 
Nothing happens.

### A novel by

### Lloyd R. Martin

Preface

When exotic sub-atomic particles of Matter and Anti-Matter meet they annihilate each other. There is no noise - to the observer Nothing Happens.

The resulting massive release of electrical energy kills all electrical equipment - Nothing Happens.

QED.

Quantum Electromagnetic Dynamics are the forces at work here: QED Richard Finemann.

## Chapters

Chapter One 2488 Roberto

Chapter Two The Coruna Effect

Chapter Three When your life stops adding up, subtract.

Chapter Four It's not what you take from this world, it's what you leave behind.

Chapter Five Gotta get a message through.

Chapter Six Pop a top again

Chapter Seven Nothing Happened, then Nothing Happened.

Chapter Eight Casa Colina

Chapter Nine A Duc for Steele.

Chapter Ten So sad about US

Chapter 11 Xanadu

Chapter 12 Each Night.

Chapter 13 Rotation of the aluminium avalanche

Chapter 14 The Other Side

Chapter 15 Big Chain

Chapter 16 Blind Trio

Chapter 17 Anita Valdez

Chapter 18 Salamanca

Chapter 19 Pategonia

Chapter 20 Ring of Fire

Chapter 21 The Ugliest building in the World

Chapter 22 Sangri-la at Salamanca

Chapter 23 Mopping up

Chapter 24 The last Tendril

Chapter 1

2488 Roberto

He nearly didn't see it coming; he picked it up almost too late.

Roberto had just begun his lunch when he noticed it, it was not very big; and completely black, the asteroid was difficult to spot.

The 900 ton suspended platform hung precariously over the 1,000 metre dish of the telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Constantly looking for dots that move across the night sky; stars do not move, so any moving objects must be asteroids. Seen flitting across the image they become easy to spot. In 1999 there were 10,000 known asteroids, now there are hundreds of thousands. Every night another 3,000 were being discovered. Most are in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but there were also rouge asteroids that have escaped the monotony of their regular orbits. They leave their trajectory and wander into the effects of Jupiter's gravity. This then propels the miniature planets at speeds in the region of 20,000 kilometres per second.

Roberto had found one of these. He immediately realised that it was going fast, so fast that he knew it must be close.

'And just where are you headed in such a hurry little fella?' he said as he picked up a slice of pizza.

He did some number crunching on the computer, as the numbers came back in he dropped his pizza slice in shock. The planetoid was headed for Earth.

Roberto sent an urgent message to the Minor Planet Center in Boston, Massachusetts. When it arrived in Boston it was the middle of the night. The next morning Judith Harris picked up the message when she arrived for work. She immediately rang her superior,

'Arecibo have picked up a rogue travelling at 20,000 kilometres per second. It can only be headed this way. The size is a guess as yet, but estimates are around the 50 metres diameter region.'

He leapt out of bed,

'What? Do we know when it is expected?'

'Yes sir, in twenty-seven hours' time.'

'Shit. A lump that size could weigh up to 20,000 tons. Travelling at that speed, what is that in miles a second?'

'About twelve and a half thousand miles per second.'

'There's going to be a big bang.' He now had the phone on speaker as he rushed to dress.

Judith was already consulting charts and doing calculations,

'It looks like 1,000 times the power of the Horoshima bomb.'

'Do we know where it will land?'

'Not yet sir. The guys at JPL are working on that now.'

'Seven tenths of the surface is water, but that could be worse than a hit on land. The tsunami raised would wipe out coastal regions all over the world. Who should we notify?'

It was the responsibility of the Minor Planet Center to notify anyone and every one of the likelihood of an asteroid strike. But to alarm people in large cities causes more danger than trusting to hope, especially if they did not know where it would hit.

Judith said,

'The chances are it will break up in the upper atmosphere.'

'Yes, but the resultant plasma could still deliver a blast wave that would kill people out as far as 15 kilometres range; remember Tungaska.'

'Arecibo recon that the entry speed will be in the region of 20,000 kilometres a second. That is gonna get someone's attention somewheres.'

'Do we know yet if there is any chance that it will miss us?'

'It doesn't look like it, sir. This is one of those elusive objects that are too small and dark to pick up early. We only see them when they have been captured by our gravity.'

'Yes, I see. We already know about everything over 1 kilometre in diameter, and we have plotted them to ensure we are safe for the next 100 years, but this came in under the radar.'

Judith struggled to hold the phone whilst she worked the computer terminal,

'This one is a lot smaller than that, but because of that it has been much more elusive.'

As he pulled into the car park at the Minor Planet Centre he finished his conversation with Judith by saying,

'The guys at JPL must be worried that someone with their finger on the nuclear button may take this for a hostile nuclear strike.'

He was right. The people at Jet Propulsion Laboratory were very concerned. A meeting of three decision makers within the organisation held a hastily convened conference.

Duty Warnings Manager Dave Mercer began,

'This is going to be noticed all over the world.'

He may not have been strictly correct in this - but it was close enough,

'We have to decide who to warn that it is an act of nature, and not an attack.'

Isa Bassey replied,

'Our authorities must be told as quickly as possible, also the Russians, Israelis, the French, Brits, and the Chinese. They all have very sensitive nuclear triggers, we do not know what will trigger them; so cannot take the risk that this may do just that.'

Mercer said,

'The last thing we want is panic in the public, so just tell them that we don't yet know where it will land. All we need to do is notify them that this is a perfectly natural event, and not to panic and hit the button.'

This was a truly predictable natural event. They knew exactly at what time the asteroid will hit, even if they do not know where. Even though it will have been slowed down by the friction of hitting the atmosphere, the asteroid could still be travelling at something like six times the speed of sound, one mile per second. Time is of the essence.

Meanwhile, all over the world people were working to find the impact point. In Puerto Rico, as Roberto got information directly from NASA, he gradually narrowed down the possibilities for the impact zone.

'Looks like South America.' he said,

'Mauna Kea and La Palma now have visual on the asteroid, it is only a matter of time before we know exactly where it will hit.'

Direktor Aguerro looked at Roberto,

'And the name of the asteroid is 2488 Roberto, how does it feel to have your name written in the annuls of space?'

'Fantastic. I am honoured, sir. A piece of space history with my name on it. Not only that, but it is headed this way, and could kill millions of people. Current observations put it well south of here, so we may be in luck, but it's nice to know that my name is on it!'

They consulted a map of the whole of South America. Aguerro took a pencil, and then drew a horizontal line across an area on the map.

The gradual pull of gravity, as well as giving them their speed, also draws them in to a planet over many thousands of years. As result of which they all approach us in an orbital manner, and come in along a trajectory.

Roberto looked at the map,

'It looks like the impact will occur somewhere in the southern regions of Argentina. There is a lot of desert around there, so we could be lucky, and it misses all centres of population altogether.'

The phone rang. Aguerro answered it with eagerness,

'Si.'

Roberto tried to hear the information coming in. But could not make out much detail, although it was obvious that the material was technical information. He watched the pencil as Aguerro made a note on a paper pad – Gostre, Argentina.

As he turned to look at the map he heard the phone drop on to its cradle, and he was joined by Aguerro. Roberto's finger traced along the pencil line until it stopped at a small circle on the map. The name 'Gostre' written alongside it.

Aguerro was first to speak,

'Well, the predicted guesses were right on the money. But it looks like there is a town or something here.'

'Do we know anything about this place?' Roberto had never been to anywhere in Argentina, so didn't know the area at all.

Aguerro looked at the map,

'Looks like a lot of desert around here, but we had better be prepared for fragments.'

'I presume the Argentina authorities have been notified'

'Oh, yes. They are well in the loop; they have to be the first to be notified.'

Gostre was a small mining settlement more than a town. Scarcely a handful of blocks of single storey buildings, with one road and a trail running through it. The place is not even habited during the winter months in the high Atacama dessert.

This was now April, and the residents of Gostre had only just begun to make their way back, it was an easy task for the authorities to get them to vacate the area.

When 2488 Roberto came to town there was no-one home to the extra-terrestrial visitor.

With a fireball hotter than the sun the asteroid began to break up over the Atlantic Ocean.

He was standing on the Falkland Islands when Wilson Forsythe saw the burning fireball scorching through the Earth's atmosphere. He was 750 miles away. The main body began to disintegrate as it passed over the coastline at the Golfo San Matias. When dragged into a steeper dive by gravity the whole body exploded in a vast fireball that was visible from space as well as Port Stanley.

As Wilson Forsythe made his way to his work he saw the smoke trail left by the falling asteroid as it caught the sun, which made it stand out against the inky blackness of night. When he finished his shift he noticed that this trail was still visible in the upper atmosphere as the sun went down.

In the meantime an area to the west of Gostre had been hit by the asteroid. By that time most of its 20,000 tons had been burned off and fragmented away on the way through the physical barrier we know as the atmosphere. Still, there was 5 – 6,000 tons in the high tensile steel centre that hit the desert. The plasma stream that went out in front of this iron rock scoured the area before the physical, molten asteroid hit.

The resultant crater was to be used for a most bizarre purpose thirty seven years later. The people of Gostre returned, but the soon dwindled away leaving it as a mining ghost town.

.
Chapter 2

The Coruna Effect

La Coruna, forty years later. A gigantic ocean liner docks in the harbour.

At ten fifteen on that fateful day there was an articulated lorry with a curtain-sided container in the colours of Norbert Dentressangle on the Ave. Alphonso Molina, a six lane highway in the centre of La Coruna.

It did not stop.

The driver, Dan Goodfellow reached down to one of the few switches in the stripped-out cab.

Before his hand could get back to the steering wheel a very slight, dead straight line of steam shot up from the trailer, it dispersed immediately.

No-one saw this.

The truck did not stop.

All the other traffic did.

A silver-grey Mercedes in front of Lauren Nickson stopped abruptly; there were no brake lights or other warning. She slammed on the brakes of her Ford Mondeo to avoid hitting the big German car.

Dan Goodfellow in the Norbert Dentressangle truck knew this would happen, so he was in a clear piece of road behind Lauren. She knew that a collision was dangerously close, so she swerved out into the next lane as she coasted along. In the glance she gave to her side mirror she didn't see the big red truck hurtling down the road. Goodfellow instinctively moved over to avoid hitting Lauren's car. That put him into the central barrier.

But he was not stopping, everyone else was.

He wrestled the wheel to bring the articulated truck back onto the road in a cloud of dust.

Inside the red curtains on the trailer were four gigantic diesel engines. These were connected to four marine alternators, these in turn served a massive doughnut shaped device known as an electromagnet.

As long as the electromagnet was powered the valuable cargo remained stable and contained. The electromagnet was being used to control sub-atomic particles called muons. These are not atoms; they are parts of atoms – infinitesimally small, so small that if they were to be enlarged enough to see them the atom itself would have to be the size of a house. Even then these sub-atomic particles would only be like very small specs of dust. But atoms are not the size of a house; they are very small. So small they cannot be seen by any microscope – but they pack a powerful punch;. If the atoms in two grains of sand were 30 metres apart they would still have a force equivelant to three million tons.

The electromagnets are needed to keep these particles in suspended animation. Only electricity is powerful enough to control them.

They are influenced by gravity, but electrical forces are much stronger than gravity.

At ten fifteen a.m. Goodfellow switched the electromagnets off.

As Lauren tried to avoid a crash a spear of light less than one atom wide flashed from the top of the trailer that was bearing down on her,.

This happened so fast that no human eye could see it. The line raised a thin streak of steam vapour, but this dispersed almost as soon as it appeared.

Almost too late Lauren caught the image of the truck as it began to come alongside. She reacted instinctively by twitching the wheel back towards the Merc. A collision was inevitable. Lauren's headlight was first to go. It hit the useless rear light cluster of the Mercedes, sending red and clear glass and plastic showering onto the road. At almost the same time Goodfellow's big front wheels bounced off the central barrier. This pushed him back towards the Mondeo. Lauren's other headlight went as Goodfellow's back wheels hit that corner of her car.

By now the action and reaction that had caused the trouble was all over. Each sub-atomic particle consists of negative parts and positive parts. Half are attracted by gravity; the others are repelled by it, and they can pass through anything.

When Goodfellow switched the electromagnets off, the positive parts headed for the centre of the earth, the negative parts moved away from the centre of the earth.

Both elements moved at the speed of light, but not for long; the whole process destroyed itself within a nano-second.

There was no sound emitted, if anything, things got suddenly quieter; engines stopped.

Goodfellow's truck had been specially modified and extensively tested to avoid this problem.

What happened at a sub-atomic level caused the whole process to destroy itself in less than a nano-second.

As the matter and anti-matter came together they annihilated each other with much greater dynamism than any chemical force. It causes a powerful pulse which fuses every electronic device within an appreciable distance.

On the liner in the harbour the passerngers were getting restless.

.
Chapter 3

When Your Life Stops to Add Up - Subtract.

Looked at from behind Wendy had the shortest hair. Seventeen year old Josh was not well known at the barbers. His father, Steve Steele, still had the long hair from his job; he used to be a policeman with the Met. After leaving the Secret Service he spent years undercover with CID. He could only tell his family that his job was to watch people. For this he had to blend in; that was why he didn't look like a policeman.

The three of them leaned on the wooden rail of the cruise liner Enterprise of the Oceans as lines were thrown ashore..

'This doesn't look much.'

Josh said.

His father was not surprised by this teenage attitude,

'I suppose it's main claim to fame is that the Spanish Armada set sail from here.

With no urgency the family group disembarked for a day exploring. They allowed themselves to be carried along with the river of people heading for the city centre.

Steele consulted at his watch. Ten fifteen. He looked around at the old city. He tried to imagine what it looked like without 3,000 people who had disembarked. The traffic told him that there were still a lot of locals about. As he watched the cars and scooters go about their business, without warning, everything stopped.

The whole city fell silent. Everywhere people looked at each other. Bewildered shopkeepers and customers emerged from darkened shops.

A scooter shrieked past, piercing the silence. Then people began talking, but this was the only sound.

Steele began to work out what had happened.

He looked at his watch again. Ten-twenty-two. But it had stopped.

He stood by a short post on the beach. As the shadow gradually shrank he marked its progress across the sand. He placed stones on the places touched by the tip of the shadow, producing his own sun dial. He could not estimate how long an hour was, but he knew that when the shadow was at its shortest, that would be close to noon. What worried him was the fact that the ship would be sailing at five pm. So if they were to make it back in time they must begin on their way back by three at the latest – an emergency taxi was not an option.

