State of Emergency (29 page)

Even though the sonic generators of the drills did all the
cutting work, driving a hole through the blockage was still
exhausting work. And when their cybersuits went down
Mark and Stephanie found the task almost unbearable.

It was filthy work. They were making a hole just over
a yard square, and the drills were slicing through the soil
as though it was air, but the machines were not designed
to be used this way – they were meant to be mounted on
stands and controlled remotely. Stephanie and Mark had
them poised like assault rifles, and they vibrated so much it
was almost impossible to keep hold of them.

The Sonic Drills shattered the soil into an ultrafine powder
which would normally have dissipated, but in the confined
space of the tunnel it filled the air with a dense cloud of
tiny particles, making it impossible to see far beyond the
end of the drill handle. With their cybersuits down, Mark
and Stephanie felt the heat given off by the powerful drills
almost immediately, and the miasma of dust and atomised
soil shot through the inert filters of their suits like water
through a sieve.

'How much further?' Stephanie yelled over the noise.

Mark glanced back. 'I'd guess another yard.'

A large chunk of concrete began to slither away from
the top of the hole. They killed the drills immediately and
jumped back. A beam about four feet long fell through the
void and landed nose-down in the soil with a dull thud,
before tipping backwards towards them.

Stephanie climbed onto the beam and pushed her Sonic
Drill against the wall. Just as she was about to turn it on, she
hesitated. A glimmer of light had appeared. Stephanie saw a
tiny hole in the wall of soil and debris. The light vanished
and then reappeared, brighter.

'There's a light the other side,' she said, turning quickly
to Mark. 'Hello?' she shouted into the opening. 'Josh? Mai?
Is that you?'

Pete felt as though he had dived into a pool of hot water. His
skin was lathered with boiling sweat, and he had to wipe the
moisture from his eyes just to see clearly. He estimated he
had 60 seconds left before the heat inside the Bullet started
to drain the life from him. Thirty seconds after that, he
would be dead.

He hated this. It was not in his nature to lie down and
die. He was a fighter, a battler – he had been all his life. This
was the big one. If he did not fight now, he told himself, he
would never fight again.

But what could he do? Pete wracked his brains for an
answer. There was a solution to every puzzle – he knew
that.

Then a desperate idea struck him. No, it was more than
desperate, it was crazy. But then, what choice did he have?
Even the craziest idea was better than just giving up. He
reached under the seat and felt around. His hand came
to rest on a small cylinder. He ran his fingers over its hot
contours, the metal barrel and the nozzle at one end. He
grabbed it and pulled it into view.

It was a miniature fire extinguisher. Pete's only option
was to open the back door of the Mole and to run through
the flames. If he could get through the fire he would put out
his burning clothes with the extinguisher. He had no idea
how intense the fire was nor how big it was, and he knew
that once he was out there he would become disoriented
almost immediately. But he kept coming back to the same
argument – what was his alternative?

Kneeling down close to the back door, Pete touched the
manual override lever and quickly jerked his hand away. It
was scorching. The heat seared through the fabric of his suit
glove. He bent down to look under the bench, searching
for something he could grip the handle with, but there was
nothing.

Time was running out. Pete could feel his breathing
becoming laboured. He glanced at his watch. His time was
almost up. He would just have to grab the handle and pray.
He leaned forward, closed his eyes and thrust his hands
forward, waiting for the agony to hit.

Suddenly the lights came on and a deep growl came from
the front of the machine. Pete froze, his fingertips a fraction
of an inch from the scorching handle. There was a hum and
then a single loud note that started to ascend the scale. The
control panels flickered to life, the screens came on and the
voice of the onboard computer boomed through the inside
of the Mole.

'
Warning, warning – internal temperature critical. Immediate
renormalisation essential.
'

'Tell me something I don't know,' Pete muttered.

Josh's and Mai's cybersuits powered up just as they were
manoeuvring Marty's stretcher into the tunnel.

'Thank Christ!' Mai exclaimed. They stopped for a moment
and lowered Marty to the ground. Mai and Josh removed
their oxygen masks and pulled on their helmets. It took only
a moment for them to realise that comms were still down,
but at least the suit coolant was working and the air-filters
were operational.

