‘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.
Chapter Sixty-Six
With surprising speed, Craine activated a hidden thumb latch on the silver ferrule of his ebony stick. Its slim carved shaft sprang away from the curved handle to reveal a concealed sword blade, thirty inches of spring steel with double razor edges and tapered to a needle point.
Nobody saw it in time. Quigley was leaning over the old man with his arms outstretched when the point of the blade hissed towards his chest with the speed of a striking rattlesnake. No sooner had it penetrated deep into his flesh than it withdrew, ready to stab him again.
Too stunned to utter a sound, the American recoiled two staggering steps, tripped over his own feet, and fell heavily backwards.
Ben raised his MP5 and fired at Craine, but the old man had already whipped out of sight under the computer table and Ben’s three-shot burst struck empty floor. Craine rolled with uncanny speed and emerged from under the other end of the table clutching his ivory stick. He pointed it at Jeff. A wizened thumb pressed a latch that released a folding trigger; Craine squeezed it and a concealed striker inside the stick snapped forwards to set off a slim high-velocity rifle cartridge that fired with an eardrum-rupturing bark and a spit of flame from the end of the shaft. It hit Jeff in the thigh, spattering blood over the wall behind him. Jeff tumbled over, clutching his leg.
Ben fired again. A computer screen burst into fragments. Craine dropped the ivory stick and scrambled with stunning agility to where Quigley had dropped his MP5. The Director was no less familiar with the weapon than anyone else in the room. Ben and Boonzie dived for cover as bullets sprayed the air. Blood sprayed up the wall behind Boonzie. The Scotsman sprawled over the floor, clutching the ragged wound in his left shoulder. Craine paused, took deliberate aim: the remote detonator sitting on the table where Quigley had left it blew apart into fragments of plastic casing and circuitry.
Ben tried to scramble to his feet to return fire, but another burst drove him back down to the floor. Craine was on his feet, moving remarkably fast towards the wall switch that activated the security shutter over the door. He was laughing, something nobody had heard in generations. ‘So you thought I’d let you undo all my plans? I was working on this before you were born.’
Quigley was down and not moving; Jeff was clutching his leg; Boonzie’s left arm was hanging limp as he crawled over to his fallen weapon. Ben got off another burst in Craine’s direction, but the old man had ducked back down behind the cover of the table, still cackling wildly.
The armoured shutter glided upwards.
And behind it were armed security guards, alerted by the deafening blast of Craine’s walking stick rifle.
Suddenly, they were swarming into the room. Gunfire erupted all over the place. Ben felt bullets ripping through the air past him. He flipped the MP5 to full-auto and emptied the magazine, saw three men go down before his weapon locked back empty; he dropped the spent mag, tore another from his pouch and rammed it in, released the bolt and kept firing. A column of hot empty 9mm cases flew into the air from his ejector port. Noise and smoke filled the room.
Craine scrambled over to the trigger. Pulling the key from his pocket he inserted it into place and twisted it a quarter turn. The arming light came on and the unbreakable glass cover whirred up on its hinges to expose the red firing button.
What nobody had noticed, while he’d been keeping them talking, was that the atomic clock and its corresponding digital countdown screen now read past zero time. The target was now comfortably within range. Craine held his finger over the button and felt the power course through him. He only had to press it, and in four minutes Moscow would cease to exist as the world knew it
.
Craine’s finger descended towards the button.
But it never got there.
Boonzie had reached his fallen gun and opened up at the swarm of guards trying to storm their way into the room. Two more went down, piling on top of the bodies half-blocking the doorway. For one precious moment, the firestorm slackened and Ben saw his chance. As the old man’s bony finger was coming down on the button, he threw himself across the consoles and wrestled Craine away from the trigger device.
Craine might have looked frail, but he was hard and wiry and could move lizard-fast. Suddenly the ebony-handled sword stick was back in his hand. Ben ducked back as he saw the slash coming, felt the razor-keen blade slice the air an inch from his nose.
Ben retreated. There was no time to do anything except avoid the slashing blade. Craine came on, fire in his eyes and teeth bared like a madman.
The guards were back at the door. Jeff was lying in a pool of blood. His gun rattled. Boonzie was backing him up. His gun ran empty. He reloaded. Jeff did the same. Ammo was running thin.
