Ethan ran toward Jesse as Lopez, Stanley and Amber fled.
‘Get out of there!’ he yelled at Jesse.
The commune leader shook his head, his arms still spread wide as he stared up at the helicopters, smiling now.
‘They’re our soldiers,’ he shouted back. ‘We have nothing to fear from them!’
Ethan slid to a halt behind a large cedar tree as he shouted back even as soldiers appeared on the rappel lines and began descending toward the forest floor.
‘They’re not our soldiers, Jesse!’ he shouted. ‘Run, now!’
Jesse looked at Ethan in confusion and then the first gunshots rang out.
Ethan saw Jesse take two rounds, a classic double–tap shot that zipped through his plexus and upper right chest. Jesse twitched once and then twice before his legs gave way beneath him and he slumped onto the forest floor amid a whirlwind of dislodged leaves and foliage.
Ethan looked up and saw brief flares of light as M–16 rifles opened up on the commune in a blaze of staccato flashes. Even before Jesse had hit the forest floor screams went up from the houses around him as the inhabitants dashed out and began fleeing into the darkened forests.
Ethan saw dozens of troops descending down the rappel lines toward the forest floor, firing indiscriminately into the darkened woods. He turned and ran across the compound, dashing left and right to spoil the aim of the soldiers, who would be concentrating on rappelling and getting onto solid ground before taking more careful aim at their targets.
Half a dozen deafening blasts and bright flares of light illuminated the forest around him as the attacking troops dropped flash–bangs to blind and disorientate their targets. Ethan could hear the screams of the commune’s families as they sought to escape the assault, and he felt his desperate need to escape warring with his need to defend people who had no means of defending themselves. A cold dread enveloped him as he realized just how far Majestic Twelve were willing to go in order to capture and kill Stanley Meyer. The assassination of innocent civilians, however abhorrent to anybody else, was no obstacle to their goal.
Ethan threw himself into the cover of the forest, behind a broad trunked tree as he looked back into the compound. The helicopters were arrayed in a ring around it, the troops descending into the forest and then moving in toward the centre to prevent anybody from escaping. He sought to find Lopez, but he could see nothing in the darkness and he knew that he would not be able to locate her easily.
He looked up and saw a single Black Hawk helicopter blocking his path, hovering above the trees and with its rappel lines now empty. He knew that the soldiers would be equipped with the latest technology: night–vision goggles, infrared sensors and other gadgetry that would allow them to track their targets in complete darkness. For all he knew Ethan was probably already in clear view to the advancing soldiers, and even if he were not those from a different angle would be able to warn their comrades of his presence crouched alongside the trunk of the huge tree.
Ethan remained in position and ducked his head down to protect his vision against any more of the flash–bangs that might be tossed in his direction as he attempted to orientate himself to the camp. He recalled Jesse describing the diesel generators that were used by the camp to provide energy during particularly cold winter months, and he hunted around the forest floor for any sign of the power lines that must run to the houses. Most likely they would be buried, but there might be some kind of evidence of their passage. In the faint light of the compound he searched the forest, remaining perfectly still as he sought a likely route, the most sensible place for Jesse and his people to have built the generators.
Ethan spotted a narrow path between the trees that appeared unnaturally straight, as though the foliage had been cleared at some point and had not yet fully regrown. He peered into the darkness and saw a glint of reflected light, the kind of reflection that could only come from metal.
A noise to Ethan’s left alerted him to the presence of the advancing soldiers and he turned just in time to see a flare of gunfire. A salvo of bullets smashed into the tree next to him and sprayed chips of bark and wood into his face as he fell away from the impacts and rolled across the forest floor. Ethan leaped to his feet and dashed across the path, sprinting down toward the metal object he had seen reflected in the firelight.
