Keystone

by Talbot, Luke

  A police van drove slowly along White Street as he emerged into the sunlight. He carried on walking nonchalantly, ignoring the look from the officer riding shotgun. It was a long time since he’d been in New York, but it was pretty much like any big city in America: mind your own business, and everything’ll be just fine.

  He jumped in a yellow cab and pointed up Broadway. “Penn Station, please.”

  The driver grunted in reply and they seamlessly joined the lunchtime traffic.

  Fifteen minutes later, he was sitting on a bench in the station, enjoying an early lunch of Triple Whopper, large fries and Coke. The slices of tomato slid out from under the bun as he tried to hold the burger together, biting small chunks from around the edges to get it somewhere near a manageable size. It was a pain to eat and surely a sorry substitute for the Lafayette Grill, but he made a promise to himself to get some proper food as soon as he got back to Florida.

  Ketchup and juice dripping down his fingers, he finally popped the last morsel in his mouth and washed it down with a mouthful of Coke. He left most of the fries and cleaned himself up, chucking the ball of rubbish into a nearby waste basket. Grabbing the still three-quarters-full Coke, he strode across the platform and boarded the train.

  A few minutes later, he was watching the station slip away.

  He flipped open his cell phone and called the voicemail box hosted in an anonymous business park somewhere in a nameless warehouse in Central America. After one ring, the auto-attendant picked up and asked him in a sweet southern accent how he wished her to direct his call. He input his six digit pin and snapped the phone shut.

  Closing his eyes he bid a silent, eternal farewell to the City of New York. So nice they named it twice, he thought. He settled down into his seat and opened his eyes, curious to see the city rush past.

  He was more of a country man, and he wouldn’t be missing it. He wouldn’t be missing it at all.

  Seth Mallus put the handset down and smiled quietly. The third device was in place.

  Los Angeles, Chicago and New York had all been planted within ten minutes of each other. A perfectly coordinated attack, despite Los Angeles being over fifteen hundred miles further to drive than the other two, they had managed to leave at the same time and arrive at the same time.

  He applauded the drivers’ organisational skills, as the finer points of their journeys had been left to them. They had strict instructions to arrive and be out of the cities by a certain time, but other than that no communication could be traced back to DEFCOMM in Florida.

  It was vital that when the bombs went off, nothing could cause the authorities to look inside their own borders for the perpetrators. For a start the fissionable material could only be traced back to the ex-Soviet block, namely Georgia. And of course, compromised defence systems would ensure that military advisors thought the threat was external, but there was always a chance a meddling FBI agent or rogue cop could sniff a rat.

  The last thing he wanted was to be assigned his own personal Hollywood Action Hero.

  Chapter 76

  Captain Tan Ling Kai looked out across the bow of the DDG Hangzhou, towards the horizon. Beyond which lies America, he mused.

  Barely fifty years earlier China had been little more than a thorn in the United States’ side; a hugely populous nation, full of promise for the future but no real threat to the global dominance of the world’s only superpower.

  In the decades since, power had shifted inexorably towards Asia, with China taking up the lion’s share. China’s dominance in the economic arena was symbolised in many things, not least of which was the surge in Mandarin language courses in the West. The greatest compliment to pay to another culture was to learn its language and customs, and China was more fashionable now than ever before. It was a sign of the resurgent East.

  But becoming a superpower wasn’t simply a matter of cultural and economic influence; Captain Tan Ling Kai was part of the blunt edge of China’s hammer blow to end three hundred years of Western dominance: military might.

  The flotilla, or zhidui, was laid out before him, pointing East towards America. They’d been misrepresented by the world media, he had heard. Misclassified as ‘Lanzhou’ class destroyers, a forty year old relic with outdated stealth technology and diesel propulsion systems, he scoffed. But the Lanzhou was a Type 052C ship, whereas Hangzhou was the first of two Type 056B destroyers, with nuclear propulsion, advanced stealth and semi-submersible defence systems.

  The other Type 056B was in position three miles off Hangzhou’s port bow.

  Along with two Jianghu V class frigates, off the starboard bow, they formed the main bulk of the Fourth Fleet, a zhidui put together to show America that they could no longer expect to rule the world unchallenged. The situation in Korea was an ideal opportunity to demonstrate that China was ready to do that. And thanks to an effective government-run media campaign, the incidental death of Lieutenant Shi Su Ning in space had swayed public opinion against the Americans, which had made it far easier for the State Council to approve the Fourth Fleet’s first active deployment.

  Their command currently came from a nuclear submarine, the Houjian, which lurked somewhere below them in the depths of the Pacific. Their latest orders had been to weigh anchor and sail at a rate of 15 knots to the limit of US territorial waters.

  Captain Tan Ling Kai was proud of his command. As the water was pumped out of her ballast tanks, the Hangzhou rose from her semi-submerged ‘cruise’ state, where the sea covered the main deck and visibility was primarily from the bridge and observation deck.

  Along with the satellite dish and radar arrays, in cruise they were the only non-submerged parts of the vessel. As the water ran off Hangzhou’s angular surfaces, he ordered a weapons systems test – standard procedure following any submerged state for the new destroyers.

