‘All the earth is a grave and nothing escapes it’
Ancient prayer
59
Langley, Virginia, present day
‘HOW COULD IT get any damn worse?’ yelled Rex Matheson, pacing in front of the screen.
‘Watch.’
Darren forwarded the tape until he found the image on the screen that had brought him running from his office in the first place. He paused and zoomed.
Staring up at the flat screen, Rex started to laugh. He couldn’t help himself because frozen on the screen was a picture-perfect close-up of Captain Jack Harkness sipping an espresso at a table in the piazza in front of the Hacienda Del Castenado in the middle of one of the most important raids of Rex’s rising career.
And Jack was smiling at the camera.
‘How the hell did he get in there. We’ve had that hacienda under surveillance for days. Only our guys getting in.’
‘Not sure, sir, but there was a bad storm the night before. I’m thinking, maybe then?’
‘And how the hell did he get wind of our operation?’ asked Rex, impressed with Jack’s intelligence capabilities despite being furious that he was interfering with the closest any agency anywhere in the world had come to even a distant cousin of one of the three families.
‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Darren, one of only a small group of agents on Rex’s team who knew anything about Jack and Torchwood, and who had been tasked to monitor his movements on a regular basis. ‘Must be a leak on the Peruvian end.
‘Or else Harkness knows something we don’t about what’s going on in that village.’
‘What’s going on in that village is a multi-billion-dollar kidnapping-for-hire business,’ said Darren. ‘One we got lucky enough to uncover in time to blackmail Donoso’s wife into letting us take her husband instead of the kidnappers. Why would Harkness care about any of that?’
‘Unless,’ said Rex, wiping Jack’s image to the corner of the screen and changing the source to CNN where the geysers and the impenetrable rock chimneys forming around them were now getting continuous coverage from every major news outlet, ‘unless being in that village in Peru has something to do with these geysers. And given Harkness’s history, that wouldn’t surprise me one damn bit.’
‘Sir, I’ve had an eye on Harkness off and on for months and he’s been nowhere near any of these geysers… Except…’ Darren paused, letting his words trail off, realising he may have made a mistake.
‘Except what?’
‘Well, sir, I’m not sure but I think I remember reading an intel report that Gwen Cooper from Torchwood was one of the victims of that “masochistic madness” that so many women are suffering from. She was institutionalised for trying to shoot her husband. Hang on, let me check.’
Darren opened another page on the screen, bringing up Gwen’s file. He double-tapped a small section at the bottom. ‘Oh shit.’
‘Oh shit, what?’ yelled Rex.
‘Gwen Cooper escaped from the hospital.’ He turned and looked at Rex. ‘On the day the vent chimney burst through the surface of the Bristol Channel. That’s near Wales, isn’t it?’
Rex slammed his hand on his desk. ‘Yes, it’s near Wales. Doesn’t anyone study geography any more? I knew Harkness was involved in all this.’
‘But what could Harkness know about the geysers that we don’t? The best scientists in the world are trying to figure them out.’
‘Just because we have every scientist in the world testing those fountains every way possible doesn’t mean a goddamned thing because it hasn’t stopped any of those chimneys from growing,’ said Rex. ‘Harkness knows a lot of things most of us do not. Believe me.’
‘So what’s he doing in Peru? The closest geyser to that part of South America has already sealed itself, and the authorities are evacuating the locality.’
Rex stared at Jack’s image. ‘I don’t know what he’s doing, but I’m going to find out.’
‘Sir, I still think it might just be that he’s figured out on his own the relationship between Donoso and the three families. Maybe he’s going to try to get to Donoso before we can. We should warn our tactical unit to keep him on their radar.’
Rex walked closer to the screen and stared at Jack. ‘Does Harkness have any support down there?’
‘No. Everyone in the village was marked when our team arrived.’
‘If he was bringing in any support, he’d have been smart to arrange for it to arrive after we’d placed our people.’
Darren fast-forwarded the video feed to the dust cloud coming over the horizon on to the meseta, the camera lodged high in the wall of the canyon.
