Dark Rising (27 page)

‘It’s still out there isn’t it?’ she asked.

Alex looked at her. ‘Yeah, it’s close. We’ll just leave it a little surprise.’ He grinned and nodded at the little metal boxes. ‘Come on.’

The tunnel was like a tomb; not a drip, a rustle or even the hushed whisper of a breeze broke the silence. Out at point, Lagudi was moving forward quickly and carefully. Zach, on the other hand, seemed to find every single piece of fallen debris, mound of dust or broken rock shard. He had a small flashlight, but they mainly relied on Lagudi’s barrel-mounted torch for illumination. Though it had a powerful beam, it created a pipe of light that left much of the peripheral darkness untouched. After what they had encountered in the outer tunnel, that was way too much shadow for Zach’s liking.

They came across the skeletons about ten minutes along the tunnel – mummified cadavers scattered on the dusty floor, their parchment-like skin drawn back from gaping mouths.
Yeerk
, thought Zach. Skeletons always unsettled him. The tendons in the jaw shortened as the body decomposed, and in a dry atmosphere this process pulled the mouth wide, making them look as if they were screaming. Patches of long wispy hair were still attached to some of the skulls. Zach shivered and looked away. He knew that it was a myth that the hair and nails continued to grow after death; it was just that as the body dried and shrank, the hair seemed longer by comparison. Basically, dead was dead. But still . . .
yeerk
.

Rocky held up his hand. ‘Let’s wait for ’em.’

Zach nodded and jammed his hands into his pockets to keep them still. They didn’t have to wait long. In a few moments torchlight coloured the tunnel walls as the team approached.

Adira went down on one knee beside the closest skeleton. ‘Not old – no more than five years, I’d say, maybe even less.’

She went through its pockets and found a few hundred rials, a comb and what was once probably an apple wrapped in a handkerchief – a final meal never eaten. She moved quickly to the next, whose tattered jacket gave up a wallet. She checked its contents. ‘Faribez ibn Yousef – a student at Tehran University . . . hmm, one too many student protest rallies, I’d say. Head shot, ribs shattered from gunfire. These guys were executed.’

O’Riordan lit up the wall behind them – it was scarred by dozens of bullet impacts. ‘I’d say they were lined up and gunned down right here.’

Adira nodded. ‘I think they’re probably Iranian, maybe prisoners or dissidents who were made to work on the hidden facility and then disposed of when their work was completed – dead men don’t talk. A lot of people go missing in Iran for the most basic misdemeanours.’

‘Bad for them, but a good sign for us,’ Alex said. ‘Means we must be close. Rocky, continue on – fast and quiet.’

Zach noticed that as Alex moved them on, he kept looking back over his shoulder, squinting into the darkness.

The creature clung to the cave wall, compressing itself down so it looked like an enormous spiked barnacle, its heavily armour-plated back to the cave’s interior. The thunderous sound of the explosion had startled it. It had never felt an impact like it, or such searing heat.

It waited for the next attack. Hours passed before it extended its eyestalks again. No great creature stood waiting to deliver the killing blow. It scuttled down from the wall.

The small creatures had disappeared, their heat trails vanishing further into the tunnels.

There was no danger now; there was just the hunger.

THIRTY-SEVEN

T
he creature reached the hole in the tunnel wall. The small animals had passed through it and away into another cavern.

As it moved closer, a light winked on in a small box at the base of the wall. Spidery legs shot out of each of the box’s sides and it scrambled towards the monster. The creature pointed its long black proboscis at the scuttling explosive and, with unerring aim, splashed it with corrosive saliva. The box continued for another second, slowed and then started smoking. In another instant it was a puddle of rainbow-coloured electronics and liquefied steel.

As the creature placed one of its thick exoskeletal legs on the rim of the hole, a light sprang on in the other box. This device had a different calibration – it did not wait. The explosion blew the creature backwards, spraying a fifty-foot circle with metal shrapnel and collapsing the ancient cave wall. Hundreds of tons of granite rained down, sealing the small hole and partially burying the monster.

