Extinction

1

Alyssa gladly accepted the steaming hot drink from the stewardess, then turned back to stare out of the airplane’s small window.

The ground below was a complete white-out, although apparently the weather had much improved over the past few days, when commercial flights hadn’t even been running. It made her shiver just looking at it out there, and she took a comforting sip of her drink.

After the trauma of her escape, she had barely slept at all, constantly checking the streets below for rioters or any other violence. She had been a bag of nerves, wired on caffeine and adrenalin, but had eventually managed a couple of hours of fitful sleep.

She still had to rise early that morning to meet up with Jamie. She’d checked out of her windows first and seen that a police barricade had been set up, which was cutting off and protecting the residential blocks. Would she be free to leave?

In the event, the police had let her pass, and the presence of a National Guard cordon on the streets even meant that the taxi sent by Rushton was able to proceed to the office at more than a snail’s pace. And when she’d got there, she’d been relieved to see that he had received her message about the hair dye that she’d lost during the riot, and brought her in three bottles.

Jamie had had little to offer in the way of hard information about the base; he had never managed to get close enough to investigate properly. But the HIRP base scared him, that much was obvious. She didn’t tell him that she was going, but he warned her off anyway, saying that he’d heard enough stories about people trying to get into the place and then never being heard from again to be wary.

She listened to the warnings, and would heed them — to a certain extent, at least. Nothing would deter her from going, but she would be careful. Jamie had told her about a man called Colonel Anderson who was responsible for security at the base, and his unsavoury reputation. Alyssa wondered if he’d had anything to do with Karl’s assassination, and the attempt to kill her. She feared what would happen if she was recognized, but the simple change of hair colour, different wardrobe and thick spectacles changed her appearance entirely, and Rushton had provided her with identity papers. There was little more that could be done.

When Anna had died, Alyssa had volunteered to become an embedded reporter with the military forces in the Middle East. It had been her way of running from what had happened, of trying to escape. When she thought back on it now, she wondered if she hadn’t perhaps been slightly suicidal; the survival rate of embeds during the worst part of the war was often as low as fifty-fifty. But she had made it through the shelling, the suicide bombs, the riots, the death and the mayhem imbued with a new sense of purpose in life. Reporting, showing the world what was really going on, had become her salvation.

As she stared out at the frozen wastes below her and felt the plane start its descent, she wondered what was really going on at the HIRP base.

2

Back at the base, Colonel Anderson surveyed one of the large antennas in front of him. The radar field, known locally as the Ionospheric Research Array, was the real heart of the HIRP operation. It consisted of fourteen rows of fourteen separate antennas, each nearly fifty feet in height, laid out in a grid spread over a huge area of land. It was an incredible sight. The array amounted to a vast radio transmitter, beaming concentrated rays of pure radio-wave energy into the upper atmosphere at regulated frequencies. Each antenna was separated in its own square fenced housing, a small portable control centre nestled underneath each one. Each unit could pump out thirty million watts, meaning that the entire transmitter array had an effective radiating power of nearly six billion watts. The ionospheric research that the base was officially scheduled to carry out typically required only a fraction of the field’s potential, but Anderson knew that Spectrum Nine would need it all.

Dr Martin King was the man in charge of the radar array, and one of the base personnel briefed on every aspect of the programme. He stood next to Anderson, arms folded and stamping his feet to keep warm.

‘Welcome back,’ King said through chattering teeth. ‘I hear your trip didn’t go too well.’

Anderson’s stare cut King dead, and the scientist instantly regretted baiting him. ‘Nothing we can’t handle,’ Anderson said calmly, the cold not seeming to affect him at all. ‘Just make sure you’re concentrating on your own job. How are preparations coming for tonight? I understand the aurora will provide excellent conditions for our test.’

‘Absolutely,’ King replied. ‘Superb conditions. Do we have the authority to go ahead?’

‘Breisner is dealing with that as we speak,’ Anderson replied. ‘But if we get the go-ahead, I need the system to be immediately operational. Understood?’

‘Yes, Colonel. It will be ready to go.’

‘Good,’ Anderson said and turned to walk back to his jeep.

He checked his watch. Damn. He would have to hurry if he was going to meet Elizabeth Gatsby at the airport.

‘Do you wish us to proceed?’ Dr Niall Breisner asked General Tomkin over the secure telephone in his private office.

‘Yes,’ said Tomkin at the other end of the line, three thousand miles away. ‘Secretary of Defence Jeffries and I both authorize phase three testing of the device, as previously discussed.’

‘The target?’ Breisner asked reluctantly; the science excited him, but he preferred not to think about the real-life ramifications.

‘Again, as previously discussed. You are authorized to go ahead with a full-power test, to the coordinates you have already received.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Breisner responded mechanically. ‘But there is… a problem of sorts,’ he ventured carefully.

‘What sort of problem?’ Tomkin’s voice was cold.

‘We have a civilian visiting tonight. Karl Janklow’s sister, coming to collect his personal effects.’

‘Yes, I’ve already spoken to Colonel Anderson about her. We’ll just have to ensure that she doesn’t see anything. You and Anderson will have to deal with her if she does. Are we clear?’

Breisner swallowed hard. ‘Yes, sir. Understood,’ he managed to say with more conviction than he felt.

‘Good,’ Tomkin said. ‘Because nothing must get in the way of this. Nothing, and nobody.’ There was a pause on the line, before Tomkin spoke again, his voice grave. ‘Good luck, Dr Breisner. Don’t let me down.’

And with that, the connection was broken, leaving Breisner to sit there and wonder, not for the first time, what he had agreed to.

3

Alyssa opened the door to the Bear Tavern at just after six in the evening, local time, the sun already long gone over the horizon.

Now she was here in Allenburg, she didn’t know what the protocol was. She had half expected a military escort to meet her at the airport, but there had been nobody there. She supposed that she shouldn’t have got her hopes up — her presence was probably just a nuisance, and they weren’t going to go out of their way to be welcoming.

She had ordered a taxi from the airport, but when they passed the bar — an old, decrepit building in a decidedly ramshackle part of town, well off the tourist track — she asked the driver to stop. It was the same tavern listed in the HIRP newsletter as the meeting place for Karl’s Adventure Club, and she thought she might learn something. If Karl’s club had met there, maybe it was a hangout for HIRP staff generally.

When she went through the door clutching her travel bag, a dozen heads turned to her, cold eyes appraising the newcomer. Typical small-town reaction, she thought. Outsiders were seldom welcome. The men — there were no other women here, she noticed — turned back to their drinks, and Alyssa approached the bar.

Half an hour later, she was sitting in a booth surrounded by faded wood and worn velvet, having finally found someone to talk to. Lee Miller was a local man, and the town drunkard by the look of him. But to Alyssa, this only meant that he might be a good man for information.

A group of men lined the bar, chatting to the humourless bartender; across the room, another half dozen men sat drinking round a card table; two more booths were occupied by loud drinkers, whilst another held a solitary man. Handsome and seemingly out of place in this rough tavern, he had come in just ten minutes after her, ordered a drink and sat down by himself. Someone with troubles, she’d thought instantly.

Miller leant towards her over the small, scarred table. ‘Ma’am,’ he said gravely, ‘you don’t wanna be asking questions about the base around here.’ He held her gaze, and it was clear he meant what he said. ‘You see those guys at the bar?’

‘Yes,’ she confirmed.

‘Four of ’em are base security. The six at the table playing cards are staff. This place gets crawlin’ with ’em. The guys at the bar come here to keep an eye on things, make sure nobody’s talking out of school, know what I mean?’ He gestured to the barman for another drink.

‘And what if they find someone who is talking?’ Alyssa asked.

Miller shrugged. ‘Hell would I know?’ he said grumpily, accepting the glass placed before him by the bartender. ‘Only thing I know is that they don’t come here any more after.’

The barman paused at the table. ‘Is old Lee here bothering you, lady?’ he asked gruffly.

‘No, not at all,’ Alyssa replied.

Leaning closer, the barman said, ‘You just be careful. We keep ourselves to ourselves here.’

The threatening tone of voice was all too clear, and Alyssa meekly nodded her head. Satisfied, the barman walked away.

Alyssa waited until he was back behind the bar.

‘Lee,’ she said quietly, ‘what sort of things would these people have been saying? You know, before they stopped coming here?’

‘Oh, the usual.’ Miller grinned. ‘The base has got some sort of secret programme, nonsense like that.’ His eyes went glassy and he stared off into space, making Alyssa wonder how much alcohol he’d consumed before she arrived. ‘One couple came in here, spouting off about how the radar field zapped a laser beam right up into the Northern Lights, they said it ain’t never looked like that before, you know? All sorts of different colours, damn crazy stuff. Course, I seen some pretty weird stuff myself,’ he continued, finding his flow now, glad to talk to someone who would listen. ‘The lights happening during the day sometimes, or else maybe just shutting off altogether, just halfway through. And then there are the birds,’ he said cryptically.

‘The birds?’ Alyssa asked.

‘Oh yeah.’ He leant back in the seat and stretched his arms over his head. ‘Just the past few months, things have been messed up for the birds. Come and go at different times, you know, fly off during the wrong season. Fight each other. Found a whole flock of ’em dead one day, just scattered over the school playground, dozens of ’em just broken in bits.’

‘What’s causing it?’ Alyssa asked, seeing the link between other recent events clearly but still not sure if Miller was just making the whole thing up.

‘Damned if I know,’ Miller grunted and took another swig of his drink. ‘Only thing I know is, I lived here all my life, and I ain’t never seen anything like it. Whatever they’re up to, it’s confusing the hell out of nature, is all I’ll say.’

‘And I think you said just about enough,’ growled a male voice beside them. Alyssa’s head whirled round to see four of the men from the bar now right next to their booth. How did she miss their approach? But it seemed Miller had been right, about this at least. ‘Why don’t you move along?’ the man suggested, and Miller didn’t have to be told twice; he picked up his drink and got out of there as fast as he could.

The man who had spoken slid into the booth across from Alyssa, into the space just vacated by Miller. ‘And I think you’ve been asking too many questions, li’l lady,’ he said.

Alyssa noticed the tension in the other three men; they were like coiled springs. She was anxious, but she still didn’t feel true fear yet. What were they going to do, right in the middle of a public bar?

The man opposite her leant forward, his coat falling open to reveal a handgun in a shoulder holster. ‘What say we take a walk outside?’ he asked.

‘And what if I say no?’ Alyssa asked, the fear starting to creep up now.

‘Then I guess we’ll have to leave it at that.’ The man shrugged his large shoulders. ‘Can’t force a lady to do anything against her will now, can we?’ But as he spoke he pulled the coat further open, his other hand reaching for the gun. His message was clear, and Alyssa nodded her head.

‘OK,’ she said, the fear strong now, her heartbeat accelerating, the pulse thumping in her chest. ‘We can go.’

The man started to slide out of the bench seat but stopped when he saw that Alyssa was not moving. ‘Are we gonna have a problem here?’

‘No,’ Alyssa said hurriedly, ‘no, not at all. It’s just that if you work for the base, you know, for HIRP, I’m supposed to be here, maybe you can check or something. I’m the sister of Karl Janklow, he was… killed here in an avalanche a few days ago.’ She used the fear, letting tears start to fall down her cheeks. ‘I’m here to pick up his things,’ she whimpered.

The man regarded her coolly. ‘That may be so,’ he said eventually, ‘but I think we’re still gonna head on outside until we can clear this up. Now come on.’ He placed a large hand on hers. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Hey, hands off the lady,’ she heard a voice say from off to the side. Surprised, both Alyssa and the man turned their heads, to see the handsome guy from the other booth standing there, staring at them.

‘Why don’t you mind your own damn business, Jack?’ the man asked, as his three friends started to surround him. ‘We ain’t got no beef with you, but if you get involved, you know Anderson will back us and not you.’

Anderson. Alyssa recognized the name as the security chief Jamie had told her about.

‘Just don’t threaten her, OK?’ Jack persisted, moving closer. At his approach, the man opposite Alyssa swung round in his seat and swung a booted foot right at Jack’s crotch.

The kick connected hard, and Jack doubled over in pain before being brought upright by two of the other men, one wrenching his arm up his back whilst the other slammed a vice-like grip round his throat. They began to march him outside.

Noticing that the man opposite her was momentarily distracted, Alyssa grabbed Miller’s empty glass and smashed it across his face. The man was dazed but not out, and Alyssa instantly followed through, upending the table and driving it forward, smashing it hard into him.

The remaining man by the table reacted, going for his gun, but Alyssa was on him, driving the heel of her palm into his face, raising her knee an instant later to connect with his groin.

She could see Jack struggling with the other two men but it was clear he was getting nowhere. She started heading towards him but the man she had hit grabbed her ankle from his position on the floor, dragging her down with ferocious strength.

Alyssa kicked out at him, her boots lashing into his face once, twice, but still he held on, pulling her closer to him, until he they were face to face. She leant forward to bite him, but he anticipated this and thrust her head back into the floor, using his other hand to draw his gun and shove the barrel into her eye socket.

BANG!

The gunshot reverberated around the room, and everything came to a shuddering halt.

The gun moved away from Alyssa’s eye, and she realized she was still alive. She felt the weight shift off her, and pushed forwards off the floor to see three men in the doorway in military uniform, one — wearing a colonel’s insignia — holding a pistol aimed at the ceiling, where he had just fired his warning shot.

‘Stand down,’ the colonel ordered, and instantly the four men did as they were told, backing away from Alyssa and Jack as if they were diseased.

‘Now get out of here,’ the officer ordered, and the four men high-tailed it out of the bar as quickly as they could.

The two soldiers who had accompanied the colonel left with the other four men, presumably to escort them back to base, and the senior officer holstered his weapon and approached Alyssa, his hand extended to help her to her feet.

‘Please accept my sincere apologies,’ he said. ‘Elizabeth Gatsby, I presume. I’m sorry I missed you at the airport. I’m Colonel Anderson, head of security at HIRP. I’m so sorry for your loss, and I’m horrified at my men’s behaviour. They’ll be reprimanded, believe me,’ he said. Alyssa wasn’t sure whether he was being genuine or not. His words sounded sincere, but his eyes were cold behind the friendly veneer.

‘Colonel,’ Jack said, nodding his head in greeting as he approached. Alyssa noticed one eye was swelling, his nose was bleeding, and he was rubbing the back of his head. Not much of a fighter, but she appreciated the effort. ‘Your men could do with a few lessons in manners,’ he suggested, quite gallantly in Alyssa’s opinion, still pressing the issue despite his injuries.

‘Quite so,’ Anderson agreed. ‘I’ll see to it, Jack, believe me.’

At that, the injured man turned to Alyssa, hand extended in greeting. ‘Hi,’ he said with a quite charming smile, ‘my name’s Jack Murray. Sorry I wasn’t much help back there. Guess fighting isn’t really my thing.’

Alyssa shook his hand warmly. ‘I thought you were great,’ she said, meaning it. ‘My name’s Elizabeth Gatsby.’

She could see Jack thinking about it, then his head snapped up. ‘Karl’s sister?’ he asked.

Alyssa nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, embracing her. ‘Karl was my best friend. I’m so sorry, really.’

‘I’ve got a car just outside,’ Anderson interrupted, putting a hand on Alyssa’s arm and gesturing to the door. ‘Shall we?’

4

Anderson spent the next hour listening to Elizabeth Gatsby and Jack Murray chatting in the back of the big SUV he was using to chauffeur them back to the base.

He’d raised hell with Breisner when he’d found out that the woman had been invited to the base to collect her brother’s things. Why couldn’t they have just packed everything up and shipped it off? But Breisner had said that might seem suspicious, and in the end Anderson had been forced to agree.

But why had she stopped off at the Bear Tavern? And why had she been talking to Miller, that damned rumour-spreading drunkard? According to her, she had heard her brother talk about the place and wanted to have a look at it, try and find some sort of lost connection with him, and although it seemed feasible, Anderson had a hard time buying it. Could Elizabeth Gatsby have been the woman at the amusement park? Her story checked out — his men had confirmed that she had been somewhere else at the time — but where would a schoolteacher have learnt to fight like that? He had already ordered his men to start looking into whether Gatsby was a high-ranking martial artist of some sort, or had grown up in a rough neighbourhood.

But now, as she sat in the back of the car chatting to Murray, she seemed perfectly harmless, quite the little school ma’am. And it was clear that she was genuinely upset about her brother. Upset enough to try and cause some sort of trouble at the base? Anderson wasn’t sure, he would have to be on his guard. That was his job, after all. And with Spectrum Nine so close to completion, he could not afford to take chances.

Murray had invited himself along for the ride, saying he’d had too much to drink to drive himself back to the base. Anderson had agreed, thinking he might learn something from listening to the two of them talk. For his part, Murray also seemed to miss Janklow, and Anderson found himself worrying about whether Janklow had ever said anything to Murray about the base’s secret project. But Janklow had been closely monitored after he had found out, and it was evident that Leanne Harnas had been the only person he had confided in. No, Anderson decided, Jack Murray was no kind of security risk; he was just an overqualified desk jockey, a nobody.

But he still had to make his mind up about Elizabeth Gatsby. As the gates opened and they pushed on through the deep snow into the complex itself, Anderson determined not to let the woman out of his sight for a second.

As Alyssa spoke to Jack in the back of the car, she was aware of Anderson listening closely, probing the conversation for any hint of untruth. She played the role she had assigned herself, and felt she had done a good job; she’d known Karl well enough to share anecdotes with Jack like only a sister or close friend could.

She was glad when Anderson suggested that they all retire for the evening, saying that because it was late, she could go to Karl’s office to sort through his things the next morning. It would give her more time at the base. But she didn’t want to go to her room right away, so she had said she was hungry, and Anderson agreed to escort her to the cafeteria. It was clear he wasn’t about to leave her alone. Jack offered to join them, which pleased her. He made her feel at ease, and he was undeniably attractive.

They continued to chat, Alyssa working hard to ignore Anderson’s presence, and she started to wonder if Jack knew anything about the covert research programme which was supposedly going on here. Was it possible that Karl had told him anything? Or was Jack in on it anyway? She felt she might be able to get somewhere with him if Anderson wasn’t there, but still the man stayed, preventing her from asking any important questions.

A vibration caused Anderson to check the pager on his waistband, and he looked up at Alyssa and Jack, obviously unhappy. ‘I’m afraid I’m being called away,’ he said. ‘May I escort you to your room?’

Alyssa gestured at her unfinished meal. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I’m still really hungry and I’d like to finish this.’

‘I can escort her back when she’s done,’ Jack offered instantly, and Alyssa tried to suppress a smile, watching as Anderson’s eyes narrowed, calculating his options.

Finally, he nodded. ‘Very well. Thank you, Jack. She’s staying in Room E14, common dormitory block. Her bags are already there.’

‘Just across the hall from me,’ Jack said happily. ‘No problem. See you in the morning, Colonel.’

Anderson pushed himself away from the table, nodded, and was gone.

As he made his way back to the base’s military command post, Anderson wondered if he’d been right to leave them alone.

But he had no reason to suspect she wasn’t exactly what she claimed to be, and Jack Murray was a known womanizer; he’d probably decided to try and add another notch to his bedpost. That probably wouldn’t be a bad thing, Anderson reflected; it would distract her from being too curious about the base whilst she was here. Besides, he’d had no choice; the message had requested his urgent presence back at the command centre. He wondered what his men had found.

He burst through into the busy command post, scanning the faces around him. He caught the eye of his chief analyst. ‘What do you have for me?’ he asked.

The man smiled at him. ‘We cracked the system,’ he announced proudly. ‘The search on HIRP originated from the research computers of the New Times Post.’

Anderson stopped dead in his tracks. So, the woman in the amusement park was a journalist; his worst fears were confirmed. ‘Who is she?’ he asked.

