by Andy Lucas
The tunnel was perfectly cylindrical, having been cut from the solid rock by a shielded hard-rock Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM). The machine had taken three years to complete its clandestine work, tunnelling from Chinese territory, into that of neighbouring Nepal, without the Nepalese government being any the wiser about such a blatant invasion of its sovereign territorial borders.
Manufactured by a state-owned industrial giant and covertly transported to the secret location in small sections, the TBM had taken three months just to get underground. The elevator shaft that had just taken Kwon down to the entry room was far wider than needed for the standard-sized elevator car. In fact, as he knew, the mechanism was bolted to the side wall of a shaft that was three times wider than the car. Blasted out of the rock in a previous century by unlucky silver miners, the abandoned mine shaft had proven to offer the perfect ingress into the earth, at exactly the right spot required. The old shaft’s excessive girth; no longer needed after the largest pieces of the machine were brought below ground, had been simply ignored afterwards.
Three long, worrying years of tunnelling had been far more troublesome politically than scientifically. The technology of the TBM’s machinery, well established for decades already, had performed flawlessly. A shielded model, it ground away at the unyielding rock face, slowly gnawing off small chips of granite and diorite slivers with a multitude of heavy disc cutters on the head; twenty-four hours every day, three hundred and sixty-five days every year. Methodically creeping through various types of ancient igneous rock; biotite, and pyroxene being the most common after granite, it had been carefully guided towards a specific, final destination; Kwon had every confidence in the engineering.
The political manoeuvring had taken more of a delicate touch. Officially, the Chinese government was not involved in the operation; especially as it was technically in the Tibetan autonomous region which was historically a hotbed of issues for China. The project was led, and funded, by Ziang Industries. Well-respected, and a global player in the rapidly expanding field of emerging technologies related to energy production and sustainability, its involvement was kept under very careful wraps. That said, certain key officials were being very well paid to keep looking the other way, with the additional bonus of a potentially history-changing scientific breakthrough at the end of it all.
Waiting patiently to receive his huge bulk was a sleek, three-quarter scale train, comprising a single railway car and integrated cab, shaped like a moulded dart. Manufactured with lightweight composites and alloys, encased in a white polycarbonate body, the impressive little vehicle sported integrated, panoramic windows. Driverless, the entire inner space was open, laid out with six luxurious, executive leather seats and a rear bench seat right at the back. Each seat faced forwards, with plenty of room between them, as well as a metre of legroom for any would-be passenger. Controlled entirely by computer, from a central hub at the other end of the tunnel, there was an empty driver’s control panel right at the front, in case a manual operation was ever needed but no chair.
The main difference Kwon always marvelled at, despite the rudimentary physics involved, was the total lack of wheels. Designed as a maglev train, short for magnetic levitation, it ran on magnets instead. Special magnetic tracks within the walls of the tunnel allowed the vehicle to hover perfectly and, as such, propel itself far faster than its earth-bound, friction-dragging cousins.
Kwon stepped over to a single door, set flush into the train’s side. It slid open as a movement sensor detected his leisurely approach and he quickly settled himself down into one of the two front seats, strapping himself in and hitting the reclining button on the armrest, which delicately raised his massive legs into a horizontal position. The door slid silently closed and the train moved off up the tunnel, quietly gathering speed until the regular wall lines, indicating the joining points for the concrete lining shields, very soon blurred from view.
Aside from using less energy, being quieter and also far smoother in ride than any train running on wheels, the most valuable asset of any maglev train was its speed. Unburdened by too much resistance, the little vehicle rapidly accelerated to a speed of over five hundred kilometres an hour. At this speed, Kwon knew, the fifty kilometre tunnel length would be eaten away within seven minutes. Barely time to close his eyes but he did anyway, gathering his thoughts and considering the next steps on a secret plan that was now nearing fruition.