By noon he figured that he would have been able to work out where the shadow would lie at sunset. This thereby enabled him to divide the afternoon section into eight sections, the number of hours between noon and sunset. At one pm it would be time to start looking for food.

Wendy and Josh went off to find entertainment on the beach. They soon came across some people playing boules. No-one could resist Wendy's almost understated charm; this even came through the language barrier. She was fascinated by the underhand throw which departed a backwards spin on the steel balls as they dropped on to the sand.

Information gathering; that has been Steele's lot in life since starting school at age four he has been not only soaking up information, but exploring different ways of gaining information. As he stood by his post waiting to find exactly where to place the next pebble. He watched not only what was happening, but more importantly, what was not happening. He looked out to sea. There were ships on the horizon, but nothing moving towards the shoreline. And the situation on land had not changed; the traffic was still static, the sounds of a bustling city were absent.

Unknown to Steele, and almost everyone else in Coruna that morning, on the Ave Alphonso Morina, a large articulated truck was moving in a southerly direction; out of town.

It was weaving through stationary traffic. Most of the time the truck was forcing its way through by ramming the stationary vehicles. Luckily they were mainly cars which could offer little resistance to the armoured front of the truck. This machine had been adapted in many ways for this day; all electrical equipment had been stripped off. Lights, horn, radio – even the starter motor had been removed. Because it was a diesel the machine could still run without electricity; the diesel fuel ignites with pressure. Any electrical instruments, like the temperature indicator, had been left in place but no longer functioned. All the electrical solenoids were by-passed and re-engineered to allow normal functioning of the machine.

Another pebble down. This one seemed to be lower down than the previous one; the sun had passed its zenith. Steele scanned the horizon again, this time he was looking for where the sun would set. He knew it would set at around eight thirty tonight. He moved around the post, as he aligned the post with the position the sun would set he sank down to his haunches. With a pebble in his hand he estimated where the top of the shadow would lie. He then picked up more pebbles, and placed one exactly half way between the noon pebble and the sunset pebble. Then one either side of these at their half way points. The half way points for the remaining pebbles were easy to find. He now had a rudimentary timepiece with pebbles marking the hours 12 noon, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.

To the right, as Steele looked out to sea he noticed that there was little movement in the harbour area. In fact there were no boats out on the water. With reference to his make-shift sun dial he knew that they had some four and a half hours to get back to the ship.

'The ship.' He thought to himself, 'I wonder if it has been effected by all this.'

He called to his family,

'I reckon it's about one-thirty now. We do not know how long it took us to get here, but it was less than an hour. What I'm worried about is the ship. Something has happened here, and I wonder if it has affected the ship.'

'Do you think we should begin to start back, then?' asked Wendy.

'We got plenty of time. Let's chill here.' Young Josh protested.

'No, son, something has happened here. It may have affected the ship and our ability to get home. I don't know how dependent the 'Enterprise of the Oceans' and this port are on the tides. But if things are as messed up as it would appear here, we may not hit the right tide. A ship the size of this takes a lot of infrastructure from each port to allow it to move. If that infrastructure is damaged, or compromised in some way, it is not safe to move, the failsafe position is to keep her where she is.'

Josh seemed pleased to hear this,

'Does that mean we may be stuck here?'

'It is not beyond the realms of possibility.'

Wendy said,

'But we should be back in Southampton tomorrow; I have my Bridge Club tomorrow night.'

She clasped a hand to her mouth in mock horror,

'We were planning salmon and cucumber sandwiches.'

Steele was not phased by this,

'No you don't, you don't even play bridge. But the sandwiches could be a problem. Let's see what we can get to eat on the way back to the ship.'

They all agreed to this, not knowing the problems touched upon.

As the three walked back in the general direction of the ship they passed shop after shop that was closed. Cafes that had staff sitting around outside were all in darkness.

Steele stopped to ask,

'Do you have any food available, Senor?'

'Si, but we have no way of taking money. Even finding the food would be difficult in the darkness.'

Steele immediately saw that they were in no mood to help, so with a brief 'Gratias.' He moved along.

Further down the street a crowd had gathered around a bank. Steele did not like the look of this,

'I think we had better go this way.' He indicated another street.

As they moved along this street a knot of angry people appeared at the end, they moved towards the Steele family.

'Shit.' Steele commented as he ushered his family across the narrow street.

The approaching mob was incensed by the fact that the cash machines were not working, and the banks had been forced to close by the power cut. This meant that they had no access to their money. This of course was not Steele's fault, and the crowd should not hold any grudge; but mob mentality does not work like that.

Steele huddled his family into a convenient doorway as the people passed. When they had passed he said,

'I think we had better get back to the ship as quickly as possible.'

They followed Steele as he made his way in the general direction of the ship using the map provided by the ships company.

As they approached the quayside they saw that there were more of the ship's crew than usual awaiting them, and armed police with military personnel.

Steele made some inquiries from a smartly dressed purser,

'What's happening? Will we be sailing on time?'

'I'm afraid that is unlikely, sir. There has been some damage done to the ship's electronics. We think we can overcome these problems in time, but the harbour authorities have withdrawn all sailing permits. Without these we cannot move.'

He waved a well-tailored arm towards the gangway,

'There is a constant commentary through the ships communication system, including the TV in your stateroom, sir. May I suggest you await further developments there, sir?' he turned to Wendy, 'Madam.'

This made a lot of sense – the carrier would want to know that their passengers were ready to set sail. And the safety of their charges was now a major concern with unrest ashore growing by the hour.

Steele and his family went to their stateroom only to find that the TV was out of commission, and the telephone did not work. On their way to the room they found that the corridors were illuminated by the emergency lighting. So things were not quite as unperturbed as the purser would have them believe – but it was probably his prime duty to get as many people back on board as possible.

'We had better see if we can find out what has happened here.' Steele said as he headed for the door.

'Wait, dad.' Josh was looking out of the balcony at the dockside below, 'Look at what is happening down there.'

The three people leaned over the wooden rail to look down on the quayside. They were on deck eight, so had a good aerial view. The scene below had changed considerably. The military and armed police had moved in to control a crowd of people who were now trying to gain access to the ship. By leaning right over, to an alarming degree, Josh was able to see the top of the boarding ramp,

'It also looks as if they are stopping people getting off.' He said.

Wendy looked concerned with this development. She turned to Steele,

'What is going on, Steve. What does this mean?'

'That is no ordinary power cut.' He said, 'A power cut does not affect vehicles or mobile phones. No, there is much more to this than meets the eye. And I think our next move is down to deck four.'

As they left their room they saw the steward, Frank.

Wendy called him as he was about to enter one of the staterooms,

'Frank. Can you tell us something about what is going on?'

'The ship's company decided to operate an open policy, so they gave us all a briefing whilst you were ashore. The radio and radars are out, which includes the internet and all phones. We are in negotiations with the port authorities to allow us to leave port as scheduled, but they have similar problems. They would like to let us out; it would be easier to do that than provision us for a longer stay.'

Josh was intrigued by this possibility,

'How long would we be stuck here?'

Frank could not comment on something he had no idea about,

'That we do not know, as it stands we are hoping to leave on time. Luckily the electronic boarding checker is still working, so we know who is aboard and who is not. But we may have to leave people behind if we get a sudden window to leave. That should not matter however, because the tides are not favourable until our expected sailing time.'

Steele was interested in something Frank had just said,

'You say the electronic boarding system is still working?'

They came aboard with such confusion they failed to notice that they presented their all-purpose sea passes. These had been used to scan the system, a beep and the holder's picture was all that was needed to board the ship. That also told a central computer exactly who was aboard.

'Yes, sir; did you not notice that you used your sea pass to get back on board?'

'It has become second nature; I didn't notice that the system is still working.'

He looked around,

'And that the ship's internal lights are still functioning.'

He turned to Wendy,

'Remember how the cafes ashore were all in darkness?'

He turned to Frank,

'You say the radio and internet are not working?'

'Neither of them, sir.'

Steele looked at the lights blazing all around them, and then said,

'Aerials.'

Frank and Wendy both said,

'Pardon.'

Josh said,

'Eh.'

'Aerials. The radio, TV, internet all come in through aerials. If they have picked up some sort of energy pulse. Like a lightning strike, and channeled it down to the equipment below decks, that would do. The lighting circuits have no such external exposure.'

He turned to Frank,

'I suppose the boarding system is not connected to the internet.'

Frank thought for a minute before replying,

'No, I believe it is a closed circuit to prevent outside influences.'

A clear picture began to emerge in Steele's mind,

'I'd like to look further into this. I think we should take the air. Thanks, Frank.' Steele shook the man's hand, 'We'll see you around.'

Steele did not say anything, as the family went to take the elevator to deck four, he hesitated,

'I think we should take the stairs.'

They walked down the plush wide staircase to deck four. This was the deck with open promenades on both sides of the ship.

There were some people walking and sitting, but not as many as there were on a sea day.

The Steele family first went to the side of the ship facing the quayside. Here people were watching the developing scene below. A steady trickle of passengers was making its way to the ship as if there was nothing wrong. But outside the security barrier was a crowd of locals being held back by the police and the military.

'Let's look at the other side.' Steele suggested.

The other side of the ship looked out over the peaceful port of La Coruna. Not a sign of the turmoil on the other side. There were not even ships sailing around. A small fuel tender was moored alongside the 'Enterprise of the Oceans'.

Steele leaned on the wooden rail-top as he contemplated what he had seen here today.

As he thought he noticed a smart blue striped boat enter the harbour – the coast guard. Further down, towards the stern of the ship there was one of many lifeboat stations. Close by this Steele saw a line coiled up, (there is only one rope on a ship, hanging off the bell.) He looked over the side of the ship, took hold of the line, then turned to Wendy,

'Stay here, you will be safe.'

'What? Where are you going?'

'Down there.'

Josh was stunned,

'You can't do that. This is not a circus, dad. And you have become a pensioner. Don't be silly.'

'I have something to do. We have to get to the bottom of this.'

Wendy protested,

'You don't think you can swing on that? Down there? You are a retired policeman, Steve. Stop playing games, you are not James Bond.'

He winked at her, and then slipped over the side of the ship, and swung down to the tender. The three-man crew were surprised to say the least. They were preparing to cast off when Steele landed. He immediately went to the wheelhouse, and greeted the wheel man in fluent Spanish.

The Brit then reached into his pocket and withdrew a wad of Euro notes. He offered 200 euros as he asked to be taken across to the coast guard boat. The wheel man looked across at the blue boat, and shook his head. Steele peeled off another two 50 euro notes. The man once more declined. Steele shrugged, put the notes back in his pocket, and then turned back to his line. Wheel man called him back,

'Wait, 250 euros'

Steele thought, as if he had a choice,

'Ok.'

The notes were handed to the man, who swung the wheel to take the tender away from the luxury liner.

.
Chapter 4

It's Not What You Take From This World, It's What You Leave Behind.

The small village of Gostre in Central Argentina does not have many visitors. In fact it does not have any visitors. The people who now live in Gostre do not leave the village. The exception today being a forty-foot container on an articulated trailer.

On this day the vehicle, in the rather incongruous colours of Norbert Dentressangle, left in a westerly direction, over a small mountain range, into the vast grey desert.

The driver on this occasion was Carlo Di Vito, radio call sign on this rig, Octavia Two Seven.

At a pre-designated point Carlo made one short radio call,

'Octavia Two Seven to Serpentine Five. Initiating in five, four, three, two, one. Now.'

There was no reply. The instrument he was using would transmit only; there was no need for a return transmission, and the whole instrument will be fused together in less than a second.

He applied a little throttle, vertical plumes of diesel smoke rose from the stacks behind the cab. With a healthy engine, and traveling at fifteen miles per hour Carlo hit the kill switch. The four gigantic diesels in the trailer stopped, and the electromagnet was switched off. The sub atomic particles split; half went towards the centre of the earth, half went away from the source of gravity, both traveling at the speed of light. This is a Quantum Electromagnetic Dynamic (Q.E.D.) effect. What happened in our terms is that there was a loud high-pitched crack, and then a thin line of steam appeared, and dissipated almost immediately. This was the small amount of water vapour in the air being heated to evaporation. Below the magnet an extremely high energy line heads for the centre of the earth. The line itself is infinitesimally narrow, but the heat generated is not. The saving grace here is the fact that the heat only lasts for less than 0.000001 of a second; but that is still enough to put a very strange hole in the earth. This hole is slightly over six metres long, four point two millimetres wide; and absolutely dead straight, pointing at the centre of the earth.

Then, at approximately 0.10-90 of a second later the anti-matter particles met matter and destroyed each other. This was quite some time earlier than anticipated; causing more damage to the electromagnet than usual. It also stopped the vehicle dead in its tracks. This caused the doughnut shaped electronic device to explode. Luckily it was positioned right at the back of the trailer. with four marine alternators and four gigantic diesels between the explosion and the cab which contained the driver. Carlo Di Vito cursed the unexpected stop, and the difficulty of getting back to base as the blast wave hit him. The combination of the sudden stop, and the blast wave hitting the cab from behind threw Carlo out through the windscreen. He did not have chance to release his grip on the steering wheel; this caused him to turn in the air. As he left the comfort of his vehicle, Carlo felt his hands touch his knees. He saw the upside down image of his stricken truck, then the sky as he completed a full somersault. The spinning driver straightened his body in order to allow him to land on his feet two metres in front of his vehicle. The blast wave moved faster than he did, so it blew out the windscreen before Carlo reached it, thereby causing him no damage whatsoever. He walked forwards three paces, and then turned to look at his unfortunate truck. What he saw was the most impressive firework display ever as the electromagnet tore itself apart, followed by the alternators. And then the diesel engines' fuel produced clouds of white smoke which reflected many of the colours that were being produced by the electronic fires and explosions.

Carlo looked around himself. He was stood in the middle of a grey desert in the Chubut Province of Argentina. He shivered as he looked around at the foothills around him. The single track road he was on did not sport much traffic – in fact it was chosen for its seclusion; it effectively went from nowhere to nowhere.

'Shit.' Was all he could say.

He knew that someone would come looking for him, because there was always a risk that the vehicle would stop, it happened with monotonous regularity in the early days.

They had to keep a rescue vehicle some distance away to prevent it being affected by the QED pulse – but they did not know how far was safe, so the vehicle had to be so far away that it was almost a day's travel on the roads in the condition they were. So a helicopter was used to get a team of mechanics with batteries, cables and starter motors to the stricken vehicle, to get it going again under its own steam. That was before. Now the vehicle was being consumed by a vast, almost alive, pyrotechnic electronic display; there was no way this was going to run again.

