Extinction (25 page)

Even with preparation, the weight of eight armed men falling to the earth was enough to pull both the desk and the other officers inexorably towards the open window. But then the men got their grip right, the desk hit the window and stayed tight on the frame, and the eight falling men came to sudden, back-breaking halt in a wild, swinging line down the face of the building, fourteen hundred feet above the earth.

Alyssa filled with satisfaction as she felt her boots hit the man on her way down, glad as his grip was ripped from the wall.

The impact with the man’s head served to slow her own fall sufficiently, enabling her to grasp the nearest concrete block with the strong, vice-like fingers of one hand.

Although the soldier had broken her fall, the shock of saving herself with one arm threatened to dislocate her shoulder, and she winced in pain as she swung out over the clouds, trying to numb the pain.

She tried to calm her breath as she watched the momentum of the first man pull all the others away from the wall, and although she was pleased they were no longer a threat, she was also happy that they hadn’t fallen to their deaths but were still secured by the rope; she wouldn’t want all their deaths on her conscience, despite the fact that they were trying to kill her.

She reached up and gripped with her other hand too, then pulled herself higher to get purchase with her feet, her toes straining for grip through the thin leather of her shoes.

She looked down the façade of the building at the soldiers all spread out like ants on a spider’s web, then gasped in horror as the man at the bottom pulled out a pistol from a belt holster and started firing.

Santana had blacked out momentarily when the woman had hit him during her suicidal plunge, although now he had regained consciousness he realized it hadn’t been suicidal at all, but was instead a carefully calculated risk. And one that had paid off too, he noticed in rising anger as he saw the woman clinging to the concrete blocks above him.

His adrenalin making his heart feel as if it was on fire, Santana didn’t even have time to consider himself lucky that the rappelling rope had held, didn’t allow himself to wait until the rope and seven other men had stopped their pendulum-like swing from one side of the building to the other.

Instead, filled now with a murderous anger the likes of which he had never before felt in his life, he processed the fact that he had lost his rifle in the fall and immediately reached for the hand-gun at his waist. Still swinging upside down, battered and dazed, he pulled it free and started firing wildly.

The first two shots hit one of the men above him, the next three threatening the crew on the rope behind the window; but Santana paid this scant regard as he aimed again, fuelled by bitter rage.

As he loosed off round after round, he heard orders being shouted from the window to the men above him on the rope, but he paid them no attention, focused purely on shooting Alyssa Durham to death.

But then he felt the rope pull, jerking his body to the side, and he finally looked up to see the man above him sawing through the rope with his combat knife.

He understood instantly what was happening; he was being cut loose, his actions endangering all the men on the rope. He was being sacrificed to save everyone else.

He gestured with his hands, eyes wide and pleading, offering to put the gun away; but it was too late, the rope was already cut, and Major Rafael Santana’s last words consisted of a single, piercing scream that could be heard all over the city as he plunged fourteen hundred feet to his death.

Dan Edwards ordered his men to check and re-check their equipment, despite the fact that he knew he didn’t have to. The men in his crew were professional through and through, and didn’t have to be told anything.

The chopper was sailing through the clouds on a direct line with the roof of the Landers Building, which was only two miles away now although they still couldn’t see it in these conditions.

The latest news was that two of the targets – the two men, Jack Murray and Ray Stevens – were on the roof, whilst Alyssa Durham, the lone female target, was climbing up the exterior of the building, approximately one more storey from the top.

An attempt to kill her outside the building had evidently gone completely haywire, resulting in the death of the field commander, and Edwards thought again that the men should have just been patient and waited until the real professionals were on the scene to handle things. Special operations forces weren’t given the label ‘special’ for nothing.

When all other options failed, Edwards and his men could be relied upon to get the job done.

‘What the hell’s going on down there?’ Jack asked Stevens, heading towards the roof edge.

‘Hey, I’d get back from there if I were you,’ Stevens yelled over to him. He’d heard the gunfire too, but there was no way he was going to the edge of a one hundred and two storey building to see what it was. So long as nobody was shooting at
him
, he was happy.

