2041 Sanctuary (Dark Descent) (59 page)

‘—we can only hope.’ Marianne Gobrinsky, the helicopter reporter, was still speaking, the image showing the massed ranks of the LA police department descending on the area. ‘Some new information fresh in,’ she said, ‘as the police try to evacuate the building, which will take some time considering its size, a message was seen on the information boards within the mall itself, It read:
red pick-up contact one five two
. The authorities have been tight-lipped about what this message might mean, but it seems clear that the fugitive is receiving outside help.’

Steiner sneered in distaste at his own success, aiding and abetting added to his growing list of crimes.

‘This theory,’ the reporter continued, ‘is reinforced by other reports indicating the security cameras inside the shopping precinct have also been overridden by a source, as yet, unknown.’

Chapter Thirty Six

Now inside the shopping mall, Samson slid the magazine out from his remaining MX4 assault rifle as he strode along.
Half full, only twenty more rounds
, he thought before shoving it back in with a click. He placed the rifle onto his back-plate, withdrew his pistol and ejected the exhausted clip, replacing it with his final one, containing thirty sub-sonic hollow points.
Not the best ammunition for fighting your way out of a sticky situation
, he mused as terrified shoppers moved out of his way, a woman with a pushchair screaming at the sight of his shimmering form and the array of weaponry on display.

Breaking into a run as panic erupted around him, Samson headed north, aiming to draw his pursuers away from the Dodge Ram.

With his metal-clad boots clanking along the rapidly emptying hallways, he spotted a couple of police officers. They hadn’t seen him, the deserted food court he now observed quiet except for the sporadic shouts and screams of the departing shoppers. Pistol in hand, Samson slid the silencer mechanism along the barrel, its composite frame snapping securely into place. A bullet already in the chamber, he selected his first target with his visor and fired, and the female officer dropped without a sound as he switched to her partner; firing again, he rendered the man dead with a similar headshot.

As he advanced, a strange sound made him whirl round, the barrel of his gun pointing straight at the source of the noise. Two big wide eyes peered at him and the baby made a gurgling sound and reached out to grab the gun. Movement in the distance made Samson look up and magnify his visor’s image; it seemed an FBI swat team had hunted him down. One of their number, a sniper, was aiming straight at him. Samson saw the man rock back as he fired and instinctively stuck out an arm, deflecting the bullet away from the infant. Another bullet pinged off his helmet, momentarily disrupting his visor display and snapping his head back. Diving to his left, the camouflage system failing, he rolled to his feet. Beginning to enjoy himself, his breathing increased and heart pumping harder, Samson ran for his life.

♦

Professor Steiner looked nervously over at the trace timer in the wallscreen’s top left hand corner. Several minutes had passed since he’d last spoken with Samson and the clock showed he had fewer than twelve minutes left. During this time, he’d glimpsed what he thought was the colonel disappearing up a flight of stairs in the northernmost quadrant of the building, but he couldn’t be sure.

‘Breaking scenes,’ said Bill Brightman, the larger than life CNN news anchor, recapturing Steiner’s attention, ‘we’re returning live to Marianne Gobrinsky, our eye in the sky. Marianne what do you have for us?’

Footage from the helicopter appeared next to the image from the news studio. ‘Bill, it seems we have activity on one of the rooftops.’

The camera zoomed in on a team of black-clad men shooting at what could only be Samson, his green and brown body armour appearing and disappearing in the dark as a number of LAPD and FBI drones followed his flight with their searchlights.

‘The suit he’s wearing looks military,’ Bill said. ‘Can you zoom in any further?’

‘I’ll patch you into our mini-cam drone.’ Marianne altered the aspect to a view directly above the roof itself.

Steiner could clearly see Samson as he returned fire to the swat team behind.

‘Yes, it’s definitely military of some kind,’ Marianne said, Steiner thinking she sounded too excited at the prospect.
The media are lapping this up
, he realised, the idea repulsing him;
don’t they know people are dying down there?

‘Are those markings on his shoulder?’ Bill Brightman said.

‘I’ll drop the drone in for a better look.’ Marianne changed the angle on screen once more.

