Текст книги "Keystone"

Автор книги: Luke Talbot

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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 36 страниц)

He kept the scene going for a few more moments, until a dark cloud finally slumbered its way in front of the morning sun, before bringing himself from the reverie into which he had so easily fallen. He checked his watch.

It was time, and he didn’t want to miss it.

With a couple of concise spoken commands, the window scene disappeared, to be replaced by a split screen. In the top left hand corner he saw Mars; Dr Jane Richardson was sitting at the communication panel of the MLP. Her left hand rested on the joystick controller of a remotely operated camera, while her right hand fidgeted with her unkempt hair. She was staring endlessly at the video output of the remote camera. In the bottom left hand corner, the camera, stationed inside the underground tunnel into which the other two members of the Mars mission had disappeared, panned slowly from left to right, then back again. On the floor, Dr Richardson had set up a spotlight, which was focussed on the stone door that now remained tightly shut.

The bottom right hand corner of his display was blank.

In the top right hand corner of the screen, a CCTV camera showed three utility vehicles reversing into DEFCOMM’s main hanger through a large sliding door, which closed as soon as they were safely inside. The drivers, wearing blue overalls and baseball caps, got out and almost as one opened wide the split rear doors of the vans. Three identical teams of six people, wearing white lab coats, wheeled three identical devices, roughly the same dimensions and shape as an average household refrigerator placed on its side, up to the open doors.

Quick checks by the drivers were followed by the devices being loaded carefully and smoothly, until they had disappeared inside the vehicles. The doors were closed, the drivers got back behind their wheels, and the large sliding door of the hanger opened once more. Seconds later, the three vans were gone, the hanger closed, and the men in lab coats had returned to what looked like normal duties: overlooking the final assembly of a thirty foot long missile, checking visual readouts or supervising a large winch assembly that brought segments of a second missile from deep within the DEFCOMM complex.

He checked his watch again: a blink-and-miss-it ninety seconds had passed. Carefully planned, expertly executed. He shook his head in wonderment; there literally was no substitute for getting the right people for the job.

And in that time, on the left hand side of the screen, Dr Richardson had panned the remotely operated camera from left to right and then back again, half a dozen times. Her posture remained unchanged, and she was still fidgeting with her hair.

While hope remained that a solution to the Mars problem would be found, his instincts told him that Dr Richardson, regardless of whether they found the other crew members alive or not, would not fully recover from this ordeal, and replacing her with a simulation was simply out of the question.

Cityscapes indistinguishable from the real thing, busy playgrounds, even Martian exploration; you could fake them all and no one would suspect a thing. But there was no substitute for genuine human behaviour. A real human could tell a fake human’s face. Oh, there was no doubt you could play a trick for a while: advanced textures, hair, lighting effects, frame-perfect animation, cartilage-elasticity algorithms and detailed muscular modelling could all come together to create a truly believable person.

But eventually, and unavoidably, the truth would be apparent to the human eye. The news reader was a case in point. She was attractive, had girlish combed-back hair in a cute little ponytail, a nice smile, a couple of freckles here and there, and even had a cheeky little personality. Take a still photo and you could make someone believe she was real. But you only needed to watch one newsfeed to recognise that she wasn’t the product of a fruitful human relationship, but rather the output of a skilled development team, the illusion broken by the one thing that cannot be programmed: Life.

This to Seth Mallus, at this very moment, was the crux of the whole matter. The paradox with which he had battled internally since the Book of Xynutians had first been presented to him.

How can the propagation of intelligent life, the success of a species, be met with annihilation? How can an advanced species such as the Xynutians be wiped clear from the face of the planet with little or no trace?

The philosopher inside him told him that this was not a paradox. The logical culmination of all life is eventual death. But the logic inside him disagreed. While death was a certainty for some, why should this affect the species as a whole, and not simply the individuals concerned?

He had eventually drawn his conclusions based purely on gut feeling. The action plan he had devised had been put into place almost immediately. There had been no public debate. His position afforded him such executive luxuries, while the lavish defence budgets put forward by the United States government over successive years had been easily diverted to fund the plan. No one had ever sought to question expenditure on a line-item basis, and many of the initiatives had cost relatively little, being simple divergence from original, legitimate projects, the truth of which was divulged to a select, well paid few.

