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27

‘We tried the southwest emergency stairs,' Mohammed explained, his face expressionless. ‘It's hopeless.'

‘Why?' Jessica asked.

‘The bomb went off down there. Don't know where exactly.'

‘Oh hell!' Frank exclaimed.

‘We came back up from 197. You can't get onto that level. We're hoping the other staircase over there will give us another route down.' Mohammed nodded towards the southeast emergency exit.

He led the way over and without hesitating turned the handle and leaned on the door. It opened onto a stairwell identical to the one they had been in a few minutes earlier. He stared inside. The lights on the levels above had gone but on this floor they were still working, casting an eerie dull haze. Mohammed looked up and saw immediately that they couldn't go up even if they wanted to. The stairs to 200 were completely blocked with rubble.

Abu was at his elbow and pushed his way into the stairwell. The others came in after him. The first thing that hit them was the stink of burning rubber. Two steps inside the stairwell and the stench was almost unbearable. Leaning over the railings they could all see down half a dozen floors, where flames lapped around piles of rubble and concrete, dull reddish lumps in the gloom.

‘The same,' Mohammed said, deflated.

The group turned together and streamed back out onto the main floor, gasping for fresher air. Carmen was coughing, her face contorted in pain.

‘My wife's asthmatic,' Frank explained.

‘Do you have a ventilator?' Abu asked.

‘I did, son,' Carmen said between gasps. ‘In my bag . . . which I guess is now under at least a foot of rubble.'

‘Okay, so what now?' Saeed asked, staring at each of them in turn, arms folded across his chest.

Frank helped Carmen find somewhere to sit on top of a pile of concrete and settled down next to her, an arm about her shoulder. Jessica was standing close by, gazing around, trying to find some clue to help them but all she could see was abject destruction, everything in pieces, everything shattered. She felt sick.

‘Hey, look at this!' It was Abu who had wandered a few yards to study something on a metal pillar in what had been the middle of the walkway in front of the shops.

‘What is it?' Frank asked and started to pull himself up.

Mohammed walked over to where Abu was pointing at a diagram attached to the pillar.

‘It's a layout of each of the mall floors,' the boy said, pointing at a plan of the top storeys of the building. The sign was dented and discoloured in places but still readable.

Mohammed stared at the diagram then ran a finger over the surface, reading the labels. ‘We're here,' he said half to himself. ‘One-ninety-eight. There're four more storeys above us, then the roof.' His finger stopped moving. ‘And a helipad.'

Saeed had arrived at Mohammed's side. He stared at the schematic. ‘You're not serious,' he said, shaking his head.

‘What is it?' Frank asked as he approached. The two women, Jessica and Carmen, watched intently.

‘This crazy person,' Saeed said and flicked his head towards Mohammed, ‘thinks we should go up to the roof!'

Frank paused for a moment. They could hear him breathing heavily. He ran a hand over his filthy chin. ‘Might not be so crazy,' he said slowly.

‘What? Go up? Are you mad too? We have to go down – down, not up!'

‘How do you think we may do that?' Mohammed asked calmly.

‘There must be other exits.'

They all studied the schematic, silent for several long moments.

‘There're only two emergency exits,' Abu said.

‘Get out the way, kid,' Saeed snapped and shoved Abu roughly aside.

‘Hey!' the boy exclaimed, but Mohammed gripped his shoulder and eased him back. ‘Not worth it,' he said, quietly. ‘Let the fool work it out for himself.'

Saeed ignored them and peered intently at the diagram, desperately trying to find something that simply wasn't there. ‘Allah!' he shouted, hitting the pillar with the flat of his hand and turning away, his face twisted in anger and frustration. ‘Okay,' he hissed. ‘We go up.'

Mohammed walked over to Carmen and Jessica and helped the older woman to her feet before picking a path through the devastation back to the southwest exit. They knew it was safe at least to the next floor up, 199, because they had already come down that way. A few minutes of negotiating the rubble and the six survivors found themselves in a stairwell once again. They quickly reached Floor 199.

Mohammed leaned over the railing and looked up. It appeared to be clear but it was impossible to tell from where he was. ‘Is everyone okay?' he asked.

Carmen's breathing was laboured. Frank looked exhausted. He was leaning forwards with his hands on his knees, taking deep breaths.

They took the next flight of stairs a little slower, turned the bend and began the final flight up to 200. They could see the door to the mall ahead of them. The number ‘200' in small metal numerals was pinned to the door, the middle ‘0' slightly askew.