Carlo sat on a nearby hill and watched the display, an audience of one. Multi-coloured arcs of flaming arches sprouted from the rapidly disintegrating trailer. The tyres began adding thick black smoke to the sides of the conflagration. He looked up to the top of the white cloud caused by the burning fuel from the D8 engines. It was the only smear in the gin clear blue sky as it rose up to a considerable height before being moved by higher winds.

'Maybe that will signal that something has gone awry.' He thought, 'There is no chance they will see it from base.' He knew that base was over 110 kilometres away. 'But at least it will show the chopper where to head for.'

In the early days it was found to be difficult to find the stalled trucks. They had no electronic devices on them, so the only way the helicopter crews had was the mark one eyeball. There were not that many roads to be searched, and the drivers are given clear instructions and navigation directions, but the areas involved were vast. The predicted rate of travel on those roads was particularly difficult; they knew when the electromagnets would switch off, so thereby maybe stopping the truck, but there was no way they could know how far the vehicle had traveled. They were usually given half a day, starting off before dawn. Then, when the area was safe for the search helicopter to enter it would have half a day to find the truck, and get it going again, or mark the position for a bigger rescue vehicle to haul it back. Usually the helicopter crew would be able to get it going before night set in, the nights here are brutal and difficult to survive without heating of some sort, and the local desert is not very forthcoming in that respect. To this end the drivers are returned by helicopter if the vehicle is not running by the time the sun sets.

This was the only thought comforting Carlo as he watched his private bonfire display dissipate. All too soon the sparks and flashes faded. Only billowing acrid smoke came from the wreck.

'Wish I could have saved my sandwiches.' He thought to himself. Water may be a problem too; there was plenty of snow around, but he would have to find a way to melt it to make drinking water – he knew the danger of eating snow in a cold environment.

As the wreck began to look less forbidding he moved down towards the remnants of his cab. Gingerly he moved towards the drivers' door. Another tyre blew out sending smoke laden shock waves out as he reached for the handle. Carlo touched the handle quickly to see if it was cool enough to hold. No. he took off his denim jacket and wrapped his hand in it to open the door.

He flung the door open, wisps of smoke followed it. The stench of burning was somehow a surprise to Carlo. Carefully he climbed into the remains of the cab. The seats were now only wire frames, he rummaged through the ashen remnants until he found what he was looking for: a metal water bottle. As he continued his search he presently found his thermos flask. Eagerly he opened the metal cup on top, the cup had protected the plastic cap inside. He shook it close by his ear. There was a liquid sloshing sound with no discernible rattling which would denote damage inside. He replaced the cup on top. Next he found his lunch box. Although it was metal it was not strong enough to preserve the contents from the heat, flames and smoke. But it may be useful. He emptied the useless ashes out as he descended from the truck.

Walking across to a small outcrop of rock, Carlo looked around for the nearest patch of snow. After placing his flask and water bottle by the rock he took the empty lunch box to the snow. Here he filled the box as high as he could. Then he went back to the still smoldering truck. He found a warm level place on the trailer to place the box. Then he went back to the rock to enjoy a cup of coffee whilst awaiting the helicopter.

The helipad where it usually sits was empty. From his office the Kommisar looked out at the pad.

If there has been a stoppage of a truck, the first they hear is when the helicopter finds it stationary, then reports back to base before landing. This time the column of smoke was spotted and reported. There is nothing out there to burn, so it was quite reasonably presumed to be the truck they had sent out on a test mission.

'Who is the driver?' asked the Kommisar when he received the news about the missing truck.

'Carlo Di Vito.' Cracknore Hard replied.

The tall well-tanned man stroked a hand through his pure white hair as he said,

'How many trucks has he lost us so far?'

'I think he has had some seven stoppages, but he managed to get three of them going again, the rescue crews brought the rest in.'

'So we have not actually lost any; we know where they are.'

'Yes, Kommisar. The one he is in has been rescued four times now.'

Little do they know that it will not be rescued again.

'Have the rescuers been released yet?' asked the Kommisar.

Cracknore Hard looked at a computer screen before replying,

'Yes, sir. The helicopter was waiting twenty kilometres to the east at the time of initiation.'

'What time was initiation?'

'Ten minutes ago. They should be close to the truck about now.'

'Put them through directly so that we can all hear what is being said.'

Cracknore Hard adjusted a few controls on his desk. Speakers all around the room crackled slightly as they came on line. Presently the Kommisar called the helicopter,

'Serpentine five to Puma One. Anything to report?'

The pilot of the helicopter came on the loudspeakers,

'Puma One. I reckon we are about one hundred clicks from Initiation Point. It could be some time before we see anything, apart from a big column of smoke.'

This was Paul Lomax, he was ex-US airborne forces, although he was now considerably bigger than when he used to jump out of the back of C-130 Hercules transports, he still liked to wear clothing that looked like parts of his uniform.

They all knew that there were only four scenarios:

1: A clean and successful Initiation. In which the truck would be traveling back under its own power, the only sign of which from a distance would be a small dust cloud if they were lucky.

2: A successful Initiation, but one which finds some electrical circuit within the truck, fuses it and prevents the truck from running. This is difficult because the truck is very small, and the mountainous desert is vast.

3: A failed Initiation; where the particles split, but the anti-matter destruction fails to produce the required QED pulse

4: a successful Initiation. But instead of the anti-matter explosion annihilating the sub atomic particles only, it obliterates other matter close by - in this case the electro-magnet. This is the easiest to find; there is usually a big column of smoke and a pile of debris underneath it.

This was what Paul Lomax saw fifteen minutes later.

'Puma One. Column of smoke bearing two eight five. White with black roots.'

There had been two other occasions when this kind of disaster had overtaken the trucks. On both occasions the drivers had not made it out alive.

The Kommisar called the helicopter,

'What height are you?'

'Eight thousand feet.'

'Let me know when you are close enough to be able to get a fix on the truck.'

'Roger, wilco.'

Fifteen minutes later the loudspeakers chattered into life again as Paul called in.

'Puma one to Serpentine five, I now have a fix on Octavia Two Seven.'

The Kommisar filed his nails as he contemplated the situation,

'How far away are you?'

'Something like twenty clicks.'

'Drop down to three thousand feet, and do a single pass. If there is no sign of life, return to base.'

'Descending now.'

Five long minutes later Carlo heard the helicopter. He looked around for the highest bit of rock on which he could stand. He looked in the direction from which the sound was coming as he dashed across to his selected promontory point. The chosen hill was some 400 metres from the still smoking wreck. Carlo was surprised to find that it had steep slippery slopes facing towards the truck. The ice and snow had begun to melt from the heat of the fire, this made it difficult to climb. He quickly made his way around to a more manageable slope. As he moved away from the truck he turned once more to look for the helicopter. A dot appeared in the distance; Carlo could not resist the temptation to wave. He looked up at the top of his hill, and then began scrambling up. As he climbed he remembered the signal pistol stored in the cab of the vehicle which was now burning merrily.

The helicopter passed over the column of smoke just as Carlo made it to the top of the hill. He stood as high as he could, and waved frantically as the men in the helicopter circled once as per instructions. They concentrated on the immediate area around the burning truck. Carlo could now make out the features of the machine as it turned its tail rotor towards him.

'They must turn again.' he said to himself.

Then he began shouting over the sounds of the rotor blades, which were now almost half a mile away from him – and moving further away.

'
Chapter 5

Gotta Get A Message Through.

Steve Steele reached up to move from the tender barge to board the dark blue Coast Guard vessel in La Coruna harbour.

He was helped on board by uniformed sailors of the Spanish Navy,

'Have you a working radio on board?' he asked them.

'Si, senor. We have been wondering why there is no radio traffic coming from La Coruna.'

'There is no traffic because they have all been disabled.'

'Can I make a call from your radio?' Steele asked in fluent Spanish.

'You will have to ask the Captain, senor.'

'Take me to your leader.' He smiled.

They made their way to the bridge of the small vessel, where Steele was shown to the captain; he could not be introduced because the crewman did not know him.

Steele opened the conversation by going straight to the point,

'I am an Inspector with the Metropolitan Police recently retired. It is my duty to report what has happened here in La Coruna to the English authorities. I think it can have international implications.'

'And exactly what has happened here?' the Captain asked, 'We are interested to find out, senor. We have been sent to find out why there is no radio traffic.'

'As far as I can make out, it is not only radio, but mobile phones, landline phones, cash machines, televisions, computers, most vehicular transport – in fact any electrical equipment has been hit by some sort of interference.'

'You mean the whole city has been struck by some force that has effected all the electrical equipment, no matter where it is?'

'Almost all electrical equipment. I have just come from the 'Enterprise of the Oceans', she has some electrical equipment that still works. The boarding computers still work and the internal lights, but the radio, and internet are out, as are the main intercoms. It looks as if she was further away from whatever caused this phenomenon.'

'Have you any idea what may have caused the problem?'

'Not the faintest. But the ramifications are many-fold. If people cannot get at their money, or buy food for their families there will be riots at the very least. By tomorrow there will be people running out of supplies. And with no means even to get to the shops to get more, or obtain money to replenish their food stocks they will not hesitate to steal it. The law will break down because they rely heavily on communications between not only themselves, but the public. There are no cars or any other kind of vehicle running out there. We saw signs that things were beginning to break down. There is no way of estimating how quickly things will disintegrate. But things were beginning to get ugly within two hours of the breakdown, whatever caused it.'

At this juncture the ship veered quite violently as the cox looked for somewhere to moor at the quayside.

Steele continued,

'I wouldn't risk tying up to the dockside just yet. Not until you can find out what is happening. People are going to be desperate to get out of town if nothing works and there is nothing to buy, and you cannot get hold of – and money . Then there is the problem of lighting. When it starts to get dark, and the lights fail to come on you will find another kind of lawless city.'

The Captain said something to the cox behind the wheel, who cut the throttles back to idle. 'The Enterprise of the Oceans' swung around into view again. A light began flashing from the docking bridge using morse code.

'I think the British authorities should be notified of the situation here as soon as possible. These people will need help from abroad and the sooner this can be organised the better.'

'And you can start the ball rolling?'

'Yes, I know the people in London who can put wheels in motion to send help.'

'Very well, Mr Steele.'

The Captain turned to the sailor who had brought Steele up to the bridge,

'Take senor Steele to the radio room, and see to it that he gets all the help he needs.'

'Sir.' The sailor said with a swift salute. Turning to Steele he said 'This way if you please.'

The two of them filed off the bridge as the Captain and coxswain studied the flashing light.

Steele and the sailor entered the radio room below decks. The door was not locked, there was no-one in the small room. The sailor sat at a narrow desk with radio equipment in front of him. He motioned for Steele to sit next to him as he switched the equipment on,

'Do you know the frequency you wish to speak on?'

'Not the foggiest, old bean. Can you call the English coastguard from here?'

'Yes, sir; that should not be a problem.' He made a few adjustments, and then punched the microphone across to Steele.

Steele looked at the radio equipment in front of him. He saw the radio call sign painted on the equipment. He pressed the transmit button and said into the microphone,

'Alpha Quebec Five Two Three to British coast guard. Alpha Quebec Five Two Three to British coast guard. Over.'

A reply came almost immediately,

'Falmouth coast guard here. Over.'

'This is Inspector Steele of the Metropolitan Police speaking from a Spanish coast guard vessel in La Coruna harbour. There has been a strange development here; could you patch me through to the Admiralty?'

'The Admiralty?' came the reply. 'I don't think we have ever been asked to do that before.' The soft Cornish tones came through the air waves.

'Well you are being asked to do it now. Can you do it?'

'I don't know, I'll have to consult the book.'

There was a delay whilst the Cornish operator took down an instruction book; a fellow radio operator came to his assistance. Together they worked out what to do.

'Putting you through now sir.'

'Admiralty.'

'This is agent Lancaster 972 calling from La Coruna.' Steele gave a call sign from quarter of a century ago. These call signs always remain active, 'Can you pass a message to SIS via GCHQ?'

'Yes.'

'Message is in plain language from the site. The Spanish city of La Coruna has been affected by unknown force canceling all electronic devices. Public unrest imminent. Possibility of hostile action responsible. Lancaster 972 residing aboard Enterprise of the Oceans, La Coruna, Spain. Message ends.'

He could not remain on the Coast Guard vessel, so they took him back to the 'Enterprise of the Oceans'.

The message was written down at the Admiralty, and then passed on to Government Communications Headquarters at Cheltenham. From here it was distributed to Inactive Agent section, the Iberian Desk, Threat Section, and the head of Mi6, 'C'.

'C' called the heads of the respective departments together. The head of the Inactive Agent section, Peter Cunliffe, opened proceedings,

'Agent Lancaster 972, came from the County Palatine of Lancaster. As you will deduce from his number, he was inducted into the Secret Intelligence Service in 1972. He was involved in several long operations during his service career, including one involving service in the French Foreign Legion. In another he trained with the RAF in Germany, and was qualified to drop atom bombs. It was during this mission that he destroyed the Ekronoplan. He has been inactive for some twenty three years now. He left the service to join the Met as a constable. He turned down accelerated promotion, and worked himself up to Inspector.'

He shuffled some files, 'Married with a teenage son, he has now retired from the Met. He is on this cruise which took in the port of La Coruna where he came across this anomaly.'

'Thank you, Peter.' 'C' turned to the other people around the table. 'Paul, as head of the Iberian desk, do you have a take on this?'

'La Coruna is an important place for the Spanish tourist industry because it takes in these massive liners. These deposit thousands of tourists in Spain every two or three days. Apart from that, there has been nothing of any significance there since the Armarda set sail from there. I can't see what significance there could possibly be.'

Keith Maddox was head of the Threat Desk. He was very good at seeking out possible threats,

'What if someone had invented a way of bringing about this effect – of killing off any electronic devices? If they wanted to use it as a threat to civilisation, which it would be, where would they test it?'

The people around the table mumbled quietly to themselves until Katherine Angel, of Codes and Cyphers, spoke up,

'So if they have found a new device to test, there must be some kind of communications we can intercept. I will set my lot on the messages intercepted over the last month to see if anything stands out.'

'C' said,

'Can we get this agent back? We need to know what happened over there so that we can work out what has happened.'

An hour and a half later a Royal Navy Merlin helicopter approached the Enterprise of the Oceans. There were no radio communications as the big chopper hovered in front of the ship. Slowly it moved towards the circle with a letter 'H' in the middle of it. A man came out on to the bows and began signaling to the pilot; he guided the helicopter down to a safe landing.