Quigley wasn’t moving.
The firing mechanism deactivated itself after five seconds and the glass cover whirred shut.
‘You!’ Craine rasped. ‘You think you can walk into my world and undo the work of a lifetime?’ Whoosh. The blade came whipping sideways at Ben. He was running out of space to retreat. The blade scored his combat vest and he felt a sear of pain as it opened up a gash across his chest.
‘Yeah, I do,’ he said. Drew the Steyr pistol from his holster and shot Victor Craine between the eyes. The gun flashed and boomed and kicked back against his palm.
The old man staggered to a halt. The sword cane fell loose from his fingers. He gazed at Ben in vague puzzlement for a brief moment and then fell on his face.
Ben directed the pistol at the doorway. He fired, fired again, and again, and saw two more guards fall back and the rest retreat further into the command centre. But there were still too many of them waiting to storm the control room and kill everyone inside.
Ben glanced at the shattered remains of the remote detonator. Goodbye, limpet mine. There was no longer any way to destroy this ship. And no longer any possibility of avoiding getting shot to pieces by an enemy of overwhelming numbers. If they’d fallen silent for a moment, it was only that they were regrouping for the next assault. This could be the last stand.
Unless …
A crazy idea had begun to form in his mind. It wouldn’t be the first. Might just be the last, though.
‘Jeff? Boonzie?’ The room was so thick with gunsmoke, he could hardly see them any more.
‘Still here,’ came Jeff’s voice, thick with pain.
‘Havnae had this much fun in years,’ Boonzie called out.
Ben clambered over Craine’s dead body to where Quigley was lying sprawled on his back. The American was still alive, but there was a lot of blood leaking out from the stab wound in his chest. Two inches lower, and Craine’s blade would have thrust through his heart.
Ben gripped his arm. ‘Hold on, Jack. We’re getting out of here.’
Quigley’s unfocused eyes gazed up at him. ‘The mine …’ he gasped weakly.
‘Change of plan,’ Ben said. He dropped the mag from his Steyr and slammed in a spare in time to let off three rapid double-taps at the guard who’d been trying to aim an M4 through the gap in the doorway. The man dropped his weapon and fell dead.
The crazy idea was growing in Ben’s mind. He ran over to the targeting computer. His eyes searched the screen, taking in the complex menu. He thought furiously. Began to punch at keys.
The guards had regrouped, reloaded and now they were back in force. Gunfire raked the room, shattering screens, splintering the wood panelling. Boonzie and Jeff returned fire from behind their makeshift cover. Suddenly Boonzie’s gun ceased firing. He yelled, ‘I’m out! Ben! What the fuck!’
‘Down to half a mag,’ Jeff called out.
‘Hold on!’ Ben yelled back. Another bullet passed by his head, so close he smelled its trail of cordite.
He’d finished entering the new coordinates. He twisted the arming key. The glass trigger cover whirred open.
Quigley had managed to prop himself up, clutching in agony at his chest. ‘What are you doing?’ he gasped.
‘You know what I’m doing,’ Ben said.
‘You crazy sonofabitch.’
‘So everyone keeps saying,’ Ben said.
The guards burst into the room. The one in front brought his M4 up to the shoulder and aimed it directly at Ben.
Ben smiled at him and pressed the red button. Kill me. It’s too late.
The guard hesitated. His weapon wavered in his hands. His eyes darted across the room to glance at one of the few screens that hadn’t been shattered in the exchange of fire. It was the screen showing the ship’s GPS position near the eastern extremity of the Gulf of Finland. Then his gaze shot across to the screen of the targeting computer and his eyes widened. Because the coordinates were the same on both.
The … same … on … both. Which meant—
Realisation lit the man’s face up in horror. He lowered his rifle. Stared at Ben for an instant as if to say the same thing Quigley had just said. Then he stumbled back towards the doorway, shoving past his colleagues and tripping over dead bodies in his panic. ‘Run! Out of here!’ he screamed to the other guards who were amassed in the command centre.
‘What the fuck have ye done, Ben?’ Boonzie asked, turning pale.
