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  Josh straightened and walked over to Louis Chabon who was picking himself up from where he had landed. He was wincing and rubbing at his leg. His trousers were ripped and Josh could see a line of blood running down his shin.

  ‘Sit down, Louis,’ he said, then strode back along the aisle of the carriage.

  There had been nine of them in the dining car. He looked around to see if he could account for everyone. A middle-aged couple had managed to stay at their table, the husband was now cradling his wife’s head and she was sobbing loudly.

  Adam Franklin at the bar had been sent sprawling across the floor. He was picking himself up, dusting himself down. ‘Nothing broken,’ he said grimly.

  Two tables away from the bar, a young woman in a trouser suit had managed to slip under the table and grip the support as the train had convulsed. She was now pulling herself out, her face as pale as death, the sleeve of her jacket had ripped along a seam. Behind the bar, the steward Gabir and the barman had held on and kept their balance throughout but they were clearly shaken.

  ‘Is everyone all right?’ Josh looked around.

  ‘What about the chap over there?’ Adam Franklin asked and nodded towards the prone form in the gangway.

  ‘I’m afraid he’s dead.’

  The middle-aged lady at the table close to Josh gasped and her husband consoled her with a muted, ‘Shush, honey.’

  ‘I’m going to go outside to see if there’s anything I can do,’ Josh said.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Franklin replied immediately.

  ‘Me too,’ Louis Chabon added.

  ‘You’re injured.’

  ‘It’s just a scratch –’

  ‘I must escort you,’ Gabir interrupted. ‘Regulations, sir.’

  ‘So must I,’ Angus Faulks piped up.

  Josh indicated that the two men should go ahead of him and watched Gabir push the button to release the carriage door. Then he followed the stewards out into the connecting bay. Gabir yanked a key from his pocket and opened a metal box on the wall. Reaching inside, he pulled out a couple of torches. He held one out to Josh and flicked on the other, opened the outer door and took three steps down and jumped the remaining metre to the tunnel floor.

  They realised immediately that they did not need the torches. The emergency lights had come on, flooding the confined space inside the tunnel with a sickly yellow light. Josh looked to his right, the northwest-facing end of the train. Flames licked the top of the Eurostar and slithered along its gently arching roof. In the light from the flames, he could see the tangled mess of a shattered carriage. Part of its roof had sliced open and peeled back like the serrated edge of a tin can.

  Peering down, Josh could see pellets of glass underfoot. Then glancing back up, he saw the air was thick with flakes and embers. A hot shard of debris landed on his exposed forearm making him recoil in pain. He could hear a ghastly grinding and the groaning of metal from the carriage ahead of first class. Beyond that sound came the impatient crackle of fire just a few carriages on. Then there was the sound of people crying out, moaning, a baby crying. Josh ran towards the heart of the chaos, the other four men close behind him.

  ‘What do we do?’ Franklin asked, catching up with Josh.

  ‘The emergency services will have been alerted straight away. There are probably cameras all along the tunnel,’ Josh replied. ‘In the meantime, we have to just try to do everything we can for the injured.’

  He stopped for a moment to allow Gabir to catch up. Behind him came the steward and Louis Chabon close by to his left. Josh could see people climbing out of their carriages at the rear end of the train. Reaching the tunnel itself, they looked lost, not knowing what to do next. They simply stood in a huddle turning this way and that, confused.

  Josh was about to turn back to find the door to the next carriage when he saw one of the passengers close to the rear of the train collapse on the floor. Then a second, a woman in a short skirt and jacket, dropped to the ground. A man slightly ahead of her fell forwards flat on his face.

  Realisation hit Josh like a steam hammer. ‘Run!’ he screamed.

  The four men next to him were so startled, they froze.

  ‘It’s a bio-attack!’ Josh yelled and grabbed Gabir, pro- pelling him forwards towards the opposite, north-end of the train.

  ‘WHAT? NO!’ Adam Franklin bellowed, throwing himself after Josh and Gabir. Louis came up behind them and some way back stumbled the big barman, Angus Faulks.