When the train dutifully slowed to a stop at the other end, the doors hummed open and Kwon exited without a backwards glance. Deep beneath the mountains, with only a single tunnel leading in and out, he had long since grown accustomed to the sense of depth and claustrophobia. It had been crippling in those early days but his scientific mind had managed to reason with his own terror and allow him to overcome the fear.
The whole system was so deep; over two miles underground, that there was a real sense of pressure on his ears and he could almost feel the weight of the mountain bearing down upon his head. With the risk of cutting an emergency second tunnel being deemed too great; effectively doubling the risk of the project being discovered by external forces, if anything happened to the subway tunnel then everyone working in the complex would die; over fifty souls.
The complex was not vast because the TBM had needed to be used to grind out the final destination as well as the route into the mountains. Careful geological analysis and resonance testing had identified the ideal termination point as being comprised more heavily of silicate-rich andesine than granite which had allowed the machine to bore much more quickly, running twenty adjacent, parallel tunnels, one hundred metres in length, chewing back and forth until the machine had finally been allowed to rest.
Abandoned at the end of its final bore, the centimetres-thin layer of rock separating each of the end tunnels had been easily quarried away by hand, creating a vast cavern, four metres high and eighty metres wide. Into this had been built a lattice of internal rooms and connecting passageways, painstakingly designed and built in the same factory which had produced the TBM. Running computer technology linked to industrial 3D printers, every component was manufactured to fit perfectly, within a two millimetre tolerance.
Flown out to the site in sections, loaded onto the train, and assembled by a team of technicians who worked around the clock, the complex had been transformed from empty cave into a fully-functioning scientific laboratory in only three weeks, installing every element flawlessly, including an array of special steel chambers; the purpose of which was known only to Kwon and a handful of his most trusted scientific team.
Power was drawn from the heat of the mountain itself. At such a depth, the trick was keeping everything cool rather than heating it up, as the surrounding rock emanated an ambient temperature of fifty-eight degrees centigrade; a lethal number for humans without a mass of air conditioners to make it habitable.
A very small borehole had been cut from the floor of the complex, using a succession of powerful drills that dug a further five miles down into the rock. At that depth, geothermal technology was then installed, cycling water down into the boiling depths where it was transformed into steam and returned to the surface to spin turbines in a special generator. A sealed system, it potentially could last for eternity, and produced far more power than the complex actually drew.
The entrance door was dutifully guarded and, as always, a stony-faced, dark-suited sentinel checked his identify pass before nodding courteously and pressing a button, set into a small unit concealed on his belt. The single, composite door slid open sideways, giving every visitor the impression of stepping aboard a science fiction film set.
The entry corridor ran parallel to the far western wall of the complex, with a dozen side passages cutting off from it at regular intervals until it stopped at the farthest extent of the north face. Every surface was neatly encapsulated in cream polycarbonate panels with a vivid red line running at waist height along every passageway wall, on both sides, intermittently scattered with directions in
Chinese, to key rooms. It reminded Kwon of a modern hospital. Clean lines, light grey linoleum floors, its countersunk ceiling strip lighting operated permanently at sixty percent illumination so as not to dazzle the complex’s occupants.
A single-floor design, its original four metre height had been reduced to three once all the ceiling and floor sections were installed. Not enough height to separate into two levels, perhaps, but perfect for one. The ceiling was high enough above everyone’s head to offer a false sense of spaciousness.
Kwon physically shook his head, as if needing to rid himself of mundane thought. Instantly refocused upon his task, he breezed down the main passageway until several side corridors had been passed, and ignored. Choosing the one he needed, moving with surprising agility to avoid bumping into a white-coated female technician who just happened to walk around the corner of junction at exactly the same moment he arrived, Kwon graciously apologised.
The technician; a young woman in her mid-twenties, instantly recognising who it was that she’d almost knocked into, dropped her instantly fearful gaze to the floor, muttered her own hasty apology and hurried away.
