Mongrel moved forward, his face a grim mask.
‘Tell me who!’
‘Ahh, to die in ignorance.’ Rogowski smiled malevolently through his pain. He checked his blood-smeared watch, his fingers slippery against his own flesh. ‘You have forty-five seconds to live. Can’t run far in that time, eh, lads?’ He stared at Carter. ‘Sorry, mate, you were just the pack mule. The carrier. We knew you could get the bomb inside undetected—but you were never trustworthy enough to detonate the damned thing. Not even with your boy’s life hanging by a thread. But did I mention that he’s dead already? The little bastard will be pushing up the daisies even as we speak—he was slotted with extreme prejudice the minute you left New York.’
‘No!’ growled Carter.
Mongrel whirled suddenly on his friend. ‘He’s stalling, Carter. Give me MicroNuke. Give old Mongrel that tick tock ticking bomb.’
Carter unzipped the pack and lifted out the long silver cylinder. There were no LED digits on the warhead—no countdown to indicate the seconds left before detonation. That was just a gizmo for the movies. In the real world such a mechanism had no purpose.
The device was vibrating softly in Carter’s calloused hands. He felt fear crawl like a large spider up his spine and neck as he held the embryo of a nuclear explosion in his sweat-slippery grip.
‘You are all dead men,’ snarled Rogowski, eyes bright with tears that spilled down his cheeks. ‘Say your prayers, fuckers—because there is nothing on Earth that can save you now.’
In a huge two-kilometre-wide circle around the munitions depot the Nex had halted. Tanks sat with their engines idling, and thousands of Nex soldiers hunkered down, waiting for the titanic explosion that was to come, their bright copper-eyed stares fixed on what lay up ahead.
Nobody would be allowed to escape the net.
Their single target was the dregs of Spiral.
Their only objective was its total annihilation.
Through me the way is to the city dolent;
Through me the way is to eternal dole;
Through me the way
among the people lost.
Justice incited my
sublime Creator;
Created me divine Omnipotence,
The highest Wisdom and the primal Love.
Before me there were
no created things,
Only eterne, and I eternal last.
All hope abandon, ye who enter in!
Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy: Inferno
R
oxi stood in the shadows for nearly an hour.
The underground chamber was huge and dark, its floor stretching away from her like the surface of a concrete ocean. To her left, in a silent gleaming line, stood sixty brand new Volvo trucks, painted in combat colours and with matt-black grilles grinning fiendishly. To her right, beyond a series of mammoth pillars, stretched a range of machines, from 8x8 German Spähpanzer Luchs recon vehicles with ten-cylinder V4 Daimler-Benz engines, to Turkish Otokar APCs sporting old VI2 Land Rover engines and roof-mounted 7.62mm MGs. The mish-mash of mothballed vehicles ended with ten HTanks—shrouded in anonymous greased sheeting that did little to disguise their war-machine outlines.
Roxi allowed her breath to ease free from her lungs. She lifted her ECube and it unfolded in her palm like an ancient Chinese puzzle box, alloy leaves unpeeling and sliding noiselessly apart. She rested her gloved right hand on the device and started to trace patterns on its digital pad. The tiny machine vibrated, signalling that there was an electronic shield of invisibility surrounding her, which effectively hid her from all forms of digital movement-detector ... as long as she was cautious and slow-moving enough to give the ECube time to decode, delete her presence, and re-encode all transmitted files.
Roxi’s hand slid down and pressed a concealed button at her hip. There was a whine and then—nothing. She gave a little shiver as her clothing’s integrated silver wiring dropped her body temperature, matching it to that of her surroundings. Now she was invisible to thermal scanners, too.
Roxi allowed the ECube to close in her gloved fist. Then she pulled free her 9mm Glock. She checked its magazine, and with her other hand carrying the ECube as if it were some magical artefact which could shield her from evil—which, in a way, it could—she moved slowly out until she was exposed to the scanners. She waited nervously, awaiting a negative and brutal response ...
Nothing. No alarms were tripped.
The ECube buzzed.
