Extinction (7 page)

There was a pause, and Anderson knew his man would be watching the woman’s actions carefully. Then muffled thumps came over the connection; the sniper was firing. But there were too many shots.

‘What the hell is going on?’ Anderson demanded.

‘I’ve missed,’ the sniper replied. ‘She got out over the other side, used the train for cover. She’s in the tunnel scaffolding, heading down to the ground.’

‘Dammit!’ Anderson cursed. ‘Keep watching. If you get another shot, take it.’ Cutting the connection, Anderson changed channels to link with the other members of his team. ‘All units, converge on the rollercoaster. The woman has escaped. Don’t let her leave this park alive.’

The ‘slow’ section of the roller coaster was still terrifyingly fast. But fearing a bullet even more, Alyssa finally took a deep breath, steadied herself, and swung her body right out of the car.

She saw chips of wood flying inches from her hands, and some small part of her mind processed the information, realized the sniper was shooting at her. The car was blocking the shots and she gripped the side for dear life, timing her next action carefully.

One . . . two . . . now!

Alyssa let go of the coaster and stepped out on to the side of the wooden tracks. The speed left her stumbling, falling, about to go right over the edge and plummet forty feet to the ground below. But then she managed to grab a metal strut in the tunnel scaffolding and steadied herself.

She could hear screams from below now as people realized what she had done, vaguely saw people pointing up at her. But then one of her hands spun off the scaffold as something hit the metal strut, the sound of the ricochet coming moments later, and she knew the sniper was firing at her again, and the cars of the rollercoaster were no longer there to protect her.

Gasping, she stepped off the side of the track and dropped straight down, catching hold of the metal struts underneath, steadying herself once more in the scaffold, hoping the wooden tracks would give her cover.

Breathing out slowly, gathering herself, Alyssa looked down; a crowd was gathering beneath, and she felt safer knowing that there were people there. Surely nobody would risk killing her once she was among them.

She hadn’t climbed since that fateful day in the mountains, when she had failed her daughter so badly. She hadn’t visited so much as an indoor climbing wall since. She just hadn’t been able to bring herself to do it. But now she barely gave those fears a thought. With the adrenalin surging into her system, for the first time in years the desire to climb became as powerful – as natural – as the urge to breathe.

Steeling herself, she started to carefully climb down the scaffold.

‘There are a lot of people here,’ Anderson heard one of his men say as they approached the coaster. ‘Too many people.’

Anderson understood. Other information coming from the park indicated that the ride was being stopped; too many people had seen the woman climb out on to the scaffolding. And when the ride stopped and Karl Janklow’s body was discovered . . .

A thought struck him suddenly, and he thumbed the microphone. ‘Use your police IDs,’ he ordered his team. ‘Clear the area beneath the scaffold. When she gets down, arrest her.’

The original plan was for his men to pretend to be with federal law enforcement, telling the park authorities that they’d had the area under surveillance and removing the two dead bodies from the coaster before the real cops could move in. But for the time being, there was only one dead body, which put something of a spanner in the works.

Still, Anderson knew that plans rarely survived contact with the enemy. Flexibility was the key, and Anderson issued his new orders. They would claim that the woman killed Janklow – it wouldn’t be immediately obvious that the shot had been long-range – and then some of his men could take Janklow’s body whilst others could move in to ‘arrest’ the woman, and kill her someplace away from the park; away from prying eyes.

Halfway down, Alyssa saw the crowd dispersing and wondered what was happening. And then six suited men arrived, looking up at her. They had handguns drawn and what looked like badges pulled out. Cops?

Alyssa allowed herself to relax ever so slightly. It was OK. She was going to be OK. The police were here, and they would handle it. She looked further across to where the six-car train had come to a halt, saw other men extracting Karl’s dead body and restraining the shocked and screaming teenagers. Park security were erecting a cordon around the area, sealing the ride off from the rest of the park, ushering the other riders out of the way. Yes, she thought, it would be all right.

