Nano (26 page)

89

72 metres beneath the English Channel

Pete, Mai and Josh were used to the strain but the others were utterly exhausted. Billy was crying again. ‘He's hungry,' Mary stated as she tried to comfort him.

They had walked about 200 metres along the main tunnel.

‘According to my scanner,' Pete said to Mai and Josh, ‘we left the Pram about half a kilometre that way.' He pointed northwest towards the British end of the tunnel. His comms crackled. He stabbed at his wrist monitor.

‘Tom? Tom? Is that you?'

More crackling, then a voice came over the external speaker. It was breaking up so badly none of them could understand a word.

‘Tom, we can't make out what you're saying.'

‘Pete . . . out there . . .'

‘What are you saying, Tom?'

A burst of static. ‘Cave in . . . Get . . . 700 . . .'

‘What?'

Then they all heard a low rumble so loud it vibrated in their chests.

‘Holy Christ!' Josh exclaimed.

‘What?' Adam stared at him, wide-eyed.

Pete and Mai understood what it was simultaneously.

‘RUN!' Mai screamed.

‘What's happening?' Gabir yelled, turning from Pete to Mai.

‘Water! The blast must have . . . JUST RUN!' Josh screamed and grabbed Mary, pulling her up from where she had been sitting on the floor rocking Billy.

They all seemed to get it at once and dashed along the tunnel away from the sound.

The roaring grew louder staggeringly fast. It bounced around the walls, echoing and booming back from the concrete. Pete was in front, tapping at his wrist as he ran. Through the internal comms, he spoke to Mai. ‘I'm calling the Pram,' he said, an edge of fear clear in his voice.

She didn't reply, just ran. The sound was deafening. It was like waves breaking on a shingle beach but amplified 1000-fold. And it just kept growing.

‘How far?' Mai asked Pete. She could see a bend in the tunnel about 50 metres ahead.

It took a moment for him to respond. ‘I've got the Pram booted up by remote. It's turning in the tunnel. I estimate 100 metres beyond that bend.'

Mai turned her head as she ran. She could see Louis and Mary falling behind. She sped back and yelled at Josh. ‘Help me, Josh!'

He slowed and turned. Gabir and Adam dashed past him. He saw what was happening and ran after Mai. ‘Come on, Louis!' he bellowed, grabbing the Frenchman under the shoulder. The man's eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed in a heap. Josh bent down, lifted him into his arms and ran.

Mai had reached Mary and Billy. ‘Faster,' she shouted. ‘Mary, you have to run faster. You have to!' Mary looked at her, eyes huge with terror. Making a snap decision, Mai snatched Billy and pulled him to her, span on her heel and accelerated away.

Pete was first to the corner and first to see the Pram. He stopped for a second, trying to encourage them all on. That's when he saw the wall of water heading towards them. It was no more than 40 metres back along the tunnel.

Josh saw his expression and knew what he was seeing. He had no need to look.

Pete played desperate fingers over his wrist monitor, watching the Pram accelerate towards them. He dashed forwards, meeting the vehicle 20 metres on and bringing it to a halt. Flying around to the driver's side, he dived into the seat, span the machine around to face away from the flood and opened the side doors.

Adam and Gabir reached the Pram next, quickly followed by Josh carrying Louis. They all tumbled into the passenger compartment. Then came Mai and the baby. She dumped Billy in Gabir's lap, shot around and saw Mary about 10 metres back.

The wall of water had already passed the bend in the tunnel.

‘Mai! No! You'll never make it!' Pete roared through the internal comms, drowning out the crashing of water.

She ignored him, jumped off the side of the Pram and sprinted back towards Mary. She reached her, the mountain of water no more than 10 metres behind them. Grabbing her by the front of her shirt, she hurled the woman before her, ran as fast as she could to come parallel and screamed at the top of her voice, ‘Think of Billy!' She pulled at her again, propelling her on.

Mary slammed into the side of the Pram. Mai guided her half a metre to her left and threw her into the vehicle, tumbling in behind her as Pete floored the accelerator.

90

Singha Pitiya, Sri Lanka

War was by his pool again. Already as brown as a chestnut, sunning himself in the bright lemon of a Sri Lankan afternoon came high on his list of sensual pleasures. But then he had so many. He enjoyed the attentions of the boys from the village who stayed in his home, he loved the topless girls who were his waitresses and bartenders. He loved his corny old jokes, his mint juleps and his Turkish Delight. He loved sailing on his massive yacht,
Rosebud
, adored piloting his private jet and cherished the smell of his Aston Martins, even though he could no longer fit inside them. But most of all, he loved the thing that provided all these goodies. He loved the money he had amassed and he could find no greater pleasure in life than laying on a lounger by his pool, having a 10-year-old Sri Lankan boy rubbing oil into his blubbery back and tapping away at his laptop, analysing just how ridiculously rich he was.

