Extinction Event

by Dan Abnett

  “Science fiction?”

  Koshkin sneered.

  “This situation is a grave matter of state security. The increase in these incidents jeopardises an entire region. I require simple, practical solutions. I need a thorough threat analysis. I have theories of my own about what’s happening here.”

  “I suppose you think NATO got Hollywood to run up a few dinosaurs,” Connor responded.

  Koshkin just glared at him.

  Connor shrugged.

  “It sounded funny when they said it to me,” he added.

  Koshkin looked at the man in the wire-framed glasses, who was waiting patiently by the shelter door.

  “Umarov, let’s take them over to the CO’s hut.”

  The older man nodded, and held the door open.

  “Please to come,” he said.

  “One thing,” Cutter said, holding up a hand. “You said Jan Iachmann used to be in charge of the scientific group. What happened to him?”

  “Professor Suvova replaced him,” Koshkin replied.

  “Yes, but where did Iachmann go?” Cutter asked.

  “Ten months ago, he went out surveying south of the river with two other members of the group,” Bulov said. “They never came back.”

  “I guess Baba Yaga got them too,” Koshkin said.

  FIFTEEN

  “I’ve just spent three hours with the minister,” Lester said. “It’s turning into a bloody nightmare. The Foreign Office has got hold of it, and so has 5.”

  “What did the minister tell you?” Jenny asked.

  “That I can tell you?” Lester replied. “Virtually nothing.”

  Jake Hemple appeared in the office doorway.

  “You sent for me?”

  “Come in, and shut the door,” Lester instructed. He sat down at his desk and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  “Seats,” he offered. “We could be here for some time.”

  Jenny and Hemple sat down. Lester opened his briefcase, and slid out a batch of ten by eight photographs.

  “It’s taken three days, but our friends in 5 have managed to identify this man,” Lester said, tapping the uppermost shot. “Nikolai Medyevin, Russian, thirty-three, palaeontologist, moving around on a South African passport with a European visa.”

  “Palaeontologist?” Jenny asked.

  Lester nodded.

  “Would you believe it? Not a spy at all. Just a bloody scientist.”

  “What about the other man on the footage?” Hemple asked.

  “Nothing,” Lester said. “5 thinks he might be some kind of contractor or specialist. He’s certainly in the country illegally.”

  “Why would these men kidnap Cutter and the others?” Jenny asked. “Why would a palaeontologist come to this country and kidnap a —”

  She paused.

  “Oh God,” she said.

  “Let’s not jump the gun,” Lester said. “Thus far 5 thinks it’s all a mistake. This Medyevin fellow, he may know of Cutter, and he may think that Cutter is a viable target for extortion, if he believes, for instance, that Cutter is doing lucrative Government work under contract. Apparently, kidnap and extortion is a growth industry in Russia. This sort of thing happens all the time, I’m told — though seldom on UK soil.”

  “If that was the case, there’d have been some sort of demand,” Hemple pointed out.

  “Yes,” Lester admitted. “That’s where the whole argument starts to go soggy. And, of course, most people in 5 and the Home Office aren’t aware of the precise type of work Cutter does for us. It’s possible this is exactly what we think it is.”

  “The Russians have got the same problem we have,” Hemple stated, “and they’ve taken the professor to find out what we know about it.”

  “It’s so horribly ironic,” Jenny mused. “Cutter was saying how desperately he wanted to make contact with any other people who’d had experience of this problem. He wanted to share information and ideas. But this probably isn’t what he had in mind.”

  Lester began to knead his temples with the tips of his fingers.

  “Well, if that’s true, the implications for national security are mind-boggling.”

  “What about the implications for Nick, Abby and Connor?” Jenny asked.

  “Well,” Lester replied tetchily, “if it were up to me, we’d find out where they are, and we’d bloody well go and get them back. I mean, what’s the point of having a dedicated special-forces unit if you can’t deploy it against a foreign power once in a while?”

  “Say the word,” Hemple said.

