The Nemesis Program

Chapter Sixty-Five

‘Jesus Christ!’ Friedkin cried out. ‘What the—?’

Victor Craine steadied himself against the computer console and stared slack-jawed at the screen on the wall that showed a section of the Triton’s deck erupt in a bright leaping flash of orange flame. Through the mushrooming fireball tumbled pieces of wreckage and shattered container. A huge plume of black smoke rolled upwards, blotting out the rising sun. Instantly, alarms were sounding all over the ship.

‘We’re under attack,’ Craine said with calm certainty.

‘B-but how?’ Friedkin stammered, wide-eyed. ‘From who? There’s nobody there.’

‘Don’t just stand there, man. Issue weapons to every available man and get them out there to search this ship from top to bottom.’

‘Even the scientists?’

‘Anyone with the right number of fingers can pull a trigger,’ Craine said. ‘I want the situation contained and whoever’s responsible brought to me alive. Alive, understood? Now get out there and organise it. Report back to me in two minutes. It had better be good news.’

Friedkin obeyed and ran out of the door, leaving Craine alone in the control room. On the screen, little figures of security personnel and ship’s crew were swarming to the site of the explosion, where a fierce blaze was now raging among a section of destroyed containers. Emergency hoses blasted foam and water at the flames, beating them back.

Craine gripped the arm of his chair for support as a second blast suddenly erupted closer to the ship’s bridge. He caught a glimpse onscreen of the orange fireball and flying wreckage before the camera was hit by some piece of shrapnel and the image went black.

‘Whoever you are, I promise you that you won’t get off this ship alive,’ he said out loud.

The pressure wave from the second explosion shattered dozens of windows in the ship’s superstructure, raining glass down on deck and scattering a group of security personnel in all directions. Just as the fire hoses were getting to grips with the first blaze, the new one began to spread fiercely, threatening the bridge.

‘That should keep them busy for a minute or two, aye?’ Boonzie said with a grin. Alarms were keening everywhere. The raid team’s arrival on board the ship was now well and truly announced — but with the diversion in full swing, nobody who was still alive had seen them yet as they filtered their way from cover to cover towards the hatchway that the ship’s plans showed led below. Rounding the side of the last container stack the hatch came into view, just a short run across the open deck.

Ben glanced left, right, left again and signalled ‘Go’. They moved out from cover and slipped unseen through the hatchway, trotting fast and silently along a short passage. At the end of the passage were two more riveted steel hatches, one to the left and the other leading to a downward flight of steps. Ben pointed ahead.

But before they reached the companionway, they caught the approach of running footsteps and the hatch to the left swung open. Through it burst a group of security guards with their M4 carbines at the ready. Six against four, but the team had the advantage of surprise. Before the guards could bring their weapons to the shoulder, Ben had time to aim centre-of-mass and put a suppressed double-tap into the nearest one, then into the one next to him. Boonzie took the two on the left, Jeff the two on the right — but he snatched the trigger on the last one and his shot went wide. The guard’s rifle swung up. The loud report from the .223 would have given their position away to half the ship, but it never came. Quigley fired a three-shot burst and the man crumpled and twisted to the floor.

‘Good one,’ Jeff said, slapping Quigley on the shoulder.

‘Keep moving.’ Ben stepped over the bodies and led the way deeper into the ship.

‘You’re late, Friedkin. Update me,’ the old man said acidly as his aide came running back into the control room, red-faced and out of breath.

‘Sir, every available man is scouring the vessel. But there’s no longer any question that our security has been breached by a boarding party. We have eleven men down that we know of, plus five more missing. No wounded.’

Craine nodded sagely. ‘Professionals.’

‘Sir, the situation is reaching crisis point. We may have to get you off the ship.’

‘Evacuate?’ Craine said. ‘On the verge of the biggest moment in political history? Out of the question.’ He eyed Friedkin’s jacket. ‘Are you armed?’

The aide flapped open his jacket to reveal the holstered Glock 17. To Craine’s certain knowledge, he’d never once drawn it except on the practice range.

‘Get yourself an M4 from the armoury and join the others,’ Craine ordered him. ‘If you can’t contain this, don’t bother coming back.’

The alarmed Friedkin rushed from the room without protest.

