The God Complex: A Thriller (30 page)

Sophie screamed when the door at the end of the corridor buckled and then gave way, her ears aching from the klaxons’ constant and monotonous pulse. Before she knew why, she was being propelled down the length of the corridor at speed. She whipped her head around to see Cash had her by the arm, her feet were hardly making contact with ground. The Senator was behind her, with Rigs ushering him from behind. Thalia was leading the way, responding to something Cash was shouting at her.

“Armory,” she finally understood.

A group of airmen rushed past them towards the door, armed in full riot gear. The sounds of gunfire escaped between pulses.

Sophie found herself being thrown into the armory
. The klaxon finally died. Everybody obviously knew they were under attack.

“Grab whatever you need,”
said Thalia needlessly. Cash and Rigs were already filling their pockets with ammo and every other piece of kit they thought could conceivably help, after having grabbed a couple of HK416s and Berretta 9mms.

“How many security personnel?” asked Cash.

“Twenty and from what I heard from the men rushing past us, ten are already down.”

“Layout?”

“One long corridor with rooms off it. It’s effectively one long half mile tunnel in the mountain. One way in and one way out.”

“Senator, you
’re looking nervous, any idea who these guys are?”

“There’s more than one
?!” he gasped.

“
I think I heard three,” said Cash.

“They’re assassins, the one that kidnapped me killed eight
men and disappeared.”

“The same people from Santa Cruz?”

“God no, those guys were amateurs in comparison. Have you heard of the Sicarii?”

Cash shook his head
.

“
Very few people live to know their name.”

“You know it
.”

“I wish I didn’t
.”

Cash looked
at Rigs, who shrugged, unimpressed.

“I’ll take you guys further into the mountain
,” Cash said. “Rigs will wait here and come at them from behind. Thalia, you lead the way, I’ll bring up the rear.”

Sophie was ushered to the door by Cash
. She looked around to say goodbye to Rigs but he was nowhere to be seen.

Gunfire echoed from up the corridor
. The airmen’s machine gun fire seemed relentless, until it just stopped.

“Go!” Cash
urged Thalia. The silence from behind was not a comforting one. Thalia raced past door after door, the end of the corridor coming into view. A few gunshots rang out behind them, all were quickly silenced.

“What’s down here?”

“The last door leads to the plant room, generators, air conditioning equipment…”

“
In there,” instructed Cash. He had an idea, which he shared quickly with Thalia before closing the door.

“Don’t open this unless I knock the signal!” Cash turned
. It was time to hunt the hunters.

When the door blew, Levi, Mika and Katya were already moving, their weapons up and at the ready, as heads popped though doors. One of them was already on a target and took it out. One shot, clean kill.

While Levi watched the corridor, Mika and Katya cleared the rooms
. The first room was nothing more than a small reception room, empty. The second room, an image of a pyramid projected on the wall, empty.

Bullets
rained down when Levi ran to join them in the second room.

“
Five heavily armed, coming our way,” he called, diving into the room for cover.

The
deafening noise of the automatic rifles continued as the security team neared the room. Bullet after bullet pounded the door frame, uselessly expending bullets for no reason other than to pin the Sicarii in situ. As long as the bullets rained they knew not to worry.

A brief pause was all Katya and Levi needed
. They signaled to Mika. He pulled the door open and he and Levi dived out at foot level into the onrushing security team, their MP7s firing accurately as they rolled across the corridor. By the time they were in the crouch position, the five security men were lying dead.

“Amateurs,
” exhaled Katya, waving for Mika to join them.

The next few rooms mopped up the last of the security team. Four rooms
and another five dead security men.

Katya watched the corridor
while Mika and Levi cleared the armory. Mika burst in with Levi at his back. They swept the room, empty.

Cash ran back towards the armory. The sound of gunfire had already died. The last of the security team must have been taken out. It was only as he ran back he realized the incline in the floor, a slight upward slope towards the entrance. He stopped. They were above him, their line of sight was above his, they had the advantage.

Cash crouched and fired down the corridor.

The lights went out, plunging the facility into a darkness only possible buried deep in a mountain, with no residual light from any source to give even the tiniest detail of the surroundings.

“What was that?” said Katya, using her ears to replace her eyes.

“What
?” asked Levi.

“That sucking noise?” she asked

The lights came back on. Mika was on the floor, his throat slit cleanly, silently gasping for air his lungs were never going to get.

“I thought you cleared the armory,”
Katya said. Her mind had already moved on from her fallen comrade. He was dead. His mind just hadn’t accepted it yet.

Levi rushed back
with his MP7 at the ready. A ceiling tile was missing.

“He was behind us, he must have gone back towards the entrance
,” said Katya, her MP7 trying to cover both directions.

“How do you know they’ve not all played the trick?”

“Did you hear him?”

“No,” said Levi.

“Exactly. Trust me, we’d have heard the Senator.”

Gunfire rang out again, the same two shots, three, one
, then two.

The lights went out, plunging them into darkness again.

Katya spun round. She heard a shuffling and fired a round.

“That’s me!”
screeched Levi.

Ten seconds turned to twenty, then thirty.