‘We’re still working on that,’ the analyst replied. ‘Each reporter has a personal access key but we don’t have a list of whose key is whose. Sometimes these guys log on under other people’s keys anyway.’

‘OK,’ Anderson said, ‘get a list of everyone who works at the Post, and I mean everyone, from the owner right down to the janitor. Then cross-reference the names with everything we’ve got on file for Janklow, see if he knows, or used to know, anyone who works there.’

The analyst smiled again and pointed at the computer in front of him. Anderson looked, saw huge swathes of electronic information racing down the screen, and understood.

The search was already under way.

5

Jack escorted Alyssa back to her room just as he promised, but they were both reluctant to part so soon. The connection was there and they both felt it.

‘Well, I’d better be getting back to my own room now, Liz.’

‘Yes, and thanks again for helping me out at the bar earlier.’ Alyssa smiled and turned to her door.

Jack turned away too, but then his head snapped back. ‘Hey, have you ever seen the Northern Lights?’ he asked.

Alyssa looked at him. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Although I’ve always wanted to.’

Jack checked his watch. ‘Well, they’re supposed to be happening tonight,’ he said. ‘These things are never exact, but they’ll probably be starting about an hour from now.’

‘Really?’ Alyssa asked, very interested now. Her desire to see the lights was one thing, but she also recalled what Miller had told her at the bar, how the lights were somehow linked to, or affected by, whatever secret programme the base was running. Did that mean that something would be happening tonight?

‘Absolutely,’ Jack said. ‘You should even be able to see them from your room. They’re pretty amazing.’

Alyssa knew Jack was probably trying to get her to let him in, so they could watch them together, which in itself wasn’t a bad idea. But she sensed a further opportunity here, and hoped Jack would go along with it.

‘I’ve wanted to see them all my life,’ she said earnestly, ‘but I don’t want to see them from inside. Is there any way to get out of here, see them properly?’

Jack frowned. ‘Not really. At these hours, base personnel are kind of confined to quarters, it’s a long-standing rule.’

‘Why?’ Alyssa asked.

‘Not sure really,’ Jack had to admit. ‘That’s just the way it is. They say it’s too dangerous to leave the buildings at night, you know, due to wolves and bears, but I’m not too sure about that.’

She looked Jack in the eye. ‘I’m not scared of wolves, Jack,’ she said.

Jack laughed. ‘After seeing you in action in that bar, I believe you.’

‘So how about it?’ she tried again.

‘How about what?’

‘Getting out of here to see it properly. I’m sure a guy like you knows a way.’

‘Just what kind of schoolteacher are you?’ he asked with a smile.

They arranged to meet outside Jack’s room in thirty minutes; he said he had to take care of some things before they could go.

Alyssa decided to use the time to have a shower, and reached into the cubicle to turn the water on. It came out cold, and she let it run. The last thing she wanted was to freeze to death; it was cold enough outside as it was.

She had discovered that Jack worked in the base’s computer section and ran all of HIRP’s operating systems, many of which he had devised himself. The image of computer genius didn’t seem to gel with his appearance or manner at all, but Alyssa knew you couldn’t judge a book by its cover. She had genuinely enjoyed her evening so far and she found herself actually wishing she didn’t have a job to do.

Since Patrick’s death — nearly six years ago now — there had never really been anyone else in her life. For the first few years she had concentrated on Anna; then after her tragic death, she had just wanted to be alone. In the last couple of years, she had tried dating a few times but nothing ever came of it, and she wasn’t sure she wanted it to. But there was something different about Jack, she thought as she stepped into the shower, stretching the kinks out of her aching body.

She tried to dismiss such thoughts and focus on the reason she was here. After tonight, she would probably never see Jack again.

She sighed.

Anderson strode back into the control room. ‘Do you have a name?’

The analyst looked up at him with a wide smile. ‘Alyssa Durham,’ he said. ‘Senior investigative journalist at the Post, and ex-climbing partner of Karl Janklow. From what we can see, she hasn’t seen him for years. But it’s a clear link. She’s the one.’

Despite himself, Anderson let a smile cross his lips. The woman at the amusement park had a name. ‘Good work. Is that the file?’ he asked, gesturing at a folder on the desk.

The analyst nodded. ‘Yes, that’s all the information we have on her.’

Anderson picked up the file and started to flip through it, his mind already establishing the next course of action. ‘OK,’ he said, his head coming up, ‘get people round to her apartment, see if she’s there. If she is, have her picked up. At the same time, I want agents over at the Post. Let’s find out who her contacts are, what she’s working on at the moment. Get this file circulated to everyone. Treat this as top priority.’

The analyst nodded, already turning back to his bank of computers and picking up the secure telephone on his desk. Satisfied, Anderson put the folder under his arm and turned on his heel, heading back out for the radar field.

Good, he thought as he left the room. Alyssa Durham will soon be mine.

6

‘It’s beautiful,’ Alyssa whispered to Jack as they sat huddled together under a thick blanket on the roof of the main control centre.

Jack had led her out of the dormitory building and across the area leading to the command centre, careful not to be seen by the patrolling guards. Jack knew they wouldn’t be picked up by electronic surveillance but there was still the human element, and they had to keep to the shadows to avoid detection.

They had managed to get to the large concrete structure completely unseen, and Jack had then taken her to a metal ladder on one side. He had explained that there was no security on top of the building, just a bunch of air-conditioning ducts and a single access hatch for routine maintenance. As long as they kept down, careful not to get silhouetted on top of the building, they would be safe from prying eyes.

In the distance, Alyssa could make out a huge forest of antennas. Jack told her that it was called the Ionospheric Research Array, and gave her a brief breakdown of its purpose and how it all worked. It was interesting, but no more detailed than the information she had digested from Jamie’s research notes. On the other hand, seeing was believing, and it was a tremendous sight to behold. Alyssa could detect no activity at the radar field, except for what Jack seemed to think was an unusually large number of vehicles in the car park.

But now the first lights of the aurora started to illuminate the dark winter sky, a sudden flash of brilliant green, like bioluminescent sheet lightning. And then it started in earnest, and the sky all around them lit up with irradiated brilliance. The eerie green glow seemed to contract, then expand, then contract once again, twisting into seemingly impossible shapes as it danced across the sky. It was perhaps the most beautiful thing she had ever seen; and there was also Jack, whose heartbeat she could feel as her head rested on his chest.

Alyssa pushed herself up, keeping her body in contact with Jack’s all the way, until her head was level with his. She turned away from the pulsating green aurora and looked into Jack’s eyes, which looked back at her with burning intensity. Did he feel it too? She leant forward slowly, wanting so much to find out; and as the aurora flared once more above them, he moved towards her, accepting her invitation. Their lips met, gently at first, and Alyssa’s heart seemed to beat louder and louder in her chest as Jack wrapped his arms round her. Alyssa responded by pressing harder into him, deeper, her arms seeking his body.

A feeling almost like electricity surged through her as their kiss continued, their bodies almost becoming one, and she felt free once more, the reality of the world melting away with their passion.

But then Jack pulled away, breaking the embrace, shattering the magical unreality of the moment. She felt cold instantly, separated from his warmth.

‘What is it?’ she asked, putting her hand on his.

‘Quiet,’ he said in reply, turning his head like a dog straining to hear some faraway noise. ‘Do you hear it?’

Alyssa turned her head and listened. Nothing. What was Jack doing?

But then she heard it too, just faint, a low rumbling like a big-capacity car engine ticking over at idle. ‘What is it?’ she asked again.

Jack held up a hand as he struggled to make it out, but then Alyssa tugged at his sleeve and pointed towards the closest radar.

Jack looked too, and she felt his body tense. A spark of light exploded from the surface of the huge radar crosshead, and then the outer perimeter of radars lit up in the same way, one by one round the huge square. They watched as the inner ‘rings’ lit up, electricity surging across the vanes, until all one hundred and ninety-six antennas were crackling with barely contained primal energy. Alyssa and Jack could both feel the force of the radar array pulsating across the clear night sky.

‘What’s going on?’ Alyssa asked breathlessly, but Jack could only look on in wonder, speechless.

They continued to watch as the huge sparks of light left the confines of individual radars, travelling through the air until the entire grid was criss-crossed with bright, crackling light. Minutes seemed to go past as they watched, the ghostly green of the Northern Lights above them all but forgotten as the energy coming from the radar grid seemed to build steadily in power, the light becoming thicker, brighter, more intense. Alyssa felt the need to look away to protect her eyes, but couldn’t.

And then the light was directed upwards from the top of each radar mast towards a point thirty feet above the central group of masts. The beams met there, joining together in a single point, forming a covering of energy almost like a brilliant, luminescent parasol, and then both Alyssa’s and Jack’s jaws dropped open as they saw a huge flash of blinding light shoot straight up into the sky from this central point, the power from every radar mast converging in one single, arrow-like surge of pure energy into the aurora above them.

The single blast was over in the blink of an eye, and when it was gone, so too were the powerful, crackling lights of the radar masts, and the entire grid was inert once more, silent, unmoving.

A few moments passed, and then Alyssa turned to Jack. ‘Have you ever seen anything like that before?’

Jack shook his head slowly, seemingly bewildered. ‘Never,’ he admitted.

Alyssa glanced skyward, and her eyes narrowed as she watched the Northern Lights continue their dance across the sky above them. But they were different now somehow, the snaking movements faster, more complex, perhaps even brighter. Yes, they were getting brighter, and she grabbed Jack’s arm to get him to watch too. The aurora began to change. Alongside the familiar green light, streaks of crimson appeared; the two colours danced apart and then melted together, again and again.

Alyssa knew the lights were sometimes red, but this seemed different somehow; and then they changed again, an opaque blue light entering the procession, darting in and out of the green and red. The sky then went completely dark for a fraction of a second, and then glowed pure green, a flash of light that almost blinded Alyssa after the darkness that had preceded it. And then there was darkness again, and then a flash of red; then dark, before a third flash, this time of brilliant blue. Alyssa knew that such a display was unprecedented.

For several minutes, the sky above the HIRP facility raged with light — red, green and blue, but also yellow, orange, violet and white, all battling each other in a stunningly choreographed rhythm that took Alyssa’s breath away.

And then the incredible light show was over and the sky returned to inky blackness once more.

After a few moments, Jack turned to Alyssa, his face serious. ‘I think it’s time we got the hell out of here.’

7

Just over thirteen hundred miles away, Jaywood Nblisi trotted gently along a beautiful white sand beach after his three-year-old son.

It was a glorious day, the sun high in the sky and blessing them with its warmth. He glanced back to his wife and four other children, all gathered on the large rug they’d brought down with them from their small home, just an hour’s walk away.

They lived pleasant enough lives, although Jaywood had to admit that the conditions at the factory in which he worked left a lot to be desired. No plumbing, no sewerage, and no breaks in fourteen-hour shifts were not exactly ideal, but Jaywood was a realist; his small island had no natural resources to speak of, no tourist infrastructure, and there was no way of making a living save for working at the factory which, hellhole or not, he knew the country was lucky to have. And he fully believed that by putting in the hours without complaint, he would one day work his way up to be a supervisor. At least that’s what his boss had told him, and he had no reason to doubt it.

At least he had every weekend off, which meant he could spend a couple of days a week lazing around on the beach without having to worry about how he was going to afford to feed his family — unlike some of his islander friends, who refused to work at the factory, and therefore suffered the ravages of abject poverty.

He had caught up with his youngest son, who had stopped to examine a multicoloured conch shell, when he felt the beach move beneath his feet.

The sensation was gone as soon as it arrived, and he began to wonder if he had imagined it; but then it happened again, even stronger this time, and he felt himself flipping into the air, the sky turning over him.

He crashed back to the ground, the wind knocked out of him. He looked immediately to his son, who was sitting there with a look of surprise — but not yet fear — on his young face. Jaywood scrambled over the white sand to him and gathered him up in his arms. He raced back towards the rest of his family, who he could see waving frantically for him to return.

Jaywood started to wave back but was sent tumbling once again as the earth shook for a third time. He collapsed, but managed to keep his son aloft, unhurt. Jaywood groaned, wondering if he had broken something.

The other people on the beach were running for the far treeline behind them. Jaywood watched as another shudder rocked the ground beneath him, and he saw a huge section of the jungle disappear right before his eyes, falling into the ground, swallowing the first people with it.

The screams started then, and sounds reached Jaywood from far away — car horns blaring, the sirens of emergency vehicles, house alarms, all from his home town, just a few miles away, on the other side of the jungle. And then he heard the klaxon sounding at the factory, the call for an immediate evacuation.

Earthquake, everyone was shouting, and Jaywood knew it must be true. He’d experienced tremors before, but something that destroyed an entire jungle in the blink of an eye? He could barely move with the shock of it all.

But he needed to move, he had to move, had to get to the rest of his family and make sure they were safe. And so he dragged himself to his feet once more and set out for them, weaving in and out of the other people on the beach who were panicking now, unsure of where to go or what to do.

As he ran, the rest of the jungle disappeared, it just seemed to be sucked down with no resistance, and he could see the buildings of his town, unobscured by trees and foliage. He winced as he saw the tallest of the buildings start to collapse, then turned back to his family, ignoring everything else. They were fifty metres away now; if the world really was going to end, as all the news reports lately seemed to predict, at least they would be together. But then there was another shudder, and the beach itself was ripped in two, leaving a deep crevasse that ran from the ruined remnants of the jungle all the way to the ocean. Jaywood himself was thrown clear, and he landed with his son, who was crying now, in a pile of sand.

The beach on his side of the rift tilted upwards at an impossible angle, so he couldn’t see his family any more. He began to climb towards the top of the disgorged land, the sound of rushing water filling his ears as he went. He climbed steadily, powerfully, ignoring the pain in his legs and back, scrambling up the broken, sandy slope until he reached the lip. He saw his family over on the other side, scattered on the ground, frightened and bruised. But they were alive. His wife, three daughters and another son, they were all alive.

He looked down into the rift in the beach, and saw how the ocean was surging into it, creating a fast-moving river that pushed through the ruined jungle towards the town beyond. How many people lived there? Jaywood knew it must be ten thousand or more. He said a prayer as he watched the water crash towards them, before redirecting his attention to his family.

He whispered reassurances to his infant son, cradled in his arms, then looked again at his wife and other children. They were standing now, looking out to sea, immobile, frozen.

Jaywood turned himself and his eyes went wide with shock, with fear, and with simple awe at the sight that confronted him.

A wall of water — it must have been a mile high — was thundering towards the little island; an implacable, deadly force of nature. Jaywood shook his head in disbelief. Such a thing seemed impossible. But there it was, coming towards them, closer and closer with each passing second.

The roar of the tsunami filled his head, drowning out all other sounds, all other thoughts, and Jaywood turned to his family on the other side of the rift and waved goodbye.

He cradled his son closer in his arms, letting him feel warm and safe. He bent his head to kiss the little boy on the head, tears in his eyes.

And then the tidal wave hit, destroying everything in its path.

8

‘Just what is going on here?’ Alyssa asked.

She was sitting on a chair at the small card table in Jack’s room, while he lay back on his bed, hands covering his face.

He sat up and looked at her. ‘I’ll be damned if I know,’ he said eventually.

‘You must have heard talk about this place,’ she probed.

Jack sighed and shook his head, and then got up from the bed and started to pace the room. Alyssa was worried that he wouldn’t say anything else, but then he turned to her. ‘OK. But before I tell you what the rumours are, you have to understand that I don’t believe them, and I’ve worked here for years. OK?’

Alyssa nodded her head, and then he began. ‘Well, obviously anything with any military connection becomes the target for conspiracy theories of all kinds, especially when some of the research is secret, and kept out of the public eye. But what some people — crazy people, in my humble opinion — believe is that the radar array can be used to influence the weather; you know, heat up clouds here and make it rain there, that sort of thing. Other people think that by influencing the ionosphere, sonic properties can be sent around the globe to be directed towards certain targets, to achieve all sorts of crazy things — natural disasters; electro-magnetic pulse waves which are supposed to shut off all electronic devices, sabotaging an entire country’s infrastructure with one simple move; direct-hit weapons that can shoot missiles out of the sky; even mind control.’

‘Mind control?’ Alyssa asked.

Jack nodded. ‘I told you the whole thing is crazy. Some folk believe the “light rays” shot out by the radars can brainwash people; indeed, they believe that we already are brainwashing people all over the world, our own citizens included.’

‘It does seem a bit far-fetched,’ Alyssa agreed.

‘You bet.’ Jack sat down on the bed once more. ‘I’ll tell you why this place attracts this sort of attention — because the real work that goes on here, quite mundane and boring as it is, is just too hard for most people to understand. And if people can’t understand something, they’ll create a story around it that they can understand. And people understand weapons, and they understand war.’

Alyssa knew that Jack was probably right, but she was convinced something more was going on. ‘Look, I’ll be gone tomorrow,’ she said, ‘and I’m sorry for being so nosy. I guess I’m just trying to understand the kind of place Karl was working in, you know, what he was doing for the last few years. We didn’t see each other much after he started work here.’ The manner of Karl’s death came back to her in vivid detail, and she hugged herself, trying not to tremble.

She didn’t resist as Jack pulled her on to the bed and put his arms round her. And then, as they sat looking at one another, their hands suddenly sought each other’s, entwining so naturally that they hardly realized it had happened. Their lips came together gently, then more forcefully, and Alyssa soon found herself lying next to him and he was brushing his lips across the smooth, soft skin of her neck. She felt herself melting under his touch and at that moment she wanted him more than she could remember wanting anything in her life.

9

As Alyssa crept from Jack’s room later that night, she hated herself.

It wasn’t for sleeping with him, she didn’t regret that for a second. In fact, lying in bed with him, his arm round her, she’d felt happier than she had in years. But after he’d fallen asleep, she had gone to his jacket and detached the security card that she had seen him using all evening. It was a betrayal of his trust but time was short. She would have to pick up Karl’s things in the morning, and then she’d be on her way, never allowed on to the base again. She’d seen with her own eyes what the radar array could do to the Northern Lights, and if it could do that then surely it could also affect other aspects of nature, perhaps even create natural disasters. If there was even the slightest chance of a connection, she knew she had to investigate it. At the very least, she felt she owed it to Karl to make the attempt.

As she slipped down the quiet corridors, she hoped she would make it back before Jack woke up. At least she had a chance of remaining unobserved, thanks unwittingly to him. He had told her that while she had been taking a shower, he had returned to his computer station in the main command centre under the pretence of correcting a systems failure. Once there, he had logged on to the security mainframe and set about redirecting some of the computer systems.

That was how he’d thought of it — ‘redirection’. It was much better than the arguably more accurate term of ‘sabotage’. But the result was the same: certain key security cameras had been turned to face in different directions, other sensors had been fed inaccurate data, and an ‘escape corridor’, unobserved by the base’s hi-tech surveillance, had been left open for their trip to view the Northern Lights.

Jack was in charge of all of the base’s computer operating systems. He wasn’t attached to the security section of the command centre, but because he had designed the software that the section used, he could control the base’s electronic surveillance capabilities. He could shut down the entire system and replace it with a useless ‘mock’ system, and the security section would be none the wiser. Not that this had been his plan tonight; his intention tonight had been much more modest. And the redirection had worked. The two of them had managed to get up on the roof and back to Jack’s room completely unchallenged. Jack told her he would switch the system back to normal in the morning, which meant that it was still streaming incorrect information through to the security centre. Alyssa hoped that this meant she would get to the computer centre undiscovered.

She retraced her steps from earlier, using Jack’s access card to pass through doors, always alert for other people, and finally entered the main command centre instead of climbing up the side of it.

Despite the lights which still shone brightly from the mobile command centres over on the radar field, this building was mercifully empty, as she’d hoped it would be at three in the morning. She quickly found the signs for the computer centre, and had to hide only once as a security guard made his rounds. She made a mental note of the time, hoping that he wouldn’t be back for at least an hour.

