The Secret Bunker Trilogy

by Paul Teague

  She made for the car, which wasn’t too far away from the entrance, and fumbled for the keys in her pocket. As she looked up towards the car, ready to point the remote at the door, she thought she saw … she was positive, there was somebody in the car. About the same height as Dan, same age or thereabouts, she thought.

  Had she had slightly more time she might have experienced a glimmer of recognition as she moved up closer to the car to investigate what was going on. But at that precise moment, where indignant anger had kicked in and she’d begun to march towards this youngster like a bad-tempered bull, a blue light, almost imperceptible to the naked eye, had begun to glow beneath the skin of her neck, and that momentary spark of recognition was extinguished in the gathering darkness overhead.

  Training

  For a task of this size and importance, absolute security was a must. That’s why those chosen had to pass over a hundred psychometric tests before they even became a contender. And they didn’t even know they were doing these tests. We so casually accept the role of the web and the internet in everyday life. A social media ad here, a search engine promo there, a ‘please tell us how we did’ survey popping up out of nowhere; online lives could so easily be hijacked and nobody was any the wiser. Most people got excited about data sharing and privacy issues. If they only knew what his organization was doing – with full global consent – the occasional highly targeted advert from an online retailer would be the least of their worries.

  So it was that he’d managed to invisibly deliver thousands of psychometric evaluations and thus target his specialist team. These people had to be very carefully chosen. They weren’t the strongest, the fastest, the cleverest or the wisest. All of the things that society generally applauded or celebrated had no currency when assembling this team. And there certainly weren’t any celebrities in there either. Test after test had shown that the most remarkable people were often the most ordinary people. Sports stars excel at sport, film stars excel at acting, professors excel at being clever and heroes excel at heroism. But in the grave matter of saving the whole of humanity, it was a very carefully selected group of ordinary people who were going to make the final cut.

  Two Figures

  If it weren’t for the pulsing device buried beneath the skin on his neck, he’d normally have been inquisitive about these two life forms just outside the blast doors. But instead, he calmly ran through a series of routines, just as he was taught to do in training. He was not an automaton in this task. While he was carrying it out, he still thought about Trudie and the kids.

  He was aware of his surroundings and he heard in the background the ‘getting to know you’ conversations of a team who were just getting used to their new environment. They didn’t know what their mission was yet, but their workstations were familiar, just as they were in their training and orientation. It was almost as if certain memories, feelings, or emotions, were being suppressed with a deft puppeteer pulling his strings so subtly that you’d barely be aware that it was actually a toy before your eyes. So he just watched the life forms on his screen and switched to camera surveillance. Just blackness. Night-vision mode. Still blackness. Penetration mode. There they were! Two figures.

  If he’d looked a little closer, if the camera had given a little more definition in that terrible, dark blackness – and particularly if that implant hadn’t been pulsing away madly – he might have realized that he already knew that woman whose face was currently taking up half of his screen.

  Chapter Seven

  News

  I’m stunned by what Kate has just told me. I’m a kid, how can I have a guest pass to this place?

  ‘What about the others?’ I ask. ‘Dad, Harriet and David, did they pass the biometrics thingy?’

  Okay, I know that isn’t the most eloquent way to express myself, but I’m dealing with a lot of new information here.

  ‘Unfortunately not,’ replies Kate.

  There are just two words in that short sentence, and I get an uneasy feeling that there might be a bit more information concealed behind that brief reply .

  ‘Where is Dad?’ I ask. I can hardly believe myself, such an obvious question, but if they are safe, why haven’t I been reunited with my family yet?

  ‘Well, that’s where I do have a slightly less positive update for you, Dan,’ Kate replies.

  I can see that she is gearing up to something. She’s figuring out the best words to use to deliver bad news.

  ‘Your dad, brother and sister are not on the biometrics database. We can’t explain that. So they do not have authorization to be here.’

  Did I say ‘bad news?’ I mean, terrible news.

  ‘Strictly speaking, Dan, they were supposed to be outside when the sirens sounded. They got trapped in here when the bunker doors closed; they’re really not meant to be in the bunker.’

  This is getting worse. I have a feeling that so far, from her point of view, this is the easy bit that she is delivering.

  ‘Dan, your family have to stay contained during active operations as they do not have clearance to be here. You are not subject to those same restrictions, but we can’t explain yet why you’re classed as ‘mission critical’, it may well be an error.

  ‘In the meantime, although you have the freedom of the bunker, you are not yet permitted under bunker protocols to see the other members of your family.’

