Tasha reached for the full-face helmet that was hanging on the rear-view mirror and slipped it over her head, squishing her locks into its padding. Her visor was a liquid crystal display on which she was able to watch her familiar spy streams in a feed from the rolling command post. A Trooper's voice resonated from the helmet's speakers.
"Ma'am, we've located her license plate on traffic cameras. The package is traveling eastbound on the Hamburg-Berlin Autobahn. Last detection at kilometer marker 108."
A still image appeared on the visor with a rear-view of Isabelle in the fast lane.
"Catch up with me!" was all Tasha had to say. Her left hand pulled the clutch and her left foot pushed the pedal into first gear. He right hand turned the accelerator as she released the clutch. Like a rocket propelled by Tasha's blood lust, the bike launched across the platoon's staging area and onto the nearby highway. The Troopers' new motor pool had a flair of prestige and wealth. The closed-off parking lot they occupied looked like it was the scene of some sort of upper-crust gathering. Smoke billowed from the command post's two exhaust pipes as it took off in the direction of Tasha's travel. The remaining Troopers jumped into their cars and sped off like a pack of race cars surrounding the heavy-rescue vehicle. Helicopters and ambulances continued to flow through the mall parking lot in a stream of suffering, which seemed unending.
Tasha could feel the vibration from the redlining engine in every cell of her body. The bike's newly developed winter tires gripped the concrete corridor well and allowed her to cut from lane to lane swiftly. The Nordic air had kept the roadway dry, despite a snow-covered landscape. She was not about to let her catch escape because of traffic. A new image of Isabelle appeared on her visor projection. A Trooper from the command post chimed in.
"Tiger-eye, the package is approaching weather and slow traffic."
While Tasha acknowledged, a map of the route showed hers and Isabelle's positions. After a quick ride and a ferry crossing that more than tried her patience, the purple-clad warrior arrived in Puttgarten, Germany. Her platoon had meanwhile reached the Danish ferry port of Rodby. The heavy-rescue vehicle and eleven autos loaded into a ferry for the 45 minute crossing to Germany where Tasha had to cover another 100 kilometers on country roads that virtually flew by. She was eagerly watching the projection on her visor, where the gap between hunter and hunted was becoming negligible. She was now deep inside the weather front that had slowed down Isabelle earlier. Tasha frantically flashed her headlight to urge other motorists out of the fast lane. She felt like a tiger wanting the gazelle on the other side of a heard of water buffalo. The drivers in front of her were annoyed with Tasha's rude display of impatience and reluctantly squeezed to the right. Freezing-cold rain was falling on Tasha. Digital road signs switched from No Limit to 100 km/h and signaled No Passing.
Isabelle was a few kilometers ahead and stuck in traffic. The concrete of the Autobahn was wet, cold wind pushed the rain through the warmth of her suit. Ahead laid a viaduct that spanned an enormous river valley. Temperatures had fluctuated around the freezing point and the icy-cold rain combined with the strong wind had prompted the roads department to activate ice warnings in both directions. Digital road signs on either side of the lengthy bridge reduced the speed limit even further. With the risk of black ice imminent, road closure signs illuminated shortly thereafter and directed motorists towards a small curvy highway through the valley.
Three lanes of traffic came to a crawl, everyone waiting to merge onto the detour's exit ramp. Isabelle was close to the detour, waiting her turn to merge off the congested roadway. Tasha's visor was splattered with near-freezing rain. Her heads-up display left no doubt, Isabelle was less than two kilometers ahead of her and barely moving forward. With no regard for the strict rules of the Autobahn, Tasha switched on her bindingly bright, dual high-beams and raced down the line between the two left lanes. Her actions brought a variety of rude European hand signals to the scene as she angered most everyone she left waiting behind her. Much like her ride across parts of Denmark, Tasha traveled with a complete disregard for laws or the welfare of other motorists. Her command of the digital world gave her a sense of invincibility that transferred to the real world. She left behind a group of drivers united by a common foe. Finally - the two blips on her map were almost touching. Tasha passed under a signal bridge that indicated the detour was 100 meters ahead. The command post had reached the back of the traffic jam and reported in over Tasha's talk-back system.