‘The minibus,’ said Darren. ‘If he’s got any support, they were going in on that bus with Donoso. There’s no other way in and out of the hacienda right now.’
‘Still nothing from Carlisle?’
‘Nothing, but things went pear-shaped pretty fast down there once the girl crashed the bus.’
‘Shit. I hate kids.’
‘Sir, keep in mind this is a live feed and this video is only about eight or nine minutes behind. We may still be able to salvage something, including Donoso. Carlisle wasn’t alone. We’ve a full tactical unit in the piazza. Their orders are to wait until Asiro kidnaps Donoso and takes him into the compound, then they’ll move in and kidnap him from the kidnappers. It lets us keep his disappearance invisible if he is connected to the families. They won’t know we’re getting closer.’
‘I know what the plan is on paper, agent, I designed it. The problem is when you mix in people things shift pretty quickly, and Harkness is no ordinary person.’ Rex shoved his hands into his pockets to stop himself from punching a big hole through the highly polished mahogany walls of his stupid office. I should have gone in with tactical, he thought. What am I doing, delegating from a fancy office?
‘Where are we monitoring this from?’ he asked Rex, jogging out of his office and into the hallway.
‘A warehouse in Cuzco via Tactical Room 14,’ said Darren, holding open the door to the stairwell. ‘This will be faster, sir.’
Both men sprinted down the stairs, Rex moving faster than his agent. ‘I want to see everything that’s going on down there,’ said Rex, ‘and I want a direct line to the unit’s commander in the piazza. Yesterday.’
When Rex was in the tactical monitoring room and the feed from the piazza was running live, Darren finally sheepishly asked him, ‘What’s your plan, sir?’
‘To figure out what the hell Jack Harkness is up to.’
‘And?’
‘And either stop him or help him.’
Isela
60
Southern Peru, present day, minutes before Isela’s shot
JACK FINISHED HIS coffee on the piazza, taking particular note of the peasant women spreading their glazed pots and fabrics across the steps of the church, their striped ponchos draped loosely around their shoulders. He watched two food vendors wheel their carts close to the high gates of the hacienda, clumsily unlocking the lids of their steaming food trays, their eyes darting on everything and everyone.
In the distance, a cloud of red dust suggested the first tourist bus from Lima was climbing the last leg of the canyon road onto the meseta. The girl in the belfry was an unknown, but Jack decided she was the lookout for the bus and her job must be to alert the hot young man doing the James Dean imitation in the centre of the courtyard.
Jack concentrated on the sounds around him, filtering and marking them in his mind, the only way he knew to track the woman, the Cuari guide he needed to descend into the mountain with him.
Click. Click. Click.
Jack tasted oranges and a hint of ginger.
She was nearby. Did she know he had returned?
Jack tipped back in the seat, the sun warm on his face, glancing longer at one of the women on the steps as he stretched, Doc Martens peeping out beneath her layers of multicoloured skirts. Touching her hand to her ear, she mumbled something into the collar ba
nd of her poncho.
Jack smiled. Gotcha.
Click.
Citrus flooded Jack’s mouth. The ginger was fading from his tongue. She was on the move.
Time to die.
Jack stood and threw some coins on the table. Glancing up at the bell tower, he saw the young girl duck quickly out of sight. Jack was aware that he was not going to be able to stop what was about to happen but, if he was lucky, he could minimise the damage, find what he needed and still reach the mountain before nightfall.
According to Shelley’s calculations, at the rate the chimneys were evolving and sealing, the Earth had six hours and twenty minutes left.
Jack ducked to the rear of the café and onto the airstrip where he bribed the boys to sell their football. He took it and then dropkicked it over the hangar to the jungle beyond. At least he could keep them away from the fighting for a while.
When the boys had safely cleared the area, Jack sprinted across the airstrip to the rear gates of the hotel, keeping his eyes on the belfry. He tapped the comms unit in his ear.
‘The condor is in position.’