Eventually, she reached the computer centre, a room of glass-enclosed cubicles separated from the rest of the building by a huge smoked-glass wall. She used Jack’s access card again, and a glass door slid open to admit her.

She searched the cubicles until she found Jack’s — helpfully, all the desks had nameplates — and sat down, hunching over in the seat to minimize her shape, should any more security guards come round and peer through the glass. The desk was cluttered with work but empty of personal effects. There were no family pictures, nothing of any noticeable sentimental nature. The only thing that indicated a real person worked there at all was a canvas print hanging to one side. It was of a train crashing though the foyer wall of a station. She recognized it instantly as the main railway station of her home town. She wondered briefly if Jack used to live there too, or if he just thought it was an interesting picture.

She used the key card to turn on the computer, praying that the light from the screen wouldn’t alert anyone.

‘Are you sure?’ Anderson asked the chief analyst. The security command centre was hidden underground, along with many of the research elements surrounding Spectrum Nine. The place was a hive of activity after the successful test earlier, but nobody else working on the base would ever realize.

‘Yes, sir,’ came the reply. ‘She’s not there. Alyssa Durham isn’t at her apartment, and she hasn’t been seen at work since yesterday morning. It was hard getting information, but from what we can gather, she’s gone away somewhere for a work assignment, although we haven’t yet found out exactly what she’s working on. Her editor, James Rushton, wouldn’t give us anything. Her bags were gone from her apartment but we can’t find plane tickets or any other type of ticket booked in her name.’

Anderson considered the matter, and could feel his blood pressure rising. After such a glorious evening, with the full might of Spectrum Nine finally being utilized, here was the bad news. Alyssa Durham was still out there somewhere.

Perhaps she had just been spooked and run off somewhere. Understandable, considering he’d been trying to kill her. And yet from her performance in the park, and the information on her file, she didn’t seem the type of woman to run away from anything. On the contrary, she seemed the kind of person who would just as soon attack.

He spun round to address the analyst. ‘Do we have a home number for Elizabeth Gatsby?’ he asked.

The analyst called up some data on his screen, and read it off to Anderson, who typed it into his phone and connected the call.

He held the phone to his ear and waited, hearing it ring and ring. No answer. He hung up. ‘What time is it there?’ he asked next.

‘Er… eight in the morning?’ the analyst suggested.

‘Maybe she’s already on her way to school,’ Anderson muttered to himself. He asked for the school’s telephone number and was put through straight away.

‘Hello, I was wondering if Mrs Elizabeth Gatsby is expected in at work this morning?’ he asked politely.

He listened as the receptionist on the other end of the line went to check her records. ‘Yes, she’s due in today. In fact, I can just see her pulling up outside now. Do you want to hold for her? Who shall I say is calling?’

But Anderson had already hung up and was racing towards the elevator that would take him from the control room to the dormitory block and Room E14.

10

Alyssa didn’t know exactly what she was looking for. How did you go about finding a ‘black’ research project, something that wasn’t ever supposed to be found?

But Jack had said that he had access to the base’s security mainframe, and she was therefore confident that she would find something. She trawled security logs, staff records, maintenance requests; anything and everything. And then she stumbled upon some transcripts.

These were written records of conversations between certain base personnel — telephone calls, emails, even chats in the rest room, it was all there. Obviously anyone suspected of leaking intelligence was closely watched.

There wasn’t anything that shouted at her, but she noticed continual references to S-9, Spectrum Nine, and something known mysteriously as the ninth spectrum.

With these key words, she inserted a search program into the system and set it running. Further security clearance was needed, but when she flashed Jack’s card across the infrared reader, access was instantly granted.

Vast swathes of information came up, and it wasn’t long before she found what she was looking for — technical schematics for a project known as Spectrum Nine, presumably the secret project that many people believed lay behind the HIRP base.

She quickly inserted a flash drive that she was carrying and started the download. Clicking off the page as the system laboriously downloaded the schematics to her portable memory stick, she began to go through the rest of the pages. The technical info should tell her what Spectrum Nine was, and what it was capable of, but she wanted names too, to find the people who were behind the project. Was it legitimate? And if so, who was authorizing it? Who—

‘Would you mind telling me just what the hell you think you’re doing?’

With a start, Alyssa looked up from her computer, to see Jack standing in the doorway.

Anderson knocked loudly on the door and when it wasn’t answered within five seconds he drew his handgun and kicked it down, bursting into the room with his weapon up and aimed.

Nothing. She wasn’t there. She, the woman who was impersonating Elizabeth Gatsby; the same woman who had evaded assassination and then capture at the amusement park. Alyssa Durham.

He raced from the room, thinking he had one last chance before he had to sound the general alarm. Across the hallway he came to Jack’s room. Again he knocked, waited five seconds, and then kicked it down, handgun scanning the space beyond.

Empty.

Damn it! How could he have been so stupid? It was no coincidence that Jack had met her at the bar; they were obviously in on it together, which meant only one thing.

They would both have to die.

It took no more than a minute for Alyssa to tell Jack everything; her real name, what she did for a living, how she had seen Karl Janklow assassinated right next to her, which had set in motion all her subsequent actions.

‘I’m sorry, Jack,’ she said, hoping with all her heart that he believed her.

‘And me?’ he asked.

‘Jack,’ she said, ‘please believe me, I never wanted to involve anyone else. What we did… I really wanted to. But I also needed information. I saw your card there, I remembered what you said about having security access, I saw my chance and I took it. I’m sorry,’ she said again.

Jack stared at her silently, his expression unreadable.

‘If what you’ve told me is true,’ he said finally, collapsing into a chair opposite her, ‘then I guess I—’

He was cut off by the shrill, ear-shattering blare of a warning klaxon.

The alarm had been sounded.

The security guard doing the rounds of the main command centre received the message over his intercom just as the alarm started.

Colonel Anderson was ordering all available security personnel to make a hard search of the base for two targets. Jack Murray was HIRP’s chief computer technician, and the guard knew him well enough; Alyssa Durham/Elizabeth Gatsby was an unknown entity, but her description was sent over even as the guard pulled his pistol from its holster and made his way down the corridor.

Anderson’s orders were clear: the targets were to be shot on sight.

‘We’ve got to get out of here!’ Alyssa shouted at Jack over the sound of the siren, clicking frantically with the computer mouse, downloading any page she came across.

‘We?’ Jack asked. ‘Why have I got to go anywhere? I haven’t done anything!’

That was true enough, Alyssa thought. ‘Then I’ve got to get out of here. Is there another way out of this room?’

‘After what you’ve done? Why should I—’

The glass wall shattered behind them, a high-powered handgun round blasting through Jack’s computer monitor.

Alyssa instinctively dropped down behind the cubicle, noticing that Jack did the same.

‘Why the hell are they shooting at me?’ Jack shouted across to her.

‘They think you’re helping me!’ Alyssa shouted back, grabbing the flash drive from the computer and stuffing it into an inside pocket. She risked a glance over the desk but whipped her head straight back down as she saw the guard level his pistol at her. The next bullet tore across the room, destroying the next cubicle, showering her and Jack with glass shards.

‘Well, thanks,’ Jack spat. ‘I guess I’ll have to help now!’

Alyssa managed a grateful smile as Jack pointed back towards the rear wall, ushering her towards it. Another way out? She really hoped so, knowing the guard would be upon them at any moment.

On her hands and knees, she started to crawl across the broken glass.

The guard snaked his way through the cubicles, angry that he’d missed that first shot. But when he’d seen the two of them sitting across from one another, he’d just raised his pistol and fired.

It was the smoked glass wall which had thrown his aim off, deflecting the path of his bullet just enough for it to miss Jack. And now they knew he was there, which would only make things harder.

Still, he figured, they would be panicked, scared and, most importantly, unarmed. What was more, they had nowhere to run. Reinforcements were already on their way, but if he played this right, all that would be left for Anderson and his men would be bodies.

Broken glass crunched under his feet as he turned past one more cubicle, his gun aimed down at the ground. But there was nothing there, just bloodstained shards of glass.

They must have crawled off, he realized, cutting their hands and knees as they went. Well, it didn’t matter; they were only prolonging the inevitable.

‘Son of a bitch!’ Jack whispered, pain shooting through his hands and knees as they continued crawling.

They had made it undetected to the storage cupboard on the far side of the room. Jack had ushered Alyssa inside and then pulled out a rear panel to reveal a duct for electric cabling. It was small, but there was enough room to crawl in. Once inside, Jack had reattached the panel and gestured for Alyssa to keep moving forward.

Jack’s curse drew Alyssa’s attention to her own cuts. The pain made pulling herself through the cramped service space decidedly unpleasant. But it was infinitely preferable to being shot at, and so she just gritted her teeth and ploughed on. She hoped the security guard wouldn’t be able to follow the trail of blood.

The cabling duct angled off in two directions, and behind her she felt Jack tap her right ankle. She veered off right, wondering why Jack knew so much about the ducts. Maybe she would ask him sometime, if they managed to survive the night.

‘So where are they?’ Anderson’s voice boomed across the computer room.

‘I… I don’t know, sir,’ the security guard stammered, unable to understand how the pair could have got away.

Anderson spent just seconds scanning the scene before he saw the spots of blood. There was quite a bit to start with, but then it petered out. He could see why the guard had failed to spot it, but Anderson was a whole different animal; to him, it was as plain as day.

He followed the trail to the cupboard and wrenched open the door. He was disappointed but not overly surprised to find it empty.

He saw the panel at the back instants later, observing how it hung at a very slight angle, as if someone had unsuccessfully tried pulling it back into place from the other side.

He reached forward and pulled it away, leaning through with his gun into the small, dark space. ‘Where does this go?’ he demanded.

When nobody answered him, he keyed his radio, contacting the chief analyst back in the underground chamber. ‘The cabling ducts from the computer room,’ he said without preamble. ‘Where do they lead?’

There was a pause, the man obviously calling up the building blueprints on his computer. ‘They terminate in an external access point, halfway down the building’s north side, about five metres from the rear access doors.’

Anderson keyed the radio once more and directed his men to converge on the access hatch.

Alyssa and Jack were already in the shadows of a copse of trees fifty yards away from the command centre when a whole squad of soldiers descended on the access hatch they had left only minutes earlier.

‘Well, we’re out,’ Jack breathed. ‘But now what? The whole base is surrounded by a twelve-foot perimeter fence. If we get past that, we’re still in the middle of nowhere.’

Alyssa tried hard to still her hammering heartbeat. Jack was right; they’d escaped the building and the immediate danger, but now what? They had to get out of the base somehow. She sank to her knees, thinking. There had to be a way; there always was.

Suddenly, kneeling there bleeding on to the crisp, fresh snow, she had a memory flash. HIRP Community Newsletter number 324, second page. Karl’s notice about the Adventure Club.

‘Jack,’ she said, ‘where’s the glider hangar?’

‘So do you know how to fly one of these things?’ Jack asked her as they stared at the sleek silver glider inside the large metal hangar they’d just broken into.

The hangar was not far beyond the trees; luckily, the search hadn’t extended this far yet. They’d seen two soldiers pass by, but used the cover of the trees to avoid them. The hangar was barely protected at all; theft probably wasn’t a big problem around here.

‘No,’ she answered simply.

‘Well, what a superb idea!’ Jack shot back. ‘So what do we do with it now?’

Alyssa stared at it for some time, and the specially rigged tractor next to it. ‘It’s not a fighter plane, Jack,’ she said, approaching it, figuring out how it might work. ‘I mean, how hard can it be?’

‘They’re what?’ Anderson exploded, already running towards the hangar.

The reply came back exactly the same as before: nearby security personnel had seen a tractor burst out of the hangar, dragging the glider behind it. What the hell were they thinking?

‘Open fire!’ Anderson commanded, and was gratified to hear the sound of automatic rifle shots just moments later.

This probably wasn’t the best idea she’d ever had, Alyssa admitted to herself as she drove the high-speed tractor towards the northern perimeter, pulling the lightweight glider behind her, a terrified Jack at the controls. But all he had to do was hold it straight; she was going to have to do the real work.

Jack had told her that just a few hundred metres ahead, the northern edge of the base fell away down a sheer cliff face to the forest below; it was unclimbable, by all accounts, so much so that Anderson didn’t even post security patrols there. But it offered everything she needed, and she accelerated towards it with every horsepower the tractor could muster.

She heard the sound of gunshots then, and felt the impact of rounds hitting the vehicle. She hoped the thin skin of the glider wouldn’t be damaged, but there was nothing she could do about that now. And then suddenly they were there, at the edge of the cliff.

As the tractor started to tilt over the edge, she was seized by a feeling of absolute horror, a sensation of deep-seated, all-encompassing dread that chilled her to the bone. The view out across the moonlit, rocky terrain, the snow-covered landscape, the feel of the chill wind on her face — for several terrifying, panic-inducing seconds, she was back on the chair lift cable watching her eight-year-old daughter plunge helplessly to her death.

‘Jump!’ she heard Jack yell. ‘Alyssa, jump!’

She snapped back to reality and started scrambling back through the tractor even as it fell from the top of the cliff, its weight pulling it inexorably downwards. With a last surge, she came out from the rear of the tractor, unhooked the towline from its attachment in one smooth movement and grabbed hold of the cable with both hands, gripping on for dear life as the tractor plummeted to the valley floor below. Momentum pulled the glider forward off the cliff until it soared out across the open sky, with Alyssa dangling beneath, swaying in the wind.

Anderson watched the glider as it pitched and yawed across the sky and emptied his magazine after it, ignoring the futility of such an action.

His men did the same, firing their weapons in a continuous barrage until there was no ammunition left. He watched in disbelief as the woman pulled herself up the towline and into the glider, marvelling at how strong she must be. How fearless.

He hung his head on his chest as the glider moved further and further away. He would just have to hope they would crash.

‘We’re going to crash!’ Jack announced as soon as Alyssa pulled herself, agonized and breathless, into the cabin and settled into the second seat in the tiny aircraft. ‘I’ve got no idea what I’m doing!’

‘It’s OK,’ she said between ragged breaths. ‘You’re doing fine.’ The most important thing, of course, was that they were leaving the base far behind them. Other than that, she didn’t really have any more idea than Jack.

‘How do we land one of these things?’ Jack asked, handing over control of the stick to Alyssa.

‘I’ve got no idea,’ Alyssa admitted.

It was dark outside and despite the moonlight, she struggled to make out what was in front of them. Or, she realized, where the ground was. It was white below her, but they could be at any height at all.

‘Are those branches?’ Jack asked as he looked out of the side window. Before Alyssa could turn her head, the first impact made the glider lurch hard in the air.

‘Yes!’ Alyssa coughed as they were hit again, harder this time. ‘We’re landing already. In the trees.’

She just had time to assume the crash position before another impact jolted the glider up and over itself, the tail now the highest point, the nose aimed straight down at the forest floor below. The light aircraft bounced down between the tree trunks to the snow-covered ground, and the world went black as Alyssa passed out.

One hour later, General Tomkin put the telephone down and poured himself a drink from the cabinet behind his desk.

He tried not to get angry, but it was a struggle. He drank the amber liquid down in one and poured himself another, feeling a little better already.

The day had started off well, with news of the successful first full test of Spectrum Nine, but the phone call he’d just had from Colonel Anderson had soured his mood considerably.

To his utter disbelief, it seemed that the woman who had avoided being killed at the amusement park was a journalist. And not only that, she had also managed to infiltrate the base — while the test was being carried out — and access information from the computer files. She had then escaped from the base with a senior staff member, in a glider, of all things! Apparently the glider had crash-landed out in the forest, but when Anderson and his men had arrived, the pair were long gone.

Anderson still had search parties out after them but Tomkin wasn’t holding out much hope. He would have to assume they would escape, and that they would use the information they had. What he therefore had to do was damage control.

What could the woman have found out? Jack Murray was a senior computer technician and had access to most of the information kept at HIRP, including full technical details of the weapon. He didn’t have direct access but those details were on file, and if the pair knew what they were looking for, it was conceivable they would have found something dangerously revealing.

Tomkin sighed as he wondered what to do. Should he alert all the agencies, label them terrorists and have them picked up? The trouble there, of course, was that they would have the chance to talk to too many people before Tomkin’s own trusted aides could get to them, and whatever information they had would be out in the open.

Tomkin studied Alyssa Durham’s file, trying to assess what she would do. Assuming she had physical evidence with her of Spectrum Nine, would she just run to the nearest internet café and put it all on the web?

His instinct told him that she wouldn’t; people published things on the internet all the time, and most of it was all but ignored. People only trusted information if it came from a reputable source, and that meant the mainstream media. Alyssa Durham would almost certainly contact James Rushton and convince him to publish a full report in the newspaper. She was a professional, after all, Tomkin reasoned. He would still order an instant block on all her email accounts, as well as her website and blog, just in case she did decide to post anything, and he would do the same for Murray too. But Rushton was the key.

Tomkin picked up the phone again to order round-the-clock surveillance on the newspaper editor and his assistants, including twenty-four-hour monitoring of all communications into and out of the Post building.

Satisfied that he had done what he could, he relaxed back in his chair and stared at his own computer, thinking about the additional information it contained.

At least, he thought, they didn’t break in here.

11

Alyssa looked at the man over the small desk, hoping he wouldn’t notice the state she was in.

She had replaced her old clothes, which had been soaked through and muddy, but she hadn’t been able to completely rid her face of the dirt which covered it, nor disguise the two-inch gash on her forehead from the crash landing, not to mention the numerous small scabs which now crossed her hands and knees from the broken glass.

Oh, who am I trying to kid? she thought. Of course he’ll notice.

But strangely, the man paid almost no attention to her as he signed her in to the motel, concentrating instead on his computer. He was obviously watching the news, and seemed to be emailing and texting at the same time. Whatever he was watching, it had certainly got his attention; she just hoped it didn’t have anything to do with her or Jack.

The phone rang and he picked it up instantly, all but ignoring his motel’s new guest. ‘Hey, man, so what do you think?’ he asked, before his eyes went wide in disbelief. ‘You mean you haven’t heard? An entire island was destroyed,’ he said. ‘What? I don’t know, one of the little ones out in the middle of the ocean. An earthquake ripped it in half, and then a tidal wave wiped it off the face of the planet. It’s gone, man. Completely gone. It was little, but it still had thousands of people living there, and they’re dead, man, dead and gone, every last one of them. It’s on every channel. I can’t believe it.’ The man seemed so wired Alyssa wondered if he was on drugs of some kind.

He held out the cabin key for Alyssa, who took it and turned to leave, still listening to the conversation behind her.

‘So what do you think, man? I mean, do you think we’ve had it? Is it gonna be the end of the world?’

And then Alyssa was gone, terrified by the thoughts which were flying through her mind.

Jack was waiting for her outside — they’d both thought it best that they weren’t seen together, as Anderson was probably searching for a couple rather than a single individual. Besides which, Alyssa was the only one with money, as Jack hadn’t been carrying anything on him when he’d left his room to find her back at the base.

After the glider had crash-landed, they had both been unconscious. For how long, they didn’t know; but mercifully they woke up before Anderson and his men had made it to the scene.

The glider had gone further than they’d thought; the forest they’d crashed into was not the one surrounding the base but was actually a smaller bit of woodland past Allenburg and over towards the next town. They had managed to make it on foot into town and then buy bus tickets south. They were both busted up pretty bad, but bought some supplies and a first aid kit from a store, and also used the opportunity to buy new clothes. Alyssa had to use her credit card, which she knew would prove where they’d been; but she also knew that when Anderson found the glider it would be pretty obvious anyway.