War clicked his fingers and another 10-year-old boy ran forwards to adjust the sunshade so that it maintained a puddle of shadow over the computer. He glanced up at the child and then back at the screen. In that half second, War's world began to crumble.

‘What the . . .?' he exclaimed to no one. He stabbed at the keyboard. The screen changed but the data it showed was the same.

‘What?' War was utterly confused. He jerked up from his lounger, dragged the laptop off the marble floor of the deck and shouted at the shade boy. ‘Bring that over my head, you fucker!' he hollered.

Panic-stricken, the boy grabbed the handle of the sun shade and pivoted it around so that a broad shadow fell across the screen. War was so distracted, he didn't even care that the shade was over him as well as the computer. He glared at the monitor and jabbed a finger at the keyboard with such venom he kept missing the desired keys.

‘Shit! Shit! Shit!' he screamed and forced himself to calm down. He tapped the keys again a little more gently, bending his head forwards so his nose was only a few centimetres from the screen.

A new page appeared. It was from his personal management system. It was multi-encrypted and as far as he had been told, totally impregnable – expressly ‘for his eyes only'. War stared at it, his face drooping, his expression passing almost comically through incredulity, fury and then despair.

On the screen was a number. It represented War's total worth as calculated by him on the basis of the latest information from his brokers, agents, estate managers and web-controllers. It began as an 11-figure number, a sum greater than the GDP of a swath of Africa. But as War watched, the numbers flashed so fast he could barely follow them. However, what he could see, very clearly, was that the number was dropping, dropping precipitously.

Within a few moments, he was down to his last billion. That number dissolved so rapidly the screen was a blur of indecipherable digits. War swallowed hard and, in the time it took to complete that action, he had lost 100 million. And still the numbers plummeted.

‘Argh!' War screamed and attacked the keyboard. Nothing changed except for the numbers plunging ever downward. In a heartbeat, War lost the equivalent of a good-sized lottery win.

‘WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?' he shouted at the top of his voice. The Sri Lankan boys cowered, the topless girls vanished into the house.

War closed his eyes, looked away, sweat streaming down his cheeks. Then he glared at the screen, his look murderous. The numbers tumbled ever downward . . . into the last 100 million, the final 10 million . . . He was ordinary! A million . . . He was positively poor! War's mind reeled and the cascade stopped . . . at zero.

There was a noise from behind. He jolted his head around, jowls wobbling and saw two men staring straight at him.

91

Floor 199, Cloud Tower, Dubai

Steph explained what was going on to the 13 survivors. They took in the information with a mixture of reactions. Many of them simply nodded, some uncomprehending, others looking hopeful.

Saeed had regained some of his former composure and offered a cynical smile. ‘Captain America to the rescue,' he said without expression.

‘I'm Australian, actually,' Steph retorted and gave the man a dark look. ‘Right,' she turned back to the others, ‘we all need to move to the middle of the floor, fast. Everyone okay with that? Mohammed, Craig, Geoff? Can you help me with Chloe, please? The rest of you follow on close behind.'

Steph and Mohammed took one end of the stretcher, Craig and Geoff the other, and between them they lifted the injured woman. Chloe groaned and opened her eyes. She was sedated and the painkillers were working on overdrive. Steph and Mohammed led the way, picking a path through the rubble and piles of debris. The other 10 sur- vivors formed a bedraggled collection following in pairs and small groups.

In the centre of the level there was a raised triangular-shaped area. A fountain had once stood there but it had been knocked over. Water had shot into the air for half an hour after the missile had struck the tower until the main feed had fractured somewhere out of sight on a different floor. The area was saturated. In places, the rubble had become so sodden it formed a slurry the consistency of wet cement. It caked their shoes and splashed up their calves.

All around the demolished fountain lay the usual collection of smashed-up furniture, sheets of metal and plastic, computers, piles of soaked paper and clothes. Dotted around this there was the depressing sight of human body parts washed clean of blood, pale lumps of pink flesh like uncooked chicken.

They all pitched in to construct a makeshift barrier on three sides. This was made from desks, panels of wood, old doors and a couple of massive plants that had stood around the fountain.

‘Almost there,' Steph said as the last of the pieces of barrier were pulled into place around the gathered survivors. They all stank, they were all filthy, streaked in dust and oil and blood.

