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  Mary did as instructed and then pulled the helmet into place. ‘Incredible!’ she said, through the built-in comms.

  ‘And you can hear me?’ Mai responded.

  ‘Loud and clear. Wow! I love this stuff!’

  Mai smiled. ‘Okay, let’s get Billy suited up.’

  The two women soon had the baby inside the suit and had folded all the excess material into a neat package. Billy looked around bemused but not too disturbed by it all. Mai handed him back to his mother.

  ‘No offence,’ Mary said, ‘but I feel a lot safer now I’m in this suit.’

  ‘I understand,’ Mai replied. ‘Okay, stand back.’ She took a pace forwards, ran her hand down a seam in the wall and stepped out into the passageway. Mary and Billy were right behind her.

  ‘Thank you,’ Mary said. Her face was lit up with undisguised relief but the strain of what she had experienced was also clear to see. ‘Thank you so much.’

  54

  Base One, Tintara

  Tom was in his quarters – his favourite place in the world, the place in which he did his best work. It was completely soundproofed which allowed him to listen to very noisy music very loudly. The previous week he had gone through a strange retro thing, playing 1980s American rock: Bon Jovi, Van Halen and Guns N’ Roses. For some reason, this week he was into British New Wave. Today, he had Sybil playlist Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart. It came through his customised speakers at ear-splitting volume.

  He could think better with music and he needed to think. He was staring at a holographic screen floating over his laptop keyboard. It showed the image of a man in combat fatigues, army boots and a balaclava. He had a belt of hand grenades, a machine gun slung over his left shoulder and a handgun in his right palm.

  Tom ran his fingers over the light keypad, simply a flat plastic plate onto which the keyboard was projected as spots of light. Numbers and figures appeared in the bottom left-hand corner of the holoscreen. He touched a symbol and the image changed to an infrared scan, patches of different colours appearing over the figure of the man on the roof of the Cloud Tower.

  When Dimitri had taken the image using the Big Mac’s cameras, he had used a multi-spectrum digital camera, which captured several different types of picture at the same time. These included infrared and UV-filtered shots. He had then turned to a new device that had only been fitted a few weeks earlier – a saser or ‘sound laser’. It was a form of advanced X-ray camera. But whereas X-rays pass right through solid objects, a saser was able to penetrate any object to any specifically defined depth.

  Dimitri had reacted with lightning speed and had taken a series of saser images of the shooter with the camera set to various depths. These images were now on Tom’s screen. He flicked through them until he found the one he wanted. There was the gunman, confident he would be unrecognisable. But because the saser had taken pictures through the fabric of the balaclava, the image on the holoscreen showed every detail of the man’s face. It was as if the shooter had not bothered with any form of disguise.

  ‘Wow!’ Tom exclaimed. It was the first time any of them had seen the machine in field use and the results were stunning. ‘Well done, Dimitri.’

  He closed in on the face. It was muscular, taut. The man had almond-shaped, black eyes, a long nose, high forehead, cropped greying hair, small ears.

  ‘Can you give me some stats on this guy, please, Syb?’

  ‘Subject is approximately 186 centimetres tall, between 81.4 and 82.3 kilograms. He has a tattoo of an eagle on his upper left arm and another of a roaring tiger across his chest. There may be others but unfortunately the images from Dimitri do not cover all angles. Subject is armed with a L85 light machine gun and a S&W Magnum handgun. He has seven M61 fragmentation hand grenades and a GPS video phone.’

  ‘Okay, let’s see if there’s a match,’ Tom said half to himself. ‘Syb, check all government resources, military and police databases globally, all university sites, school records, hospital records, all CCTV records globally over the past decade. Use my hacking codes for everything – can’t waste a second here. We need a name to pin to this ugly bastard.’

  55

  72 metres beneath the English Channel

  Josh had left the others in the hub and headed off along the corridor leading back to the air-con turbine. Past the door, the passageway fell away to the left. This was the darkened corridor they had seen earlier. He turned into it. The corridor curved gradually left and the darkness slipped away – bright overhead lights cast a yellowy glow about the silent walkway. It was featureless, the walls smooth, unblemished, as fresh as the day they were painted. A hundred metres further on stood another door. It looked odd, older than the rest of the Hub, like some sort of relic that had been left and incorporated into the super-hi-tech environment of the Channel Tunnel.