And after years of careful planning and research, tonight he had reached a crossroads, although it vexed him slightly that his hand was being forced. The timing wasn’t of his choosing, and he would have enjoyed more freedom to study the Mars findings more.

Of course, there was still a chance that Dr Patterson would make a discovery, that the crew on Mars would be recovered safe and sound, and that the elaborate charade could once again resume. The ‘alien findings’ would gladly be accepted as impressive hoaxes, the ‘issues’ communicating with the Mars team put down to computer viruses initiated by the hoaxsters. The whole debacle would be given a suitably inflammatory ‘cyber-terrorism’ headline in the daily news, and undoubtedly a government agency previously unknown to the general public would suddenly receive billions of dollars of funding to combat this terrifying threat.

But just one look at Dr Richardson, alone in her little world on Mars, told him differently.

He was at a crossroads.

To the left, unfortunately made inaccessible by a big red ‘No Entry’ sign, the Mars team turn up safe and sound and everything goes back to normal.

Carry straight on, and DEFCOMM is investigated for its part in the biggest cover-up in history. He is arrested on suspicion of murdering a member of the Clarke’s crew and the head of a museum in Cairo, and also for abducting a respected British scientist and faking her death, in doing so making it abundantly clear that he had no intention of ever letting her go. Not to mention the lesser charge of misappropriating millions of dollars for personal research, and misusing government-owned equipment and defence systems, for which treason and piracy would probably be mentioned. He would be tried in Florida, where there would be no avoiding a certain death penalty.

Of course, he had always known this to be the case. All of the risks he had taken had been well calculated and very deliberate, which is why he still had one more direction to take.

A ninety-degree turn to the right. The answer to Aniquilus’ Paradox was not that life resulted in death, but that death allowed life. Just as modern Man had benefitted from the demise of the Xynutians before them.

Am I Aniquilus? he mused.

With the vans safely on their way to despatching their deadly cargos, he turned his attention to Dr Patterson’s expedition to Egypt, the final hope for plan A, before plan B was executed. It was due diligence, he told himself, to give them a fair shot.

He barked a command and the final quarter of the screen lit up: a satellite view of a barren, desert scene. Seven hours ahead of his current time-zone, it was mid-afternoon, and by the dark shadows moving along the rock and sand he could make out a trio of all-terrain vehicles labouring their way along what could barely be called a dirt track. Their target lay a few hundred yards away, round a couple more bends and through a gap in a small ridge: a small plateau, in the middle of which stood a small building.

It was a live-satellite feed from above Egypt, one of the perks of distributing hardware and software for United States defence satellites, and the display was grid marked for easy referencing.

“Full screen,” he snapped. As the image filled the window, he caught a glimpse of movement along the narrow gap in the ridge, through which the small convoy would shortly be passing.

“Magnify C7,” followed by “Magnify range D3 to F6.”

Now filling the screen was a man in khaki cargo pants and a short sleeved shirt. Held across his knees was the unmistakable form of an AK-47. He zoomed the display back one level, and panned across the gap to the other side of the ridge. Within seconds he had located two further men with guns. While these were far better hidden than the first, they clearly hadn’t been expecting to be seen from above.

Seth Mallus shook his head slowly before picking up the phone and calling Walker.

Chapter 67

George shifted uneasily between the two rocks he hoped offered him cover from the track below. He was uncomfortable, primarily because of the unfamiliar AK-47 laid across his knees and the approaching 4x4s he imagined were full of men with guns, but also because no matter how hard he tried there always seemed to be a sharp rock nestled somewhere it shouldn’t be.

To make matters worse, his nerves were making his stomach churn more than any fairground ride he had been on.

He raised his head over the boulder and sneaked a peak across to the other side of the gulley. Although he knew more or less where Haji and Manu had taken up their positions, he couldn’t see them at all. Certainly anyone approaching from below wouldn’t stand a chance.

A few yards to his left, Tariq was going over his weapon one last time, calmly, methodically, making sure that it would fire when he needed it. The routine reminded George of the crazy man in boot camp in Full Metal Jacket, though he daren’t say that out loud to Tariq, no matter how friendly he seemed.

Somewhere to his right, and slightly below him, he imagined that Leena would be going through a similar routine.