More gunshots pursued him immediately, his doom prevented only by his rapid motion and the dense trees around him that made a perfect shot almost impossible due to the nature of the night–vision goggles. Ethan knew from his own use of them in Afghanistan that they presented a flat image in only two dimensions that made it incredibly difficult to judge depth perception, meaning that any soldier using a rifle with them had to account for this change in perception, something very difficult to do against a moving target amid multiple obstacles.
Keep moving.
Ethan slid down into the foliage as he spotted ahead of him a rectangular metal wire cage, within which were two diesel generators that were currently switched off. The cage had a door which was sealed with a padlock. Ethan yanked at the lock but it was far too secure for him to break through. Instead, Ethan spotted the fuel lines that fed diesel from the tanks into the generator, which was then converted into electrical power and directed toward the homes.
Ethan pulled out a small knife from his satchel and managed to push the blade far enough through the wire fence to puncture one of the fuel lines. He levered the knife back and forth until the blade sliced through and the diesel fuel began to spill onto the forest floor beneath the tanks. Ethan tucked down behind the tanks and then began to retreat as fast as he could away from them. A second Black Hawk helicopter was to his left, still hovering and gusting hot air through the forest along with the smell of aviation fuel. Gunshots rang out as the soldiers closed in on the homes, completely encircling the compound.
Ethan reached into his pocket and pulled out a zippo lighter, one that he carried with him throughout the Gulf War. Ethan had never smoked, but in theatre one of the quickest ways to gain friends among the Iraqis was to offer cigarettes and to light them, breaking down social barriers with the people they were trying to protect as they sought information on whatever bad guys they may have been after at the time.
Ethan placed one hand on the ground and felt the tinder–dry leaves and twigs coating the forest floor beneath his touch. He gathered together a small pile of them, the gusting wind from the helicopter blades at his back as he crouched down over the kindling, shoved the zippo lighter deep into it and flicked the flint.
The makeshift kindling ignited immediately with a pale flame that quickly grew in intensity. Ethan leapt up as soon as the flames had taken hold and dashed to his right as another pair of gun shots cracked out and zipped through the space where he had been crouched moments before.
Ethan hurled himself behind another tree and then peeked around to see the flames from the small fire growing rapidly in the turbulent downdraught of the helicopter’s blades as it blustered through the trees. The flames were already three feet high and spreading quickly to both the left and the right as they began marching toward the diesel generators. Ethan knew damned well that diesel was not flammable, but it did have a flashpoint and was combustible above a certain temperature. The flames were already crackling through the undergrowth and growing like some fearsome beast fed by the very power of the helicopter sent to kill them. The heat from the flames would also disguise his infrared signature and that of the fleeing civilians, rendering the soldier’s night vision goggles and infra–red sensors useless at the same time.
Ethan heard further shouts of alarm, this time male voices, deeper than the shrieks of panic and terror from the inhabitants of the commune. More gunshots crackled out, but this time they were not directed at Ethan and he heard returning fire from his left. Jesse’s shotgun.
Lopez.
Ethan moved without conscious thought, his back now covered by the advancing wall of flames that would be driving the troops away from him
and forcing them to circle around in order to reach the centre of the compound. With the flames in his rear Ethan hurried forward and caught a glimpse or two of Lopez firing, the shotgun’s report differing from the distinctive rattle of the M–16s.
The forest was glowing now in the light of the ferociously growing fire, and Ethan suddenly saw the helicopters pull up and away from the forest as they sought to avoid fanning the flames any further, the pilots recognizing the danger to the troops on the ground. Ethan crouched lower and checked over his shoulder. The fire was now raging, driven this way and that by the turbulent downdraught from the helicopters, a twisting inferno that would be almost impossible to stop.
‘Get down, hands on your head!’
Ethan froze, staring ahead, and in the light of the fire he saw troops advancing toward him, their weapons trained on a figure huddling on its knees with hands in the air.
As Ethan watched, he recognized from his silhouette the shape of Stanley Meyer as the troops surrounded him, and then they were placing manacles around his wrists and dragging him away from the commune. Ethan searched for any sign of Lopez, suddenly fearful that she had been shot and killed and that the troops had advanced to find Meyer alone in the forest.
