The Secret of Excalibur (30 page)

Another strut broke, then another. The entire jib sagged, bending under its own weight. It was a chain reaction, each failed spar putting more and more pressure on the others.

Chase stared in horror, then desperately tugged his jacket’s cuffs over his hands. The crane would give way at any moment . . .

With an ear-splitting shriek of tearing metal, the jib folded like paper, ripping apart where the helicopter had collided with it and spearing towards the ground. The tower lurched, the massive concrete counterweights extending out behind the operator’s cabin pulling the whole thing over.

Like a giant redwood felled by a lumberjack, the massive crane slowly but inexorably began to topple.

The leather of his jacket covering his palms, Chase squeezed his hands round the outside of the ladder - and jumped off the rungs.

And fell.

Using his feet as guides against the vertical stiles, he plunged down the core of the shuddering crane.

The falling tower picked up speed, buckling. He was no longer falling vertically - the crane was leaning at five degrees, ten, the horizon rising above his line of sight as the ground rolled towards him.

The leather protecting his hands shredded as he sliced over the joints of each section of ladder, but he couldn’t slow down - he was still too high to survive the fall.

Twenty degrees, thirty, metal twisting and tearing all around—

With an explosive boom of shattering concrete, the tower ripped away from its base.

Chase was still slithering down the ladder, but now he was on top of it as it hurtled towards the horizontal. He shot through the oily smoke, opening his stinging eyes to see the muddy ground rushing at him with increasing speed. Now he squeezed both hands tightly round the stiles. He felt the heat of friction through the leather as it tore and burned, slowing his descent, but maybe too late—

The crane smashed down.

The protruding counterweights hit first, sending a whipcrack ripple down the length of the collapsing structure. Chase bounced from the ladder and slammed against the framework above him, then thudded back down on to the rungs as the wrecked crane came to rest.

He lay unmoving, sprawled over the broken ladder. Concrete dust wafted over him. The echoes of the impact died away, for several seconds the only sound the crackle of the burning helicopter.

Then Chase coughed.

‘Fuck . . . ing hell . . .
fire
!’ he wheezed, dragging himself through the bent framework to lie in the mud. He was less than twenty feet from the crane’s base, his descent having slowed as the tower toppled. But he had still hit the ground as if dropping face-first from over ten feet up, with all the pain that entailed.

The mere fact that he’d been able to crawl from the crane told him nothing major was broken, but there was a nasty throb in his left arm where it had been injured a year earlier. His head hurt too; he rubbed his forehead and realised he was bleeding, another deep slash to add to the one he’d received jumping through the window at Vaskovich’s mansion.

The thought of the Russian cut through the fog of pain. Chase sat up. He had no idea what had happened to Nina. And as for Mitchell, and Excalibur . . .

Both the latter questions were answered within seconds of each other. A buzzing roar came from above as the MD 500 descended, the stubs of its wrecked undercarriage like broken insect legs. As he watched the helicopter drop into the construction site, he saw Excalibur sticking out of the mud near the crane’s base like a gleaming grave marker. Which, for Chase, it almost had been.

Still breathing heavily, he hobbled to the sword. A moment of effort was all it took to pull it from the ground.

He had Excalibur.

But his body ached too much for him to feel triumphant. Wearily, he turned to see the helicopter hovering unsteadily over a large pile of sand. Before Chase could wonder what the hell Mitchell was doing, the MD 500 dropped sharply, smacking down on its belly atop the soft pile. It squirmed deeper into the sand as the rotors kept spinning, but Mitchell had already shut down the engine and dived from the cockpit, rolling to the bottom of the heap and running as fast as he could on his injured leg towards Chase. Behind him, the helicopter wobbled, then finally tipped over. Its rotors thudded through the sand, kicking up a huge gritty spray before being brought to a stop.

‘Bloody hell!’ Chase cried. ‘Took a bit of a chance, didn’t you? You could’ve been puréed!’

‘Can’t wait around,’ Mitchell said grimly, taking out a phone. ‘I didn’t have any other way to land, and there’s already police and fire trucks on the way, I saw them from the helo. We’ve got to get out before they arrive. You okay?’

Chase indicated his torn clothing and bloodied skin. ‘Oh, absolutely fucking top! What about Nina?’

‘I don’t know. You had the relay - I lost contact with her as soon as we moved out of range. Come on.’ He called a number as he hurried towards the site’s main gate, issuing rapid orders. Chase followed, the sword in his hand.