The bus had taken them on a route south for several hours, Alyssa and Jack fearful at every stop that they would finally be found. Eventually, Alyssa suggested getting off before their final destination. It was possible that Anderson’s men would find the office where they’d bought their tickets and discover the route, maybe even fly someone to the final destination to intercept them.

When they got off in a small town, they quickly managed to hitch a lift, going east to better mask their trail. They knew they had to turn south again eventually, and so when they saw the roadside motel, they’d asked to stop. They would rest the night and continue on in the morning; they were so exhausted that they just couldn’t function any longer without some sleep.

Alyssa waved the key at Jack and gestured over to one of the linked cabins to one side of the horseshoe-shaped arrangement. He nodded and started to walk over.

As they met, Alyssa looked at him, worry and fear clear across her features. ‘We need to watch the TV,’ she said.

‘Oh no,’ Jack groaned as Alyssa unlocked the door to let them in, ‘don’t tell me we’re on there already?’

‘No,’ she said uneasily. ‘I think it might be much worse than that.’

As they watched in horror, everything Alyssa had heard the man say on the telephone was confirmed. The island nation had been destroyed in its entirety last night, every last man, woman and child swept to their deaths by the largest tsunami the world had seen in recent history.

Luckily, because the island was out in the middle of the ocean, and due to the direction of travel, the tsunami had over six thousand miles to go before it hit anything else, and the latest reports were that it had completely dissipated before hitting any major landmass. But the effect on the rest of the world seemed to be electrifying — citizens of every country were up in arms, demanding to know what their governments were doing to save them from similar catastrophes. The doomsday scenarios being preached on the streets of every major city in the world were now being taken seriously even by the conservative media.

But there was one piece of information which Alyssa found even more alarming. ‘Jack,’ she breathed, ‘the earthquake that destroyed the island and created that tsunami started at about two o’clock in the afternoon, for that time zone. Which means it was about eight o’clock at night up here.’

Jack nodded his head. She didn’t have to spell it out for him; it was barely minutes after the radar array had sent that unified blast of pure energy up into the heart of the aurora. He touched her hand and she knew he was as horrified as she was.

What was the purpose of such a device? Who was going to be using it? The obvious answer was the military forces of her own country. But did they have authorization, or was it hidden from Congress, the Senate, even the President himself? And more importantly, just what were they going to do with it? Alyssa still had no idea what the information was that she’d managed to get out of HIRP, or what use she could put it to. She felt her pocket, checking that the flash drive was still safe.

She knew she had to try and get in touch with James Rushton but she was concerned about how to do that. Anderson would surely be watching him now. And probably everyone else at the Post too, she thought uncomfortably.

She needed to relax if she was going to get any constructive thinking done. She stood up and moved towards the bathroom. ‘I’m taking a bath,’ she told Jack, who just nodded, still transfixed by the television screen.

Alyssa leant her head back on to the edge of the bath and luxuriated in the hot, foamy water.

She was thinking now about Jack Murray. It had been years since Patrick had died, and she knew it was silly, but she couldn’t help feeling as if she had betrayed him in some way. Anna, too. What would Anna think? And she started to realize, perhaps for the first time since it happened, why she felt so much guilt in her personal relationships, why there hadn’t been anyone else. It wasn’t because of Patrick; it was because of Anna. Deep down, she hated herself for letting her little girl die. She despised herself, and the years hadn’t lessened the feelings one bit. She blamed herself for Anna’s death, it was her fault, no matter how much counselling said otherwise, and so she’d sabotaged any chance she’d had for her own happiness. This was why she had shut herself off from other people, why even when she went on dates, she was already pushing men away. It wasn’t because she didn’t like them; it was because she didn’t like herself. She couldn’t forgive herself, and wanted to punish herself.

But didn’t she deserve some sort of happiness? Wasn’t it time to let go? She thought again of Jack, and was again hit by feelings of guilt, this time for involving him. What had she done? Basically, she’d ruined his life. He’d really had nothing to do with any of it, and just because he’d been caught with her, he would now be marked for death. Patrick, Anna, and now Jack. It was too much.

But what could she do? The die had been cast. Even if they split up, Jack would still be a target. No, she decided, the best thing would be for them to work together until they cracked this thing. Jack was a computer genius, after all, and might even find some way of contacting Rushton covertly. It was worth discussing with him, anyway.

They hadn’t talked much on the way here, not wanting people to hear what they had to say, but Alyssa could tell that Jack had accepted his lot; it was clear he understood he was a target and he had never even mentioned going alone. She knew it was selfish but she was glad; the truth was, she felt good being with him. Perhaps she liked Jack so much because he had made her forget to hate herself.

She sighed, and slipped her head under the water, the warmth cascading over her face, through her hair.

‘Alyssa?’ she heard him call from the main room. ‘I think you should come and watch this.’

12

Oswald Umbebe was sitting in the newsroom, on a couch across from the anchor, a popular host called Jonny Watts. The title on the screen read, ‘Are the Days of Planet Earth Numbered?’

Alyssa recognized the man being interviewed, it was the same charismatic preacher she’d seen that first day near the city square. He was even wearing the same eye-catching white robe and golden head- and armbands.

She turned to Jack, who seemed to be watching her for a reaction.

‘I saw him once,’ Alyssa told him. ‘Back home, he was preaching after the bats came.’

Jack nodded. ‘Yeah, they seem to be getting something of a following. I’ve been seeing news reports that membership is increasing by the thousands.’ He stopped talking as the interview began on the small screen in front of them.

‘So, Oswald,’ Watts began. ‘May I call you Oswald?’

Umbebe smiled graciously. ‘You may call me whatever you wish,’ he said, and Alyssa was again struck by his deep, melodic voice. ‘As you know, I believe that we are all destined to die — very soon — and so names and titles have ceased to be important.’

‘And yet you are still the “high priest” of your order,’ Watts pointed out.

Umbebe raised his hands. ‘What can I do? I have responsibilities that I cannot avoid. I want to live my life in a positive manner until the end.’

‘But you are recruiting,’ Watts persisted, ‘are you not?’

‘We are,’ Umbebe confirmed, ‘and I think I understand where you are going with this.’ He smiled at the presenter. ‘You are trying to suggest that our order is attempting to capitalize on recent events, yes? That we are in some way trying to profit from this calamity.’

Watts held Umbebe’s gaze. ‘Are you?’ he asked.

‘What do your reporters tell you? If they have done their research, you will know that we receive no financial contributions from our followers. What then would our purpose be?’

‘To be honest, that’s what I want to get to the bottom of. What do you want?’

Umbebe sat back on the couch, relaxed. His mode of dress, in stark contrast to that of Watts and utterly ridiculous in most circumstances, seemed to be the perfect choice for the man; he radiated confidence and charisma.

‘I want everyone to accept the inevitable. I want everyone to accept the fact that they — we — are all going to die. All of us. It is a cycle, you see.’ Alyssa was hypnotized by him, just as Watts seemed to be. ‘The world’s eternal cycle. The earth was created, and it is designed to go through cycles of destruction and regeneration, until it is finally sucked into the sun and obliterated in its entirety. But until this final ending — possibly billions of years away — it must still be periodically purged.

‘We have seen this happen many times over the millennia. There is a great cataclysm, resulting in mass extinctions, the end of life as it is known at that time, and this is then followed by a period of renewal, of regeneration.

‘Just consider everything we experience directly in life. We are born, we live — through various ups and downs — and then we die. Day turns into night, turns back into day. The sun rises, the sun sets. The tide comes in and it goes back out. Blood circulates around our bodies. If it stays still, it stagnates and dies. Every single cell in our bodies is destroyed and regenerated on a six-year cycle. Do you disagree with any of this?’

Watts just shook his head, entranced by Umbebe.

‘Well, why is it so hard to accept that the earth itself follows just such a pattern? My order has charted each mass extinction event over the course of millennia, and we have predicted that the next will occur this year. We are certain of it. But I do not say these things to frighten, only to educate. Do we try and hold on to the cells in our bodies? No, we do not. We let the body get on with it, and regenerate itself. We, too, should not get in the way of the earth as it purges itself. It is necessary.

‘And so you ask me why. Why do I recruit for the order if not for financial gain? I will tell you why. I recruit so that the people of earth can understand what is to happen, so that they can welcome it, rejoice in it, be a part of it. And I want to tell people, do not be afraid. We are to be sacrificed for a greater good. If we do not die, if life as we now know it is not purged, then the earth will suffer, and this will ultimately bring about its own early death. So, I implore everyone, accept your fate. There is no other choice.’

Alyssa watched as Watts, normally so quick off the mark, just stared at his guest, contemplating his words.

‘This man seems so sure of himself,’ she said in wonder. ‘But why?’

‘I don’t know,’ Jack said. ‘Maybe he’s crazy. Do you think there’s anything in it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, you know,’ Jack said, shrugging his shoulders, ‘do you think he might be right? Do you think the world follows cycles, and needs purging?’

Alyssa frowned. Did Jack believe it? She hoped not. ‘Listen, Jack, whether the earth needs purging or not, the premise of his beliefs is wrong. I mean, all these cults and sects, they’re saying these things because they think the earth itself is rebelling. Well, we’ve now got strong evidence to show that this just isn’t so. A lot of these recent strange events can be explained by the covert Spectrum Nine programme, whatever the hell it is, which was developed at HIRP. All of this “end of the world” nonsense will be killed off once we publish what HIRP is up to.’

Jack nodded his head, thinking it through. ‘I guess you’re right,’ he said eventually. ‘But you’ve got to admit, he makes a great case, doesn’t he?’

Alyssa had to agree. ‘He’s very persuasive, I’ll give him that. But at the end of the day, he’s wrong. And we’re going to prove it.’

‘We?’ he asked, and Alyssa was relieved when his serious expression broke into a smile.

Alyssa returned the smile, grateful hands finding his, holding them tightly. ‘Thank you, Jack,’ she said. ‘And I’m so sorry for getting you into this.’

He shrugged. ‘Hey, what’s done is done. And now I’ve got to help you if I don’t want to end up dead. But that means we’ve got some work to do. First we’ve got to find out what’s on that flash drive you’ve got.’

Alyssa nodded, just as the windows exploded around them in a hail of concentrated gunfire.

13

Anderson watched with grim satisfaction as the front of the motel room was obliterated by the small-arms fire of his men. His assault team had nothing larger than a single tripod-mounted machine gun, but the assault rifles the rest of his soldiers carried were all set to fully automatic and were capable of terrifying levels of destruction on their own.

If the frontal attack didn’t kill them outright, if — by some small chance — they managed to survive and tried to escape through the rear windows, then a secondary team was there lying in wait for them.

After finding the empty glider, Anderson had almost lost hope; but he was not accustomed to failure, and would keep going until his mission was complete.

It hadn’t been hard to figure out where they’d go from the crash site; the next town was less than a mile away. Anderson had already tagged Alyssa Durham’s credit cards and he knew as soon as she used one. They’d missed her in town by bare minutes.

Interviews at the local transport hubs had revealed where they were headed soon after, and Anderson had immediately scrambled a helicopter from the base to follow the bus.

Conscious that the chopper could be overheard by his prey, Anderson ordered the pilot to fly high and use infrared and optical recording equipment to monitor the vehicle below. The footage was relayed directly back to Anderson, who followed from a distance, loaded up with his men in a convoy of jeeps and SUVs.

He watched a live feed as Durham and Murray got out of the bus and hitched a lift east, saw them eventually get out of the car at the motel, and Durham go into reception while Murray waited outside. He even saw which room they both went into.

He was on the scene not long after, and had spent the next hour setting up the operation. He spoke to the guy at the front desk, who then went door to door to the rest of the rooms, asking everyone to vacate the property, while Anderson’s men positioned themselves for the assault.

The owner wasn’t there, but Anderson called to explain the situation, and although he could tell the man wasn’t happy, Anderson had given him no choice; besides which, the federal government would cover the cost of repairing the man’s business.

The young guy working there had shut himself in reception ever since the shooting started, wanting to dissociate himself from the whole affair. Anderson couldn’t blame him really; he knew it was going to be messy.

Alyssa pulled Jack to the floor as soon as the first rounds started flying, huddling close to him, trying to flatten herself on the ground as much as physically possible. It brought back instant, fear-inducing memories of full-scale attacks back in the Middle East. But she remembered the advice of the troops she had been shadowing, how she should try and push herself so low it seemed as if she was going through the floor.

As they waited there, heads down and breathless, her mind was racing. The fire all seemed concentrated to the front of the room. Which left—

‘The rear?’ Jack asked, panic all over his face. ‘Maybe we could try and get out of the rear windows?’

Alyssa shook her head. ‘No. That must be what they want us to do, they’ll have soldiers out there waiting for us.’

‘What then?’

Alyssa could see that Jack was on the verge of losing it, and she couldn’t really blame him; she had felt much the same the first time she had experienced heavy gunfire. Although back then at least she’d had armed soldiers protecting her. Here, they were on their own. She didn’t even have clothes, having left the bathroom in a towel and a robe.

Think, Alyssa, she ordered herself. Think!

‘What’s that?’ Jack asked, pointing across the floor. Alyssa followed his gaze, and saw what he’d noticed. From this perspective, so low down, she could see that the room’s rug was pulled back at the corner, and underneath it… Yes!

‘Trapdoor,’ she said.

She knew that in climates where the winters were very cold and the summers quite hot, buildings could sink into the ground when the frost thawed. Many structures were therefore supported on stilts to give some ground clearance, and a space for the building to ‘settle’ in such conditions. She hadn’t realized that the motel had this, as the raised portion was disguised from the front by a wraparound veranda. She could only hope that Anderson and his men didn’t know about it either, and that the motel owner hadn’t told them.

‘Stay here,’ she whispered to Jack, crawling low across the floor to the foot of the bed. She took a deep breath, summoning her courage to raise a part of her body into the firing line, and quickly shot an arm up towards the bed, pulling down her jeans and blouse in one swift movement. The clothes weren’t entirely necessary, but the flash drive was in her trouser pocket, and that really was essential.

Clothes in hand, she gestured towards the trapdoor. Jack nodded, and started moving towards it, wood and glass showering him as he went. Alyssa was right behind him, saw as he pulled the rug up and tugged at the trapdoor. At first it resisted, but then it swung wide open. By the time she got there Jack was already through, and he helped guide her down after him.

She tried to position the rug over the door in such a way that it would fall naturally when it was closed, and slammed it shut over them.

Beneath the room, they had enough space to stand hunched over, and Alyssa quickly discarded her robe and put her clothes on. Once dressed she patted her pocket to confirm the flash drive was still there, and then motioned to Jack to move.

The ground was freezing cold under Alyssa’s bare feet, and she could see that Jack was suffering too, although at least he had socks on. The crawl space was dark, only faint light from the roadside neon sign filtering through cracks in the wood.

They were out of the room, but they still had to get away, and they would have to do so with no jackets or boots, in a sub-Arctic winter, with a team of cold-blooded killers on their tail. The trapdoor wouldn’t stay hidden forever. Sooner or later, when they hadn’t appeared out of the rear window, Anderson would order a ceasefire and send his troops in to find their bodies. The hidden crawl space would be discovered soon after.

She thought back to the layout of the motel. The reception was on the far west end of the complex, round the horsehoe, past all the other rooms. She wondered if the cold, dark crawl space would take them all the way there.

‘Come on, Jack,’ she whispered urgently, moving past him and pulling him along, ‘we need to move quickly. I think I’ve got a plan.’

‘Cease fire!’ Anderson ordered after five minutes of fully concentrated fire. The team at the rear hadn’t reported any activity, which meant that Durham and Murray must still be inside. And if they were still inside, they were dead. ‘Section one, move in.’

The motel room was almost entirely destroyed, and the interior lights could be seen clearly through ragged holes in the thick wooden walls. All the windows were completely gone, and Anderson wouldn’t have been surprised if the structure was so weakened that it would collapse altogether in the not too distant future.

He watched from the shadows as his first eight-man section approached the front door cautiously. They expected the fugitives inside to be dead but their training made them inherently careful when it came to approaching the unknown.

They reached the door and Anderson watched as one soldier kicked it open and a pair of men swept into the room from one side, followed by another pair from the other.

There was silence for several long, uncomfortable moments as the section searched the room. Come on, Anderson said to himself. Come on!

His earpiece buzzed, and his hand went straight up to cut out the extraneous noise. ‘Sir,’ the report came through, and the nervousness in the man’s voice told Anderson everything before he said another word. ‘They’re not here.’

The trapdoor to reception was situated in the back office, which was empty. Alyssa and Jack levered themselves out of the crawl space, shivering with cold.

Jack pointed to some coats hanging on the wall, and they slipped them on. There was one pair of boots, far too big for Alyssa but which fitted Jack just fine.

Alyssa pushed the office door slightly ajar and saw the reception desk right in front of her. The man she’d spoken to earlier in the evening was vainly trying to use the computer and make calls, frantically checking the connections. Obviously the lines had been cut.

Jack waited behind her as she crept forward, her bare feet silent on the wooden floor. She noticed that there was a revolver strapped to the inside of the desk — there in case of an attempted robbery — but the man was completely wrapped up in figuring out what was wrong with his electronics.

Within seconds she was right behind him, her first two fingers pushing gently into his back like the barrel of a gun, hand round his mouth. ‘Make a sound and I’ll shoot,’ she whispered in his ear, and she watched as his hands comically went straight up into the classic position of surrender.

Jack raced past her, grabbed the real gun from the desk and aimed it at the young man’s head. Alyssa moved past him, blowing imaginary smoke from her fingertips.

The man rolled his eyes to the ceiling, his arms coming down with sagging shoulders. ‘OK,’ he said quietly. ‘What do you want?’

Anderson watched as the car approached from the rear lot, and he flagged it down, seeing the receptionist at the wheel.

The man rolled down the window. ‘The boss is coming in,’ he said to Anderson. ‘He says he doesn’t want me round here any more, wants me to go home. And… I’d really like to go, please.’

Anderson could see the man was scared. He was just a civilian, not used to anything like this. He didn’t blame him in the least.

‘OK,’ Anderson said. ‘But if you say anything about this, I know where you live, and we will come and see you. Do you understand?’

The man nodded his head frantically, and Anderson smiled. ‘Good. So we understand each other.’

He watched the man nod his head again, and wondered if he was about to soil himself. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d seen someone do it, just from a threat.

‘Thanks,’ the man said weakly, and drove away from the shattered motel on to the deserted road beyond.

‘Good job,’ Alyssa said from the passenger footwell of the vehicle, where she’d lain hidden, the revolver pressed up into the receptionist’s crotch.

She removed the gun, hearing a genuine sigh of relief as she did so, and slid up into the passenger seat just as Jack emerged from the rear footwell on to the back seat.

Alyssa felt sorry for the guy but it had been their only way out. He was never in any real danger though; she would never have used the weapon on an innocent man.

As she watched the empty road open out before her, she wondered how long it would be before Anderson realized that the boss wasn’t coming into work and that the receptionist had just escaped with two high-value fugitives in his car.

She hoped it would be long enough.

‘What do you mean the chopper can’t fly?’ Anderson demanded.

‘Weather’s taking a turn for the worse,’ the pilot replied. ‘Going to be coming down hard. I need to get back to base before I’m stranded here.’

Anderson put down the radio, his anger threatening to erupt. But he kept it inside, holding it tight, controlling himself. He needed eyes in the sky but it looked like this just wasn’t going to be an option.

He’d finally put it all together, and was furious with himself for allowing them to pass out of the area right in front of him. Durham and Murray had at least twenty minutes’ head start on them, which would be hard to get back, especially if the weather was going to get worse like the pilot thought.

There was another option, though, Anderson thought as he reached reluctantly for the radio and asked to be put through to the local highway patrol.

‘That’s a roadblock up ahead,’ the motel receptionist said fearfully, already letting up on the accelerator.

‘Ram it,’ Alyssa instructed, having already seen it. It was just two cars, and driving right through it was undoubtedly their best option.