  It took only a few seconds to reach the horrific wreck of the exploded carriage. Human remains lay in a random mess on the side of the tunnel and there were sticky lumps of red and grey flesh attached to the wall. It was ferociously hot and the air was filled with the stench of burning bodies and plastic. Josh pushed his left palm against his mouth and nose and held his breath.

  A sheet of metal flew out from a carriage to his right and slammed to the floor of the tunnel a couple of inches in front of him. He dodged it, crashed into the side of the wrecked carriage and felt the searing heat of the steel burn into his arm. He stifled a yell and pulled back, just managing to keep upright as he stumbled over a pile of twisted metal. He flicked a glance back along the tunnel. All those who had been standing outside the carriage beyond first class were now sprawled out on the floor of the tunnel, limbs contorted like swimmers frozen in mid-stroke.

  Josh beckoned to the others to hurry, then turned back to face the front of the train. The tunnel was completely blocked from floor to ceiling. Twisted metal sheets, piles of rock, sand and clay from a fissure in the tunnel lining had formed an impenetrable wall around the driver’s cabin.

  Josh felt his heart skip a beat, a blind panic he had not felt for a long time shot through him. He was shocked and gawping at the horrendous sight. Gabir arrived, stopping beside him. Next came Adam, then Louis. Josh could see Angus running towards them, panting heavily.

  ‘Sainte mère . . .’ Louis cried.

  Josh looked around him, assessing the situation, searching desperately for a clue to get them out of the tunnel. He was trying to control his breathing, but even so the fumes clawed at his throat. Gabir started coughing convulsively.

  ‘What can we do?’ Adam gasped, the panic bubbling up in his throat.

  For a moment, Josh had no answer for him, but then he saw it. He pointed to a hatchway, frantically nodding to the others, making them run towards it.

  ‘Where? I don’t see it.’

  ‘There, 10 metres back,’ Josh hollered. ‘Now! RUN!’ And he bolted along the side of the tunnel, back towards the approaching bio-agent.

  ‘But Josh . . .’ Adam Franklin yelled, realising the danger. He felt Gabir and Louis spring forwards beside him and went with them.

  Josh reached the hatch, his left hand still over his mouth and nose, trying not to breathe, his mind frantically analysing the situation. He knew the bio-agent might get into the body through the skin but there was nothing he could do about that. He reached for the hatch handle, gripped it and offered a silent prayer to a God he didn’t believe in. He twisted it.

  It did not budge. He felt vomit rise up in his throat and yanked the handle around the other way. Now it turned. He pushed the door inwards.

  The others were standing beside him. He shoved Gabir in first. Louis was itching to clamber into the opening and half-fell through the hole. Adam pushed his long body into the aperture, crashing to the floor the other side. Angus had just made it to the door and was gasping for breath. Josh grabbed him and helped him into the opening. Then he leapt through the hatchway. In one controlled movement, he pulled on the door and twisted the handle shut.

  32

  Somewhere above Dubai

  A burst of retro jets shot from their undersides and the Silverbacks George and Ringo settled onto the helipad on the roof of the Cloud Tower. The squeal of the engines subsided, the fuselage of each plane lowered on its landing gear and the canopies popped upwards.

  ‘Okay, Steph,’ Tom’s voice came through
the comms. ‘Latest infrared scans coming through to you and Chloe.’

  The two E-Force rescuers were running towards the entrance doorway into the tower. Steph was carrying a lightweight carbon-fibre box containing her emergency med-kit. Chloe had a Sonic Drill slung over her shoulder. At first glance it looked like a huge machine gun but it was actually a device that used an ultrasound beam to break through concrete, rubble, even sheets of steel.

  The view from up here would have been staggering except for the dense black smoke spiralling up from the impact site almost a dozen floors below. As they ran, Steph and Chloe studied the screens built into the wristbands of their cybersuits. Using a high-intensity laser resolution device, the screens displayed a remarkably clear and bright visual, even in strong sunlight. The image made for grim viewing.