They lifted Marty again and began to walk along the
tunnel. Turning a bend in the drain, they caught their first
glimpse of the blockage. It looked like a barricade from a
battlefield, a huge mound of soil and concrete, twisted metal
and pieces of plastic.

'Stop,' Josh said, his voice just audible through the helmet.
He had a hand up, indicating they should stay quiet for a
moment.

They all stood still, holding their breath.

'You hear that?' he asked Mai.

She nodded. 'Doesn't sound like the Mole.'

'It's a Sonic Drill. Actually, it's two.' Josh's cochlear
implants were working hard to decipher the sounds.

They picked up the pace, and as they came closer Dave
could hear the low hum of the drills. As they reached the
blockage the sound stopped abruptly. They lowered Marty
carefully to the floor of the tunnel. Dave hooked his drip
onto a metal strut poking out of the barrier, while Mai
crouched beside her patient. Josh clambered over the barrier
to the area where the sound had been loudest.

Mai ran a sensor over Marty's chest. A series of coloured
lights blinked in the darkness of the tunnel, and the device
emitted a succession of bleeps. She checked the small screen
on the top of the machine. Returning the sensor to the
med-kit, she plucked out the Vasjet, replaced the cylinder
containing the medication with another, and held it against
Marty's bare chest, just over his heart.

Josh had stopped close to the wall of the tunnel. He was
looking back towards Mai when they all heard a woman's
voice calling to them. Josh scrambled up the wall of
detritus and soil and quickly found the tiny opening into
the blockage. He waved his torch across the opening, then
lowered it. A return flash appeared.

Josh leaned in. 'Steph!' he shouted. 'Is that you?'

'Josh! Are you okay?'

'I am now that the cybersuits are back on.'

'Who's with you?'

'Mai and three survivors – Senator Foreman, Dave
Golding and Marty Gardiner. Marty needs urgent medical
attention.'

'Okay. We're no more than a yard away from you now.
We're using the Sonic Drills. Suggest you stand back. We'll
be with you ASAP.'

Josh clambered back down the jagged piles of soil, slipping
in the slurry until he reached the floor of the drain. He began
to tell Mai the news when the wrist of his suit emitted a
bleeping sound, and Mai's went off at the same moment.

They both gazed down at the flexiscreens moulded on
the wrists of their cybersuits. They knew immediately that
normal comms were still down, but the computer in the
suit had an emergency backup that allowed it to operate as
a conventional computer hooked up to the internet via an
internal modem.

In the grey darkness of the tunnel, the miniature screens
were iridescent squares of intense light. Stretched across the
brightness, Josh and Mai could each see a dark strip of letters
appearing like a line of typing on a manual typewriter. It was
an email giving them news that came straight from their
worst nightmares.

The message Tom had sent through the internet was succinct
and uncompromising. '
There's a bomb on B6. It'll go off in
under six minutes. Tom
.' Then he had typed in his E-Force
ID serial number – 8683823567#5 – a code known only to
the six team members. Hitting the send button, he spun his
chair around. 'Jerome,' he said to the nearest technician, 'I
need to speak to Senator Evan Mitchell immediately.'

The technician nodded and leaned over his virtual
keyboard. 'He's not picking up, Tom,' he said a few moments
later.

'Damn it! He has to. What's the number?'

The technician told him and Tom typed it in. Tapping a
couple of keys on his own virtual keyboard, he pulled up
a file on his holoscreen. He opened it and inputted a complex
alphanumeric sequence. A moment later the holoscreen
was filled with numbers and letters. The sequence flowed
down in two columns. Tom thrust his cursor into the stream
and plucked out a segment of numbers. A dial tone came
from the speaker on his computer. There was no reply. Tom
tapped at the keyboard again and a voice jumped out of the
speaker.

'But Senator –' the voice said.

'No buts, Sam, no buts –'

'Senator Mitchell?'

'Who's that? We have a crossed line.'

'Senator. It's Tom Erickson, E-Force.'

'What?' the man named Sam interjected. 'Who the –'

'Tom?'

