State of Emergency (3 page)

They all started talking at once. After a moment, Harrison
put up his hands. 'Okay, okay. Controversial suggestion.'

'Are you serious?' Stephanie Jacobs asked. 'How could we
possibly –'

'Of course I'm serious.'

The four guests were suddenly quiet.

'You're all perfect candidates,' Harrison went on.

'Except that we all have lives already,' Pete Sherringham
retorted.

'I realise that. Look, no one expects you to give up your
careers. After an initial three-month intensive training
period, you will all return to your everyday lives and be . . .
well, for want of a better expression, on-call.'

'Three months! How can I give up my research for three
months?' Stephanie Jacobs exclaimed.

'I will take care of everything. Each of you has individual
needs. Each of you will be remunerated in full for any
financial losses, and you'll be paid handsomely for your
time. Josh, I know your new book isn't out for six months.
You can still work on the next one if you want to. We have
peerless research facilities. Pete, your number two can run
Globex for three months and you can be in constant touch
with your managers from here. And Stephanie, the same
applies. You have our resources at your disposal, and the
everyday running of the lab can be managed. Maiko, there'll
be no problem arranging a sabbatical from NASA for you.'

There was a heavy silence for a moment. Then Pete
Sherringham spoke up. 'Okay, you seem to have all bases
covered, Mark. But why should any of us agree to give up
our time and jeopardise our hard-earned careers?'

Harrison looked around the table. He knew the answer.
Each of the four were high achievers, determined and truly
exceptional people. But he had studied their profiles. He
knew, for example, that each of them had reached a point in
their lives where they needed a new challenge. 'The decision
is entirely yours,' he said. 'But there is one last thing I want
to show you.'

He stood up and led them back to the seminar room where
they had met. Harrison picked up the remote and flicked on
the screen behind him. 'This happened just before I came in
here to introduce myself,' he said.

The lights dimmed and the screen lit up. It showed
the perilous scene on the Cretan mountainside. A rescue
worker was making his way under the stricken coach when
lightning struck. They all watched him fly through the air.
Then, moments later, the coach began to slide. The camera
followed it until it hit the rocks below and exploded.

Mark Harrison was driven in silence through the prison
gates. Twelve-foot-high grey fences stood to left and right.
The view through the windscreen was swept with rain.
So different to Tintara
, he thought. He had got used to the
sunshine and lush vegetation, and autumnal New York State
just didn't cut it.

Letting his mind wander, he felt a familiar knot of
excitement. His dream of creating E-Force was finally
coming together. It was the culmination of his ambitions,
a blend of all his talents, education and experience. Since
growing up in Texas as a super-intelligent kid out of sync
with his classmates and even his own family, he had been
extraordinarily successful. He had savoured his time at
university in England and had been extremely popular,
becoming the President of the Oxford Union. After that,
his career in IT had been a simple progression from one
triumph to another, and then his switch to the US military
had brought him immediate rewards.

He had been destined for great things, but no matter how
much he achieved he always wanted more. It was clear to
him now that something had always been missing, and that
something was E-Force.

Mark cast his mind back over the meeting with the four
people he most wanted as members. They had spent the
night at Base One and he had shown them around the
complex, trying, in his enthusiasm, not to go overboard.

He had even attempted to play down the state-of-the-art
facilities at Tintara. His guests had all left deeply impressed.

He hadn't expected instant commitment, and of course none
of them had signed up there and then. He hadn't pushed
them. Better to let them mull it over.

He was confident about three of the visitors – Pete
Sherringham, Maiko Buchanan and Dr Stephanie Jacobs.
Josh Thompson was the problematic one. Josh was almost a
celebrity – in some ways he had the most to lose.

And now
, Mark thought,
here I am, hoping to enlist the vital
sixth member of E-Force.

When Mark was led into the cell he found Tom Erickson
with his back to him. The light from a laptop cut through
the gloom. The guard retreated and locked the door. Erickson
spun his wheelchair and snapped shut the laptop.