A man in the uniform of a Sub-Lieutenant came out of the helicopter as the rotors wound down. Members of the ship's crew moved forward with equipment to tie the machine down as a matter of duty. The Sub-Lieutenant waved them away.

The Sub-Lt approached the welcoming committee. He shook hands with the first person to hold out his hand,

'Sub-Lieutenant Kennet of HMS Devonshire. You have a passenger by the name Steve Steele, believed to be traveling with his family. We are here to remove him on the instructions of Her Majesty's Government.'

'The main comms system is out of commission, sir, but we shall endeavour to find him. If you would follow me.'

They moved into the ship. Then up two flights of stairs to a large well-appointed room behind the bridge where seven people were busy working at their various tasks. The greeter went across to a computer terminal. He tapped in some details, then turned to the naval contingent,

'Yes, I see that your chap is aboard here. Now we have to find him. Luckily the staff intercom is still functioning, so I will alert all staff to find your man.'

He took hold of a microphone and said into it,

'All staff please note, passenger Steve Steele to be found and asked to report to Studio B with immediate effect.'

He repeated the message.

He then turned to the men from the Royal Navy,

'I have asked for him to report to Studio B because all of the query desks are swamped. So we should be able to get some privacy in a room near Studio B. If you would follow me; we should take crew's passages to the Studio, which is at the rear of the ship. The sight of Royal Navy uniforms may cause some concern to the passengers.'

Sub-Lt Kennet replied,

'I think your hopes of our arrival being kept secret have been somewhat scuppered by that big grey helicopter on the front of the ship.'

They all smiled and filed out of the comms room.

By the time the group arrived at Studio B, the Steward from Steele's room greeted them,

'Mr Steele and his family have been located, and are making their way here now.'

Twenty stewards had been roaming the decks that were jammed with passengers wondering what was going on. Throughout the ship they called,

'Mr and Mrs Steele report to me.'

Josh was the first to hear this call,

'Is that us they are calling, mum?'

Wendy took Steele's sleeve,

'Steve, I think they are calling us. Why? Is it because you misused ship's equipment?'

Josh latched on to this,

'Oh, you're in for it now, Dad.' He turned to his mum, 'Is it going to be the plank, or keelhauling?'

Wendy said to Steele,

'And what were you doing with that Tarzan stunt? You are not in the police any more, and even then I don't think you had to pull anything like that.'

He replied,

'Needs must when the devil drives.'

As they made their way to the steward Wendy attempted to remonstrate with her husband,

'Steve, this is no time to go inventing new games. What were you thinking, and why did you have to go to that blue boat? You are retired now.'

Josh was very helpful,

'Yeah, Dad. You should behave more like a pensioner.'

Steele half smiled at the boy, then bit his bottom lip, and pretended to throw a clout at his son.

They found the steward, he asked them to follow him to Studio B; this they did.

When Steele walked into the studio he was not surprised to see the Royal Navy uniforms, but what they had to tell him did surprise him.

'We have been ordered by the highest authority to transport you back to the UK with immediate effect.'

'What about my family?' asked Steele.

'We have room for them.'

'Can you give us chance to throw some things into a suitcase?'

'Of course, sir.'

With that the Steele family dashed through the passengers to their cabin. Here they literally threw some necessary items into a suitcase, then made their way to the front of the ship. The Merlin helicopter lifted with the surprised family aboard. No-one spoke. Wendy and Josh looked around in amazement. Steele just sat there as if this was all in a day's work.  
.
Chapter 6

Pop A Top Again.

The cold grey and white desert stretched out before Carlo. He sat on top of his little hill watching the helicopter recede in the distance. The sound had faded long ago, but the clear blue sky allowed him to watch the dot get smaller and smaller until he could just about make it out close to the horizon.

He shivered as he began to move down from his perch among the snowy peaks. The truck still smoked and smoldered, he knew the helicopter crew would have marked the trucks position for future reference. The recovery vehicle may not set off to recover his wreck until tomorrow morning because driving on these roads at night was very dangerous. He never drove his rig at night, mainly because it didn't carry any lights; due to its main purpose.

He cautiously made his way down the hill towards his smouldering heap. He hoped to find something to salvage which would help him in his situation. There was precious little of use to him. He was looking for some way of letting any rescuer know that he had survived, and do not presume otherwise. The next vehicle he expected would be the wrecker truck equipped to drag the carcass back to base. If he missed this he would be completely stranded with no signs of life for miles.

There was no way he could leave a written message, but there must be some way he could let them know that someone had survived the conflagration. He looked carefully around the blackened rig. He considered dropping the trailer; most of the connections were mechanical, and had survived. He wound the front support wheels down on the trailer until they dug into the grey sand. Then applied the trailer brake by pulling a large lever by the rear wheels. Next the umbilical line for the brakes. He was surprised to find that it was still intact between the tractor and trailer. He climbed up on to the blackened frame to disconnect the bayonet connection.

'This is good.' He thought to himself.

This was simply him feeling like he was doing something constructive towards his predicament.

He jumped down from the vehicle, and then looked at the burned out tyres. He shook his head; there was no way he could move the vehicle away from the trailer in these conditions.

'Shit.' He had not considered the full problem. 'Anyone seeing this would at least know that someone had been working after the wreck.'

He stood back and tried to play the part of a recovery man. He looked at the trailer's front wheels on the ground, then the burned out tyres.

'That's no good.'

He concluded, shaking his head,

'It just looks as if the tyres burning out has caused the trailer to drop down to the wheels.'

The disconnected air-line was too small to notice, as was the fact that the brake has been applied.

He sat on a rock to contemplate his predicament.

Then he remembered the emergency tool box that was stored behind the cab. In it were things like a massive ratchet jack, tyre levers and spanners. They were there for the removal of punctured wheels. If he removed the trailer wheels, then the truck wheels, it will be obvious that someone has been working. And it will aid the recovery; they usually need fully functioning wheels to be able to drag the wreck back.

The sun was going down rapidly, and the temperature was dropping. He got the tools out of the box. This had escaped the worst of the fire mainly because it was mounted low down on the windward side, so a cooling breeze had taken most of the heat away. This pleased Carlo, because he found a very useful tarpaulin. This would be his shelter for the night.

The driver mechanic managed to work the massive ratchet jack under the trailer. With the big hexagonal bar he began the arduous task of jacking the rear of the trailer up, a large tube gave him the extra leverage he needed. Before the wheels left the ground he undid the wheel nuts. This was hard work; the nuts did not want to move, but at least it kept Carlos from freezing. With the nuts from the four wheels loose he continued lifting the trailer with the jack. Once they were clear of the ground he removed the nuts, and then pulled the four wheels away from the trailer. This left him exhausted, and the darkness was almost complete.

The tools he found in the toolbox allowed him to remove a lot of junk from the remains of the cab, so he would at least have some protection from the cold night. It would still be very cold, but he had made sure that he was raised from the ground. And with a roof over his head and the tarp to trap some body heat, at least he knew he would survive the bitter night.

By the time Carlo had done all this preparation it was thumping dark; he was doing everything by feel now, which made things difficult. Because of the cold he kept dropping things, and then had difficulty finding them.

He slept fitfully that night. When the slow light of day crept over the scene he was glad to see it. The rays of the sun would soon warm things up, but not too much, as witnessed by the snow patches that lay around.

He was pleased to find that he still had half a canteen of water, so that would not be an issue for a while. As he looked around he looked in the direction of base, from which he hoped to be rescued. Then he looked around at the small mountains that almost surrounded him.

'That would make a nice walk.' He thought to himself. He selected three peaks that were quite close to his present position. 'They will do. Time to pop a top.'

He jumped down from the cab, shivered, then pounded his feet to get his blood flowing, he set off towards the first peak.

Traveling at a brisk walk Carlo passed small valleys with short bushes and vegetation in them. It was in one of these valleys that he found a small pool of liquid water. It looked clear and clean, so he tried a sip. It tasted fine. Carefully he lowered his water bottle into the pool to replenish his precious liquid.

He got to the summit just over one hour later. He knew he had most of the day before anyone would come to rescue him, so there was no rush to get back to his truck, or what remained of it.

He reviewed his watch.

'Time to pop another top.'

He carefully began descending the slope; the last thing he needed was to fall and injure himself. Out here it probably would be the last thing he would ever do.

As he began to climb the next hill he became aware of another, alien sound.

The helicopter was coming back!

He spun his head to look to the south-east. Scanning the area he soon made out a very small dot.

'Shit! I did not expect them until this afternoon.'

He turned and began his descent down the hill. By the time he made it back to the truck the chopper had landed and shut down its engines. Men were examining Carlo's truck as he approached them. He recognized little Colin Head with his big bushy beard. Colin was surprised to see Carlo walking towards the group,

'A walking ghost.' He exclaimed.

'Who do you think took the wheels off?'

'I thought it unusual for wheels to drop off like that.'

'Yes,' Carlos added, 'And for the jack to fall out of the toolbox and wedge itself like that too.'

They shook hands and laughed. As they walked back to the trailer Colin explained,

'When Paul saw the truck burning he flew over looking for you. When he didn't see any signs of life he presumed that you had perished the way the other two had, so didn't risk landing.'

'I was standing on that bloody hill.' Carlo pointed at a nearby hill.

Colin said,

'Paul reported seeing smoke and flames pouring out of the truck windows, so I presume his attention was on the wreck rather than taking in the scenery.'

Carlo shrugged,

'That sounds like Paul; concentrates on the disaster, rather than appreciating the beautiful scenery that surrounds us all.'

He pointed to the truck and trailer, 'Now what are we doing here?'

Colin picked up an iron bar as he said,

'Paul could only get eight complete wheels in the helicopter with us. So he has had to go back for the other ten whilst we start getting the remains of your rig ready for the wrecker that is on its way.'

By the time Paul returned with the ten wheels the team had replaced a complete set on the trailer, plus one of the twin sets on one side of the truck. At first glance the burned out rig looked good enough to move – they had even managed to jack up the other side and removed the wheels.

Paul shut down the engine as men moved across to him. He called as they approached him,

'Why have you not started it up yet?'

Colin responded,

'Cause we need someone to swing on the starter handle, you big lummox.'

'The name is Lomax, headcase.' Then he saw Carlo, 'How the hell did you get here?' was all he could say, without thinking.

'I took a day trip out here, and this is how they treated me. Just look at the overnight accommodation.'

'Sorry, good buddy. I took a quick sweep, and presumed that if you were still in that cab, you were a gonner.'

'I was a gonner; I decided to go over to that hill. I was waving my arms off at you.'

'I am pleased to see you are ok, but how did you get out of there?' Colin indicated the blackened cab.

'I was thrown forwards by an explosion, I wasn't even given chance to let go of the steering wheel. So I was catapulted forwards into a somersault, which landed me on my feet in front of the truck.'

Paul shook his head almost in disbelief,

'Well, the boss is not best pleased with the way you have treated his truck; you know how he loves his red rigs. And this is no longer red.'

'It was yesterday; glowing red.'

Paul waited for the rescue wrecker to arrive, by then all the wheels had been replaced. The mechanics on the rig checked to ensure it was fit to be hauled back to base at Gostre.

Carlo, Colin and his crew flew back with Paul in the helicopter, whilst the burned rig was towed back. By the time it made it to Gostre the night had fallen. The wrecker had very good lights.

.
Chapter 7

Nothing Happens, Then Nothing Happens.

On the banks of the River Thames stands the imposing building containing Mi6.

Inside there was a meeting of some very important people.

The head of Mi6, known to all as 'C', was surprised to see some of the people present.

'Good afternoon, Cuddington.'

'C' greeted Pye Cuddington, private undersecretary to the Foreign Minister, at the same time he thought to himself,

'What is he doing here?'

'Afternoon 'C'.'

Also in the room in the Mi6 building were Neil Sherwood, SAS Intelligence Branch, Katherine Angel, Department Head of Codes and Cyphers Dept., Keith Maddox from the Threat Desk, and Steve Steele, recently retired Police Officer and lapsed secret agent.

'C' opened the meeting,

'Thank you all for coming, Steele here has had an interesting time recently. If you could, Steele.'

'Thank you sir.' He turned to face the group. 'We docked in La Coruna, Spain this morning to find the city in almost complete lockdown; traffic had stopped, apart from a few scooters, the electricity was out, as were mobile phones and of course cash machines.' He paused to allow the message to register,

'This last thing, the cash machines, along with banks and shops, was the biggest threat to public order. When people can't get their money, or get supplies for their family, they soon turn nasty. If you have been deprived of a modern tech system, like the internet, or your mobile phone, it has an unsettling effect upon you. If that is magnified within a group, and added to the problem of basic survival – how long can you survive if you have no access to money, and cannot exchange it for food anyway because the whole city is in lock-down due to lights being out in shops, electronic tills cease to work – even some electronic doors fail, locking people in or out; this is particularly true of banks. And there we have the main problem; civil unrest begins within hours. We reckon whatever happened, happened at ten twenty, by noon there were ugly crowds gathering. There would be very little chance for the civil authorities to quell things down, they have no communications either; all radio was effected.'

Keith Maddox wanted to know about the threat,

'How could this all affect us? Is there a threat here? Something happened in a Spanish city – '

Steele considered the question, but not for long,

'There is something about this that just does not feel like a natural phenomenon. It felt man-made, and if it is man-made, why, and who will be next?'

Sherwood asked,

'What makes you feel it could be a possible threat?'

'It's limitations. Some of the ship's electronic systems still worked, if they were connected to the internet or an aerial they were fried. This suggests to me that whatever caused the problem has a limited range. The coastguard vessel was unaffected, but I don't know how far away it was, but whatever the cause was had ceased to be effective by the time the coastguard boat got in range. This suggests a deliberate act. And what if it was just a trial; the next one could be in the middle of London, or New York. The whole financial world would be thrown into complete disarray.'

Keith Maddox then saw another threat,

'Or Heathrow; imagine what would happen if this guy were parked out near the airport watching the approaching aircraft - as soon as he sees two Super Jumbos on approach he flicks the switch. All the flight controls melt, and thousands will be killed. Not to mention the effects on other aircraft in the vicinity of whatever this thing is. Then there is the aftermath'

The room fell silent. Presently Neil Sherwood said,

'They could end air travel as we know it.'

'C' wanted to know more, he asked the only person who had experience of the situation,

'Steele, have you any idea how this incident came about?'