Two steps up the second flight of stairs, they stopped. Immediately past the door to the mall, the emergency staircase had collapsed, only picking up again as a ragged platform a dozen steps up. It was impossible to reach without ropes or ladders.

Frank and the two women sank to the floor. Carmen started to sob. Abu leaned against the wall and took deep breaths, his face lathered with sweat. Mohammed was staring silently at the chasm ahead of them.

‘So what now, oh wise man?' Saeed said, close to Mohammed's shoulder.

The Bedouin turned, his face expressionless. ‘We go back to 199 and wait to be rescued.'

28

Somewhere above Dubai, 9.46 am

The view from the microlight was astonishing and Azrael felt absolutely triumphant. The chaos, the death, the pain he had caused. It was intoxicating. The tower was gutted. Hundreds of people – tiny dots on the ground – were rushing across the forecourt.

He had trained for three months with the microlight and knew exactly what he was doing. There were at least three rescue helicopters flying around the building and he spotted a military chopper a little way off. None of them were interested in him though. They were fully occupied with the unfolding disaster at the Cloud Tower.

Swooping down towards the roof of the stricken building, he pulled back on the throttle, slowing the tiny engine and coming in to hover for a few seconds a dozen metres above the top of the tower. Then, carefully, he lowered the one-man flying machine and touched down on the roof between two massive air-conditioning vents.

Unbuckling, he jumped out onto the roof, catching a whiff of burning. ‘Oh, the sweet smell of destruction . . . better than napalm in the morning,' he thought to himself.

Removing a bag from the tiny aircraft, he pulled an automatic rifle to his shoulder, tugged on a belt of grenades and slung a belt of ammo across his chest. Lastly, he pocketed his hand gun and radio. From the rear of the cockpit he yanked out a small holdall.

Reaching in, he pulled out a roll of grey plastic. He unravelled it to reveal a sheet about 4 metres square. It was what the popular science magazines dubbed an ‘invisibility cloak'. The scientists who had developed it at the weapons research establishment on Trista da Cunha called it a ‘shroud'. It had the ability to scatter light falling on it so that it merged into the background, making it the perfect camouflage.

He dragged it to the microlight and pulled it over the top of the machine. Taking care to cover every inch of the flying machine, he tucked in the lower flaps. In one corner of the sheet, he found a flat electronic pad. He tapped it and the microlight seemed to disappear.

29

Somewhere above Dubai, 10.54 am

‘Entering visual range,' Pete said from the lead Silverback,
John
. He banked around from the southeast, over Dubai, descending rapidly from his cruising altitude of 31,000 metres. Sixty seconds later, he arrived over the Cloud Tower, precisely 4 minutes ahead of schedule. The other three Silverbacks were flying close behind. The four aircraft swooped down in a square formation over the tower, descended to 25 metres above the roof helipad and hung there.

‘Well, there it is,' Pete said mournfully. ‘A pretty mess if ever I saw one.'

Blown by the strong winds coming in from the desert, black smoke billowed from a gaping chasm in the northeast side of the tower. The
Scourge
missile had slammed into the south-facing wall of the triangular building and sliced a hole straight through it, emerging from the northeast face, close to the north corner. It had ripped away at least half a dozen floors and smashed up a dozen more. A huge black smudge extended dozens of storeys above and below the impact site and fires burned as far as 10 storeys away.

Pete opened a comms link with Mark aboard the Big Mac. ‘I can count seven UAE Air Force helicopters hovering around the Cloud Tower. They're spraying water at the sides of the building to douse the flames but it doesn't look like they're making much difference. I can also see scores of rescue vehicles around the base of the tower.'

‘Copy that,' Mark said. ‘I'm told local rescue services have been fully deployed. A couple of thousand people have already left the tower through ground level exits. The area has been sealed off. There's a Royal Navy frigate, HMS
Valiant
, steaming for Dubai port at top speed. The
Valiant
has some specialist equipment and 200 well-trained men. Can you see anything else on the ground?'

‘A lot of fire trucks and water hoses,' Steph replied as she flew
Ringo
over the tower. ‘I can see on my screen people swarming around. A few TV stations are there too. There's a media chopper hovering level with the top of the Cloud Tower a few hundred metres to the north. What about us? Do we have clearance to land?'

‘Just got it. Direct from the Federal President and the Council of Rulers. They've given us complete autonomy and offered every resource they have.'

