The Last Book. A Thriller

by Michael Collins

  Sam pointed at the status screen, alive with a continuous stream of updates on the hunt for Payne.

  ‘Anything?’ she asked.

  Both men shook their heads. There was no sign of Payne’s car. They’d circulated the license plates but the vehicle, a common model, had slipped out of sight. Sam had followed up on Ethan’s hunch and asked the White House to enquire about any unusual activity or newly filed flight plans on any Australian military bases and drawn a blank.

  ‘What about your brother’s last words,’ Sam asked, ‘any leads there yet?’

  ‘“Everybody addicted, narc and smokes,” is what he said,’ Ethan sighed. ‘It could have meant anything. Kralinsky’s winding the words through every computer he can, but it’s just a bit too cryptic.’

  ‘Would he have being trying to throw us off track?’ Ben asked. ‘Maybe giving Payne more time?’

  Ethan felt heat rising to his face and told himself that it was a fair question and to calm down.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Ethan said, evenly, ‘he knew he was dying. What would he gain from lying? You never knew the Joey I did. He may have turned into a killer, but he didn’t know how to lie.’

  The room became silent as they thought Ethan’s words through. When Ben’s smartcom rang, they all started. Ben listened and then waved them over to the monitor.

  ‘They’ve made contact.’

  *

  At 40,000 feet Flight Lieutenant Craig Delaney leveled Archangel One, his F/A-18F Super Hornet multi-role fighter jet over the ocean south of Sydney and reported himself ‘in position’. He’d been ordered to scramble on a no-drill, combat mission and, thrilled to be doing something for real at last, checked his instruments for the hundredth time, making sure his air-to-air missiles and 20mm cannons were armed and ready to go.

  At twenty six and a recent graduate from the RAAF’s fighter school he never dreamed that his first taste of action would be over home skies. He thought of Carrie, his wife, by now fast asleep back home and unaware of his debut as a fully-fledged combat jock. She was probably dreaming of the house they’d put an offer in for and were eagerly awaiting the owner’s response. He had an overwhelming need to hear her voice. He knew some of the guys had done it, a quick and quiet conversation with a girlfriend or wife by smartcom whilst perched on the roof of the world, but this was different. This wasn’t a patrol exercise, where he was bored to death watching out for bandits that would never materialize. It was kill or be killed.

  Craig looked out over the dark night sky, taking in the bright glow of Sydney. He reminded himself not to stare and upset his night vision. Born there, he loved that city, its crazy weather, vast waters and diverse cultures. But, right now, he wouldn’t exchange where he was for anywhere in the world. Mentally, Craig tapped his fingers with impatience – come on, come on.

  He didn’t have long to wait.

  ‘Unresponsive jet bogey at twenty and climbing south east, speed mike one, range one twenty K,’ said a steady female voice from Central Command. ‘Prepare to engage and destroy. I repeat, prepare to engage and destroy.’

  Telling himself to be calm, Craig acknowledged his order to hunt out and be ready to shoot down what seemed to be an extremely fast-flying jet, climbing out of Sydney’s military airspace. He wondered only briefly what the hell it could be about. And the fact that the mystery airplane was not acknowledging any attempts at communication was none of his business. His was there to follow orders without question. He reminded himself to keep his mind on the job as he concentrated on hauling his plane in a tight, diving turn. Soon he was reveling in the enormous G force pressing through his body and the powerful charge of adrenalin as the advanced radar system kicked in, picking up his target.

  ‘I have him,’ he said, responding automatically, ‘attack radar locked and weapons armed.’

  Craig’s thumb was on the missile release. It only required one last confirmation from Combat Control to launch his two Sidewinder missiles in quick succession and blast his target into millions of tiny fragments.

  Craig heard Combat Control at exactly the same time he saw the target disappear from his heads-up display. This time her voice held an edge of concern.

  ‘Stand by, Archangel One, we’ve lost him. He’s dropped off the screen.’

  An interminable silence seemed to crawl through Craig’s mind as his thumb hovered over the missile release. Desperately searching the inky sky for a tell-tale silhouette, or flash of light, he cursed his bad luck. Another second and it would have been all over for the intruder. Suddenly he realized his predicament. It was quite possible that he was now the hunted.