Steele though for a second,

'No sir. Nothing happened, and then nothing happened. Everything stopped. In reckon we were just about leaving the ship, not exactly in the city itself, by the time we got ashore properly there was complete silence – no traffic sounds even though the place should have been buzzing. All electricity was out, all cell phones were defunct, cars ceased to function; we worked out later that it was probably caused by the electronics in their engine management systems being fused together. If this is right, they will never run again. But the real threat to public order is in the inability to get money or food. If people cannot feed their families they go out to find ways of getting food and supplies. By the end of the second day the shops will be empty, and the city will begin to starve. With no transport people will have to walk to find food.'

Katherine Angel pointed out,

'It will move things back about two hundred and fifty years; to a time before the Industrial Revolution.'

Maddox added,

'Yes, in small areas, but the perpetrator will still be in the modern era. They can just walk in to any area they want. No one will be able to do anything about it because no-one will know.'

Sherwood added,

'Yes, and they can use any airport they want because they rely heavily on electronics; Christ, even the doors are electronic. There would be no aircraft near the dead airports for fear of collision, even if the runways were still usable; there would be airliners all over the place trying to land without ground assistance or clearance. It would be chaos.'

'C' called for a more steady approach,

'So this is only a dress rehearsal you mean? Let us return to the situation in La Coruna, shall we?' he turned to Steele, 'Do the Spanish authorities know about the problems in La Coruna?'

'The coast guard vessel I got aboard had a good look at the situation, but by the time they arrived it was deemed too dangerous for them to land.'

'So they do not have a really clear picture of the actual situation on the ground?'

'I think that by the time a clear picture emerges there will be too much chaos for the authorities to keep up. Things will be changing and deteriorating too fast to keep abreast of.'

Cuddington spoke for the first time since he sat down,

'So the greatest problem they face is a runaway chaos started by access to food and money? Is that right as I see it?'

Maddox was first to reply,

'Yes, pretty much.'

'And does La Coruna have a market?'

All turned to look at Steele,

'I suppose so; most Spanish towns, villages and cities have markets.'

'Well, what I suggest we do right now to avert a catastrophe is to contact the Spanish Government and suggest that they find a way to open up a road into La Coruna, then send all the supplies already on order for the supermarkets directly to the markets. The banks must find a way to get money to the people. It will be pandemonium, but that is better than chaos and civil unrest. Meanwhile we must find out how this happened, and how do we combat it.'

'C' asked Steele directly,

'Can we be sure this was a deliberate act?'

'You remember talk about the neutron bomb back in the eighties? It was supposed to do most of its damage by what was known as the electromagnetic pulse; a powerful surge of energy that infiltrates any electrical equipment and overloads it, fusing the parts together.'

They nodded.

'When I spoke to the people on board the ship they told me that anything with an aerial had been affected, including connections to the internet. Now we are more reliant on electronics than ever before we have become vulnerable. It looks possible that someone may have developed the scheme to do away with an explosion to create the same pulse – at a sub atomic level.'

Neil Sherwood agreed,

'This is all feasible. In quantum dynamics such a pulse has been seen to be produced under certain conditions, but that was using the Particle Accelerator at Cern; not exactly mobile.'

Steele added,

'But another feature found at Cern, and in other accelerators, was the tremendous amounts of electrical energy released by certain particles as they split. If someone has found a way of separating this activity without the need for an accelerator, they will have a powerful weapon.'

'C' thoughtfully said,

'And do you two gentlemen think that is what has happened?'

Steele replied,

'It fits all of the probabilities.'

'C' addressed the group as a whole,

'Do we have any clue what is going on here?'

Katherine Angel of Codes and Cyphers answered,

'We have a whole bunch of encrypts coming out of Argentina which we cannot get into.'

'How do you mean, Katherine?'

'We usually manage to get a handle on the core of any codes fairly quickly these days, but these are resisting all of our attempts to get inside them.'

'Are they local to the area?'

'No, they spread out as far as Eastern Europe, but they are mainly confined to South America.'

'South America you say? Not just Argentina.'

'Mainly Argentina, but Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador and Venezuela also.'

'Could these two be linked?'

'Possible. The encrypts began some time ago, but they would take quite some time to build up this kind of operation, the time frames could well match.'

'C' pondered a little before continuing,

'Has there been an increase recently?'

'No, in fact if anything they have nearly stopped. We thought we would lose them before we managed to get a handle on them.'

'That sounds almost like confirmation. They would go quiet at the outset of an operation. Like firing off an aircraft from a carrier; the last thing a pilot wants is for all and sundry chattering at him.' He looked around the room, 'Anyone got anything to add?'

There was various shaking of heads and general mumblings before 'C' continued,

'The situation as I see it then is thus, we have a deliberate act of disruption of electronics here. That could wreak havoc in the quietest hamlet, if unleashed at a major airport there would be massive loss of lives. Two of these could bring the financial centres to complete collapse all over the world. They must be stopped. If we tie them in with the mysterious codes coming out of South America, there may be something to work on there? He addressed Katherine directly, 'Can you give us something more to go on? A few locations would be a nice start.'

'Yes, we have plotted almost all of the transmissions, and can pinpoint exactly where the majority came from.'

'Good, then we have a plan of action.' He pointed his spectacles at Cuddington, 'If you could liaise with the Spanish authorities with regard to the present situation, everyone else, throw everything at finding how the attack took place, and how to stop it happening again.'

Steele asked,

'What about me, sir. I have just retired from the Met, and don't want to be involved in the kind of thing I left behind twenty years ago.'

'C' was emphatic,

'You found it, you clear it up. You are back. Work with Katherine, and then find out where these radio transmissions are coming from and chase them up. There must be something big out at the end of one of them.'

Sherwood said,

'They must also have some sort of support setup in Spain, I'll see if I can sniff this out, and then we may have some idea about the delivery system.'

Keith Maddox put forward his view of the future development,

'If you can find the source, maybe in Argentina, how are you going to take care of it? They don't exactly talk to us still.'

'C' almost answered him,

'There will be some Achilles' heel.'

Maddox replied to Steele,

'I have agents in Los Lagos and Buenos Aires who will be glad to help you over there.'

'C' put a cap on it,

'Right people, we have a plan – let's execute it.'  
.
Chapter 8

Casa Colina

Three miles out of Gostre, down a dusty single track road, beyond a small railway bridge, the Kommisar and his Chief Scientific Advisor, Kings Langley were traveling in a sumptuous limousine that was getting dustier and greyer with every turn of the wheels on the grey stony desert ground. As they approached the simple security gate the driver opened the electric window a crack. Heat and dust flew in as he passed his pass to the guard in the simple hut. It looked like any simple and ordinary security post. But if you looked at the girders planted in the ground pointing outwards you might think there was something special here. And the fence was not a normal fence, either. The second one may have been, but the barbed wire between them really gave you the impression that they didn't want people wandering in here. There was no doubt about it, it would take something the size of a main battle tank to force a way in here. Then you look at the little bridge they had just passed under. Anything powerful enough to break through the fence would not get under that bridge.

The man in the hut glanced at the pass, and then looked into the rear of the limo to see his commander there. He waved the car on as the barrier lifted and the window closed almost in unison.

The location of Casa Colina was chosen for its isolation, but mainly because the asteroid had landed there. The area had been evacuated when the asteroid was detected, and its destination was realised. People just did not bother returning, leaving a basic infrastructure for the setting up of Casa Colina.

The limo approached what must have been the ugliest building in the world. This sits on the left before getting into the site proper, on the opposite side of the site lay the Rio Wyre. Wide and slow at this point with impenetrable mud banks, this completed the security of the site.

The limo drove past this river as it attempted to glide on the rough ground. It moved towards a large pentagon-shaped building that was not even visible from the gate. This was where the administration of the whole operational proceedings was run from, and where the Kommisar was headed.

Ironically, most of the work of Casa Colina concerned circles or cylinders.

The main body of research was not visible from anywhere. In a crater of celestial construction the main piece of the devious device was sitting semi-buried in the side of the desert bowl. This was the Anti-hydrogen Synchrotron Booster.

The position of Casa Colina was fortunate for many reasons. It lay in an old river bed close by a mountain range. Over millennia the river had coursed down from one of the oldest mountain ranges on earth. After millions of years meandering along this course the river had gouged out its own valley that was bigger than the Grand Canyon. But this was also older, and in the course of thousands or millions of years this valley had filled in.

Kings Langley waved an arm out towards the edge of the crater as they walked towards it,

'The ground filling in this crater was not hard rock, but down at ten feet was a strong bedrock. This became exposed when the asteroid struck; providing facilities for the building of a circular tunnel with a flat floor that was invisible to the world outside.'

He said as they descended steps that had been constructed to lead from a platform out over the edge of the crater.

The Kommisar hesitated on this platform as they seemed to move from ground level out into space above the crater.

As they walked down the stairs towards the level floor, Langley paused on a platform within the steps,

'Here you can appreciate the tunnel. As you can see it does not go anywhere. It circles around the inside of the crater, and is protected from the elements by dirt from the surrounding landscape. Inside this tunnel we have constructed one continuous hollow electro-magnet.'

He pointed at an area that seemed to be exposed,

'Inside this we fire sub atomic particles.' He turned to the Kommisar, 'Not atoms, but parts of atoms. These we manage to accelerate to 99 per cent the speed of light; 1,860 miles a second.'

His arm described a circle,

'It is impossible for anything to travel beyond the speed of light. But if you cheat and get two sub atomic particles up to 99% light speed traveling in opposite directions, their closing speed will be 198% the speed of light relative to each other.'

They continued down the staircase as Langley continued,

'According to Einstein's theory of relativity as you approach the speed of light time slows down. This is the natural barrier to traveling faster than light; as you reach 100% time slows, until it stops at 100%. According to one of these particles the other one not only does not exist, it is traveling back in time – all things being relative.'

The Kommisar shook his head in disbelief as he said,

'This is the weird world of Quantum Mechanics. Being built in a crater that was created by an element from outer space gives our scientists an edge that no-one could have forseen.'

Langley continued,

'By crashing particles together strange elements come into existence. Sometimes only to disappear almost immediately. But the energies released by these activities were stranger and more exotic than we could ever imagined.'

They reached a construction on the side of the tunnel; as they entered a world of pure science Langley attempted to explain,

'We found there were strange abnormalities within the crater; we presume that because it was formed by the asteroid strike. We found some unusual elements not previously known to mankind, they must have been deposited in the ground and air around the crater. The interactions with these elements have given us some very unexpected results.'

The Kommisar led the way into a large room; it was larger than expected, complete with the flags of five nations at one end.

This whole organisation was built and paid for by five countries. These were duped into believing that it would give them more power in the world than they could otherwise achieve.

He looked at the flags as he said to Langley,

'The only way we could launch this whole enterprise was to involve all these countries. Within Latvia we would never get sufficient backing from within such an unstable regime. And at any moment one man could switch off funding with the change of government. We thought of taking over the government, but that would mean we would be in the business of running a country, I didn't want that. No, with more than one country working on the project gives us much more stability.'

He walked along the row of flags as he explained, 'Columbia was first to be contacted. With their economic and political setup I felt that they would be keen to improve their status on the world stage. They suggested Ecuador would bring more financial stability, and Argentina has land to spare. The government of Venezuela, or elements therein, then came along with more money. Whilst El Salvador gave us more scientists and other specialties.'

Langley looked at the flags as he realised that the initials of the countries spelled out CLEAVE. This is the word he had seen all over the establishment as they walked around.

The two men took seats at the large oak table which dominated the centre of the room. The Kommisar began the proceedings,

'Now then, Kings, there was something you wanted to tell me.'

'Yes, sir.'

He began to spread drawings on the table,

'When we ran preliminary tests on the Compact Muon Collider we found that it operated at normal temperatures. Other devices of this sort need to be frozen down to almost absolute zero in order to operate properly.'

'What about the rest of the equipment?'

'The whole setup operates at normal temperatures. These colliders usually have to be chilled right down before working. That usually takes up to two months.'

'What do you think causes this?'

'We just do not know. Everything we use is sourced locally; mainly from within the crater and its environs.'

'You mean you are using space dust for your experiments?'

'That's right, sir. The geologists find what is likely to be interesting, and we smash it up for them.'

The Kommisar looked at his fingers as they formed an 'A' shape in front of his mouth.

'I think you are using slightly incorrect terms here.'

'How do you mean, sir?'

'The words 'Terrain' and 'Geologist' are out of context; because you are not dealing with objects from the local terrain, as you put it, but from space. So the word geologist is a bit of a misnomer too, due to the fact that these objects are not from the earth.'

Langley began to see things in a different light,

'And the whole structure is semi buried in stuff from this asteroid.'

'Yes. But what does this have to do with the work? What I mean is; how does it affect what we are doing here? Can we continue here?'

'Most definitely sir. What this means is that instead of freezing down over some two months, then firing. At the same time as having to keep the anti-hydrogen elements at three degrees above absolute freezing, we can now do all the work at room temperature. This means we can fire off and transport these things as fast as you can get the portable electromagnets lined up.'

The Kommisar's face lit up. He placed his hands flat down on the table,

'That is splendid news. We will begin putting together a plan of action immediately.'

.
Chapter 9

A Duc For Steele

Sherwood and Katherine Angel were driven back to CGHQ Cheltenham, which allowed them to discuss their problem.

'We must find out what these people are up to.'

Sherwood began,

'If the theory about Argentina is correct, and we don't even know that yet, we have no idea what they are doing now, and we need to know what they are going to do next.'

'We have been trying since this ring came on to our radar six months ago. We have cracked the main constituents of it, but it is like trying to decipher a foreign language without knowing anything of it.'

'Have you tried different languages on it?'

'Yes, the first we tried were Spanish and Portuguese, then as many Russian dialects that we could get our hands on.'

'Spanish was a good guess, given that that was where they struck.'

'That brings us to where might they strike next?'

Katherine looked worried,

'You saw the pandemonium it caused in a little city, can you imagine what would happen if that level of attack came to London.'

Sherwood added,

'Or Cheltenham.'

Katherine looked even more shocked,

'Oh my God! That would put us out of business completely.'

'Yes; those big aerials and dishes are asking for signals to be put down them.'

'Speaking of dishes, what about Fylingdales?'

Katherine still referred to the Ballistic Missile Early Warning station in Yorkshire by its cold war name,

'Without the radar detection provided by this station we could be attacked and we wouldn't even know about it.'

'Yes, I know that AWDREY was rendered useless before I left the service.'

Katherine looked a little puzzled,

'Awdrey? Isn't that the chap who wrote Thomas the tank engine? What has Thomas the tank engine to do with this?'

