Exodus Code (29 page)

‘Someone else must realise we’re facing an apocalyptic event and know what to do to stop it, right?’ asked Eva, the ful force of what was happening final y, incontrovertibly sinking in to her consciousness. She began to cry.

Jack and Cash glanced at each other. Jack shook his head.

‘That’s not fair,’ said Eva, tears running down her cheeks. ‘Why should we have to be the only ones who know the Earth is a turning into a big, stupid, awful bomb? I never asked for that responsibility. I don’t want that responsibility.’

‘Hey,’ said Jack, ‘I’m taking most of the responsibility and I real y do have a plan, but—’

‘But you need our help,’ said Vlad.

‘I need your help. Al of you. Because there are a few other events at play that need to be handled before I can implement my plan.’

‘Are you sure we can’t just throw you into the stupid mountain and get it over with?’ asked Eva, wiping her face with her sleeve.

‘Not going to be that easy,’ laughed Jack.

‘Of course, it’s not.’

‘The helix needs my consciousness, my humanity, as one of the pieces to initiate its big bang and to seal the chimneys. I’m going to give her exactly what she wants, but with a slight change in the code.

‘You’re going to fool Mother Nature?’

‘That’s the plan.’

‘Wel ,’ said Hol is, ‘I’m tired of being the chief cook and bottle washer on this ship. I’d like to earn a little respect. Think savin’ the world might be the thing to do.’

‘If my plan works, Hol is, no one is going to know what you or any of us have done.’

‘Trust him,’ said Gwen. ‘It’s better that way.’

Jack tapped the map on the screen until it zoomed in on the southern coastline of Peru. ‘This is where it al began. And this is where it wil end.’

He smiled at them al . ‘One way or another.’

‘All the earth is a grave and nothing escapes it’

Ancient prayer

Langley, Virginia, present day
‘HOW COULD IT get any damn worse?’ yel ed Rex Matheson, pacing in front of the screen.

‘Watch.’

Darren forwarded the tape until he found the image on the screen that had brought him running from his office in the first place. He paused and zoomed.

Staring up at the flat screen, Rex started to laugh. He couldn’t help himself because frozen on the screen was a picture-perfect close-up of Captain Jack Harkness sipping an espresso at a table in the piazza in front of the Hacienda Del Castenado in the middle of one of the most important raids of Rex’s rising career.

And Jack was smiling at the camera.

‘How the hel did he get in there. We’ve had that hacienda under surveil ance for days. Only our guys getting in.’

‘Not sure, sir, but there was a bad storm the night before. I’m thinking, maybe then?’

‘And how the hel did he get wind of our operation?’ asked Rex, impressed with Jack’s intel igence capabilities despite being furious that he was interfering with the closest any agency anywhere in the world had come to even a distant cousin of one of the three families.

‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Darren, one of only a smal group of agents on Rex’s team who knew anything about Jack and Torchwood, and who had been tasked to monitor his movements on a regular basis. ‘Must be a leak on the Peruvian end.

‘Or else Harkness knows something we don’t about what’s going on in that vil age.’

‘What’s going on in that vil age is a multi-bil ion-dol ar kidnapping-for-hire business,’ said Darren. ‘One we got lucky enough to uncover in time to blackmail Donoso’s wife into letting us take her husband instead of the kidnappers. Why would Harkness care about any of that?’

‘Unless,’ said Rex, wiping Jack’s image to the corner of the screen and changing the source to CNN where the geysers and the impenetrable rock chimneys forming around them were now getting continuous coverage from every major news outlet, ‘unless being in that vil age in Peru has something to do with these geysers. And given Harkness’s history, that wouldn’t surprise me one damn bit.’

‘Sir, I’ve had an eye on Harkness off and on for months and he’s been nowhere near any of these geysers… Except…’ Darren paused, letting his words trail off, realising he may have made a mistake.

‘Except what?’

‘Wel , sir, I’m not sure but I think I remember reading an intel report that Gwen Cooper from Torchwood was one of the victims of that “masochistic madness” that so many women are suffering from. She was institutionalised for trying to shoot her husband. Hang on, let me check.’