  Josh studied the door, tried it. It swung inwards into darkness. He stepped inside, switched on the torch Gabir had given him and ran the beam around the wall ahead. It was streaming with water. Then the stink hit him. ‘Oh, fuck!’ he exclaimed to no one and took a step backwards into the corridor, holding a hand over his mouth and nose.

  He took a deep breath of fresher air and plunged back into the corridor. Turning to the right, he flashed the beam around. The tunnel fell away into the distance, the light from the torch sucked up by the blackness. He could hear dripping water, the scurrying of rats. Water ran down every wall and the smell was all pervasive, a pungent stink of damp and fungus.

  He felt utterly isolated, completely cut off from the world. The English Channel lay above his head and he was walking along a tunnel between England and France. It was deeply unsettling but he’d been in far more dangerous situations. The difference was that with E-Force he could don a cybersuit and feel the safety net of the world’s most advanced technology at his fingertips. And the memory stung.

  An intense feeling of loss and regret cut through him so suddenly he was forced to stop for a second and swallow hard. When he had resigned six months ago, he had been angry, felt victimised, wronged. At the same time, he had been buoyed up by his innate self-confidence. And indeed, he had gained huge attention from the decision. His career had been boosted enormously. Famous as an ex-member of E-Force, he had become a celebrity. But those things did not fill the hole that had opened up. He missed his friends, he missed the thrill of what he had done with E-Force.

  In spite of the smell, he took a deep breath and felt better. He started to jog. There had to be another way out, a doorway, a hatch, something. He scanned the walls with the torch beam as he ran, studying every inch.

  Five-hundred metres on and he was beginning to grow anxious. This could lead to nothing but a dead-end, he realised. Perhaps this was just a horizontal shaft, blocked at one end. That would account for the stink. The air was stale. But no, that was ridiculous. There must be a door. It would stink if this corridor hadn’t been used for years. Then he saw something on the floor in the torch light. He crouched, shining the beam directly down onto it.

  It was a clip file, a little old-fashioned, he thought, with a worn plastic cover. Inside were laminated pages. It looked like some kind of technical manual. At the back, he found a diary. It was blank but he noticed the year on the top of the first page: 1989.

  ‘That would be about the time they were building the main tunnels,’ Josh said aloud. He glanced around. ‘But this particular tunnel is older, a lot older.’

  He pulled himself up, the file in one hand, torch in the other, and pressed on. A few minutes later, he was a further 200 metres along the passage when he caught sight of a shape on the left wall. It was a door. He came up close to it, running the torch beam along the seam, then down to the handle. He gripped it, turning it clockwise. It opened inwards.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Josh exclaimed and switched off the beam. There was no need for a torch here. Along the ceiling ran bright strip lights. He was in a wide tunnel. Looking down, he saw rail tracks. Across the tunnel on the far wall
hung a large metal sign. It had been put there for maintenance staff and workmen. On the left it said: ‘Folkestone 35.5 kms’ and beneath this a long black arrow pointing left. On the other side of the sign were the words: ‘Coquelles 15 kms’ and an arrow pointing right.

  56

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ Gabir asked as Josh came through the door into the Maintenance Hub. Louis looked up and sauntered over. Adam was sitting on the floor chatting with the two youngsters, Tracy and Fred. They glanced around at him as he entered.

  ‘I found a way out.’

  Adam Franklin jumped up and walked over. ‘Really?’

  ‘An old tunnel. It looks maybe Victorian but I’m pretty sure it was used until at least the late 1980s when they were building the modern tunnel. I found this.’ And he showed them the file.

  ‘But that’s impossible!’ Gabir exclaimed. ‘There are no old tunnels.’

  ‘There might be,’ Louis replied. His moustache twitched comically. ‘It is well-known that the British had started a tunnel in the 1880s.’

  ‘Yes but we’re a third of the way into the tunnel, still on the French side,’ Adam commented.

  ‘Ah but perhaps our French engineers got a lot further than yours long ago,’ the Frenchman retorted with a sly smile.