At the very end of the passageway, Kwon reached his goal. The door sat barely a metre from the dead end of the corridor, on the right. All the doors looked the same; completely flat, featureless panels of thick aluminium. No door furniture again, it hissed open horizontally as soon as he stepped close enough. A clever mix of concealed pressure sensors beneath the floor and motion detectors, so minute that Kwon had never genuinely been able to spot them, ensured nobody ever walked into a closed door.
Inside, the room was kept at barely twenty percent illumination, feeling cool and dingy by contrast to the outer corridor. The door slid obediently closed behind him as he stepped over to a small aluminium desk, settling down in front of a huge flat screen hanging on the wall above it. The seat was built from lightweight tubular steel, reinforced with titanium so that even his massive weight was easily supported. The padding was scant but it was comfortable enough to get a few hours work done at any one time.
Kwon did not bother to examine the rest of his private quarters. He knew it was forbidden for anyone else to enter, on pain of summary execution. Besides, the integrated bio-scanners that regularly swept the interior, unseen, would trigger a call to security if anyone else’s DNA was ever detected without Kwon first overriding the system from his computer on the very rare times he invited a guest back to his bed.
As he bent forward to activate the computer touchscreen, built into the desktop, he paused. Suddenly overcome with a wave of fatigue that washed over him with a strength that warned him against bothering to do any more work, Kwon listened to his body and headed across to his large, king-sized bed. Flopping down on his back, he closed his eyes, convincing himself that he would just have a few minutes rest. Sleep had other ideas and he was soon wrestling with dark entities; fighting for his life in the depths of the underworld.
It was a recurring nightmare that he'd experienced for over a decade and one, his own spirit told him, was a portent of his future. Kwon was engaged in very dangerous work, with an uncertain outcome. The only certainty at all was that many thousands of people, maybe even millions, would soon perish.
11
James Pace and Max Hammond were genuinely flummoxed. Their intelligence had indicated the ARC site in Uruguay was now under heavy military guard and remained in active use, despite the calamitous downfall of the company and its elusive leader.
Moving up the beach, they had traversed, crab-like; low and slow, taking every precaution against detection. There had been no lights showing but they'd already surmised that the majority of the action would be taking place underground, if this site was anything like the two previously discovered in Namibia and Antarctica.
After twenty minutes moving stealthily around the surface buildings, clad like an SAS hit team, the two friends had found nothing at all. The windows of the warehouses and a couple of brick sheds were not blacked out; they were simply empty. Nothing remained inside any of them, not even an abandoned crate or a dirty rag. Cleared out and with concrete floors swept clean, their silence mocked the intruders.
Not willing to throw caution to the wind yet, Pace and Hammond searched around for any sign of an access point underground. Eventually, after ten further minutes of scanning and pacing, Hammond spotted a small door set into the base of the cliff, just where it curved behind the largest warehouse. Unimpressive; built from heavily weathered oak, no crack of light or any sound leaked out from its ill-fitting edges.
'This is too damned quiet,' muttered Pace warily. Hammond nodded silent agreement in the darkness. 'Either they're damned good at camouflage or they've shipped out somewhere else already.'
'I can't hear anything,' said Hammond, 'but that doesn't mean there isn't a heavily armed welcome party waiting for us on the other side of that door.'
Pace regarded the door and realised they weren't going to find anything out standing around outside. Reaching a hand out to a small, circular doorknob, he turned it and pushed firmly. The handle was well maintained and heavily oiled, turning smoothly in his grip. The door swung inwards on silent hinges.
The passageway beyond also lay in total darkness.
'Age before beauty,' Hammond chuckled quietly. 'Don't forget, if that old antique gun of yours jams, just hit the deck and I will save the day with some good, old-fashioned Russian reliability.' In referring to the well-worn AK-47 in his hands, he was accurate. The iconic weapon had proven itself to be one of the most reliable firearms ever to grace a battlefield.
'You just don't like going first,' Pace shot back with a grin. 'Come on, let's see what's waiting for us.'