  “Oh, put it away,” Lester sighed. He sat back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. “There are two problems. One is, the Home Office and the Foreign Office would go berserk if we broke the rules.”

  “So we bend them,” Hemple said. “I’ve learned to walk some very fine lines.”

  “Two,” Lester carried on, “we haven’t the faintest idea where they are. The van the Russians were using hasn’t turned up. We’ve had no sightings, port watch hasn’t seen anything, and Medyevin’s passport hasn’t been flagged by Customs.”

  “They will have left the country,” Hemple said. “A ship, a private airfield, something like that.”

  “Yes,” Lester agreed, “but we don’t know where they’ve gone. We are so pathetically lacking in specifics, we’re helpless. We’re just going to have to wait.”

  Jenny looked at Hemple.

  “Prep the alpha team anyway,” she said.

  SIXTEEN

  General Grigoriy Markov was something of a survival himself. He was old-school, a dinosaur relic from the era of the Soviet Military who had managed to survive the cultural K-T boundary event in 1991 that had marked the start of the Russian Federation.

  Rina Suvova told Cutter that the general had accumulated enough political capital to retain a senior post in the modern army, but it seemed his superiors weren’t quite sure what to do with him. The Siberian mission was important because of the serious state security issues attached to it, and that befitted his status. At the same time, it was a wet-nurse posting to the middle of nowhere. Not even that, perhaps: the advance camp was so remote, it wasn’t near the middle of anything.

  He was waiting for them in his hut, standing beside a portable desk laden with report files. He had no English, and relied on his adjutant, a dapper man called Zvegin, for translations.

  Cutter’s first impression of Markov was of a big man, tall and overweight. With his bulk and his thick beard, Markov comically seemed to fit the Russian ‘bear’ stereotype. But he was getting old. His hair was shaggy grey, his eyes heavy, his ears big and fleshy, and his bulk was weighed down by the law of gravity. Cutter thought he wasn’t so much a bear as a giant sloth, or even an old bull elephant.

  Markov had put on a dress uniform and his medals. There were so many of them, it looked as if the army had handed them out as freely as boy-scout initiative badges. Without words to establish his authority directly, most likely Markov was trying to show Cutter that he was indisputably in charge.

  Koshkin, in his simple black BDUs, had infinitely more authority, however. He was the young bull who had usurped Markov’s place in the herd. The old bull just hadn’t fully realised it yet.

  When Koshkin and Umarov, followed by the members of the science group, brought Cutter, Abby and Connor into the hut, Markov’s manner was stilted. They were guests, whose help he was keen to secure, and it seemed part of him wanted to greet them with handshakes. But they were also prisoners, foreign nationals whose illegal arrest and deportation he had authorised.

  He settled for an awkward nod of the head. Then he spoke, and Zvegin translated.

  “General Markov is anxious that you provide technical scientific support for this mission,” Zvegin said. “He is especially interested in your theories as to the origins of the erratics.”

  “I’m sure he is,” Cutter replied.

  Zvegin waited to see if anything else was forthcoming, and when it wasn’t, seemed reluctant to t
ranslate Cutter’s terse response. The general looked at his adjutant expectantly.

  “Okay,” Cutter said, “I’ll repeat this for the general’s benefit.” Zvegin started to translate.

  “I think we can help one another,” Cutter continued. “I think we have a mutual problem that has consequences for the entire human race, and has nothing at all to do with national boundaries. I will assist Professor Suvova in any way I can. But I condemn your seizure of me and my friends. It is totally unacceptable. If any further threats are made against us, my cooperation will vanish in a flash. Are we clear?”

  Cutter waited until Zvegin had caught up with the translation. Koshkin scowled at him.

  The general listened to the translation, cleared his throat and looked directly at Cutter. Before he could say anything, however, Cutter headed him off.

  “Additionally,” he continued, “I wish to be allowed contact with the British Government, to inform them of our condition and location.”

  “There is no way —” Koshkin snapped.