'T, O, M,' Tom intoned.

'Sam, I have to go,' Mitchell said.

'But –'

'Please, just hang up, yeah?'

There was a heavy sigh and a click.

'Alright, Tom. You have my attention.'

'There's another bomb in the CCC,' Tom said.

'What?'

'Another –'

'Okay, okay. Where?'

'On B6.'

'Any details?'

'It'll go off in –' Tom glanced at a digital clock to the left
of his holoscreen – 'five minutes and 21 seconds.'

Captain James McNally had been ordered to lead a small
group down the slope to the east of the CCC. It would take
them from the Ground Level down to B2, the first floor of
the car park.

Smoke billowed towards them as he and two others, Phil
Lazardo and Julio Lopez, a rookie, descended the slope. They
pulled on their oxygen masks but the smoke was so dense
that they could see nothing further than a few feet beyond
their noses. McNally led the way. His torch was as good as
useless, its light swallowed up by the black fumes. A moment
later he reached a clearer area.

'Over here,' he called through his radio, and he signalled
to the other men. The smoke had cleared suddenly and they
could see the devastated car park, cars ablaze and shrouded
in dust and filth, the ceiling bowed from the weight of
collapsed masonry on B1. 'Fan out,' McNally said. 'Phil, skirt
along the north edge. Julio, you take the centre lane. We'll
meet up at the ramp.'

Some of the electric lights were working, but they presented
more of a hazard than a help as they swung loose on
frayed cables, and it was hot. McNally made steady progress
along the southernmost aisle between rows of demolished
vehicles. There was no sign of life, which hardly surprised
him considering the state of the place. All he could hear were
flames crackling, the fizz of gas, the sound of falling debris.
Then he thought he heard something else. He stopped and
held his breath. He strained to listen and heard the sound
again – a banging.

Turning, McNally ran back towards the slope, then up
the next aisle. The banging sound was growing louder, and
then he heard two children yelling for help. At that moment
a message came through from the Chief – a 10-33, which
meant '
Get the hell out – now!
'

Then McNally learned the dread news: '
Another bomb will
go off in four minutes, 45 seconds
.'

As he ran towards the cries, Phil burst in over the radio.
'Boss? Where are you?'

'Just get out. You and Julio. Head straight for the ramp.'

'But –'

'Just do it!'

McNally could see where the yells had come from. A
BMW four-wheel drive stood at the end of a line. There were
two faces at the rear windows, two kids, a boy and a girl,
about seven or eight. They were hammering on the glass,
their screams coming through a tiny air-gap at the top of
the window.

McNally didn't hesitate. 'Get back,' he shouted,
loosening the axe from his belt. He swung it at the door
of the vehicle, creating a great gash in the metal panel
that knocked the lock inwards. A second heavy blow
shattered the lock. He grabbed the handle and pulled the
door open.

McNally ripped his mask away from his face. 'Come on!'
he yelled.

The kids scrambled across the seats towards him and he
dragged them through the jagged doorframe. They were so
petrified they could hardly move. McNally crouched down
in front of them. The boy was the older of the two by maybe
eighteen months. His sandy hair was matted to his face with
sweat, his deep blue eyes bloodshot, his cheeks moist with
tears and sweat. The little girl had her blonde hair in bunches
and was clutching a toy dog.

'Okay, we're going to get out of here,' McNally said. 'What
are your names?'

'Tim,' the boy said shakily. 'My sister's Juney.'

'Tim, Juney – you must be brave. You understand?'

They both nodded.

'The way out is over there. A ramp leads to the surface.
Come on.'

He stood and pulled the kids to each side of him, an arm
around their shoulders, guiding them on. They ran along
the aisle. McNally checked his watch. Under four minutes.

He pulled his mask back on. He couldn't save anyone if
he was overcome by fumes. They reached the end of the row
of cars, and McNally saw Phil and Julio at the foot of the
slope. The two firemen turned and saw them.

McNally waved and Phil started to move towards them,
when an explosion directly overhead on B1 shook the whole
building. McNally just caught sight of the ceiling buckling.
Juney screamed and McNally grabbed the two kids, pulling
them under the nearest car.