Origin (7 page)

Once the target city had been located, it was then a matter of checking hotel bookings, travel companies, taxi services, CCTV footage, and satellite photography.

Evelyn Edwards’ features had finally been caught on CCTV going into the Parque Metropolitano, and the data was immediately fed to the Alpha Brigade members who were already in Chile.

Further CCTV followed Lynn as she met a second person, whose features were subsequently confirmed as belonging to the second target, Matt Adams. The pair were then electronically followed back to the Hostal Americano, where the primary target had apparently booked a room for cash under the name of Patrice Leaky.

The five men from the Alpha Brigade were on-site within the hour, ready to roll, and as Jacobs sat in his sauna, the sweat rolling off his body in fat, thick droplets, he had to admit that it was an impressive turnaround.

With Eldridge also en route for Chile, Jacobs was confident that the pair would be in Nevada by nightfall. They would be expertly interrogated, every last drop of information forced from them.

And then they would be executed.

‘T
HEY INTERCEPTED THE
email?’ Lynn asked over the small breakfast table, incredulous.

Adams nodded. ‘They even showed me a copy. I wouldn’t have known about it if they hadn’t, I hadn’t been home for days.’

The night before, Adams had purposely not told Lynn the details about the attack on his house, knowing how she would react. She had a terrible night as it was, and Adams knew she wouldn’t have slept a wink if he had told her his own story.

But now Lynn looked as if she had been bitten by a snake, recoiling with sudden terror. ‘They might know where we are!’ she whispered, trying to contain her rising panic. ‘If they intercepted the message, they could know anything!’

Adams shook his head. ‘No. They came to me because they had no idea where you were. They needed to get the information from me.’

‘And you’re sure you weren’t followed?’

‘Pretty sure. I had a borrowed passport, used a random route, never noticed anything out of the ordinary. And I’m pretty good at that.’ Adams winced even as he said it. That might once have been true, he thought, but not any more. He hadn’t even seen Lynn come up to him in the park. He was out of practice, plain and simple. As it stood, Lynn seemed to be doing a better job than he was. What if he
had
been followed?

‘It might not have even been
people
following you,’ Lynn warned. ‘Electronic surveillance – credit card purchases, closed-circuit television with facial recognition software, satellite photography, the list is endless!’

Since her escape, Lynn had been meticulously researching the techniques and methods of her potential enemies, and her razor-sharp mind had absorbed an incredible amount of information on the subject. She didn’t have the practical experience but certainly now knew the theory well enough to be worried.

‘Hey,’ Adams said as soothingly as he could, all too aware that Lynn was right. ‘I only used cash, I don’t even
have
any credit cards, and I was careful to avoid cameras. I didn’t use a phone either. I think we should be OK for now.’

Lynn looked at him for a moment before making her decision. ‘No. We have to leave. Now.’

Adams nodded his head. He actually agreed, he just wanted Lynn to calm down, to try and relax. Mistakes were made when tensions were high, and Adams knew that better than most. ‘OK,’ he said, grabbing his bag from the second bed. ‘I’m ready. Let’s go.’

Within three minutes, Lynn was ready with him at the door. Reaching out to touch the thin wooden partition, his hand stopped, and he reflexively put out his other hand to stop Lynn, a finger going to her lips to silence her.

He pressed his head closer to the door, listening, senses tuning to the world beyond the door.

The noise was coming from the stairs. Six pairs of feet, booted, heavy, as if each person carried something. It could be luggage of course, but it could just as easily be weaponry of some kind. There was a defined movement to the footsteps, a rhythm, a sense of cohesion that felt vaguely military.

He felt his old senses coming back to him slowly, crawling out of the veil they had been hiding behind since that day in the desert.

He sniffed the air, and smelled no cologne, no deodorant, just a faint hint of natural soap, enough to disguise the more potent smell of body odour.

And then he picked up the breathing – regular, even, paced, but slightly elevated, and not by the exercise but by anticipation.