He looked like a surfer except his legs were limp and
twisted. Tom Erickson had marked his nineteenth birthday
just a month earlier. His IQ had been recorded at 202 (four
points higher than Stephen Hawking). He was wearing baggy
jeans and an oversized Ramones T-shirt. His dark hair was
lank and hung to his shoulders. His face was gaunt, but his
dark eyes were alive and childlike.

It was a face Harrison knew from the cover of
Time
magazine, for Erickson was the most gifted computer
hacker on earth. And it was this gift that had landed him
here in Aldermont Correctional Facility with a six-year
prison sentence. One year earlier he had been convicted
of defrauding a private bank in Washington to the tune of
$60 million. He had done it without ever moving away from
his laptop.

Erickson was only ten when a truck had hit him outside
his home in Baltimore. He had come so close to death that
a priest had been called to the ICU. But he had survived,
although his legs were rendered completely useless. Bedridden
for a year, he had turned to computers and learned he had
an intuitive understanding of them. He could almost merge
with them. He played a hard drive the way Hendrix played
a Strat – by instinct.

Tom's problems started when he hit puberty and began
to resent his predicament. He could blame no one, but that
only made it worse. He started to rebel against everything
– his parents, school, but most of all some nebulous thing
called 'authority'.

At his trial, public opinion had turned against Tom when
he admitted he had robbed the bank simply because he
could – because he wanted, as he put it, to 'fuck people
around'. In a world in which money was more important
than anything else, the trial had made Erickson infamous.
National headlines dubbed him an 'Evil Genius' and 'Doctor
Frankenstein of Cyberspace'.

He was no such thing, Mark knew. He was a kid with a
great talent and no respect for authority. In other words,
extremely dangerous but not inherently evil. 'I'm amazed
they still let you near a computer,' he remarked.

Erickson looked Mark up and down. 'They think it's safe
as long as I'm not online. Which
would
be true . . .'

Mark couldn't resist a smile. 'An odd thing to admit to.'

'Not really. Think you can prove anything? Good luck,
man!'

'Okay, maybe we should start again,' Mark said. He walked
over to Erickson with his hand out. The boy was reticent
but took it limply, his long, thin fingers barely touching
Harrison's.

'So what brings you to sunny Aldermont?'

'I have an offer I think will be mutually beneficial.'

'Don't tell me – another state-financed cluster-fuck. You
have "government lackey" stamped on your forehead, dude.'

Mark looked confused.

'It goes like this,' Erickson sighed. 'The suits in Washington
have got themselves in the shit again and will promise to
knock a couple of months off my sentence if I solve their
latest IT screw-up. You must know it wouldn't be the first
time.'

Mark lowered himself onto the edge of the bed. The boy
glared at him.
I can understand your frustration
, Mark thought.
Such wasted talent. It would make anyone furious with the world
.
'Well, I'm happy to say you couldn't be more wrong,' he
replied after a moment. 'Take a look at this.' He handed
Erickson a CD.

An image appeared on the boy's laptop. He looked
disinterestedly at the screen, then frowned. His fingers
skittered over the keys and his expression changed to one
of sceptical curiosity. On the screen, a set of specifications
and schematics flowed down as Erickson moved the mouse.
Finally, he looked up, his head tilted slightly. 'Nice fantasy,
Mr Government Man.'

'Reality.'

Erickson flicked a glance back at the screen. 'You're fucking
with me.'

'No,' Mark said, folding his arms. 'What you have there
is a spec for the most sophisticated computer ever built, a
prototype quantum computer.'

'But we're – what – twenty years away from such a
thing!'

'Clearly not.'

'Look, what's this all about? Assuming a quantum
computer exists – which I doubt – what do you want me
for?'

Mark told him the basic facts about E-Force. The boy
stayed silent. When he had finished, the only sounds were
from outside, a shout in the distance and the slamming of
a heavy door.