"Tiger-eye, we're reading a sudden temperature drop at the bridge sensors to negative four Celsius."
A gust of wind had brought up a mass of cold air that had collected on the valley floor. The rain on the cold roadway no longer possessed the energy required to stay in liquid form. At an instant, entire puddles turned into solid ice when there was no more energy to be drawn from its own volume or the roadway underneath. Tasha could see Isabelle's helmet through the windows in a row of cars occupying the fast lane. Finally, she would take out Isabelle, who had become so much more than just another mission. A bullet would do the job nicely this time. No one would be too concerned about a dead terrorist and Tasha was quickly arranging her own escape.
"Join me at the top of the line for extraction."
"Yes, ma'am!" replied the Trooper behind the rolling command post's console.
The driver activated the vehicle's emergency signals. Blue lights were flashing from the enormous truck's roof and grill. A deafening two-tone siren announced the platoons approach. The engine's turbo-charger whined as the Trooper shifted down and pushed the accelerator into the floorboard. The truck took a prominent position between the two leftmost lanes and forged forward. Motorists had no choice but scramble out of the way of the intimidating mass of rolling metal. Cars in the left lane ran up towards the snow-covered median before they were stopped by the center guard rail. The autos to the right of the Troopers' fake rescue vehicle made for the slow lane, causing a series of fender benders. Like a pressure wave, the speeding command post sent ripples of traffic spilling across the superhighway. In its wake, Tasha's flotilla of force followed in eleven prestigious-looking Trooper cars.
Tasha had reached the head of the jam. An array of digital signs above the roadway was lit up with closure and ice warnings. To the right, unable to absorb the heavy flow of vehicles, the off-ramp was jammed. Tasha stopped. Within arm's reach was what had been so hard to pursue - the package. For the first time, Tasha was looking at Isabelle with her own eyes, her identity concealed by the helmet. Tasha reached for the gun holster on her right thigh, it was time to complete the mission objective. A tractor-trailer loaded with Apophis-brand superfluid helium-4 provided cover from witnesses to her right. She checked her rear-view mirror and noticed that the two shapely young women on motorcycles had caught the attention of a car full of eighteen year-old guys. One of them was taking their picture with his cell phone. Tasha looked down to the closure of her gun holster. A photo of the hit would draw unneeded attention. She saw ice crystals had formed at the edge of the puddle at her feet. The sudden drop in temperature had caused the puddle to tip from liquid to solid. Like a fast growing fern, the crystalline structure spread before her eyes. This would be Tasha's solution, to use nature as a weapon. With a tone of victory in her voice, her orders boomed from the speakers in the command post.
"Deactivate detour. Display no speed limit."
While the convoy continued to plow through the jammed traffic, one of the three Troopers in the surveillance room was accessing the Autobahnmeisterei's computer system. A few keystrokes and the digital signs on either side of the enormous bridge switched to display red circles with white diagonal slashes. This signified unrestricted travel despite the fact that even in dry weather the bridge had a speed limit of 100 kilometers per hour.
With no limits before them, six lanes of impatient drivers poured onto the bridge from both sides. Isabelle felt her feet slip on the ice that was forming under her. She sensed something wasn't right abo
ut the woman in the purple leather combo to her right. Isabelle knew her head start wasn't going to last forever. The unusual road sign activity was an indication that things weren't what they seemed to the other travelers. The large tanker-truck to Tasha's right side moved forward. She was desperately trying to find her way to the exit ramp so she could avoid the potentially fatal ride across the frozen viaduct. The tanker had moved too far ahead for her to get around. Tasha tried to wait so she could squeeze past its back but traffic was now flowing on either side of her as she still sat stopped, illegally, between two lanes. The angry drivers she had passed earlier weren't about to lose more time over Tasha and aggressively pushed forward. She had no choice if she didn't want to get run down but drive onto the bridge. Patches of black ice were forming all across a bridge that was filling up with speeding traffic. The flashing blue lights of the rolling command post approaching from behind added to everyone's sense of urgency. Much like a person who can feel that he or she is doing the right thing, Isabelle could sense where it was safe to ride.