  In rapid succession, sections of the ship slid open, revealing the full range of weaponry on board. The first compartments, running parallel to each other along the flanks of the ship, exposed sixteen banks of four vertical launching system cells for a combination of cold-launch surface-to-air, surface-to-surface and surface-to-submarine missiles. Capable of undertaking up to eighteen simultaneous engagements, the brand new Chinese-built VLS was a quantum leap from the antiquated revolver-style favoured by the outgoing 052C class destroyers. Next, two compact gattling gun turrets emerged from either side of the bridge, their deadly barrels springing to attention as they each circled through two hundred and twenty degrees in a full protective sweep of the Hagzhou’s deck. The sea-whiz defence system could fire nearly six thousand rounds-per-minute, up to a range of over three kilometres.

  Finally, the top of the deck midway between bridge and bow folded back and a single domed turret emerged from below. After rotating through three hundred and sixty degrees and pivoting the 120mm gun barrel from horizon to zenith, it disappeared into the bowels of the ship, helping it regain the quasi-zero radar profile that made it one of the most advanced warships afloat.

  China was ready.

  Chapter 77

  Gail stood, frozen to the spot, as the corridor sealed itself behind them. The memory of Akhenaten and Nefertiti’s piercing red gaze was still fresh in her mind.

  Patterson ran back to the door, reaching it the moment it closed, and slammed his palms against it. “No!” he exclaimed.

  Ben started towards him but was caught off balance by Walker, who slammed him against the floor and easily prised the pistol from his hand.

  “Fucking Arab,” he muttered as he stood up and kicked Ben in the stomach. He pointed the gun at his heart and started to squeeze the trigger.

  “Wait!” Patterson shouted. “Don’t shoot!”

  Walker hesitated long enough for Patterson to explain his objection.

  “We may still need him,” Patterson struggled to come up with a valid reason quickly enough. “What if we find something heavy that needs lifting, what if we need to force this door open?” He knew it was a tragic excuse, and
he almost winced as he gave it.

  Walker weighed up his options briefly. As far as he was concerned, he’d waited long enough already. He’d played the nice guy long enough to get out of the crumbling tomb he’d woken up in following the explosion. Now he was in a corridor lit by electricity, with increasingly fresh air being pumped in from somewhere. He was in no doubt that from hereon in he could fend for himself. He couldn’t rule out the possibility that there may be a need for more manpower, but on the other hand he didn’t consider the Arab to be particularly strong anyway.

  “I doubt it,” he surmised.

  Gail was going from turmoil to anguish. In the last five minutes she’d had her academic beliefs finally shattered, and now she was faced with one of her dearest friends being brutally executed.

  “If you kill him, then I won’t get you out of here. I would die with him rather than help you.” She was amazed at how calm her own voice sounded; it was like hearing someone else speak.

  “You’ll help me if I point this gun at you,” he threatened.

  Gail shook her head simply, a wry smile appearing on her face. “You kill him, and we all die down here.”

  After a moment or two, he lowered the gun and stepped away from Ben. “Your lucky day, Mohammed,” he jeered.

  Ben stood up, helped by Gail and Patterson.

  “Thanks,” he whispered to them both, with a nod to Gail.

  For the first time, Walker was in control. “You,” he said pointing the pistol at Gail, “find out how to open this door.”

  She knew now that Ben was only alive because there was a chance she could still be useful. Thinking hard, she desperately tried to live up to that promise. The corridor they were in was very similar to the airlock found on Mars. The Russian, Captain Marchenko, had entered it first, and when the airlock opened for a second time, to let the other crew members in, he was gone. That meant that Marchenko had passed through the airlock successfully. And he must have been groggy, with hardly any air and no power to his suit, she thought.

  Looking around, she noticed for the first time the engravings on the walls. Processions of Xynutians, along with dozens of different species of animals, heading towards the door that Walker was standing by.

  She breathed in deeply, and noted that the air was almost fresh now, and at a pleasant temperature, rather than the chill of the hall behind them.

  It’s just an automatic airlock, she realised suddenly. How else was it possible for an astronaut to make his way through while suffering from a lack of oxygen, which would have impaired his thought processes?

  She walked towards the door and pushed past Walker. No time to lose, this thing could open any second now! She moved her hands over the inscriptions on either side of the door and settled for the head of one of the Xynutians, who was wearing a particularly elaborate headdress and holding another staff, this one double-headed, aloft. Pressing hard twice, she stood back and observed the door anxiously.

  “Well –” Walker began, but before he could continue his sentence the door slid open silently, and what was revealed instantly made him forget what he’d been about to say.

  For staring right back at them, its staff held aloft and its teeth bared in a gruesome sneer, was a Xynutian.

  Chapter 78

  George sat down, exhausted. Tariq and Manu were gulping down the last of their own water, while Leena had descended to Ben’s Toyota to fetch more.

  He looked across at Zahra guarding the American, who was shifting uncomfortably against the hand and ankle ties that made sure he wasn’t going to try and escape.

  “We need some help,” he said. “We need medical help.”

