The Spear of Atlantis (Wilde/Chase 14)

by Andy McDermott

  Alula nevertheless kept firing, the impacts ringing stridently through the airlock. Eddie hauled the unconscious Emir to the exit. ‘Get this fucking door open before they get that one open!’

  ‘Just a moment,’ said Lobato, oddly calm as he concentrated. His fingers danced across the control panel, a new window popping up. He tapped it, and a message flashed on the screen. ‘There!’

  ‘What did you do?’ said Nina as she breathlessly stood.

  ‘Locked the door,’ he said, a little smugly, as a muffled pounding came from the other side. ‘One of my companies designed the operating system for this facility, so I inserted a back door that would give me unrestricted access.’

  ‘The same thing you did on the Atlantia, right? And you gave your code to the Emir?’

  ‘No, that was a different code with the same function.’ He quickly joined Eddie and opened the outer door before helping lift the Emir again.

  ‘Can they override it?’ Nina asked.

  ‘There is an emergency manual release, so yes.’

  ‘The technicians know about it?’ said Eddie as they carried the Emir into the reception area.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then we’ve got less than a minute. Get to the car, quick. Nina, you drive.’

  Nina led the way to the Saudi SUV. She looked around for any more of Alula’s forces – and saw something more menacing than any soldier. ‘Shit!’ Parked side-on to her on the helipad were two aircraft: the Emir’s personal helicopter, a gleaming Sikorsky S-76 bearing the Dhajani flag and royal coat of arms . . . next to an Apache gunship in desert camouflage. She had once faced off against a similar chopper – an experience she and Eddie barely survived.

  ‘Well, that’s all we fucking need!’ the Yorkshireman growled. The Apache was the latest AH-64E version, an airborne tank designed to kill targets on the ground with great efficiency. The pilot and gunner were visible in the cockpit, and he had no doubt they had been personally chosen by – and were loyal to – Alula.

  The two helmeted men spotted the fleeing group, reacting in alarm at the sight of the Emir. ‘Buggeration and fuckery!’ said Eddie as the pilot hurriedly threw switches. ‘They’re powering up!’

  Nina reached the Toyota and flung the rear door open before jumping into the driver’s seat. ‘How long before they can take off?’ The war machine’s rotors were stationary.

  ‘They don’t need to!’ Eddie replied as he lowered the Emir into the back. ‘The gun’s electric – they can shoot us while they’re on the ground. Gideon, get in!’ Both men rounded the vehicle, Lobato taking the seat beside Nina as Eddie glanced at the gunship.

  The chain gun beneath the Apache’s cockpit swung down from its stowed position. It performed a brief sequence of tilts and pivots as it ran through a self-testing routine . . . then snapped around to lock on to the Land Cruiser, the gunner tracking them with his helmet-mounted sight.

  Eddie threw himself on to the back seat. ‘Go!’

  Nina jammed her foot on the accelerator. The big vehicle surged forward, bounding over the kerb on to the sand beyond the parking lot.

  The chain gun followed – then opened fire, unleashing a rapid-fire stream of high-explosive shells—

  Nina screamed as the barrage whipped past just behind them. One of the technicians’ cars took the brunt of the attack instead, metal shredding like paper in a shotgun blast and sending the mangled wreckage cartwheeling across the lot. Other shells smashed into the heliostats beyond, mirrors exploding. ‘Oh my God! They missed!’

  Eddie raised his head. The cannon had reached the limit of its firing arc. ‘They can’t turn the turret any further. Good job you went this way rather than staying on the road – we’d have been dead.’

  ‘All I was thinking was that we’d go faster forward than in reverse,’ she replied, clutching the wheel fearfully.

  Lobato peered through the rear window. ‘So are we safe?’

  ‘Course we’re not fucking safe,’ Eddie replied, still watching the Apache. ‘They’ll be in the air soon, and then we’re fucked – shit, get down!’

  He ducked, Nina doing the same as gunfire clattered from the reception area. Al-Asim and the guards had opened fire from inside the lobby, destroying the windows in their haste to stop the escapees. Rounds struck the tailgate and shattered the rear windscreen. Lobato shrieked and dropped, covering his head with his hands.