The command centre was strangely quiet now that every member of the personnel had been sent out to hunt the boarders. Craine looked up at the atomic clock. Six minutes, forty-one seconds and they’d be within range of the target. Everything was ready. The technical stuff was all out of the way and all that remained was for him to arm the trigger device and press the red button.

Six minutes, thirty-seven seconds. Craine felt in his trouser pocket for the arming key. It was there, solid and chunky and reassuring.

Nobody could stop what was going to happen.

Craine reclined in his chair, closed his eyes and pensively caressed the carved surfaces of the ivory and ebony sticks resting across his lap. He felt tired and very, very old, yet a feeling of serenity came over him. Down here in the depths of the ship, insulated from all the chaos happening above, it was almost peaceful.

‘Victor Craine,’ said a voice behind him.

Craine opened his eyes. Snatched up his sticks and struggled out of his chair to face the presence in the room.

Ben was standing in the doorway. His MP5 dangled loosely from his hand. ‘So this is where we play with our toys,’ he said, glancing about the room.

Craine wasn’t particularly afraid. He’d lived too long and faced death too many times in the past for that. ‘Major Hope. You surprise me. I confess I’d taken your demise somewhat for granted.’

‘I told you it was au revoir,’ Ben said. He stepped into the room, followed by the others.

‘Nice place ye’ve got here,’ Boonzie commented gruffly.

‘Agent Quigley too,’ Craine said as he recognised the American. ‘My, my.’

Jeff stepped over to flip a wall-mounted switch. With a clunk and a whirr, an armoured steel shutter glided down to bar the doorway. Designed to isolate the main control room in time of crisis, it would resist a rocket-propelled grenade and take all day to breach with a thermal cutter.

‘It looks as though you have me at a disadvantage, Major Hope,’ Craine said, leaning wearily on his sticks. ‘You’re an incredibly persistent man.’

‘I do have that irritating tendency,’ Ben said. ‘And don’t call me Major. I’m retired.’

Craine shrugged. ‘Be that as it may, a man of such admirable tenacity would have been an asset to me.’

‘Sorry, Craine, but destroying the world, wiping out thousands of innocent people — it’s not quite my style.’

‘Your profile says you’re a drinking man,’ Craine said. ‘There seem to have been some issues with that, towards the end of your military career.’ He shuffled away from his chair and over towards a polished cabinet by the wall. ‘If you still imbibe, perhaps I can tempt you with a glass of something very special.’ Hooking the ebony stick over his arm, he opened the cabinet and lifted out a bottle. ‘This cognac is almost as old as I am. My doctor has declared it off-limits, but under the circumstances …’ He carefully poured some out into a crystal glass. ‘Care to join me?’

‘I don’t tend to drink with mass murderers so much,’ Ben said.

Craine took a sip and smacked his wrinkled lips. ‘I realise the superficial view a man like you must take of a man like me. You’re a soldier. Soldiers follow orders without thinking twice about the deeper strategies involved, strategies conceived by deeper and more knowing minds. You perceive only the obvious. There are so many things you don’t understand. You see, we’re not destroying, we’re building. Sparing lives. Working to create a better place for us all.’

‘We don’t have time for this,’ Quigley said. ‘Let’s take him and get out of here.’

‘Sounds good tae me,’ Boonzie grunted.

Ben said nothing. Until that moment he’d paid no notice to the screens on the wall, but he was staring at them now. He stepped closer and peered at the illuminated map with the target location flashing bright red at its centre. To its left, another screen displayed the target’s GPS coordinates. To the right, another again showed what looked like a live satellite image of a city. A city with an extremely distinctive skyline, lit in reds and golds by the rising sun.

Ben could hardly believe what he was seeing. And yet there it was.

‘Moscow,’ he said. ‘I should have seen it. This is your next target.’

Craine sighed, with the regretful look of a surgeon committed to performing an unpleasant, yet vitally necessary, operation. ‘I’m afraid that’s so. The most populous city in Europe, home to eleven million people, shortly scheduled to be hit by an earthquake measuring approximately nine point eight on the Richter Scale.’

‘The big one,’ Ben said, aghast, remembering what Lund had told them.