'You are probably too young to know about AWDREY. The initials stand for Atomic Weapon Detection Recognition and Estimation of Yield. In the cold war it was the only way we would know about a high altitude nuclear burst. This would have delivered a destructive Electromagnetic Pulse without a blast wave reaching the ground. There isn't someone doing nuclear tests in the upper atmosphere is there?'

'No, we would know about it if there were. Do you think that possible? That it could have been the EMP from a nuclear burst?'

'No. The coastguard boat came from less than five miles away, and was not affected; had it been EMP there would be a much bigger circle of effect. This is a short range weapon, and the advantage of a short range weapon is that you can be close by to take advantage of the effects.'

'Unless the hit was at a place like Heathrow.'

Sherwood's eyes opened wide,

'Christ yes. All airliners are electronically controlled, as are the airports. And we do not even know the delivery system – it could be completely portable. That would incapacitate a major hub like Heathrow in an instant.'

'Not only that, but the aircraft about to land, even possibly the ones in the stacks, become uncontrollable. Thousands would die in the ensuing crashes.'

'Do they have manual reversion of controls for use in emergencies?'

Katherine thought for a moment,

'I really don't know.'

'We have to find about the delivery system. Have you heard from Steele yet?'

'Yes, he is on his way to La Coruna to see if he can find out what caused this mess.'

'I hope his family are ok.' Sherwood knew of the problems that can arise if families become involved in an operation.

'We have information from La Coruna. The latest I heard is that the Enterprise of the Oceans has cast off from the quayside to prevent rioters from boarding her.'

'How on earth do you know that?'

'A 41 squadron Tornado flew over equipped with the latest recce pod. We received live pictures, would you like to see some?'

She removed her mobile phone from her bag. It was an ordinary I-phone, as she switched it on Sherwood said,

'Yes.'

She swiped the display and tapped it a couple of times before a moving picture appeared. She passed the phone to Sherwood. He looked at it as the footage from the aircraft played out. The big liner was indeed several metres from the quayside, but stationary in the water.

'I presume she cannot get out of the harbour without at least radio communications with the shore.'

'No; that would be far too dangerous. The coast guard are escorting smaller vessels back and forth, but something as big and heavy as the Enterprise is having to wait.'

'How long ago were these pictures taken? Have things changed?'

'These are live pictures. I said that the recce pod is the latest. The aircraft is still over La Coruna. We can direct the pilot to cover any area we need better cover, or go down low for greater detail, or just to use the jet noise to disperse a crowd.'

'Down low? How high is he now?'

Katherine looked at the picture,

'Seven thousand feet.'

'You're joking. These people are almost recognisable.'

'Yes, they can be made recognisable, we use this for spotting leaders of groups. Good isn't it?'

'Can we have a look at the other parts of the city? We may be able to work out the areas affected, and thereby deduce where the centre is, then look for clues about the delivery system.'

Katherine took the phone, tapped it a couple of times, then looked like she was making a normal phone call,

'Angel to Hurdle Zulu. Go to Angels one five and scan the area.'

The picture immediately began to grow in area as the Tornado climbed another eight thousand feet in seconds.

Katherine and Sherwood banged heads in the car as they both tried to look at the phone together.

'What am I thinking?' she said, 'We can do this another way.'

She reached into her bag again and withdrew an I-pad,. Switched it on, then tapped it a few times and then turned it to show Steele the same picture he was looking at, but on a much bigger screen,

'Here, you need this more than me.'

They swapped devices. Steele could hardly believe what he was looking at as Katherine said,

'If there is any area you need to take a closer look at, let me know and the camera can zoom in.'

'Okay.' Sherwood was studying the hardly moving picture of roads around La Coruna. He was looking for signs of movement. When he found some he made a mental note of where it was, then he looked for similar activity further round the perimeter. In an industrial area he found a quite good demarcation of disabled vehicles. After only a few minutes he announced that he had found the epicenter of the melee.

'There is a three lane motorway snaking on a north/south alignment to the left of the city centre. Can we zoom into an area near some long sheds?'

'Angel to Hurdle Zulu, road near long buildings near centre of picture. Can you zoom in?'

Sherwood could not hear the other side of the conversation, but the picture began to zoom into the requested area.

'Hold it there.' He said.

'Angel to Hurdle Zulu, hold.'

The picture stopped closing, but still had movement as the Tornado flew over the city. The required area remained in the centre of the image despite the aircraft's movement through the air.

Sherwood could now make out individual vehicles. As he began studying the shapes he noticed that most of them had ground to a halt. There were very few collisions, except one area near a flyover close to a petrochemical plant. There was quite a lot of carnage there. He noticed what looked like the remains of the path carved out by a large vehicle. This could have been made by a lorry that was still capable of traveling after all the others were disabled. Upon further scrutiny he found further evidence of this vehicle carving its way through the static traffic.

'Do we know what this road is called?' he asked Katherine.

She tapped her phone a few times, swiped across its face, tapped some more,

'That's good. Its full name is 'Rondo Real Club Deportivo De La Coruna'. I suppose we could shorten that to Deportivo Road.'

'The A6 would have been better. OK, can we contact Steele?'

'Yes, I can send him a text, do you want it encrypting?'

'No, I don't think that will be necessary, it is a simple message, tell him the epicentre was on that road near the petrol refinery. Before you reach the AG55.' All this time Sherwood was studying the imagery coming down from Spain. 'There should be CCTV footage from around Pastorisa.'

The text was sent,

"EPICENTRE ON AC14 RONDO DEPORTIVO NEAR PETROL REFINERY, BEFORE AG55. CCTV FROM PASTORISA"

Steele was on a Royal Navy Merlin helicopter heading to La Coruna when he received the message. He consulted the map at the navigators station, and decided to stop off at Pastorisa.

The big chopper dropped Steele off in a field close to the little town centre. He walked towards the town looking for one particular type of shop. He had only been walking for ten minutes when he found what he was looking for; Santi's Bikes – a motorcycle shop.

The British agent in his holiday attire suit walked into the shop, through the ranks of bikes, he addressed the man who greeted him in fluent Spanish,

'Buenos Dias. I would like to hire a bike for a day, perhaps two.'

'I'm sorry, Signor, we do not have any bikes for hire.'

'You do not understand,'

replied Steele, who then continued in pure English with a cut-glass accent,

'I would like to give you some money.'

He pulled out a wad of 500 euro notes, and waved them in front of the man.

He paused for a moment, then stroked his chin before raising an index finger,

'I may have something for you.'

'I thought you might.'

'Come this way.'

The man led Steele through to the back of the shop. The man took Steele into a wooden shed, inside sat a gleaming Ducati,

'992cc. I have just finished refurbishing this model.'

'Could I hire it from you?'

'How do I know you will bring it back?'

'You can hold my passport and a large deposit.'

'What about insurance, Signor? We do not have that type of insurance available.'

'Don't worry about that, my company will handle all of that side of things.'

'What is your company, Signor?'

'The British Government.'

The puzzled look was met with the sight of the wad again as Steele said,

'And a large deposit will of course be rested with you.'

'The bike stands me at two thousand euros, Signor. Could we make the deposit half of that?'

'Yes. And the hire cost per day?'

'Could we say three hundred euros a day?'

'Why not make it five hundred?'

The dealer held his hand out saying,

'I will even throw in a helmet for that.'

Ten minutes later Steve Steele roared down the road towards La Coruna.

The satnav on the tank of the Ducati showed Steele exactly where to go. Exactly forty three minutes after stepping down from the helicopter he arrived at the site of the original event which had caused such disruption, and held so much threat to world stability.

.
Chapter 10

So Sad About Us.

'You can't switch off the sun, but almost anything else is fair game for us.' The Kommisar addressed another meeting.

Seated around the dark table in the conference room at Casa Colina were the following:

Kings Langley, Chief Scientific advisor,

Cracknore Hard, who's title of Security Chief hid a multitude of sins,

Carlo Di Vito, transport,

and various members of the organisation.

Di Vito said,

'Unfortunately the Peterbuilt is also something we can switch off. Every time we take it out on a test run it stops. We don't yet know why; there is nothing electrical left on it.'

'Well that just will not do,' the Kommisar said, 'We can't have a vehicle left behind for them to examine. So far they have not a clue about what is causing the problem; by the time they find out it will be too late.' He turned to Di Vito, 'Does it start again?'

'Yes, but we have to drag it along with something.'

'Can you fix it?'

'Given time I can fix anything, but this means taking the engine out, putting it on a rig, and then testing it to find out what is stopping it. I can't see it being shipped and ready for the time scale you need.'

Kings Langley then put forward a suggestion,

'We have been developing a different type of beam. By using materials from within the crater we find that there are some weird things happening.'

Cracknore Hard butted in,

'Everything about this business is weird.'

'To continue. When we use certain atoms and particles we find that we do not get the usual Quantum Electromagnetic Dynamic Pulse. The detectors we are using cannot give us an accurate picture as yet. But coupled with other experiments we have been doing it appears that the anti-matter particles do not react with anything down here. This allows the particles to shoot up into the upper atmosphere before reacting with something at altitude. This means we have a pulse like a sunflower with its head horizontal; a long straight stem, then a massive flat head.'

Carlo immediately saw the possibilities,

'That means you could drop the trailer, and then run for ten minutes before it fires up. After that you simply go back to the trailer, hook up, and away. Brilliant, I love it.'

Cracknore Hard suggested,

'I propose we try this in the foothills near El Maiten. If you can catch an airliner about to cross the mountains they may never find the wreckage; even if they do it will take them weeks to find out what happened.'

The Kommisar asked Di Vito,

'Can you do that?'

'Yes. Test rig three is almost ready to go,' he turned to Langley, 'Is the new apparatus ready?'

'Yes, it can be fitted in less than a day.'

Elswhere -

Astred looked at her husband as they waited for security at Buenos Aires International airport. They had been on vacation to the capital, now they were waiting for their return flight. This was not a scheduled airline flight, but a cargo aircraft operated by Buenos Aires Plus Argentina (BAPA) with seating for some 48 people in the upper deck.

Home was El Calefate in the cold South of Argentina, over the Andes Mountain chain.

'I just can't get over how high the buildings are.' She remarked.

'And how close together they seem to be.' He replied.

'And around every corner there seemed to be something happening.'

'Yes, the place was certainly buzzing.' He said as he removed their boarding passes from his jacket pocket.

The uniformed security guard checked them over; as they passed through the barrier she again turned to him as she said excitedly,

'Even at night; but it will be nice to get back to the quiet life we are used to.'

'Yes, where the only activity is a pack of stray dogs walking across the road.'

'The city seemed to have a life of its own. I know our town is active, that is because it is a working town. But in BA you felt as if you could stay up all night.'

'Not quite.' He countered, but in fact they had stayed up until the early hours on three occasions. This was unusual for them; they tended to be in bed by 10, he always had work the following day. He worked two shifts, six – two and two – ten, every other week he was on 'earlies', so had to be up at five. When he was on 'lates' he still got up before seven. At those latitudes and this time of year the nights were very short, so it was light when they went to bed and when they got up.

They walked across to the lounge windows where they could watch aircraft movements; to them it was like something out of a science fiction film. Not that they were unaccustomed to travelling; he had been involved in mining operations all across Argentina. But this was the first time they had visited the Capital.

'Which one is ours?' She said, 'Can you see it yet?

'Can you see anything that could be a '747?'

'How should I know? What does a '747 look like?'

'It looks like the plane we came in on, because that was a '747.' He looked out of the window, down directly below their vantage point he saw it, 'There, that's the one. The one with 'Air Plus Argentina' on it.'

Further down the lounge Claudia Lorena and her daughter had just come through security. At fourteen and a half (half years still count when you only have fourteen of them the percentage is important) Claudette was nearly as tall as her mother. But that may have been due to her mother being only five feet three inches tall.

The young security man seemed to take a shine to Claudette, not being aware of her age.

'You have an admirer there.' Claudia teased her daughter.

'You mean him? He's old enough to be my father.' The young girl protested with a perspicacious grin.

'Would you like a drink?' Claudia asked, 'I am going to get myself a coffee. Would you like anything?'

'Yes. Could you get me a lemon milk shake, a bar of chocolate, three cakes, and some sweets. Oh; and get something for yourself.'

Claudia smiled knowingly,

'Sometimes I'll think I'll be glad when you start smoking. I'll see what they have. You sit there and look after the hand luggage.'

Claudette sat on the plastic chair, and placed their bags on the seat next to her.

Claudette's father was not able to come along with them on this trip. He was a shift manager, and was not able to take the time away from work. As a manager he was able to send his family on more holidays than he could manage, so they were able to take four holidays a year. In another seven week they would be going on their main holiday to Hawaii.

.

Gostre was as quiet as a ghost town when Colin Head mounted his truck. They had given him explicit instructions where to go, what to do, and when.

He was to drive up into the foothills of the Andes, then find a road that intersects a line drawn on his map. Then he was to find somewhere to drop his trailer, leave it at least one mile away whilst it performs its act. Then he can return to pick it up. This all sounded quite do-able; but on mountain roads there is no room to turn around, so when he returns for his trailer he will be facing the wrong way. Not only that, but most mountain roads in this vicinity are single track, with no room for an eight foot unit to pass a trailer of the same width. He reckons he will need at least eighteen feet of road width – preferably without a precipitous drop alongside – and somewhere fairly close by to allow him to turn the tractor unit round. He may have to travel some distance before he can begin heading back to base, but that is as maybe.

Luckily it would soon be daylight, so he decided to set off in the direction needed before consulting his maps.

Two hours down the road in a westerly direction, and Colin was in full daylight when he found a good place to stop and study his maps.

After some consideration he found what looked like a possible place. It took him most of the day to reach the spot, light was beginning to fade, he was now 100 miles from his base at Gostre. His rendezvous time was around first light the next day, now all he had to do was find somewhere to spend the night.

By first light the road that Colin had chosen was blocked. The red Norbert Dentressangle forty foot monstrosity looked like it had been abandoned. Massive diesel engines were running inside, but there was no sign of the tractor unit that had put it there. These mountain roads are very quiet, no-one needed to pass the obstruction. At 0623 it had been sitting there for one hour and twelve minutes. At that precise moment the engines suddenly stopped. A split second later two sub atomic particles left the dead electromagnet. One descended to the earth's core. The other headed away from this source of gravity; to the heavens. It rose up at the only speed it can, 186,000 miles per second; the speed of light. It only lived for 0.00002 of a second – did not get two miles into the upper atmosphere before it met with its opposite number. They immediately annihilated each other in a brief flash, and with a powerful pulse of energy in the Quantum range.