  Nina powered over a rocky rise. They briefly went airborne before slamming down on the other side, now shielded from their attackers. ‘Jesus!’ Eddie cried, struggling to hold the Emir on the seat. ‘We’re not trying to shake the bullet out of him!’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, would you like me to engage hover mode?’ she snapped back. Ahead lay the sweeping forest of heliostats, giant gleaming sunflowers directing their reflected rays at the power towers. ‘Gideon! How do we get out of here?’

  The billionaire nervously straightened, gripping the centre console as the SUV bounded across the plain. ‘The road to the main gate is . . . that way,’ he said, pointing.

  Eddie looked back. The helicopters were partly visible beyond the rise; the Apache’s rotors were still stationary. ‘The chopper’s not moving yet, so we might have a chance of reaching it.’

  ‘I’ll try not to throw the Emir around too much,’ said Nina. She followed a sweeping route through the heliostat masts as Eddie examined the Dhajani ruler.

  Alula strode out of the reception area to see a cloud of dust rising in the solar forest. ‘They got away?’ she snarled.

  ‘I’m sorry, Your Majesty,’ said al-Asim, bowing his head. His men looked abashed.

  She glared at them, then indicated the Apache. ‘Send the gunship after them!’

  ‘They’ll need a couple of minutes to bring the rotors to take-off speed – but I’ll order them to skip the safety checks,’ he added hastily as her angry gaze returned to him. Taking out a walkie-talkie, he issued rapid commands to the aircrew.

  Alula turned her attention to the guards. ‘You three! Get after them!’

  They exchanged nervous looks. ‘Ah . . . how, Your Majesty?’ one asked.

  ‘Take a car, idiot!’ She pointed at the remaining vehicles in the parking lot.

  The technicians, who had earned their survival – for now – by showing their captors the airlock’s manual override, emerged. The Russian gawped at the mangled wreckage. ‘My car!’

  Alula had no sympathy. ‘Your keys,’ she demanded, jabbing a finger at Oto. ‘Now!’ One of the guards snatched them from the quivering Japanese scientist’s hand. A push of a button on the fob unlocked a Cadillac Escalade SUV beneath a sunshade. The three men ran to it.

  As al-Asim finished his call, the Apache’s twin engines started up, the rotors slowly beginning to turn. ‘The gunship will be airborne in two minutes,’ he reported. ‘They won’t escape.’

  ‘I want to be absolutely sure of that,’ Alula replied. ‘My brother must not survive.’ She turned towards the larger building adjoining the antimatter facility: the operations centre for the solar plant itself. An observation room, walled in mirrored glass, was located at the top of a five-storey tower, giving the technicians an unobstructed view across the huge field of mirrors. ‘Up there. We are going to burn them.’

  ‘Road’s coming up,’ Nina announced with relief. Traversing rough terrain at speed while trying not to crash into any solar panels or heliostat masts had been neither easy nor enjoyable. ‘How’s the Emir?’

  Behind her, Eddie had managed to keep the injured man in place by fastening a seat belt around his waist. ‘Not good, but he’s not dead, either.’

  ‘How?’ she asked. ‘He was shot in the heart, point blank!’

  ‘Something in his chest pocket took the impact. Don’t want to move it yet, though – it might be the only thing keeping him from bleeding to death.’

  ‘There is a medical unit at the test track,’ Lobato told him.

  ‘We need to get away from here, not back through the middle of
the fucking power station!’ Eddie put his palm on Fadil’s chest, trying to staunch the bleeding.

  ‘Okay, here’s the road – hold on!’ Nina cried. She slowed to bring the Toyota through a small ditch, then swung it on to the route to the gate.

  ‘They are following,’ warned Lobato.

  Nina checked the mirror, seeing another vehicle weaving through the masts. She accelerated. Back on smooth asphalt, the 4x4 surged away. ‘We’ve got a clear run now.’

  Alula, holding the spearhead, stared across the plain. From the observation tower, it seemed as if she was overlooking sea rather than desert, the heliostats reflecting blue sky. ‘Can the mirrors be aimed manually?’ she demanded.

  The head technician had not been expecting gun battles or his country’s ruler to be usurped on his watch, and was in considerable agitation. ‘It, it would not be—’ he stammered.