The gunfire stopped then, and another sound started to emerge through the thick, dense cloud. ‘Hey Jack, wait!’ Stevens called again with renewed urgency. ‘Stop!’ he called, even louder, and Jack paused and looked round at the banker.

‘What?’ he asked irritably, keen to see what was happening, aware that any sound was a possible indication that Alyssa might still be alive.

‘Do you hear it?’ Stevens asked.

‘Do I hear what?’ Jack responded, but then grew silent as he began to perceive the noise Stevens had heard. What was it? A slow, steady, mechanical beat. Rotor blades. ‘A helicopter!’ Jack said in panic. ‘They’re sending a damned gunship after us!’

Just fifteen feet below the roof parapet, Alyssa continued to climb steadily, trying her best to ignore the searing pain in her shoulder. Once, she reminded herself, she’d had to make a four hundred-foot vertical descent with a badly broken collarbone. It had been hard, but she’d made it. She always made it. She cut the pain from her mind completely, as she concentrated on making the next foot of height up the building. She would make this too.

The men on the rope below had ceased to bother her, far more interested now in saving themselves, and Alyssa was able to concentrate more fully on her climbing. But then another noise intruded on her, and it was only seconds before she realized what it was.
A helicopter
.

She looked up at the roof edge above her, just scant feet away, and cursed her bad luck. So near. But she understood that the chopper would be on them within minutes, and they wouldn’t stand a chance.

But, she told herself, if she made it to the roof, at least she could spend her final moments in Jack’s arms. And, with renewed vigour and purpose, she continued to climb.

Jack and Stevens were crouched behind an air-conditioning duct. It wasn’t much of a hiding place but at least it gave them some shelter from the wind. They had wedged the elevator doors open with a long piece of broken metal antenna which they had worked into the sliders on either side. The doors showed no signs of moving.

Jack was staring morosely across the expanse of the rooftop when he thought he saw a hand clawing at the edge. He stared, disbelieving, but it was definitely a hand. He’d raced towards the edge and saw another hand appear, and then Alyssa’s exhausted, beautiful face as she pulled herself up and over the parapet.

And suddenly he was there with her, pulling her up the rest of the way, arms tight around her, kissing her cold cheeks, her lips.

‘Alyssa,’ he breathed. ‘I thought you were gone.’ He embraced her tightly, and she hugged him back, her body still strong despite what she had been through.

And then they both turned towards the sound of a helicopter, hovering just ten feet over the roof on the far side of the building.

‘What the hell are they doing here?’ Edwards exclaimed in fury. WBN News? Who had given
them
permission to fly?

But dammit, there they were, hovering right over his targets, their cameras on live, broadcasting the scene to the whole damned world.

Edwards’ own chopper was still one mile out, and he got on the radio immediately to Colonel Anderson. He was going to need new orders.

Anderson couldn’t believe what was going on.

Getting permission for the special ops team to fly over the city had stretched his patience to the limit, and it was now clear that it was the mayor’s office that had been the real cause of the hold-up. It seemed that Stevens really was a good friend of the mayor and he was unhappy about how the situation was developing.

That damned newspaper editor James Rushton, too. Anderson wished he had pulled the man in when he’d had the chance. When Alyssa Durham’s distress message had come over the radio, Rushton had seized on it instantly, appealing directly to the mayor for his help and convincing him to keep the news helicopters flying.

The mayor could not withdraw permission for the special ops chopper to approach the Landers Building – Secretary of Defence Jeffries had stepped in and declared the situation to be an issue of national security – but he was still in a position to authorize flyovers by media news crews.

Anderson sighed, and put another call through to General Tomkin.

Alyssa, Jack and Stevens waved their arms at the TV news helicopter, showing the world at large that they were helpless, unarmed. The cameras picked up everything.

And then another helicopter arrived, and Alyssa noted with dismay that it was military. It pushed its way past the civilian chopper – which moved round, cameras still on the scene – and then it hovered over the roof’s expansive flat middle section, dust kicking up high into the air.