Craine gave a dry smile. ‘Indeed. The largest disaster in recorded history, surpassing the 1960 Valdivia earthquake in Chile by some ten gigatons or more. But then, it takes a heavy hammer to crack a nut so tough. And believe me, it will be cracked. I only have to press that button, and our dear Moscow more or less ceases to exist. Even you would have to admit that’s quite a feat. I’d forgotten how good this brandy was. Sure you wouldn’t care for a … what is it the Scots call it? A wee dram?’

‘You’re insane,’ Ben said to him.

‘No, Major Hope. I’m simply someone very well informed, who happens to be aware of where the pieces stand on the chessboard. In this game of ours, the stakes are high and we’re playing to win.’ He paused. ‘We’re at the dawn of a new Cold War. You have no idea what it cost us to come through the old one. I know, I was there. Now Russia is rising, and she’s a far greater force to reckon with in the modern age, let alone if she were to unite with China. I don’t think we can win again. The western economies would never survive the drain on our resources.’

‘I don’t suppose it would do your global empire-building plans any good.’

‘That’s simply a long-term agenda. There are more pressing things to worry about in the meantime. Possible nuclear war is one of them. I’m sure you wouldn’t want that, would you?’

‘So you can pre-empt your worst-case scenario by wiping out a few hundred thousand innocent lives now,’ Ben said.

‘Aren’t global stability and peace worth the sacrifice of a single city and a few of its citizens?’

‘I don’t think I like the way your game is played.’

‘It’s the same one we’ve played for centuries, Major,’ Craine said. ‘The rules don’t change, only the technology does. If something like Nemesis had existed fifty years ago, don’t you think we’d have used it? Why do you suppose my predecessors were so interested in acquiring Tesla’s plans? We could see what Stalin was doing, even in 1943 while we were ostensibly allied against Nazi Germany. The moment the war ended, our real problems with the Soviets began. Unfortunately, the scientists of the day simply weren’t able to make the technology work. Now we can. The timing could not have been more opportune. Naturally, it’s easy to regard what we do as evil. But if you could learn to see with different eyes, you’d come to appreciate what Nemesis truly is. The end of war. The end of conflict. Ultimately, a force for good.’

‘And of course doing good has got no end,’ Ben said. ‘First Moscow, then what?’

Craine shrugged. ‘Since you ask: for some time now, western intelligence agencies have been concerned over the tacit support that the Pakistani government and its intelligence service, the ISI, offer to Taliban terrorist leaders. It’s one of the most significant obstacles to their plans for the Middle East. The city of Karachi, being Pakistan’s most populous city and the country’s financial centre, was selected as our next target.’

‘Destabilise the government, move in, take over, threat neutralised. You make it sound so easy.’

‘Child’s play,’ Craine said with a little smile. ‘Thanks to the Program.’

‘Sorry to tell you, Director. The Program is over. There’s a high-explosive limpet mine attached deep under the waterline of this vessel. We’re going to send your little experiment to the bottom of the sea.’ Ben nodded to Quigley. ‘Show him, Jack.’

Quigley took out the remote detonator. ‘Now I’ll get to find out what it feels like to press the button, huh?’

‘I was wondering what the purpose of this visit was,’ Craine said.

‘But we saved the best for you,’ Ben said. ‘We could just have let you go down with the wreck, but instead we’re going to spare your life. You’ll come with us, stand trial for mass murder and spend your last days behind bars.’

The old man was suddenly looking less sure of himself. A gleam of sweat appeared on his bald scalp. ‘I’d like to see you try. You can’t prove a thing.’

‘Wrong,’ Quigley said. ‘We have all the evidence we need, Craine, thanks to your friends in New York. By the time it all comes out, not even the Pentagon will stand by you. You’ll be fed to the animals.’

Craine was turning paler, and his breathing suddenly seemed to be coming in gasps. The glass dropped from his hand and shattered on the floor. He clapped his hand to his chest and collapsed, his withered legs folding under him.

‘Great. That’s all we bloody need,’ Jeff muttered.

‘Let him lie there,’ Boonzie said.

‘We have to get him out of here alive,’ Quigley said. He set the detonator on the table nearby and hurried over to help the fallen man.

Craine was writhing on the floor, clutching at his sticks. Quigley reached out to raise him up.

Ben couldn’t have moved fast enough to prevent what came next.