‘That's good –'

‘Hang on. I'm just getting some new stats from Tom.' Mark patched them into the network, and the data and images came up simultaneously on the screens aboard each Silverback. ‘Tom,' Mark said, ‘can you talk us all through it?'

‘The main image is a thermal of the tower.'

The pilots studied their screens. Each of them could see a representation of the tower. It appeared as a mere outline. The main feature of the image was the complex array of moving coloured areas within the outlined framework.

‘You can see there are some serious fires burning,' Tom said. ‘Flammable material from the “Chasm” – the hole punched clean through the tower, between 185 and 195 – has been pushed upward and downward. There are major fires on 196 and 197 and on 184 down to 180. These fires have plenty of fuel. Sybil reckons they could burn for more than 48 hours . . . if the tower was still standing then.'

‘What?' It was Chloe. ‘You mean we have another 9/11 scenario?'

‘I'm afraid so. We need to extinguish those fires asap. They're eroding the main support structure. Take a look at Diagram 3.'

The new image was a structural schematic of the Cloud Tower. ‘We managed to track this down. It shows the tower's design. There's a central steel and concrete core – acts as the spine. The floors are like ribs connected to the central column. The missile sliced through the tower at an angle that missed a direct hit with the core.'

‘That's good, right?' Steph said.

‘Except the missile explosion has weakened it and now the fires are seriously compromising the infrastructure.'

‘You mean the tower is going to go whatever we do?'

‘Yes.'

‘How long do we have?' Mai asked solemnly.

‘Sybil's still working on it.'

‘A ballpark, Tom?' Mark interrupted, impatiently.

Tom sighed. ‘Unless the fires are extinguished within . . .' there was a pause over the comms, ‘just over 21 minutes, the tower will collapse about 25 minutes later – 46 minutes or so from now, at about 11.42 local time. If you get the fires out in the time frame, we'll have bought ourselves maybe an extra hour, at best . . . 12.42 pm.'

30

Paris, 7.40 am local time

Josh Thompson just made it to Platform 6 at Gare du Nord as it was closing on the last of the Eurostar passengers. The guard had a hand up and was shaking his head when he suddenly recognised Josh from the cover of
Le Monde
and half a dozen other papers and magazines from Thompson's days as a member of E-Force. His irritable expression changed to one of awestruck surprise. With a smile, he reopened the gate and wished Josh a safe journey.

The first class carriage was some way down the train but Josh had only a small overnight bag with him. He had arrived in Paris directly from London the previous afternoon to deliver a lecture at La Sorbonne. The lecture had gone well and had been attended by almost 1000 students and members of the public. But even after such an event, Josh still found it hard to accept that he was a celebrity. Before E-Force, he had been a successful academic and writer who was respected in his field – the arcane discipline of encryption. He had written the standard text on the subject –
The Theory and Practice of Cryptography
– but that had not exactly been a hit in airport bookshops.

Now everything had changed. He had walked out on E-Force six months ago after a row with Mark Harrison. But the move had done his capital as a writer and lecturer no harm at all. He had published the book he had almost finished before joining E-Force –
Everyperson's Guide to Codes and Encryption
– that had gone on to top the non-fiction bestseller lists in a dozen countries.

But for all this sudden success, for all the money and accolades that had come his way, he missed being a member of E-Force. He missed the thrill of adventure, the terror of putting his life on the line, daring to go into the most dangerous situations imaginable. These days, he drove a Ferrari but it was nothing compared to the Silverbacks he had once flown.

Yet it was not just these prosaic things. Although he could never have admitted it to anyone, he missed the others in the team. Sure, he had fallen out big-time with Mark, but he had never stopped respecting the man . . . and liking him. He also missed the rest: Mai, Pete, Tom and perhaps most of all, Stephanie Jacobs, for whom he had always had a soft spot. On their last mission together, he and Steph had gotten lost in the Gobi Desert and almost died together. That sort of thing bonds you, forever.

As the train pulled out of the station, he was alone in first class. For a few minutes, he watched the city slide away behind him. It was raining and the concrete and slate were wet. It looked bleak, grey clouds hung low and rain beat against the windows of the train as it began to pick up speed. He was suddenly drawn away from the view by someone opening the carriage door. He turned and saw a steward in a blue SNCF uniform. The man stuck his head around the edge of the door. He was small and lean, his skin a mocha brown; of Algerian descent, Josh guessed.