  Adam let out a heavy sigh. ‘I very much doubt that.’ And he gave Louis a look of contempt.

  ‘Doesn’t matter, does it?’ Josh said. ‘The point is, it connects up with the modern tunnel from London to Paris.’

  ‘Seriously?’ It was Fred Hardy who had stood up. Tracy was pulling herself up from the floor.

  ‘It’s about a kilometre from start to finish and there’s a door that opens onto the Paris-bound tunnel. From there we might be able to communicate with Sangatte and they can send a cart down for us. Worse case, we have to walk 15 kilometres.’

  ‘Well, what are we waiting for?’ Adam said, looking directly at Josh.

  But Josh wasn’t returning his gaze, he was staring past the Englishman. A few metres across the room, Tracy and Fred were standing close together. Each had a pistol in their hands. They had adopted the ‘power stance’ – left leg a little in front of the right, each holding a gun with both hands at arm’s length, their bodies turned slightly to the right.

  57

  ‘What the hell . . .?’ Josh began.

  ‘Shut up,’ Fred snapped.

  Josh gave the youth a venomous look. Adam span around and gulped.

  ‘Put the file on the floor, please, Dr Thompson. Hands behind your back,’ Tracy said, taking a step forwards, her pistol steady as she pulled lengths of wire from a back pocket of her jeans. ‘You too,’ she snapped at Gabir, Louis and Adam. Fred covered her while she bound the men’s hands. She stepped back, gun level.

  Josh placed the file on the floor about half a metre in front of him.

  ‘Sit,’ Fred commanded.

  The four men started to lower themselves. ‘Not you,’ Tracy snapped and waved her gun at Josh.

  ‘What is this . . .?’ Josh tried again.

  ‘I thought I told you to shut up.’ Fred took a couple of paces towards Josh and smashed his pistol across his left cheek. Josh teetered and almost fell but kept his balance.

  ‘Hey!’ Adam cried from where he was seated between Gabir and Louis. Blood began to stream from a split in Josh’s cheek. It ran down to his shirt collar.

  ‘We’re only interested in you,’ Tracy said to Josh. Her face had transformed. Gone was the gentle, rather naïve student. Now she looked like a member of Baader Meinhof. She nudged the barrel of a Glock into Josh’s ribs. ‘We want to take our time over you.’

  Josh glared at the woman who called herself Tracy, War’s niece Lucrezia. ‘How melodramatic!’

  ‘I like to think of it as fun. We have to get our kicks somehow, Dr Thompson!’ And she giggled, then caught her brother’s eye. ‘Oh, Cesare, darling, don’t look jealous.’

  ‘Shut up, Lucrezia,’ the boy responded. ‘I know you prefer young meat, not an old carcass like him!’ And he flicked a contemptuous glance at Josh.

  Josh smirked. ‘You’re really called Lucrezia and Cesare? Don’t tell me, your dad’s the Pope?’

  The two young terrorists looked at Josh with expressionless faces. They’d heard it all before and it meant nothing to them. They relished the association with their heroes the Borgias.

  ‘This is all very flattering,’ Josh went on. ‘But what is this?’

  ‘Oh, it’s only partly about you, Mr E-Force,’ Cesare said. ‘We derailed the train and released the Sarin all for very sound economical reasons, which you’ll understand we cannot go into. But we had a second reason for it. We’ve been tracing your steps for days. We knew you would be on the train but we thought you would also die on it. Happily, that hasn’t happened. Happily for us, that is – we can have some fun. After that we’ll deal with your friends when they arrive. We’ve done our homework. We know the old tunnel. We know it links up with the London–Paris tunnel. Your buddies will come down that way to get to the site of the derailment and when they do . . .’

  Lucrezia stepped back and lowered the gun so that it was pointed at Josh’s left kneecap. Then she raised it a little, directing it straight at his groin. ‘Now where to begin . . .’

  The phone on the wall rang. Josh reacted instantly hooking a foot under the technical manual he had left on the floor. The folder flew through the air and hit Cesare in the side of his neck. He fell forwards, his gun clattering across the floor.

