Origin (34 page)

Eldridge watched with satisfaction as his men took the first man down, and realized that the man behind the metal bench would probably be distracted.

From his position on the ground, Eldridge could just about see the man’s feet and ankles underneath the bench, and so aimed his submachine gun and loosed a single round. It hit the man’s ankle but didn’t make him drop to the ground as he had hoped it would. The man was tough, whoever he was.

And then the man appeared from behind the metal bench, a crazed look on his face, seemingly ignoring the gunshot wound to his leg. It was then that Eldridge realized it was John Ayita, the head of the Shadow Wolves whom he had failed to find when recently ordered to execute them. Which meant that the other man was probably Samuel ‘Two Horses’ Stephenfield, the unit’s intelligence chief and the only other member to have successfully evaded Eldridge’s death squad. Until now.

Ayita shot his pistol with unerring accuracy, taking one man down after another, but the result was inevitable; like Stephenfield before him, Ayita, too, was eventually shot by Eldridge’s expert team. The first rounds entered Ayita’s gut, doubling him over, making him drop the gun; the next four tore into his chest, ripping into his internal organs. But still he kept coming, the warrior in him not dead yet, and Eldridge was amazed as Ayita reached into his belt and pulled out a hunting knife, raising it above his head and charging the rest of the men on the platform, letting out a ferocious war cry as he did so.

But the cry was caught in his throat as another forty bullets entered his body almost simultaneously, hurling him backwards ten feet on the platform, his torso all but destroyed, his lifeless eyes staring up at the steel-girdered platform roof.

Eldridge got to one knee, and then to his feet. He looked through the train window.

Damn! Adams and Edwards had gone.

T
RYING TO IGNORE
the sounds of gunfire behind them, Adams sprinted across the tracks on the far side of the train, away from the platform. Ahead of them was another train, making ready to leave the platform. The doors on this side were closed, but Adams knew they had to make it if they were to stand any chance of getting out of there alive.

The gunfire was still continuing as they reached the train, and Adams grabbed Lynn and hauled her up into a locked doorway, pulling himself up after her just as the train pulled out from the platform.

Holding on to the exterior as they were, they were sitting ducks if one of the armed men on the far side decided to take a shot at them, and so he helped Lynn round to the small handholds to the side of the door, which acted as a ladder, and gestured for her to climb.

And climb she did, reaching the top and then helping him up.

He rolled on to the top of the train as it passed the end of the platform, mercifully leaving the station.

And then the sound of gunfire stopped.

Eldridge saw what Adams and Edwards were doing and immediately ordered some of his men back to the cars, to give chase if need be, and others to race around to the other platform.

Meanwhile, as his targets climbed the ladder to the top of the train, Eldridge went down on one knee to stabilize his position, put the stock of his assault rifle tight into his shoulder, took aim and squeezed the trigger, firing off one shot.

The round only narrowly missed, passing between their bodies, but it was enough to unbalance Lynn. She turned on the unstable top of the moving train and slipped, falling over the side.

Adams reacted in an instant, his hand grasping her arm as she went over the side, holding her weight as she dangled in front of a carriage window.

Digging his feet into the metal roof and gripping a side rail with his free hand, he started to pull her back up.

Eldridge cursed and licked his lips, taking aim once more.

He squeezed the trigger again, and was gratified when the round went through Adams’ upper arm with a spray of blood.

Adams felt the round enter his arm and his grip loosened instantly.

He watched as Lynn fell to the tracks, and moved to follow her; but instead, his head filled with pain, his vision turned cloudly, and he passed out, unconscious on top of the moving train.

Eldridge watched as his men jumped from the opposite platform, picked up the unconscious Evelyn Edwards and carried her off the tracks.

He took another aim at Adams, his body slumped over the edge of the train’s roof, but the train rounded a bend, taking his target away.

He turned to look at his men across the train station and keyed his mic. ‘Do not kill the woman yet,’ he ordered. ‘Stop that train, and make sure the male suspect is dead first. For now, bring her back over here. We may still need to use her.’