‘Hit team,’ he said to Lynn finally. ‘Six men, armed, turning down the hallway now. We’ve got ten seconds.’

CERN,
THE
E
UROPEAN
Organization for Nuclear Research, is based near Geneva, Switzerland. Famous across the world for its search for the ‘God Particle’ at its Large Hadron Collider facility, the institution was originally founded in 1954 to unite Europe’s – and later the world’s – foremost nuclear physicists. Since then, its particle physics research has taken over to a large extent, and its discovery and then its creation of antimatter is both admired and feared in equal measure.

Many members of the general public were genuinely terrified when the collider – more commonly known as the LHC – was first switched on. Consisting of billions of particles being deliberately smashed together along miles of underground piping – sometimes as many as ten thousand per
second
– it was thought in some quarters that the device might create a black hole that would destroy the entire world in the blink of an eye.

Of course, no such thing ever happened, and the LHC has hummed away safely ever since, on a constant quest for the explanation of the beginnings of the universe.

Professor Philippe Messier considered the history of the LHC laboratory as he entered the elevator. He had just finished examining a damaged portion of the pipeline, which was getting the full attention of an army of engineers and machinists. Satisfied that everything that could be done was being done, he decided to check on the more important project, three hundred feet further under the surface.

Whereas the LHC was very much the public face of CERN, the project below – even though it had cost close to several
trillion
euros over the decades – was unknown by all but a handful of select people in the outside world, all part of the elite organization headed by Stephen Jacobs. The others – engineers, technicians, physicists, mathematicians, machinists, and hundreds of skilled and unskilled workers – were not part of the chosen, and would never be allowed to leave the facility. In a way, they were slaves to the machine, destined to work until they perished.

Messier smiled as he descended lower in the elevator, excited whenever he thought about the project. As the elevator came to a smooth stop, and the doors opened, the vast machine was revealed in all its glory.

Although it depended to a large extent on the power secretly generated by the LHC above, the technology that this secret device relied upon was more esoteric by far, unknown to the vast majority of the human populace. It was a gift from the gods, almost literally, Messier thought as he approached it.

Soon
, he thought as he neared it.
Soon
.

A shiver of excitement ran through him as he looked through the huge observation windows. Soon it would be fully operational, and it mattered to him not one iota that the result might well be the destruction of the human race, except for the chosen few.

The chosen few who would soon be as gods themselves.

Adams ran past Lynn, who stood rooted to the spot, clutching her backpack. He looked through the window on the opposite side of the room, across the Avenue Santa Maria to the block opposite.

Within two seconds, he had spotted the sharpshooter on the roof, rifle aimed at the window, as well as the reflection in the shopfronts opposite of two men waiting by the Hostal Americano foyer below him.

‘Get by the side of the window!’ Adams whispered forcefully to Lynn. Then he pulled the nearest bed across the floor, using it to barricade the door. It wouldn’t stop the team for more than a few extra seconds, but it would be enough.

Eldridge had met up with his men at the hotel at three in the morning. He had listened to their briefing, drawn his own equipment, and laid out the plans for the capture of the fugitives.

At seven o’clock the same morning, he had led his team down the stairs and watched as his two lead men had raced at the door, small metal battering ram held between them. The strategy was pure ‘shock and awe’ on the small unit tactical level – smash through the door, disorientate the targets with stun grenades, and effect a quick arrest, subduing both people with force if necessary.

But although the door had shattered, it had not caved forwards into the room as expected.
Why the hell not?

‘Murphy!’ he called. ‘What’s the hold-up?’

As the man on the right used the ram again, he called back, ‘There’s a bed behind the door! They knew we were coming!’

Eldridge pressed the toggle on his tactical mic, speaking directly to the sharpshooter on the opposite roof. He would have liked to have more men outside, but their resources were necessarily limited in such a remote location.

‘Williams, what do you see?’