  A Simple Mission

  He knew that what he did was top secret work, he understood that. He knew that he couldn’t ask any questions and that orders had to be followed without question. That’s how these things work. If you can’t live with that, get a job at the local council offices. But this mission had troubled him. He was only supposed to have driven past those kids to get a really close video image of them. For face mapping or something similar, he wasn’t involved in what happened after the initial job was done.

  It was simple enough, for goodness' sake. The black car that came with the job was military grade. It looked like a regular car, could even generate a random number plate to keep it off police records if need be. If you wanted to, you could even show no number plate if you needed to be completely anonymous, and this thing was amazing to drive. In fact, it drove itself if you had to take your hands off the wheel. A feature often required in really delicate operations. Like this one.

  Three dimensional, biometrics imaging. Whatever that means. He was a ‘hired hand’ not a scientist. He just gathered the data. And kept his mouth shut. And they gave him some great kit to do his job.

  So why had the car swerved itself at the last minute, killing that kid?

  The Sirens

  She approached the person sitting in the car, the faint, blue pulsing light beneath her skin flickering furiously. Whatever its function, it was working overtime. Suppressing something very strong – an emotion, a thought, a connection. As she went to open the car door, a siren started to sound. She dismissed it at first, thinking it was part of the ‘tourist experience’ at the bunker.

  It’s odd, even though that siren wail has been used since the Second World War, then adapted for the Cold War, there is still nothing that can get anywhere close to it when it comes to the sound of grim portent. You couldn’t replace it with a digital version, for instance – there’s nothing that could assume anywhere near to its gravity and sense of impending crisis.

  So when the siren continued to sound, the woman knew intuitively that something was up. It may have been prompted by that implant, but it fused her real thoughts, feelings and actions so seamlessly with those devised by her invisible puppeteer, that no observer would have been able to tell which part came from her real self and which part was artificially created.

  ‘Come with me!’ she demanded of the figure in the car, holding out her hand in a manner that showed that this was not up for discussion. It didn’t matter what this person was doing in her car, why they had her laptop open and how they even got in there in the first place. She knew with all the certainty that she’d ever had in
her life that taking shelter in the bunker was the best – the only – thing to do.

  The device was able to suppress and hide her most powerful maternal emotions, yet seemed to miss the thing that landed them in so much jeopardy. ‘Dan’s phone!’ she exclaimed, halfway across the car park.

  Ridiculous that she would risk losing time to retrieve a mobile phone. Like the animal owner who leaps into the river to save their dog, only to perish while the dog swims happily to the river bank. Crazy actions at crazy times.

  If it wasn’t for the seconds that she’d lost retrieving Dan’s phone, they’d have made it to the blast doors. If it wasn’t for those lost, precious moments, she might have had time to glance to her right where a distinctive, black car was parked. Unusually, it had no number plate.

  Chapter Eight

  Uncertainty

  I can’t say that I really understand the meaning of the word ‘protocols’ but I certainly get the sense of Kate’s last sentence.

  ‘You mean I can’t see them at all?’ I query. Kate’s eyes narrow. ‘The viper?’ I wonder to myself.

  ‘Dan, I’m sorry, but until we receive a full mission definition, we have to observe the protocols.’

  That word again. And she’s using my name in each of her sentences. That’s wearing a bit thin now. I can hear the words coming out of your mouth, I can hear you trying to get some rapport going here, but what you’re telling me is not making me happy.

  ‘What’s mission definition?’ I think to myself. I’m learning a lot today. I didn’t hear the words ‘mission definition’ very often when Dad and I were laughing at online videos of cats as part of my home education. In fact, there wasn’t much ‘mission definition’ in my life at all until I started talking to Kate. I decide to focus on what’s important.

  ‘So, where does that leave me?’ I ask.

  ‘You have the freedom of the bunker, and you may access all Green Zone areas,’ she replies, ‘But Red Zone areas are out of bounds to you.’

  Funny how you can find yourself in the most hi-tech place you’ve ever been, yet you can’t beat the colours red and green to tell you what you can – and can’t – do.

  ‘I also need to give you a tour of the bunker. I’m guessing it looks pretty different since you last saw it?’

  ‘A bit of an understatement that, Kate.’ She’s got me at it now, I’m using her name in my sentences. It helps to build rapport, you know.

  ‘What about Mum?’ I ask again. I’m not sure what I mean about Mum, I just want some sort of action plan. Some ‘mission definition’.

  ‘As part of standard, start-up schemata, we sweep the perimeters to check for life forms outside the bunker gates,’ Kate answers. ‘That process will be underway as I speak to you now. It’s a basic security measure, but in this case we’ll be looking for your mum.’

  Schemata. Another new word to add to my vocabulary.

  ‘If I hear anything, I’ll let you know straight away.’