  An ear-piercing howl of warning filled Craig’s helmet, and he saw his heads-up display awash with a frightening red glow. His aircraft was being locked onto by a hostile radar system, designed to guide a heat seeking missile straight up his tailpipe. Hours on the flight simulator had taught him to suppress any feelings of terror and just respond.

  Craig pulled his joystick back and hit the afterburners, feeling himself slammed back into his seat as twenty feet of bright orange flame roared from the back of his plane. Archangel One was catapulted into a sickening 750 feet per second climb. But it was too late.

  *

  Sam, Ben and Ethan stared at the screen. Where a blip had been, there was nothing but the steady sweep of the military radar as it illuminated the empty sky. For the last two minutes an increasingly distressed air traffic control operator had called into the ether for an answer from Archangel One. There was now an ominous silence.

  ‘Poor fucking bastard,’ Ben said, echoing all their thoughts.

  ‘It was a stealth,’ Ethan said. ‘How could he have got that?’

  ‘Friends in very high places,’ Sam replied, wiping her wet cheeks with her knuckles. ‘Radar-cloaking capability aircraft don’t come in cereal boxes.’

  ‘CIA?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘We don’t know, Ethan,’ Sam said. ‘There are too many secretly funded covert organizations out there to point the finger at any particular one.

  Sam glanced at Ben who was still staring at the now blank screen.

  ‘For years we’ve been trying to identify a rogue operator very close to the country’s upper management,’ she told Ethan. ‘He’s probably the same one Payne has had unrestricted access to. We follow the leads and, just when we’re getting somewhere, up comes the scorpion’s tail and we get stung.’

  ‘Juan and my wife got too close,’ Ben said abruptly. ‘And we’ve no idea what they found out, but it got them killed.’

  ‘What now?’ Ethan asked, slumping into his seat. He knew that Payne could be on his way to any number of safe locations. What they could do to prevent him from pushing Corsfield’s last book out now eluded him.

  ‘Come on, guys,’ a voice boomed from the speakers, ‘cheer up. You did your best.’

  ‘Kralinsky,’ Ethan said, ‘what are you doing eavesdropping on a highly-protected, top secret government installation? No, don’t answer that. I’m a shareholder and liable.’

  Sam smiled.

  ‘Hello Kralinsky, nice to hear your voice. Any idea how the President’s taking the news?’

  ‘The President is fine, thank you Sam,’ spoke another familiar voice. ‘And I hope you’re standing up to address your Commander in Chief.’

  Ethan smiled as both Sam and Ben automatically straightened their shoulders.

  ‘I’m sorry we failed to stop Payne sir,’ Ben said.

  ‘Ben, you’ve all done an incredible job,’ the President said, ‘and your level best, including that lovely girl, Sarah Marsden—a huge effort and big sacrifices. Guys, Mark Payne’s getaway is the fault of the administration. If we had our house in order, he wouldn’t have had a snowball’s chance in hell of pulling it off. And that’s something we still have to address, hopefully with your help. But, for now, we have to turn to plan B. Payne is out there with a dangerous vial of unknown poison. Any ideas?

  ‘Can we declare the books a weapon
of mass destruction and have them banned?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘Good point Ethan and, by the way, I’m sorry to hear of your estrangement from our unwitting agent, Sarah Marsden. I don’t want to sound like some drum-beating patriotic supporter, but when she understands the lifelong effort you’ve devoted to the well-being of this country, she’ll come around I’m sure.’

  Ethan shrugged and remained silent. He felt that the President’s hopeful prediction was already a lost prayer.

  ‘Not knowing what Payne intends to achieve with the algorithm is our Achilles heel,’ the President continued. ‘And to ban the book without any hard evidence would make us a laughing stock, probably accelerating its distribution.’

  ‘Can we beat him to the punch and bring out our own book before his?’ Sam asked.

  There was a silence as everyone contemplated the possibility. Finally Kralinsky spoke.