Ten minutes earlier, Zahra had disappeared from her position on the plateau overlooking the track below. Before she had done so, she had waved twice then held up three fingers, followed by one finger of the other hand, signalling that there were three cars in total, and that Ben was in the first one. There were no warning signals, meaning one of two things: either Gail was also in the first car, or she simply wasn’t there.

After an hour spent shifting uncomfortably among the stones and rocks, it suddenly occurred to him that these men and women, dotted around the gulley and plateau with their Kalashnikov rifles and deadly bayonets, really were risking their lives for a man and woman they barely knew.

The ‘date’ that Ben had agreed to with Zahra was small payment indeed for such a massive gesture, and George suddenly felt overcome with nerves.

His stomach lurched uncontrollably as he tried to fight back the flow he knew was about to follow.

He retched, and his cheeks bulged out as he tried to keep the contents of his stomach inside. Instead, they filled his sinuses and he impulsively opened his mouth, spraying the rock in front of him. The acrid smell that followed caused him to retch again, and this time he didn’t try to stop it.

Within seconds a pool of vomit had gathered in the dust between his legs. Looking down he noticed that the AK-47 had taken a battering. He wiped his sick covered hands against the legs of his khaki shorts and shook the dripping rifle.

George looked in despair towards Tariq, who urged him to be quiet. He was about to apologise when the unmistakable noise of diesel engines bounced off the rocks above their heads.

He kept his head down, tried to breathe through his mouth, and closed his eyes.

And for the first time since his childhood, without even knowing where the words came from, he prayed.

Dr Henry Patterson leaned forward and tapped the man in the passenger seat on the shoulder.

“What was that all about, Walker?” he asked. Walker had just come off the phone, and it didn’t sound good.

Walker twisted round and stared directly into Ben’s eyes. “Turns out there might be some company ahead,” he grunted, putting his phone away. “Little welcome party you’ve prepared for us?”

Patterson shot an accusing glance at Ben, before switching his gaze to Gail. “You knew about this?” he said, sounding hurt.

She didn’t answer, instead probing Ben’s expressionless face for any sign of what was to come, her heart swelling in anticipation of the rescue attempt that was about to unfold.

Walker pulled a walkie-talkie from his breast pocket, all the while staring fixedly at Ben. Holding the walkie-talkie to his mouth he ordered the last car in the convoy to turn round and approach the plateau from below, from where the Toyota van was still parked. That had been where Mallus had suggested they approach from over the phone.

He then ordered the second car to overtake them and wait before the last corner while the last car’s occupants took up their flanking positions.

Patterson leaned forward again, as if wanting to have a private word, but Walker pushed him back. He then replaced the walkie-talkie with a pistol, which he pointed directly at Ben.

“I don’t want to have to kill anyone today,” he said matter-of-factly. “But believe me I will if I have to. You make one move,” he waved the gun across the back seats of the 4x4, taking in Gail, Patterson and Ben. “In fact, if any of you make a move, you’re all dead.”

Patterson sat back, his jaw dropped. “Me?” he said indignantly. “What have I done?”

The man grinned. “Not only have you dragged me and my men out here to this shithole, surrounded by Arabs,” he gestured with the gun towards Ben, “but it looks like you’ve dropped us all into a trap, too.” His grin disappeared, replaced with what could only be described as a snarl. “And if the purpose of that trap is to catch or save or whatever either of you two, then believe you me one way or another, it’s going to fail.”

George sneaked a peak as the 4x4 lumbered slowly through the gulley and came to a stop on the plateau, next to the entrance to the Library. He couldn’t see any sign of Gail or Ben getting out, and so switched his attention to the second 4x4 which drove slowly along the tracks of its predecessor and pulled to a stop slightly beyond it.

The two cars were side-on to their position in the gully; the doors on the far side of the lead car opened and several men got out. They waited outside the entrance to the Library, without leaving the cover of their vehicles. George felt that they were eyeing the exact place in which he was hiding, and he shrank back behind the boulder.

Anticipation rose inside him as he prepared himself for the third and final 4x4, which was their target. Zahra would cover the other vehicles while the third was immobilised, and then they would call for the surrender of the remaining people.

