The Fusion Cage

XLIII

‘You are a very brave lady. I did not think that you would do my work for me.’

Assim Khan looked appraisingly at Mary Meyer, and the body of Huck Seavers lying before her. Mary Meyer slowly got to her feet and glanced at the pistol she had dropped.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ Assim Khan snapped as he kicked the weapon out over the edge of the chamber and into oblivion.

Mary swallowed thickly and began to move around Huck Seaver’s body, hoping against hope that Amber was still watching. Having been sickened by the shot that had hit Huck, now she found herself begging to hear another like it.

‘Who are you?’

‘It doesn’t matter, really,’ Assim murmured. ‘All that matters is that this thing here is removed from play.’

Assim gestured to the fusion cage with the pistol.

‘Saudi Arabia,’ Mary guessed on an impulse. ‘They sent you, didn’t they?’

Assim smiled but shrugged.

‘I’d have come here for Lithuania, if the money had been right.’

Mary’s heart turned cold as stone. ‘Money. You know one day you’ll die, and you can’t take that money with you.’

‘True,’ Assim smiled without warmth. ‘but it makes a life better to have it than be without it. Pick up the cage.’

‘Pick it up yourself.’

Assim shrugged and aimed at Mary. ‘Whatever.’

The shot was deafeningly loud in the confines of the heat chamber and Mary almost fainted as her hands shot to her chest and sought the blood that she felt sure must be pouring from her.

Instead she saw Assim slump down onto one knee, shock on his features as he turned to aim down the stairwell behind him. From nowhere a dark haired Latino woman burst into view, one heeled boot smashing into the pistol to send it spinning from Assim’s hand out across the chamber. The pistol skittered past Mary and flew out over the edge of the tower.

Lopez slammed into Assim and sent him sprawling across the floor as she shouted at Mary.

‘Run, now!’

Mary, stunned and uncertain, turned instead for the fusion cage and lunged for the control switches on its side.

Aaron Mitchell got out of his vehicle at the control centre even as he heard the sirens approaching from the far distance. He could see the flashing lights of a stream of law enforcement vehicles rushing toward Crescent Dunes, and he knew that behind them would be helicopters and probably the media too.

He had little time, and despite the pain in his ribs he knew that he had to complete his mission.

‘Be ready to leave,’ he ordered his driver, and then turned for the control centre.

The control centre was empty but for the bodies of five engineers lying on the ground, firmly bound and gagged. Aaron looked at them only for a moment to ensure they could not interfere with him, and then he turned to the control panel itself.

The array was controlled entirely by computers which handled the rotation and angle of each of the thousands of heliostats arrayed around the central heating tower. A cursory examination of the control panel confirmed that Mary Meyer had shut the entire array down, the mirrors pointing not at the tower but at the sky. On reflection, at last he understood what Mary had been trying to do: the power from the fusion cage would light Las Vegas, but the mirrors would remain deactivated in front of the television crews that would inevitably arrive behind the law enforcement. The tower would be ablaze with heat, even with no solar energy directed toward it, and that would pose too many questions for Majestic Twelve to possibly cover up.

In one simple move Mary would have proved the validity of her fusion cage and secured her place in history. Now, pained and injured, Aaron was filled with a fury that he had not felt since his youth amid the steaming forests of Vietnam, fighting hand to hand in the tunnels beneath the jungle against a much feared and hated enemy.

Aaron surveyed the controls one last time, and as an image of Ethan Warner flickered darkly through his mind he re — activated the solar array and re — set the controls to their default settings. The panel lit up before him as the control system re — booted itself and almost immediately he heard the sound of a siren going off somewhere in the distance, from the tower itself, as the heliostat mirrors suddenly hummed into life and their motors began turning the mirrors toward the tower.

Two birds, one stone.

In minutes, the heating chamber of the tower would be bombarded by the sun’s rays reflected by nearly two thousand gigantic mirrors, and every memory of the fusion cage, Mary Meyer, Ethan Warner and Nicola Lopez would be quite literally vaporized from the face of the earth.

Aaron turned and limped from the control centre to his waiting car. He glanced up the road and saw the distant police motorcade still a couple of miles away. Without hesitation he climbed into the vehicle, which drove out of the compound and away to the north.

Lopez ducked down as Assim Khan leaped to his feet, blood spilling from his chest and hate radiating from his features as he swung for Lopez. His fist brushed through her hair as she drove a straight right into the wound in his chest.

Pain wracked the assassin’s features and he cried out as he stumbled backward, struggling to stay focused on Lopez as she lunged forward with another roundhouse left. Assim blocked her blow with one solid forearm, a dull but terrible pain shuddering along the length of the bone. Lopez cried out as she was suddenly driven backward.