‘I’ll put my belt on,’ Jack said, sitting back quickly into his seat.

But the fear was too much for the car’s already nervous driver, and in a fit of panic he wrenched the wheel sideways, pulling the car across both lanes of the highway.

In the back, Jack had still not managed to put his belt on and sailed into the door, which sagged open. The car hit the kerb hard and the man pulled the wheel again, and then the door flew open completely. Jack spiralled out across the roadside, finally rolling to a stop in the snow.

One of the police cars was already heading towards them with four armed officers inside it. Alyssa whipped the revolver across the receptionist’s head, knocking him out cold. With his feet still on the pedals, she turned the steering wheel across the other way, pulling the damaged vehicle back on to the highway.

She looked out of the window, saw that Jack had regained his feet and was heading away into the treeline, trying to lead the police away from her. He turned to her, the police car now between them. ‘Get going!’ he called. ‘I’ll see you back home, at the café in the picture in my office!’

And then he was gone, legs pumping through the snow, away into the trees, the cops moving in towards him from the other side.

With Jack gone, Alyssa dragged the unconscious man from the driving seat and took his place, gunning the engine and accelerating hard towards the roadblock’s remaining police car.

Seconds later she was through, leaving the other vehicle spinning in her wake, her own car severely damaged but still going, and as the cops opened fire behind her, she pressed the pedal even further, accelerating away from the scene.

She could only pray that she would see Jack again.

Oswald Umbebe’s pain was back, sharper than ever. And yet it seemed a blessing in its way, keeping his mind sharp, his appreciation for life vital. He pushed his medicine to one side, untouched.

He was a busy man, dealing with every aspect of his operations. He had followers in every nation, and their preaching — on the streets, in the few churches they owned, even on television and the internet — had to be guided, moulded, in the way he wanted. They were priests of the order but they still required guidance, especially now as the flock grew and grew with every passing day. Since the statue had moved, millions of believers had been recruited into the Order of Planetary Renewal. Umbebe knew it would do them no good physically — everyone was still destined to die — but at least they would understand why, and this would give them comfort in their last moments. They would see themselves as self-sacrificial martyrs, not helpless victims, and this would make all the difference to them. Instead of fear, they would feel joy.

And there were still many other aspects of his work he needed to keep on top of — intelligence briefings, reports from his agents around the world, which required him to modify and adapt his various plans.

He coughed up a little blood as the phone rang, and wiped it away with a handkerchief as he answered.

He remained silent as he listened to the report from the other end of the line. He had seen the news stories, of course, but this was further confirmation, what he had been waiting for: the weapon was ready, and the next phase of his plan could finally be put into operation.

But then came the bad news, and Umbebe listened as the caller explained what else had happened. He was silent for several long, painful moments as he digested what he heard. It was damaging, yes, that much was true. But the situation was perhaps still salvageable. His keen mind worked things out in instants, and he described the new plan to the caller. As always, improvisation was everything.

He replaced the receiver and smiled.

It was the smile of a man who knew that victory was just around the corner.

14

By the time Alyssa got back to the city, she was exhausted both mentally and physically.

She’d had to abandon the car eventually, and had then hitch-hiked her way southwards, a laborious and painful journey made worse by her justifiable paranoia that Anderson and his men could be waiting for her at any stage.

She was also unable to use her ID or credit cards, and after buying a cheap pair of shoes had to rely on the meagre cash she had left to feed herself snacks on the way. Until the last driver, at least. The woman had been so understanding towards Alyssa’s invented story of fleeing from an abusive husband that she’d gone straight to a teller machine and withdrawn a large sum of cash, pushing it into Alyssa’s hands, demanding that she take it.

But now she was back, where was she going to go? Anderson would have people at her apartment and at the office. She daren’t risk contacting James Rushton, as they would no doubt expect her to do this and have his phone lines bugged.

Everywhere she went in the city she saw soldiers in full body armour, assault rifles at the ready. She’d never seen anything like it, and asked a man working at a news stall what was going on.

The old man looked surprised, peering up at her from his mug of hot coffee. ‘You’ve not heard?’ he asked. ‘Oh, well, it’s really only kicked in during the past couple of hours.’

‘What’s kicked in?’ Alyssa persisted.

‘Full martial law is in operation,’ he told her, ‘at least in this state. A few others too, although it’s not national yet. But the city’s pretty much under siege from rioters, protesters, you name it. The National Guard were called in, then the regular army. It’s happening all over the country.’

Alyssa had seen signs of increased military activity during her long drive south, but nothing like this. She thanked the man and left.

She wondered whether there was the manpower to launch martial law everywhere. Surely there was a limit. And what if the soldiers started to ask questions? What if some of the commanders began to believe in this end-of-the-world talk? She shuddered to think of it. As it was, her home had been turned into something of an urban dystopian police state. It terrified her even more when she thought that many of these same people might be actively searching for her.

And yet she had to be here; Jack had told her to meet her ‘back home’, at the picture in his office — the train crashing through the wall of one of the city’s most famous landmarks. The nearest café to that was the Grand Café, a beautiful coffee house situated in the main foyer.

If there was any chance that Jack had escaped capture, she had to try and meet him. She’d got him into this, and she wanted to help him get out of it if she could.

Avoiding the concentrated CCTV surveillance of the subway system, she walked across the frighteningly unfamiliar, militarized city to her destination, hoping against all hope that Jack would be there to meet her.

Four hours and eight coffees later, Alyssa realized that Jack wouldn’t be coming today.

What did that mean? Did it mean that he wouldn’t be coming at all? Had he been captured? Was he dead? Or was it just taking him longer to get down here?

Pushing away her last coffee cup, she rose to leave, vowing to come back first thing in the morning.

But the hours until then wouldn’t be wasted, she thought. It was time to find out just what the hell was on the flash drive in her pocket.

‘So when is the big day?’ asked John Jeffries over the secure satellite link. The Secretary of Defence had been receiving regular updates, but due to the political nature of his job he was always one stage removed from the day-to-day practicalities of the project.

‘I’ll let Niall answer that, John,’ said General Tomkin, who sat behind his desk staring at the live images of the men he was talking to on the dual-screen videophone in front of him.

Dr Niall Breisner cleared his throat. ‘After the successful stage three testing of the device, there just remains some basic system debugging to complete, as well as the final analysis of the test data. But we’re talking a matter of days.’

‘I want the project signed off by the fourth,’ Jeffries said immediately.

‘That’s just six days away,’ Breisner said with concern. ‘Why the sudden push?’

‘We need to deal with matters on a political and tactical level, as well as just technological,’ Jeffries answered. ‘And with our own citizens rioting across the country, it’s been decided that we need to strike soon, get this thing wrapped up immediately. My colleagues feel that if we do not use the device as planned within the next two weeks, we may have a civil war on our hands.’

‘And that,’ Tomkin added, ‘is unacceptable. We’ve started this, and we need to end it. At the moment, we have the political will to go ahead with the plan. How long that will last, we don’t know. John is a strong-minded sonofabitch but we all know people on the team who might not have the belly for what we need to do, especially if it takes much longer. We need to strike while the iron is hot.’

‘The fourth,’ Jeffries stated again. ‘Six days’ time. Can you do it?’

There was silence as Breisner seemed to weigh things up. ‘Yes,’ he answered finally. ‘The device will be ready by the fourth. The plan can proceed as proposed.’

‘Excellent,’ Jeffries said. ‘Thank you, Niall. Our country will soon be a safer place.’

15

Alyssa walked through the main concourse of the central train station the next morning, her head a swirl of conflicting emotions.

She hoped she would see Jack today of course, but she was also horrified by what she would have to tell him if he was there. The information on the flash drive was just beyond belief.

The night before she had secreted herself in an internet café and opened up the disk, poring over the downloaded documents for hour after hour as she pieced together the mystery behind Spectrum Nine and what it might be capable of. What she found was simply terrifying.

She was now disguised yet again but she was more than ever aware of the personal danger she faced. This was actually quite a good location to meet Jack. The central station was as public as any venue in the city, and it was unlikely they would be executed in such a place. It was also secure, guarded by members of the city’s municipal police, National Guard, and the regular army. Alyssa knew that Colonel Anderson was part of that same army, and the station could therefore very well be the lion’s den, but she had decided to work on the premise that the project was not fully authorized, and Anderson’s forces were limited in number. If the project was fully approved and everyone was in on it, she would be arrested or killed soon enough anyway.

She saw a large group of people on one side of the foyer, listening to white-robed preachers of the Order of Planetary Renewal. There were several of them, and they were preaching their message to as many as two hundred people. The armed patrols watched them with curious eyes. Would some of the soldiers pay attention to the message? Alyssa hoped not; the result could well be chaos and anarchy.

She sat down at a free table in the Grand Café and ordered herself an espresso. She’d not slept well; she’d used some of the cash from the friendly woman driver to rent a room in a cheap hotel, but her mind would not relax.

She checked her watch. It was 8.28 a.m. She sipped her drink, wondering if today would be the day. How much longer would she give him?

She had information, but what was she going to do with it? If she approached Rushton or anyone associated with the media, she would be found and killed. Her email accounts had been deactivated, as well as her blog and website.

Could she go to the police? Maybe the feds? But HIRP was an authorized government project. Maybe Spectrum Nine was too. Which meant she would also have to stay clear of federal law enforcement.

She hoped Jack would show up; he might be able to circumvent computer security protocols, get her accounts reactivated, allow her to post some of this information in plain sight, see if anything came of it. But it wasn’t a course of action guaranteed to get results. She knew what they really needed was to find out who was behind the project, something that the documents she’d downloaded did not reveal.

Again, she knew that Jack would be able to help her access the information.

But these weren’t the only reasons she wanted Jack to be there, she finally admitted to herself. She wanted him close to her, simply because of the way she felt about him.

‘Where the hell are they?’ Anderson exploded at Bill Jenkins, his chief intelligence analyst.

‘I’m afraid we just don’t know at this stage,’ Jenkins said apologetically. ‘After they got away from the roadblock, they might have done anything — hitch-hiked, caught a bus, a train; hell, they might still be hiding out in the woods, for all we know.’

‘You’ve got a description out?’

Jenkins nodded. ‘Yes, to those people we can trust. As discussed, we’re not going to widen the loop until we know what they’ve managed to find out, until we know just how compromised we are.’

‘How’s it going with that side of things?’ Anderson asked, calmer now; he knew that Jenkins was doing all he could.

‘We’re just reconstructing the computer records now,’ he answered. ‘We’ll know soon enough what they managed to get.’

‘Good,’ Anderson said. ‘As soon as you find out, let me know.’

‘I will.’

‘Best guess as to their location?’

‘You know how these things go. People on the run typically go back to their home base. Not every time, but nine out of ten. No reason to suspect they’ll be any different.’

Anderson nodded, having come to the same conclusion. He turned his back on Jenkins, picked up his phone, and started to make some calls.

It was just before nine o’clock when Alyssa saw the familiar figure emerge from the subway stairs into the grand marble foyer, striding purposefully towards her.

‘Jack!’ Alyssa exclaimed as he got to the café, unable to help herself. They hugged, and Jack kissed her on the cheek. Alyssa could see that he was exhausted, with a look in his eye that reminded her of a cornered animal — fearful, but in its own way still dangerous.

‘How did you get away?’ Alyssa asked. ‘I thought I might never see you again.’

Jack shrugged his shoulders, taking a seat opposite her. ‘After I got into the treeline, I lost the cops pretty easily. Spent the night in the woods, almost froze to death.’ He grinned. ‘Then I headed back to that first town, thought it would be just about the last place they’d look, and caught a bus again, same as the first time. Had to pawn my watch to buy a ticket, but what the hell. Changed buses a few times, and here I am. How about you?’

‘Hitch-hiked,’ she said, smiling at him.

Jack ordered a coffee, and then Alyssa leant forward and gripped his hands across the table, looking into his eyes with an intensity that he could literally feel. ‘It’s real,’ she said.

‘It’s real?’ he asked. ‘The weapon?’

Alyssa nodded her head. ‘It’s codenamed Spectrum Nine,’ she whispered. ‘They’ve discovered something they refer to as the “ninth spectrum”, a group of soundwaves that can be used to produce controllable fluctuations in the weather. They’ve programmed the radar array to reproduce this soundwave pattern, and when they transmit it up into the sky, they can transfer it across the ionosphere to any point on the globe they want. Nobody else even knows about the existence of this ninth spectrum, which is why nobody can see any link between the strange events that have been occurring. Nobody can detect it,’ she breathed. ‘It’s perfect.’

‘That explains how the statue moved,’ Jack said. ‘One of the only possible explanations was soundwaves, but of a type unknown to current science. This ninth spectrum must be powerful enough to cause the atomic structure of solid state objects to alter.’

‘But who’s behind it?’ she asked. ‘That’s the question we really need to answer. Obviously Niall Breisner is in on it, as he’s the one that’s been signing off on all the testing. And Anderson almost certainly knows about it. But who’s really behind it?’ Alyssa held up her hands. ‘I’ve got no idea. But if we’re going to stop it, we need to find out.’

‘Stop it?’ Jack asked, surprised. ‘I thought you were writing a story on it. Once it gets out, they’ll have to pull the plug. You’re talking as if we have to stop it ourselves.’

She looked at him, her eyes serious. ‘We do,’ she said gravely. ‘They’re going to use it again. We have five days.’

Anderson was with Dr Breisner on the radar field when the call came through from Jenkins back at the command centre.

He tried to control his expression, trained never to reveal anything to anyone who might be observing him, but a muscle beneath his eye started to twitch involuntarily. He tensed his face to get rid of it, but this only made it worse. Damn them. Damn them to hell!

Jenkins’ news was the worst it could have been. He had managed to decipher Murray’s computer files, find out what he and Alyssa Durham had been looking at. And, as Anderson had feared, they had hacked into the secure HIRP database and accessed the classified information about Spectrum Nine. So now they knew everything. Well, everything technical anyway; there was next to no information on the base’s files about how the device was going to be used operationally or tactically.

He would have to inform Tomkin, who may or may not then decide to inform Jeffries. Doubtless Tomkin would throw more men at the task of finding Durham and Murray, before the pair revealed anything.

Anderson just hoped — for his personal satisfaction if nothing else — that his own men would find them first.

16

‘I need to get a look at the data on that disk,’ Jack said over a plateful of food, his suppressed appetite suddenly returning with a vengeance. ‘Maybe I’ll see something that you missed.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ Alyssa agreed. ‘We can’t use any of my resources at the paper but we can hire a computer at an internet café. We don’t need to connect to the web, so they won’t be able to trace us.’

Jack nodded, bowing his head back to his food, and Alyssa watched him as he ate; then he raised his head once more to speak, but something behind her left shoulder caught his attention.

Alyssa tensed as she saw his eyes widen in shock.

Major Rafael Santana was an ex-Special Forces operative, semi-retired and now a unit commander with the local battalion of the National Guard.

He had served under Easton Anderson back when the man was a major, both in central Asia and the Middle East, and they had remained close ever since. Santana had received the call from his old commander just an hour earlier, along with a picture of a man called Jackson Edgar Murray and a woman named Alyssa Durham. These characters were supposed to be agitators, people who wanted to cause some sort of disturbance; home-grown terrorists, apparently.

Anderson had contacted many of his old colleagues, asking them to keep their eyes out for this man and woman, and to ‘terminate’ the subjects on sight if possible. Santana was told that General Tomkin was willing to issue a nationwide arrest order for the man if necessary, but due to ‘sensitive’ issues, everyone would prefer the problem to be wrapped up with a minimum of fuss. Santana hadn’t asked questions; he knew the score. It wouldn’t be hard to kill the pair if it came to it. He could always say that he thought the subjects were armed, and were reaching for a weapon. It happened all the time, and in a nervous, keyed-up environment like the city was at the minute, nobody would bat an eyelid.

And so it was that he had spent the morning scouring the train station for Durham and Murray. He had provided the pictures to his section of soldiers, and they were also out there looking for them. They didn’t know that Santana was going to kill them, but they would alert their chief as soon as they found the pair, and Santana would do the rest.

And there, across the foyer, as arrogant as you could get, the little terrorist scumbag was sitting having coffee with a woman. Who was she? She looked different from the picture, but it had to be Durham.

‘Targets located,’ he said into his two-way radio. ‘Grand Café, central concourse. I’m approaching now.’

He edged forward, past the crowd of worshippers who were taking up one side of the hall, tuning out the white-robed preachers’ messages of death and destruction. He would soon be doing enough of that himself.

As he moved forward he took the safety off his automatic assault rifle, but then he stopped dead in his tracks. Murray had looked up from the table, looked over the shoulder of the Durham woman.

He had been spotted.

Jack saw the soldier headed towards them, watching in disbelief as the man started to raise his rifle to his shoulder, aiming it towards them.

‘Get down!’ he screamed, grabbing Alyssa and pushing her to the floor as the air above them erupted in gunfire.

Jack quickly upended the table, using it as a temporary shield between them and the soldier. Alyssa peered round the edge of the table, pulling her head back quickly as another barrage of high-velocity rounds impacted the steel that protected them.

Jack and Alyssa exchanged looks of terror, but then Alyssa heard a click. ‘He’s empty,’ she shouted at Jack, over the screams of the other patrons of the café, who were running away in all directions, or else cowering behind tables and chairs.

Alyssa grabbed Jack by the arm and pulled him further into the café, through the double glass doors that led to the interior. They heard the glass shattering behind them — the solider must have reloaded — as they raced past the counter towards the rear.

She didn’t know exactly where she was going, but there had to be some sort of rear service access for the café. Jack was looking for the same thing. ‘Here!’ he shouted, pushing through a swing door into the kitchen.

As Alyssa and Jack raced into the busy, hot kitchen, they had to jump over the people who were cowering on the floor, keeping their heads down at the sound of gunshots. They crashed through another door at the end of the kitchen, and found themselves in a long concrete corridor that accessed all of the retail and restaurant units along this side of the terminal.

‘Come on,’ Jack said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

Santana cursed out loud. He’d missed them. Luckily he’d not shot any civilians, but the café was a mess.

He got on his radio instantly. ‘All team members to converge on the main concourse,’ he ordered. ‘Louis,’ he said to his communications specialist, ‘get on to the security chief here, inform him we’re in pursuit of suspected armed terrorists.’

He broke off to shout at the staff and customers of the café to stay down. He looked around, searching for the pair, and saw one of the waitresses pointing towards the kitchen. He peered through the access hatch, saw the door swinging at the other end.

‘Where does it go?’ he barked at the waitress.

‘S-service corridor,’ the waitress stammered.

Santana cursed again, getting back on his radio. ‘Team members to enter eastern service corridor,’ he shouted as he ran through the kitchen, kicking the door open at the other end.

He turned into the passage and saw the man and woman racing away, footsteps echoing off the concrete. Immediately he opened fire again, spraying the corridor with bullets.

Alyssa heard the door opening behind them and instinctively grabbed Jack and dived for the floor. Keeping low, they started to crawl. She heard boots pounding behind them. Then another sound echoed from in front, and she looked up to see three more men enter the corridor ahead of them, rifles up and aimed.

She tried to resist as Jack pulled her up off the floor, flinching as the soldier behind and the three in front opened fire, concrete erupting around her as the high-powered rounds chewed up the passageway.

Santana watched as Murray managed to pull the woman up, narrowly avoiding the gunfire as they slammed through another access door. Dammit! Where the hell did that door lead?

‘Louis,’ he spoke over his radio, ‘do we have CCTV feeds through here?’

‘Negative,’ Louis reported. ‘No surveillance in the service areas.’

‘Schematics?’ he asked as he ran down the corridor, meeting his colleagues at the access door. ‘Blueprints?’ He signalled his men to get after the targets.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ came the reply.