Samson looked up when the UAV got too close, the green glow from his helmet visible as he evaded the lights attempting to pin him down, his breath visible as it gusted from his helmet into the cold air around him. As Steiner watched, Samson raised his rifle and fired, sending the screen fuzzing into a mass of black and white pixels.

‘Oh my.’ Marianne sounded disturbed by what she’d just seen. ‘Did you get that? Those glowing eyes?’

Bill Brightman nodded. ‘We did – whoa! He just jumped to the next building!’

The camera had switched back to the helicopter’s video stream and replayed in slow motion footage of Samson jumping clean across a wide gap, bullets bouncing from his back as he flew through the air. Now returning to real-time, Samson looked to be nearing the end of the road, the rooftop he was on running out ahead. Out of nowhere a helicopter rose above the building, mini-guns firing on either side, spraying Samson with a barrage of deadly hail. Samson faltered and fell before a huge explosion lit up the dark skies, the flames giving way to a pall of thick black smoke.

Steiner didn’t really take in what the CNN team said next, he felt stunned and disorientated, not because he mourned the colonel’s abrupt demise, but because with his death Steiner’s chances of helping those in Steadfast to get to safety had just taken a significant backward step, perhaps irreversibly so. He was on his own now. His eyes darted to the trace timer; eight minutes remained until the FBI acquired his exact location – he had to move.

A few more minutes passed while Steiner finished hiding his digital signature. Hurriedly, aware of his ever-dwindling window of opportunity, he began shutting down the computer hardware. He flicked the switches off one by one, leaving one quantum processor running to ensure the trace continued to be fended off for the longest possible period. Closing the programmes still open on the wallscreen, Steiner’s finger paused over the CNN footage. He watched, gobsmacked, as their cameras caught the image of a bright red Dodge pick-up bursting out of the shopping mall’s first floor façade. With huge shards of glass flying in all directions, the wheels of the truck slammed down onto the ground, its suspension buckling to breaking point.

‘Dear Lord,’ Bill Brightman said, grandstanding for all he was worth, ‘guess who’s back.’

Chapter Thirty Seven

Steiner couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Samson was alive, although by the looks of what faced him, he wouldn’t be for much longer. The CNN helicopter footage showed that the car park Samson now found himself in was completely surrounded, not only by the LAPD and FBI, but also by the National Guard, called in to lend a hand to their law enforcement colleagues. Drones and helicopters filled the dark skies above, including those from the world’s media tasked with covering the story, their combined lights shedding a bright blanket over the single red vehicle.

‘There doesn’t appear to be anyone inside the car,’ Marianne Gobrinsky reported.

She wasn’t wrong. The TV footage showed the interior of the battered pick-up pretty well and Steiner couldn’t make out anyone sitting in either of the front seats. Was it really Samson at work? Unconsciously he’d started twisting his wedding band around his finger, the countdown timer for the FBI trace temporarily forgotten, its digits dropping below the two minute mark unseen.

♦

Bent double in the driver’s seat of the Dodge Ram, Samson didn’t need to use his visor’s spectral scanners to know what confronted him outside. Even as he sat there, rifles were being trained on every inch of the vehicle. If he so much as popped his head up, he’d have it taken off in an instant by multiple, high-velocity, armour-piercing rounds.

The only reason he wasn’t already dead was because of the person he had crammed into the adjacent foot-well; his hostage. The FBI agent, now conscious, gagged and secured with her own set of handcuffs, stared at him with baleful eyes.

Samson knew he’d been fortunate back on the roof. The helicopter had provided him with the perfect foil against which to stage his own death. Utilising his last two grenades, he’d blown a hole in the roof while at the same time reactivating his camouflage, which he’d managed to repair on the move. After the shockwave passed, Samson had thrown himself down into the thick smoke, landing heavily on the floor below. Still having to act quickly, he’d then hotfooted it back through the mall, avoiding the police, to finally reach the truck. Unfortunately his plan of switching vehicles hadn’t accounted for the cops that had decided to set up shop in the same car park where he’d stashed the pick-up. Deciding action was preferable to waiting to be discovered, Samson had driven the vehicle into the shopping area to avoid the squad cars below, before launching it out through the first floor window of the complex’s main entrance.