Lopez jerked left and raised her right arm, catching Assim’s arm under her own. She closed her arm over his and yanked her left knee up into the assassin’s ribcage. Assim grunted and Lopez felt brittle bones somewhere in the man’s chest crunch against her knee cap.

Assim rallied, a fist flashing into Lopez’s vision and smacking across her cheek. She reeled away, and before she could regain her balance the assassin slammed one foot into the inside of her left knee. The leg buckled with a lance of bright pain that bolted up her thigh as Lopez crashed down onto the unforgiving floor.

The assassin swivelled expertly on one foot, one leg smashing down on top of Lopez to pin her in place as in Assim’s hand appeared a wicked blade that flashed toward her. Lopez brought one leg up against Assim’s chest and caught the assassin in freefall with the blade a hair’s breadth from her throat. Dull pain throbbed though her skull as she struggled against the weight and insane strength of her assailant as the tip of the blade touched her throat.

‘You have fought bravely,’ he said in a sombre tone, ‘but now I must protect myself. And for that, you have to die.’

Assim leaned his weight into the blade.

And then a gunshot smacked the hot air.

The bullet slammed upward through Assim’s hip, shattering bone and ploughing through his internal organs before bursting from his shoulder in a fine mist of bright blood. Lopez smashed the blade clear of her throat as Assim shuddered from the blast and rolled onto his side.

Ethan burst into the heating chamber and stared at Lopez. ‘Are you okay?!’

‘About time!’ Lopez gasped.

Assim Khan groaned as Lopez looked at him. ‘Christ, won’t this asshole ever die?’

Ethan glanced at Mary, who was standing over the fusion cage, and then he saw something outside of the chamber. A brilliant, blinding flare of light that began to grow as though a star had suddenly burst into life out on the desert plains.

‘The mirrors are working!’ he yelled.

Ethan grabbed Lopez and propelled her toward the stairwell as he dashed to Mary’s side. ‘Move, now!’

‘No! I must start it up!’

‘It’s too late!’ Ethan insisted. ‘We’re about to be fried! Come on!’

Mary tried to activate the device and she hit a switch that lit up with a green glow before Ethan yanked her away from the fusion cage and they ran for the stairwell.

A terrible, fearsome heat seared the air as Ethan followed Mary and pushed her down ahead of him. They dashed down the stairs together, the heat in the chamber swelling with a remorseless power that seemed to burn the air around Ethan. He felt his eyes dry out, his skin seared and then he dashed through a series of heavy doors and saw Lopez slam them shut behind him.

Assim Khan staggered to his feet and grasped for the stairwell. The metal touched his hand and he saw his skin slough off in a bloody mess. He turned, delirious with pain and blood loss, barely able to see in the searing heat as a brilliant halo of light burned into his retina with the strength of a thousand suns.

To one side, he saw Huck Seaver’s body consumed by flames, thick smoke billowing from the corpse as it burned.

To the other, he saw the fusion cage burst into life.

Assim screamed as a fearsome heat ignited his clothes and then his skin, as he felt his flesh and his bone seared by thousands of degrees of pure energy. With the last remaining synapses functioning in his body he dashed for the open air of the ledge outside, but he barely made two steps before his body was charred into an unrecognisable black mess of bone and tissue that burst into a flaming pyre and collapsed, smouldering ashes billowing out over the tower’s ledge and into the desert sky.

Ethan staggered out into the open air beneath the huge tower, just in time to hear the sound of dozens of shotguns, rifles and pistols being cocked.

He looked up to see a dozen or so police cars, their lights flickering with brilliant colors before them and countless officers glaring at him down the barrels of their weapons.

Ethan dropped the pistol he still held in one hand and slowly raised his hands, Mary beside him doing the same as he watched Lopez standing with her hands in the air, her dark hair billowing in the hot desert wind.

‘On your knees, hands behind your heads!’

The voice bellowed at them from a loud hailer and Ethan obeyed, placing his hands atop his head as he knelt down on the hard desert soil and watched as two FBI agents advanced toward them, pistols pointing at Ethan and Mary.

‘My daughter,’ Mary cried out. ‘Is she okay?’

The two agents said nothing. One of them was a young guy, late twenties Ethan guessed, who covered his partner as she advanced. The partner was a little older, with long auburn hair and a determined expression, all cold blue eyes and no smiles.

‘Ethan Warner,’ she said as she looked at him. ‘I’ve been wanting to talk to you for quite a while, but you keep avoiding me?’

Ethan managed a shrug and a grin.

‘I won’t avoid you anymore, let’s be friends. What’s your name?’

Special Agent Hannah Ford offered Ethan a tight grin devoid of warmth as she produced a set of hand cuffs.

‘My name is: you’re under arrest, asshole.’

‘That from your mother’s side?’

Ethan winced as Hannah Ford slammed the cuffs brutally hard around his wrists.