Taking great care, Roxi walked softly down the centre of the huge concrete vehicle-storage warehouse. Reaching the end, she lifted the edge of one of the greased tarpaulins covering the HTanks.
Again, she keyed something into the ECube and it scanned the HTank. Roxi heard several relays thump into place. The HTank was primed and ready to roll.
Suddenly a noise alerted Roxi and she moved behind the HTank, dropping to a crouch. She licked her lips and flicked off the Glock’s safety as two Nex walked slowly down the centre of the chamber, gazes sweeping left and right. They disappeared at the far end.
I see security is tight here in New York, thought Roxi sombrely. But then, Durell himself was in the building ...
She crept along the row of HTanks, then climbed lithely onto the tarpaulin and reached up towards the ceiling. False tiles formed a shallow cavity in which piping and electronics were fitted; Roxi slid a tile free, then climbed up onto the supporting framework above, her slim body bent almost double, and slowly pressed her access tile back into place.
Inside the ceiling now, she worked her way across the frame and squeezed herself into a narrow aperture which opened into one of the many lift chutes that gave access throughout the New York Sentinel HQ. Roxi shone the beam of her Maglite torch down to illuminate gently swaying thick cables and a huge array of gearing mechanisms and powerful electric motors. She glanced up but the beam would only reach so far before the shaft disappeared into darkness.
Roxi holstered her weapon and ECube, took the Maglite in her teeth, and leapt lightly from the shaft’s edge. She caught hold of a thick cable, her fingers clamping tight against the heavily greased steel, and began to climb slowly.
Roxi felt the vibrations first. The cable under her gloves began to tremble, then sway gently from side to side. To her left, a few feet down, wheels started to spin. Calmly, she continued to climb. And then it came, hammering down from the darkness above: the huge alloy block of the lift.
Roxi’s gaze lifted, focusing in the erratic light of her Maglite on the falling cube. At the last moment she released her grip, kicking herself backwards as she went into a horizontal dive. With outstretched hands she took hold of the struts on the lift’s underside and hung on for dear life.
Suddenly, the lift slammed to a halt. Hydraulics cushioned the abrupt stop for the occupants but Roxi, attached to the lift’s base, was jerked and shaken roughly. One hand lost its grip.
For a moment, Roxi swung. Then she scrabbled and caught hold again with both hands.
Shit, she wanted to say. But she dared not speak. The Sentinel HQs were riddled with sound detectors as well as surveillance cameras. Anyway, if she’d opened her mouth she’d have dropped the Maglite.
She hung for a while, contemplating her next move. Then the lift clicked with a meshing of gears and started to rise at an incredible rate. Roxi clung on, counting the floors as they passed. She needed Floor 96 but the lift stopped prematurely at 94. Then, after a short pause, it began to descend.
Twice more the lift ascended. Roxi’s brain frantically calculated the floor levels as they sped past at an incredible rate. Within minutes her mind was a scramble of confusion and she fought with all her might for clarity. Then, on the next ascent, as she passed—by her calculation—Floor 96 she released her grip on the lift’s underside and neatly folded over, hands gripping the undulating cable and legs arcing around to clamp it. She hung for a moment, hair blowing in the updraught in the shaft.
Roxi slid down the cable, her Maglite’s beam intermittently illuminating a narrow opening which led in turn to a section of crawl space above Floor 96.
She slowed down and steadied her body against the swaying cable. Then with amazing agility, she leapt from the cable to the ledge. Arms outstretched, she caught hold and then hauled herself up into the confined space. Sweat gleamed on her face and trickled down her spine to make her itch. She took the Maglite from her mouth, switched it off and put it away. Then she licked her lips and pulled out her Glock with fingers that trembled with fatigue.
This is where the fun begins, Roxi thought, smiling grimly. She crouched, listening intently. She waited like this for nearly twenty minutes, then eased free one of the ceiling panels and dropped down. Replacing the panel, she crept along the cool gloomy corridor and crouched by a doorway, once again concentrating.