But then she paused, going no further, her mind racing furiously. Why were they moving the body? It was a murder scene, wasn’t it? And she’d covered enough of those in her time to know that the body shouldn’t be moved. The cops should be leaving it for the forensics people and other members of the crime scene investigation team. And come to think of it, what the hell were non-uniform police doing here anyway? There were six below her, another six taking care of the body. How could they have got here so quickly?

Something wasn’t right, and Alyssa knew immediately what it was: the twelve suits weren’t the police at all. They were here because they wanted to kill her. It was the only explanation that made sense; they were clearing the body before Karl could be identified, and they were waiting for her so that they could finish the job.

She checked around her, looking for avenues of escape. The faces on the ‘cops’ below her changed from expressions of welcoming helpfulness to ones of concern as she stopped moving towards them. She watched as they spoke into lapel microphones, listened to their earpieces, looked up at her again with even greater concern as she still refused to move.

Anxious, she scanned the area. The scaffold she was on was wrapped round one section of track and led all the way down to the ground. She was on the internal side of the scaffold but she noticed that the bare metal structure went further out into the park. She peered between the thick metal struts and saw that there were stalls below on the other side, the scaffold just feet away from the rear of their canvas coverings.

Without a second thought, she turned her body, twisting through the metal to head towards the outside of the structure. Gripping the metal tightly, she manoeuvred past the track and out into the abyss, nothing below her for thirty feet except exposed metal bars and the solid, unforgiving concrete of the park floor.

She heard the fake cops shouting to her from below, bellowing instructions for her to come back, but she ignored them and headed quickly for the other side of the scaffold. The people below her would have to head back out of the entrance and race all the way round the structure to get to her. She turned to look at them, saw that they were already setting off at a run. Trying to keep calm, she knew she would have less than a minute to escape.

Slipping her lithe body through the bars, she quickly got through to the outside of the ride, clinging tight to the struts as she looked at the small stalls beneath her. She knew she could climb down in a couple of minutes, but she also knew that this would be far too long; she only had about thirty seconds left before the killers would be there.

The sound of a ricochet and the hot spark of damaged metal jolted her, adrenalin flooding her system once more, rocketing her heart rate and making her palms instantly slick with sweat. She almost lost her grip and went sailing to the ground below, but just held on, years of climbing instinct hard-wired into her.

Sniper
, she thought, and knew the people after her must be getting desperate. The shooter must have been positioned to fire at the inside of the tracks, and the shot had come through the scaffold at her, which explained how he’d missed. The guy must be an incredible shot just to get close under such conditions. Then there were more shots, sparks from the metal struts hitting her skin and burning her face.

Her reaction was instantaneous, and utterly unexpected to her pursuers. Taking one single, deep breath, she crouched down and jumped from the scaffolding towards the park below.

The sniper watched as his target jumped from thirty feet. What was she thinking?

His view wasn’t ideal, the heavy metal of the scaffold obscuring much of it, but he could see that the woman hadn’t fallen. No, she had bent at the legs and intentionally
jumped
. Had the shots scared her into trying a suicidal escape?

Despite the extremely demanding conditions, he had still been disappointed to have missed. Anderson had ordered him to take the shot as soon as he knew the woman was heading away from the other agents, and he had done so, knowing that hitting her would be a miracle but wanting to do so all the same. It was not in his nature to accept missing his target.

But perhaps he hadn’t had to hit her anyway; she would be stone-cold dead as soon as she hit the concrete even without a bullet inside her.

Alyssa had purposefully propelled herself forwards, away from the scaffold, hoping to make several feet of distance as she plummeted earthwards.

As she sailed through the air, she prayed she’d jumped far enough; and then she was there, her feet reaching the stretched canvas roof of one of the amusement stalls on this side of the ride.