An hour later they were in an American safe house, an anonymous apartment in an equally anonymous block a few miles from the crash site. They had got clear just before the police arrived, hurrying through the darkened streets until being picked up by the same driver who had taken them to Prikovsky’s warehouse - although his gleaming SUV had been replaced by a much more discreet old Volkswagen Golf.

‘So do you know what’s happened to Nina?’ Chase demanded as Mitchell concluded another call. He himself had called Prikovsky, learning that while his girls had all left the mansion, Nina had not been with them. That didn’t mean she hadn’t got a lift back to Moscow with someone else, but his concern was rapidly growing.

‘Not yet,’ Mitchell snapped. ‘Vaskovich is moving, though - his private jet just took off from Vnukovo airport. It’s a safe bet he’s aboard.’

‘Probably doesn’t want to be around when the Russians start asking why one of their shiny new gunships just crashed in the middle of Moscow. I bet that bloke Mishkin’s wishing he hadn’t taken the job. It’ll be a bugger to explain.’

Mitchell was about to say something when his phone trilled.

‘Yes,’ he said, eyes widening as he listened to the caller. ‘Yes, put him through. It’s Vaskovich,’ he added to Chase.

‘Put it on speaker,’ Chase said. Mitchell frowned, but did as he was asked.

There was a click of connection, then a voice came from the phone. Vaskovich. ‘Are you there, Jack?’

‘I’m here, Leonid,’ Mitchell replied. The background whine suggested that the billionaire was indeed airborne in his jet.

‘You’ve stolen something from me. You and Chase. I assume he’s there.’

‘Yeah, I’m here,’ said Chase. ‘If you’re wondering where Dominika is, I dropped her off on the way back from your party. Sorry about messing that up, by the way. Seemed like quite a good bash.’

‘Yes, it was,’ Vaskovich said, clearly irritated behind his veneer of calm. ‘But that doesn’t matter. I’m having another party here in my plane. For a
very
special guest.’

A cold fear swept over Chase. He knew who Vaskovich meant. ‘If you fucking hurt her—’ he began, before Mitchell signalled him to shut up.

‘Is she all right, Leonid?’ the American asked.

‘For now. You have something I want, I have something you want . . . or at least that Chase wants.’

‘Let me talk to her,’ Chase demanded. He glanced over at Mitchell, daring him to try to silence him, but the DARPA agent had a thoughtful, almost calculating expression.

Whatever he was thinking, Chase didn’t care, forgetting about him as he heard Nina’s voice. ‘Eddie? Oh, thank God you’re okay! I didn’t know what happened, just something about a helicopter crash!’ ‘Yeah, just another day working for the IHA. Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine. I’m sorry, they caught me on the way out.’

‘There is a reason why
real
secret agents do not appear on chat shows,’ said Kruglov sarcastically in the background.

‘I recognised her,’ said Vaskovich, ‘but not soon enough, unfortunately. Her disguise was very effective. Still,’ he went on, tone hardening, ‘I have her now. I want the sword, Jack. Deliver Excalibur to my mansion within the hour and I’ll release Dr Wilde. Otherwise, I may have to . . .
drop her off
.’

‘Why the mansion, Leonid?’ asked Mitchell, holding up a hand to cut off Chase’s furious response. ‘I assume you’re on your way to Grozevny. Why don’t we save you some time, deliver Excalibur to you there?’

Vaskovich laughed mockingly. ‘Yes, I’m sure you’d love to see my facility at Grozevny, Jack. That was your plan all along, wasn’t it? It’s a good thing for me that Aleksey never trusted you.’

‘I’m not going anywhere. Dominika shot me in the leg.’

‘Are you okay?’ Nina cut in.

‘It’s more than just a flesh wound this time,’ Mitchell lied, giving Chase a faint smile. ‘But I was thinking Eddie would be a better person to deliver it. He doesn’t know anything about earth energy, or care either . . . and I’m pretty sure that if I tried to stop him getting Nina back, he’d kill me.’ Another smile. Chase returned it, with just a hint of sincerity.

‘Why should I trust you?’ demanded Vaskovich.

‘It doesn’t matter, because I won’t be there. Eddie will. And like you said, you’ve got something he wants. And you’ll have what you need to make your system work, right there.’

Kruglov muttered something in Russian, clearly distrustful, but after a moment Vaskovich spoke again. ‘You have a jet?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I’ll arrange for the airspace to be cleared. But know this: if the plane goes off course, it will be shot down. If anyone other than Chase and the pilot are aboard, they will all die, and so will Dr Wilde. If Excalibur is not aboard, everyone dies. If there is any kind of deceit, everyone dies. And so will you, Jack. Don’t think you are beyond my reach, even in America. Am I clear?’

