Читать книгу Giant Killer - John McNally - Страница 17

SPLASH!

Six foot six and sixteen stone of pure military meat hit the muddy water at the foot of the five-metre wall, sending it in all directions at once.

Unstoppable, Captain Kelly of the SAS (seconded to the G&T’s informal military detachment) hammered every muscle in his body towards the next obstacle on the course that ran through the woodland surrounding Hook Hall, the stately home and laboratory complex in Surrey that served as the HQ of the Global Non-governmental Threat Response Committee.

Thirty metres of monkey walk lay ahead. Kelly grabbed the first bar and began to swing beneath the frame, enjoying the pain, loving it, the complications of the abortive Monte Carlo mission forgotten for a few blissful moments.

And they had to forget. All who had experienced life at nano-scale had found it difficult to adjust to life back at normal size, but more than anything, life without Finn …

THUD!

A four-inch, six-ounce throwing knife, travelling at 130mph, split the surface of the target post, transmitting the concentrated intent of the young woman who threw it from the far end of the Zen-white martial arts studio in the Old Manor.

Flight Lieutenant Delta Salazar bent her body over and took up her second position. When she wasn’t on fire, chasing down Tyros on motorbikes, she was ice. Lukewarm tears were just not her thing. Except when it came to her little sister. About Carla – still missing, possibly captured, possibly dead … she was a complete mess.

Hence the yogic knife-throwing routine she indulged in every morning to try and clear her mind.

THUD!

Crinkle.

Engineer Stubbs unwrapped a boiled sweet, popped it into his mouth and began to suck. It was a twenty-two-calorie Werther’s Original, containing soya lecithin and flavouring, and it was the first solid to pass his lips in forty-eight hours.

He was in his chaotic workshop in the old stables at the back of Hook Hall. He had not taken an active role in the Monte Carlo mission as he didn’t “travel well” and just the thought of going to France caused him an upset tummy.

Also, he knew it would all go wrong. It was his default position.

He was a man not of action but of make do and mend. In his time at nano-scale he had improvised a jet-powered jeep and a hydrogen balloon on the hoof, as well as having designed the Ugly Bug experimental nano-vehicle.

Fat lot of good it had done poor Infinity though, he thought …

VVRVRRVRRRRRRROOOOOM!

The De Tomaso Mangusta had been designed to take the breath away, a beautiful piece of jet-age engineering built for speed and named Mangusta, or mongoose, to imply it would eat its 1960s rival, the AC Cobra, for breakfast. With Dr Al Allenby’s customisations, it was capable of lunch and dinner too. Al didn’t just drive it round the runway at Hook Hall – he tried to plough it into the earth, so brutal was his cornering, so crude his acceleration. The thrill ride used to take his mind off things.

Used to.

He passed the Start/Finish line for the ninth time at 145mph – VVRVRRVRRRRRRROOOOOM! – and saw the chequered flag.

The signal that the Monte Carlo post-mortem meeting was about to begin.

With a sigh, Al slowed, left the track, and drove down through the complex to the hangar-like building known as the CFAC (Central Field Analysis Chamber). The huge doors parted as he approached and he drove straight into the vast concrete space that was dominated by a ring of particle accelerators capable of whipping up an electromagnetic vortex that could shrink all matter.

His Boldklub machine. It had been used first during Operation Scarlatti, when Finn had first got caught up in the nano-world and where, somewhere, he remained. Now it stood idle, waiting for his return.

Al crushed the lump that rose in his throat and spun the Mangusta to a handbrake halt at the centre of the array.

Commander James Clayton King, the Hook Hall supremo, on his way up the steel gantry steps to the control gallery, didn’t look down, break step or in any way acknowledge him. The impeccable figure who had coordinated saving the world any number of times hated showing off of any sort.

In moments, the G&T Committee were assembled: engineers, scientists, thinkers, soldiers. There were no formalities. Commander King reviewed the Monte Carlo débâcle using video to illustrate the handover, the roar of the motorbike, the pop of the empty cigar tube, the chase and kill. When the recording finished, he concluded: “We‘re not the first to leave the casino having incurred a loss. We knew this could happen, which is why we took precautions. Kaparis duped us. We duped him.”

Pictures flashed up of the dead rider and the girl who’d made the exchange.

“Tyros, of course. Note that they’ve taken to wearing coloured contact lenses to disguise the scarring left by the brain programming.”

The last known picture of Kaparis flashed up, able-bodied and evil, standing with a group of super-rich investors in Zurich, Switzerland, sometime in the late 1990s.

Al had to look away.

“As ever, he is playing games, displaying his power.”

“What goes on in that pretty little head of yours …?” Delta wondered aloud as she imagined three separate ways she’d like to snap that pretty little head off.

“We go again,” said Kelly. “We have no choice. He knows we have no choice. We wait for him to make contact again and we start again.”

“And we look ridiculous, again,” said Stubbs gloomily.

“Shut up, Stubbs,” said Kelly automatically.

“We are prepared for every eventuality,” said King. “Except one.”

“What?” said Al.

“He may be stringing us along because he doesn’t have Infinity or Carla.”

“They are NOT dead!” cried Delta, who never welcomed this suggestion. “We have no evidence that they’re dead. I was the last to see her and at that time she was alive!”

It was true that Delta had lost consciousness shortly after, but (attached to Yo-yo’s collar and still at nano-scale) she had been the last person to see her sister alive. Infinity Drake was presumed to be secreted somewhere about her person.

King waited a moment.

“We have no evidence, apart from a few doubtful videos, that Kaparis is holding either Infinity or your sister.”

Delta took comfort in this and bit her lip not to show it.

Al looked at the Zurich picture again and felt his stomach twist. Whenever he thought of Kaparis, his body tensed to take a punch. Exactly what Kaparis would have wanted, Al thought. Maybe that was the problem. Al looked round at the experts at the table or on screen, perhaps the finest minds ever assembled. He had led them to disaster. All his life he had been the smartest guy in the room, the brain. He had surfed his intellect and got as far as Boldklub and nearly bust open the laws of physics, but now it seemed he was all washed up.

“Stubbs is right …” said Al (but Stubbs took no pleasure in it). “We should never have fallen for Monte Carlo. That was ridiculous. We’ve become too predictable. Too logical. We’re scientists. We want the world to be rational, but we know that most of the time it isn’t. Life is random, absurd. That scares and confuses us. That’s why most of us are so bad at personal relationships!”

Al looked around. He was right. The room was full of blinking, uncomfortable nerds.

“If we can’t logically figure a way through this, then we’ve got to embrace the irrational, the unconscious. Look for answers there. We – no, I – I’ve got to stop digging the hole we’re in, I’ve got to step back and feel it, you know?”

“May I be excused?” requested Stubbs at this point.

“It’s time to get Zen, get patient,” Al continued. “It’s time to look beneath. This is a game of chess, not noughts and crosses.” He got up and paced. “We’ve got to think forwards, think backwards, think laterally; find the gap, the clue.” He slapped the table – “Come on! Let’s think outside the box! Let’s burn the damn box! You’re the brightest and the best. The only thing that trumps facts, that trumps time, that trumps the inevitable – that breaks E=MC² – is the HUMAN IMAGINATION!”

Al climbed on to the desk and threw himself into a headstand. His legs flailed and split, but he held it, just.

He regarded them all, upside down. They looked ridiculous.

“It seems,” sighed Stubbs, “we’re back to square one.”