Just at that moment Astred looked out of the window of the Boeing 747SP. She was one of the very few people who saw the blue-white dot flash. Just as all four engines stopped dead.

The captain made a frantic Mayday call into the dead radio. The controls froze because they needed computerised inputs which were impossible due to the electronic components being fried.

A Boeing 747 does not glide well without engines. In normal flight configuration the control services are set to provide straight and level flight. The engines provide thrust below the central aerodynamic line of the aircraft, now they are just drag inducing windmills. When this force is lost the aircraft pitches down fairly rapidly. The passengers and crew were not expecting this, even the pilots were not strapped in. They were in the front where the downward pitching moment was strongest. As the captain began his mayday call he felt the effects of reduced gravity when the nose began to drop. As he tried to broadcast the second call of 'Mayday'

his head hit the cabin roof. The cockpit roof of a modern airliner has many switches and control boxes. Luckily his head hit behind these, unlike the co-pilot, whose head collided hard with the controls on his side of the aircraft.

The passengers did not fare any better. The cabin was filled with people trying to control their predicament. They found themselves being moved around in an uncontrolled way.

As the aircraft began to fall to earth it gained speed. This prevented the stall, but as it passed its design maximum speed bits began to break loose on the wings. This in turn gave asymmetric lift co-efficients to each wing. The resultant move caused the aircraft to roll as it fell. Now pointing almost straight down the people were completely weightless, so was all the baggage and detritus belonging to all and sundry. Astred managed to regain her seat, but only managed to keep position by clinging on to the straps. She then felt the strong arm of her husband reach across. He had managed to fasten his seat belt, and now he helped her stabilise her position. She took hold of his shoulder, and looked into his eyes. The fear in her melted away when she saw the control and understanding he exuded.

Elsewhere Claudia clung to Claudette. A small suitcase caught Claudia on the shoulder as the stubby airliner ploughed into the side of a mountain in the Andes. Hard rock smashed the aircraft into millions of pieces on impact. The resultant avalanche smothered any flames that tried to emerge. It then covered the wreckage with several feet of permanent snow.

It will never be found.

.  
Chapter 11

Xanadu

The traffic around Steele was quiet. Very, very quiet. People had begun to wander around wondering what had happened. They seemed to be speaking almost in whispers. But he could not hear anything as he traveled along the road, avoiding bits of broken plastic in his path.

Then the broken plastic bits came to an end. He then knew he was at the exact place where the event had taken place. He stopped the Ducati, and let the rear wheel skid to place him at ninety degrees to the direction of travel. This allowed him to look in the direction in which he had come. It was not clear at first, but by looking at the patterns of stranded vehicles and the broken light coverings from cars that had suffered a glancing blow from a heavy goods vehicle, it was possible to see where the perpetrator had gone. Steele roared off in the direction he had already come, this time following the trail left by the only moving vehicle for miles around.

He approached a group of people standing by a big Mercedes that had a considerable amount of scratching along the metallic paintwork. These were marks made by the wheel nuts of a heavy goods vehicle; the circular motion exacerbated by the continuing forward movement of the offending wagon.

'What caused this?' he called out, stopping.

'Big lorry. Norman, or something.' A man called back.

'Any chance of a number plate?'

They all looked blankly at each other, and then a woman offered the information,

'The name on the side began with a D, and was quite long, I think it was French.'

Steele didn't have to think for long,

'Red was it?'

'Si, Yes. It was red.' A man bent down to extract paint residue from the side of the luxury car. A large flake of bright red paint was shown to Steele.

'Sounds like Norbert Dentreesangle.'

'That's the one, Si. Norbert Dentr... what you said.'

'Thanks.' Steele revved the bike up, and continued along the road. As he accelerated away he punched the voice command control on his cell phone.

'Steele here. Yes, it was a Norbert Dentressangle wagon. Probably an artic, heading south on AC14 as predicted. I am now moving to Pastorisa.'

Upon reaching Pastorisa he looked for CCTV cameras as he moved towards the centre of the town. Within ten minutes he was looking at CCTV footage of the main road outside town. These were the nearest cameras still working after the QED pulse had knocked out La Coruna. He found the lorry, then asked the operator to see if he could find the vehicle before the pulse, then track it back to where it had come from.

Meanwhile he called up Katherine Angel,

'Get your recce boys to look for a Norbert Dentrassangle wagon with a white roof somewhere in the... region.'

The Tornado flew over Lisbon, and then north towards La Coruna, but there was no sign of the Norbert Denressangle vehicle.

Steele had a little more luck. The CCTV people had managed to track the vehicle back through the area near Pastorisa.

'Senor, we have him.' Declared the policeman, 'Would you like us to apprehend him?'

'Oh, no. I need to see where he goes; there is probably much more information available at his base.'

'OK, senor. But we may have trouble tracking him outside the towns and cities; we can put a police vehicle behind him if you wish.'

Steele thought for a few minutes,

'No, I don't think that will be necessary; we have ways of following such a big object without him knowing.'

Flying 4 miles high the Tornado had equipment on board that enabled it to find and track many vehicles without them knowing it was even there. Sherwood sat in the back seat, he managed to find the truck on its way to Santiago de Compostela. When it reached the outskirts of the city, it pulled into a large industrial area with many similar articulated vehicles. Most of these were green with the words 'Rouco Yanez' emblazoned on their sides.

Steele was back on his 'Duck', he kept in constant communications with the high flying Tornado, who told him of the truck's stop,

'Probably stopping to eat his sandwiches.'

Quipped Steele, 'That should give me chance to catch up with him.'

'That would be useful.'

Sherwood, as electronics officer in the back seat of the Tornado said,

'We have a marker on the vehicle, but if it goes under cover and changes its appearance we would probably lose it. I have you only seven minutes from it now.'

Steele was giving the Italian performance bike the beans. He knew that he would not be stopped by the police, and was authorised to break any highway laws in his efforts to catch up with the lorry. This he did seven minutes later when he reached a large industrial complex. A small side road appeared; Steele immediately took this, and dismounted from the machine as soon as he was clear of the road. Sherwood called him at the same time,

'Do you have eyes on?'

'Not yet. This is a big plant, do you have him?'

'Yes, I have you off to the east; there is a row of artics and trailers directly in front of you. Our man is among them. You may find it difficult to see him from there, but he is in that line. At least he is for now.'

'Ok. Moving round now to a better spot.'

Steele began moving on the opposite side of the road to the plant. There was little cover, the bushes offered a little, but Steele was hard put to to avoid being seen from the other side of the road. He was glad of the darkness of his leathers as he moved between one piece of cover to the next. The sun beat down on the leathers, and he began to sweat. Only some ten minutes into this manoeuvre he got another call from Sherwood in the Tornado,

'He's on the move.'

Steele stopped, raised his binoculars to examine the line of lorries which now lay opposite his position. Surly enough, he saw a red trailer move out of the line. He was ten minutes from his bike, but he knew he could cover the distance in less than five if he broke cover.

There was no choice. He had to get back to his transport in order to follow the truck, or see what was going on.

He stood up and began moving through the low bushes. Then a shot rang out. He heard the bullet whiz past him. From past experience he could tell that it had been fired from across the road in the direction of the lorry park. He ducked down behind the nearest bush, and then moved his position as his first choice for cover took two more bullets. He knew then that there were at least two shooters. Now he had to remain under cover for as much of his journey back to the bike as possible. He reported to the Tornado,

'Taking fire here, where is he?'

'He's gone round the back, still in view.'

Steele ducked behind another bush. He considered using his pistol, but realised that the shooters were too far away. He risked a look through his binoculars to work out the best evasive tactics. The shooters were using very long guns. They looked to be some five feet long, Steele knew that they were not American squirrel guns; these were modern high-powered snipers rifles. The firing stopped. They would not waste shots on what they cannot see; these were experts. He knew that he may not even hear the shot that takes him out; extreme care has to be taken now. Moving over dry, dusty ground behind low bushes without raising dust is not fast. By the time Steele could see his bike the lorry had left the plant, and was on the highway half a mile down the road. He was now behind a rise in the ground as he descended to the Ducati he worried that he may be exposing himself. Looking in the direction of the plant he saw that part of a building came into view. He knew that this was not a good sign, so began ducking down to reduce his image as seen from the rooftop. A shot rang out telling him that he had been seen. He threw himself flat on the sandy grass as he slid down almost out of control towards the bike. Upon reaching it he didn't bother putting his helmet on. He jumped on the machine, and in one movement turned on the ignition and hit the starter button before his bottom had hit the seat. The rear wheel was not allowed to spin on the sandy ground; the acceleration was quick, but raised as little dust as possible. The dirt on his leathers began to fly off as he sped down the highway. On a smooth highway this bike can accelerate to 60 mph (96.6 kph) in less than four seconds. By the time the shooters managed to draw a bead on Steele he was traveling past 60 mph. He had reached 100 mph as the two bullets left the barrels of two high powered snipers rifles. The shooters had done their homework; they allowed for the movement of the target, even predicting the shape of the road. Wind and gravity acting on the bullets had predictable effects; the shooters had spotters who had taken all this into account. The only thing that they missed out was the rotation of the Earth. The range was extreme by the time the bullets caught the speeding bike; they had been in the air for almost two seconds. In this time, and at this latitude, the Earth's rotation had moved the surface a considerable distance. On the road Steele was in direct contact with the planet; the bullets had less contact with earth than Steele. This difference meant that the bullets were half a metre off target.

'Where is he now?' the words came from the speeding bike as it rounded a bend to take it away from the shooters.

Sherwood constantly monitored the situation that was developing four miles below him when he saw a new movement on his threat screen,

'What the hell is that?'

'What's what?' replied both the pilot and Steele,

'We have something weird following you.' He said as he fiddled with various settings. Then he said, 'It's a bloody drone. Looks too small to carry armament, so I don't think it a threat.'

'It does mean that my cover's blown.' Steele commented, 'I'll keep on the lorry for now. Where did he go?'

'He has entered an industrial estate. I'll talk you through it, looks convoluted.'

'Roger that.'

'He has about six miles on you at present. We have him fixed, so cannot lose him unless he goes underground or something; which is very unlikely in a thing that big.'

Steele clipped his speed down to about 65 mph; but the drone could not keep pace even at this slower speed, so was visibly dropping back. Another five minutes would see Steele in the clear. Sherwood was about to tell Steele this when he picked up another possible threat on the long range display.

'Hello, I think we have more company here.' He said as he turned his attention to the new visitor, Looks like a helicopter. Wait, it's a Hind gunship, chief. A definite threat; and it is heading straight for our boy.'

'These carry a machine gun in the chin turret don't they?' the pilot asked Sherwood.

'Yes. We have definitely got to do something about this.'

'Brimstone.' The pilot said.

Sherwood was concerned,

'Is that in our rules of engagement?'

'This is a special mission; that is why we have live ammunition.'

Small for a guided missile, Brimstone was only seven feet long. But it packed a big punch; able to take out tanks, it can definitely take out an attack helicopter.

There was no time for further discussion,

'Missile away.' Sherwood announced as the missile left the canister mounted on the rear edge of the shoulder pylons at the rear of the Tornado.

The aircraft was following a race-track pattern to keep the selected piece of Earth in view at all times. This meant the there were times when it was not facing the points of interest. This did not matter to the little, highly intelligent missile. By the time it reached the front of the Tornado, the Brimstone had accelerated to mach one; over six hundred miles an hour. It began a sharp turn to the right as it began to dive down.

The radar guidance on board had no trouble picking up the rotor of the helicopter. From four miles up, the rotating disc stood out like a sore thumb. The little missile plummeted down at three times the speed of sound. Sherwood kept himself in the loop with the simultaneous use of laser guidance as well as the millimetre-waveband radar system.

In less than six seconds it was all over. The missile hit the dead centre of the rotor disc. As it exploded, it sent a spear of molten copper down into the body of the machine, destroying the integrity of the airframe in a fragmenting explosion.

Sherwood reported to all,

'Threat removed.' Then he continued instructions to Steele, 'Sherwood to Duck, slow down. There is a turn off to your left one mile down the road. Take it.'

Steele lost speed. The turn led him directly into an area of utilitarian flat-topped buildings.

'Take your second left.' Pause, 'Now.' And then, 'Three junctions on your right. One. Two. Now. He has gone into a building, can't tell you what it looks like, they all look the same from up here. Slow down, it is on your left now.'

Steele didn't stop.

Neither did the drone, which had now made up for lost time by knowing where Steele was heading, and cutting corners.

'Sherwood to Duck. You got a drone again.'

Steele stopped the Ducati and stood taking in all the elements around him. He heard the faint sounds of the drone carried on the wind. He reached for his sidearm, an automatic pistol which shot bullets. He looked in the direction of the sounds of buzzing from the drone. It was then he realised that bullets are not good for shooting such a small flimsy object like a drone. He put the gun away, and reached into the motorcycle panniers; here he withdrew an object that looked similar to an old fashioned duelling pistol. It was actually a development from the sawn-off shotgun. This did not fire bullets, but simple shot. These depleted uranium pellets spread into a predetermined pattern, and covered a disc the size of a plate. One or two hits from the super heavy grenades would be sufficient to disable the drone.

He took careful aim as the mechanical insect came into view. The pistol fired with a louder than expected bang. The shot hit the drone in three places, knocking one of the four motors from its mount. At the same time the central gondola was smashed, leaving the operator blind. It spiraled spectacularly down, and crashed into a field.

Steele moved around to the rear of the building. He carefully remained out of sight of the structure until the last moment. The flat roof gave ample cover and a good working area for guards.

A shot rang out as Steele moved in closer to the boundary fence. He took cover behind a bush as he withdrew his weapon; a shotgun pistol.

Moving stealthily from cover to cover Steele carefully approached the building. He knew that there would be a rear access; and that there is a good chance that it would be unlocked. The gun he carried would be of little use against the roof-top guards who were probably armed with rifles. Once inside it would give him a considerable edge, mainly because he did not have to aim it – the shot spread out to cover a respectable area.

Several columns of tyres faced the Brit as he entered the building. These piles of rubber gave him good cover as he looked for the truck. The smell of new rubber filled his nostrils as he moved around. He worked his way round the establishment trying to keep out of sight. He had to cover open space from time to time; it was during one of these exposed moments that he was spotted by Dan Goodfellow.

The driver was removing panels from his truck in preparation to install electrical equipment, like a starter motor and lights.

'Hey!'

The driver/mechanics shout rang out in the quiet workspace.

