The Extinction Code (22 page)

The fighter was climbing steeply toward the gray sky, her swept wings arcing over gracefully as the pilot turned back toward them.

‘Slashing attacks,’ Ethan said through gritted teeth as he gripped the controls more tightly. ‘We’re just damned lucky that he doesn’t appear to have missiles.’

Lopez swivelled in her seat and saw the fighter descend back down toward them at terrific speed.

‘Here he comes!’

Ethan made to move the control column, but then he had a better idea and he relaxed in the seat. He looked ahead and he knew that they would never make the safety of the cloud banks before the jet fighter’s bullets tore into the Icon, and therefore into both of their bodies. They would be shredded in an instant and the aircraft would tumble from the sky in pieces to fall into the dense jungle, and who knew how long it would take for anybody to find their remains, if they ever did. Nobody involved in this attack was going to report the incident.

‘Turn, damn it!’ Lopez snapped at him.

Target fixation.
The words drifted unbidden through his mind as he recalled the Gulf War. There had been occasions when fighter pilots had fixated on a target so much that they had literally flown their aircraft into the target itself. Snipers had focused so much on long range shots that they hadn’t noticed the ranks of enemy soldiers advancing on their position.

Ethan weaved the Icon lethargically about the sky as he descended toward the forest, trying to give the impression that he was attempting to evade the attack but instead looking for somewhere down below to land on the river.

‘Ethan!’ Lopez snapped as she grabbed his collar. ‘We, are going,
to die
.’

Ethan looked over his shoulder at the onrushing MiG, one hand on the controls as he waited for the inevitable sight of the bullets rocketing toward them. With his free hand he reached down and twisted the rudder trim to one side.

The little Icon pivoted in the air, her nose shifting to the right slightly.

‘What are you doing?’ Lopez asked.

‘Spoiling his aim,’ Ethan replied. ‘Get ready, we’re leaving.’

‘We’re
what
?!’

The Icon was still five hundred feet above the river as the MiG descended in behind them. Ethan twisted his shoulders and craned his neck as he saw the jet line up and then a burst of cannon fire ripped toward them.

Ethan did not touch the controls, and in a heartbeat of terror he saw the bright tracer rounds rocket it seemed directly toward his eyes. Then the bullets flashed past the Icon with scant feet to spare, and Ethan hit the fuel dump gauge once again and pushed forward on the control column.

The Icon descended sharply, trailing a cloud of fuel vapor behind it as the MiG rocketed overhead and climbed sharply away. As soon as it was past them, Ethan reached across and pulled a bright–red lever as he pulled back on the throttles.

The emergency safety parachutes deployed with a loud double–bang and the Icon slowed to a halt in mid–air, Ethan and Lopez thrown forward in their harnesses as the jungle canopy loomed ahead of them. In an instant the Icon crashed down onto the tree tops, her wings collapsing as the aircraft settled at an awkward angle amid the dense branches, leaves and vines.

‘Go, now!’

Lopez pushed the canopy open and clambered from the cockpit, the sound of the jet aircraft’s engine echoing around the forest as she climbed clear of the Icon and hurriedly began climbing down the tree.

Ethan clambered out of the cockpit and grabbed one of the emergency flares as he scrambled onto the tree. He pulled the flare and tossed it into the cockpit, smoke and flame spitting from the device as he clambered down in pursuit of Lopez, who was almost on the forest floor.

‘Run!’

Ethan jumped down behind her and dashed away as he heard the jet engine rocket closer, and then a deep
brrrr
sound. Bullets smashed through the canopy above them and hammered the forest floor as Ethan hurled himself down alongside a large tree trunk and Lopez rolled into deep undergrowth.

The MiG’s bullets hit the Icon’s fuselage and the searing heat from the tracers hit the fuel vapor spilling from the dump valve. The Icon exploded in a massive fireball in the tree tops as the MiG rocketed by overhead. Ethan covered his head with his arms as burning debris rained down from the canopy and the roaring of the jet fighter faded into the mountainous distance.

He rolled out from his hiding place and looked up to see the remains of the Icon burning furiously, clouds of thick black smoke spiralling up into the humid sky.

‘Lopez?’ he called out. ‘Are you okay?’

There was no response from the jungle nearby, and Ethan scrambled to his feet and bolted toward the place he had last seen Lopez disappear into the undergrowth. He saw her legs poking from the thick foliage and rushed to her side, reached out for her.