‘Nothing, movement at the window a moment ago – wait a second, they’ve broken through the window, the male target has something in his hand, he – arrgghh!’

Eldridge’s blood went cold as the connection went dead.

Sprinting once more towards the window, Adams had grabbed Lynn by the hand, dragging her with him. In his other hand, he had snatched up a large mirror from the dressing table. At the window he pulled the curtain back and slammed his booted foot straight through it; the glass shattered, falling to the ground two storeys below.

An instant later, ignoring the cries of Lynn as he secured his grip on her wrist, Adams thrust the mirror up and out, angling its reflection straight at the sniper opposite. He saw the man recoil instinctively from the sudden, intense reflection of sunlight that hit him in the eye through the telescopic lens of his rifle, then heard the team behind him thumping against the door, breaking it down, and in that tiny window of opportunity, he pulled Lynn forward and jumped with her straight out of the window.

Adams had seen the wide, canvas awning over the entrance to the hotel’s foyer when he had arrived, and then later confirmed that Lynn’s room was directly above it, two floors up.

Jumping was a risk – they could easily hit a metal support strut – but the odds were more favourable than staying in the room and taking on six armed men.

Adams was pleased that Lynn didn’t scream on the way down, although he didn’t know if it was bravery or shock. Either way, though, silence was a good thing – he hoped that the men below hadn’t already been alerted by the broken glass, as he would need every advantage he could get.

They hit the fabric straight on and, using the bounce from the awning, Adams gripped the edge rail with one hand, his other arm going round Lynn’s waist, and swung round and down, letting go at the end of the swing and dropping lightly to the ground, right in front of the two men he had seen earlier.

As he landed he let go of Lynn, who staggered disorientated to the side. The men’s eyes went wide as they saw him, hands on their earpieces, obviously receiving communication from the team above.

Before they could react, Adams launched himself forward, his full body weight behind a heavy straight right to the first man’s jaw. Adams saw the eyes go, and as the man dropped unconscious to the ground, Adams was already twisting to the other side, throwing a left hook towards the second man. It connected but his timing was off, and the man just staggered back, hurt but still a threat.

Adams saw him instinctively go for the pistol in his belt, and then saw his head twist round from another heavy impact. He turned, and saw Lynn standing there, backpack in her hands, having swung it at the man with all her might.

Adams was impressed, but Lynn had always been a tough one. The man was still conscious but he was down. Adams suddenly remembered the sniper opposite. His vision might be impaired but he was still capable of getting off some shots.

He pulled Lynn to one side, taking shelter behind one of the two huge terracotta plant pots stationed on either side of the main entrance even as his suspicions were confirmed and the rounds hit the sidewalk where they had just been standing. Adams noticed that the impacts left no mark, except for small black smears – rubber bullets. They could still be deadly if the target was unfortunate but it indicated that whoever was after them wanted them alive.

That was the good news.

The bad news was that they were now stuck between a sniper on one side and a team of men in the hotel behind them. The sniper might only have rubber bullets but they would still incapacitate them easily enough. If they ran into the street, they would be shot with these bullets; if they retreated back into the hotel, they would be greeted by the six men who would now doubtless be racing down the stairs to the foyer.

Adams made a quick calculation in his head – from the time he had broken the window and they had jumped, he guessed no more than fifteen seconds had passed. During that time, the team upstairs was probably only just through the door, the team leader putting it all together, deciding what to do. An armed team descending two flights of stairs would take at least thirty seconds.

Adams knew there would be a back entrance to the hotel, probably exiting into a service alley. He should have scoped out the exits as soon as he arrived. Sloppy. And sloppy could easily mean dead against these guys. He would have to raise his game if he and Lynn were going to survive.

As it was, they had thirty seconds to go back into the hotel and find their way out the other side.

It would have to be enough.

E
LDRIDGE LED HIS
men back down the stairs, cursing all the way. How had they known his team was coming? And who would have guessed they would jump out of the window? What a mess!