'Okay,' Erickson said finally. 'So I wasn't that far wrong.
You've hit a problem with your goody-two-shoes scheme.
What you offering for my services? Three months for good
behaviour?'

'You know,' Mark said, fixing his gaze on the strange
kid in the wheelchair, 'for such an intelligent guy, you
can be remarkably slow. I want you with us at Base One –
permanently. Tom, I'm offering you a way out.'

A conventional jet would take two and a half hours to get
from southern California to Tintara. But the passengers
leaving an isolated base near San Diego were not aboard
a 747. A plane like theirs would not be in regular service
for another couple of decades. It was a VTOLPA – a vertical
take-off and landing passenger aircraft – one of only seven
in the world. Known as the Hummingbird, it could carry 22
passengers and crew in considerable comfort at 40,000 feet,
with an average cruising speed of mach 6, a little under 4000
miles an hour. This meant it could cross the stretch of the
Pacific Ocean to Tintara in twenty minutes.

Maiko Buchanan, Stephanie Jacobs and Pete Sherringham
hardly knew one another, but they now had common
ground. Each of them had agreed to join E-Force. That first
evening on Tintara, two weeks earlier, none of them had
been able to express how they felt. It had taken time to sink
in. So they had simply enjoyed a friendly dinner, drinks and,
of course, the grand tour. Most importantly, though, they
had all got on well.

Maiko had been the first to make a commitment. Mark had
met her five years earlier at NASA, when he had helped with
the agency's IT upgrades. Even back then, before Buchanan
had her own mission command, he had been impressed by
her abilities and commitment. But the thing he liked most
about her was her open-mindedness. She could see the big
picture. This was the crucial reason he had invited her to
join the team.

It was her ability to visualise that had made it so easy for
Maiko to take the leap. That, and the fact the invitation had
come at a great time. Her role at NASA had become a little
nebulous. She was one of their most experienced pilots, but
the sense of adventure was slipping from her grasp.

Maiko's life had been relatively uncomplicated until about
six months before. She lived in Sugar Land, outside Houston,
with her mother and her sixteen-year-old daughter, Greta.
But her mother had now moved to a nursing home, and
Greta was going through a rebellious phase. Maiko was still
not sure what the root of the problem was, except that Greta
was determined to reject her heritage wholesale and to be
considered completely American, which of course she was.
Maiko, though, still felt drawn to the country of her birth,
the place where she had spent the first decade of her life. It
was something Greta could not grasp, and Maiko disliked
the fact that her daughter seemed to be ashamed of her
family's roots. Greta had now moved in with her stepfather,
Howard Buchanan, the man Maiko had divorced five years
ago. Which left Maiko facing the prospect of living alone in
her large house, going through the motions of a career that
had peaked, and with no sign of a love life. It hadn't taken
much to persuade her to pick up the phone.

The Hummingbird took off smoothly. Through billowing
vapour from the engines, they could see the ground falling
away. At 20,000 feet, the plane climbed on a steep diagonal
before levelling off at cruising altitude. Once they were
out over the Pacific, they felt a serge of acceleration as the
engines thrust the craft forward to a comfortable cruising
speed of mach 4.4.

Stephanie Jacobs peered out the window. She was feeling
suddenly unsure of herself, isolated.
Have I made the right
decision?
she wondered, then tried to smother her doubts.
Maiko had told her she had joined up because of good timing.
Perhaps the same was true for her. Stephanie's lab in Sydney
was relocating to a dedicated facility close to Avalon, a surf
town 20 miles north. And as she watched the clouds rush
by, she wondered for the first time whether perhaps Mark
Harrison had actually known all about this. Perhaps it had
informed his decision to contact her in the first place.
Never
mind
, she thought.
It doesn't matter. I've made the commitment
and that's that.

'So, what made you say yes, Pete?' Maiko Buchanan asked.
Stephanie Jacobs turned away from the window.