Katya was spinning, tuning in to every tiny noise. Mika’s body was still gurgling at their feet.

Levi’s breathing was becoming heavier, the darkness was unnerving
. Mika’s dying body wasn’t helping them.

Thirty became thirty five
. “We’re letting them hunt us,” said Levi, infuriated at how easily the tide had turned against them.

Forty seconds. The lights came on. A face appeared in front of him
; it was a face he recognized, a face he had been sent to hunt at an ancient site. He raised his MP7 to fire, but it wouldn’t move. A vice like grip held its muzzle aimed at his own foot. Rigs smiled and slashed the knife cleanly across Levi’s throat, silencing his dying scream.

Katya’s vision wasn’t dissimilar, only she had no idea who the man was that was less than an inch from her face
when the lights came on. Her MP7 also didn’t move. She let go of it and moved with lightning speed to her waistband, retrieving a knife and thrusting it into her attacker. Unfortunately, the thrusting motion was what her mind had intended for her body to do, a body that had already been effectively severed from her mind when a 9mm bullet tore through her spinal cord.

“Did you see how fast she was
?” marveled Rigs. “She nearly had you and you already had the gun at her neck. Any others?”

“Nope, all gone
.”

“So they were
Sicarii
, or whatever,” Rigs shivered in mock fear. “Two words assholes, night vision!” He removed the Air Force’s latest night vision equipment they’d acquired in the armory.

“We’re lucky they
didn’t take it themselves,” said Cash. “Can’t believe we left the box sitting there.”

“They thought they had us
,” said Rigs. “Too cocky.”

He had recognized Cash’s first signal
. When the lights went out, he knew that was his signal to get out. The first kill had been a bonus, a flick of his knife as he brushed past the man on the way out of the armory. He hadn’t had time to pause, he knew the lights would be back on in twenty seconds. His priority was to get clear of his hiding hole and in behind the attackers. At the second signal, he had crept out of his position and been able to communicate with Cash along the corridor as they both moved in for the kill. First signal, position, second signal, kill. They always did it the same way. Cash counted down with one hand three, two and the lights had come on.

“So what now?
” asked Rigs.

“Switzerland
, I suppose,” said Cash.

“Do we have time for a detour?”

“Depends on where.”

“Not far from Switzerland, I’d really like to see the pyramids,” said Rigs.

“I knew it, you saw something in that photo, didn’t you?”

“Maybe,” said Rigs
. “Maybe.”

Anya hardly recognized the small
atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean from her plane passing slowly overhead. The former US Air Force base, acquired by Atlas Noble a few years earlier, boasted a massive terminal building that would have rivaled most international airports. The U-shaped atoll, over 1,700 miles from the nearest major landfall, also boasted the world’s first spaceport. In less than two weeks, the transports would commence, ferrying the population.

The atoll
, which a year earlier had housed a few buildings and was nothing more than an emergency landing strip for aircraft experiencing problems, had been transformed. It was more akin to a major international hub. The terminal buildings covered the island while taxiways ran around its perimeter. Every spare inch had been used to maximize the numbers that could be processed through the center.

Anya was particularly pleased to see how well the platform had come
along since her last visit. It stood proudly protruding high above the water level. It was the perfect launch pad for their transports. The colossal metal structure, with its bridges feeding down to the terminals, had become the perfect intergalactic space port, exactly as had been envisioned. All they needed were the aircraft and the spaceships and they were good to go.

All in good time
,
she thought. The five spacecraft were not going to be brought on site until the convergence. Likewise, the aircraft. None were as opulent as the Atlas Noble corporate jet, however, numbers and efficiency were more important than comfort. All would maximize the number of people they could carry. There would be no classes on board, just as many seats as they could fit in safely. Over fifty Airbus A380s were scattered around the world awaiting the call, each with over eight hundred fifty seats.

The runways were empty, the taxiways clear, four small planes sat on an apron
, looking tiny in comparison to everything around them. They were four fighter jets that would clear any inquisitive strays, although the chances of any stray flights in the middle of nowhere were all but impossible. Only commercial jets could reach that far and none would fly that far off course due to the amount of fuel they would need to burn.

Satellites were a concern
; Atlas Noble had covered that with some very simple technology.

Anya lifted the handset by her side
. “Can they switch it back on?”

Anya waited
a couple of seconds for the captain to relay the message. The image below her transformed back to how she remembered it. Thousands upon thousands of panels had been placed on top of every single new building. Anya looked down on the image of how the island had been; it was as though everything they had built had disappeared. The image was remarkable, in perfect synch with the sun’s position in the sky, it darkened when the sun set and brightened when the sun rose.

“Wonderful
!” She checked her watch. She was on a tight schedule to make it back in time for Alex’s birthday. “Can we go to Iwo Jima, please?” she asked. It was the main reason for her trip. She was linking up with Caleb Noble, head of transport, on his first experimental fueling exercise for the spacecraft. A helicopter would meet her at Iwo Jima and fly her out to his deep sea vessel stationed above the Mariana trench, the point of the world’s oceans where at its deepest, pressures of 1,000 times atmospheric pressure were known to exist. It was the perfect testing ground for their fueling system.