2041 Sanctuary (Dark Descent) (68 page)

‘Maybe he’s rebelling,’ Eric said, ‘there must be some people inside the council who think some of the things they’re doing is wrong.’

‘Perhaps,’ Jessica replied, ‘but to go out and aid someone in mass murder? I don’t think so.’

Whoever he is and whatever his reasons this man and his companion are extremely important to the GMRC. From what I’ve been able to glean from LAPD radio chatter a GMRC delegation was sent to take custody of them only to be rebuffed by the FBI.

Jessica was surprised. ‘I didn’t think anyone could rebuff the GMRC.’

Not many can. There are only a handful of organisations on the planet with enough clout and backbone to defy them and the FBI is one of them _

‘How long do you think the Bureau can hold out?’ Jessica asked. ‘If the GMRC want them, surely it’s only a matter of time until they get their way?’

I’m unsure. That is why we must move quickly _

‘Move quickly?’

Yes. This is an unprecedented opportunity to get access to a man from the very highest echelons of power. He is the one weak link in a very strong chain. A man who has the secrets I need _

‘We need,’ Jessica said.

Yes _

‘One question,’ she said, ‘how do you propose we get
access
to a man most likely guarded by more agents and police than we could shake a stick at?’

I have a plan _

Jessica’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘That involves what exactly?’

The message window disappeared to be replaced by the live image of a dark-haired man; Jessica jerked back in surprise and Eric swore.

‘Trust me, Jessica Klein,’ Bic said with a sly wink, ‘trust me.’

Chapter Forty Five

Deep below the surface of the earth, thousands of feet beneath the Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range in Mexico, lay USSB Sanctuary; the jewel in the crown of the USA’s highly classified subterranean programme. Within this mighty man made marvel was a facility within a facility; the SED, Sanctuary’s Exploration Division, a civilian-run outfit overseen and utilised at will by the U.S. military.

At night the SED Command Centre became quiet, inactive, standing by to continue its duties at morning light. Tonight, however, events were already unfolding to ensure this fragile serenity would be ripped asunder.

Riley Orton, leader of the elite Deep Reach Team, Alpha Six, lay on his stomach secretly watching those in the shuttle bay below. He’d been tasked by his commanding officer, Dresden Locke, to keep tabs on the military, who had seen fit to stage an off-the-books retrieval from Sanctuary Proper outside the USSB. Behind this dubious undertaking was one General Stevens, a man known to consider the safety of others to be an inconvenience compared to acquiring newly discovered Anakim technology. Whatever the General was bringing into the SED, Locke wanted to make sure it wasn’t anything that would put his civilian teams at risk and Riley was there to make sure everything was documented.

With the cameras from his Deep Reach helmet recording everything he saw, Riley zoomed in on the massive stone monument in which General Stevens and his men had invested a lot of time, effort and resources to transport back to base. Comparing it to the modified air-shuttle they’d used to move it, the ancient Anakim monolith must have been touching fifty feet high, twenty feet wide and the same in depth. He thought back to his unauthorised excursion with Sarah into the nine hundred thousand year old structure, where he’d seen a team of scientists working on something in the ground that emitted a strange energy reading. He knew for certain this giant object was what they’d been analysing that day, before it had been extracted from the ground and hoisted through a hole cut into the building’s roof.
I never would have guessed it would have been so big though
, he thought.

Riley bunched his right hand into a fist, frustrated at the injustice of such an important discovery being kept hidden from those that would most appreciate its value. He knew the military would take it apart piece by piece in order to find out its secrets, the total opposite approach that the SED’s renowned archaeologists would employ.

A crane lowered the mysterious artefact onto an articulated lorry, the soldiers and military scientists working in unison like worker ants to ensure its transition was smooth and without incident. Riley took some detailed stills of a curious glass enclosure embedded into one side of the multi-sided object. It looked to contain some type of fluid, the truck, as it moved off, disturbing the contents within. As he pondered what this curious monstrosity might be, a bright flash of white light from the shuttle bay’s control centre caught his attention. Riley scanned the large glass windows with his visor. Someone crouched beneath one of the operator desks.
What on earth?
he thought.
Has Locke sent someone else to spy for him? Surely not.
Standing, still hidden on his lofty perch – a little used elevated crosswalk – Riley adjusted his visor further before his eyes widened in recognition. ‘Sarah? What the—?’