‘Pretty fuckin’ crystal,’ said Chase, scowling.

‘I will arrange for your jet’s safe passage,’ Vaskovich said. ‘Chase?’

‘What?’

‘You may not believe me, but I am a man of my word. If you bring me Excalibur, you will get to marry Nina. Whenever that may be. But if you betray me . . . you will both die.’ There was a click as the line disconnected.

‘You think we can trust him?’ Chase asked.

Mitchell snorted. ‘Doubt it. But it doesn’t matter - I was lying too. I’ll be on the plane with you.’

‘Wait a sec - if they find you, they’ll kill all of us.’

‘Don’t worry!’ He gave Chase an enigmatic smile. ‘I’ll be aboard when it takes off - but I won’t be when it lands.’ He clapped a hand on Chase’s shoulder. ‘Come on. Let’s go rescue your fiancée.’

27

T
he aircraft taking Chase and Mitchell north from Moscow was not the State Department plane in which they had flown to Russia, but a smaller Cessna Citation Mustang business jet, conspicuously lacking any kind of corporate markings. Chase suspected it was normally used for discreet, private transportation of US intelligence operatives.

A group of which Mitchell was now undeniably a member.

‘So,’ said Chase as Mitchell opened one of several plastic cases stacked in the jet’s cabin, ‘you were a spook all along, were you?’

‘That a problem?’

‘Depends on the spook. So the whole scientist thing, was that just a cover?’

‘Hell, no,’ Mitchell said firmly. ‘I really do have a PhD in high-energy physics. Would never have been able to convince Vaskovich I’d be useful without it.’

‘And how long’s DARPA been running its own intelligence operations behind everyone else’s back?’

‘A while. It’s better if nobody else knows. We do whatever’s necessary to ensure America has a decisive technological advantage over all other countries - and keep it that way.’

‘By force.’

‘If we have to.’ Mitchell took a rifle from the crate - a weapon of a design Chase had never seen before. He tossed it to the Englishman. ‘Case in point. Check it out.’

Chase turned the futuristic gun over in his hands. A cursory examination revealed it had two separate magazines, one flat along the top and the other set into the stock. The handgrip was positioned forward of both mags in a ‘bullpup’ configuration. ‘Looks like something from
Judge Dredd
.’

‘The XM-201 Advanced Assault Rifle, one of DARPA’s new toys.’ Mitchell brought out a second, identical weapon for himself. ‘Two hundred rounds of caseless high-power propellant in the buttstock, and a top-mounted helical magazine with five twenty-round feeds for mission-variable three-point-six-millimetre munitions.’ He moved a selector switch on his gun. ‘Standard copper-jacketed, tungsten penetrator, explosive, or plastic nonlethals. Normal loadout is forty standard rounds and twenty of each of the others per mag, but I thought the plastics would be kinda pointless for this operation.’

‘
Three
-point-six-mil ammo?’ Chase asked dubiously. ‘You won’t get much stopping power with that.’

‘You’d be surprised - although we haven’t tested it on a live human target. Yet.’ He gave Chase a meaningful look. ‘It’s also got a three-round twenty-five-millimetre grenade launcher linked to a computerised laser rangefinder. Just lase the target, tilt it up and the sights’ll tell you when you’re at the right arc angle. Viewfinder with ten-times scope and night vision here, built-in Identify-Friend-or-Foe system to cut down on friendly fire—’

‘Now there’s a gadget you Yanks actually need,’ Chase said mockingly.

Mitchell shot him a sour look before continuing. ‘Hold it in firing position.’ Chase hefted the weapon and did so. Mitchell tapped at a small keypad set behind the sights. A green LED lit up with a bleep. ‘There. It’s now biometrically coded to your hands. Only authorised users can fire it. And if it falls into enemy hands, there’s even a coded self-destruct signal that melts all the electronics to prevent duplication. Pretty cool, huh?’

Chase lowered the gun. ‘Not really.’

Mitchell seemed surprised, even a little affronted. ‘Your professional opinion?’

‘Yep. All the gadgets mean it’ll eat batteries, which means more crap you’ve got to cart about with you, fancy electronics are the first things to break in the field, this mag in the stock makes it too bulky, having switchable ammo paths into the receiver means it’s more likely to jam, the carrying handle’s too far forward and I bet it costs a fucking fortune. You’ve made a gun that does twice as much as an M-16 . . . for ten times the price.’ He grinned. ‘Typical American toy.’

Mitchell grinned back. ‘Hey, how else are we supposed to keep increasing the stockholder value of our arms industry every quarter? Anyway, it’s at least five years from service, maybe even ten. You know how much the brass hate change. Even for the better.’