Three, she thought after long, tense moments. There are three of them in there, as well as the boy Joseph. She could also hear a distant tinkling of water. Using her ECube as a scanner she logged the position of the three Nex guards and then waited for her moment.
It took another few minutes before the ECube reported that it would be safe to enter. Trusting blindly in the technology, Roxi opened the door a fraction on silent hinges and slid inside.
The room was large and bright, as if lit by sunlight from above. Roxi squinted up at an artificial sky scattered with wisps of white cloud. The whole room was a jungle of vegetation: exotic foliage, green plants, purple-leafed creepers, bobbing colourful flowers. Sculpted walkways edged with crushed pink shells and white stone weaved intricate patterns among the greenery, and the air was filled with an extravagantly rich heady fragrance. Accompanying the simulated sun, a synthetic breeze drifted gently through the trees, making their leaves whisper and sigh. Outside, HATE poisoned the reality of nature, so the Nex scientists had now recreated the delights of an organic new world within a controlled environment.
Roxi smelled orange blossom. And jasmine.
She slid through shadows and crouched behind a tree. She looked around carefully, searching for the enemy. The sound of running water was louder now, more distinct. She could see a gleam of silver up ahead, shimmering.
Roxi checked her ECube. The three Nex guards were all spread out, and only moved occasionally. They were relaxed, obviously feeling that they were on an easy gig babysitting a five-year-old boy. What possible threat could he pose? And who on earth would be able to infiltrate so far into Sentinel HQ tower? Especially the central New York Sentinel HQ?
Roxi smiled savagely. But then, Durell had his own problems at the moment. The focus was on bringing down Spiral by using their own specialised tool—Carter ...
Roxi moved carefully around the outskirts of the room. The walls were covered with thick vegetation and she was soon sweating heavily. And then she saw Joseph. He was sitting on a low wall that surrounded a pond into which a silver waterfall tumbled, trailing his hand in the water and staring down at something beneath the rippling surface.
At least there’s one benefit of the heat and humidity, Roxi thought to herself, leaping up onto a ledge of loam to avoid treading on a narrow shell pathway.
The heat slowed the Nex down ...
She checked her ECube again. Up ahead. Directly up ahead.
Roxi glanced in that direction but could see no Nex. Was it disguised? She looked down once more at her ECube, but the machine was dead. With a shiver, Roxi realised that she was on her own ...
Roxi continued around the room, her Glock ready in her grip. She spent nearly half an hour searching meticulously before she came to the conclusion that, apart from Joe, she was alone in the chamber. There were no Nex present.
Frowning, and with her heart hammering in her chest—she
knew
she was being dicked with in some way; she just couldn’t quite figure out how—she approached the boy from one side where he was hidden by a spread of large-leafed palm fronds.
She watched him for a while. By now he was lying down beside the pond. She could see the object of his fascination—Koi carp, a selection of bright colours, silvers and glittering greens and vibrant golds. With a careful glance, she stepped onto the grass and moved towards the young boy. Joe jumped when he saw her, looking around nervously.
Roxi held a finger up to her lips. ‘Shh. I’m here to take you home.’
Joe’s eyes widened. An uncertain smile flickered across his face but was instantly gone. ‘Home?’ he said, his voice soft and frightened. Confusion showed on his young features.
Roxi nodded and smiled. ‘Carter sent me. Your daddy sent me. To take you away from this place.’
‘But what about the Nex?’ said Joe.
‘We have to be careful. We have to move slowly, and keep our eyes open. We have to avoid the Nex at all costs—there are too many to fight. They are too strong.’
And then Roxi saw the look in Joe’s eyes.
‘But what about her?’ he said, pointing.
Slowly, Roxi turned, her Glock held low. Standing directly ahead of her, holding a Steyr sub-machine gun, was a lithe Nex female of modest stature. She wore a tight body-hugging black uniform and on her feet were soft black boots. Her short dark hair was spiked and bristling, and her oval flawless face was elegant, sculpted and extremely pale-skinned. Her eyes were bright and copper; they showed no emotion.