Tasha wasn't about to be outrun, neither by Isabelle nor by traffic. With the roar of her bike's engine, she sped ahead. The purple-clad warrior had barely passed the helium tanker when her front wheel lost contact with the road on a patch of ice. The force of the spinning rear wheel pushed the bike’s front to the right. With no traction, Tasha toppled and went into a high-speed skid across the slippery concrete. She slid diagonally across the road towards the slow lane, directly in front of the tanker. The driver slammed on his breaks to avoid flattening Tasha and sent his truck into a jackknife skid towards the center divider. Still straddling her sliding road-rocket, Tasha impacted with the guardrail at the edge of the bridge. Its wheels wedged between the metal rail and the roadway, causing the bike and its rider to flip upwards. Like shot from a catapult, Tasha was flung over the edge of the bridge. Fortunately for her, she was close enough to the end of the lengthy structure that she landed head-first in a snow bank at the face of the mountain, while Isabelle cleared the bridge on her way to Berlin.
The angry drivers behind the jackknifed semi slammed on their brakes only to watch the enormous transport of hazardous cargo crash into the center divider. The trailer snapped off the truck's saddle mount and with an incredible groan, the pressurized tank ground across the metal guard rail. Its fill-valve snapped off on the divider and a flood of liquid helium spilled across both sides of the roadway in a matter of seconds. The drivers in the oncoming lanes were the first to feel the effects of the spill when their tires froze solid and shattered as they sped onto the river of liquefied gas.
Cars in all three lanes flipped forward and were sent flying into the air at Autobahn speeds. The innermost vehicle cleared the divider and collided in mid-air with an automobile from the other direction that had suffered the same fate. What followed was a flood of collisions that spilled across the roadway, high above the valley floor.
Below the carnage, a river snaked through the snowy valley. By its side, an Apophis bottling plant was reducing the proud stream of pristine water to a mere trickle. Instead, an unending stream of trucks was flowing thought the plant, carrying the life-giving commodity off in plastic bottles.
While the destruction on the bridgeway was skidding to a super-frozen halt, the cold of the winter had prevented the liquid helium from evaporating too fast. The superfluid found its way to the road's drainage system from where it flowed into a hillside storage tank, intended to collect rain water for the months when the river was low and fire danger was high. The tank was 30 meters in diameter and still full from the autumn rains. The helium froze the mass of water on contact. As it solidified, the expanding ice ruptured the thick steel walls of its enclosure. Like an enormous hockey puck, the house-size disk of ice proceeded to slide down the mountainside at rapidly increasing speed. It left nothing standing in its path towards the bottling plant.
In a five-year campaign, Gene's chemical plants and pharmaceutical companies had strategically poisoned rivers around the globe to the extent that it was a certain death sentence to use municipal water for cooking or drinking. Gene had bought up the land surrounding all major wells and springs. Those who could afford to do so, bought the bottled and still drinkable water. The poor fell into Gene's plan to reduce the world population to a more profitable size, after becoming fodder for his healthcare machine.
The bottling plant at the bottom of the canyon supplied the drinking water for a good portion of northern Germany. It was a busy plant. Several huge pumps siphoned virtually all the water from the river. A warehouse of bottling machines was filling thousands of disposable plastic bottles with the precious bounty. A line of trucks snaked to one end of the warehouse where machines offloaded empty bottles.