  Quiet

  Had he recognized that face on the screen, he might have moved with more urgency. He certainly would have been very surprised to see that particular person on the screen in front of him. They were connected. It was some years ago and at the time it was very significant to both of them.

  For the person who’d engineered this reunion, it couldn’t have had any more significance. It was as if a puppeteer was working through the script in a performance, each step carefully devised and planned to make sure it moved carefully towards the crescendo, the plotted course, the final outcome. It was no random thing that they happened to be in this place at this time. But when they’d first met, neither of them had a family, it had genuinely been a chance meeting back then. He now had Trudie and the kids. She had Mike, David, Harriet, Dan and Nat … not Nat. Nat had died. But it was almost a lifetime ago for both of them. So much was different since then. So much water under the bridge, so many changes.

  An apparent arbitrary meeting that had been working up to this reunion all these years later. What could have made this event so crucial right now? It made no difference to either of them at this moment. He was unable to recognize her because of the device implanted in his neck. She was unaware in the terrible darkness beyond the bunker blast gates that she and her young companion were even being watched.

  Yet what was it that linked these two people so inextricably that it should be crucial to the world beyond the bunker that they met once again at this place, inside this underground shelter? If they had met each other again under normal circumstances, they would have worked it out straight away. It was those terrible events that they got caught up in while they were both serving in the Army.

  Global

  Ordinary people for an extraordinary job. The future of humanity no less. The problem with the ‘high achievers’ is that they tend to be too good. Brilliant – at only one thing. They spend hours, days, months and years honing their skills, ridiculous amounts of time mastering every element of their profession and then they become masters. But in becoming exemplary at one thing, they lose their focus and skills in many other areas. And ordinary people were exactly what he needed right now, for this particular mission.

  Sure, these recruits had to be fit, bright, sharp and intelligent. But they also needed to be average. Not just any kind of average though. They had to be the very best at being average. Being average means that you can do many things to an average standard. One minute you can be fit, the next you can be strategic. You can pivot from that to being an average problem solver, an average technical operator or an average fighter. Yes, in this scenario being average at many things was exactly what he required.

  This mission had never been attempted before and even he could not anticipate what skills, challenges and problems lay ahead. So in this scenario, average was about as good as it was going to get.

  Sadness

  He was used to being impartial about his work. He knew it had to be done, most of the time it was just surveillance or moving people from one place to another. But this was something else. He had not been responsible for the car swerving. His hands were off the wheel, the car took over the minute that was detected by the sensors. The car’s internal computer knew to adjust speed, maintain distance from the kerb, scan for all life forms and ‘anticipate’ other vehicles. It could ‘recognize’ double yellow lines, ‘Stop’ signs, ‘Give Way’ road markings and even a school crossing attendant. And this was a military-grade vehicle.

  While commercial organizations made a big deal about driverless cars and how they were ‘the future’, they were wasting their time; the military had been on to this concept for many years. If it works with drones, it works with cars. ‘Military’ might not be the right word to use though. It was definitely ‘military-like’, it felt governmental and it was certainly top secret. But he wasn’t quite sure who he worked for. And that didn’t matter to him before he – before his car – hit that child. But it’s all he’d thought about since then. He was no killer.

  He had no instructions to kill on that day. He’d been unable to stop it, just forced to look into the eyes of one of the children and watch it happen. The only way it could have occurred is because of computer error. Unlikely. He hesitated to say ‘impossible’, but it really was pretty well impossible. As impossible as anything could be. No, he was sure it had something to do with the man who’d distracted the mother as he’d just driven by. The face that he recognized straight away, in spite of the disguise and even though he was completely out of place. He should not have been at that place at that time. It was his boss, Doctor Pierce.

  Chapter Nine

  Last Moments

  She rushed past the black car, failing not only to notice its familiarity but also the very obvious fact that something was not quite right. It had no registration plate. Had this been anything other than a desperate race to get back to her family, she might have glanced back.

  Something out of place might have registered with her. Had she looked back, sh
e would have seen that number plate change before her eyes. From being totally blank, to generating a random registration number. Something that the police would never be able to trace. Had she noticed what was going on, she might have wondered ‘What kind of car can do that?’

  And if the device in her neck wasn’t doing its job quite so well, she might have realized that she’d been travelling in that very car only a few days earlier.

  Tour

  It seems on the surface that I’m talking to the most pleasant person on the Earth. She even uses my name regularly in her sentences. To build rapport. So why do I get an uneasy feeling whenever Kate speaks to me?

  She appears to be helping me, giving me the information that I am asking for. I want this, I need to know these answers and this information. So why does it all seem to be bad news? Everything she says seems to be a block – a ‘No’ – yet the way that she says it sounds as if it is a positive thing.