The booming thump echoed along the tunnels, bouncing away into the distance until it was no more than a whisper. For seconds, silence returned to the Sassanid cave, then a cardoor-sized sheet of granite was thrown into the air and other large stones were pushed aside like empty boxes as the creature flipped over onto its segmented legs. Its thick cosmoid scales were barely pitted by the explosive’s tiny jagged missiles, and the crushing impact of tons of stone had stunned it for only moments.

It cautiously approached a section of flat wall away from the rockfall, then struck out with one of its raptorial claws at an acceleration of over 10,000 gravities and nearly twenty-five miles per second. There was a boom as the shock wave travelled up and down the cavern, and a sharp echo continued for many seconds afterwards. But the granite’s crystalline molecular structure held.

The beast reared up on its four powerful rear arthropodic legs. Its upper carapace unfolded to expose its twin attack claws and the numerous smaller thoracic limbs used for grasping prey. Multiple antennae and fan-like whips waved in the air as if it was deciding on its next approach. Its eyestalks lengthened and moved independently of each other as it investigated its options. One eye swivelled towards the interior of the cave, followed by the other. It had decided.

A faint breeze wafted down the tunnel, carrying with it the scent of the small animals the creature was following and the irresistible radiation trace that had initially drawn it here. It sensed there were other openings that would give it access to the tunnel; its dorsoventrally flattened body could compress down and slide through the tightest crevices.

It dropped to the ground and sped into the dark, its chitinous legs making a clicking sound as they rubbed against each other in its haste.

Alex saw Zachariah jump from the explosion, and his HAWCs stopped in their tracks. All eyes swung towards him and then back down the tunnel. No one spoke; everyone listened. Alex knew they were all aware of what that detonation meant – the thing was still coming.

Adira tried to catch his eye and he ignored her to turn back to the dark tunnel. He cleared his mind; it was still there, but further away now. Satisfied, he swung back with a grim smile on his face. ‘Okay, people, the back door is closed. Only one way for us now – forward.’

Rocky didn’t seem to hear; he just stood looking back down into the darkened passage.

‘Let’s go, Rocky.’ The sound of Sam’s voice brought him back, and he trotted out to point, Zach shuffling a few feet behind.

After a few more moments, the small team came to a dead end – a wall made from huge blocks of stone. Alex could hear the hum of machinery, probably air conditioning.

Lagudi knelt and pressed his ear to the wall. ‘I can hear something that sounds like a washing machine.’

‘Maybe it’s an Iranian laundry.’ O’Riordan laughed at his own joke and examined the wall. ‘Looks like cinder block with a substandard mortar mix. Just need to disintegrate the mud around these stones and we should be able to pull ’em out by hand.’ He felt in one of his suit pouches. ‘I just got enough boom gel left to do a ring charge – it’ll give us a high-energy vibration over the bricks in a four-foot area. It’ll shake ’em loose like Grandma’s teeth. Gimme five minutes.’ He looked at Alex. ‘Okay, three.’

Alex walked over to Zachariah, took him by the arm and led him a few feet away from the others. ‘Dr Shomron, remember back at the base when you described the German scientist’s body as being washed back into our universe? If
he
hadn’t been washed back, then is it possible that something else could have come in his place – to restore some sort of universal balance?’

‘Sure. It’s all theoretical, but just about everything is when you’re talking about black holes or dark matter anomalies,’ said Zach with a shrug.

‘Even theoretically how is that possible?’ Alex asked. ‘How does something come
out
of a black hole – I thought matter only went one way?’

‘From what we know so far, that’s true. Once you pass the event horizon, there is no return of anything – matter, heat, light, colour, nothing. But there is another theory that says black holes could be doorways, portals; that they are only one side of a wormhole. I, for one, certainly don’t think that matter is destroyed – or even can be. For over a hundred years we’ve had a theory of mass conservation – you know, that matter can’t be created or destroyed. Sure it’s being challenged now, but my view is that the theory is still sound if you regard our planet, solar system or universe as just bigger closed systems.’

‘Okay, but a wormhole – you mean like a warp-in-space-type wormhole?’