None of the three fugitives attempted to flee as the doors of the helicopter opened and a team of eight special operations personnel fast-roped down to the rooftop, weapons up and aimed as soon as they landed; they just raised their arms in surrender.

The media chopper kept on filming, and Alyssa knew that WBN would be sending live footage out over the satellite network. Would they all be gunned down live on TV?

She swallowed hard as the men approached, wondering what orders the soldiers had been given.

Seconds later, the lead man was upon them, hand up to halt the men behind him. He looked at the three people over the top of his assault rifle. ‘Alyssa Durham, Jack Murray, Ray Stevens,’ he announced coldly over the continued thrum of the helicopter rotors, ‘you are under arrest.’

Relief flooded Alyssa’s body so powerfully that she collapsed on to the rooftop.

O
NE HOUR LATER,
Colonel Anderson’s airplane touched down. He had to show his military credentials to be allowed the continued use of his cellphone, although he still experienced a dead spot as he was ushered through the airport.

When he reached the arrivals lounge, there were several military officers waiting for him. ‘Where are they?’ he demanded before anyone had the chance to introduce themselves.

‘Due to the helicopter being forced to circle for so long, fuel was a problem,’ the nearest officer said. A tall, athletic man in his mid-thirties, he led the group through the glass doors and outside to a waiting army limousine. Other men moved ahead to open the doors for them.

‘They had to land at DuPont Airfield, just outside the city,’ the tall man continued when they were inside the car. ‘The airfield’s only about ten miles from the city’s internment camp where the rioters and protesters are being held. It’s the most secure place in the area at the moment, so the prisoners are on their way there now.’

Anderson considered the situation. He would have liked Durham, Murray and Stevens to be isolated, but it could have been worse. At least they were in custody, and on the way to a secure location. He could deal with Durham and Murray, but Stevens posed another set of problems entirely. How much did he know? And what could be done about him? It was clear that the mayor was taking a keen interest in this, and Anderson didn’t want the situation getting blown out of all proportion. Would a ‘tragic accident’ be too obvious?

The majority of the government wasn’t involved in the Spectrum Nine programme. Almost nobody had any idea it even existed, and that was the way Tomkin wanted it kept. So yes, Anderson decided, an unfortunate accident for Ray Stevens seemed best. Anderson was pretty sure that Tomkin would authorize the same fate for the mayor himself if he continued to pry too deeply.

There was James Rushton too of course, the editor of the
Post
. What should be done about him? Urgent action was required. It just wasn’t worth taking the chance that Rushton would say or, even worse, print something about what he thought he knew. Any hint of what was really going on would cause untold damage to the plans.

From the car, Anderson called Tomkin. There was going to have to be a media curfew put in place, connected to today’s ‘terrorist’ incident; and then he would need authorization for James Rushton to be dealt with.

‘My hands are tied, James,’ said Harry Envers, the city’s mayor, regretfully.

James Rushton was sitting on the other side of the desk in Envers’ large, well-appointed office. ‘I understand that, Harry,’ he said reasonably, ‘and I appreciate what you’ve done so far, I really do. But is there really nothing we can do to get them out of there?’

Envers raised his palms. ‘My remit is this city, James, you know that. Only this city. And hell, martial law is in action here anyway, it’s amazing I’ve got any pull left at all. But outside the city limits I’ve got no authority at all. And that camp is way out of the city limits.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s under full military jurisdiction too. You know I’d help if I could. Hell, I’ve known Ray Stevens for over thirty years; I’ve had his wife on the phone most of the morning wanting to know what I’m doing about it – that is, when I’ve not been trying to explain things to the board of York Investments.’

Rushton looked down at the desk. He knew Envers was right; there was nothing he could do. But there was something Rushton himself could do. He still had no evidence, no cold, hard facts, but he now believed in his heart of hearts that Alyssa was right. Elements of the government were using the HIRP base as a covert weapons programme. She’d gone up there to investigate –
with my blessing, damn me!
– and then days later had become a ‘dangerous terrorist’, at least to hear the authorities tell it. He’d known Alyssa Durham for years and knew she was nothing of the sort. It was obvious what had happened – she had found out too much and was being silenced.