‘Lopez?’

She groaned and he gently helped her up into a sitting position. His hands searched for any sign of injury, but he could find nothing. He looked at her and she scowled back at him wearily.

‘We’d like to thank you for flying Warner Air. Please be sure not to leave anything behind, like body parts.’

Ethan fought to conceal his relief as he helped her to her feet.

‘Hopefully, they’ll think that we’re dead,’ he said.

‘Are you sure we’re not?’

‘You’re complaining, so everything’s normal,’ Ethan replied and orientated himself toward the coast. ‘Come on, we’ve got a long walk ahead of us.’

‘We could use the satellite phone, call for help,’ she said.

Ethan pointed up to the burning remains of the Icon A5. ‘The phone’s up there,’ he replied, ‘but I don’t want anybody knowing we’re still alive. MJ–12 is going all out to finish us off, let’s make them think that the job’s done.’

***

XXVI

Ambila Lamaitso,

Madagascar

‘Sweet Lord above, what happened?!’

Christiano Rabinur stood in the doorway of his office in a ramshackle safe house near the coast, the night air filled with a heady mixture of wild Indian Ocean and dense jungle foliage.

‘We ran into a little trouble,’ Ethan replied.

He stood in the doorway with Lopez, both of them bedraggled and weary, smeared with grime and foliage from their impromptu trek through the jungle.

‘Is my aeroplane all right?’ Rabinur enquired anxiously.

‘Well, it’s technically still airborne.’

Rabinur peered at Ethan suspiciously and then ushered them inside the safe house and slammed the door behind them. ‘You didn’t break it did you?’

‘We’re fine, thanks for asking,’ Lopez uttered, her black hair entwined with soil that hung in thick clumps around her shoulders. ‘We just spent an hour hiding in a mud hole waiting for sundown so we could get here unobserved. How about you quit with the questions and tell me where the shower is before I take what’s left of your airplane and shove it up your as…’

‘Straight up the stairs, turn right,’ Rabinur said quickly. ‘You can’t miss it.’

Lopez stalked up the stairs without another word as Ethan walked with Rabinur into the kitchen, where the agent poured him a glass of filtered water.

‘We came under attack from a Malagasy fighter aircraft,’ Ethan said after he had guzzled two full glasses. ‘I’m afraid the Icon didn’t make it out in one piece.’

‘Mother alive, how will I explain this to General Nellis?’ Rabinur wailed softly, his hands pressed to his head. ‘We only received it last week.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Ethan promised, ‘Nellis is used to me breaking the agency’s toys, I’ll take full responsibility. I need to know how many MiG–17 Frescos the Malagasy Air Force operates?’

Rabinur laughed. ‘One, maybe two,’ he replied. ‘They’re older than the hills and barely get airborne these days.’ His tone became sombre. ‘You think that they were hired out to hunt you down?’

Ethan nodded, draining another glass of water. ‘We need to talk to the pilot of that aircraft. I didn’t get a good enough look to pick out a registration or anything, but if the Air Force only operates a couple of jets then there can’t be many pilots on the island qualified to fly them.’

‘I’ll get on it in the morning,’ Rabinur promised. ‘What are you going to do next?’

‘We can’t question the pilot,’ Ethan replied. ‘He most likely believes us to be dead and I want it kept that way. I’ll need to speak to Jarvis though and I’ll need you to conduct the interrogation of the pilot, make it look like a homicide case: if he thinks he’s up for killing two Americans, and the government suspects the same, he might be willing to talk. Likewise he would have been paid to attack us, as would the crew who fitted the aircraft with live missiles, maintenance and so on. Track them down, and we’ll find out who was behind the attack.’

‘Got it,’ Rabinur replied. ‘We’ve got a secure link here to Washington if you need to use it.’

Ethan checked his watch: ten in the evening in Madagascar made it roughly five in the evening in DC. ‘Do it,’ he replied, ‘and no visual images, just audio.’

‘Okay, it’s this way.’

Ethan followed Rabinur to a small room that looked like a little library, with bookshelves and a wicker rocking chair. Rabinur pulled one of the books from the shelves, and the entire wall revolved to reveal a communications station replete with radio set and a telephone.

‘Very James Bond,’ Ethan said as he picked bits of mud and foliage out of his hair.