Chase shrugged and put down the rifle. ‘Think I’ll stick with the old school, thanks.’

Mitchell shook his head. ‘Not for this mission, you won’t. There’s another reason why I wanted these. When Vaskovich’s earth energy system is running - which it will be as soon as he gets Excalibur - it puts out a
huge
magnetic field. You go in there with a gun made of steel, and it’ll be pulled right out of your hand.’ He patted the body of his XM-201. ‘This baby’s made of polymers and ceramics, nothing magnetic. And even the electronics are shielded. When the system’s running, there’s only one kind of gun that’ll work in there. And we’ll have them.’

‘You’ll have them, you mean,’ Chase corrected. ‘I don’t see Kruglov letting me stroll in there with one of these. And speaking of that, how’re
you
going to get in there?’

Mitchell indicated a case. ‘Another DARPA toy.’ He checked his watch. ‘In fact . . . I should start prepping it about now, so give me a hand.’

The case contained what looked like a large, hard-shelled backpack. Mitchell slid the rifles into a compartment inside it, then climbed into a black one-piece flight suit and zipped it up. He donned the pack with Chase’s assistance. ‘Latest thing we devised for airborne special ops,’ Mitchell told him as he fastened an electronic control unit to his wrist. ‘And this one
is
going into service, within the year. It’s a glidewing - we wanted to call it the Batwing, but we’d probably have some trademark problems if we did. Can carry a SEAL and all his gear. Once I’m in freefall, the wings extend - they’re carbon fibre - and I can glide way further than I could in a HAHO parachute jump.’ He put on a cheesy commercial announcer’s voice. ‘But wait, there’s more!’

‘Are these engines?’ Chase said, seeing cylindrical protrusions on each side of the pack.

‘Yep. Mini-turbojets, three hundred pounds of thrust between them. There’s about fifteen minutes of fuel, but I can use them in bursts to gain height and glide. Then when I want to land, I just pop the ’chute. A good pilot can hit a fifty-foot target area from over a hundred miles away.’

‘And you’re a good pilot?’

‘Not bad. The controls are very intuitive - just pretend you’re Superman.’ He smiled, then became all business. ‘After I bail out, I can land in Vaskovich’s facility without anyone even knowing. Then I’ll come find you and Nina.’

‘What about extraction? How are we getting out?’ One of Vaskovich’s demands had been for their jet to take off and return to Moscow immediately after delivering Chase - and being searched for uninvited guests.

‘It’s all taken care of. Trust me.’

Chase didn’t like being left in the dark - especially when his and Nina’s lives were on the line - but it was clear that Mitchell wasn’t going to tell him anything else until he had to. Some kind of US incursion into Russian airspace would explain why he was being so secretive - Chase couldn’t reveal information he didn’t know.

Mitchell finished strapping on the pack, then took a full-face helmet from the case. ‘Okay, I’ll kick the cases out before I bail so nobody wonders what was in them - you’ll have to close the door after I jump. Try not to fall out, huh?’

‘And you remember to pull the ripcord
before
you hit the ground,’ countered Chase with a grin. ‘You know, for a navy man, you’re not such an arsehole after all.’

‘Oh, I’m an asshole,’ said Mitchell. ‘I’m just on the right side.’ He clapped Chase on the shoulder, then donned the helmet as the pilot called a one-minute warning from the cockpit. ‘Okay, here we go!’

Weighed down by his equipment, he moved to the cabin door as Chase brought over the empty cases and secured himself to the wall. ‘Thirty seconds!’ the pilot shouted.

‘See you down there,’ said Chase. He pulled the lever to open the hatch.

The noise and wind were horrific - even though it was slowing and descending, the Cessna was still cruising at over two hundred knots and nine thousand feet. Gripping the door frame, Mitchell booted the cases out, then hurled himself into the black void. He was snatched away by the slipstream, barely missing the jet’s low wing as he fell.

Buffeted by the freezing wind, Chase pulled the lever to close the hatch. Shivering, he returned to his seat, hoping Mitchell knew what he was doing.

Ten minutes later, the jet was on the ground.

Vaskovich was taking no chances; before Chase was allowed to exit, three armed men came aboard and searched the aircraft. All they found were the pilot, Chase, and the aluminium case in his lap. After frisking him thoroughly for concealed weapons, they waved him out at gunpoint.