  ‘We know that he has a manuscript ready for a team of writers to belt out a Corsfield type version. We’re starting from scratch here, and even if we used, sorry—asked, Sarah to help, it would take her months to have something that may be half-way acceptable enough. I hate to say this, but I think we have only a matter of days before this thing is going to hit us.’

  ‘Jesus! Really?’ Ben exclaimed.

  ‘We need to use force then,’ Sam said, ‘we have no choice. We have to mobilize hard-hitting search and destroy teams all over the world. As soon as each shipment of books is located, they’ll have to be seized and obliterated.’

  ‘And we need a cyber grabber,’ Kralinsky chimed in, ‘to detect, hack into and take over every eBook site.’

  ‘A secure communications centre,’ Ben said, ‘No clusterfucks—we need to segue intelligence with operations under one roof.’

  ‘I’m onto it,’ the President said. ‘Anything else before you guys make your way back here?’

  ‘Is there any point in that, sir?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘Explain, my friend,’ the President asked.

  ‘Going back home,’ Ethan said. ‘Is there any advantage to that—time-wise? We have one of the most sophisticated electronics networks in the world right here. Combine Kralinsky’s magic with that and we have a secure environment that might give us the jump on whoever’s trying to sabotage our efforts. The Aussies have been good to us and I’m sure a word from you will be all it takes.’

  When Sam and Ben murmured their agreement the President concurred.

  ‘Let’s get on with it then,’ he said. ‘I’m calling the Australian PM now and Sam, you’ll be getting a call from the director of our National Terrorism Centre within minutes to see what he can do to get the ball rolling. He won’t know any details—he’ll just do exactly what you ask. If you tell him to blow up the White House, he’ll be instructed to follow those orders, but I’d rather you didn’t.’

  Everyone laughed, easing the tension a notch.

  ‘What do you need from me?’ Kralinsky asked, as soon as the President had signed off.

  Ethan picked up his flexi-pad, consulting the notes he’d been making.

  ‘Find the physical location of every high-capacity printing outlet. That shouldn’t be too hard—there aren’t that many left. It’s all the tin-pot e-Book outfits that will be the challenge. There are over a dozen electronic formats available to download onto flexi-readers.’

  ‘Fifteen,’ Kralinsky said, ‘as of ten seconds ago.’

  ‘And the pirate, peer-to-peer versions?’

  ‘Good point.’

  ‘Right,’ Ethan said, ‘can you track down their source companies, official and otherwise? They aren’t going to listen to any appeal not to publish and miss out on their squillions, so can we hijack their sites?’

  ‘Very unconstitutional, but perfectly doable,’ Kralinsky said. ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘Can you give us the ultimate electronic shield?’ Ben asked. ‘My company’s technology is good, but I know yours is better.’

  ‘Tell me when you get to where you’re going and it’s done.’

  ‘What about me?’ asked a voice, ‘I want to help.’

  Everyone turned to face the door.

  ‘Oops,’ Ben muttered, ‘there’s our first breach of security.’

  ‘Sarah,’ Sam said, quietly, ‘you should be resting.’

  ‘I heard everything,’ she replied, avoiding everyone’s stare. ‘You’ll have to let me help, or what is it you’ll have to do—kill me or something? Look, I’m sorry, I made a ridiculous fuss. I had no idea it was as serious as this. You guys are absolute heroes. Sam, you tried to tell me about Ethan, but I didn’t realize what everyone’s real involvement was and how much you’d all lost from your lives until Kralinsky talked to me.’

  ‘Kralinsky?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘I’m not here,’ Kralinsky whispered.

  ‘Ethan, I’m so sorry,’ Sarah said, still staring at her feet.

  ‘Sarah Marsden,’ Sam said, ‘by the power invested in me by the President of the United States, I hereby appoint you to the position of Communications Coordinator. Now, everyone,’ she added, standing, ‘let’s give these two a few minutes to be re-acquainted.’

  34.

  And on the seventh day …

  ‘We’re losing it.’

  Ethan said nothing. The stark despair surfacing under Sam’s words reflected all their feelings too accurately.

