BLOOD GURKHA: Prophesy (James Pace novels Book 5) (9 page)

Fate, in its wisdom, was about to deal Shilan another helping hand. What should have happened was that the morning would arrive, the bodies would be discovered, and a search would have located her hiding spot. She would have fought valiantly but the experienced mercenaries guarding the facility would have eventually overpowered her and gunned her down.

Yet the cards did not fall this way.

Drunk though she was, Professor Sadie Munro’s acute hearing woke her from a deep slumber at a shade past four a.m. The storm was still raging, unabated, and she immediately panicked about being grounded by weather. Although still dark, looking out of her bedroom window, she was aghast to see eight inches of fresh snow covering the courtyard and their helicopter.

Not bothering to look for her host, she slapped herself around the face a couple of times, really hard, and then dragged herself into the bathroom where she threw up. Fifteen minutes later, like any self-respecting, functioning alcoholic, she had showered, forced down a few glasses of tap water, and begun rounding up her sleeping crew. Despite the grumbles and complaints, another fifteen minutes saw her entire team assembled in the lounge downstairs. They were alone, apart from a couple of house guards, who questioned her intentions.

‘We are leaving,’ Sadie informed them curtly, her eyes burning fiercely with no trace of residual inebriation.

‘You cannot leave in the middle of the night,’ protested one of the guards. ‘The storm is still very heavy. It would be dangerous.’

‘Are you a meteorologist?’ she questioned. The man eyed her coldly. ‘Thought not. Now listen, carefully. We are guests of Ms Roche and Professor Prior. I have to get myself, my team and all our equipment into the air before the snow freezes on our helicopter and we end up stuck here. We are on a tight schedule and no delay can be tolerated.’

‘I understand,’ said the guard, used to taking orders and sensing the futility of arguing. Still, for her sake, he tried one final time. ‘I still think it's better to wait for first light. It would be safer.’

‘Your concern is noted, thank you.’ Then, brushing past him, she ordered her crew out to the helicopter. ‘Please thank Professor Prior for his hospitality,’ she shot back to the guard before disappearing through the door and out into the teeth of the storm.

‘Your funeral, stroppy cow,’ the guard muttered grimly. Having no desire to chase a crazy archaeologist outside and continue a pointless argument, he re-joined his companion over by the open fire, where a steaming mug of hot chocolate was calling him. Settling into a comfortable armchair, he sipped the delicious liquid and felt grateful that he’d not been ordered to help clear snow off the partially buried Chinook.

Working hard with brooms and shovels, Sadie’s team managed to clear the worst of the snow away from the fuselage after an hour of back-breaking toil, dripping with sweat beneath their winter coats.

The storm finally abated completely a few minutes after five-thirty. Sadie’s pilot was a very experienced, ex-military flier who wanted to get the team dropped off and head back to civilisation as soon as possible so he had needed no persuasion to risk the flight rather than be marooned, possibly for days.

He conducted the pre-flight checks and warmed up the powerful engines for ten minutes before finally lifting the old workhorse into the dark, starless void. Within moments, the flashing red and green navigation lights were lost within the unseen clouds above.

Below, with dawn still an hour away, the ARC complex slumbered on in blissful ignorance of the horrendous discoveries that awaited the morning changing of the guard.

Exhausted, drawn into a near catatonic sleep, Shilan too was unaware of events and slept on as the helicopter headed higher up into a mountain range which had seduced many adventurers across the centuries. As testament to the danger, most of them had never completed their return journey.

10

Chang-Lei Kwon still felt a tremor of expectation in his soul whenever he felt the elevator slide to a halt, twelve floors down. He knew where he had landed; after all there was only one stop in this car. No annoying people crowded in, floor after floor, accompanied by chatter or the ever-present irritation of smart phones. No, this ride was all his, as always.

There was also an absence of mechanical ringing, or even a soothing computerised voice, confirming to him that he had reached his destination. The grey steel doors simply slid open and he stepped briskly through them before they had even fully opened. Patience had never been one of his virtues. As one of the world’s leading physicists, his time was in great demand, which meant he rarely had the luxury of using any of it up for himself. Luckily, with an understanding wife of thirty years and no children, he was free to focus on his work.

With thick silver hair and eyes that nearly matched; battleship grey, he was very tall for someone of Chinese descent, standing well over six feet three inches in height. Cutting an imposing figure, he always wore his trusty white coat and always chuckled to himself when he met people for the first time and they were unable to hide their stares of incredulity.

For not only was he a giant in inches, Kwon had been a body-building aficionado since his late teens. Long days spent in lectures, or studying for a multitude of exams, had cried out for a physical counterbalance. Some colleagues ran, or swam laps. Biyu Yi, a very dear friend of his, and secret lover of many years, had always sworn by mountaineering. An eminent botanist, she had tragically been killed in a climbing accident the year before, leaving Kwon utterly bereft.

His wife, who had known all about her husband’s affair for almost as many years as it had been going on, gave him sympathy and love until his grief became bearable. He still mourned her every day and hoped, more than ever now, that an afterlife of some kind might be waiting for him so he could be reunited with her once more.

However, he appeared as far from death as possible at that moment. Weighing in at over three hundred pounds, Kwon was now blessed with the bulging, sculptured physique of an American world wrestling star. His phenomenal physical strength was only surpassed by his intellect. Together, he was a formidable human specimen.

Kwon knew what his eyes would see outside the elevator. Nothing save for the brightly-lit hollow entrance to the tunnel that started where he stood and proceeded to stretch out beneath the mighty Himalayas for over fifty kilometres. The tunnel was narrower than a typical subway tunnel; a little over four metres in diameter, lined perfectly with smoothly-fitting concrete segments, painted brilliant white. The light from the train’s very modest, twin headlamps was then more than enough to light the way without any need for interior tunnel illumination.

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.