Darren opened another page on the screen, bringing up Gwen’s file. He double-tapped a smal section at the bottom. ‘Oh shit.’

‘Oh shit, what?’ yel ed Rex.

‘Gwen Cooper escaped from the hospital.’ He turned and looked at Rex. ‘On the day the vent chimney burst through the surface of the Bristol Channel.

That’s near Wales, isn’t it?’

Rex slammed his hand on his desk. ‘Yes, it’s near Wales. Doesn’t anyone study geography any more? I knew Harkness was involved in al this.’

‘But what could Harkness know about the geysers that we don’t? The best scientists in the world are trying to figure them out.’

‘Just because we have every scientist in the world testing those fountains every way possible doesn’t mean a goddamned thing because it hasn’t stopped any of those chimneys from growing,’ said Rex. ‘Harkness knows a lot of things most of us do not. Believe me.’

‘So what’s he doing in Peru? The closest geyser to that part of South America has already sealed itself, and the authorities are evacuating the locality.’

Rex stared at Jack’s image. ‘I don’t know what he’s doing, but I’m going to find out.’

‘Sir, I stil think it might just be that he’s figured out on his own the relationship between Donoso and the three families. Maybe he’s going to try to get to Donoso before we can. We should warn our tactical unit to keep him on their radar.’

Rex walked closer to the screen and stared at Jack. ‘Does Harkness have any support down there?’

‘No. Everyone in the vil age was marked when our team arrived.’

‘If he was bringing in any support, he’d have been smart to arrange for it to arrive after we’d placed our people.’

Darren fast-forwarded the video feed to the dust cloud coming over the horizon on to the meseta, the camera lodged high in the wal of the canyon.

‘The minibus,’ said Darren. ‘If he’s got any support, they were going in on that bus with Donoso. There’s no other way in and out of the hacienda right now.’

‘Stil nothing from Carlisle?’

‘Nothing, but things went pear-shaped pretty fast down there once the girl crashed the bus.’

‘Shit. I hate kids.’

‘Sir, keep in mind this is a live feed and this video is only about eight or nine minutes behind. We may stil be able to salvage something, including Donoso.

Carlisle wasn’t alone. We’ve a ful tactical unit in the piazza. Their orders are to wait until Asiro kidnaps Donoso and takes him into the compound, then they’l move in and kidnap him from the kidnappers. It lets us keep his disappearance invisible if he is connected to the families. They won’t know we’re getting closer.’

‘I know what the plan is on paper, agent, I designed it. The problem is when you mix in people things shift pretty quickly, and Harkness is no ordinary person.’ Rex shoved his hands into his pockets to stop himself from punching a big hole through the highly polished mahogany wal s of his stupid office. I should have gone in with tactical, he thought. What am I doing, delegating from a fancy office?

‘Where are we monitoring this from?’ he asked Rex, jogging out of his office and into the hal way.

‘A warehouse in Cuzco via Tactical Room 14,’ said Darren, holding open the door to the stairwel . ‘This wil be faster, sir.’

Both men sprinted down the stairs, Rex moving faster than his agent. ‘I want to see everything that’s going on down there,’ said Rex, ‘and I want a direct line to the unit’s commander in the piazza. Yesterday.’

When Rex was in the tactical monitoring room and the feed from the piazza was running live, Darren final y sheepishly asked him, ‘What’s your plan, sir?’

‘To figure out what the hel Jack Harkness is up to.’

‘And?’

‘And either stop him or help him.’

Isela

Southern Peru, present day, minutes before Isela’s shot
JACK FINISHED HIS coffee on the piazza, taking particular note of the peasant women spreading their glazed pots and fabrics across the steps of the church, their striped ponchos draped loosely around their shoulders. He watched two food vendors wheel their carts close to the high gates of the hacienda, clumsily unlocking the lids of their steaming food trays, their eyes darting on everything and everyone.

In the distance, a cloud of red dust suggested the first tourist bus from Lima was climbing the last leg of the canyon road onto the meseta. The girl in the belfry was an unknown, but Jack decided she was the lookout for the bus and her job must be to alert the hot young man doing the James Dean imitation in the centre of the courtyard.