  Markov began to speak, and Zvegin translated back to Cutter.

  “The general assures you no further threats will be made, and that your cooperation is appreciated. However, on the second point, contact with your government is not possible at this time, due to state security measures.”

  “I’d like him to reconsider that,” Cutter said.

  “I’m sure the decision could be reviewed,” the adjutant replied without reference to the general. “Perhaps a show of good faith? Can you offer us something of substance?”

  Cutter glanced at Connor and Abby beside him.

  “What do you think? In for a penny?”

  “Go for it,” Abby said.

  “I just want to see some more dinos,” Connor added.

  Cutter turned back to Markov and his translator.

  “The root cause of this situation is a phenomenon known to us as an anomaly. There may be more than one, in fact. If you supply us with the appropriate equipment and resources, we will do our very best to locate the anomaly.”

  Zvegin translated this for the general’s benefit and then asked Cutter, “What is this anomaly?”

  “It’s a puncture in the fourth dimension,” Cutter explained. “It’s an interface between one discrete temporal era and another.”

  “It’s a hole in time,” Connor clarified.

  Zvegin hesitated, and then translated. Markov listened. Then he laughed, assuming a translation mistake, and asked for clarification. Zvegin repeated what he’d said.

  A certain amount of uproar followed. Markov began to make baffled demands, and Koshkin, Suvova, and the other scientists started arguing back and forth. It became heated.

  Cutter looked at Connor and Abby.

  “We’ll just let them get on with it, shall we?” he asked.

  They waited for another minute or so, but rather than calming down, the argument became even more fierce. Markov, Suvova and Koshkin were engaged in a three-way shouting match that Medyevin and the adjutant, Zvegin, were trying to referee, while Bulov and Yushenko sniped from the wings.

  “So, World War Three,” Abby observed.

  “This is getting us nowhere,” Cutter said. He made a move to intervene, but Connor stopped him.

  “Allow me.” Connor hooked his fingers in his mouth and blew a whistle so shrill it cut through the bellowing and yelling. All the Russians glared at him. He gave them a cheery wave.

  “Look, hi. Hello. Not entirely clear what you’re all arguing about, because I don’t speak Russian,” Connor said, “but now that I’ve got your attention, can I just say, I’m guessing it’s about the whole idea of anomalies, right?”

  Zvegin was translating rapidly for the general.

  “So, some of you, like, believe my boss here might have something,” Connor went on, “and the rest of you think he’s bonkers. That’s all right. I think he’s bonkers a lot of the time, too. But it occurs to me, you can stand around all day shouting at one another, or you can let us find the anomaly. Right, we find it for you, you can see it, it proves anomalies are real, and you won’t have to argue about it any more.”

  Markov pointed a finger at Connor and said something.

  “Ooh, am I going to get shot now?” Connor asked, suddenly nervous.

  “The general says this is a simple and reasonable solution to the issue,” Zvegin said.

  “Absolutely,” Connor said, relieved. “Save all the arguing for later. When we’ve found the anomaly for you, you can all have a brilliant row about what to do with it.”

  “You can do this, Nicky?” Rina Suvova asked Cutter.

  “Connor’s the real whiz at it,” Cutter replied, “but, yeah. We can find it, I’m certain.”

  “What will you need?” Medyevin asked.

  Connor shrugged.

  “Whatever kit you’ve got, actually, but most of all a radio.”

  “Absolutely not!” Koshkin barked. “This is all just a trick so they can get their hands on a communications device!”

  “Listen, Koshkin,” Cutter said. “You brought us halfway round the planet to help you. Well, this is what we do. If you won’t let us build an anomaly detector, then you might as well send us home, because that’s all we’ve got to offer.”

  “Our understanding of this event has not advanced in months,” Suvova appealed. “Let Professor Cutter at least try.”

  Koshkin exchanged a few more words with the general.

  “Very well,” he said at length. “But Umarov will supervise you at all times.”

  The older man in the wire-framed glasses nodded.