  Josh jumped forwards with incredible speed and managed to grasp the pistol between his bound hands and turn it a little so his finger wedged against the trigger. But Cesare also moved fast and scrambled on top of Josh, pushing him flat to the ground. The young man slammed his fist into Josh’s defenceless face. Lucrezia screamed and took two paces towards them.

  Josh still had the gun, his finger poised on the trigger. He brought it around and smashed it into the side of Cesare’s head. The kid slumped forwards onto the filthy floor, the gun between them, trapping Josh’s hand. He felt his fingers bend back under the young man’s weight, his index finger catching against the trigger, sending a ripple of pain along his arm. The gun jolted as it went off, the sharp crack of it muffled by Cesare’s body. Josh yanked his arm free and rolled across the floor, using the shelving to pull himself up.

  Cesare lay spreadeagled on the floor, convulsing, blood spurting from his chest. Josh turned to see Lucrezia standing like a statue, transfixed. She whirled around, saw the gun still in Josh’s hand, then span back to her brother, her face as white as snow in the harsh light. A weird gurgling sound came from her throat. She turned and ran.

  58

  Cloud Tower, Dubai

  The comms signal sounded on Dimitri’s control panel in the Big Mac. He depressed a switch and a voice spilled from the speakers.

  ‘E-Force, this is J-Alpha on Eagle 1. This is an encrypted line. Can you hear me?’

  ‘J-Alpha,’ Dimitri responded. ‘Good to hear from you. My name’s Dimitri Godska on Big Mac, aircraft designation EF11334. I have your position as . . .’ He glanced at the holographic image floating above the control panel and could see two Lynx Mk8 helicopters. ‘Four kilo- metres due east of the Cloud Tower. Do you have us on your radar?’

  ‘Certainly do, Mr Godska. Quite a large signal too.’

  Dimitri laughed. ‘What’s your ETA?’

  ‘Forty-five seconds.’

  Dimitri checked the clock. It was 11.55 am local time. In the corner of the big screen over the control modules a counter displayed the estimated time until the collapse of the tower. It read: 47 minutes 5 seconds. ‘Excellent,’ Dimitri said into the comms. ‘We have the shooter on infrared. He’s still on the roof. We know exactly where he is.’

  ‘How on earth did the man get there in the first place?’

  ‘Microlight. We’ve looked back over satellite footage from before we got here. It’s still on the roof. Our sensors just picked it up. It’s covered w
ith some sort of light-distorting camouflage.’

  ‘Good God!’

  ‘There’s something else,’ Dimitri added. ‘He’s extremely well-armed. Uses a S&W magnum and a L85 light machine gun. He also has at least seven M61 grenades.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that, Mr Godska. We’ll take him out.’

  59

  The choppers came in low over the roof from the east. From the flight deck of the Big Mac, Dimitri and Mark could see the astonishment on the faces of the pilots. E-Force was famous around the world and most people had seen TV and YouTube clips of the authorised films shot by E-Force insiders, but nothing compared to seeing the vehicles close-up.

  ‘Tom?’ Dimitri called through the comms to Tintara.

  ‘Dimitri. How’s it going?’

  ‘It’s going but we need some help.’

  ‘The shooter on the roof? I’m just staring at his ugly mug as we speak. Syb’s working on getting background but it’s slow going, even for her. Most of the databases are protected and we have to break in. Sometimes we find the database is actually pretty flimsy – with not much to offer.’

  ‘No, it’s not the ID we need help on,’ Dimitri explained. ‘The SAS guys are going to try to take out the terrorist from the choppers. But if that fails they plan to drive him inside to Floor 202 and trap him there. We know there’re no sur- vivors on that level and the way down is blocked.’

  ‘Good plan.’

  ‘Can you get us images from BigEye? We could pin him down faster. The sensors on the Big Mac aren’t picking up anything beneath the roof.’

  Tom sighed. ‘I don’t think I can, Dimitri. I tried getting some images from inside the tower using BigEye a few minutes ago. No go.’

  ‘Why?’ Dimitri sounded incredulous.

  ‘Sybil tells me there’s too much interference. It’s quite specific – over a narrow frequency range. It just so happens the parameters the BigEye cameras use fall into that range. It’s a bitch.’