The fabric bent, and Alyssa’s heart dipped as she thought it would tear; but then she used the stored energy in her legs to jump again, pushing down against the taut canvas to dispel the force of gravity, and managed to somersault forwards, turning in mid-air to grab hold of the edge of the roof and swing her body round and down until she let go and dropped to the ground amidst a group of startled onlookers.

She saw the crowds parting beyond her and realized that the killers would be on her in seconds. Ignoring the offers of help from those around her, she turned to face the opposite direction and ran, pushing through the mass of people, desperate to get away, her heart pumping so violently she thought it was going to explode right out of her chest.

‘Status?’ Anderson asked twenty minutes later, every nerve shredded.

He knew the answer before it came through to him. ‘Negative,’ the reply came. ‘We lost her, sir. She’s nowhere to be found.’

Anderson didn’t even bother to reply, just thumbed off the radio and sat back in his chair. How had the operation gone so badly wrong? Picking off two defenceless subjects while both were strapped in place should have been child’s play. Who could have predicted that the woman would have jumped off the damned ride?

But he should have predicted it; that was his job, after all. It didn’t matter in the slightest that it was a rushed operation, set up in only a matter of hours; Anderson knew he could have handled it better.

After Janklow went missing, he had requested authorization to use every tool available to catch him, but the computer specialist had proven a crafty opponent. He had avoided detection at every transport hub he must have used, and Anderson feared that he might have disappeared from the grid entirely.

But then fate had intervened, voice recognition software capturing a call from a payphone to the amusement park, Janklow’s voice requesting details of the opening times.

Anderson had reacted instantly, setting up observation posts around the park and putting it under constant surveillance. It had taken time, though, and Anderson had worried that Janklow might already have visited the park and left, to be lost once more. It also occurred to him that it was a red herring, Janklow’s idea of a joke to waste his pursuers’ time.

But then his men had seen him, first entering the park and then meeting up with the woman. It was obvious she was a contact, someone he had arranged to meet. But who the hell was she, and why was Janklow meeting her? Was she a girlfriend? Someone in law enforcement or government? Or even – and this would probably be the worst outcome – a reporter of some sort?

Anderson had ordered high-definition pictures taken, and government supercomputers were hard at work trying to identify her. But Anderson had ordered her death anyway, along with Janklow; he couldn’t take the risk of the information getting out.

But now she had escaped, this mysterious woman, and she carried who only knew what information from Janklow, with which she was going to do who knew what. And he still didn’t even know who she was.

But he did know one thing, he told himself as he leant back in his chair, stretching his aching body. Whoever she was, he was going to find her.

G
ENERAL
D
AVID
T
OMKIN
stretched out in his seat as he took the call, trying to get some life back into his tired limbs. He had spent a lifetime in the military, and had fought on every front his country had been involved in for the past thirty years, first as an infantry officer, then in Special Forces, and later in intelligence. He was an active man, even now in his late fifties, and the sheer inactivity of his latest job was enough to make him scream.

He was, admittedly, the highest-ranking military officer in his nation’s esteemed armed forces, a position he was proud to have been granted, and one he took very seriously indeed. But despite the important and highly prestigious office that he held, the fact remained that he no longer actually had any operational command over combatant forces; the role of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was advisory only, and as such Tomkin spent far more time than he would have liked behind a desk.

But the job meant that he was enormously influential; he had command over personnel and budgets, and had control over the structure and utilization of the world’s most powerful military force. His ability to work the budgets was one he had never foreseen being so expert at. Back when he had been leading platoon attacks against hostile militias down in the world’s worst hellholes, fiscal policy was the very last thing on his mind. But over the years, as he had progressed through the ranks, he had realized the importance of correctly organized budgets; correctly organized in the sense that certain ‘black’ projects could be lost, forever beyond political scrutiny. He had developed a certain skill at manipulating military budgets over the years, and was now able to hide such programmes – weapons research, illegal prisons for terrorist suspects, covert ‘snatch squads’, paramilitary hit teams – in places that would never be found by prying eyes.