His men kicked through the door into the room beyond, guns at the ready. There was a yell as the first man to enter the dark chamber tumbled down a flight of stairs. The second man flicked on a torch and shone it down the narrow staircase.

When the soldier came to rest at the bottom, Santana had no sympathy. ‘Joe,’ he called down after him. ‘Can you see anything down there?’

Joe got unsteadily to his feet, turned on his torch and scanned the area. ‘Nothing,’ he called back up. ‘There’s nothing down here.’

Damn. Santana took out his cell phone and called Colonel Anderson.

Idiot. What was Santana doing? Anderson cursed to himself. He wasn’t even airborne yet, still on his way to commandeer the fast jet stationed at the airport which would get him to the city in a little over three hours, and he had to rely on men like this? Santana had been a proven combat vet, once upon a time. Obviously, his time in the reserves had made him soft. The man had lost his edge. Tomkin had wanted to keep things low-key if they could — the less people involved the better, it was felt, which was why Anderson had contacted some of his own people in the city to deal with Durham and Murray. But now he got on to the terminal’s chief of security, a civilian but nominally in charge of all of the units currently on patrol in his building — over a hundred armed men and women. It was time to activate them.

In the dark, Jack and Alyssa had also fallen head over heels down the concrete staircase.

Alyssa had fallen right on top of Jack and bounced off the other side, bursting through another door they may never otherwise have seen. Jack groaned in pain but managed to pull himself to his feet and haul himself through the narrow opening. Once through, he wedged the door shut tight.

This corridor was narrow, and Alyssa could feel both walls with her hands. There was still no light, and she felt her way by touch, ignoring the sounds coming from the room behind them. Ahead she could see a very faint, hazy light. Was it another door? She edged forward cautiously, but no more light came through; it just remained a vague fuzz. Then she bumped into something hard. Her hands went up, feeling ahead of her. Metal. It was another door.

Her fingers quickly scoured the surface for a handle, her hands sweaty now as she heard the door behind her being forced. They’d be trapped like rats if they didn’t get out quickly.

And then she found it, a metal lever. She yanked it up and spilled out through the door, instantly blinded by lights and deafened by the sound of a blasting horn.

Jack grabbed her as the subway train shot past, just inches from her face. Her whole body shook, rippling in Jack’s hands as the high-speed vehicle blasted through the tunnel.

And then it was gone, leaving her reeling. Jack pulled her round, slapping her face lightly. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We need to go. Now!’

Alyssa nodded her head, forcing herself to regain control. Jack pulled the metal door shut behind them and they raced over the tracks, careful not to touch the electrified rails, heading for the door on the other side of the illuminated tunnel. As they reached it, they saw the lights of another train barrelling towards them, the scream of its engines filling the enclosed space.

Alyssa tugged at the door lever but it wouldn’t move. She felt Jack’s body pressing against her, squashing her against the door, and then the train was going past them. Jack’s body was buffeted by the train’s slipstream, threatening to rip him from the door frame, but he hung on for dear life, protecting her, until the train was gone.

She tugged the lever one more time with every ounce of strength she had left, and at last it opened, on to another narrow access corridor.

They pushed through, running for their lives.

‘We’ve lost them.’

Santana’s words came through to Anderson over the satellite phone, and he clenched his fists in rage. ‘You’ve lost them?’ He struggled to control himself. ‘Could you please explain to me how one hundred armed, trained professionals can lose two untrained civilians?’

‘They got into the subway system,’ Santana explained. ‘There’s no surveillance down there, no way to track them.’

Anderson was disgusted. But he also felt something else — fear. The consequences of the pair escaping were too much to handle. If they got word out about Spectrum Nine, he, Jeffries, Tomkin, Breisner — they’d all be sent to jail. And Anderson was not going to allow himself to be put in jail.

‘Do I have to do your job for you?’ he asked through gritted teeth. ‘If you can’t find them in the tunnels, you monitor the CCTV coverage at the stations and you post your people on the exits for when the pair finally emerge, which they will have to do at some stage. Can you do that?’

Santana replied in the affirmative, and Anderson grunted as he cut the connection. Amateurs. He was counting down the minutes until he could land in the city and take over the manhunt himself.

17

Jack and Alyssa emerged back on to the city streets less than an hour after they’d entered the tunnel system.

For almost thirty minutes they had wandered the concrete service corridors — some lit, others pitch black; some wide, others barely big enough to push through side on. There was no way to navigate and soon they had become hopelessly lost. So when they had stumbled out of a door on to another track, they decided to trace their way down it until it met a platform. Luckily the timing had been good, and they hadn’t had to dive out of the way of any oncoming trains.

As they neared the platform, they heard human voices, dozens of them, raised in anger. A small-scale riot seemed to have broken out. As they emerged from the tunnel they saw people armed with knives and bottles trying to attack a cordon of riot police, who pushed back against them with their shields and batons.

Jack and Alyssa both saw the cameras mounted on the platform walls and instinctively lowered their heads. A train came along then and stopped at the platform. Those who were going to get off here thought better of it and backed away inside as scared commuters pushed and shoved their way on to the train, Jack and Alyssa among them. The doors closed and the train pulled away, leaving the violence and chaos behind.

Feeling safe at last within the crush of other passengers, Alyssa took Jack’s hand and squeezed it.

The next station was much quieter, and there were no armed guards on the platform; perhaps all personnel near the scene of the riot had been called on to help quell it.

Jack and Alyssa stepped off the train and made straight for the ticket barriers. They were stopped by a ticket officer, but Alyssa told him they’d come from the riot on the next platform and had lost their tickets in the confusion. The officer, obviously used to such stories over the past few days, simply sighed and buzzed them through. There were more important things to worry about, it seemed.

‘Where are we?’ asked Jack as they emerged into the bright light of day. Alyssa just turned and pointed across the main road. There, opposite them, was the central park, famous around the world. ‘Well, how’d I miss that?’ he asked brightly, trying to dispel the fear and desperation that had been filling him.

‘So what now?’ Alyssa asked, looking around for cops or soldiers.

‘Right now, we stop a taxi and get the hell out of the city,’ Jack said.

Alyssa nodded. A taxi wouldn’t be monitored in the same way as buses or trains — you didn’t need to buy tickets, for one thing — and the only person who would see you was the taxi driver.

‘A taxi’s fine for now,’ Alyssa said, raising her arm to flag one down, ‘but we might need to ditch it before we leave the city. There are roadblocks and security checks everywhere, and taxis are bound to get stopped.’ She lowered her arm as a yellow cab stopped in front of them. ‘We’ll take it as far as the city limits, then we may have to get past the security checks on foot.’

Jack nodded as he opened the door for her. Alyssa got in the back, and Jack slid in next to her.

The driver turned round in his seat. ‘Where to?’ he asked in a strong local accent. ‘Just so long as wherever it is, you ain’t gotta be there anytime soon, know what I mean?’

Alyssa and Jack smiled. ‘No problem,’ Alyssa said. ‘We can see how crazy things are. Just to the bridge will be fine, thanks.’ She would have liked to go further, but she realized that all choke points such as bridges would be monitored. Damn. How were they going to get out of the city?

The driver turned back to face the road ahead. ‘Damn shame what’s happening to this city if you ask me,’ he said as he indicated to turn into the heavy traffic. ‘But it’s not the first time. I remember when—’

But Jack and Alyssa would never hear what the man was going to say, as the back of his head exploded towards them, his brain spraying through the chicken wire grill and covering their faces with greasy, bright-red blood.

It was a shame he’d had to kill the cab driver, Santana thought as he raced with four of his men towards the car; but he couldn’t afford for the man to pull out and his prey to escape. Not after it had taken him so long to find them.

But now, trapped in an immobile vehicle, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel; he’d simply run over and empty his magazine into the two fugitives through the window.

The pair had been picked up by CCTV footage as they emerged from the tunnel on to the station platform — Anderson had arranged for facial recognition software to be connected to the city’s system in order to quickly identify them. They had tried to hide their faces after they’d spotted the cameras, but by then it was too late.

They were tracked getting on to the train, and then cameras were monitored at the next platform along the route, where they were seen exiting. The station personnel had been sent over to help control the riot, but Santana was there with some of his men on foot in a matter of minutes.

He ignored the screams from fearful bystanders, who threw themselves for cover behind parked cars, and just kept his attention on the taxi, its windscreen now shattered and smeared with blood. His men were close behind him, their own weapons raised.

But then he heard the sound of the vehicle’s engine gunning, and the taxi was moving, not waiting for a gap in the traffic but smashing its way out, knocking another car sideways as it accelerated towards him.

Santana couldn’t help the cry of panic that escaped his lips as he dived to the side, the taxi’s fender missing him by an inch.

Jack cried out he was thrown back into his seat, Alyssa wrenching up on the handbrake as she violently twisted the wheel all the way round.

The taxi slid across the road, oncoming vehicles having to jam on their brakes, as the cab made a one hundred and eighty degree turn. Now pointing in the opposite direction, Alyssa gunned the engine again and accelerated off down the busy city street, towards the oncoming traffic. She kept her hand on the horn, gratified that the cars, vans and bikes were all moving out of her way. She wasn’t going fast, but it was fast enough to get them away from the armed soldiers behind them.

‘Where are you going?’ Jack asked. He pulled the dead cab driver back through the broken grille to the rear seats and climbed over into the front passenger seat.

It was a good question. Where the hell was she going? She could already hear sirens behind her. How far could they hope to get in a stolen taxi without a windshield and with a corpse in the back, in a city that was on full military lockdown?

‘I’ve no idea,’ she said through gritted teeth as she forced the cab onwards, weaving in and out of the oncoming traffic, one hand glued to the horn. ‘But anywhere’s better than here.’

There was a break in the traffic, a slight easing in the number of vehicles coming towards them, and for a time Alyssa managed to surge forwards, travelling parallel to the park. But then the reason for the break became all too clear, and Jack and Alyssa watched in horror as a sixty-ton main battle tank turned a corner on to the wide boulevard in front of them.

‘Are you sure about that?’ Jack asked quietly.

18

The tanks had recently been brought into the city because of the growing unrest, more as a visual deterrent than anything else. It was never anticipated that they would be used but the sight of a sixty-ton hunk of armoured metal with a gun on top that looked as if could take out a small army on its own did wonders for crowd control.

Santana and his men were running down the street after the out-of-control taxi when the regular army M-251 main battle tank trundled on to the parkway ahead of them, its huge 120mm smoothbore cannon aimed down the street at the yellow cab.

Well, Santana had to admit, Colonel Anderson had certainly come through in spectacular style. Anderson was monitoring the situation and acting as the main point of liaison between the different security forces. Santana understood that General Tomkin had given the colonel temporary field command, and he was now authorized to do anything in his power to bring the two terrorists to justice.

Santana had seen what these tanks could do when he’d served in the Gulf. An armour-piercing flechette round had been fired at an enemy personnel carrier, and when Santana had arrived on the scene to arrest any survivors, he had been sickened by what he’d seen. The round had pierced the hull and created a vacuum inside the personnel compartment which instantly vaporized everything organic within it, air pressure sucking it back out of the vehicle. The image of the charred, burnt and bloody remains of the enemy soldiers that were scattered around the carrier had been forever imprinted on his memory. But — despite the devastation he knew such a weapon could create — he now wanted such a result. His eyes opened wide in anticipation.

Alyssa, too, had seen the devastation caused by such weapons during her own time in the Gulf; and she had also seen how the front end of the tanks gave a telltale lift a fraction of a second before they fired.

She kept on driving straight for the tank, even as its barrel swivelled towards them, locking on to its target. Closer, ever closer she drove, waiting for the front end to lift. If she missed it, she’d never know — they would both be dead instantly.

The cab was just four hundred feet away now, then three hundred, then—

The front end lifted and she yanked the wheel hard left. The gun fired, the ground shook with the sonic boom, and the cab mounted the kerb and smashed through a thick row of bushes into the park beyond.

Santana watched in disbelief and horror as the taxi swerved left and disappeared into the park, and the tank’s 120mm high-velocity projectile streaked up the road towards him.

With a yell, he and his men dived for cover, heads down. Santana heard the explosion — could feel the heat from the blast — and when he looked up, all he could see were the smoking, devastated remains of a haulage truck.

He keyed his cellphone to speak to Anderson, unsure what to say, but the colonel spoke first.

‘Don’t bother,’ he said. ‘I already know. I want you and your men to locate transportation and be mobile in case the cab leaves the park. I’ve notified other units as well.’

‘Yes, sir. And the tank?’ Santana asked.

‘The crew has its orders,’ Anderson replied.

‘It’s following us!’ Jack yelled at Alyssa, twisting in his seat to look through the rear windscreen.

‘I know, I can hear it!’ Alyssa yelled back, swerving to avoid a family, then swerving again to avoid a teenager riding a bike.

The sound of the tank trampling bushes, trees and benches was tremendous. Day-trippers, alarmed by the sight of the yellow cab careening through the park, now scattered in every direction as the tank bore down on them.

Alyssa pushed the car hard, jumping hills and tearing through underbrush, all the while struggling to avoid people who still hadn’t fled the park. She gunned it between a gap in a row of high trees, gasping as she emerged on to a softball pitch. There were screams from all over as the players scrambled to safety, spectators dropping down behind their seats.

‘What the hell are people doing out playing softball?’ Jack yelled. ‘Don’t they know the city’s on lockdown?’ He grunted as the car hit a hillock on the far side of the pitch and he was tossed painfully in his seat.

There was an explosion directly behind them, and their car was hurled twenty feet further forwards before it landed, regained traction, and accelerated off.

Jack turned in his seat again and gasped. The tank had driven straight through the line of trees, destroying them, and had loosed off another shell, obliterating the small hillock they had just driven over.

‘I think you’re going to have to drive faster,’ Jack said.

Alyssa just nodded and floored the pedal. There was another row of trees on the left and she yanked the wheel that way, breaking out on to a wide path with the trees providing a barrier between them and the tank.

Alyssa and Jack both let out involuntary screams as another explosion rocked the air. The rear passenger window smashed and they both turned, and saw a tree branch jammed across the back seat. The row of trees was now just a jumble of smouldering vegetation.

They had now almost reached the far side of the park. But what would they find on the other side? Probably more police officers and army soldiers, Alyssa thought bitterly, before she cut the thought off. There was no use in thinking like that. They would keep going until they were stopped.

Santana had put local resources of armed riot police and state troopers at every exit to the park. He was receiving real-time surveillance drone footage and had positioned himself at the most likely exit. He now waited — with his own men, three cars, two vans and twelve state troopers — as the taxi drew near.

He wondered if the tank would be able to get another shot off before the cab left the park. If it did, that would be great — Santana would see the cab and its occupants destroyed before his very eyes — and if not, then Santana would just have to do it himself.

‘We’re not going to make it,’ Jack breathed. He could see the exit block ahead, and behind them the tank was tracking its barrel to aim at them again.

‘Just keep watching that tank,’ Alyssa said, ‘and let me worry about the roadblock. Watch the front end, and shout loud when it lifts.’

‘What?’ Jack asked in confusion.

‘Just do it!’ Alyssa yelled, struggling to keep the car straight on the gravel path.

The park exit was just a quarter of a mile away, a ten-foot-wide open gate in the middle of an eight-foot-high steel fence.

‘It’s on the path!’ Jack cried out next to her. He knew that once its position was stabilized, the tank would fire on them again.

Alyssa ignored him.

‘Are you going to ram them?’ Jack asked. ‘There’s no way this little thing can break past all of them. What are you doing?’

‘Shut up, Jack,’ Alyssa snapped. ‘Just tell me when that front end lifts!’

They were so close now, just a hundred yards away.

‘Now!’ Jack yelled.

Instantly, she jerked the wheel to the right, careening off the path on to the trimmed entrance lawns. The tank’s 120mm shell streaked past them and through the open gateway, obliterating the waiting police vehicles. The air around them was filled with flame and heat but Alyssa kept her mind focused and her hands gripped tight to the wheel.

Jack turned from the scene of devastation outside the park exit to look where the cab was headed. He barely had time to close his eyes before the taxi hit the steel fence at sixty miles per hour.

As soon as Santana had seen the taxi swerve right, he had leapt to one side himself; he had seen this happen before.

And then all hell was let loose as the tank’s high-explosive shell hit the lead van head-on, destroying it totally, bits of metal shearing across space into the other vehicles, flames bursting across the open space and igniting the fuel that spilled out from damaged engines until the whole damn area was on fire.

He watched helplessly as state troopers rushed to carry the injured to safety, straining his eyes through the twenty-foot high flames to see what had happened to the taxi.

The impact knocked Alyssa’s breath right out of her, but the robust cab managed to smash through the steel fence with an almighty crash, the speed of the vehicle dropping from sixty to thirty miles per hour as she bumped on to the northern parkway.

The front end of the cab was crushed, a steel railing embedded in the engine, but it was still moving. Alyssa pulled the wheel to the right to straighten the car but it didn’t respond. She tried to turn again, harder, but the cab wouldn’t turn with her. The wheels were locked in place from the impact.

Ahead, the concrete bulk of a skyscraper loomed. She tried to let up on the accelerator, switched her foot to the brake, but it was no good; the yellow cab was still travelling at twenty miles per hour when it hit the building head on.

Santana watched as the taxi hit the one-hundred storey skyscraper. Yes. Then he saw the tank appear at the edge of the park, its turret-mounted gun aimed at the stricken taxi.

He counted the seconds until the gun sounded its ferocious sonic boom once more, almost giving a little hop as it did so. The taxi disintegrated; the roof popped off and the doors exploded outwards while the rest of the chassis collapsed inwards in a fiery, smoking ruin.

Santana let out a sigh of satisfaction.

It was over.

19

Secretary of State John Jeffries strode out of another emergency cabinet meeting, keen to get back to his office to check up on the current situation.

The meetings had been coming thick and fast over the past few days. Decisions had to be made about the involvement of the armed forces in city security, disaster prevention and recovery, emergency protocols activated to ensure uninterrupted chain of command, protection of the national infrastructure prioritized; the list was endless. Endless, and endlessly tiresome.

Jeffries was not overly concerned, for he knew the truth — there were not going to be any more disasters. Not in their home territory, at least. Jeffries knew that the cabinet was worrying without need — it was their own country that now controlled the ability to create disaster. They had nothing to fear.

There was the civil unrest, of course. But the military would easily be able to control that problem if local police could not.

The only fly in the ointment now was this pair of characters on the run from Colonel Anderson. Jack Murray, a computer technician at HIRP, and Alyssa Durham, an investigative journalist, which was a much more terrifying prospect.

General Tomkin, through Anderson, had already ordered the targets to be executed on sight, and Jeffries had spent the meeting biting his fingernails in anticipation. He didn’t want to risk communicating with Tomkin or Anderson via his cellphone, and knew he would have to wait until he could use the secure landline back in his office. As the meeting dragged on, he could feel his ulcer starting to burn his stomach.

But now he was out. He walked purposefully down the stately corridors of the Senate building, and two minutes later he passed his secretary in the outer office and pushed through into his inner sanctum without a word.

He sat down at his desk and dialled Tomkins’ secure line. It was picked up after just two rings.

‘John,’ the voice on the other end of the line said. ‘I thought I’d be hearing from you earlier.’

‘I’ve been stuck in a damn meeting all morning,’ Jeffries fumed. ‘Status report?’

‘The news is both good and bad,’ Tomkin said cagily.

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning that Murray and Durham are still alive, but we have them contained.’

‘Contained how?’

Tomkin gave a brief breakdown of how the pair had escaped, without revealing too much about how one of the army’s tanks had all but destroyed part of the city. ‘It seems they were able to make it out of the cab before the shell hit and entered the foyer of the Landers Building through one of the shattered windows.’

‘And where are they now?’ Jeffries demanded.

