Nano (24 page)

81

72 metres beneath the English Channel

‘What the fucking
hell
is going on?' Adam Franklin exclaimed as Pete and Josh ran through the doorway into the storeroom of the Maintenance Hub. The Englishman's forehead was wet with perspiration and the terrible stress he was under was clear in the lines of his face. One of his trouser legs had been cut at the knee and he had a bandage around his calf. Mai had cut the ties at their wrists.

Behind him stood Louis Chabon and the steward, Gabir. Mary sat on the floor at the back of the room cradling Billy, the biohazard suits they had used lying in a heap beside them. Mai saw Josh and ran over to embrace him.

‘Ow!' he exclaimed and lifted his hand. Pete had cut the ties but the middle fingers of his right hand were bruised black. ‘Busted, I think.'

Mai ran her medscan over Josh's hand and shook her head. ‘Not broken, dislocated joints.' She removed a Vasjet, a needleless injection, from her med-kit and shot some painkillers into Josh's hand. ‘You should start to feel that in a few seconds.'

Josh nodded and smiled. ‘I know! Thanks.'

‘Okay, so the two youngsters were terrorists,' Pete began, turning to the three men. ‘They're both dead.'

‘Fuckers!' Adam spat and pushed back against the wall, letting himself slide to the floor. ‘This is just ridiculous!'

‘So what do we do now?' Gabir asked.

‘Please tell me the tunnel you found is real,' Louis sighed and looked to Josh.

‘Oh, it certainly is.'

Pete nodded. ‘Josh described it on our way back here. It has to be our best hope.'

Pete led the way, Josh beside him, Mai following from the rear.

‘So we have no comms with Tintara?' Josh said.

‘No, too deep.'

‘But there is a way.'

‘Oh?'

Mai caught up with them.

‘We linked up with you earlier using this,' Josh said, holding up the wireless phone from the storeroom of the Maintenance Hub. ‘Has a pretty good range – reaches all around these passageways in the Hub.' He waved the phone in a semicircle.

‘Yeah, we can link up with Sangatte but it's a pretty inefficient way to communicate with Base One.'

‘Better than nothing.'

‘Hold on,' Mai interrupted. ‘We can do better than that.'

The two men turned to her.

‘We can use the power booster on the Silverback at the entrance to the Chunnel on the French side.'

‘Sorry, you've lost me,' Pete said.

‘We used the Pram's booster earlier remember? To talk to Tom?'

‘Yeah.'

‘So we can use this wireless phone, pump the output through our comms to the Silverback at Sangatte. The plane's booster will get a signal to Tom. He should also be able to use the BigEye sensors to do the whole thing in reverse – use the Silverback to boost the power of the detectors on the BigEye so he can see where we are.'

Pete was nodding. ‘Very clever.' He turned to Josh. ‘May I?'

Josh handed him the wireless phone. He keyed in an encoded call signal through his cybersuit comms and waited to see if the wireless would pick it up. A tech on Base One responded almost immediately and patched Pete through to Tom in his quarters. The beep of the comms cut in over the music in the background – Echo and the Bunnymen's
Bring on the Dancing Horses
– and automatically paused the song.

‘Tom,' Pete said.

‘Pete. You going through Sangatte?'

‘No, Mai had a great idea.' He explained how they had boosted the signal.

‘Well, we are a smarty pants, aren't we?' Tom laughed.

‘We've hooked up with Josh. He's found a tunnel that links up with the Paris-bound tunnel.'

‘No kidding?' Tom sounded surprised. ‘Can you put him on?'

Pete indicated to Josh and moved back to walk beside him, the wireless phone on speaker.

‘Dude. How they hangin'?'

‘Oh, they're hanging,' Josh responded with a chuckle. ‘Good to hear your voice again, Tom.'

‘You too. Now what's this about a tunnel? I've got all the latest schematics from Eurostar and I've gone back through the archives. Seen zip.'

‘Well, it's there, Tom. I explained to the others. I found an old manual, a plastic clip folder on the floor of the passage. It was a technical file on the construction program. I reckon the tunnel itself is Victorian, but it was used by at least one of the teams who worked on the Chunnel construction back around the late 1980s.'

‘And it definitely links up?'

‘Yep, saw the signs in the main London–Paris tunnel.'

‘We drove right past it earlier,' Pete added. ‘Didn't see the door, but then that's not surprising as there are dozens of small openings and hatchways on either side.'

‘Okay,' Tom said. ‘You know how to get back there?'

‘Sure,' Josh responded. ‘We're on our way now.'

‘All right, listen. I have an idea. We can do the opposite of the comms link. I can pick up on sensors from the Big –'

‘We've thought of that already,' Mai cut in.

