Black Mountain

NINETEEN

Alex and Adira kept pace with the other disembarking passengers as they headed through the hot and crowded arrivals hall towards the immigration desk. They’d had an exhausting journey via Sudan, Ethiopia, then down the coast of Africa to Johannesburg, South Africa, from where they’d flown to Mexico. Adira’s plan was to get through immigration here at the main airport, then take an internal flight to Nuevo Laredo, which was separated from the American city of Laredo by a stretch of just 100 feet of the Rio Bravo. Then it would be a matter of driving to the small speck on the map that represented the town of Asheville — the name Alex had kept repeating to her.

Since the introduction of the biometric eye scanners, it had become difficult to infiltrate the US via any of its own ports, which was why she’d chosen Mexico as their entry point. New software made it possible to identify unique corneal reflections, which meant even prosthetics could be detected. Adira guessed both her and Alex’s eye prints would be flagged as soon as they looked into the tiny camera lens. But Benito Juárez was one of the busiest airports in the world, with nearly 30 million passengers annually, so getting lost in the crowd should be relatively easy.

Adira linked arms with Alex as they joined the line for the immigration desk. Outwardly, they looked like a holidaying couple, intent on fun and relaxation. But inside she felt the rising tension. This was a huge risk; Adira knew how intensive the American surveillance was. Coming in via Mexico might buy them some time, but she didn’t doubt for a moment that if the US Intelligence Services wanted to look into a window anywhere in the world, they could. She also knew that other eyes would be searching for them. By now, her uncle would have discovered she had disappeared with Alex. Sorry, she whispered silently.

‘Pasaportes,’ demanded the woman at the desk, her eyes flicking from Adira to Alex.

Her gaze was unemotional and slightly bored, but Adira knew she’d miss very little. Like most immigration officials, she’d have been trained to assess facial features, eye colour and purported ethnicity before checking what her eyes told her against the information in their passports.

Those passports were gold-embossed with the South African coat of arms, and the stamps from numerous countries dating back several years showed a young married couple who liked to travel. The passports had all the necessary watermarks, chips and sophisticated dyes required to pass the forensic testing that may be done by immigration in any country. They were authentic, just not really theirs.

The woman looked at Alex’s personal details, then said in heavily accented Afrikaans, ‘Waarom kom jy aan Mexiko?’ She watched him closely as he replied.

‘Om jou land te geniet,’ Alex said, smiling broadly at her. He turned to Adira to include her in the conversation. ‘Sy kan Afrikaan praat.’

‘Uitstekend!’ Adira said, stepping forward and beaming at the woman. ‘Dit sal ’n wonderlike vakansie liefling.’

The official’s gaze remained flat and bored. ‘English?’

‘Yes, a little,’ Alex said, sounding disappointed that the conversation in Afrikaans was over.

The woman grunted and stamped both little green books. ‘Enjoy your holiday, Mr and Mrs Jashub. Next.’ She waved them out of the way, already focused on the next person in line.

Adira linked her arm through Alex’s again and smiled up at him, her eyebrows arched. ‘You see, Benjamin, a little practice did come in handy, yes?’

Alex smiled back at her. ‘Clever girl. You’ll make a good spy one day.’

In another hour, they were on their way.

Salamon and his three agents watched the young couple walk from the international terminal towards the smaller domestic terminal. He had guessed correctly; he would have made the same choice for a covert entry into America. The convoluted path Captain Senesh and the American had taken had given Salamon and his team plenty of time to arrive to intercept them.

In the back seat of their vehicle, one of his men held what looked like a folded towel at his shoulder. A black tube poked out from it, pointing at the couple. They could take both down in an instant.

‘They’re about to go undercover,’ the man with the gun said. ‘We’ll lose them.’

Salamon spoke without turning. ‘Hold.’

For now, General Shavit had ordered they just be observed; Captain Senesh’s intentions were still unclear.

The man in the back seat shifted slightly, his face creasing in concentration. A thin cord ran from the black tube to a small plug in his ear. He pulled the plug free and leaned forward to speak to Salamon. ‘Nuevo Laredo.’

‘We’ll need to move it to catch them if they’re flying,’ the driver said.

Salamon shook his head. ‘No, they’re going to cross there. We’ll meet them on the other side.’

Jack Hammerson and Sam Reid sat in the dark watching the recessed screen that covered half the back wall of Hammerson’s office. It was split into several frames, all showing two figures walking quickly towards Benito Juárez’s domestic terminal. Both men wore headset comms linked directly to Major Gerry Harris, who was located in an electronics surveillance factory beneath the Offutt Airforce Base in Nebraska. Harris manned the constellation of orbiting birds that fed a lot of the high-altitude intelligence over the United States mainland and also much of the globe.

‘Screw down another fifty,’ Hammerson said, squinting at the images.