After a long pause, it became obvious that the third 4x4 wasn’t coming. George looked at Tariq nervously, who returned a worried glance. Had they misread Zahra’s signal? Had there been only two cars? Had they completely messed up their chance?

Unlikely, George told himself. Maybe one person could make a mistake, but all five of them?

“Tariq,” he whispered. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Something is wrong.”

He was about to ask what they were to do when Manu and Haji made the decision for them. Shots rattled across the bonnet of the second 4x4, eruptions of sand in the ground evidence of several stray bullets that missed entirely.

George instinctively ducked his head as low as possible between his shoulders and sank down between the rocks. In the gully, the echo of the AK-47 fire was deafening.

Moments later, a reply sounded from near the 4x4s. Not the explosive crackling of the Kalashnikov, but a muffled whump, like flat stones slicing into a mill-pond.

Like a conversation, the Kalashnikovs and their opponents exchanged volleys, though the overwhelming sound of AK-47 fire from all around him made it difficult to judge exactly how much reply they were receiving.

Suddenly Tariq was beside him, holding his collar and dragging him along.

“Come!” he shouted.

George’s legs somehow managed to comply, and he scrambled for his rifle and followed Tariq down through the rocks towards the gulley. Moments later, the hiding place they had been occupying erupted violently as dozens of rounds pounded into the rocks.

 Tariq dragged George round the corner of the gulley, until they were standing on the trail along which the 4x4s had driven to reach the plateau. A quick glance in all directions confirmed the absence of the third 4x4.

“Leena?” George said, gasping for breath after their dash from hiding. She had been on their side of the gully, shortly before it had been sprayed with bullets.

Tariq shook his head. “Don’t know.”

“How many of them are there?” he asked. “How many?”

Tariq held up two hands full of fingers, his thumbs curled inwards.

“Eight?” George said, amazed.

Tariq grinned grimly and shook his head, curling three fingers of his left hand inwards.

Three dead! George was surprised; the enemy had clearly known about their intended ambush, and had brought possibly better weapons and more people. Against six of us! He stood upright and held the AK-47 firmly with both hands, positioning his index finger very deliberately on the trigger mechanism. He made to go back towards the gulley, but Tariq stopped him.

Using hand gestures and broken English, George got the principles of Tariq’s plan. They had been outmanoeuvred by the Americans, who had climbed the cliff onto the plateau from the third 4x4. From that position, they could lie low and pick Zahra’s company off at will, and they had effectively reached a stalemate.

“The best way to fight fire is with fire,” George agreed as they started running along the track. “So we out-flank the out-flankers.”

They rounded a corner and broke into a faster pace, Tariq taking the lead, George trying not to trip on any large stones as he followed several yards behind.

He felt bad leaving Zahra, Manu, Leena and Haji behind. He felt even worse thinking what might have happened to Ben. He couldn’t bear to think where Gail may be and if she was OK. He just hoped that he could fight through the pain and drag his unfit body round the mountain in time to do something about it.

Chapter 68

Gail screamed as Ben shoved her head down behind the passenger seat of the 4x4. Dr Patterson did his best to follow suit.

Walker had ordered the driver to move the car in front of the small building in the middle of the plateau. The other 4x4 followed, parking at an angle behind them. Their new position formed a triangle, the bumpers of the 4x4s meeting at the apex, with the gatehouse to the Library at the base. This provided them with cover from the gulley, and direct access to the cliff edge, where Walker’s men had positioned themselves.

As soon as the shooting had begun, Walker jumped out and fired a quick volley over the bonnet of the car.

“Out!” he yelled at Patterson, yanking the rear door open. He gestured for Ben and Gail to follow. The driver of the other vehicle opened his passenger door and dragged another out. By the way he fell to the floor, it was clear he was either dead, or close to it. Only one soldier got out of the back.

They sat down along the edge of the vehicle, while Walker barked orders into his walkie-talkie. Gail could see the odd head peak over the cliff-edge: Walker’s men from the third 4x4. It reminded her of their initial discovery of the Library all those years ago, when Ben had awkwardly popped his head above the cliff during her phone call to George.

Except these men were dressed in black and were carrying the strangest guns she had ever seen. Not that you’ve seen many, she reminded herself.