Moving cautiously, crouching low, he stepped inside purposefully. Although still hopeful that Josephine Roche might be hiding somewhere underground so that he could rid the world of her once and for all, the sheer silence everywhere suggested the two of them might be on a wild goose chase.
An hour later, exasperated, hot and thirsty, Pace and Hammond were sitting at an empty plastic table, in an abandoned mess hall, cursing their bad luck. Relying only on their torches to light the way, the third in the series of WWI British science bases turned out to be laid out very much like the one in Antarctica. Several large rooms had once housed scientific equipment, men and food stores. A single, hand-hewn passageway descended from the main floor, emerging into a huge underground cavern, complete with a rotting wooden pier that stretched out into the deep-water lapping at the stone ledge that passed for the lowest step. Here, many years before, the ill-fated British naval submarine, codename K-19, had been a regular visitor. If it was anything like Antarctica, Pace thought, U-Boats would also have been seen tied to the pier after the British team had been massacred.
The cavern, though impressive and with a vaulted ceiling reaching up impressively above their heads for over one hundred feet; was as empty as the rooms above and the buildings above them. Clearly, nobody was home.
'So, where have they all gone? And why didn't our people know they'd already left?' Hammond was thinking aloud, rocking on an orange, plastic chair that had clearly been used fairly recently, like a bored child trying to survive a dull grammar lesson. 'The McEntire Corporation has its finger on every pulse. I've never known them to be wrong about crucial intelligence before.' In the flickering light thrown out by both of their torches, the shadows of his puzzled expression were plain for Pace to see.
'They didn't get it wrong,' said Pace, suddenly releasing a pent up breath, carried on a bitter laugh. 'They knew exactly what we'd find before we even stepped on the bloody plane.' Of course, it was Baker's way of letting him blow off some steam without putting either of them in any real danger.'
'Baker? Really?'
'It's his job to protect the Corporation, and its people, while Doyle is incapacitated,' explained Pace ruefully. Why hadn't he seen it? Damn. 'Not only did it give us something to do, it got us away from London for a bit.'
'T
ime he needed to track down the real location of Josephine?' wondered Hammond.
'I'm betting so,' replied Pace. 'I understand but I don't like being played. I need to find her. Sarah might be dying and her father definitely has more chance of checking out than recovering. I need to know why.'
'Revenge,' said Hammond. 'You know why she targeted Sarah. To hurt you. Come on, James. The work we did, and you especially, brought down her entire shady company. The few legitimate directors threw her out of the business she inherited from her uncle. Our team destroyed her life and killed some of her key people. It's only natural she'd want to hit back at us; at you.'
'I don't buy it,' argued Pace. The whole idea had seemed absurd. It was true that Josephine Roche was a sadistic murderer, who had zero scruples, but she was on the ropes and setting up a hit against Doyle McEntire's daughter would have taken some doing. 'It was too risky to be a knee-jerk decision. There has to be something more going on.'
'Maybe,' Hammond conceded, pausing to balance expertly on the two back legs of his chair momentarily. 'If you're right, and I'm not saying you are,' he added hastily, 'then what reason could she have?'
'There is only one,' Pace decided, his voice suddenly edged with clarity.
'Care to enlighten me?'
'She needs to keep the McEntire Corporation's attention focused elsewhere for a while. What better method than assassinating the boss's daughter? She couldn't have known that Doyle himself would then keel over with a coronary. His death, if it happens, will just be a bonus for her.'
Hammond had lived and breathed espionage and the dangerous life of a covert McEntire operative for over a decade. Comparatively, James Pace was a novice but he had performed so well in the Amazon and African operations that Doyle McEntire had welcomed him to the fold with open arms. A skilled military helicopter pilot; kicked out of the RAF after one too many bouts of insubordination, Pace was a shrewd, intelligent man and one Hammond had quickly grown to call a friend. Despite the difference of time served, Hammond trusted his friend's insight, and his courage.