The result made him smile. The man’s baseball cap was pulled down, obscuring most of his face from the steep vertical angle, but Jack Hammerson knew that man, knew his walk, his mannerisms, as if he were his own flesh and blood. Welcome back, son, he thought.

The woman with him turned her face for just a second and VELA grabbed it. A blurred image appeared in one of the smaller screens to the side; dot points manifested on the facial matrix, joined together, were mapped and enhanced — and a name appeared underneath the photograph in flashing red: Captain Adira Senesh. Next to it: Priority Alert.

‘Trouble,’ Sam grunted. He toggled a small stick on his armrest and an electric whine filled the darkened room as his wheelchair moved closer to the screen.

The last mission he and Alex Hunter had worked on together, Sam had suffered a massive trauma to his spine. The creature they had been fighting had broken Sam’s back as easily as snapping a twig, severing his spinal cord and shattering his L1 and L2 spinal plates. Sam would never walk again. Or not unless there were significant advancements in stem cell technology, Hammerson thought… or they managed to convince Alex Hunter to return. The Arcadian’s amazing regenerative abilities held so many secrets, so many possible answers.

Hammerson exhaled long and slow. First things first. We gotta see if we can make contact with him before we start trying to explain to the top brass how a dead soldier’s suddenly come back to life. There would be way too many complications trying to get that one past Graham in Medical.

Sam studied the woman’s face up close for a few seconds, then rolled back to Hammerson’s side. ‘Like a bad penny, huh?’

Hammerson nodded. ‘Big time. And if Alex hasn’t contacted us, we have to assume he doesn’t know us, or doesn’t want to. Worst case: she’s turned him. Either way, approaching them will be difficult.’

He rose from the chair, pushed the mic wire down from his mouth and went over to his desk. Staying standing, he pulled a keypad forward to start typing, then pressed his palm to the screen. A red line circled his hand, reading the peaks and valleys of his palm and fingerprints. He was accessing MUSE, the Military Universal Search Engine. The sophisticated USSTRATCOM intelligence system would allow him to enter nearly any website on the planet. There were only a few installations with the technical and intellectual firepower to resists MUSE’s invisible intrusions — and one by one they were slowly being broken down.

Hammerson copied a photo of Adira Senesh, then accessed the Mexican immigration arrivals files. Within a few minutes he’d found what he was looking for: Rebekah and Benjamin Jashub, entering from South Africa on a holiday visa.

‘Sam, take a look.’ Hammerson swivelled the screen.

Sam snorted. ‘Looks pretty good for someone who was in a steel coffin last time we saw him.’ He leaned closer to the passenger information and laughed. ‘You gotta be kidding me.’

‘What is it?’ Hammerson frowned and looked back at the screen.

‘Looks like he hasn’t lost his sense of humour. Jashub comes from the old Hebrew name Yashuwb, meaning he will return. Expecting us to be watching, maybe?’

‘Or perhaps a little warning from Senesh.’ Hammerson tapped his chin with one knuckle as he thought. ‘Can’t afford to go near them; and we certainly can’t let the local authorities in on the surveillance. We need to see where they’re going, then move to…’ He paused. He wasn’t sure yet what he wanted to do with Alex Hunter, or even what he could do given Alex’s capabilities and unpredictability. ‘Move to… talk to him, I guess,’ he finished.

Sam nodded slowly, obviously guessing his HAWC leader’s dilemma. ‘I’m ready to go whenever you say, boss. He trusts me… or used to.’

Hammerson nodded. He’d known that, crippled or not, Sam Reid would want the chance to try to bring Alex Hunter back in. Sam knew Alex better than anyone, and had been the closest thing Alex had to a friend. But Hammerson also knew that if Captain Adira Senesh was in any way controlling the Arcadian, Sam Reid would be committing suicide by going after them. And that was if he was fully fit. Stuck in a wheelchair, well…

‘For now, we just watch,’ he said, and pushed the mic wire up to his mouth again. ‘Captain Harris, I want 24/7 surveillance. Capture every nanosecond of CCTV feed, traffic-control footage and satellite stream we can get… and patch it through to me, and only me. Understood?’

‘You got it, Colonel. Recordings?’

‘Negative; I’ll do that from here — you just follow him. And remember, these guys are the best. They know we’re probably watching so they’ll be smart.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Harris responded. ‘We’ll be smarter. No one can hide from VELA.’

Hammerson was about to sign off when he heard Harris give a grunt of annoyance. ‘Got a problem, Colonel — there’s a dual-feed loop. I think someone else is watching.’

‘Ah shit! Can you find out who?’

‘No problem.’ There was silence for a moment, then, ‘Yep, got it. Feed is being routed to Medical Division.’