'Asked myself the very same question at least 20 times,'
Pete replied. His strong Geordie accent sounded oddly quaint
in this setting. He ran a hand through his thick sandy curls
and fixed the two women with his intense bright-blue eyes.
'Our Colonel Harrison is obviously a very persuasive fella.'
He smiled, but behind the nonchalance lay pain.

A month earlier, Pete had split from his second wife, Donna.
She had wanted children, he hadn't. In his eyes, the world
was a very nasty place, and bringing a new, innocent life into
that world would have been cruel. He could never understand
how intelligent people – who could see how corrupt the world
had become – still chose to fill it with more people. He had
loved Donna, but he had known that if he had let her have
her way, he would never have forgiven himself.

'It's interesting there're only the three of us,' Stephanie
said suddenly, snapping Pete out of his reverie.

'Not really,' Maiko replied. 'I never thought for a minute
Josh Thompson would commit.'

'You know him, right?'

'Yeah, and he's a great guy, but he's his own man. He's
also kinda famous now.'

Stephanie shrugged. 'I'm sure Harrison has a Plan B.
To be honest, I thought Josh Thompson was a bit full of
himself.'

Maiko grinned. 'He's certainly one for the ladies – so I'm
told!'

They heard a sound from the direction of the flight
deck and turned to see Mark Harrison approaching. Behind
him a young, long-haired man rolled along in a motorised
wheelchair.

'I'm glad you could all make it,' Mark said. He moved to
one side as the youth came forward. 'This is Tom Erickson,'
he added. 'Our IT guru.'

Peter Sherringham was the first to respond, shaking
Tom's hand warmly. The two women looked stunned – they
instantly recognised the infamous hacker.

'Well, I hope you're all enjoying the flight,' Harrison
said, easing himself into one of the armchair-sized seats. He
handed each of them a white envelope. 'Your contracts, and
a down payment on your services.'

Pete was the only one to open his. He gave the contents
a quick glance, but the others could tell he was pleased by
what he saw. He folded the envelope and put it in his jacket
pocket.

'I can't help noticing that there are only three of us from
our first visit,' Stephanie Jacobs said.

'Yes. Regrettably, Josh Thompson has decided not to join
us. But there are contingencies. Now, I wanted to just give
you a quick briefing en route to Tintara. Once we arrive
I want us to get straight down to business. Tom here will
be overseeing every aspect of our computer systems. I can't
emphasise enough the importance of this role. It's quite
possible our lives will depend on Tom's talents.'

'Don't take this the wrong way, lad,' Pete interrupted,
looking directly at Erickson. 'But aren't you supposed to be
behind bars?'

'I was, until this nice man from E-Force came to visit,'

Tom responded, nodding towards Mark. 'Looks like you're
going to have to trust an old jailbird, dude.'

Mark handed each of them a leather folder. 'Basic stuff,'
he said. 'Specs of the equipment, background info on the
set-up.'

They flicked through sheets of data on the island
and schematics of the base. Base One was the centre of
operations, and for obvious reasons its whereabouts was a
closely guarded secret. Tintara was little more than an atoll,
three and a half miles long and 1500 yards across, girdled
by pure white sand.

'This place is a freaking cliché,' Tom said, looking at an
aerial photograph of Tintara. 'Palm trees, fantasy beaches,
the works!'

'Yep, there's even a bar on the north beach run part-time
by a couple of very enthusiastic technicians. They do a mean
caipiroska,' Mark replied. 'There's almost nothing to see
from the air, though. Some of the key buildings are on the
surface, but camouflaged. As you saw on your first visit,' he
added, turning to Pete, Maiko and Stephanie, 'a lot happens
underground – we have living quarters, operations rooms
and technical support, including an amazing complex of
labs. The computer nexus is here,' he said, pointing out the
location for Tom's benefit.

