth and heard a voice, but he couldn't make out the words. Then his eyes began to clear and he saw Phil's face swim into view.
McNally tried to move, but nothing worked.
'You're okay, Jim,' Phil said. He was smiling down at him.
McNally swallowed hard and managed to find his voice, a weird croak. 'The kids . . .' Then, as paramedics lifted him onto a stretcher, he saw them. Tim and Juney were also on stretchers, masks over their faces, liquid-filled tubes protruding from their arms. Tim gave him a weak smile.
'Broken bones, cuts and bruises, but they'll be good,' Phil said.
McNally felt a huge weight lift from his shoulders. Watching the ceiling drift past as the paramedics carried him out through the back of the smashed-up shell of Kmart, he could still smell the fires burning. It was a smell he knew all too well. He also knew that, after tonight, he never wanted to smell it again.
109
Josh and Stephanie were taking a well-needed rest. Mark was on the flight deck of the Big Mac, staring at the screen, which showed a view of the devastated CCC in the pre-dawn light. The fires had all burned out and the wreckage looked grey, a lifeless morass. A few emergency crews remained, picking through the rubble and ashes. A police helicopter circled overhead, its lemon beam sweeping across the jagged columns and twisted piles of concrete and steel.
Tom's face appeared on the screen. 'Morning, Mark,' he said. 'Thought you'd be asleep.'
'Nope. Steph, Josh and Pete are. Mai's just left for Houston. I obviously just didn't have a trying enough day!'
'When do you hope to leave?'
'I can't just yet. I'm waiting for a flight for Senator Foreman.'
'He's still with you?'
'He insisted. Said he was happy to wait and that there were many more urgent cases to deal with here.'
'How's Pete?'
Mark shook his head. 'A living miracle. No one would imagine he had been so close to a massive explosion. The nanobots are fixi
ng him up. He has a couple of cracked ribs, cuts and bruises. It's ridiculous, really.'
'Testimony to the engineers who built the Mole.'
'Yeah, the poor machine is beaten up beyond recognition, but the shell of the Bullet held. Pete was just thrown around inside. So, have you found out anything more?'
Tom frowned. 'Those guys are using some pretty sophisticated defensive software.'
'So you haven't.'
'I didn't say that,' Tom retorted. 'You're very privileged to have a living genius on call.'
'Okay, genius. Let's have it.'
'Sybil had broken into their system, but the files themselves were very well protected. I succeeded in cracking them – eventually. The owners don't have a clue I was there, of course, and they never will. I must give Sybil some credit for that. Once Syb and I had their defences opened up, I found out more about the marines who got aboard the Big Mac. It was a piece of cake to trace their connections.
'As expected, everything led back to one source – a group of four very influential guys. They call themselves the Four Horsemen, would you believe? Obviously some weird reference to the Bible. They clearly fancy themselves as Antichrists.' His expression darkened. 'Which is apt, I suppose. Seems they weren't content with killing a thousand innocent people in an attempt to get Senator Foreman. When they learned of us, they wanted to steal our technology into the bargain. Anyway, here's the info.'
As he spoke, a column of text appeared to the right of the screen on the Big Mac. Mark whistled as he read the information.
'Yeah, it goes right to the top – well, almost,' Tom remarked.
'And we've got a cast-iron case against them?' Mark asked.
'I can prove they have their paws all over the bombing and the assassination attempt. Their IDs are in the files, and there's a whole heap of comms records. Whenever they communicate with anyone outside the inner circle of four they use voice and image distortion software. But I've unscrambled the records. Here are the ugly bastards.'
Four faces appeared at the bottom of Mark's screen. He vaguely recognised two of them from newspaper articles, but he couldn't put names to them. They were obviously very powerful figures, but men who managed to remain almost completely anonymous.
'Alright, Tom. Good work. Leave it with me.'
Mark broke the connection and stood up from the control panel. He touched a patch on the wall and the door to the sickbay opened. Marty was still unconscious but Dave Golding was sitting at his bedside. Kyle Foreman was snoring quietly.
'How are you feeling?' Mark asked, surprised to see the boy awake. He pulled up another chair.
'I guess I'm okay . . . physically.'
Mark looked into the young man's face. 'The physical wounds always heal a lot faster than the psychological ones.'
Dave looked at his feet for a moment. 'What about Marty?'
'Steph reckons he'll make a complete recovery.'
Dave looked relieved. 'He's a good man.'
'Yes, and a tough one. You three never gave up.'
Dave looked at Mark and tears brimmed in his eyes, spilling over onto his cheeks. 'All those people . . .' he began.
Mark could say nothing. The door from the flight deck swished open and Stephanie walked in. She saw Dave's face, apologised and started to retreat.
'No, no, please,' Dave said, wiping his cheeks. 'Come in . . . I'm being a real wimp.'
Mark put a hand on the boy's shoulder. 'After what you've been through, that's the last word I'd use to describe you, young man.'
They all turned at a sound from the other bed. Kyle Foreman was pulling himself up on the pillows, looking dazed. Stephanie paced over to him. 'How are you?' she asked.
For a second the senator's face was totally blank, as though he had no idea who or where he was. He took a deep breath. 'A little muggy.' He glanced at the catheter in his arm, then around at Dave and Mark. 'Dave,' he said. 'And Marty – how is he?'
'Fine now, thanks to you two,' Stephanie said.