Steph crouched down beside Chloe and pulled the thermal blanket tight around her friend, tucking it under her chin. ‘How you bearing up?' she whispered. Chloe opened her eyes; they swam a little from the effects of the sedative. ‘I . . . I feel amazing actually, Steph. You should try this sometime.'

Steph smiled down at her and moved a few strands of auburn hair from Chloe's face. She leaned into her comms.

‘Ready.'

92

‘On my signal,' Mark said into the Big Mac comms, his voice picked up by each of the three Silverback pilots. ‘Three . . . two . . . one . . . fire.'

Dimitri, Ralph and Gina stabbed at their control panels within a millisecond of each other. The computer systems engaged immediately. Just 0.2 milliseconds later, three identical 3-metre-long, 20-centimetre diameter spiked maxinium poles shot across the 200 metres between the planes and the building, and slammed into the sides of the tower at precise, predetermined points immediately beneath Floor 199.

Seventy per cent of each pole sank into the infrastructure of the building, fixing them fast. And as the three Silverbacks banked away in three different directions, each of the poles telescoped out. Within 4 seconds, each pole had thickened to half a metre and grown lengthways to 5 metres.

‘Okay,' Mark stated. ‘So far, so good, guys. Begin net foundations.'

Dimitri made the first run. He brought around the nose of
George
, ran his fingers over the sheer plastic panel of his control module, altered a couple of minor parameters and shot towards the building. As he approached the northwest face of the Cloud Tower, a silver thread of pure nanocarbon fibre slipped from the underside of the plane. With incredible precision, he hooked the end of the cable around the metal spike and swung north, dragging the thread around the corner of the tower. Accelerating, he flew over the northeast wall. The thread passed under the spike on that face of the building. Dimitri ploughed through the clear air and did a 360-degree turn, hooking the cable over the spike. Banking tight around to port, the nanocarbon thread slithered around the southeast corner and he repeated the manoeuvre on the third spike.

As Dimitri reached full circle and went on to the second run, Gina came in from behind him, spinning
Keith
into a precise flight path. With pinpoint accuracy, she mimicked the course Dimitri had followed but allowing her carbon thread to weave around the spikes a little further out than Dimitri's first and second run.

Ralph swooped down in
Mick
and tucked in behind Gina. He repeated the process so that, between them, they began to weave the infrastructure of a nanonet like a vast spider's web, a hoop around the building made from one of the strongest materials known to man. And as the threads built up line upon line, hundreds of millions of nanobots set to work. Emerging from the threads like fleas from an infested animal, they began to form interconnections, building up a three-dimensional fabric as light as paper but 100 times stronger than reinforced titanium steel.

93

To the survivors on Floor 199, the sound of the three metal poles slamming simultaneously into the sides of the tower returned them to the moment over three hours earlier when the missile had struck the tower. This time though it was easy to believe the entire massive edifice of the Cloud Tower was going to crumble around them.

The vibrations created by the impacts of the spikes made the entire level shudder. Flying masonry, metal bolts and pieces of furniture smashed into the barrier constructed in the centre of the floor and bits of ceiling tumbled down to shatter harmlessly on its makeshift roof.

Steph started to remove the sheets of pressed steel and wood surfaces from above her head. ‘Give us a hand, will you?' she called to a couple of the men from Charlotte's party. Between them, they removed the rest of the material forming the canopy. She noticed a couple of people staring up and followed their line of sight.

It was as though snow was falling all around. Thousands of pieces of white insulation material, a type of styrofoam, tumbled from the ceiling. Steph couldn't help smiling. ‘Christmas has come early,' she said to Abu standing beside her. He was gazing up to the roof, his face more alive than she had yet seen it. They put out their hands, palms upward and caught the flakes.

But then came a new sound. It began as a distant squeal and grew rapidly louder. A couple of the party turned to the northeast face of the building, eyes widening in panic.

‘It's okay,' Steph called above the noise. ‘It's an E-Force jet.'

Dimitri's Silverback was flying along the side of the building, beginning his first circumvention of the Tower. Steph turned to see Chloe staring at her, her large brown eyes not quite focused.

‘Frank, Mohammed, Craig? Can you help me with Chloe?'

‘What are we doing now, exactly?' Saeed asked. He was standing just behind Mohammed, fixing Stephanie with his cold, black eyes. In spite of his aggression, he cut a rather pathetic figure. He was covered in dust, his face filthy and blood-streaked, his right arm in a sling, the bandage around the wound red with blood.

‘We're going to get out of here,' Steph snapped back.