The man who had been driving their car loaded a new clip of ammunition into his gun. Standing sideways, he fired half a dozen shots straight through the windows of the 4x4 and into the rocks beyond.

A single shot was returned.

As he came down from his firing stance, his gun arm fell limply and his weapon crashed into the dust. He managed to get to one knee as his legs crumpled under his weight, and then toppled sideways in front of Gail, Ben and Patterson.

It was then that Gail saw the bloody mess where his right eye should have been. Looking away in horror, she saw the look on Ben’s face: he was staring at the strange weapon that had fallen almost into his lap.

He was about to reach for it when Walker intervened.

“One, you’re too slow. I saw that coming a mile away.” He took the fallen gun and removed the magazine with a click. Dropping the empty magazine from his own, he reloaded with the dead man’s ammunition then looked Ben in the eyes. “Two, you wouldn’t even be able to fire it.” He nodded at the small indentations on the grip of the handle. “Unless of course you took his hand with it,” he grinned viciously before turning back to the two remaining soldiers in their improvised fortress.

“Fucking prick,” Gail managed to say under her breath before anyone else got a word in.

Ben looked at her in surprise. “I’ve not heard you swear like that before.”

“I’ve never met such a prick before,” she replied, this time elevating her voice slightly as she swore. Walker gave the faintest of reactions, in the form of a wry smile as he patted the side of his gun.

The three soldiers took it in turns to fire over the top and from underneath the cars, changing position frequently. On a few occasions, as they ducked down after firing, they exchanged tips on where to fire next. Of the three heads that had been popping up from the cliff edge, only two appeared to be firing now.

The opposing gunshots also seemed to be decreasing, with longer gaps between bursts and fewer impacts around them.

Walker dropped down to a crouch after firing a particularly long volley, a wild grin on his face. “Got the Arab bastard!” he exclaimed “Ripped him apart!”

Gail looked at Ben; it was obvious he was fighting to keep down a torrent of emotions. She put her hand on his knee and squeezed hard. She opened her mouth, but couldn’t put a suitable sentence together, so closed it without saying a word.

He put his hand on hers and squeezed back.

Dr Patterson nodded towards the gatehouse, its unlocked door swinging freely on its hinges. The top third of brickwork was covered in bullet holes, though he could see none in the bottom portion. “Bit odd,” he whispered to them both.

“I’m no expert,” Gail said, “but if they’re hidden in an elevated position above us, then they should have an advantage shouldn’t they? And yet I get the feeling they’re the ones taking the most hits.”

Ben took a moment to think about it. “They’re aiming high; they know we’re still here.” He nudged the corpse in front of them with his foot. “Unless they have a clear shot, and then they’ll aim to kill. The problem is, these guys have figured that out.”

Gail looked at the soldiers. With the rhythm they had entered into, it was difficult to see how any attacker could take a good aim at any one of them. Despite there being only five of them left, practically all the gunshots now came from their side, and the louder crackling fire from the gulley had practically stopped, save for the odd burst every twenty seconds or so.

Walker shouted a couple of concise orders, followed by some jerky hand signals, which Gail didn’t get the meaning of.

“They’re moving in,” Ben whispered quickly through gritted teeth. “Gail, George is up there.”

Her heart stopped beating for a fraction of a second. She looked at him in despair. “What?”

“We have to stop them moving in, otherwise it’s over,” he said.

One of the soldiers was crouched down at the back of the 4x4 furthest from the gulley, his gun held against his chest. Walker nodded at him, and then he and the driver who had dragged the corpse from the car levelled their weapons towards the gulley and began firing, while the soldier ran from cover and darted towards the enemy defences.

“Now!” Ben hissed.

He got up and ran towards the doorway, pulling Gail with him. As they ran, he shouted something in Arabic at the top of his voice.

Patterson followed, and they all piled into the building and practically fell down the stone-cut stairway the ancient Egyptians had made thousands of years earlier. On their way, Gail managed to punch the light switch, and the LED bulbs in the stairway and entrance hall beneath lit up.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Gail gathered her senses and looked around, immediately spotting the circular hole cut into the wall of the chamber a decade earlier, beyond which lay the Library itself.

“We made it!” Patterson exclaimed, searching himself for bullet wounds.

Ben was listening intently at the bottom of the steps, a worried look on his face.