  Al-Asim pointed a gun at his head. ‘The correct answer is “Yes, Your Majesty”.’

  ‘Y-yes, Your Majesty!’

  ‘Show me,’ Alula ordered.

  The man, suddenly sweating despite the air-conditioned cool, led her to a console. ‘These dials move the focus of the reflected sunlight – we call it the prime beam,’ he said, indicating a set of controls. ‘If one tower is out of action, we can shift its beam to either of the others to increase the amount of light falling on it. We select the mirrors on this touchscreen.’ He tapped a large glass panel.

  ‘Can you control all the mirrors at once?’

  He blinked. ‘Yes, but – but it has never been done. We have not needed to—’

  ‘Do it,’ she snapped. ‘Set all the mirrors to focus together. Then aim it at that.’ She pointed.

  The technician’s mouth dropped open as he saw her target: a vehicle racing away on the access road. ‘But there are people inside it!’

  ‘Her Majesty is well aware of that,’ said al-Asim. ‘Do it!’

  Mouth dry, the man entered commands, bringing all the thousands of heliostats under one set of controls. Alula felt almost wonderment as the mirrors began to realign. Great ripples swept across the ‘sea’ as each rotated and tilted to direct the sun’s rays towards one particular spot.

  The road, and the SUV racing along it.

  39

  ‘What the hell’s happening?’ said Nina. All around them, the great mirrored flowers were starting to move. To her growing alarm, she realised that those on her left were turning in the opposite direction to those on the right, swinging around to point at the road.

  Lobato regarded the synchronised display. ‘All the mirrors are realigning. But they are not aiming at any of the towers. They are—’

  ‘They’re aiming at us!’ she cried. ‘Alula’s gonna fry us like an ant under a goddamn magnifying glass!’

  Eddie looked back. Nina was right – the great mirror-lined bowl was becoming brighter by the moment as every single heliostat turned to reflect the sun at them. ‘Shit! Is there anywhere we can hide from it?’

  Lobato searched the hillside for cover, but saw nothing. ‘No. We will just have to stay ahead of it.’

  ‘You ever tried to outrun the sunrise?’ the Yorkshireman said cuttingly. As if incineration was not enough of a danger, he also saw the pursuing Escalade vault on to the road – and the Apache rise above the vast shining bowl. ‘Nina, new plan – get off the road again! If you stay under the mirrors, they won’t be able to see us, and what they can’t see, they can’t melt.’

  ‘And what about the helicopter?’ Nina demanded.

  ‘Let’s worry about one horrible death at a time. Get under the mirrors!’

  ‘Really not liking this plan,’ she said, but she swerved the Toyota off the road.

  Alula watched the SUV disappear beneath the shifting mirrors. ‘Follow them!’ she snapped. The combined beam from the heliostats started to form, the air shimmering as it was superheated by ever more intense sunlight.

  ‘I – I can’t see them,’ protested the technician.

  ‘Are you blind? Follow their dust trail – Hashim, hold this.’ She thrust the spearhead at al-Asim and shoved the technician aside to take the controls herself. The Apache had by now cleared the pad and was heading in pursuit. ‘Tell the helicopter to hover above them. I will do this myself!’

  She adjusted the dials. The heliostats all responded, sending the searing point of light sweeping after the Land Cruiser.

  In normal operation, each of the three prime beams would be created by a third of the mirrors, the temperature at the focus point roughly one and a half thousand degrees Celsius. All the mirrors combined, however, produced something far more intense. Heliostats toppled in the monstrous new beam’s wake, flower heads of glass and metal scythed off as a beam half as hot as the sun’s surface sliced through them like a laser.

  The technician stared in horror as his facility crumbled before his eyes. Alula ignored him, an almost maniacal smile forming as the dazzling beacon of destruction drew ever closer to her brother and his rescuers.

  ‘What was that?’ said Nina, hearing explosive crashes behind them. ‘The chopper?’

  Eddie turned – to see mast after mast shearing apart, the huge mirror arrays falling and smashing in a blizzard of mirrored fragments. ‘No, but I almost wish it was!’ Lower down the slope, the other SUV was angling towards them. A man leaned out of its window. ‘Incoming!’