Even though the wind was low, the cold hit him hard. Grozevny was on the very rim of the Arctic Circle at the entrance to the Barents Sea, situated on the edge of the marshy tundra about a hundred and eighty miles from Archangel’sk, the nearest city. During the Cold War it had been a naval base, a hiding place for the Soviet Union’s ballistic missile submarines. Now, that perverse non-conflict long over and the base’s secrets laid bare for anyone with an internet connection and Google Earth to see, it had passed into the hands of one of Russia’s new oligarchs.

As Chase stepped on to the runway he saw the cold sea off to the north, a cliff rising up along the curving coastline to the east. About a mile away, a long L-shaped jetty protruded into the waves from its base. He guessed the sub pen was under the cliff. Beyond it, the ground rose to a small hill, at the top of which was a brightly lit building, but it was too far away for him to make out any details other than its size, which was considerable.

More of Vaskovich’s men surrounded the jet, weapons at the ready. Kruglov stood at the foot of the steps, Maximov beside him. ‘Is that the sword?’ Kruglov demanded, pointing at the case.

That Kruglov hadn’t killed him on sight suggested Vaskovich intended to honour at least part of his deal. Chase opened the long case, revealing Excalibur nestled on a bed of foam within. ‘Where’s Nina?’

Kruglov glanced in the direction of the distant building, then indicated the nearer of two black Mercedes GL Class SUVs. ‘Get in.’

Sandwiched between Maximov and another guard in the back seat, Chase was driven along a road on the coast. The view ahead confirmed what he’d thought: the jetty was indeed connected to the sub pen, a vast concrete arch set into the cliff face, lights blazing within. The jetty ran from the end of a dock on the pen’s far side, a rusty crane overlooking the water.

To Chase’s surprise, the dock wasn’t empty.

The little convoy drove along a road at the base of the cliff and into the pen itself, giving him a grandstand view of the colossal vessel within. It was a submarine, a Typhoon-class ballistic missile boat, the largest type of sub ever built. As big as a Second World War aircraft carrier, only six Typhoons had been constructed by the Soviets, and just a single example remained in active service, the others either scrapped or supposedly held in reserve. Chase now knew where one had ended up.

But whatever the Typhoon’s purpose here, it wasn’t as a weapon. The vessel wasn’t seaworthy: a large section of deck aft of the squat sail had been removed to expose the twin pressure hulls within, dozens of heavy-duty electrical cables leading out from the hole to a pylon by a tunnel entrance on the opposite side of the dock. It wouldn’t be going anywhere in a hurry - at least, not if it wanted to stay afloat.

The SUVs drove over a bridge at the dock’s rear, then back along the other side of the sub to stop at the tunnel. ‘So what’s this?’ Chase asked as he got out of the Mercedes. He mimicked Sean Connery in
The Hunt For Red October
. ‘You going to shail into hishtory?’

Kruglov ignored him, directing him into the tunnel towards the lower terminus of a funicular railway rising out of the grim concrete cavern. The track was steep, ascending the hill above at a steady forty degree angle. A boxy carriage waited for them at one of the two gates.

Everyone entered the carriage, all guns pointed at Chase as it began to climb the track. He looked up the hill as they emerged from the tunnel. A second car was descending from the top of the track, the two linked by cables and counterbalancing each other. A road followed a long zig-zag path up the hillside from the base, the funicular sometimes passing over, other times under it on its ascent. To each side, the hill was covered by what at first glance he thought was a forest of leafless trees . . .

‘Christ,’ he said, seeing what they really were. ‘Your TV reception must be pretty crappy if you need that lot to get a decent picture.’

The ‘forest’ was man-made, metal: a vast antenna array stretching round the entire hill and on to the tundra beyond. The receiver for Vaskovich’s earth energy station, Chase realised, like the American HAARP facility Mitchell had described, only on a much greater scale.

He got a better view of the large building on the hilltop as they approached. It was circular, with a domed roof resembling an observatory. More electrical cables were draped down the sides of the dome like morbid streamers, linking it to the array.

The funicular reached the upper station. Two more waiting SUVs took the group the few hundred metres across the freezing hilltop to the facility. Inside, Chase was hustled through the building’s blank corridors to what resembled an airport’s security screening station. Warning notices in Cyrillic plastered the walls; he had no idea what they said, but the stylised symbols accompanying them suggested danger from both high voltages and magnetism. A thick line of striped red and yellow was painted on the floor.

The station was manned by two men in orange overalls. When Kruglov stepped up to them, one man ran a sensor wand over his body while the other monitored the results on a screen. The machine bleeped several times. With a look of resigned annoyance, Kruglov emptied out his pockets, placing all his metallic belongings, including a gun, in a plastic tray. The first man ran the wand over him again. Satisfied with the result, he put the tray in a nearby locker and waved Kruglov over the painted line.