It was the searing pain in his left biceps that woke Adams eventually, his head first lolling groggily to one side, and then snapping up when he realized where he was, and what had happened.

Ignoring the pain in his arm for the moment, he pulled himself up to a crouch, looking back down the length of the train and the track behind it. The Geneva-Cornavin station was now just a small spot in the distance, and Adams could only assume that he’d been out for a full minute or two. Easily time enough for Eldridge and his men to have got to Lynn.

His whole body convulsed in anger, and only with the recurrence of the pain did he look down to check the damage to his arm. It seemed like a clean wound, the 9mm round having passed through the meat of the biceps like a hot knife through butter. The bone was undamaged but the wound was bleeding badly, and he knew if he didn’t stop it soon, he would pass out again from a drop in blood pressure.

Even though instinct told him to instantly leave the train and race back to the station, years of training and experience dictated that he first of all tend to the damage to his arm. If he did not treat that as a priority, he might not make it off the train at all.

He took off his jacket and tore the sleeve from his shirt to expose the wound fully, then tore off his other sleeve and wrapped it round the bullet wound in a tight compress. He then tore off the bottom of one trouser leg and cinched it round the makeshift dressing, tying it off in a tight knot. He put his jacket back on to conceal the damage. Not perfect, but it would do.

The train was picking up speed but was not yet travelling too fast to dismount. He would climb carefully down the side ladder, get as close as he could to the tracks in order to minimize the impact of the fall, and then he would jump. He just hoped his arm would hold up.

And then he heard the scream of tyres and the gunning of loud, powerful engines, and turned to look. Just twenty metres away, racing down the city streets parallel to the tracks, were two Audi 4x4s, keeping pace with the train.

He recoiled instinctively when he saw rifles coming out of the side windows of each car. He pushed back and rolled, just as the top of the train carriage lit up with sparks, high-velocity rounds ricocheting off the metalwork. The rounds chased him over the roof, eating up the metal so close to him he could smell the cordite, and then he was off the roof entirely and falling through the air on the far side of the train.

It wasn’t the exit he had hoped for, and although he tried to roll as he hit the tracks, the impact knocked the wind out of him, dazing him momentarily. He broke the fall with his damaged arm, fighting against the desire to use the good one. The bad arm was already useless, he figured, so why risk hurting the one that still worked? It took great presence of mind to wantonly endanger the damaged limb, but the jarring pain just caused his mind to sharpen even more, driving him up and off the tracks, racing for the far side, away from Eldridge’s men.

He managed to get to the far side, diving over the side of a huge metal barrier before the length of the train passed by and betrayed his position to his pursuers. Stuck as they were on the road, unable to close in on the tracks, the soldiers would have to abandon their vehicles and give chase on foot.

Behind him was another barrier, and when he went to look over the side, he saw a shopping concourse down below. Without pausing, he leapt over the side, clinging to the metal girders that supported the track, and edged down to the shopping level using his legs and one good arm. He knew he would be being tracked by satellite, and realized that he could use the underpass to lose the surveillance. He had to be aware of CCTV, but he was used to that.

He joined the throngs of shoppers making their way through the underpass, trying to act as normally as he could, while still keeping an eye out for both his armed pursuers and for the inevitable CCTV. He noticed a sign for an underground parking garage for the shopping concourse. It was just what he needed.

He knew it was useless to return to the station now, even though he wanted to with all his heart. Ayita and Stephenfield would both be dead, and Lynn . . . But he didn’t want to think about that now; if he was to be of any further use, he couldn’t. He had to put aside what had happened at the station, box it up in a far corner of his mind, to be dealt with at some point in the future.

If he ever survived to see the future, he thought grimly.

‘We’ve lost him,’ Eldridge heard one of his men report in. ‘He fell off the roof on to the tracks but by the time we left the vehicles, he was long gone. We’ve searched the area but there’s no sign of him.’