‘We have a little under four minutes to get off the ship,’ Ben said.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Four minutes. Two hundred seconds. A hundred and eighty. A hundred and sixty. Time became very compressed when every moment mattered this much.
Ben led the way with the bleeding, half-conscious dead weight of Jack Quigley draped across his shoulders. Behind him, Boonzie had Jeff’s arm around his neck, half carrying him, half dragging him as they struggled through the ship’s passageways, clattered up steps, stumbled through hatches in a race to reach the upper deck in time. Ahead they could hear the echoing steps of the personnel members running in panic to abandon the vessel any way they could now that the word had spread like wildfire that they were about to self-destruct.
A deep vibration seemed to come from the core of the ship. The lights flickered and dimmed, as if some gigantic power drain were sucking in all its energy.
Ben kept moving, hanging tightly onto Quigley with his teeth gritted in determination. He could suddenly see Brooke’s face in his mind and held that image there, letting it spur him on to run faster. ‘Come on!’ he yelled behind him to the others. ‘Keep going!’
Ninety seconds. The fresh air and bright light hit them as they burst out of the last hatchway into the morning sun. The sea was calm, the sky an unbroken expanse of blue except for the smoke still rising from the smouldering fires on deck. Running figures raced ahead of them between the cargo containers. Some of the personnel were trying to lower lifeboats, others clambering over the rail and leaping wildly into the sea from a height that would almost certainly be fatal.
Seventy-five seconds. Ben blinked the sweat from his eyes. He thought of the rope ladder hanging from the ship’s side down to the moored rigid inflatable below. They’d never make it down to the boat.
One minute. ‘The helipad!’ he yelled. It was a short sprint across the deck to the resting chopper. Could he get it up in the air in time? He didn’t know, but it was the only chance they had.
He ran, legs straining from his burden. He could hear Jeff and Boonzie’s grunts of pain as they laboured to keep up.
Fifty seconds. Crossing the helipad, he tore open the aircraft’s side hatch. He roared with effort as he bundled Quigley into the back. Racing around to the pilot’s seat, he hurled himself in behind the controls. Boonzie and Jeff were clambering aboard now. Boonzie’s grating rasp in Ben’s ear: ‘Fly this thing, laddie!’
Forty seconds. Ben glanced around him at the unfamiliar
cockpit layout. Come on. Get it together. He flipped switches. Powered up the turbine. The rotors began to turn. Slowly, maddeningly slowly, then a little faster. Then faster still, until the yellow blade tips became a solid halo above the cockpit and the engine revs were rising to a howl. Go, go, screamed the voice in his mind.
Ten seconds. Nine.
The chopper’s skids shifted on the deck as the aircraft started to go light.
Eight. Seven.
‘Fly it!’ Boonzie yelled.
Ben hauled on the controls. The chopper rose into the air, hesitated, rose a few feet more.
Five seconds. Four.
The helicopter climbed steadily upwards. The Triton’s towering superstructure was like a skyscraper next to them. Up and up. They were going to make it.
Then the ship seemed to disappear in a soundless explosion. It was as if an invisible hurricane of unimaginable fury had suddenly struck out of nowhere. Every intact window burst apart. Railings and cables and containers and bits of walkway and masts were suddenly shearing away, toppling, tumbling through the air. The hull crumpled and was torn apart at the seams just as easily as if it had been a child’s plastic model. The ship’s prow reared up as its back broke, hurling thousands of tons of cargo loose and crashing about the deck. The sea exploded all around. Foam and spray leaping skywards. The air black with flying debris.
Ben never even saw the steel cable that fouled the rotor blades with a massive shrieking crunch and sent the chopper gyrating wildly off course just as it cleared the deck enough to accelerate upwards and away. He couldn’t hold it. The aircraft began to spin and then plunge towards the mountainous swell.
The last thing Ben saw before he blacked out was the white water surging up to swallow them whole.
It was the cry of a seagull that woke him. The bird flapped down to land beside him, eyeing him curiously. The sky above was clear blue and the grey sea rose and fell gently, tugging his body back and forth on the swell. He blinked and looked around and realised he was clinging to a shattered rotor blade. What had happened? His fogged mind began to piece the memories together.
The Nemesis Program_Ben Hope Page 36