  They were completely exhausted. Since setting up their command centre five days ago, they’d worked around the clock to oversee one of the biggest covert operations ever known. Yesterday, when tens of thousands of copies of Corsfield’s book began to appear in printed form, colossal resources had been called on to stem the tide surging out from every corner of the globe.

  Helicopters, fast patrol boats, and fixed wing aircraft of all descriptions had been coordinated with real-time satellite imagery to chase down freighters, airlines, even smugglers. In the end, it was all too much.

  A twenty foot satellite screen, blinking with hundreds of lights, hung above their heads. A mere handful was coloured green, each tiny light indicating a successful interception. The rest were red, thickly clustered, with more and more appearing each minute.

  ‘e-Books?’ someone asked.

  Sarah checked her notes.

  ‘Kralinsky managed to stop twenty two applications, but the file has been distributed on 780 websites that we know of and a PDF version has gone viral.’

  ‘We can’t even begin to contain it then,’ Ben said.

  Ethan took a surreptitious glance across the long boardroom table to where Sarah sat. Despite the gloominess in the room, he found himself smiling inside. Their reconciliation hadn’t been easy, and still had a very long way to go. Over the last six days and nights, they’d taken every opportunity, stolen or otherwise, to explore their feelings for each other, entailing a hell of a lot of soul-searching Ethan wasn’t accustomed to.

  Raw from his shock discovery that Joey was still alive, and then, only to witnessing his violent death, Ethan felt himself reacting in ways that surprised him. Joey, his parents, even Jilly, had been shadows in his murky past he’d never really faced up to. Joey’s end had opened forgotten wounds that needed healing.

  Ben checked his smartcom.

  ‘Better tidy up, we have an urgent Image Projection hook-up with the President in fifteen minutes,’ he told them.

  *

  ‘Good morning everyone, I’ve seen the status updates and they’re not encouraging, are they?’

  The President’s image sat on Ethan’s left, taking the head of the board table recently cleared of a shameful quantity of food containers, plates and coffee cups. Although housekeeping had suffered, they’d eaten well, Ethan insisting that only the best food be prepared and delivered.

  ‘No, Mr President,’ Sam agreed, from the other end of the table, ‘the volume of both hard and electronic copies has swamped our resources.’

  ‘Sabotage?’ the President asked.

  ‘Some might have been, sir,’ Ben
said. ‘We’ve seen some of our bigger targets like large container ships take evasive action in the final stages of the assault, well before they could have detected us.’

  ‘We’re you able to get any indication of their sources?’ the President asked.

  ‘Kralinsky’s running through hundreds of trace-backs, but nothing yet, sir,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Sir, we know it’s early days, but have any identifiable side effects appeared yet?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘That’s a good question Ethan,’ the President replied, ‘and interesting. The books have been readily available in some places, Malaysia and Singapore, for example, for three days. We downloaded a copy to analyze about that time too. Taking into account that some people are exceptionally fast readers, the strange thing is that we’ve noticed a fractional reduction in incidental violence in Singapore. Until recently, the island was becoming a hotspot for rioting.’

  ‘Sorry for the interruption, but I think I might be able to help you with that, Mr President.’

  The meeting room flickered momentarily as a figure appeared in one of the two remaining empty chairs.

  ‘You look unnervingly cheerful Kralinski,’ Ethan said, moving over to give his friend some elbow room, before he realized his mistake.

  ‘Thanks,’ Kralinsky said, leaving everyone wondering if he was thanking Ethan for the extra virtual room, or for the skewed compliment. ‘I’d like to bring someone into the meeting, if it’s alright,’ he continued. ‘I think you’ll be very interested in what he has to say.’

  ‘We trust your judgment, I’m sure,’ said the President, as everyone looked at each other curiously.

  The last empty chair shimmered as a form took shape. A man in his forties appeared, looking around the table with the expression of someone suddenly transported in from another galaxy. His eyes flicked over everyone, widening in shock when they got to the President.

  ‘You didn’t say …’ he muttered, staring at the table top.

  ‘Let me introduce Mr Terence Quirk,’ Kralinsky cut in. ‘Terry, I’d rather not mention the name of anyone else present if that’s OK with you. Suffice to say, this is of top level confidentiality.’