Movement below told him he wasn’t the only one interested in this most unexpected of intruders, a Special Forces commando also looked up in her direction.

Riley swore and started running.

♦

Sarah Morgan burst through the doors of the control centre, flying through the air to collide with the soldier on the other side. As she struggled to rise a hand grabbed her ankle, pulling her back. Grappling with the man on the floor, Sarah realised she stood little chance of overpowering him. In seconds she was being hauled to her feet; the other soldier, who’d been chasing from behind, bursting through the doors to lend a hand to his colleague.

‘Nice work,’ the soldier said, before being knocked out cold by a sucker punch from—

Riley?!
she thought.
What is he doing here and why does he have his helmet on?
With no time to care, Sarah made use of the diversion by thrusting herself backwards, slamming her other would-be captor against a wall. The man grunted before Riley waded in with another crunching blow, the soldier’s grip on her falling away.

Breathing heavily, Sarah stared at Riley, stunned by his sudden appearance. ‘What are you doing here?’

He raised his visor. ‘I could ask you the same question.’

‘Man down,’ a voice said, ‘third floor—’

Sarah looked down to see one of the soldiers on his radio. She kicked out, sending the communication device skidding across the floor. Riley bent down and delivered a short sharp blow to the soldier’s chin, sending him back to sleep.

‘Let’s move!’ Riley grabbed her hand and dragged her down the hallway.

Running flat out, interconnecting passageways flashed past. An occasional shout from their pursuers made them dart in the opposite direction, hurtling through the maze of the SED complex as though their lives depended on it. Nearing the edges of the building, the transparent walls revealed to them that more soldiers cut off their escape ahead. Riley reacted by guiding them up flight after flight of noisy metallic stairs. Higher and higher they rose through the building, their superior fitness levels helping to keep their adversaries at bay.

They burst out onto the vast roof of the building. Above and surrounding them was the large domed atrium in which the SED was housed. As stunning it was, draped in shadow and low level night-time illumination, there was no way out; they were trapped.

‘We’re bolloxed.’ Sarah looked around in despair. ‘They’ll have the whole place surrounded by now. Fuck! They’ll lock me up and chuck away the key this time. Three strikes – I’m out.’

‘Not yet, you’re not.’ Riley pulled her onwards towards the roof’s edge.

Sarah nearly had a heart attack when he walked straight off the top. Rushing forwards, she saw him on a small platform below, looking up at her.

‘Come on,’ he said, before moving off down the side of the building along a narrow gangway.

Following him down, she hurried to catch up. Used to climbing, heights didn’t overly bother her, but without any gear and in partial darkness she was well aware of the long drop to her right and the disturbing lack of any kind of handrail between her and oblivion. Far below, she could just make out the forms of soldiers ringing the periphery of the ground floor.

Due to the curving nature of the SED’s exterior architecture, Sarah soon found herself walking around a bend and almost knocking Riley from the edge.

‘Careful,’ he said, giving her some more room.

Sarah looked around. ‘What do we do now, just hide here and hope they don’t find us? If they don’t know who we are already.’

Riley grimaced. ‘If only it was that easy. You saw what I saw down in the shuttle bay and General Stevens will search every square inch of this building until he has us. He takes the word
privacy
very seriously. Thankfully those soldiers didn’t have time to get a good look at us and the internal cameras are down to preserve their clandestine operation, which means we got lucky.’ He peered over her shoulder. ‘I don’t suppose you have anything useful in that backpack?’

Sarah’s thoughts went to the bag on her back and the ill-gotten gains contained within; the shaped charges, three waypoint beacons, two sets of Deep Reach uniforms and an air-shuttle manual. She shook her head.

‘Pity.’

‘So,’ she asked, ‘what’s the plan?’