*
‘Glad to hear your voice, Condor,’ said Cash, from his seat in the rear of the minibus. The driver, Juan, glanced at him curiously in his rear-view mirror. Smiling across the aisle at Vlad and Eva, Cash folded up his laptop and popped a disc into his pocket. Loosening his seatbelt, he manoeuvred down the aisle to the couple two seats in front.
‘May I borrow your map, please?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Gwen, who was stoned enough to keep her synaesthesia at bay, but alert enough to participate in the mission. Gwen had refused to be left on the ship, even threatening a call to Alan Pride, who Jack had confided to her had helped Dana with her intelligence. If anything happened to them, Pride had promised his help to Anwen and Rhys. He had also made sure that Dr Steele had given Gwen the right balance of drugs to be useful to the team when the time came.
Cash took the map back to his seat, scribbled on it that Jack was inside the compound and so far Dana’s intelligence had been accurate. There were other forces at play in the Hacienda, Jack thought CIA, and that might make it more difficult to get what Jack needed.
Cash returned the map to Hollis and Gwen.
On the Ice Maiden, before they jumped ship to get to Lima as quickly as possible, Jack had been clear about his intentions and how they could help. Given his memory of how the mountain had affected him when he was last here, he knew he would need their help to make it to the top. The final stage of the plan was the only phase Jack had never explained to any of them.
Once Jack found what he was looking for in the Hacienda del Castenado, what was he going to do when he reached the top of the mountain?
61
AT THE REAR gate of the hotel, Jack signalled to the guard that he’d forgotten his cottage’s key.
‘I’m a guest of the hacienda,’ said Jack pointing through the wrought iron gates. ‘Numero seis ocho seis.’
The guard smiled, nodded his head that he understood, but refused to open the rear gates to the actual compound. ‘No entrada, señor. Deliveries only. Please follow path back to piazza. Enter there.’
‘I really don’t have time for that walk,’ said Jack, smiling and then reaching through the gate, he grabbed the guard’s head, and slammed it against the edge of the wall. The guard dropped to the ground.
Climbing up onto the gate, Jack flipped over to the other side, landing gracefully on his feet directly behind a second guard, who turned immediately at the sound. Jack raised his elbow, slamming it into the guard’s nose. Then he pulled the guard’s body behind the nearest cabana, where he removed the man’s red T-shirt, his assault rifle, a knife, and his radio, which Jack clipped to his belt, slipping his earpiece out and putting the guard’s in his ear instead.
Stripping off his coat, his shirt and his braces, Jack pulled on the guard’s T-shirt. He walked over to the fountain, splashed water on his hands and slicked back his hair. He needed not to be an easy mark for Rex until he was ready to be.
Jack knew Rex had to be watching this entire raid after he’d made himself obvious in the piazza. Hugging the vine-covered wall, Jack sprinted to the front of the hotel, the speakers above him blaring traditional Aymara music like the tinny soundtrack to an old Western.
Inside the compound, the hotel was made up of six pastel-painted bungalows in a U-shape around the main house that sat at the opening. Each bungalow had an inner courtyard containing a private swimming pool and its own lush tropical garden. After his arrival last night, Jack had discovered that all the bungalows were empty. Given the real function of this hacienda, Jack doubted there ever were very many guests who stayed voluntarily.
The main building housed a massive colonial dining room, the kitchens and the Castenado family’s private quarters. Through a locked gate just beyond the main building, tucked under the heavy canopy of the jungle, Jack had discovered the camouflaged barracks for Asiro Castenado’s men.
Dana’s intelligence had informed them that Castenado was running drugs and a sophisticated kidnapping business. A wealthy businessman goes missing while on vacation, his family, his business, his shareholders are alerted, and no one else; the money changes hands and after the exchange the businessman is found wandering the mountains, dehydrated but unharmed.
Problem was the kidnapping scheme was the smallest obstacle Jack had to overcome to get what he needed in the village if he was going to get to inside the mountain in time.
Six hours left.
When Jack reached the locked gate to the barracks, he stopped, adjusting the volume on the radio. In his earpiece, he could hear Antonio calling Asiro’s guards to their positions.
A voice in Jack’s earpiece crackled, ‘Acción!’
From the belfry, someone fired off a shot.