“Ben?” Gail asked.

He hushed her with his hand and craned his ear upwards.

After a moment of silence the muffled sound of Walker and his men’s automatic rifles echoed down the stairs. But this time, instead of being followed by the odd return shot, a salvo of gunshots and ricochets came back. Even from underground they could hear glass windows breaking, metal being punctured and the thuds of bullets hitting the dirt.

“Yes!” Ben shouted, punching the air. “There must be at least three of them left.” He slapped Gail on the back, grinning. “We’ll be –”

The rest of his sentence was cut off by a massive explosion which made the whole room shake. Dust fell from the ceiling and poured down the steps into the chamber. Seconds later another explosion shook the room, followed almost instantly by another, final blast.

Gail instinctively clasped her hands over her ears and crouched down, closing her eyes. The rumbling from above continued for a while, eventually replaced by a loud, painful ringing. She opened her eyes cautiously and in the dust-filled air saw a pair of army boots on the floor in front of her. As the dust began to clear she could make out the uniformed legs they were attached to, then the utility belt with empty holster and spare clips of ammunition, followed by the shirt with the walkie-talkie in the breast pocket, and finally the bloodied face of Walker.

He was lying on the floor, his back and head propped up against the last three steps. His eyes were open and he looked disoriented, blinking heavily and lolling his head from side to side.

Ben was standing over him with Walker’s pistol in his hand, pointed directly at the soldier’s head.

“I knew I should’ve killed you,” Walker shouted, slurring his words. “Should’ve put a bullet in you when I had the chance.”

“Yes, you should have,” Ben replied. “What was that explosion?”

“Did the cars blow up?” Gail asked.

Ben shook his head. “Maybe afterwards, yes, but that first explosion sounded too big to just be cars blowing up.”

Walker grinned, his teeth and gums full of blood. It bubbled out of his mouth as he talked. “Not heard one of those before, tough guy?” His eyes had steadied now as he trained his eyes on the Egyptian. His head still bobbed up and down slightly, but it looked like he was regaining his strength. He shifted his position and grunted, holding his ribcage as he pulled away from the steps to sit forwards.

Ben took a step back and brought his other hand up to steady the pistol on the man’s head. “What was it?”

“Goddamn it,” he grimaced as he removed his shirt and started to unfasten the body armour he was wearing underneath. “It was a HICUP Grenade.”

“Hiccup?” Gail mused.

He looked at her sarcastically. “Yeah, sweetheart. High Impact Concussion grenade. The UP stands for Under Pressure, or pressurized. When it explodes, it’s like you packed a ton of TNT into a baseball.”

Ben looked at him with a confused look on his face. “We don’t have anything like that to throw at you, so where did it come from?”

Walker held up his body armour to display three star-shaped impacts across the chest. “Me,” he said simply. “I pulled the pin, reached back to throw it, and then got shot. The impact of the bullets threw me back and I dropped the little bastard. Once you’ve lit a firework, you just don’t go back to it, so I had to jump for cover.” He looked at them one by one, and shook his head. “Which is how I ended up joining your little party you’ve got going on down here.”

“OK, enough of the story. Get up,” Ben gestured with the pistol and Walker followed him to the other corner of the room. Standing a couple of metres away from him, he called over his shoulder, “Peterson, check what’s going on up there, it’s gone very quiet.”

“Patterson,” he corrected. “Call me Henry.”

“Oh aren’t you all just best of buddies now,” Walker said.

They ignored him.

Patterson left the room and Ben called over to Gail. “Don’t worry about George, Gail. I’m sure he’s fine. I left him in very good hands.”

“Thanks, Ben,” she managed to say.

Patterson came back down the steps with a grim look on his face. “We have a problem,” he said.

Gail’s face dropped even further. “Are they still fighting?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so, can’t hear anything, that’s for sure.”

“So?”

“The entrance is blocked with rock and sand in the first flight of steps and I couldn’t make it more than ten steps up. It’s a job for proper mechanical diggers, we’re not getting out of here in a hurry.”

They stood in silence for a few moments before Patterson continued.

“I’m sorry, Gail, but it looks like we’re going to have to find the other entrance to the Library now, because it might be our only exit before the oxygen runs out.”