‘Yes, but not just in space – in time and even between dimensions. And warp isn’t really the right term. It’s more like a short cut – a quick way to traverse two points in space and time in our universe, or between multiple universes. A more scientific term is a space–time topological nontrivial tunnel. But I actually like “wormhole”. I’m pretty sure that’s how Hoeckler ended up in your backyard, through a wormhole.’ Zach nodded to himself as he spoke, his hands working as if he held a pencil and was drawing mathematical equations in the air. ‘It’s my theory that there’s an
osmotic gradient
that operates between existences. Matter is universally balanced, and if the concentration in one existence is suddenly upset, then the
system
will try to restore the balance by some means. Like a swap or transference from one to the other. In fact –’

‘Okay, okay, I think I understand,’ Alex said. ‘Now the million-dollar question – could something have been deposited here through the opposite end of a wormhole? Something . . . living?’

Zach looked at Alex with a creased brow, then slowly his eyes widened. ‘You think . . . Yes! Yes, of course, on paper, sure. I was starting to think the same thing. It couldn’t have been a mutation as it was too complete, too efficient. There was nothing about it that inferred deformity – more . . . precision.’

Zach stepped in closer to Alex and grabbed his upper arm. ‘This is bad, very bad. This means they’re opening black holes and sending matter through . . . and somehow allowing matter to be pulled back. This is beyond dangerous. What if they pull through some type of infection, or a universal parasite plague? Not to mention what the black hole itself will do. We need to shut this off immediately. We need to destroy it.’

Alex patted Zach’s shoulder. ‘Just help us find it first, Dr Shomron. Then we can decide what course of action to take.’

A low-frequency hum followed by the sound of sand raining down signalled the end of their conversation.

‘I think we have a breakthrough, so to speak,’ Alex said with a grin. ‘Let’s see where we’re up to.’

He moved back to the group, leaving Zach standing in the dark. Alex didn’t need to see the scientist’s face to know it was troubled.

The HAWCs worked quietly and efficiently in the darkness, removing the cinder blocks until they had a hole roughly four feet across. They held their position, waiting, listening for the slightest sound of habitation. After a few minutes, Alex nodded his head to proceed. They broke through about five feet above a dirty moist floor in a tunnel lined with pipes. The cool air was like a balm against their perspiration-and dust-streaked faces, but there was no time to rest. The whine of the air conditioning was louder now that they were through the wall. Faulty fluorescent tube lighting cast a white flickering glow every dozen feet along the tunnel.

Lagudi went through first and shot ahead to provide forward cover. One by one the others slithered through, with Alex last. He lifted O’Riordan up above his head so the HAWC could turn off the light tube near the hole in the wall so the breach was less noticeable.

The HAWCs moved quickly down the tunnel in single file until they reached a nexus of corridors. The Iranian signs were meaningless to everyone except Adira, who pointed to one that indicated both elevator and exit.

They avoided the lift – if they were being pursued, no one wanted to be caught in a steel box jammed in a vertical concrete pipe. The solid wooden fire door they encountered was old-style and low-tech. The heavy frame and solid steel lock casing was sealed tight; tough luck if there was a fire. Lagudi reckoned he could pick it in under two minutes. O’Riordan said he could blow it open in one. Alex shook his head and took the handle – he exerted a gradually increasing enormous pressure to the frame and was rewarded by a soft splintering sound. The door swung open.

‘Hey, must have been unlocked,’ he said, and winked at Sam, who gave him an
oh really
look.

The HAWCs were now travelling blind; neither the American nor Mossad information networks had been able to obtain any intel on the inside of the Jamshid II facility in Arak. Alex knew they didn’t have time to do a floor-by-floor sweep of the multi-level facility, so he based his judgment on a Western military design – first level for meeting rooms; second level for scientifics, where there was probably more shielding; lower levels for storage and perhaps staff quarters. ‘Level two,’ he told his team.

They went up the stairs like wraiths. They only halted when they heard the elevator coming down, but it continued past their position and so they resumed their rapid climb.

Al Janaddi was in the sphere room, shouting instructions, when a guard interrupted him.

‘Professor Al Janaddi, one of the motion sensor alarms has gone off down in level five,’ the young bearded soldier informed him. ‘There’s movement in the eastern sub-basement.’

‘
Achhh
, what now?’ snapped Al Janaddi. ‘I can’t deal with everything personally. It’s probably rats – send some of Bhakazarri’s madmen down there to shoot them. I’m busy!’