‘It’s a Cold War safe house,’ Rubinar replied as he sat down and switched on the communication panel. ‘The radio is state of the art though, untraceable as it runs direct through DIA satellites: no way to intercept the signal, and even if somebody could they would still have to break the encryption.’

‘Good,’ Ethan replied. ‘I want you to shut all of that off and make this a normal–sounding call, routed out of the city and not this safe house. Can you do that?’

Rubinar seemed surprised. ‘Well, yes, but why would you want to…?’ Then he got it, and smiled.

Ethan watched as Rubinar contacted the DIA Headquarters and was passed on to Jarvis in the ARIES Watch Room.

‘Jarvis?’

Ethan let Rubinar vacate the seat as he sat down and spoke clearly to Jarvis, hoping that his own voice carried clearly enough to be recognizable to his boss.

‘This is Agent Foxx, Madagascar Station, I’m afraid I’m here to report the loss of two agents in the field this afternoon, local time.’

There was a moment’s pause and Ethan felt he could almost hear Jarvis thinking thousands of miles away.

‘That’s truly regretful,’
Jarvis replied.
‘Do you have the names of the agents in question?’

‘Warner, Ethan,’ Ethan replied, ‘and Lopez, Nicola. We believe that they were killed during a routine investigation in the interior. We only have limited witness reports suggesting an attack by a Madagascan Air Force jet, but reliable intelligence is thin on the ground at this time.’

A brief silence this time.

‘I will arrange to have their next of kin informed as soon as possible,’
Jarvis said.
‘What is the investigative plan to find out who was behind this attack? You do realize that if this was indeed an attack by a Madagascan Air Force jet then this will become a national incident involving both governments and may be considered an act of war?’

Ethan smiled. Jarvis was well on the ball already and knew that any Madagascan government listening post would be hearing the radio chatter and panicking like never before.

‘We will endeavour to ask the government here to detain all personnel capable of flying the aircraft in question within the hour,’ Ethan replied. ‘Any injury that they might receive before we question them will likely be seen as government complicity in the crime, so either way we’re going to get to the bottom of this. Wherever it takes us, we’ll follow.’

‘Understood, Agent Foxx,’
Jarvis replied.
‘I’ll inform the Secretary of Defense of what’s happened, and we’ll brief the President in the morning. Let’s hope the Malagasy government do the smart thing and hand over the pilot behind this as soon as possible. I’d hate to think what would happen if the American people heard of the death of two US agents in the country and demanded military reprisals? Madagascar would cease to exist overnight.’

‘Precisely,’ Ethan agreed. ‘I’ll have Agent Rubinar contact the consulate first thing in the morning and find out what’s happening, and report back as soon as we know what the Malagasy position on this regrettable incident is. Foxx out.’

Ethan switched off the communication suite and looked around at Rubinar. ‘It’s all yours, Christiano. Find out what you can when they hand the pilot over and pass it directly to Jarvis on behalf of “Agent Foxx”. Whatever trail you uncover, we’ll pursue.’

Rubinar was about to reply when the sound of rattling pipes was followed by a screeched
“For Christ’s sake”
that
echoed through the safe house as Lopez’s voice cried out.

‘Have you people never heard of hot water, damn it?!’

Rubinar sighed and headed off to the antiquated boiler somewhere else in the house.

*

ARIES Watch Room,

DIAC Building, Washington DC

Jarvis had only moments ago set the phone down after his mysterious call from Ethan Warner when Hellerman knocked at his office door and peeked in.

‘Boss, we’ve got something.’

Jarvis pushed himself up and out of his chair as he followed Hellerman through the Watch Room to his office, where Hellerman closed the door and pointed at the chromium sphere in the vacuum chamber. The scientist had brought the object up from the ARIES R&D department earlier that day.

‘I’ve figured out something about how this thing operates, and more importantly why.’

‘Go on,’ Jarvis encouraged.

Hellerman recounted something of the history of the device first.

‘You’ll recall that the first mention of
Die Glocke
, or “The Bell” in German, appears somewhere around 1937, when an object matching its description was described as having crashed into a Bavarian lake. Another sighting was made in 1945. Then there was another sighting in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, in 1965, this time of an airborne object that was witnessed by hundreds of citizens in the town and later covered up by the military. Both objects appear identical in their descriptions to the object that was first detected in orbit around our planet by Nikola Tesla in 1899.’