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            Coleman had studied satellite photos before the mission, but they hadn’t done the sheer scale of research installation any justice. At best, the photos gave the impression of a facility sunk in quicksand until only its giant cement roof remained exposed.

           
People actually live under there.
The best and brightest
. Geneticists from around the world competed to spend time working under that plug. Shops, dormitories, recreational areas, a swimming pool, the Complex had everything its community of international researchers and their families required to approximate the illusion of normal daily life.

            Including his ex-wife and son.

            Vanessa and David. Vanessa
Sharp
, Coleman repeated in his mind.
She was back to using her maiden name now. Had been, in fact, for the last six years. It still sounded strange. Like she had gone back in time to be the person she’d been before they married.

            But she wasn’t that person anymore. She’d come a long way.

            Coleman’s platoon was chosen for this operation because of Vanessa. During his briefing on the
USS
Coronado
, no one said, ‘We know you were married to Vanessa Sharp’, but it hung unspoken. This morning when her picture appeared on the briefing screen, all eyes flicked his way. A onetime weapons inspector herself, the brass flagged Vanessa as both a critical operational objective and a potential problem.

            Because Vanessa Sharp hated the military.

            Her outspoken views were common knowledge. She could argue the topic for hours -
American weapons-research traded like shares. Fraudulent military claims of biological weapons. Cover-ups after botched weapon trials
– the list went on.

            It was just a shame, Coleman thought, that her feelings manifested themselves
after
they had been married. They’d separated eight years ago. It was hardest on David, their son, with Coleman and Vanessa’s constant terse negotiations over the boy.

            Coleman doubted he’d be as useful as the brass obviously hoped.

            How would she feel about her ex-husband leading an uninvited team of armed Marines into her research facility? Accompanying weapons inspectors, no less. Hopefully she wouldn’t take it personally.

            Please, who are you kidding? Everything is personal with her.

            Trouble between them seemed inevitable. If they couldn’t agree on how much time Coleman could spend with David, his
own son
, then what chance did they have with this? Their arguments before the break-up had been bitter, but always just between them. Today a lot more was at stake than just a marriage.

            Coleman mentally shoved aside the looming problem of Vanessa. Things would unfold however they would, and there was nothing he could do about it now. On the bright side, he’d be seeing David and where Vanessa had been hiding him for the last eleven months.

            That’s not fair. We agreed this was better than boarding school. Don’t be bitter.

            He took the opportunity to scan the research facility again from the air. Still thinking about David, he found his eyes drawn over to the dome.

            The largest above-ground structure was a massive transparent biodome. Three hundred meters long, the oblong dome bulged from the desert like a futuristic space base. Under the dome nestled a sprawling botanical reserve. Landscaped for recreational purposes, the reserve dual-functioned as a living gene bank for genetic research. It reminded Coleman of the Eden Project in Cornwall, England, where a series of biodomes contained examples of widely varied ecosystems from around the world. He and Vanessa had backpacked across England before their engagement. The Eden biodomes were the highlight of her trip, but they were featherweights compared to this monster.

David raved about the dome during his phone calls. He said parts of it looked like Jurassic Park, and that he knew the place better than anyone in the Complex.

            As if the plug and the biodome weren’t enough, there was more.

            The lawn.

            Visible from space, a two mile wide circle of genetically-enhanced grass surrounded the Complex in a lush green oasis. Coleman knew the lawn was fundamental to the operation of the Complex, but that was all he could discover.

           
Where do they get the water for all that grass?
he wondered.

            ‘Okay. We’ve just lost GPS navigation,’ advised the pilot. He spoke quickly into his headset and then shook his head at the co-pilot. ‘I’ve lost the other birds.’

            ‘It’s their security system,’ confirmed Coleman, leaning forward to talk over the chopper drone. ‘The signal jamming should start about five clicks out if all their C-Guards are fired up.’

            ‘Spot on,’ confirmed the co-pilot, checking his instruments. ‘Five clicks. That’s some impressive jamming hardware.’

            No landlines served the Complex. It was all wireless. In a world where every cell phone could transmit images and data around the world, the C-Guards offered the only secure option.

            Coleman had experience with the types of C-Guards used for protecting VIP convoys, but never anything on this scale.
C-Guards were very high powered radio jamming devices.
During a security alert, such as the theft of sensitive research data, no electronic signals could breach a five kilometer zone around the Complex. This prevented the stolen data being transmitted off site.
T
he devices shrouded the Complex in a zone of radio silence.

            But not for long.

Coleman pointed out the
windshield
. ‘There. That helipad’s our drop point.’