'We're over 200 miles from the nearest island – a long
way from prying eyes. But, even so, security is tight. On
missions, the aircraft are sealed against unauthorised access,
and the skin of all vehicles and machinery has been coated
with Camoflin.'

'Which is?' Maiko asked.

'Another wonder from CARPA. It's a paint that camouflages
our equipment and blurs any photographs or video footage
taken by nosy individuals. We use the same stuff for the
buildings on the island. On the base, all access is controlled
by retinal-scan technology. You each have quarters in the
main accommodation area, here.' He tapped the map to
show them.

'Now, as you know, nothing has been tested in the field
yet and we won't be fully operational for three months.
Once your training is complete, you'll return to your day
jobs. But you'll be on-call to respond to any appropriate
emergency. We'll be ready to tackle a broad spectrum of
operations anywhere in the world. We can reach any point
on the globe within two or three hours.

'Potentially, there will be five of us on a mission, but
maybe not all at the same time. Tom will remain at Base
One. As the computer expert, he'll be there to support us
during a mission. Any questions?'

'How do you know if E-Force is needed?' Tom asked.

'BigEye, a set of satellites that monitors activity on the
Earth's surface. Look in the file – pages 105 to 123, I think.'
Mark paused for a moment. 'Okay, the training plan itself.
You'll each be put through a core programme, which will
involve an advanced survival course and instruction in how
to use all the equipment at our disposal, including piloting
the fleet of aircraft.'

Mark flicked a switch on his armrest and the cabin lights
dimmed. A screen lit up in front of them. 'Just a quick survey
of the equipment,' he said, and an image of a futuristic aircraft
appeared on the screen. It was the Hummingbird. 'This is
the plane we're sitting in,' he said. The image changed. 'And
this is the Silverback. You three saw it on your first trip.
We have four of these – John, Paul, George and Ringo. Top
speed of mach 10. Crew of two. These can carry 500 pounds
of equipment. They're designed to get one or two members
of E-Force anywhere on Earth, ultra-fast.'

'You serious about those speeds?' Tom asked. He was
shaking his head in disbelief.

'Yep,' Mark replied. 'All these planes are VTOL, for which
they use conventional jet engines. But once they're at
operational altitude, they shift to scramjets.'

'Scramjets?' Maiko said. 'We use them at NASA.'

'Of course. NASA's plane, the X-43A, is famous. Broke the
air speed record in 2004. Mach 9.8. Our planes use a very
advanced version of the same technology. Scramjets take in
oxygen from the air at supersonic speeds and use it to burn
fuel. They don't need to carry most of the propellant. They
just suck up the oxygen as they move through the air. A bit
like a whale eating plankton.'

The image changed again. This time a massive, almost
spherical aircraft appeared. It was silver, with a flight deck
high up on the sphere. It looked for all the world like a
giant burger. 'The Big Mac,' Mark said. 'Our main cargo
workhorse. It carries the heavy stuff; four-seater submarines,
heavy digging equipment, winching machinery. We use the
Big Mac to transport an array of equipment. This includes
the Mole, a 2000-horsepower burrowing machine, the Cage,
a protective framework for working in extremely unstable
conditions, and the Firefly, a two-seater firefighting vehicle
that can tolerate an outer-skin temperature of 1000 degrees
Celsius for an hour. Aside from these, we have an assortment
of heli-jets that can fly at mach 2, ground vehicles, boats
and high-speed subs.'

The screen flicked off and the lights came up.

'You said there was a core programme,' Stephanie said.
'What else is there?'

'I was just coming to that. You'll have a further programme
tailored to each of you. Those who've not had
military training will be put through a course based on one
used by the Green Berets. Those without medical training
will be given a crash course in essential procedures.' Mark
paused for a moment and looked into each of their faces.

'I won't pretend. It's going to be tough, very tough. Any
questions?'

'Yeah, just one,' Tom said. 'I take it I'll be exempt from the
hundred-yard sprint through mud and horseshit?'