by Hammond, Ray
The driver was a FARC mercenary wearing civilian clothes and, as instructed, he rolled the van to a gentle stop. A chevroned barrier stretched across the entrance to the campus.
The armed guard in the brightly illuminated glass booth folded his newspaper, yawned, rose to his feet and slid open a small hatch-window.
The van driver raised a silenced handgun and with a quiet ‘thud’ shot the guard in the centre of his forehead.
‘GO,’ shouted Resigo.
The rear doors were thrust open and Floyd and the others spilled out into the cool night. It was bright under the sodium street lights and Floyd glanced up at the two security cameras mounted on lamp posts on either side of the entrance. Raising his T-94 he took careful aim and, as instructed during the briefing, squeezed off a short burst at the camera trained on the entrance approach to the guard house.
Two other members of the unit were dragging the dead guard from the glass-windowed post while the rest had taken Floyd’s knapsack and were unpacking their own. Then they were laying remote-controlled explosive charges within the booth itself and at random points along the six-foot high wire perimeter fence. As soon as the ambush was set all except three men were scrambling back into the van. The three left behind would remain in the bushes to detonate the explosives as required.
Picking up speed, the van headed into the campus from the south. Poplar trees lined either side of the road and the vehicle sped to the right around a large rotary and then took the next avenue on the left.
Floyd had the map of the campus clear in his mind and he raised his weapon again. They would be at the CERN Security Centre in a few minutes and then he would face his first real test of this assault – how to play a convincing part without, himself, being forced to take innocent lives.
*
A few minutes before the HFDA’s advance raiding parties arrived at the campus, Nicole Sanderson and her driver had entered the complex through Entrance B in the north. Now, ten minutes later, she stood in the main Accelerator Hall Reception Centre deep within the CERN complex.
‘So, it’s just you two on duty is it?’ asked Nicole, flipping her badge shut and glancing from one armed guard to another.
‘Yes, miss. Just us,’ confirmed the younger of the two men in good English.
‘O.K., there is no reason for alarm,’ the ATA agent told them. ‘But as a precaution the police are on their way.’
During the thirty minute high-speed ride from the outskirts of Geneva to the CERN campus, Nicole had called Mike Ryan back and she had patched Ray Fox of the CTU into the conference call. It was almost midnight in France, eleven p.m. in Somerset and six p.m. on America’s East Coast. She had also patched the agency’s consulting physicist into the conference from Mountain View.
‘Professor Nagourney thinks the HFDA may intend to attack the CERN research facility, outside Geneva,’ Nicole told her boss and the director of Britain’s Counter-Terrorism Unit from the back of the speeding consulate limousine. ‘I’m on the way there now.’
‘CERN?’ said Fox.
‘It’s a giant particle accelerator – buried deep underground, very near Geneva, to the west,’ added Nagourney, for the sake of clarity. ‘It straddles the French-Swiss border and it’s the biggest machine in the world. We know that the HFDA has been building their own miniature accelerators. Obviously they now have plans for using a full scale particle collider.’
There was a short silence as the two heads of the anti-terrorism agencies considered this information. Over the airwaves Nicole could almost hear the men consulting their VAs.
‘Sue’s found it,’ said Fox. ‘Is it some sort of giant wheel? It’s shown on my map like a damn great crop circle, only it’s drawn in dotted lines.’
‘That’s right. It’s underground,’ confirmed Nagourney. ‘It’s buried at an average depth of about one hundred and fifty metres.’
‘It’s forty-five kilometers from Morbier, from where my man reported in,’ Fox told them. ‘What could they do if they got control of this thing, Professor?’
‘Well, I suppose they could create some pretty powerful black holes,’ Nagourney told them. ‘I’ll have to do some calculations and get back to you on that one.’
‘Right, we’ve got to tell the French and Swiss governments, agreed?’ said Ryan from Washington.
‘I’ve already told my opposite number in Paris that the HFDA has landed on French soil,’ said Fox. ‘And I’ve alerted the Swiss. But its gone midnight in Geneva and it will take the local police some time to gather a decent force together. French special forces are on their way by helicopter from Ardentes but I’ve also scrambled the SAS by scram-jump. I’m going to divert them to CERN immediately.’
When the conference call was finished, Nagourney had remained connected to Nicole but he had also opened a second network connection and tried several numbers. On the third attempt he got an answer and then he spoke in rapid French for several minutes. Nicole listened in as Carl translated.
‘That was Marcel Toussaint – I used to work with him at Brookhaven,’ Nagourney had explained unnecessarily to Nicole as he closed his second connection. ‘He’s inside CERN, down in the Large Hadron Collider right now, preparing for a run-up. He’ll meet you at the main reception building. I’ll stay linked.’
Now the doors of one of the very large elevators at the rear of the reception atrium opened and a short man dressed from head to toe in a white all-in-one sterile-environment suit stepped out and strode across the marble floor.