‘I see it,’ replied the pilot, flicking off a series of alarm switches. The Pave Hawk wasn’t happy about all the jamming to its navigation and weapon systems.

Coleman checked his wristwatch and smiled. At that exact moment, two Pave Hawks peeled off left and right. The elevator and ventilation plant rooms made ideal infiltration points. One helicopter headed to the west elevator plant room, the other to its eastern equivalent on the right side of the plug. A third bird went humming straight over Coleman’s Pave Hawk towards the northern plant room.

            Coleman struggled to keep the growing excitement from his face. A wave of anticipation crested through the helicopter’s passengers, Marines and weapons inspectors both.

            It was show time, and his team were taking the front entrance.

#

Gunmen poured from the freight containers, leaping over Ralph’s body. They moved fast, with purpose, securing the storage area, then the freight lift, then the entire south-west quadrant of the basement level.

            ‘All clear,’ reported the lead gunman, a huge man with the body of a competitive weight-lifter. ‘Zero resistance.’

            At that signal, two men stepped from the first container.

            They couldn’t have looked more different from one another.

            The face on the left was so angular that nervous sweat dripped from the tip of his nose. His brown hair clumped straight back like a rat squirming from a sewer. He looked prematurely aged, with deep lines surrounding his sallow eyes like cracks in a drying saltpan.

            Dressed in the same grey military-style fatigues as the gunmen, he was the only person not wearing a headset radio and a grey bullet-proof vest.

            This was Francis Gould.

            But it was the second man who dominated the scene, diminishing Gould’s presence to an insubstantial shadow.

            Turning his head slowly, absorbing the scene from left to right, Cameron Cairns’s rugged features exuded a cold aura of barely-restrained violence.

            Cairns’s presence triggered instinctive fear in strangers. When he entered the room, you immediately appreciated your own mortality. When he looked at you with those close set eyes over his big parrot-beaked nose, you just
knew
he was auditing your heartbeats, deciding if you’d had enough already.

            Or that’s how Gould felt. Cairns terrified the living shit out of Gould.

           
With good reason
, Gould told himself.
I know what he’s capable of.

            As Cairns crossed from the container to the lead gunman, his every fluid gesture demonstrated confident control of his body and surroundings. He clenched and unclenched a grey-stubbled lower jaw that looked strong enough to bite through a steel bar.

            ‘Lieutenant Bora,’ Cairns said to the lead gunman, his voice a husky growl. ‘The chest.’

            Lieutenant Bora signaled two gunmen with a quick hand gesture. The gunmen shouldered their weapons and rushed into the freight container. They returned carrying a heavily-reinforced steel chest between them.

            Cairns glanced up at the nearest ceiling vent and then lowered his unsettling gaze back down to Gould. ‘Dr Gould, if you please.’

            Gould came forward, almost tripping over his own boots. The long wait in the cramped freight container had sent his legs into severe pins and needles. He looked up at the ceiling vent.
I’m actually going to do this. There’s no backing out now. He’ll kill me if I don’t.

            Gould withdrew a slim silver canister from a concealed pocket inside his grey oversized military fatigues. It was the size and shape of a big cigar. For a moment he stared at the canister, his thumb stroking the sealed cap.

            He pictured the face of Vanessa Sharp in his mind. It proved all the motivation he needed.
This is for you, bitch.

            In one deft movement, he flicked off the cap and held the canister up to the vent.

            After five seconds, he lowered the canister. His hand was shaking. Angry at his own reaction, he threw the expended container across the floor so that it settled against Ralph’s body in an expanding pool of blood. Hate was a powerful emotion.

            Gould looked at the chest, at the ruthless men guarding it, at all the heavily-armed men standing around him.

            All guarding an empty chest.

            But it wouldn’t stay empty for long.

            Biological hell had been unleashed.

#

Three levels up from where Gould stood under the ceiling vent, Sasha Kinnane worked in a room filled with butterflies.

            Every wall, every bench, every spare space in her laboratory and the corridor outside was filled with boxes of butterflies. The transparent butterfly cubes were stacked to the ceiling.

            Sasha was the senior resident entomologist. A butterfly specialist. Right now she sat rigidly forward in her chair, staring with rapt attention at her computer screen, captivated by the bizarre reading from her remote pheromone sensors in the recreational reserve.

            Sasha worked directly under a ceiling vent.

            Her head snapped up when she heard an incredible rustling sound. She pushed off from the lab bench with one hand so her chair swiveled on the spot. She stopped herself with her foot on the floor when she faced the entire lab.

            Her butterflies were going haywire.

            What the…?

            Every butterfly cube was a violent brown blur of activity. The rustling was the sound of tens of thousands of butterflies all pelting frantically inside their cubes.