  ‘We’ve requested the rescue services concentrate on get- ting people out from the bottom of the tower,’ Tom said. ‘Basically everyone below the impact site. There’s no point Air Force or local rescue choppers trying to land on the roof and work their way down because they don’t have the necessary equipment – it ain’t going to be easy for us, actually.

  ‘Your screens are showing Floors 191 through 202. The first life signs are not apparent until 198 and there’re only six survivors there. There are more on 199. However, it looks like there are two major blockages. One immediately below you between the helipad and Floor 202. There’s another blockage close to the entrance to Floor 200. It’s clear the people trapped on 199 can’t go up any higher. Then anything below 197 is smashed up beyond recovery so they must be sitting tight there on 199 waiting for rescue – sensible move.’

  ‘So we have to get through the top blockage just beneath this doorway and bring the people out onto the roof,’ Chloe said. ‘How far away are Mark and Dimitri in the Big Mac?’

  ‘Our ETA is 34 minutes 13 seconds,’ Dimitri cut in on the comms.

  ‘Okay, Dimitri. Mai and Pete are just circling for their first run at the fires,’ Steph responded, looking up into the thick smoke. ‘We’re heading inside.’

  She reached the door into the building and grabbed the handle. It opened easily outwards and she stepped into a short corridor. Chloe was right behind her. Ten metres along the passage stood a pair of elevators. Next to these was a narrow stairway leading down. The power was out in this part of the tower, the staircase had been thrown into darkness.

  Steph’s and Chloe’s helmet lights came on automatically, dispersing 2000 watts around the confined space. Chloe took over the lead and picked her way down the first flight of stairs. Behind them, the corridor disappeared into darkness once more. Ahead, they could see a closed door. Chloe tried the handle. It was stuck fast.

  ‘Stand back,’ she said and levelled her wrist at the handle. A narrow tube about 5 centimetres long and made from a carbon nanotube composite slid from the sleeve of her cybersuit. This was the business-end of a vector laser. Each cybersuit was equipped with one. Chloe tapped the pad on her wrist and an intense blue beam shot out the end of the tube, instantly dissolving the lock. One kick and the door crumbled inwards.

  They were in a short stairway. Halfway along, the roof had collapsed, the void filled with rubble and twisted metal. Steph held out her left wrist and ran the fingers of her right hand over the controls on the pad. A sensor array hooked up to her suit computer analysed the composition of the blockage. The device was based on a conventional sonar. It emitted a beam of high-frequency radiation that bounced back to a detector in the pad at her wrist. The suit computer then calculated the depth of the blockage at various points and determined its components.

  It took only a second and the data came up on Steph’s wrist screen. ‘Hell!’ she exclaimed. ‘Worse than I thought.’

  Chloe swung the Sonic Drill from her shoulder, pushed a button on the side and three retractable legs shot out. She stood the device on the floor, made a few adjustments and swung it around to face the blockage. ‘Prepped,’ she said without taking her eyes from the piles of debris.

  Steph gave her the stats. ‘The barrier isn’t too concentrated, just big. It extends almost 3 metres – most of the way to the exit onto 202.’

  Chloe adjusted the drill to a low-impact broad beam setting and squeezed the trigger. The near side of the barrier started to vibrate. A metre-wide concave disc appeared. This turned into a hole moving away from them at several centimetres per second. The material of the barrier where the beam hit was turned to very fine powder.

  Fifty-four seconds in, Chloe shut down the drill. The dust took a moment to settle. A hole about 2 metres deep had been punched into the barrier. She picked up the drill and moved it into the opening, parted the tripod legs and reset the controls.

  ‘Just a sec,’ Steph said. ‘Just want to do an infrared check. Make sure nobody’s on the barrier or too close to it.’

  She tapped at her wrist monitor. It emitted a steady beep. Moving her hand in front of her, she swept across the width of the hole and back again. The beeping stayed steady. ‘Okay. Let’s take it very slowly, just in case.’

  Chloe depressed the switch on the Sonic Drill again and the machine sprang back to life. This time the hole opened up a little slower than before. The debris churned around and was powdered.

  ‘Okay, almost there. Twenty centimetres.’