Foreman shook his head. 'You guys played your part. I don't know how to begin to –'
A bleeping sound came from the flight deck. Stephanie walked into the adjoining room and leaned over the control panel. A few moments later she was back in the sickbay, a big smile on her face.
'There's someone who wants to talk to you, Senator.'
He gave her a puzzled look.
'Sickbay screen, please,' Stephanie instructed the onboard computer. 'And raise the upper third of Bed 3 . . . 45 degree angle.' The screen on the far wall lit up and the head of Kyle Foreman's bed raised slowly. Stephanie helped him sit up.
The screen filled with the face of a woman.
'Sandy!' Foreman exclaimed.
'Darling . . .'
'My God! Where are you?' He had just noticed she was also in a hospital bed – she was wearing a green gown only partially covered by a silk Versace dressing gown.
'Where do you think?' Sandy replied, beaming. The camera pulled back and they could all see the face of a newborn baby, wrinkled and pink. He was wrapped in a blanket, asleep in his mother's arms. 'Meet Kyle junior,' Sandy said, as a tear of joy slid down her cheek to meet her smile.
110
Houston, Texas
The Lincoln Continental swept through the gates of Base Three, five miles from downtown Houston. An hour after sunrise, the sky was a bruised orange, as though it had been daubed by a young child with a dirty paintbrush. The road was awash with water and the wipers were working hard.
The driver had the radio on. Every station was abuzz with the latest news from the disaster site in Los Angeles. Reports claimed that more than a thousand people had died at the California Conference Center, and that hundreds more had been injured. The emergency services expected the death toll to rise, as many people were critical or still unaccounted for. As for who was behind the horror, no one had claimed responsibility. Fingers were being pointed at a spectrum of possible culprits, from al-Qaeda to nebulous groups of eco-terrorists.
Mai sighed and shook her head as she heard excited reporters describing the amazing rescue vehicles of a strange organisation called E-Force that no one had heard of before. The biggest tease for the newsmen had been the fact that any attempt to photograph or film the machines used by the organisation produced only shapeless blurs. E-Force, it seemed, had appeared out of nowhere. Nobody had any clear idea who was involved, or even if E-Force was a government body or the product of a mysterious philanthropic group.
Mai sat in the back of the car, letting the babble from the radio wash over her. She watched the buildings flash past, shrouded in rain. As she focused on the sound of water splashing against the undercarriage of the Lincoln, a menagerie of emotions vied for her attention. She was utterly exhausted, but more alive than she could ever remember being. She felt exhilarated to be part of E-Force. Only time would tell how the organisation would shape up.
What was to be their remit in the future? Although she was pleased they had been able to help the rescue services and had saved the lives of three good men, she knew they could do so much more. But then a darker voice in her heard told her that it wouldn't be her decision to make. It wouldn't even be Mark Harrison's. E-Force might be non-military and ostensibly apolitical, but that was an oxymoron. Could anything as important as E-Force remain apolitical for long?
The hospital reception area was quiet. A cleaner was polishing the floor, and a couple of young doctors walked by, studying their clipboard notes. Mai took the elevator to the sixth floor and walked along the brightly lit corridor. Reaching the door to her mother's room, she paused for a moment and took a deep breath, then turned the handle.
The room was in semi-darkness, the curtains still closed. Mai stood frozen in the doorway as two people came towards her, their heads bowed. It was Greta with Howard, Mai's ex-husband. He had his arm around Greta's shoulders.
They both looked up at the same moment. Howard's face was pale. He shook his head slowly, his jaws clenched. Greta glared at
Mai, pulled away from her stepfather and pushed past her mother and out into the corridor.
Howard paused. 'I'm sorry,' he whispered, then he walked on.
Mai took a step into the darkened room and the door closed quietly behind her, blocking out the sounds of stirring patients in neighbouring rooms. She looked down at her mother. Eri Kato was tiny, a doll, her skin pale and shiny like waxed paper. The doctors had removed the respirator and the tubes.
Mai leaned over her mother's inert body and knew there was nothing left. No vestige of Eri remained. Mai ran a hand along the dead woman's cheek, feeling her skin. It was as soft as a newborn baby's. A tear fell from her eye onto her mother's lifeless face. Mai watched it slide onto the sheet and soak into the fibres.
111
Base One, Tintara
Two days later
Mark stared in silence at the faces of the two men on the screen. On the left was Senator Evan Mitchell. On the right, Clayton Franberger, the Secretary of State.
'It's hardly an appropriate time to celebrate,' Franberger said. 'But I think you and your team may congratulate yourselves on a job very well done.' He smiled. To Mark the man seemed like a rabid dog.
'Thank you, sir,' Mark replied dutifully. 'I'm proud of all of them.'
'And I understand Senator Foreman has already spoken to you to express his thanks.'
'He has, yes.'
The Secretary of State glanced at his watch surreptitiously. 'Well, once again, well done, Mark.'
'Sir, about our findings –'
'Findings?'
Mark glanced meaningfully at Senator Mitchell, who looked down for a moment and coughed.
'The Four Horsemen.'
'Yes, yes, the Four Horsemen,' Franberger said, fixing Mark with a hard look.
After a pause, Senator Mitchell spoke. 'We feel there is insufficient evidence to proceed.' He looked into the middle distance, unable to meet Mark's eyes.
