Читать книгу Department 19 - 3 Book Collection - Will Hill, Will Hill - Страница 50

The two Blacklight helicopters descended towards the SPC base, their engines roaring in the freezing air, their rotors churning the falling snow into spinning flurries. Their wheels skidded across the icy surface as they touched down, then the doors were flung open and Admiral Seward led the rescue team towards the SPC control room.

Twenty Blacklight Operators ran across the snow, dark shapes moving quickly through a landscape of pure white. The men shivered as the Arctic wind whipped through the mesh of their uniforms; snow slid in torrents down their purple visors, obscuring their view.

They reached the entrance to the base, skidding and sliding to a halt in front of a ragged metal hole where the heavy airlock door should have been.

“Christ,” muttered one of the Operators.

The door had been ripped out of its frame; it lay to one side, buckled and twisted like an empty drink can. The hinges that had held it in place were eight-inch cylinders of solid steel, more than two inches in diameter, and the vacuum seal that connected it to its housing should have been able to withstand an earthquake almost twice as strong as the Richter scale was able to measure.

“Alert 1 from here onwards,” said Seward, and stepped through the hole.

Snow was piled high on every surface in the control room, and stood in deep drifts against the sides of the desks and tables that had, until very recently, been the work stations of the SPC duty staff. In places it had turned a bright pink, as blood soaked up from beneath it.

Admiral Seward almost tripped over the first corpse.

It lay in front of the empty doorway, the body of a man who could have been no more than nineteen or twenty. He was covered in snow, and Seward ordered the men to clear the man’s body. They knelt and brushed the snow away with their gloved hands, uncovering the dark grey SPC uniform inch by inch.

There was a gagging sound from one of the men working at the man’s waist, and Seward stepped up next to him. The man turned away, his hand over his mouth, and the Admiral felt his gorge rise.

The soldier had been pulled in half.

Below his waist there was nothing but an enormous quantity of blood, covering the floor in a thick pool.

Admiral Seward split the rescue team into two groups, and addressed the first.

“Clear this room,” he told them. “I want these men taken out of here. The rest of you, come with me.”

He left Major Turner overseeing the recovery of the bodies in the control room and led the rest of the men deeper into the base. They walked slowly along a wide grey corridor, and into a lift that was standing open at the end. Seward pressed the button for the first underground level.

“Search this building floor by floor for survivors,” he said. “I don’t want anyone left behind.”

There was a ringing noise, and the doors slid open. The Operators filed out, split into two-man teams, and started checking the doors that ran along both sides of the corridor. Seward watched them until the lift doors closed in front of him, and he began to descend again.

The Director of Blacklight pulled a triangular key identical to the one General Petrov had used little more than two hours earlier from a chain on his belt, and inserted it into the slot below the numbered buttons. The lift swept past the -7 floor, and slowed to a halt. The doors opened, and the long rows of heavy vault doors stopped him momentarily in his tracks. Seward had only been here once before, shortly after he was appointed to the position of Director. Yuri Petrov, a man he had fought side by side with on several occasions, in some of the darkest corners of the globe, had escorted him down and taken him through the vaults one by one, a personal guided tour of the most secret artefacts the Russian nation had collected over the course of its long history. For a moment he was overcome by the loss of the SPC men who had died in the control room, the latest casualties in a long, bloody war that the public could never know was being fought. Then he shook his head to clear it, and hurried onwards.

The corridor was slick with gore and splattered with chunks of scarlet meat, and Seward held his breath as he stepped around the carnage; the air was thick with the scent of blood, and the foul stench of the vampires who had spilled it. He forced himself onwards until he was at the door marked 31, where he found General Petrov staring at him from the empty table inside the small metal room.

His severed head had been placed upright, his dead eyes pointing towards the door. Blood had run down the metal pillar and pooled at the base, drying black. The face itself was almost unrecognisable; long ridges of purple bruising criss-crossed the skin, the nose and jaw were broken in several places, and the mouth was swollen to huge proportions. But the eyes were clear, and full of defiance.

Petrov was Spetsnaz when it meant something. I bet they tired before he did.

Seward walked round the pillar, checking every corner of the vault. He knew it was futile, but he did it anyway; he would not dishonour Petrov’s memory by missing something obvious. But there was nothing in the vault apart from the Russian General’s head.

He walked back out into the steel corridor, stepping carefully around the remains, and pulled his phone from his pocket. He dialled a number, and held it to his ear. “It’s gone,” he said, when the phone was answered. “Yes, I’m sure. I’m standing in the empty vault right now.”

There was a long silence.

“I understand that,” he said, eventually. “I need a list of anyone who accessed encrypted SPC content on the Blacklight mainframe in the last forty-eight hours. Yes, I’ll wait.”

He paced up and down the corridor, waiting for the information he had requested. After almost a minute, the voice told him there were no records of anyone accessing the information he had requested.

“Re-run the search, overriding the security protocols. Use my access code, 69347X. Do it quickly.”

Almost instantly a single name was read to him.

Seward swore. “I need an immediate current position,” he said. “Run his chip.”

Agonising seconds passed. Seward had stopped in the middle of the corridor, and was holding the phone to his ear with knuckles that were gradually turning white.

Not him. Please not him.

The voice on the end of the line reappeared, and described a location.

“Any other Operators with him?” asked Seward.

The voice answered.

“Thank you,” said Seward, and hung up. He swore heavily under his breath, dialled a second number, and waited for Cal Holmwood to answer. The Operator picked up after the third ring.

“Cal?” Seward said. “It’s Henry. I need you to bring Mina to Russia, immediately. To SPC Central Command. Apologise to the Americans and take off, right away. We’ve got trouble.”

Holmwood sounded surprised, but immediately told the Director that he would do as he was ordered. Seward thanked him, hung up, and dialled a third number. He was about to punch the CALL button when the phone rang, vibrating in his hand. He looked at the screen and saw the same number he had been dialling. He pressed ANSWER, and pressed it his ear.

“Listen to me,” he said, interrupting the voice on the other end. “I need you to tell me where Jamie Carpenter is. His life may be in danger.”

There was a pause, and then the voice answered him. The colour drained from Seward’s face.

“He’s walking into a trap,” he said. “Call—”

But the person on the other end of the line was gone.