Hammerson exhaled a low growl. Graham probably, he thought. He leaned forward to rest his knuckles on the edge of his desk. ‘Okay, Gerry — just make sure you cover your tracks… and don’t lose our man.’ He removed his headset and said softly to the screen, ‘The game’s afoot. Your move, Arcadian.’

‘They’re different,’ Lieutenant Marshal told his superior officer.

Captain Robert Graham snorted as he straightened his tie in the mirror. ‘Of course they’re different, Marshal. We wanted them to be different — we built them that way, remember?’

Marshal stepped a little closer. ‘No, I mean that the latest test subjects’ personalities have altered. Their strength, reaction times and resistance to pain have increased five fold, but they haven’t benefited from the same boost to their cognitive and strategic thinking as the original Arcadian did. In fact, there’s something missing… they’re kind of mechanical somehow, like they’re just… I dunno… like they’re just acting human.’ His voice went down in volume. ‘It seems like there’s no soul in them anymore.’

Graham managed to snort and sneer at the same time. ‘So, we’ve created a soldier with increased physical capabilities and no conscience — and that’s bad because…? Personally, I think they’re magnificent. And so will General Moneybags.’ He motioned to the door with his head. ‘Speaking of which, time to invite the general in.’

General Wozyniak had three stars and a hell of a lot of pull in the US armed forces. It was he who had wanted the original subject, Alex Hunter, reproduced and had given Graham and Marshal the job of delivering. Money was no object, but time was. Finally, Graham thought, they had something to show him.

Captain Graham saluted, then offered his hand. The general ignored the hand and made a half-salute motion towards his head. ‘Show me what you’ve got, Captain.’

During the next thirty minutes, Graham had their three latest subjects perform individual tasks that showed their strength, speed and resistance to pain and trauma. General Wozyniak nodded at key moments, and at one point Graham was sure he saw a brief smile flick across the man’s permanently compressed lips.

The final task was a simple hand-to-hand combat manoeuvre that pitted three regular soldiers against one of the ARC-044 batch subjects. The three opponents were large, highly trained and fit. Formidable by themselves, as a trio they should easily overcome a single combatant.

Graham turned to the general. ‘Our three attackers have been told they simply need to hold the ARC-044 subject on the floor for five seconds, by any means. They can use full contact, no restrictions, no pulling of punches.’

The general just grunted.

Graham pressed a comm stud on the desk in front of the large window. ‘Commence.’

The three men circled the barefoot, unarmed subject. The first attacker came in low from the side, scissoring his legs, expecting to side-sweep the subject off his feet. The subject leapt out of the way of the sweeping leg, then came down hard just as the leg was passing underneath him. Both heels targeted the large bone of the femur; the sickening snap caused the scientists behind the thick glass to grimace.

The remaining two men ignored their fallen comrade, instead taking advantage of his demise to attack at once. One came in fast head-on, the other came from the rear. To the men watching, it was almost as though the ARC-044 subject was waiting for the attack, welcomed it.

The volunteer at the ARC-044 subject’s rear wrapped one brawny arm around his throat and the other up beside his head and applied pressure. His teeth were gritted as he strained and seemed to be attempting to separate the small bones in the neck, or shut off the air. It was if the ARC-044 didn’t even notice. He continued to face the attacker who came in from the front, who hit out with his large fists in a series of strikes that, had they landed, would have broken jaws or shattered eye sockets. He was quick and his punches were delivered with a professional rolling of the arm and shoulder that told of unarmed combat training. But none of his blows hit their target. All were parried, swiped away or merely swung across empty air where the ARC-044 subject had moved out of the way with an ease that bordered on tormenting.

Finally, Graham’s enhanced warrior caught both his combatant’s fists, held his attacker for a second and looked into his eyes, before drawing him in close. He shifted his grip to the man’s head and twisted violently while still staring into his face. A snapping sound came over the microphone and the soldier’s body fell to the floor like an empty sack.

Graham noticed Marshal look sharply at him, but he ignored his subordinate. Wozyniak could have been watching a chess game, but his eyes were unwavering and the hint of a smile had appeared again.

Marshal turned away from the window, but Graham felt his own excitement building as the ARC-044 subject pulled the final man over his shoulder and threw him heavily to the ground. He held him there and pummelled his face, over and over. When the crunches became wetter and softer, Graham switched the window to frost.

‘Was he supposed to kill them?’ the general asked. His tone was indifferent but his eyes were interested.

Graham shrugged. ‘He was supposed to defend himself. He was told his attackers would be ordered to try to kill him so he obviously reacted with what he believed was commensurate force. All the men were Special Ops volunteers and aware of the risks.’

The General nodded. ‘Okay. What now?’

Graham smiled. ‘Access to the armoury, and then test out in the field. I’ve got something in mind — if you would just sign off on the order.’