There was a pause, almost as if Tomkin was checking real-time surveillance — which Jeffries presumed he was — and then he spoke. ‘They’re on the fifteenth floor, running up the stairwell.’

‘What assets do we have there?’

‘We have thirty armed police officers in the lifts and on the stairs getting after them right now, and we also have a full SWAT team en route. We have snipers placed in the park and buildings opposite to take them out if they appear in the windows, and we have a special ops team coming in via chopper to land on the roof and enter the building from above. They’re not going to escape,’ Tomkin said confidently.

‘This Durham,’ Jeffries said, ‘this journalist. Can we be sure she can’t get her story out before she’s caught?’

‘We’re monitoring all communications into and out of her offices, and also the private cell of James Rushton, her editor. We’ve also cut all communications links to the Landers Building, and to that entire city block. Even when she’s finally cornered and tries to get the message out, she won’t be able to do anything.’

‘And Rushton?’ Jeffries asked next. ‘What does he know?’

‘We’re unsure,’ Tomkin answered. ‘We assume that she infiltrated the HIRP base with Rushton’s knowledge and consent, and obviously he might be suspicious that he hasn’t heard from her since, but we think it’s better to leave him hanging, see what we can learn from him.’

‘Are you evacuating the Landers Building?’

‘No. At the moment we have the pair confined to the stairwells. We’ve locked the access doors through the building’s security mainframe, so they’re trapped. If we evacuate, we’ll have those same stairwells clogged with about two thousand people, and our targets could well escape in the confusion.’

‘OK. As you say, it’s good and bad. I can live with that. Just don’t let it get any worse.’

Jeffries ended the call and sank back into his leather chair, holding his stomach. He reached for his medication, wondering when the stress would ever end.

20

Alyssa was breathing hard now, Jack still behind her as they sprinted up the stairwell.

In her prime, running up the stairs all the way to the top would have been just a good morning’s workout to her. Now, however, she felt as if her heart was about to leap out of her chest, and her legs were on fire, lactic acid building up in her thighs to excruciating levels.

Still, she was doing better than Jack, who really seemed to be struggling. He was naturally fit and athletic, without the excess fat people often accumulated from too much time spent behind a desk, but he obviously didn’t get out and exercise too often.

They were both somewhat the worse for wear from the impact with the building. Twenty miles per hour wasn’t exactly a high-speed crash, but it had been enough to loosen a few fillings. Alyssa had smashed her head against the steering wheel, and it was bleeding profusely. She wondered if she was concussed, as she was starting to feel dizzy. Jack had damaged his legs, jamming them up against the dashboard as the cab hit the wall. The injury to his shins and knees would do nothing to help his chances of escape.

They reached the twenty-fourth floor. ‘How about… that one?’ Jack wheezed behind her.

She reached for the handles of the big double doors and pulled, but the result was the same as it had been on every other floor. ‘Locked,’ she called down to him. ‘Let’s keep going.’

She waited for him at the landing, then took his arm to help him onwards. She could tell he wanted to refuse her help, but the pain in his lungs and chest gave him no choice.

The twenty-fourth floor. Only seventy-six left. Not that it seemed likely they would ever get to the top floor; Alyssa could hear the heavy boots and shouts of the men below her — armed, and no doubt ordered to kill them on sight. And she was under no illusions about finding any of the remaining doors above them open; it was obvious that the building’s security system had locked it down tight. The only way they would open now would be when more police officers or soldiers — who were undoubtedly racing ahead of them in the fast elevators — entered the stairwell from above, trapping them finally and fatally.

But it was not in Alyssa’s nature to give up; she would not surrender, not while there was breath left in her. She’d tried to call James Rushton both at the office and on his cellphone, but her own phone was dead. She realized that all communications must have been cut off, and she would be unable to contact anyone. There were probably snipers observing the building, but at least there were few windows in this service stairwell; they crouched low every time they passed one, and Alyssa wasn’t sure how much longer Jack would be able to keep it up.

On the twelfth floor of the Landers Building’s eastern service stairwell, Santana led the troops ever upwards.

Murray and Durham had a head start on them due to the length of time it had taken his people to realize that they weren’t in the vehicle, but the fugitives didn’t have the training he had, he was racing up the stairs two at a time, and they would have been shaken and bruised at the very least from the crash.

According to the latest updates, the SWAT team was still fifteen minutes out, whilst the special ops team that was going to secure the roof was due in ten. Santana hoped he would need neither.

He was leading one section of men up behind the targets, whilst two other sections made their way up in the high-speed elevators. According to the heat sensors that were monitoring the movements of Murray and Durham, they were now on the thirty-second floor. The other two sections were in the elevators on the far side of the building. Having quickly calculated the size of the building, how long it would take for the teams to cross it, how fast the targets were running, and how fast the elevators were travelling, Santana got on to his radio and spoke directly to the section leaders.

‘Exit the elevators on the sixtieth floor,’ he told them, ‘then start sweeping your way down the stairwell. Execute on sight.’

He listened to the dual affirmation, then concentrated on upping his speed. He hoped he would get to them before the others.

Jack paused halfway up one of the flights of concrete stairs, out of breath and panting raggedly. He collapsed in Alyssa’s arms, and she took his weight as he sagged, propping him up against a wall.

‘I’m… I’m sorry,’ he panted. ‘I don’t know if I can… go on.’ Alyssa studied him. He could go on, she was sure. Was he just giving up?

Then she realized. Jack was giving up for her, he felt he was holding her back. He thought she would have a better chance without him.

‘You can make it,’ she told him. ‘And I don’t want to make it without you.’ She didn’t tell him that she didn’t know what she meant by ‘making it’. Her plan, if it could be called that, was essentially to keep heading upwards, but nothing more than that.

Jack looked completely done in, but then something sparked in his eyes. ‘What if…’ He was suddenly focused, his mind switched back on. ‘Let’s get up to the next door,’ he said urgently, pulling forwards.

They came to the next landing, with another set of locked double doors. Alyssa checked the number. The forty-eighth floor. Nearly halfway up.

Jack started to feel around the edge of the door frame.

‘What are you doing?’ Alyssa asked.

‘Trying to find a control panel,’ Jack said. ‘It just occurred to me, the doors must have them, for manual override in case of an emergency.’

His fingers found the panel, which was hard to see in the reflected white paint on the surrounding wall. He pulled with his fingers, but the panel wouldn’t move. He drew back his fist and punched through the wooden cover. He clawed away the broken wood to reveal a computerized control panel underneath. He tried inputting some codes but they were rejected instantly. ‘Damn,’ he breathed. ‘They’ve really got it locked down.’

‘What’s the plan if you manage to get through?’ Alyssa asked.

Jack continued to play with the controls as he spoke. ‘Our only purpose now is to get this information out, right?’

‘Yeah, I guess that’s right,’ Alyssa agreed. The sound of boots on the stairs below was getting louder.

‘Well, we’re going to get out of this death trap and try and access some computer systems. They may have shut everything down, but I might be able to override their programs.’

Watching Jack’s hands work steadily, Alyssa’s attention was suddenly caught by a noise from above — more boots on the stairs, heading downwards.

‘Whatever you’re doing,’ she urged, ‘do it faster.’

21

‘They’ve what?’ Santana asked, not yet out of breath but starting to feel the first faint signs of fatigue.

‘They’ve exited the stairwell,’ Anderson’s voice came back over the radio. ‘Murray must have overridden the system somehow.’

‘Which floor?’

‘Forty-eighth.’

Santana looked ahead to the next landing, checked the number. ‘We’re there,’ he said, holding up a gloved fist to slow the men behind him. Shouldering his rifle, he approached the door cautiously.

His head snapped up at the sound of boots above him, and he saw the other team hurrying down the stairwell, their own weapons up and aimed.

Santana signalled them to stop.

‘Do we have their location?’ he asked next.

‘Negative,’ Anderson replied. ‘This is an office level, approximately thirty separate rooms and over a hundred people.’

Santana said no more and reached for the door handle, the index finger of the other straightened next to his trigger guard, ready to move at any second.

He pulled the handle.

‘It’s locked!’ he said through the radio to Anderson. ‘The damned thing’s locked!’

Anderson cursed. How had Murray done it? They had been pinned, trapped, with no possibility of escape; and now Murray and Durham were free to roam the building, and the state troops were locked in the stairwell!

Anderson immediately got through to the building’s security control room. ‘Get those doors open!’ he bellowed. ‘Right now!’

‘We… we can’t!’ stammered the man on the other end of the line. ‘I don’t know what they’ve done, but the system’s not responding!’

‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ Anderson moaned. ‘You’re telling me I’ve got to send all my men down fifty floors to get back into the building?’

‘I’m sure I can do it,’ the man said nervously, ‘I just need some time.’

‘You’ve got two minutes,’ Anderson barked. ‘If it’s not open by then I’m going to shoot you in the head the minute I walk through your door, do you understand me?’

‘Yes, sir,’ the man said, and Anderson could hear the fear in the voice. If it was possible, it would be done.

‘Santana,’ Anderson said next, back in touch with the leader on the ground, ‘can you break through?’

There was a pause before Santana replied. ‘No, sir. The doors are thick steel units, and we don’t have explosives. The SWAT team would be able to, but they’re not here yet. Besides which, we don’t know if there are civilians on the other side.’

‘OK,’ Anderson decided, ‘split into three groups. Group one is to go downstairs and find an alternative route into the building, group two is to go up and do the same from the roof, and group three is to stay put and wait in case security manages to get those damned doors open.’

Anderson waited for the acknowledgement, then put the radio down, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose as his head began to throb with a dull, heavy pain.

‘Where are we going?’ Alyssa asked as Jack pulled her by the hand through a huge open-plan office, work cubicles on either side of them.

The office workers had obviously been warned that Alyssa and Jack were dangerous and cowered behind their desks, keeping their heads down and avoiding eye contact.

‘An enclosed office somewhere,’ Jack answered. ‘Somewhere with a computer and a bit of peace and quiet.’

Alyssa suppressed a laugh. Peace and quiet? Not likely. Jack had somehow managed to relock the door behind them, but she knew it wouldn’t take long for their pursuers to get through and come after them again.

They turned and weaved through a maze of cubicle corridors, Jack seeking out an office almost like an animal smelling its next meal, using his instincts to guide him.

They came to a wooden door in a long wall on the northern side of the building. Jack pulled the handle and barged through, Alyssa right behind him.

The office was big, with a stately desk holding a flat-screen monitor dominating the space. A large man in a suit sat behind the desk, his back to a huge picture window. Six other people were in the office with him, three sitting on a couch against the opposite wall, two on chairs on the other side of the desk, and one sitting cross-legged on the floor; all obviously hiding out in their boss’s office.

‘Out!’ Alyssa shouted. ‘Now!’

The seven people widened their eyes, and Alyssa could almost smell their fear. She wondered what they had been told. Something to do with terrorism, she assumed; they probably thought she and Jack had explosives strapped to their bodies.

A thought occurred to her, and she stopped the big man in the suit. ‘Not you,’ she said, ushering him back inside the office. Terrorists took hostages, didn’t they? She felt bad about it, but a hostage might make a SWAT team think twice before they blew the doors off and ran in, guns blazing. She hoped.

She saw Jack heading towards the other side of the desk, keen to get behind the computer.

‘No!’ Alyssa shouted to him, gesturing to the window behind him. Jack stopped, understanding instantly. Snipers.

He came back round to the other side, and he and Alyssa dragged the desk further into the office. Once it was at a safe distance from the window, Jack turned the monitor and keyboard round to face the other way and sat down on one of the other chairs.

‘Pass me the disk,’ Jack said, and Alyssa fished it out of her trouser pocket and handed it to him.

As Jack got to work, Alyssa grabbed the sofa by one of its arms and started to drag it across the thick wool carpet, ignoring her hostage who stood off to one side, watching her. She pulled the heavy couch across the doorway. It wouldn’t stop their pursuers altogether but it would certainly slow them down. Especially if she added a little something extra. She looked at the suited executive.

‘Sit down on the couch,’ she told him. He stared at her with disdain. There was no fear in his eyes, and Alyssa knew he must be a man of some power and, hopefully, some importance. Eventually, he grunted and reluctantly lowered his hefty frame onto the couch, which creaked under his weight.

Alyssa sat down in a chair opposite him, keeping herself away from the windows. ‘Look,’ she said to him, ‘I’m sorry about this. If there was any other way, believe me we’d be doing that instead. But there isn’t, and that’s the bottom line. Despite what you’ve been told, we’re not terrorists. I mean, do we look like terrorists? I’m a journalist, my name is Alyssa Durham. I work for the New Times Post.’

There was a flicker of recognition in the man’s eyes. ‘I’ve read your work,’ he said eventually, ‘if you are who you say you are.’ He gestured with his head to where Jack worked feverishly at the computer. ‘What’s he doing?’

‘That’s Jack Murray, and he’s trying to get a line out of the building, open up communications somehow. He’s a lead technician at the High-frequency Ionospheric Research Project.’

‘What?’ he asked.

‘It’s a government research centre which we’ve discovered is a front for a covert weapons programme. That’s why we’re here now, being chased by government agents.’

The man shook his head. ‘Whatever,’ he scoffed.

‘It’s the truth,’ Alyssa said. ‘What’s your name?’

The man seemed to consider not answering, but then thought better of it. ‘Stevens, Ray Stevens. I’m the vice president of York Investments, the multi-billion dollar financial giant whose offices you’ve just barged into. And whatever your reasons are, you’re both in big trouble.’

‘From you?’ Alyssa mocked. ‘We’ve just had to drag your desk away from the window so we don’t get shot by snipers. A stolen taxi we’ve just driven across the park got blown across the street by a damned battle tank. The weapon we’ve discovered is capable of destroying entire countries. And you think we should worry about a fat banker? Mr Stevens, you really need to get over yourself.’

Stevens spluttered, outraged, but then caught himself. ‘A weapon that can destroy entire countries?’ he asked, his interest aroused despite himself.

He watched Alyssa nod her head gravely, then leant forward on the couch. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘They’re in the northern office,’ Anderson informed Santana.

Santana was still in the stairwell, having decided to lead this section. If Murray could unlock and relock them, he was sure the building’s security experts would also be able to do so. And he didn’t want to waste twenty minutes running up and down the stairs again.

Anderson went on to tell him that the pair had taken a hostage, and even more unfortunate was the fact that it was Ray Stevens, one of the richest bankers in the city and a personal friend of the mayor’s.

Good news came next, though, when Anderson reported that security had finally managed to override the door locks; they would be open any moment.

22

There was banging on the office door and Stevens jumped. He quickly recovered himself. ‘They’re not going to shoot their way through with me sitting here,’ he said confidently. He turned to the door and shouted, ‘Hey! This is Ray Stevens! I’m right on the other side!’

The banging stopped, and Stevens turned back to Alyssa with a look of satisfaction.

As Jack continued to clack away at the keyboard, Alyssa scanned the walls of the room. ‘Is there another way out of here?’ she asked.

Stevens hesitated. Eventually, he nodded his head. He gestured over to the side of the office, where some large mahogany bookcases stood in an alcove. ‘Over past the bookcases,’ he said. ‘There’s a private elevator, goes from here up to the executive lounge on the hundredth floor.’

‘Does it go down?’ Alyssa asked.

Stevens shook his head. ‘No, it’s only for the chosen few of us on the executive board. Bit of a luxury gentlemen’s club. Not many people even know about it.’

‘Is there another way down from there?’

Stevens nodded. ‘I guess so. There are four offices like this one, and each has its own private elevator. So there are at least three other ways down, although none of them come down further than this level.’

Alyssa looked at Jack. ‘How are you getting on?’

He carried on typing as he talked. ‘Nothing so far,’ he said in exasperation. ‘I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to get through. I think they’ve shut down the building’s actual external communications hardware on a physical level, not just performed a software command protocol. They’ve pulled the plug, so to speak.’ He looked up at Alyssa. ‘We’re going to have to get our message out in person.’

Alyssa nodded. She could hear activity on the other side of the door. It was time to move, although she had no clear idea how they were going to get out of the building. She motioned Stevens over to the private elevator. ‘Lead the way,’ she said.

Minutes later the three of them stepped out of the elevator into the executive suite on the one hundredth floor of the Landers Building.

Alyssa could scarcely believe her eyes as she gazed at oak flooring covered with rich wool rugs, mahogany-panelled walls hung with works of fine art, breathtakingly turned antique furniture — and this was just the foyer. There were private dining rooms, Stevens explained, a bar area with an entire wall of glass that looked out over the city, a library of rare first editions and antiquarian delights, kitchens and service rooms, and even bedrooms in case the valued executives needed to stay the night.

Alyssa’s eyes strayed to one of the large windows in the foyer, but there was no view today; the hundredth floor was enveloped in low cloud, At least that meant there would be no threat of snipers.

‘That’s strange,’ Stevens said as he walked through the foyer, starting to check through the rooms. He had listened without interruption when Alyssa had explained what she knew about Spectrum Nine. She wasn’t sure if he believed all of it, but his manner had certainly become less antagonistic. And they had all heard the assault team blasting through his office door just seconds after the elevator started its ascent. It seemed clear that while Stevens might not be a primary target, his life was considered dispensable.

‘What’s strange?’ Jack asked, trailing after him.

‘There’s nobody here,’ Stevens answered.

‘Well, they probably went down in the other elevators when this whole thing started,’ Alyssa said, catching up with them in one of the private dining rooms.

‘Perhaps,’ Stevens said. ‘But where are the service staff? This area has over twenty people working here and they don’t have access to the private elevators.’ He grunted. ‘So there must be some other way out. Stands to reason really, though I’ve never considered it before.’

Alyssa and Jack exchanged looks. ‘Maybe directly to the ground floor,’ Jack said hopefully.

Stevens just shrugged his shoulders. ‘Maybe.’

‘Then what are we waiting for?’ Alyssa said. ‘Let’s go and find it.’

‘A private lounge?’ Santana exclaimed with barely concealed rage. ‘Why the hell didn’t we know about that before?’

The cop before him just stared back, unfazed. ‘Who knows? SWAT just got here, remember? You’ve been on the scene for an hour already. Why didn’t you know about it before?’

Santana wanted to punch the puke in the face, but thought better of it. Besides, the cop was probably right. He should have known about it. And yet the executive suite didn’t show up on any of the blueprints to the building, and nor did the private elevators which accessed it. There was just a big open space for the hundredth floor, labelled as still ‘under construction’.

The SWAT team had placed explosive charges round the office door frame and smashed their way in with a battering ram, with little regard to the well-being of the bank’s vice president. Anderson had told Santana to get the job done, whatever it took. When they found the elevator at the back of the office, Santana had instructed one of his men to ask if any of the employees knew anything about it. One man had explained about the private lounge, and how there were three more elevators that accessed it.

Now Santana snapped out orders to his men and the SWAT team, creating four assault sections, one to each of the elevators. They would time their arrivals to coincide, burst out into the lounge foyer and clear the floor one room at a time.

Locking and loading their weapons, Santana and his section of eight men squeezed into the elevator and checked their watches.

One minute and ten seconds left before they would set off into the kill zone.

23

‘Well, here it is,’ Stevens called to the others, standing at a large concealed panel in the main kitchen, much like the panels that were used to disguise servants’ access corridors in the large houses of the past.

‘At least I think it is,’ he added. ‘There’s a control pad right next to it, the same as next to our own elevators.’ He sighed. ‘The trouble is, I have no idea what the code is.’

Alyssa looked at Jack.

He answered her unspoken question with a nod. ‘It’s going to take about ten minutes.’

They heard a pinging sound from the foyer and raced back to check it out. The light had come on above all four private elevators.

Alyssa turned to Stevens. ‘OK, think. Is there any other way out of here?’

Stevens thought. ‘Well, there is one way,’ he said finally, ‘although I don’t know if it will do us any good.’