‘Miss Sanderson?’ asked the man, ‘I’m Marcel Toussaint.’
Nicole showed her badge again and slipped a slim communicator from her pocket. Carl transferred Nagourney’s voice to the speaker and in short, rapid fire sentences, the federal agent and her remotely-linked consulting physicist told the astonished CERN scientist about the HFDA’s presence in the area and their suspicions that HFDA terrorists intended to storm the research facility.
‘They seem to be able to create controllable black holes,’ Nagourney explained over the link. ‘That’s what destroyed central London and it would have done to same to Silicon Valley if their weapon had not been found.’
‘Controllable black holes?’ echoed the amazed physicist.
‘Yes, and I need some data from you urgently,’ said Nagourney from Mountain View. ‘I’ve got to provide the US Anti-Terrorism Agency with some sort of estimate of what the HFDA might be able to do with their technology if they got hold of a particle accelerator the size of the Large Hadron Collider.’
*
‘GO, GO, GO!’ shouted Resigo from the front passenger seat, and Floyd and the eleven others were out of the van, weapons at the ready. They ran in a crouch towards the double doors at the side of the Security Centre.
The leading FARC mercenary fired a volley of shots at the entrance while still running and as the doors burst inwards he leapt into the single storey building.
Deliberately, Floyd was last in. He heard at least two more bursts of automatic weapons fire – no louder than festive party poppers – then his young fellow fighters were lowering their guns. One of the security guards lay on the floor in two pools of blood that were seeping from beneath his body. A second guard, himself no more than nineteen years old, was pinioned against the rear wall of the Security Centre, an automatic rife leveled at his chest.
Ramon Resigo strode into the room, righted one of the fallen swivel chairs, drew it up to the large security control console and nodded to the soldier who was holding the surviving guard at gunpoint.
The young security man was manhandled across the room and forced down into the chair in front of the console. Floyd noticed that the lad had urinated in his trousers.
As the HFDA soldier stood beside the terrified teenager, his rifle leveled once again, Resigo drew an automatic pistol from his belt, cocked it and placed it hard against the boy’s left temple. Then, speaking in English – the language of the CERN campus – he began to explain what he wanted.
*
‘How long are your calculations going to take?’ Nicole asked Nagourney in Mountain View. ‘They’re waiting to hear from us in Washington.’
‘I need a while longer,’ the physicist told her. ‘Bob and I want to check our figures one more time.’
The agent glanced at her watch. She knew that Mike Ryan was now waiting anxiously to go back into the White House Situation Room to brief the President.
She walked back over to the desk manned by the two security guards. Both men were speaking into walkie-talkies.
We can’t reach the gate houses, Miss,’ said the younger guard anxiously, putting down his handset. ‘And there’s no answer from the Security Centre.’
Nicole felt a deep sinking sensation in her stomach. Suddenly there was a flash of light from across the campus, then the roar of an explosion, then the soft but unmistakable sound of gunfire. Carl enhanced her vision.
‘Headlights!’ cried one of the guards, drawing his gun. ‘Coming this way!’
‘Quick, come with me,’ said Toussaint. ‘Well be safer underground.’
‘I must get my driver,’ shouted Nicole, running for the plate glass doors.
Twenty-one
At gun point – under the threat of two guns – the severely frightened guard in CERN’s Security Centre had obeyed Resigo’s orders precisely. Many times he had fumbled at the controls, his hands twitching like landed fish, but each time the relentless pressure of the cold gun muzzle at his temple had forced him to correct himself.
Beyond the darkened windows of the Security Centre Floyd had seen vehicle after vehicle of the HFDA raiding force speeding by. He knew they were on their way to take control of the main Accelerator Hall Reception building and all other strategic posts within the CERN complex.
As the security guard had unlocked the electronic shutters to the remote access shafts each of the commando units had radioed in, reporting their successful entry. Graphic displays on the control console showed that the three elevators were already on their way down to the deeply buried tunnel.
Now, twenty minutes after taking control of the Security Centre, Resigo’s radio crackled into life. He exchanged a few words and then he split his force into two.
‘We have control of the Accelerator Hall,’ he told Floyd and five others. ‘They want us over there.’
Then he barked orders to the remaining soldiers to hold the Security Centre at all costs and led the way back out to the van.
‘Drive to the main Accelerator Hall Reception,’ he instructed the driver.
The van sped through the campus. All the buildings were dark in the research complex. The only sounds in the van came from Resigo’s walkie-talkie as he monitored the progress of the various HFDA raiding parties.
Floyd saw a large building with a brightly lit interior. From the briefing he knew it was the reception centre which housed the two large
elevators leading down to the Large Hadron Collider. HFDA soldiers had blown the glass doors in, Floyd saw, and at least six HFDA vans were drawn up in front of the entrance. Men were unloading the vehicles and placing steel cylinders onto trolleys.