The soldiers dragged the old man away, hurrying in retreat from the growing flames behind Ethan, and then suddenly Ethan sensed motion behind him and he whirled to see four heavily armed troops looming behind him, two of them holding Lopez and Amber in savage grips.
‘On your feet!’ one of them growled, his black fatigues smouldering where burning foliage had become lodged in the folds.
Ethan got to his feet, his hands in the air as he confronted the soldiers.
‘Move!’ one of them snapped as he rammed the barrel of an M–16 under Lopez’s jaw, ‘or I’ll ventilate her skull right here and now!’
Ethan was about to turn when he saw a brief flare of light burst like a new–born star amid the flames behind the soldiers, and he ducked down as suddenly all noise and light vanished as a terrific blast ignited in the forest.
Ethan felt the shockwave from the blast hit him as the diesel generators exploded, the fearsome flames snarling through the forest igniting the fuel within them as the temperature reached its flashpoint.
Even as he ducked down he saw the blast hit the soldiers from behind, lifting them from their feet and hurling them to one side. He saw both Lopez and Amber still in the grasp of the soldiers and partially shielded from the impact of the blast as an immense fireball ripped through the trees and billowed up into the sky.
Ethan managed to get his hands over his ears to protect them from the raw fury of the detonation, but even so as he scrambled to his feet his head was dizzy and his legs felt weak as he struggled across to the nearest of the fallen soldiers before they were able to bring their weapons to bear upon him once more.
He saw the soldier look up at him and try to lift his M–16. Ethan brought one boot crashing down on the weapon to pin it against the forest floor as he lifted the other boot and smashed it down across the soldier’s face. The soldier’s head snapped to one side as he was plunged into unconsciousness, and Ethan grabbed the M–16 from his hands and turned it on the other fallen soldiers.
Cold fury gripped Ethan’s heart as he took aim and fired three controlled shots, each round puncturing the soldier’s skulls. These were not servants of the US government, these were mercenaries, killers for hire, probably former Special Forces and the kind of people who clearly had no problem killing civilians for their pay.
Lopez hauled herself to her feet and without prompting stumbled over to Amber and tried to help her up. Ethan turned and saw the entire forest filled with churning flames, felt the heat washing across him from the inferno as it grew. Somewhere beyond the darkened forest he could hear the helicopters waiting, holding clear of the blast zone as they prepared to land in the nearest clearing to allow the soldiers to regroup and climb aboard.
‘We need to move, fast!’ Ethan said as Amber struggled to her feet.
‘Where’s my father?’ Amber asked, clearly shaken by the blast and the speed and ferocity of the attack.
‘He’s gone, Amber,’ Ethan replied. ‘They got him. There’s nothing we can do, except get out of here before they come for us too.’
Ethan did not wait for a response, knowing that they didn’t have time to debate the situation, stranded in the middle of nowhere and with a hostile force within a short distance of where they stood. Clutching the M–16 rifle, Ethan turned and led the way through the darkened forest in the hopes that the raging inferno behind them would conceal their presence for long enough to make good their escape.
***
XXX
Angel Springs Hotel, Virginia
Stanley Meyer sat in silence as he watched the dawn break across distant hills, the sky above a wonderful eggshell blue and a light mist hovering in the air across the nearby forests. It looked so much like the hills near Clearwater.
So much had changed, in so little time, that he felt as though he were in some kind of dream, that he would wake up eventually in his own bed with his wife beside him, Amber asleep in her room, and their lives back to normal. He realized, with some melancholy, that he almost wished it were true and that he had never gotten himself into this mess.