  After an hour or so of excavating, he had been able to squeeze his entire arm and head into the hole they had created, but despite all of their cries and shouting, no one had responded from beneath the rubble. If there was still a chance that Gail was alive, or Ben for that matter, the fact that they weren’t answering meant that they probably needed urgent medical assistance.

  Zahra nodded her head. “On their way,” she answered. “But by car, and from al-Minya. They’ll be here as soon as they can.”

  George did the sums in his head and worked out that they were still at least twenty minutes away. Zahra had only called for backup when there had been no response from inside the Library.

  It was easy enough to explain what five members of the Tourism Police were doing in Amarna, as it was still fairly common for tourists to request armed escorts into the lesser travelled parts of the country, and Egypt had more Tourism Police than it sensibly knew what to do with.

  And the fact that they’d been involved in a battle with an unknown terrorist organisation would probably help.

  But Haji was dead, and she was dreading having to explain that. The shock of losing Ben had dissipated now, and she was only left with the harsh reality of her situation. What she had thought would be a fairly simple operation had turned into a bit of a nightmare.

  Leena returned with the water, a large five litre plastic container with a handle, and they all refilled their bottles.

  “Torches?” George made what he hoped was the international hand signal for ‘torch’, and not something deeply offensive.

  She nodded and put them down on the ground. It made sense to pack a torch if you were going anywhere away from the beaten track, and Ben had packed two large Maglites before setting off from Cairo.

  George gulped some more water down thirstily. The Sun had already set, sinking into the Sahara almost half an hour earlier. In the twilight, it was clear that the batteries running the lights inside the Library had run out, as no light emerged from the hole in the rubble.

  Tariq, Manu, Leena and George stood in a small circle over the hole in the ground. Only one more stone. They had needed the rest, but now he felt a resurgence of energy, a desire to reach Gail, whatever her condition, and be with her.

  It felt like years since they’d last held each other, since he’d said goodbye to her in England, although it had been barely a week. However long, it had been too long.

  The four of them took up their positions around the block of stone, which was almost the size of an average man. On three, they heaved upwards, and managed to lift one end about a foot from its resting place. Rubble and sand streamed through the new hole and fell down onto the steps below; the hollow rattling noise the stones made as they fell caused a pang of emotion in George: they were so close now he could have let go and slipped through with them.

  “Come on!” he yelled at the top of his voice as they heaved at the mass of sandstone. “Come on!” As the outburst left his lungs they fell back and the stone crashed down on its side. Tariq fell on top of Leena, and they cheered triumphantly, seeing the stone well and truly clear of the hole.

  Tariq got up and stretched over to slap George on the back, but his hand swiped thin air as George grabbed a torch and launched himself down the hole, landing on the bottom steps of the ancient staircase with a thud.

  Sweeping the antechamber of the Library with the torch, and ignoring the shooting pain that ran across the top of his foot following his spontaneous dive down the stairs, he quickly moved on to the hole in the wall and the Library beyond. He searched between the empty bookcases, and in every corner of the room, but there was no one to be found.

  “Gail!” he shouted. “Gail, where are you?” Tears were streaming down his face as desperation made him lose all self-control. “It’s me!” he sobbed.

  The torch beam fell on the podium that had held the Stickman book. Wiping the tears from his eyes, he blinked several times before understanding what lay before him. Beyond the podium, where previously there had been a stone wall, there was a corridor, plunging down into the depths of the Earth.

  Zahra arrived at his side and handed him his borrowed AK-47, which was still fully loaded. It reminded him that two of the Americans were still down here with Gail and Ben, and he checked the position of the safety.

  “Where are they?” she
asked.

  George collected himself and took a deep breath. “Down there,” he said pointing down the corridor. Before she could answer he’d left her behind and was half running, half limping down into the unknown, the AK-47 in one hand, the torch in the other, and with renewed hope in his heart.

  Chapter 79

  Walker was the first to take a step towards the Xynutian, who hadn’t moved since the door had opened. Its steadfast gaze, although very lifelike, was utterly lifeless.

  The statue was in the centre of a large hall, about thirty feet on each side. Directly opposite was another doorway, towards which Walker now marched.

  Gail entered the hall slowly. When she reached the Xynutian, she turned and looked back down the corridor.

  “They’re looking at each other,” she said in wonderment. “They’re acknowledging each other across the millennia.”

  Walker hurried her up. “No time for history lessons now, sweetheart. You promised to get us out of here, and part of that means you going first.”

  The entrance hall gave onto a larger room, as brightly-lit as the first but almost twice as large. Along the middle of the room were three benches with glass tops. The opposite end of the room housed three doors.

  It seemed that each door corresponded with one of the benches.

  “It’s a worktop,” Patterson said. “They must have worked almost lying down, though.” He looked back through the door at the statue, and tried to imagine the Xynutian using the knee-high displays.

  “Or they used their feet,” Ben joked.

  Gail knelt down and touched the glass on the middle one. Immediately, shapes sprang to life in mid-air, hovering several feet above the worktop. Three concentric circles rotated at different speeds in front of her. The largest of them was also the slowest, barely moving at all, while the smallest rotated fastest, completing two revolutions in the time it took the middle ring to rotate only once.