‘Dr Thompson?' the man said in heavily accented English. ‘I'm sorry to bother you, sir. The PA is faulty. Someone's working on it right now but I just wanted to let you know the dining carriage is open.'

Josh nodded and took in the man's name on his badge. ‘Thanks, Gabir.'

He felt tired. After dining with the Dean and his wife the previous evening, he had attended a party organised by the student union. He hadn't reached his bed until 2 am and then his alarm had gone off three hours later. What with that and the gentle soporific rocking of the train, he was soon asleep.

He stayed in one position, his chin down on his chest for over an hour and was only awoken when an announcement came through the repaired PA informing him they were about to enter the Channel Tunnel. He snapped awake and felt surprisingly alert.

‘Perhaps it's true what they say about the benefits of power naps,' he said aloud to the empty carriage and turned to the window just as the train dived into the darkness of the tunnel.

Through the window lay uniform blackness and Josh soon became very bored. He stood up, stretched and walked out into the corridor, heading for the dining carriage. It was a smart affair – comfortable seats at tables covered with crisp white linen cloths. There was a bar at the end of the carriage with a small group of people standing drinking. A liveried barman paced around filling glasses. The lighting was a little subdued to add atmosphere. Through the windows, the walls of the Channel Tunnel flashed past at over 150 kilo- metres per hour.

Josh crossed to the bar and leaned into a space a little way from two men who were chatting amiably. The barman returned from the tables as Josh arrived.

‘Dr Thompson,' he said. He was a huge, ruddy-faced, jowly man with a soft Scottish accent. ‘Good morning, sir. My name is Angus Faulks. I'm your bar steward today. What would you like?'

Josh ordered a tomato juice and turned to survey the room. He could smell croissants and coffee.

The man nearest to him at the bar turned. ‘Hello,' he said and did a double take. ‘Good Lord. You're –'

‘Karl Marx?' Josh responded and the man laughed.

Sticking out a hand, he said: ‘My name's Adam, Adam Franklin.' He was tall and solidly built. He wore jeans and a tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbows. His unruly hair and furrowed brow reminded Josh of the TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson. Franklin turned to the other man. ‘And this chap is Louis Chabon. Don't ask me anything about him, we've only just started chatting.'

The Frenchman was a foot shorter than Adam Franklin, with small, dark eyes, a face as thin as a bird's, all bone and nose. He extended a hand. ‘My pleasure,' he said, clearly oblivious to who Josh was.

The tomato juice arrived, Josh took a sip and nodded at the steward. ‘Good.'

Gabir appeared from a hatchway behind the bar. ‘Ah, good morning, sir. Glad you could join us. The view outside is, well, a little bland, no?'

Josh smiled and turned to Adam Franklin. ‘This is all rather nice, isn't it?'

‘Your first time, I take it?'

‘Except for the trip to Paris from London yesterday. I always fly. Thought I'd try something different.'

‘Lord! I work for Lloyds Bank as liaison between us and Banque Nationale. Have to make this ruddy return journey twice a week and rail takes the edge of it a shade, I can tell you.'

The Frenchman, Louis Chabon, was about to say something when they all heard an explosion. Then came an incredibly loud screeching sound that cut through the carriage. The whole train heaved to the left, then to the right. The alarm screeched. The train shook again. A row of wine bottles and glasses on a shelf behind the bar smashed to the floor.

A woman at a table at the far end of the carriage screamed and Louis Chabon slammed into Josh, who had instinctively grabbed hold of the edge of the bar. Josh was pushed backwards by the force of the collision and the shuddering of the train. He span around and just managed to keep his balance. The Frenchman flew past him and landed heavily on a table close by, crying out as his leg hit the edge. Then Josh caught a glimpse of a man in a dark suit and white shirt being thrown from his seat clean across the compartment. He slammed into the window on the far side and bounced back, hit the table and collapsed to the floor.

The lights in the carriage snapped off, then on again. They stayed on for 2 seconds then clicked off a second time. The carriage was thrown into darkness for at least 10 seconds, then they all heard a whirring sound as an emergency backup system kicked in and the lights flickered back on. The train began to slow, the brakes squealing in protest. Josh saw sparks flying up the outside of the window and heard the pitch of the engine drop down an octave. Then came a loud crunch as something overhead smashed onto the roof.

The brakes went into overdrive. The train shuddered, rocking twice more before it came to a complete stop. The only sound Josh could hear was the moaning of the shocked and injured.