The hotel in which he had been forced to spend the night was far more luxurious than anything he had ever believed possible. From the cold, hard, dark confines of a military helicopter he had been transferred into a luxury limousine and from there to the hotel. The bathroom had marble floors and a voice activated pad on the wall allowed him to open the curtains, turn on the lights, alter the air conditioning and do pretty much anything he wanted without ever having to lift a finger. On one wall was mounted a television larger than the dining table in his home, the screen concave to prevent any reflections from marring the perfect image it produced.
Stanley knew that there were soldiers outside his door, dressed in smart suits and with their weapons concealed. His door was locked from the outside and the entire top floor of the hotel booked out to conceal him from observation. Stanley reckoned that the proprietors of the hotel probably assumed that a rock star was staying incognito upstairs, or perhaps a movie idol or something, not a retired scientist considered a lunatic by most of his peers.
Stanley had no idea whether Amber, Lopez and Ethan were still alive, but he did know that Jesse had been shot during their attempted escape. He had heard more gunfire afterward, and in the carnage that ensued he felt certain that there had been no survivors in Jesse’s commune. The sight of people being shot and killed had affected him deeply, and sleep had not come to him despite the huge size and great comfort of the king–size bed that dominated his room. People were dying, dying because of what he had achieved and because of what so many other people wanted to see destroyed.
A great pall of depression settled on Stanley’s shoulders as he watched the sunrise through the broad windows, all of which had been secured and locked shut and were made from a form of glass that could not be broken. Had he not already been informed in great depth of the security of his room, he might have been tempted to hurl himself through them and off the fifth floor balcony to his death below. He had chosen a course of action that he knew had been dangerous, but he had believed the danger to be only to himself. Never once had he considered the possibility that the brutality of those who were pursuing him would extend to innocent civilians, to people who had never heard of Stanley Meyer or Seavers Incorporated or free energy devices. His grief intensified as he reflected upon the nature of the people who had died, people who had been seeking a way to live peacefully outside of the National Grid, the kind of people that Stanley Meyer had hoped to champion with the fusion cage. Now, the first people to encounter him and his device, or the promise of it, were dead, their children with them.
Tears welled into his eyes, but the rage he had once felt for the machine that seemed determined to thwart him at all costs would not come.
He knew that he had pushed too far, too soon, that he had challenged the powers that be and found their nature to be far more horrific than anything he could have imagined. Finally, after all this time, he realised something that he had not before considered: that perhaps many scientists refused to become involved in the free energy game not because they felt that it would not work, but because they feared the consequences of even attempting to do so. More than one inventor had died under mysterious circumstances after proclaiming to have discovered some form or other of extreme efficiency or free energy.
Stanley turned wearily to the television and switched it on. The screen glowed into life in an instant, an image of a news anchor from a local state television station appearing larger–than–life and clearer too, almost unrealistically high definition as though he were looking through a window to where the newsreader sat dictating her newsfeed directly to him. He had already watched the reports a dozen times, but once again found himself unable to tear his view from them.
‘ … reports are coming in once again from the fire service fighting the blaze near Nathalie, a fire which appears to have been started deliberately. Casualties are reported in the dozens, along with the destruction of a small commune belonging to one Jesse McVey, an employee of a private firm in Lynchburg who owned the compound and had built an off–grid community there over the last ten years … ’
An image of Jesse appeared on the screen, all youth and vigour and bright smiles, photographed in front of the home he had built in the woods many years previously. Stanley’s tears welled again as the news reporter continued.
‘ … it is believed that an explosion of a gas canister or possibly a diesel generator started the blaze, which then consume the entire community. On–site explosive experts are already warning of the dangers of using such generators in wilderness conditions, citing dry conditions and the danger of natural sparks as well as the threat of arson. The blast at the site was heard as far away as Harrisburg, and although firefighters now have the forest fire under control they are maintaining a perimeter around the site to prevent contamination in order for forensics experts to search the scene. The local police department say they are now treating the event as a multiple homicide and are seeking witnesses. All victims found at the scene are confirmed to have died from asphyxiation or burning during the fire.’
The Fusion Cage (Warner & Lopez Book 2) Page 22