Turning away from the penetrating and unsettling gaze of his companion, Samson tried restarting the engine, which had cut out during its collision with the ground. He kept the key turned and the engine spluttered to life, aided by a push of the accelerator with his hand. Reversing as best he could with his contorted posture, Samson stuck the car in first gear and released the clutch. With the pick-up now rolling forward at a sedate and steady pace, he flipped the switch that the previous owner, the Apache Indian, Norroso, had custom-fitted to the flatbed. A whirring of gears raised the rear tray higher and higher, acting like a tip-up truck. At the critical angle of tilt, where the gravitational pull on the load became greater than the frictional resistance, a long wooden crate slid out past the open tailgate, hitting the tarmac and splintering open. Samson, his hand wrapped around a small transceiver he’d removed from his utility belt, thumb poised over the small button on top, floored the accelerator and then depressed the button.

On the ground behind him, the black, cylindrical, stainless steel prototype device rested on the tarmac, its broken case lying shattered around it. On one side a power bar pulsed green confirming one hundred per cent capacity. Beneath this, in illuminated red lettering, two words:

SYSTEM ARMED

On receipt of the signal to activate, small charges propelled four separate spikes into the ground, a fifth charge jettisoning the top section of the weapon five hundred feet into the air. 

A flash of light and a pulse of energy swept through the pick-up and beyond as the tri-phase, electromagnetic pulse-bomb detonated. The dashboard lights flickered and died, the engine cutting out, its electronics failing. Samson twisted the ignition key once more, praying that its tough, antiquated circuitry had survived the EMP. The engine coughed and spluttered before purring back to life, the truck’s momentum jump-starting it. Sitting upright, he pulled the steering wheel hard to the right as complete darkness descended within a half-mile radius, the lights of buildings in the distance blinking out to join those already disabled at the epicentre of the silent blast. His visor already set for night-vision, Samson refrained from putting the headlights on as the sky rained aircrafts and drones from above.

With every police car being electric and unshielded against EMPs, the entire LAPD police force had been immobilised. Only the National Guard operated with gasoline and their transport was static and would be unable to start; at least that was Samson’s theory.

A helicopter smashed into the ground ahead and erupted into flame, its frame buckled and broken. Yanking up the handbrake, Samson slid the back end out to miss the carnage by inches. Gunning the accelerator, the Dodge Ram’s bored-out, seven litre engine roared in response. With everyone thrown into the pitch-black, Samson drove unimpeded at the weakest link in the ring of parked vehicles. The Dodge’s bull bars broke through the line, smashing aside two squad cars and catapulting him out into the street beyond, and freedom.

Chapter Thirty Eight

A beeping sound made Steiner tear his gaze away from the final TV shots of what had looked like Samson setting off some sort of energy weapon. His eyes widened as the trace timer slipped past ten seconds.

‘Holy—’ Steiner’s heart rate skyrocketed as knee trembling, palpitation inducing panic set in.

‘Trace complete, Professor,’ the A.I. said, ‘the game is up. The chicken is cooked, the broth is boiled, the bread is buttered, the—’

Steiner tore 152’s console from its socket and stuffed it into a satchel, along with anything else he could grab, before fleeing out of the door and rattling down the stairs as fast as his legs could carry him. Bursting out into the low-lit street, he paused to calm his mind, taking long, deep, slow breaths, despite the sound of approaching police sirens in the distance. Suppressing his emotions, he recalled the location the colonel had suggested for their rendezvous, the corner of Slauson Avenue and Port Road, three blocks away. But in what direction was that? In the heat of the moment he’d failed to consult a map and going the wrong way could prove disastrous.

He could see the red and blue flashing lights now, a mile away, but he hadn’t made director general by being easily distracted. Sifting through his mental imagery of the final stages of his arrival into LA with Samson, he slowed his breathing further.

There, he had it! The vestiges of a visual memory, a vision of a lamppost, attached to it a green sign with white letters reading
—son Ave
. It was the best he was going to get, a partial name, and he’d already started running to his left, happily in the opposite direction to those that hunted him down. Pulling out his baseball cap as he ran, Steiner pulled it onto his head before rounding a corner and disappearing into the endless night.