  Everyone ducked as the royal guardsman sprayed full-auto fire at them. The cargo area’s side window blew apart, followed by thunks as bullets punched through the bodywork. Lobato cried out as a metal fragment tore into the back of one hand, another round narrowly missing the Emir’s legs before striking the frame of Nina’s seat. ‘Jesus!’ she yelped.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Eddie hurriedly asked.

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ she assured him as she lifted her head, ‘but we’re running out of places to go!’

  Ahead was a gap in the ranks of heliostats to accommodate a line of electrical pylons, but the space left to ensure that the power lines were not damaged by the mirrors’ beam had been filled by photovoltaic arrays, banks of solar panels running directly across her path. ‘You will have to go around!’ said Lobato, clutching his wound.

  ‘How? It goes half a mile in each direction!’

  ‘What’re they made of?’ Eddie asked Lobato.

  He looked back in confusion. ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘The panels, the frames! What’re they made of?’

  ‘The panels are polysilicon cells mounted on glass, and the frames are aluminium—’

  ‘So they’re lightweight? Nina, go through ’em! Fast as you can!’

  ‘You think I wasn’t already going that fast?’ She lined up with a set of panels. ‘Brace yourselves!’

  Everyone tensed, Eddie holding the Emir—

  The Toyota ploughed into the solar panels.

  Dark glass exploded, flying shards raining over the hood. The SUV lurched, about to roll over as the angled panels acted like a ramp – then their frame collapsed under its two-ton weight and the vehicle slammed back down, dragging the wreckage for several yards before the mangled framework fell away.

  But they were not clear yet. Another set of panels loomed—

  Nina spun the wheel and hit it head-on. This time, the whole array disintegrated on impact, part of the aluminium framework cracking the windscreen. She gasped, but held course, powering the dented 4x4 back into the endless maze of mirrors.

  Another burst of bullets followed them. The Escalade was still closing. But the sizzling solar beam had overtaken it, drawing ever nearer to its prey.

  ‘The pylons!’ cried the technician, unable to hold his silence any longer as the blazing point of light approached the power lines. He reached for the controls. ‘Your Majesty, you must stop—’

  Al-Asim threw him to the floor. ‘Do not touch her!’

  ‘But if you cut the power lines—’

  ‘Shut up!’ Alula yelled, fixated on her target. The Toyota had come back in
to sight, and she sent the beam after it as fast as the mirrors could realign. ‘I’ve almost got them!’

  The dazzling spot raced across the gap after the retreating Land Cruiser, vaporising the solar panels on the ground – and slicing through a pylon.

  Skeletal aluminium flashed white-hot, melted – and fell.

  Eddie stared through the rear window in horror as the beam rushed towards them, feeling its heat rising on his face—

  It abruptly halted.

  The bisected pylon crashed down in front of the pursuing Escalade, the severed power lines whipping furiously. The driver braked hard – but too late. The vehicle ploughed into the fallen structure, flipping end over end and smashing down on its roof.

  But the inferno remained stationary, burning sand into glass in a searing cauldron. ‘Christ!’ Eddie said. ‘Dunno why, but the beam just stopped moving.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Lobato, with relieved realisation. ‘It cut the power lines, which caused a feedback surge in the power storage units. The safety systems activated automatically to prevent an overload, affecting the entire facility.’

  ‘So are we safe?’ Nina asked, swinging the vehicle back into the now-stationary heliostats as fires erupted behind them.

  ‘No. It will only take a few seconds to reboot . . .’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Alula demanded, rounding angrily on the technician. The finger of God chasing her brother had abruptly stopped, the controls no longer responding to her commands. The screen showing the heliostat status blanked out, then returned with a large warning banner obscuring most of the display.

  ‘I tried to warn you,’ he replied fearfully. ‘When you cut – I mean, when the main power lines to Dhajan City were cut,’ he corrected, trying not to imply that the country’s clearly ruthless new ruler was in any way at fault, ‘the system shut down to keep the power storage units from overloading. But look, look,’ he went on as the warning disappeared, ‘it’s already reset!’

  Alula took hold of the controls again. The heliostats responded, the point of intense light emerging from the flames and smoke. She searched for the fleeing SUV, but it was hidden by the mirrors. ‘Tell the helicopter to find them,’ she ordered al-Asim. ‘I want to kill them myself!’