The never-ending stream of tractor-trailers billowed black diesel smoke towards the bridge above on their way to the other end of the plant. At the shipping dock, countless machines were loading cases of water bottles onto pallets, which rolled down conveyor belts into the back of the empty trucks. The flow of water left on an endless convoy up the highway. As if nature was fighting back with one of the four elements, the frozen disk crashed through the side of the warehouse. It thundered across the entire length of the large production facility, leaving nothing intact. The pumping station became its final casualty. The river returned to its full, majestic flow. The bridge above was littered with superfrozen body parts of motorists who shattered when their cars crashed. Tasha was slowly gaining consciousness in her snow bank on the side of the mountain, while her platoon had stopped just short of the bridge.
Tasha was going to have to wait for a helicopter to take her to the command post and backtrack across the local road to catch up with Isabelle.
29 ISABELLE ARRIVES IN BERLIN
Isabelle had, once again, enjoyed a peaceful and picturesque journey with no interference from her still unseen nemesis. The sky had cleared and the sun was setting behind her when she approached the greater Berlin area. The warm light of the evening sun bathed the city in a beautiful orange glow. After a few minutes only the top of the cityscape was illuminated as night fell onto the streets and rose up the length of the tallest buildings until it reached the sky. The day had given way to the night, where Gene and Tasha were at their strongest. A road sign signaled Isabelle she had reached her destination.
City - KuDamm.
Isabelle followed the exit towards Berlin's prominent promenade. Ralf's apartment was near the KuDamm, he had told her she could stay there, but it didn't seem to Isabelle that she would be safe after what had happened on the Autobahn. She wasn't sure where to go. It was a beautiful winter night. Mounds of snow lined the dry roadway. Isabelle rode past the Brandenburg gate. On the other side of the city's iconic landmark laid a different part of Berlin, once separated by the death-strip with its automated machine guns and electrified fences. The division once cut through the heart of the city as much as it cut through the hearts of its people. The wall that had divided the city was long gone. The land and factories that had been taken from the people by the communist government at the time had gone on the auction block when the eastern government collapsed. What Apophis hadn't bought at the end of communism, it absorbed from its competitors during the thousands of mergers and hostile takeovers that ensued over the decades that followed. Gene now owned virtually everything in the world. He had leveled all of the dilapidated former East Berlin and littered it with high rises, shopping centers and his latest addition: corporate-owned jails that he filled within a few months. Running jails had become a very profitable business move and an increasing number of countries adopted the Apophis prison chain out of fear of corporate trade embargoes.
To fill the jails, Gene had anyone arrested who possessed even a single copy of a song or movie they hadn't purchased. A scan of what subscribers thought to be smart-phones had identified hundreds of thousands of people who had performed illegal downloads. Gene's revenue on movie and music sales doubled, while his jailhouse profits increas
ed hundred fold. The industrialist’s sense of morality dictated that those who undermined art were the enemy of a world of beauty.
Many children lost their parents and were given up for adoption for a hefty fee by Gene's orphan placement service. Once again, the city had been torn apart by an external force. There was a cold sadness Isabelle felt in Berlin that she hadn't encountered on such a large scale before. The former East was also where the Apophis particle accelerator had been built a few years earlier.
Isabelle approached the Europacenter, a shopping mall in the heart of the old Berlin. A giant screen on the side of the shopping center played news footage from the Autobahn disaster. The sun had come out after the calamity and melted the super-frozen body parts. Rescue workers were wading through a blood bath to get to those who had survived in their cars. Isabelle's driver's license picture appeared under a headline that accused her of sabotaging the warning signs. A picture of Isabelle on the motorcycle and its license plate were next to appear on the gigantic screen. A few people who had watched the broadcast looked in Isabelle's direction, just when one of Apophis' helium tankers bound for the particle accelerator pulled up. The light turned green and she rode off. Another red light, Isabelle stopped next to a circular building that rounded the corner. There was no place safe, it would only be a matter of time before the police would spot her. The yellow, skin-tight suit was far from inconspicuous. After what she had learned on this most unusual journey, Isabelle knew this wasn't just about herself and her father. The scope of the pursuit that had so changed her life was a sign of the massive resources her opponent possessed.
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