Eldridge double-clicked the radio in acknowledgement.
Damn it
. He had already received notification from the team at Area 51 that satellite surveillance had tracked him as far as the underpass and had not reacquired him. Either Adams was still somewhere in the underpass area – unlikely, if his men hadn’t found him – or he had managed to escape the area somehow.

Still, Eldridge now had Evelyn Edwards as his hostage and he was certain he would be able to use her as leverage if Adams came at them again.

He keyed the radio. ‘OK,’ he ordered, ‘that’s it then. Start making your way to base. It’s almost time.’

‘Yes, sir,’ he heard the confirmation come back to him, eagerness in the man’s voice.

Eldridge turned to look at Lynn Edwards, unconscious and handcuffed in the Audi’s leather bucket seat next to him.

One out of two wasn’t bad, he figured. At any rate, it was going to have to do for now, at least.

Just a few miles behind Eldridge, unbeknown to both men, Adams drove his recently stolen car. He had hot-wired it in the parking garage and was now on the road to CERN. There was to be no more subtlety, no more attempts to second-guess. There was no time. He was just going to go straight up to the main gate of CERN and demand to be let in.

He had remembered something that Professor Travers had said during their impromptu ‘hidden history’ lecture in the bowels of Area 51, and it had given him something that at least resembled a plan.

He just needed to make a quick stop first.

By the time the big Audi reached the main Mysen entrance to the CERN facility, Lynn was awake, although she chose to hide this fact from her captors.

Her immediate thoughts were for the baby. Would it still be OK after such a fall? But there was nothing she could do about that now; only time would tell.

But what about Matt? What had happened to him?

As she looked about the car with hooded eyes, she recognized the large bulk of Eldridge next to her and realized she had been handcuffed to him. But Matt was nowhere to be seen, and she wondered what that meant.

Had he escaped? She hoped with all her heart that this was the case. But what if he had been captured, and was in another car? What if he was dead? But the fact that she was still alive lent credence to the possibility that Matt was alive too. It made sense to hold her as a hostage if he hadn’t been killed yet.

The thought gave her hope, despite her current situation. If Matt was alive, then maybe they still had a chance.

E
LDRIDGE LOOKED DOWN
at Lynn. ‘You might as well cut the pretence and open your eyes, Dr Edwards,’ he said bluntly. ‘I know you’ve been awake since the city.’

Lynn opened her eyes and stared at him. ‘Well, clever old you,’ she said sarcastically.

Eldridge smiled. ‘I don’t think you’re in any position to poke fun,’ he chided. ‘We are allowing you to live, for now. You would do well to remember that.’

She ignored him, and they proceeded in silence. The car drove through the gate to the CERN laboratories, a rather unassuming barrier that looked as if it was guarding nothing more than a regular, run-of-the-mill industrial estate. As they passed nondescript office blocks, temporary accommodation and the occasional larger concrete laboratory, Lynn wasn’t surprised to find that the rest of the complex, like the gate before it, was also not dissimilar to a standard industrial estate.

During her time in NASA, she had come to understand that many of the world’s most famous and highly regarded scientific facilities – the kind of places that the public imagined would be all spotless, gleaming stainless steel and high-end electronics – were in actual fact very often depressingly mundane, and it seemed that CERN was no different.

After a few minutes, they halted in front of what appeared to be the administrative headquarters. The front seat passenger got out and opened Eldridge’s door, and the big man got out, pulling Lynn along behind with him.

They pushed through the heavy front doors, and Lynn was surprised to see that the foyer was rather more plush than the exterior would suggest. But then, she figured, the research carried out here depended to a large extent on donations and external funding, and in her experience the people signing the cheques liked to be wined and dined in fine style.

There were a few people wandering around, and Eldridge was careful not to make a show of the fact he had a woman handcuffed to him. The desk security guard noticed but merely nodded his head at Eldridge.

They remained silent as they passed through the foyer, and Lynn noticed the first signs for the Large Hadron Collider, labelled in several different languages. They turned down a long corridor and followed it to the end, and despite circumstances, Lynn found herself excited to be here. The LHC was the world’s scientific Mecca, and she had always wanted to see it.