Jack gripped him. ‘What is it?’ he demanded.

‘There.’ Stevens pointed towards another elevator door, positioned in a corner of the room behind a huge potted plant.

‘Why didn’t you mention it before?’ Alyssa asked as they raced towards it.

‘Because it doesn’t go down,’ Stevens said evenly. ‘It goes up. To the roof.’

Santana re-checked his assault rifle, making certain the magazine was properly inserted and he had one round chambered, ready to go.

They would be in the foyer in seconds, and he flicked the safety catch of his weapon to the ‘off’ position, watching as his men did the same. Drilled into keeping the weapon safe until a target was identified, the SWAT officers sharing the elevator with them decided to follow normal protocol with their own; but Santana was too far gone now to worry about protocol. The three people upstairs had to die, and they had to die the second those elevator doors opened.

There would be no more mistakes, Santana promised himself as the elevator began to decelerate, weapon coming up to his shoulder as they came to a stop on the hundredth floor.

The foyer’s fifth elevator, Stevens explained, was to access the building’s rooftop helipad. Stevens had to admit that there was no helicopter there at the moment, and he wouldn’t be able to fly it even if there was, but it was mutually decided that it was better to avoid the destruction that was about to be brought down upon the executive private lounge. They would keep heading up, until there was nowhere else to go.

Stevens keyed in the code and the steel doors slid open. Stevens and Jack hurried inside. Alyssa, however, paused, her eyes drawn to the far side of the room.

‘What are you doing?’ yelled Jack, reaching out to yank her inside.

She snatched her arm away, pointing to the bar in the far corner. ‘Is that a radio?’ she asked Stevens.

‘I don’t know,’ the big man snapped. ‘I suppose it could be, the staff use them. What does it matter? Get in the damned elevator!’

Alyssa sprinted across the room. If she got that radio, they would be able to get a message out from the roof. Radio communications were always possible; Anderson and his men wouldn’t have thought of this possibility, she was sure.

‘Come back!’ called Jack, but Alyssa ignored him. She grabbed the radio off the bar top and held it triumphantly aloft.

And then the lights above the private elevators clicked off, the doors opened, and all hell broke loose.

Santana saw Murray and a large, heavy man in a suit — presumably Ray Stevens — in another elevator across the foyer.

As the flash-bang grenades went off, Santana opened fire at them, watching as they hunkered down and hit the elevator button. He cursed as the doors began to close, his bullets ricocheting off the metal surface, noticing Murray’s pained expression as he looked across the room towards…

Alyssa Durham. She was running through the smoke as rounds from the rest of the assault team tore up the oak floor and wool carpet behind her, grabbing a bar stool as she went.

Santana turned his own weapon towards her, watching in disbelief as she hurled the stool at the huge window on the eastern side of the building. The glass shattered and she followed the bar stool, throwing herself straight out of the window, one hundred storeys above the earth.

Alyssa had placed the radio in her belt as she ran, and with both hands free, she swivelled in mid-air and grasped hold of the bottom window ledge. It was wide, made of rough concrete which gave her fingers purchase, but the wind at fourteen hundred feet was strong, threatening to rip her hands off the ledge and send her into the abyss below her.

But the building did have a surprising amount of places where an experienced climber could place fingers and toes. Calming herself, she swung one leg up and levered her body up on to the ledge. She moved to the side of the window and pulled herself upright, fingers sunk deep into the half-inch gaps between the concrete blocks. She shut her mind to the fearsome wind and the freezing low-level cloud, and started to climb.

Santana looked out of the window straight down, but he could see nothing. Then his peripheral vision caught movement to the left, and his rifle came out of the window at the same time as he saw Alyssa Durham’s leg pull round a concrete abutment to the side of the window ledge.

He squeezed the trigger but the rounds ricocheted off alongside splinters of the concrete wall, Durham already safe behind the abutment.

What was she going to do? Hide there forever? Climb to the roof and join Murray and Stevens? The special ops team should have arrived by now but they had hit a delay due to air restrictions over the city and were circling two miles out whist paperwork was sorted.

Santana thought for a moment, then pulled his head back in and ordered men to guard the window while he went further down the wall to another window, to check if the target could be seen from the other side of the abutment.

As he moved down the wall, he called over to the men working at the door to the rooftop elevator. ‘How you doing over there?’

One of the men shook his head. ‘It’s not responding,’ he called back. ‘They must have jammed the doors open up on the roof.’

Cursing, Santana got on the radio and verified the estimated arrival time of the special ops team. The clearance to fly over the city had still not been granted but Anderson was working hard to get it approved.

Santana stuck his head out of the next window but all he could see on this side was another abutment, which meant that she had managed to find a channel between two abutments and was now covered on both sides.

He wouldn’t normally have considered it, but he’d seen the Durham woman putting a radio in her belt as she ran for the window. With that, she might be able to contact the outside world, which Anderson had explained was completely unacceptable.

He called the SWAT officers and his own men into the centre of the room and explained the situation to them; they were going to have to follow Alyssa Durham out onto the building’s exterior.

A plan was quickly agreed upon, and the well-equipped SWAT team began to unravel their rappelling ropes, ready to finish their mission once and for all.

24

When the bullets had come, Alyssa had almost lost her precarious grip on the concrete blocks, at one stage only holding on with two fingers of one hand as she dangled perilously above the cloud-shrouded abyss below. But she had managed to hold on and haul herself back onto the building’s façade.

Her cheek and arm had been cut and torn by concrete chips which had been shot loose from the high-powered rounds, but that only served to increase her focus as she started once again to climb.

Slowly, painfully, Alyssa climbed up the channel between the wide concrete abutments. It should protect her from rifle fire all the way to the top. But what would she find up there? The assault team waiting for her? She had no way of knowing. She hoped Jack and Stevens had kept the presence of mind to block off the elevator doors once they’d hit the roof; if not, then there would surely be a less than friendly welcoming party once she made it up there herself.

When she got to the roof, she figured she’d use the radio to make an emergency distress call. She knew that news agencies routinely scanned the radio waves for such things, and she hoped that hers would be picked up. At the very least, the presence of the media would make it less likely that they would all be shot out of hand.

As her fingers continued to work against the wide edges of the building’s huge block-work, pulling herself as close in as possible to avoid the worst of the buffeting winds, a new sound drifted up to her. The sound of men shouting.

She paused momentarily, trying to identify the words, but she could not. She recognized the tone though; they weren’t shouts of shock or anger, but the shouts of orders being transmitted across open space. She knew instinctively what it meant; they were coming out after her.

‘This is an emergency distress call; I repeat, this is an emergency distress call.’

Anderson looked up as he heard the words coming over the radio network. Who the hell was that? He paused. Alyssa Durham? He shook his head. It couldn’t be. But the message continued, and he knew it was her.

‘Anyone who is on this channel, please listen!’ She sounded scared, desperate, and Anderson knew this would also make her dangerous. Damn it!

‘My name is Alyssa Durham, and I am heading towards the roof of the Landers Building. Police officers and soldiers are trying to kill me, and they are also trying to kill Jack Murray of the High-frequency Ionospheric Research Project, and Ray Stevens of York Investments.’

Anderson started to pace the enclosed confines of the aircraft, his pulse rate rising. He turned to his communications operator. ‘Is there anything we can do to block this?’ he asked in exasperation.

The operator shook his head. ‘These channels are always open, it would take hours to get them blocked.’

Still with one ear to the message, he dialled the number for General Tomkin.

‘We have uncovered a government plot to use HIRP research as a weapon to—’ the message continued, even as Tomkin answered his secure phone.

‘Colonel Anderson, what’s the situation there?’ came the gruff voice.

But Anderson didn’t answer, all his attention focused now on the radio message. He heard Alyssa Durham’s breath catch in her throat, in shock, no words coming now; and then there was a piercing shriek coming through the equipment, and he realized that Alyssa Durham was screaming.

Aboard the special ops chopper, Major Dan Edwards smiled. Finally.

The word had just come through from the state aviation office that they had at last been cleared to fly over the city.

The pilot eased the helicopter out of its circular holding pattern, aiming the nose across the city to the Landers Building just five miles ahead of them.

Edwards nodded to his team. ‘OK, men, let’s lock and load. We have three high-level targets, and it’s up to us to take them out.’ He racked the slide on his personal weapon, putting a round into the chamber. ‘You know the score. No prisoners.’

The radio fell out of Alyssa’s hand as she screamed, grasping onto the ledge above her with both hands and pulling her legs up just instants before the concrete façade below was ripped to pieces by high-velocity rounds.

Without looking back, she pulled herself all the way up onto the next block, instinctively pushing her body further into the left-hand abutment to shield her from the bullets. There was a pause then, and she assumed the men were edging further out onto the building. Without a moment’s hesitation, she used the opportunity to climb even further upwards, hoping the thick cloud might obscure their aim; although she knew deep-down that if they reached the channel, they couldn’t possibly miss.

Santana edged along the window ledge, cursing himself for shooting prematurely, before he definitely had a target.

He looked back at the seven armed men behind him, all joined by the rappelling rope, which in turn was anchored to a table and six other men back in the executive lounge, and nodded at them.

Cautiously, careful not to look down, Santana edged his toes and fingers along the ledge, a slow and painful process that nevertheless brought him closer and closer to his quarry. She wasn’t going to escape this time, he was damned certain of that.

But his mind rebelled at what he was asking his body to do. His conscious mind told him that he was well secured, and even if he fell, he wouldn’t die; but the instinctive side, the part of his inner nature that could never be fully controlled, was horrified by the height of the building, the sheer surface, the fact that they were in the clouds! What had he been thinking?

But, despite the reservations of his subconscious, he drove himself onwards step by step, easing across the surface of the huge skyscraper one hundred storeys above the city streets.

He was close now; so close. Just three more painful, tortuous sideways steps and then he would be there in the channel, and then it would be all over.

Two feet now, and he eased his assault rifle forwards on its sling, ready to aim it upwards the instant he leaned around the corner. He looked back to his men, lined up along the ledge, ready to back him up. He edged the final foot to the corner and nodded to them.

Turning back to the edge of the left-hand abutment, he slowly breathed out, trying to calm and centre himself. He wasn’t going to waste any shots this time; each one would count.

And then he was stepping out off the ledge, easing himself around the large concrete post that was providing his target with her protection. One step, two steps, and then he was there, in the channel.

He looked up, raising his weapon skyward as he did so.

And then his eyes went wide with shock; he never had the chance to scream.

Alyssa had looked down, saw the man’s hands reaching around the concrete abutment twenty feet below. She knew that as soon as he was in the channel, her chances were zero.

At least she’d managed to send something out over the radio; maybe it would be picked up by someone. There really wasn’t anything left to do, and so she decided to take her life in her own hands and not wait to die at the gun of some faceless government thug.

She waited until she saw the man’s head and shoulders swing around the concrete pillar, and then let go her grip of the building. Hands, feet, body; she simply let go of everything and plummeted towards the earth.

Santana took the full impact of Alyssa’s fast-moving weight after her twenty-foot fall, her boots planting themselves firmly into his face on her way down.

The savage impact knocked Santana clear off the wall, his own momentum stripping his team-mates from the wall’s concrete surface after him.

As the men fell into the abyss one by one, already the commands for full brace were being given back in the office, the knots attaching the rope to the table checked quickly as the six officers prepared to take the strain.

Even with preparation, the weight of eight armed men falling to the earth was enough to pull both the desk and the other officers inexorably towards the open window. But then the men got their grip right, the desk hit the window and stayed tight on the frame, and the eight falling men came to sudden, back-breaking halt in a wild, swinging line down the face of the building, fourteen hundred feet above the earth.

Alyssa filled with satisfaction as she felt her boots hit the man on her way down, glad as his grip was ripped from the wall.

The impact with the man’s head served to slow her own fall sufficiently, enabling her to grasp the nearest concrete block with the strong, vice-like fingers of one hand.

Although the soldier had broken her fall, the shock of saving herself with one arm threatened to dislocate her shoulder, and she winced in pain as she swung out over the clouds, trying to numb the pain.

She tried to calm her breath as she watched the momentum of the first man pull all the others away from the wall, and although she was pleased they were no longer a threat, she was also happy that they hadn’t fallen to their deaths but were still secured by the rope; she wouldn’t want all their deaths on her conscience, despite the fact that they were trying to kill her.

She reached up and gripped with her other hand too, then pulled herself higher to get purchase with her feet, her toes straining for grip through the thin leather of her shoes.

She looked down the façade of the building at the soldiers all spread out like ants on a spider’s web, then gasped in horror as the man at the bottom pulled out a pistol from a belt holster and started firing.

Santana had blacked out momentarily when the woman had hit him during her suicidal plunge, although now he had regained consciousness he realized it hadn’t been suicidal at all, but was instead a carefully calculated risk. And one that had paid off too, he noticed in rising anger as he saw the woman clinging to the concrete blocks above him.

His adrenalin making his heart feel as if it was on fire, Santana didn’t even have time to consider himself lucky that the rappelling rope had held, didn’t allow himself to wait until the rope and seven other men had stopped their pendulum-like swing from one side of the building to the other.

Instead, filled now with a murderous anger the likes of which he had never before felt in his life, he processed the fact that he had lost his rifle in the fall and immediately reached for the hand-gun at his waist. Still swinging upside down, battered and dazed, he pulled it free and started firing wildly.

The first two shots hit one of the men above him, the next three threatening the crew on the rope behind the window; but Santana paid this scant regard as he aimed again, fuelled by bitter rage.

As he loosed off round after round, he heard orders being shouted from the window to the men above him on the rope, but he paid them no attention, focused purely on shooting Alyssa Durham to death.

But then he felt the rope pull, jerking his body to the side, and he finally looked up to see the man above him sawing through the rope with his combat knife.

He understood instantly what was happening; he was being cut loose, his actions endangering all the men on the rope. He was being sacrificed to save everyone else.

He gestured with his hands, eyes wide and pleading, offering to put the gun away; but it was too late, the rope was already cut, and Major Rafael Santana’s last words consisted of a single, piercing scream that could be heard all over the city as he plunged fourteen hundred feet to his death.

Dan Edwards ordered his men to check and re-check their equipment, despite the fact that he knew he didn’t have to. The men in his crew were professional through and through, and didn’t have to be told anything.

The chopper was sailing through the clouds on a direct line with the roof of the Landers Building, which was only two miles away now although they still couldn’t see it in these conditions.

The latest news was that two of the targets — the two men, Jack Murray and Ray Stevens — were on the roof, whilst Alyssa Durham, the lone female target, was climbing up the exterior of the building, approximately one more storey from the top.

An attempt to kill her outside the building had evidently gone completely haywire, resulting in the death of the field commander, and Edwards thought again that the men should have just been patient and waited until the real professionals were on the scene to handle things. Special operations forces weren’t given the label ‘special’ for nothing.

When all other options failed, Edwards and his men could be relied upon to get the job done.

‘What the hell’s going on down there?’ Jack asked Stevens, heading towards the roof edge.

‘Hey, I’d get back from there if I were you,’ Stevens yelled over to him. He’d heard the gunfire too, but there was no way he was going to the edge of a one hundred and two storey building to see what it was. So long as nobody was shooting at him, he was happy.

The gunfire stopped then, and another sound started to emerge through the thick, dense cloud. ‘Hey Jack, wait!’ Stevens called again with renewed urgency. ‘Stop!’ he called, even louder, and Jack paused and looked round at the banker.

‘What?’ he asked irritably, keen to see what was happening, aware that any sound was a possible indication that Alyssa might still be alive.

‘Do you hear it?’ Stevens asked.

‘Do I hear what?’ Jack responded, but then grew silent as he began to perceive the noise Stevens had heard. What was it? A slow, steady, mechanical beat. Rotor blades. ‘A helicopter!’ Jack said in panic. ‘They’re sending a damned gunship after us!’

Just fifteen feet below the roof parapet, Alyssa continued to climb steadily, trying her best to ignore the searing pain in her shoulder. Once, she reminded herself, she’d had to make a four hundred-foot vertical descent with a badly broken collarbone. It had been hard, but she’d made it. She always made it. She cut the pain from her mind completely, as she concentrated on making the next foot of height up the building. She would make this too.

The men on the rope below had ceased to bother her, far more interested now in saving themselves, and Alyssa was able to concentrate more fully on her climbing. But then another noise intruded on her, and it was only seconds before she realized what it was. A helicopter.

She looked up at the roof edge above her, just scant feet away, and cursed her bad luck. So near. But she understood that the chopper would be on them within minutes, and they wouldn’t stand a chance.

But, she told herself, if she made it to the roof, at least she could spend her final moments in Jack’s arms. And, with renewed vigour and purpose, she continued to climb.

Jack and Stevens were crouched behind an air-conditioning duct. It wasn’t much of a hiding place but at least it gave them some shelter from the wind. They had wedged the elevator doors open with a long piece of broken metal antenna which they had worked into the sliders on either side. The doors showed no signs of moving.

Jack was staring morosely across the expanse of the rooftop when he thought he saw a hand clawing at the edge. He stared, disbelieving, but it was definitely a hand. He’d raced towards the edge and saw another hand appear, and then Alyssa’s exhausted, beautiful face as she pulled herself up and over the parapet.

And suddenly he was there with her, pulling her up the rest of the way, arms tight around her, kissing her cold cheeks, her lips.

‘Alyssa,’ he breathed. ‘I thought you were gone.’ He embraced her tightly, and she hugged him back, her body still strong despite what she had been through.

And then they both turned towards the sound of a helicopter, hovering just ten feet over the roof on the far side of the building.

‘What the hell are they doing here?’ Edwards exclaimed in fury. WBN News? Who had given them permission to fly?

But dammit, there they were, hovering right over his targets, their cameras on live, broadcasting the scene to the whole damned world.

Edwards’ own chopper was still one mile out, and he got on the radio immediately to Colonel Anderson. He was going to need new orders.

Anderson couldn’t believe what was going on.

Getting permission for the special ops team to fly over the city had stretched his patience to the limit, and it was now clear that it was the mayor’s office that had been the real cause of the hold-up. It seemed that Stevens really was a good friend of the mayor and he was unhappy about how the situation was developing.

That damned newspaper editor James Rushton, too. Anderson wished he had pulled the man in when he’d had the chance. When Alyssa Durham’s distress message had come over the radio, Rushton had seized on it instantly, appealing directly to the mayor for his help and convincing him to keep the news helicopters flying.

The mayor could not withdraw permission for the special ops chopper to approach the Landers Building — Secretary of Defence Jeffries had stepped in and declared the situation to be an issue of national security — but he was still in a position to authorize flyovers by media news crews.

Anderson sighed, and put another call through to General Tomkin.

Alyssa, Jack and Stevens waved their arms at the TV news helicopter, showing the world at large that they were helpless, unarmed. The cameras picked up everything.

And then another helicopter arrived, and Alyssa noted with dismay that it was military. It pushed its way past the civilian chopper — which moved round, cameras still on the scene — and then it hovered over the roof’s expansive flat middle section, dust kicking up high into the air.

None of the three fugitives attempted to flee as the doors of the helicopter opened and a team of eight special operations personnel fast-roped down to the rooftop, weapons up and aimed as soon as they landed; they just raised their arms in surrender.

The media chopper kept on filming, and Alyssa knew that WBN would be sending live footage out over the satellite network. Would they all be gunned down live on TV?

She swallowed hard as the men approached, wondering what orders the soldiers had been given.

Seconds later, the lead man was upon them, hand up to halt the men behind him. He looked at the three people over the top of his assault rifle. ‘Alyssa Durham, Jack Murray, Ray Stevens,’ he announced coldly over the continued thrum of the helicopter rotors, ‘you are under arrest.’

Relief flooded Alyssa’s body so powerfully that she collapsed on to the rooftop.