  Chloe moved her hand towards the control panel of the Sonic Drill as a slab of concrete fell away from above the opening in the debris. It crashed into the gaping hole and was pulverised immediately. They could see a chink of light from the other side. Chloe took the power down still further then she suddenly snapped it off.

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘What?’

  The powder had changed. The grey and white flakes of rock had turned red. Clots of sticky matter fell to the floor of the opening.

  Chloe flicked on the drill’s safety catch and Steph clambered into the hole, bracing herself on the smooth sides of the newly formed tunnel. She reached the end and pulled at a few chunks of loose concrete and plastic. A human arm tumbled down onto her chest, its fingers mangled and pulverised. She screamed involuntarily.

  Squeezing further into the hole and shoving aside final remnants of the blockage, she hauled herself onto Floor 202. The rest of the mangled body was there, charred, broken and long dead.

  33

  Cloud Tower, Dubai

  ‘In position for first run,’ Pete announced from the cockpit of John.

  He was hovering 500 metres from the northwest-facing side of the tower. Directly ahead lay the devastated floors of the building and the Chasm, the vast hole where a dozen floors had once been.

  ‘Copy that,’ Mai responded. She was in the Silverback Paul, poised in front of the south-facing wall, the same distance from the tower.

  The two aircraft eased forwards and 20 metres from the sides of the building, they shot up vertically. As they passed the opening, jets of flame-retardant material sprayed out from their undercarriages, cascading into the great wound running through the tower. The material, developed by CARPA, was known as Quenchex. It was 100 times more efficient than the most powerful conventional fire-retardant and had been used by the team on many missions.

  Sixty-thousand litres of Quenchex poured down on the dozens of fires inside the Chasm, sucking the air from around the flames, extinguishing them almost instantly.

  ‘Nice work!’ Tom exclaimed.

  He was seated in his chair in front of the big screen in Cyber Control on Tintara, the other side of the world. He could see everything as it happened in real time from cameras aboard the Silverbacks and from BigEye 17 positioned in orbit, 36,000 kilometres above the Persian Gulf. He surveyed the laptop in front of him on a platform over his wheelchair. The holographic screen displayed a myriad of bright colours, symbols and numbers.

  ‘Coming around for second approach,’ Mai said into the comms, her voice echoing around Cyber Control. She had swung around to the northwest-facing side of the tower and Pete was about to follow her first r
un up the south-facing wall. ‘Okay . . . on my mark.’

  The two planes soared upwards, each pilot stabbed at the release button on their control panels. Another load of Quenchex shot into the tangle of charred remains running through the enormous building. A second wave of flames were snuffed out, their fuel sucked away. The Silverbacks roared upward, levelling off 600 metres above the top of the tower. They slowed and hovered.

  ‘Are we done?’ Pete asked.

  ‘Just a second,’ Tom replied from Tintara. ‘We’re just analysing the . . . Damn it!’

  ‘I’ll take that as a “no”.’

  ‘Mai? What’s left in your Quenchex tanks?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Practically out.’

  ‘Pete?’

  ‘About 3000 litres. No good for an effective third run.’

  ‘Fuck!’ Tom exclaimed, his voice sounding fierce and frustrated.

  ‘I’m going in,’ Pete said suddenly.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Tom and Mai said in unison.

  ‘I’m going in . . . Taking John inside the Chasm.’

  ‘Don’t be –’ Mai began.

  ‘Look, we have . . . 17 minutes 4 seconds to get those fires out or this bloody tower goes.’

  ‘But you can’t!’ Tom exclaimed over the comms.

  ‘Just watch me, kiddo.’

  34

  Pete swung the Silverback to the south and shot down to hover parallel with the centre of the Chasm. Running his fingers over the flat plastic of his control panel, he analysed the thermal spectrum of the devastated floors.

  ‘Pete, you know this is insane, don’t you?’ Tom said.

  ‘Probably, but we don’t have much choice.’

  Tom fell silent for a second. ‘Okay. But I have to let Mark know.’

  ‘Fair enough. But I’m still going in.’

  Tom wheeled away from the wall-sized screen and rolled his eyes at a tech standing close by.