  “You’ll need a translator then,” Medyevin said. “May I?”

  “Get to work,” Koshkin said. “Let us see where it takes us.”

  Night was not so much falling as flooding out of the forests to submerge them. In the main longhouse of the advance camp, Connor and Cutter worked with the tools and equipment Umarov had supplied. Connor had the back off a powerful, bulky field set from the radio room. He’d also scored one of the camp’s heavy-grade military laptops.

  “What do you think?” Cutter asked him.

  Connor shrugged and put down a screwdriver. “It’s not going to be the most portable thing in the world, but we’ll just have to manage.”

  “The radio set is the key component?” Medyevin asked, watching them intently.

  “Yeah,” Cutter said. “Radio is the basis of the ADD units we use at the ARC.”

  “ADD — by which you mean anomaly detection devices?” Medyevin queried.

  “That’s right. Our experience is that anomalies cause radio interference on the 87.6FM frequency. We use the interference patterns to identify them, and then triangulate their location.”

  “That’ll be the hard part,” Connor said. “I’m not going to be able to rig up much more than a basic warmer/colder directional indicator. There’s going to be some legwork involved.”

  He started playing around with the laptop.

  “This is a pretty good piece of kit,” he observed.

  “You sound surprised,” Medyevin said.

  “Oh, you know, it’s all those stories about cosmonaut’s taking pencils into space,” Connor said. “I thought Russian tech would be solid and very basic.”

  “Some of it still is,” Medyevin responded, “but we source decent hardware these days. Russia really wouldn’t be able to compete if it didn’t.”

  “Well, respect,” Connor said. “This is full on. That said, it’s loaded with all sorts of applications I can’t use because I don’t have the military clearance code.”

  He looked at Umarov. The man in the wire-framed glasses simply smiled back.

  “Yep, that’s what I thought,” Connor said. “No keys to the missile silo for me. But I can use the GPS system and a few other bits. I can’t believe they’ve got coverage out here.” He looked at Cutter. “Wireless broadband in the middle of darkest Siberia? How amazing is that?”

  “Special services have be
en arranged,” Medyevin said, “due to the sensitive nature of this operation. Communication was considered to be key.”

  “So, how long?” Cutter asked.

  “If I work late, I can probably get the basic set rigged up for tomorrow morning,” Connor replied. “That’s not the issue. The fine tuning is the issue.”

  “Go on,” Cutter said.

  Connor turned a dial, and briefly filled the air with a hiss of white noise.

  “The interference is there, right where we said it would be. There’s absolutely no doubt at all that there’s an anomaly here. But how close and where is another thing. I’m getting all sorts of weird readings.”

  “Back home, before we left, we were getting weird readings too,” Cutter reminded him.

  “It feels like the same sort of thing,” Connor said. “I’ll know a bit more when I’ve finished lashing this together, but right now it’s really hard to finesse the readings in any way.”

  Cutter left Connor at work and went outside for a breath of air. He was tired, and Medyevin was asking too many questions that he couldn’t answer.

  The doctor had evidently bought the ‘holes in time’ theory, which made him a useful ally, but Cutter couldn’t get past his blatant ambition. Given the situation, Medyevin was bound to be interested in their ideas and theories, but he seemed excessively keen.

  He wants to learn, thought Cutter. He wants to know more about this than any of his colleagues, so that he can become Russia’s foremost expert. This is about Nikolai Medyevin’s career. This is his break into the big leagues, his opportunity to secure a reputation.

  ***

  Abby was outside already, watching the stars come out. The sky above the black trees was a huge and luminous dark blue, almost lighter and clearer than the murky day had been. The air seemed fresh. The lamps of the advance camp burned yellow and white in the darkness of the forest clearing, but overhead the sky was full of glittering silver lights and fields of stars that looked like diamond dust.

  “How’s Connor doing?” she asked, seeing Cutter approach.

  “Not bad,” he replied as he joined her. “Let’s hope we can get this situation sorted out, and then get on our way as soon as possible.”