A column of soldiers was now rolling carts bearing metal canisters and other equipment towards two large freight elevators at the rear of the entrance hall, lifts large enough to carry vehicles. Dr Sergy Larov was standing with an electronic tablet in hand overseeing the unloading. One elevator had already been fully loaded and had begun its slow descent. Floyd counted at least a dozen soldiers guarding the inside and outside of the building.
‘Take these men and get outside. Make sure we’re not disturbed,’ Resigo ordered Floyd.
Floyd and the men over whom he had just been given temporary command spread out around the building. Despite the frantic activity of unloading going on at the main entrance, the rest of the campus still seemed undisturbed. From the briefing Floyd knew that most of the halls around the main access building were assembly centres – places where researchers prepared experiments and equipment before transferring them down to the large Accelerator Hall and the tunnel far below. All would be deserted at this time of night – especially on a weekend. Completing one full circuit of the building, Floyd noticed a black American-built limousine parked on the grass, but there was no sign of driver or passengers.
Inside the reception area the last items of equipment were now being rolled towards the elevators. The doors of the two vans which had carried the materials had now been closed and they were moving away from the entrance.
A large unmarked white van approached the building followed by a second van with a folded satellite dish on its roof.
The first vehicle stopped right outside the building’s entrance. The rear doors opened and four heavily-armed HFDA soldiers climbed down from its interior. They all stood back, as if waiting for somebody.
From the rear of the second van a three-man television crew emerged. The cameraman raised his camera to his shoulder as the lighting engineer powered up a bright flood-light and the sound man extended his overhead boom.
Then, clearly illuminated by the TV lamp and the light spilling out from the elevator access building, Alexander Makowski himself stepped out of the rear of the first van and stood still, glancing around at his surroundings.
He was tall and lean, and he wore a brown suit and a collar and tie. He looked like a college professor.
More men spilled from the rear of the second van and began to elevate the satellite dish ready for live video transmission.
Standing to one side of the entrance, no more than twenty feet away, Floyd’s left hand begun to swing the muzzle of his rifle.
Would Makowski’s death, here, now, end this terrible campaign? Floyd knew that Larov, his technical team and all the equipment had already arrived deep underground. Would the shock of Makowski’s death make them stop whatever they planned to do with the giant accelerator?
Floyd’s weapon was still swinging towards the Humans First leader. He realized that if he assassinated Makowski now he too would die in the next few moments. He knew from the ice inside him that he was prepared to pay that price, but only if his sacrifice would bring a complete and certain end to the terror campaign.
Then two HFDA soldiers stepped between Floyd and his target and almost immediately Colonel Andreas Poliza walked out from the atrium to meet his leader. After a warm handshake and a few words, Makowski nodded his satisfaction and, surrounded by his guards, his retinue and the TV crew, he was led into the building and taken directly to the elevator shafts.
*
‘There’s no time for argument,’ Ray Fox told Adolphe Thiers, the director of the Groupe d´Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale, the French anti-terror agency, over a late night phone link. Neither man had selected Visual Mode. ‘The SAS are only minutes away from landing in Geneva.’
My government will never allow a foreign army to operate independently on French soil, said Sue in Fox’s ear as she simultaneously translated the Frenchman’s response. The SAS must be under the command of the Commandement des Operations Speciales, or they will not be allowed to land.
‘We don’t have time for this,’ Fox shouted back in fury. ‘These regiments train together – let them fight together.’
We must be in command, translated Sue, echoing the insistence in Thiers’s voice. This will be an operation on French soil and it will be run by French forces.
‘O.K. But the SAS must be free to decide their own tactics,’ shouted Fox. ‘That’s what they’re best at. That’s why we train your forces.’
That will be up to the French commander on the ground, Sue translated.
‘Very well,’ said Fox, praying that the men at ground command level would have the common sense to allow the SAS to do what they did better than any other force in the wor
ld.
Twenty-two
Floyd lifted the old-fashioned fixed-line phone on the unattended reception desk and dialed nine for an outside line. He heard nothing. There was no secondary dialing tone. Glancing hastily around the atrium, he hung up, then lifted the handset again and dialed zero. Still no outside dial tone.
Trolley load after trolley load of chemicals, equipment and containers had now been ferried down to the tunnel far below. Makowski, along with Colonel Poliza, Dr Sergy Larov, the prisoner Professor Bo Lundgren, Ramon Resigo and scores of HFDA soldiers, had also transferred to the lower level.
As instructed, Floyd and the half-dozen members of his unit had been laying radio-triggered explosive charges around the main elevator shafts and at the entrances to the three emergency stairwells. He knew that each of the HFDA units that had broken into the remote access shafts to the underground tunnel would also be rigging them with explosives. But as the pre-operation briefing had stressed, the access shafts were not to be blown up unless absolutely necessary. If the vast underground air-conditioning system was denied its supplies of fresh air, the system would begin to shut down the massive and power-hungry collider for safety reasons – and, if Larov were to be believed, that would immediately trigger a massive black hole implosion.