Damn! The girl was not just watching. Something else was going on.
Jack sprinted to the wall, climbing quickly and in time to see the minibus’s front wheel explode. The bus careened off the sides of the canyon wall like a pinball, once, twice, and then wham, a final ricochet flipped it over, sending it skidding on its roof, coming to a rest against the canyon wall at the edge of the piazza.
The bus was blocking the only road off the meseta.
62
FOR A FEW seconds after the minibus hit the canyon wall, Juan didn’t move, taking stock of his situation and his injuries. A cut above his left eye was bleeding heavily and he felt as if he’d been in a cage fight. Shoving the deflated airbag off his lap, he listened. Steam hissed from the engine. The bus creaked and moaned as it settled against the canyon wall. He could smell hot rubber. Behind him, the student, Eva, he’d heard her boyfriend call her, moaned and then was silent, her head flopping on her shoulder, blood trickling from the corner of her lips.
Through the shattered windscreen, Juan saw the UN soldier sprawled a few feet from the wreckage. He was breathing, but bleeding from a head wound. Juan couldn’t worry about him right now because suddenly a line of armed men were fanning out from the gates of the hotel. As soon as they did, the piazza was ablaze with gunfire.
Unfastening his seatbelt, Juan hit his comms.
Nothing. Static. He decided to stay with the plan despite the chaos outside.
Easing out of his seat, pressing his hands on the floor that was now the roof above his head. He stared at the other couple who had been tossed up to the front of the minibus and were unconscious, an avalanche of luggage piled on top of them.
They were alive, but they were not likely to be making any sudden moves for a while. Juan crawled out through the shattered windscreen and, hugging the side of the van to avoid calling any attention from the gunfight in the piazza, he slipped round to the back of the minibus, and released the emergency exit. Gunfire strafed the top of the van. He pulled open the doors and threw himself into the rear of the bus.
‘Señor Donoso,’ he called, tossing backpacks and camera bags from his path. ‘Señor
, you must come with me.’
Suddenly, Juan’s earpiece crackled to life. ‘Get him out of there now. This is Deputy Director Rex Matheson. We need you to take Donoso straight to the extraction point. Do not, I repeat, do not go near the piazza or the hacienda. Do you copy?’
Juan tapped his earpiece twice. ‘Señor Donoso, please come with me. You will not be hurt. Your freedom has all been arranged.’
Donoso shoved his wife off his chest and scrambled up. ‘I’m already hurt, you fucking idiot. This was not supposed to happen. Who took out the bus?’
His wife was regaining consciousness, calling his name over and over again.
‘Olivares, please, what has happened?’ she cried.
‘Now, Juan,’ said the voice in his earpiece. ‘This village is a war zone. Get the mark to the extraction point.’
‘Sir,’ pleaded Juan, trying to ignore the demanding voice in his earpiece. ‘We do not have a lot of time. You must come.’ Juan did not speak Portuguese so he spoke in English. The cut above his eye was stinging as sweat dripped from his forehead. The temperature inside the van was stifling.
Donoso scrambled to his knees in the debris, sliding a gun from his jacket pocket as he did so.
‘Sir, please,’ said Juan, drawing his.
With no hesitation Donoso shot Juan in the head. His wife screamed, scrambling frantically inside her Louis Vuitton satchel looking for something.
‘Is this what you’re look for?’ With his free hand, Donoso lifted a second gun from under his waistband, holding it up for his wife to see.
Cash began to stir from the backseat, his earpiece screaming static. Donoso pointed his gun at Cash’s face.
Cash raised his hands in surrender. ‘Stop. Wait. I’m nobody.’
‘Everyone’s somebody!’ Donoso glared at him, cocked the gun, but then after a beat he lowered it. ‘Don’t move, Mr Nobody.’
Cash slid down in the seat, fiddling with his earpiece. A cut on his leg was bleeding down his calf, wetness seeping into his boot. That can’t be good, he thought. Up ahead, Vlad was staring back at Donoso and the executed driver in disbelief.
Torchwood: Exodus Code Page 22