‘Oh, have you now?' Tom said indignantly. ‘How about you just concentrate on getting out of there and leave the clever stuff to me?'

The three of them laughed.

There was a silence the other end for a few seconds. Then Tom's voice came back on. ‘Gotcha. You're headed southeast and . . . well, what do you know? I've got the tunnel Josh discovered. It's about 100 metres down –'

‘On the right,' Josh said.

‘On the right. Well done . . . Oh shit!'

‘What?'

Pete, Josh and Mai stopped. Mai called out to the others and beckoned to them to catch up. Mary carrying Billy, who had fallen asleep, was the last to reach the group. They were all fatigued but Mary looked totally wiped out.

‘What's wrong?' Louis asked. His shirt front was soaked with sweat. A rivulet of perspiration ran down his left cheek and he was limping from the wound he'd sustained when the train was hit.

Pete raised a hand. ‘Tom? What the hell is it?'

‘There's an electrical power substation close to your location. I can see from the thermal sensors of the BigEye that it's getting critically hot.'

‘What? How?'

‘I'm not sure but I can only assume the explosion in the Paris-London tunnel that stopped the train damaged the cooling system.'

‘How serious, Tom? Where is it?'

‘Very serious. It's about to go. It's behind you about 20 metres away. You've gotta get away from there . . . now!'

82

Mai darted up to Mary. ‘Give me Billy,' she said. ‘We can all move faster that way.'

Mary paused for a heartbeat, then kissed the baby and handed him to Mai.

‘Come on, as fast as you can!' Pete yelled and pushed the others ahead.

Josh hung back with Pete at the rear of the group. About 50 metres further along the passageway, he saw the door.

‘It's here,' he announced, running ahead. He yanked at the handle. The door eased open and Pete shepherded everyone inside.

‘How's that substation?' Pete said into his comms.

‘Sensors are nowhere near as clear as normal, Pete,' Tom responded. ‘I'm keeping an eye on it. Will let you –'

BOOM.

The entire Maintenance Hub shuddered. The sound of the blast cascaded along the tunnel. The floor shook.

‘Everyone! Against the wall,' Pete shouted above the noise.

He grasped Mary, pulling her back and down to the floor. She lifted her head and snapped around, panic-stricken, looking for Billy. She saw Mai clutching the baby close to her chest. Louis flew to the floor, landing heavily. Gabir was right beside him and dragged him to the wall.

The sound and the shaking gradually faded away.

‘Come on,' Josh cried. ‘We have to get as far away as possible.'

They all scrambled to their feet. Louis had a nasty gash above his left eye. Blood streamed down his cheek. Adam came over and, between them, he and Gabir managed to get the Frenchman to his feet.

‘Can you walk?' Pete asked, coming up to the three men. He peered at the slash across Louis's temple in the dim light.

‘Yes . . . yes,' Louis replied, his voice shaky.

‘Tom?' Pete called into his comms. The signal was weak. He could hear a confusion of sounds coming from the headset in his suit but none of it made sense. ‘Comms are unusable, at least for the moment,' he said, turning to the others. ‘Must be interference from the explosion.'

Mary ran over to Mai and put her hands out for Billy. ‘I'll be okay,' she said.

Mai passed the baby over and rested a hand on Mary's shoulder. ‘Let me know if you need help.' Then she pulled up alongside Josh who still had Gabir's torch. Between them they lit the way ahead. Pete came up the rear, encouraging the others to run as fast as they could.

‘It's about a kilometre to the exit,' Josh shouted back and turned to Mai. ‘And it still stinks as bad as it did earlier!'

It was incredibly hot in the tunnel, even hotter than in the main Hub. They soon felt the effects. But they had to keep going or die. Every few seconds, an aftershock from the blast rumbled along the passage, sending fragments of brick and stone cascading from the ceiling.

A few hundred metres in, the tunnel reverberated with a powerful tremor. Adam paused for a second and looked around, taking shallow raspy breaths. His face was crimson, his shirt dredged through as though he had just stepped out of a shower fully clothed. Pete caught sight of him. A cracking sound came from the ceiling. A large chunk of rock began to shake free from the roof of the tunnel.

‘Adam!' Pete hollered and rushed forwards, shoving him roughly backwards. He dived to one side as a lump of ceiling plummeted down, hitting the stone floor with a deafening crunch, missing Pete's side by a centimetre.

The slab shattered into pieces, the snapping and cracking ringing around the tunnel like gunfire. A piece hit Mai in the back of her helmet, sending her sprawling. Josh rushed over to help her up.

‘I'm good,' she said. The rock hadn't so much as scratched the helmet's maxinium backplate.

The tunnel had filled with dust. It shimmered in the light from the cybersuits and the torches.

‘Everyone all right?' Pete called and twisted around to check.