‘That’s the plan.’ He pointed out into the shadows.

Sarah followed the direction of his finger, out and away from the building. ‘Are you kidding me?! You’re insane.’

‘It’s either that or we’ll both be spending the rest of our lives in a military prison.’

Sarah looked out across the expanse between them and the atrium wall. Built into the surface were tiny handholds, leading down on a diagonal. At the very top of the advanced climbing course a platform could be discerned, lit by a huddle of dim lights.

‘It’s too far,’ she said. ‘We’ll never make it from a standing jump. And we’ll be climbing without any gear – in the dark.’

‘It’s not totally dark and you know as well as me climbing is based on touch and feel more than vision. Trust me, I’ve climbed this course a dozen times, it’s not the hardest by any means.’

She gazed down. ‘But it’s the highest.’

‘One of them,’ he agreed, ‘but if it wasn’t doable I wouldn’t suggest it. And besides, we only need to make it to the next platform down, not all the way to the ground. We can take a ladder the rest of the way and sneak out without anyone being any the wiser.’

Sarah looked at him and then back out to the wall opposite. Below, she could just see the second platform. ‘What about the standing start?’

He moved back a step and gestured for her to look past him. Beyond, the walkway cut back in towards the centre of the building, a perfect runway to the launch pad on which they now stood.

Just the thought of leaping from the building, hundreds of feet up with no safety net, made her feel sick to her stomach. ‘I can’t do it.’ She stared at the platform across the void. ‘No way, it’s too far.’

‘Sarah, look at me.’ Riley placed his hands on her shoulders and then moved them to either side of her head, his eyes looking deep into hers. ‘You can do this. I know you can. This jump has been done before, I’ve seen Cora do it with room to spare and you’re faster than she is, you can jump further.’

‘Cora’s done it? Not in the dark, I’ll bet, and not without a safety net.’

‘No, not in the dark, but it’s not that dark, look again. And believe it or not, she did do it without a net, someone dared her to do it and she did.’

‘And I suppose you’re the idiot that dared her?’

He gave a wry smile. ‘I didn’t think she’d go through with it, I admit. She is a crazy one.’

Sarah still wasn’t convinced.

‘Right,’ he said, backing up, ‘you can wait here if you like. I’m not sticking around to get banged up.’

Sarah stared at him; her heart was racing and it wasn’t even her making the jump. At his insistence she moved back a few steps so he could get a clear run up. Without another word, he sprang forwards, his speed rapidly increasing before he planted his right foot and launched himself into mid-air. Sarah watched with a sense of detached horror as Riley vaulted out into the atrium. He seemed to hang for an age before crashing down onto the platform with a dull thud, rolling to hit the wall to which it was attached. Getting to his feet she could just make out his broad grin as he waved her over.

Adjusting the rucksack on her back, she considered her options. With the choice of life in prison and a near suicidal jump Sarah found herself walking down the short runway, her palms sweaty and her mind in chaos. Not wanting to look at the challenge that awaited her she stood facing in the opposite direction, building up the courage to attempt the ridiculous.

She tightened the bag’s shoulder straps. Closing her eyes she whispered a silent prayer before opening them again. She took a deep breath in and then let it out with a whoosh. Unable to put off the inevitable any further she flicked a mental switch.

‘Oh fuck, oh fuck.’ Spinning round, her mind screamed at her
Go go go!
Her long limbs accelerated her towards the abyss. Slamming her foot down she thrust out into the air, arms flailing, eyes wide, mouth agape. Air whipped around her as she flew through it to come thumping down on the platform moments later. A millisecond after that the wall nullified her forward momentum with a shoulder-numbing impact.

Sitting up, she rubbed her bruised body. Riley held out a hand and she scrambled to her feet.

‘You okay?’ he asked.

She nodded, an exhilarating mix of relief, accomplishment and joy at having made the leap flooding her body and mind. She’d never felt more alive. A broad grin spread across her face, mirrored on Riley’s own.

He grew serious. ‘Keep focused, that was the easy bit, we still have the climb to do.’