Jack concentrated on the sounds around him, filtering and marking them in his mind, the only way he knew to track the woman, the Cuari guide he needed to descend into the mountain with him.

Click. Click. Click.

Jack tasted oranges and a hint of ginger.

She was nearby. Did she know he had returned?

Jack tipped back in the seat, the sun warm on his face, glancing longer at one of the women on the steps as he stretched, Doc Martens peeping out beneath her layers of multicoloured skirts. Touching her hand to her ear, she mumbled something into the col ar band of her poncho.

Jack smiled. Gotcha.

Click.

Citrus flooded Jack’s mouth. The ginger was fading from his tongue. She was on the move.

Time to die.

Jack stood and threw some coins on the table. Glancing up at the bel tower, he saw the young girl duck quickly out of sight. Jack was aware that he was not going to be able to stop what was about to happen but, if he was lucky, he could minimise the damage, find what he needed and stil reach the mountain before nightfal .

According to Shel ey’s calculations, at the rate the chimneys were evolving and sealing, the Earth had six hours and twenty minutes left.

Jack ducked to the rear of the café and onto the airstrip where he bribed the boys to sel their footbal . He took it and then dropkicked it over the hangar to the jungle beyond. At least he could keep them away from the fighting for a while.

When the boys had safely cleared the area, Jack sprinted across the airstrip to the rear gates of the hotel, keeping his eyes on the belfry. He tapped the comms unit in his ear.

‘The condor is in position.’

*

‘Glad to hear your voice, Condor,’ said Cash, from his seat in the rear of the minibus. The driver, Juan, glanced at him curiously in his rear-view mirror.

Smiling across the aisle at Vlad and Eva, Cash folded up his laptop and popped a disc into his pocket. Loosening his seatbelt, he manoeuvred down the aisle to the couple two seats in front.

‘May I borrow your map, please?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Gwen, who was stoned enough to keep her synaesthesia at bay, but alert enough to participate in the mission. Gwen had refused to be left on the ship, even threatening a cal to Alan Pride, who Jack had confided to her had helped Dana with her intel igence. If anything happened to them, Pride had promised his help to Anwen and Rhys. He had also made sure that Dr Steele had given Gwen the right balance of drugs to be useful to the team when the time came.

Cash took the map back to his seat, scribbled on it that Jack was inside the compound and so far Dana’s intel igence had been accurate. There were other forces at play in the Hacienda, Jack thought CIA, and that might make it more difficult to get what Jack needed.

Cash returned the map to Hol is and Gwen.

On the
Ice Maiden
, before they jumped ship to get to Lima as quickly as possible, Jack had been clear about his intentions and how they could help.

Given his memory of how the mountain had affected him when he was last here, he knew he would need their help to make it to the top. The final stage of the plan was the only phase Jack had never explained to any of them.

Once Jack found what he was looking for in the Hacienda del Castenado, what was he going to do when he reached the top of the mountain?

AT THE REAR gate of the hotel, Jack signal ed to the guard that he’d forgotten his cottage’s key.

‘I’m a guest of the hacienda,’ said Jack pointing through the wrought iron gates. ‘Numero seis ocho seis.’

The guard smiled, nodded his head that he understood, but refused to open the rear gates to the actual compound. ‘No entrada, señor. Deliveries only.

Please fol ow path back to piazza. Enter there.’

‘I real y don’t have time for that walk,’ said Jack, smiling and then reaching through the gate, he grabbed the guard’s head, and slammed it against the edge of the wal . The guard dropped to the ground.

Climbing up onto the gate, Jack flipped over to the other side, landing graceful y on his feet directly behind a second guard, who turned immediately at the sound. Jack raised his elbow, slamming it into the guard’s nose. Then he pul ed the guard’s body behind the nearest cabana, where he removed the man’s red T-shirt, his assault rifle, a knife, and his radio, which Jack clipped to his belt, slipping his earpiece out and putting the guard’s in his ear instead.