They were all too tired to answer properly. Mary nodded. She had Billy close to her chest, his head tucked inside her jacket. Louis had stumbled over and Gabir was helping him up with one hand, keeping the torch steady with the other. Pete took a step towards Adam and hauled him to his feet.

‘Oh, my fucking nose,' he hissed, spitting blood as he spoke. He was covered from head to toe in dust and Pete could see more blood streaming down his chin. His nose was black.

‘Let's go!' Pete gripped Adam's arm and pushed him on.

‘Thank you,' the Englishman spluttered.

Pete ignored him and started to pick up pace. Mai helped Mary and Billy, and Josh gave Gabir a hand with Louis.

‘There,' Josh shouted. ‘It's there . . . the exit.'

They all stumbled along the remaining 30 metres of passageway, panting and coughing, utterly shattered. Pete approached the door, turned the handle and stepped out into the London–Paris tunnel. A gust of fresh, cool air blew through the doorway and they all breathed deeply.

83

Oceanview Castle, Big Sur, California

It was very late but the three men – Death, Pestilence and Conquest – dressed now in tuxedos, brandy balloons and Havana cigars in hands, were completely comfortable with the vagaries of the fourth dimension. For them, time zones meant little.

They were attending the 71st annual meeting of the Brotherhood, a secret organisation of the world's elite that had been created immediately after the end of the Second World War. The purpose of the organisation had been deliberately shrouded in mystery for some seven decades, but in recent years with the internet available to almost everyone on the planet and the blossoming of social-networking, stories and conspiracy theories about the organisation flourished. Suffice it to say, whatever the wildest speculation about the Brotherhood might be, the reality was far more radical, sinister and all-embracing.

Pestilence, a ruddy-faced, wholesome-looking American in his mid-forties who loved the wilds of his native Montana almost as much as he loved money and power, led the other two into the west-wing library of the fake stately home. His fellow American, Death, strode a step behind his colleague. Considering physical appearances alone, he was a very different man to Pestilence. He was long-faced, pale and carried about him a perpetually miserable demeanour. Even dressed in his elegantly tailored tux, he had the look of an upmarket undertaker. Conquest, a man born to wear a five-thousand-dollar dinner suit, his black hair greased back, every inch the Eton-Oxford man he was, followed a couple of paces behind, nonchalantly swirling his brandy as he walked.

‘This had better be good,' Conquest said as soon as the door to the library was closed.

Pestilence ignored him, pulled a metal object the size of a pen from his pocket and lifted it to eye-level at arm's length. He turned 360 degrees and the top of the object winked a red pulse, the light breaking across the spines of hundreds of leatherbound volumes. He lowered the object.

‘The room's clear,' he said, returning the bug-detector to his pocket.

‘I said this had better be good,' Conquest repeated, his voice cut-glass, cold, almost inhuman. ‘I was just conversing with the President of the World Bank and the former British Prime Minister.'

‘I'm so sorry to draw you away, my friend,' Pestilence replied sardonically. ‘I happened to be talking to a woman with the IQ of Einstein, the wealth of Nero and the body of Aphrodite. We must all make sacrifices.'

Conquest laughed, a little too loudly, and the other two realised their colleague had been enjoying the Camus Cognac rather too much.

‘But seriously,' Pestilence went on, ‘I cannot say the reason I brought you here is . . . “good”, Conquest, but it is “necessary”.' He put a hand into his pocket and removed his phone. ‘I received this a few minutes ago from a trusted source on an encrypted line.'

He handed the machine to Death. Conquest leaned in over his shoulder to watch the screen light up with a moving image. It was a short video clip of the roof of the Cloud Tower in Dubai. A heavily armed figure in black, wearing a balaclava, was crouching by a wall. He ran out looking disturbed by something they could not see. A few moments later, he had dived through a doorway and into the building.

Conquest and Death lifted their heads simultaneously. ‘Who is it supposed to be?' Death asked.

Pestilence simply stared at them.

The British Horseman, Conquest, produced an incredulous look. ‘Oh, good Lord, no!' he muttered.

‘My associate did some checking,' Pestilence went on. ‘He had surveillance satellite images of Azrael in the desert just before the attack on the tower. His physiognomy matches this man's precisely. And the gun he is using is identical to the one he was armed with as he prepared the missiles. The man you see here on the tower is definitely Azrael.'

‘Operating under his own volition?' Death hissed.

Before Pestilence could respond, Conquest said, ‘I would consider that possibility unlikely.' He swirled his brandy and took a large gulp.

‘So our fat friend has acted unilaterally,' Death said slowly and fixed first Pestilence and then Conquest with his expressionless black eyes. ‘In so doing he has broken the Golden Rule . . . to which there can only be one response.'