Other people looked at where Goodfellow was pointing.

Steele ducked behind cover as he prepared his shot-pistol.

A overall-clad figure appeared to one side. Steele fired a shot, the man's head took the blast directly. Only three metres separated the men; the shot did not have chance to spread, therefore it was only the size of a child's hand when it hit.

The destruction was complete. The man's head stayed in place, but was devastated. Ten pellets of depleted uranium traveling faster than sound entered the soft flesh of his face, then exited the rear of the skull, taking out most of the bone and brain with it.

Steele thought about his ammunition. He knew he had enough shots to kill everyone in this facility. If only he could keep out of harms way, there was a chance that he could scare most of them away, thereby allowing him to drive the evidence away. Little did he know that he would not be able to start it, so the authorities would have to get involved. This could be messy; he knew there were more people down the road at the bigger plant, and they had helicopters. This was only going to be an intelligence gathering mission.

Steele looked at the truck as he moved around. He managed to take a few pictures with his cell phone, but there was very little to be gathered from these. Now he was preoccupied with the fight at hand.

A man sprang into Steele's view. The man was pointing what looked like a pistol. Steele instinctively ducked as a shot rang out, missing him by inches. The assailant looked to be moving to Steele's right, so he moved to the left just as another man jumped out in his path. Steele did not have chance to aim his weapon, neither did the other man. But Steele's gun was not firing bullets. Two guns went off almost simultaneously without being aimed. The bullet missed Steele. The shot almost missed the other man; but one pellet embedded itself in the muscle at the top of the man's leg. This caused him to wince in that direction instead of taking another shot. Steele did. This one hit the man directly in the middle of his chest; taking out most of his vital organs.

The other man moved closer whilst Steele was dealing with his threat on the other side. This manoeuvre was expected by the experienced fighter. He threw himself backwards as he turned to point his weapon in the opposite direction. Again two guns fired simultaneously. Again neither one could be aimed. The bullet missed, the shot caught the man on the top of his arm. The power of the shot was insufficient to turn the man, or even deflect his arm; but it stung like hell. This combined with shock to overwhelm the effects of adrenalin in action. The man grabbed his arm. Steele then took out another assailant.

Steele ran across the workspace. He knew that anyone he saw was enemy. On the far side of the compound there was an office window. Through it he saw two people, one was on a telephone. This constituted a long-term threat; the man was probably calling for reinforcements. Steele fired at the window as he raced across to it. The glass shattered spectacularly as the shot hit it. Steele looked around him as he passed the front of the red truck. Without hesitating he fired at the people in the office. One already had blood on his head from flying glass. The other one, the one on the telephone, took the shot in the shoulder, neck and head. But he had got his message across.

Sherwood called from the Tornado,

'Steele, you better get out of there. They are sending reinforcements in.'

A series of fast cars were now moving from all over the large plant which the lorry had first visited. There were so many relatively small targets, it made the use of Brimstone impractical.

Steele looked up at the big red rig. He was thinking if he could drive it away.

Carlo called from across the workshop,

'It's no use. It won't run.'

The screeching of tortured tyres prevented further conversation as two big Mercedes Benz limousines roared into the garage space.

Steele turned to face this new menace, Carlo took advantage of the fact that the Brit now had his back turned, with the gun trained on one of the cars.

The mechanic picked up the first thing he could lay his hands on; a steel pry bar.

The metal lay across Steele's shoulder and neck. He stumbled forwards, the gun fell from his hand as he lost consciousness and dropped to the concrete.

.  
Chapter 12

Each Night.

The plant at Gostra, Argentina, was deathly quiet. The crescent moon almost lay on its back as Kings Langley's car turned into the plant. Alongside him sat Cracknore Hard, they were on their way to a video conference with Europe.

The silver limo seemed to glide around the silent site until the ominous building that was Marrakesh Tower. The two men were greeted by Carlo de Vito,

'Morning, gentlemen. The Kommisar is waiting for you.'

'Will you be joining us?' Langley asked.

'Yes, I think we are to discuss tactics and operations.'

They walked up one flight of stairs to a conference room. Sat at the long table was the Kommisar. He welcomed the group,

'So sorry for the late hour; we have a video link with Europe arranged, and this was the best time available.'

They took seats at the ample table. The Kommisar touched the screen of the large TV, and then sat with his men. Presently the screen glowed, and a lone figure came into view.

Manfred Bogarts was in the depot at Santiago de Compostela. Behind him could be seen lines of trucks, only a skeleton night shift were working at this hour, one reason for the timing of the call.

The Kommisar began the discussion,

'Guten Morgen, Herr Bogarts.'

'Guten Morgen, Herr Kommisar.'

'As you can see, I have here with me Kings Langley, my scientific adviser, Cracknore Hard, security, and Carlo de Vito, transport.'

The assembled nodded to the screen, Bogarts replied in the same manner.

'To get straight down to the task at hand,' the Kommisar said, 'How many trucks do you now have, Manfred?'

'As you can see, we have many trucks - that is not what is at issue here; it is the specialist trailers. There are two at Salamanca being equipped with the magnets and motors required. One is on its way back here, there is the one we used at La Coruna, but I don't think we shall be able to use that one again.'

'Why not?' asked the Kommisar.

'The engine began its life with 350 horse power. I fear that in the meantime most of them have left, and run to the hills; the rest have taken up heavy smoking. Carlo has put it into storage not far from here, but we have had a visitor. I don't think the machine has been compromised or seen, we will have to get it moved and checked over; but we will definitely need another tractor unit.'

Kings Langley was looking past the image of Bogarts on the screen,

'What about the trucks behind you? Could you not sequester one of those?'

'Not exactly, Mr Langley. Yes, we could easily take a truck to drag the trailer back to Salamanca, but it would not be possible to use it on operations.'

The Kommisar interrupted,

'What you are saying is that we have only three possible units ready?'

Bogarts thought for a moment,

'Four if you count the trailer used at La Coruna. Five counting the one coming back from Paris. We could modify one of these,' he thumbed over his shoulder, 'And send it to Salamanca to pick up the La Coruna trailer; it all depends on your time scale.'

'That is what I am trying to establish.'

The Kommisar consulted the large wall map, and then turned back to the screen,

'Manfred, how long will it take you to modify an existing truck?'

'Twenty four hours, sir. But then it will need testing.'

The Kommisar was thinking hard about this,

'Not if we use a different operating protocol. Carlo has been working with a different scheme. If the tractor unit is untested, the trailer can be dropped and left to trigger itself. The main problem here is retrieving it. If the area is sealed off due to the effects of the pulse, we may not be able to get the trailer back.'

Cracknore added,

'Could we self-destruct?'

The Kommisar looked surprised as he scrutinized Cracknore,

'Self-destruct? Self-destruct? These things consist of an electro-magnet, and three diesel generators. Just how are they supposed to self-destruct? Do you not realize that the generators fuck up their own electronics when the magnet is switched off? That cannot be hidden. The enemy cannot miss that clue to what happened.'

'I just thought, that within all the ensuing destruction when the airliners begin crashing, one trailer exploding might not be noticed.'

'NOT NOTICED? We have invested years of research into these machines. To leave one in the reach of the enemy, even in a damaged state, is beyond sensible.'

He shook his head, causing the shock of white hair to emphasize the movement,

'We must find a way of using one truck that has not been tested.'

He turned to di Vito, 'If we use the truck, and it fails to keep running, is there any way we can invest in another way of starting it again?'

'Hand cranking used to be used quite widely before batteries became reliable. I suppose we could install some sort of crank system, but it will take a little time.'

'You do not have any time, get on with it at once.' He indicated the outer office.

Di Vito hurried into the office, tapping his cell phone as he went.

The Kommisar turned to the man on the screen,

'Manfred, do you know the exact details needed to convert a truck?'

'Yes, We have been involved in most of the development of the system.'

'Can you begin converting one of the vehicles there?'

'We will need certain...' there came a knock somewhere in the room in which Manfred sat. He turned to speak to someone off camera. As he turned back to the Kommisar he held a cell phone in his hand, he waved it as he said,

'It's Carlo di Vito about the conversions.'

The Kommisar calmly said to Manfred,

'Would you be so good as to pass a message on to signor di Vito for me?'

'Yes, of course, Kommisar. What is it?'

'If you could just say, Carlo, stop pissing about, and get back in here.' He looked at the outer office door.

Presently Carlo appeared at the door, the men in the room began applauding, Manfred joined in.

'Is everything in place?' the Kommisar asked.

'Yes, sir. It will be ready within twenty four hours.'

'Good, and then it will take one day for it to travel to Salamanca.' He looked at Carlo, 'Can the remaining three trailers be readied in two days?'

Carlo thought for only a second or two.

'It looks possible. What do you have in mind?'

The Kommisar stood up. He took two paces away from his chair before replying,

'These three trucks will be used together. They will not be together, of course, but will trigger their devices simultaneously. In order to make this possible the three trucks will have escorts.'

He turned to Cracknore, 'What facilities do we have in Europe to support this activity?'

Cracknore Hard did not hesitate,

'There are many disaffected outfits across Europe. We have units in most countries. Where do you want them?'

The Kommisar seemed to be delaying things now as he reiterated the question,

'The targets you mean? Where are the targets?'

'Yes sir; where are the targets?'

'Target number one, Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris. Have you got a unit that can give some military support?'

'We have some people who used to work with the Spanish Eta terrorist group, they left because it got boring.

The Kommisar nodded,

'Very good. The second target is in the north of the UK; Manchester.'

Langley could see a ready supply of support for this one,

'That is an easy one. The old IRA organization was effectively dismantled by the British. There are still cells of people who would like to get back at their neighbours.'

The Kommisar showed his approval,

'We shall go into details later, but the third target is more challenging; this is not one airport, not only are we looking at hitting airports this time. In the south of England there is the headquarters of the Air Traffic Control network setup. This is only 30 miles from Heathrow; the busiest airport in Europe.'

He drew a circle with his finger on the map of Europe,

'The effective range of each of the beams as they are now configured has a range of twenty miles. The only thing limiting this being the curvature of the earth; so we can not only knock out the busiest airport in Europe, but the air traffic control network for the whole of southern England, including most flights into Europe.'

The assembled group looked surprised by this development.

The Kommisar continued,

'All of this has to happen in three days.'

'Why the rush?' asked Kings Langley.

The Kommisar glanced around the small group and at the screen before replying, he was looking at Manfred as he said,

'We may have been infiltrated. The test at la Coruna seems to have gone according to plan, but we did not expect to attract the attentions of a British secret agent. We do not know where he sprung up from; there has been no agency activity in that area for decades, that is why we chose it for the test. But he somehow managed to drop on to us very quickly. Now he has managed to get help and backing so efficient it has already cost us a helicopter. We managed to get him in Santiago de Compostela,' he asked Manfred directly, 'Do you have any more information on that?'

'We have the aforementioned agent. He is undamaged, we are holding him until an interrogator can have a word with him.'

'I am sending someone to you directly. He will be there late tomorrow, could you sit on him until then?'

'No problem. He will be suffering a bad head until then, at least.'

The Kommisar looked at the assembled group, and then turned to the screen as he said,

'Any questions?'

A low mumbling accompanied the shaking of heads as the group indicated that there were none.

'Very well.'

He addressed then next comment directly to Cracknore Hard.

'You shall take a team aboard the Gulfstream IV to Rio, then on to Monrovia before continuing to Salamanca.'

An air of determination came into his voice then,

'Find out how this interfering busy-body got on to us so quickly, and how much he knows. If he can interfere with our plans I need to know as soon as possible.'

He thought for a second before adding 'Damn!' he looked at Cracknore as he said, 'I will have to go myself.'

.  
Chapter 13

Rotation and The Aluminium Avalanche.

Charmaine Marchant hurried through the early morning streets of Paris. She was not late, but always moved with a purpose; as if there was always somewhere to go.

The early morning sun promised a nice day as its rays slanted through the buildings on the Avenue du Charles de Gaulle.

The Academie Savantes por de la Terrene studies all things to do with the Earth as a whole, as compared with studies which concentrate on separate elements that go to make up the planet upon which we live.

'Good morning.' She greeted the uniformed doorman as she mounted the stone steps to the main door.

'Savva.' He replied. English is normally used in the institute, but the security staff are allowed levity within this ruling, due to their regular dealings with the French public.

Before Charmaine could make it to her office she was met with a direct question from Mantel Duchamp,

'Morning, Charmaine. What do we have on things that can slow the rotation of the Earth?'

They went into her office, she looked puzzled at him as she struggled to put together a reply,

'Pardon?'

'What can interfere with the rotation of the Earth?' he patiently replied.

'Not much. Planetary collision. Close encounter with another gravity field.

She looked at him,

'I suppose any movement by the moon - there isn't much that can influence the rotation of the Earth, or any planet for that matter. What makes you ask?'

'There has been a blip in the rotation of our planet. Only very slight, but we have detected a minuscule slowing, the inertia of the core countered it almost immediately, but we managed to pick it up. The equipment has been checked, there can be no doubt that the Earth suffered a slight hiccup.'

They sat opposite each other in silence. Eventually he shrugged,

'The effect was too slight to have been caused by anything of an interplanetary nature, but we are certain that it happened.'

'Did it effect the clocks?' she was now grasping at straws.

Once again he shrugged,

'How do we know? If it did, the effect would have been very slight, and would influence all the clocks in the same way; so we would have nothing to check it against.'

Duchamp rose from his chair, and began pacing around the office. As the carpet gave way to the polished floorboards his leather soled shoes made a louder tapping as he slowly moved about. He stopped, turned to face Charmaine. He stroked his chin as he said,

'It is as if someone has touched the brakes, and then released them.'

'Could an interference with the magnetosphere do something like that?'

He carefully considered his reply,

'Magnetosphere? Why would that come into the equation?'

'You know, as you draw electrical power from a dynamo the workload causes the machine to slow down; I wonder if the same could have occurred here.'

'So you think that someone plugged into the magnetosphere in some way?'

She did not answer immediately,

'It must be a possibility. But I don't see...'

He interrupted her train of thought,

'I suppose it is possible; If there were a sudden pulse of energy...'

'You mean taking at the same time as expending energy.'

'Now we are moving into the world of Quantum Physics.'

Charmaine gently drew breath before saying,

'The effects of the tiniest on the most massive. Is it possible?'

He shook his head as he thought hard about this,

'Within Quantum Physics anything is possible.'

Charmaine looked quizzically at Duchamp, then out of the window before pointing in a meaningful way, but with a questioning expression on her face,

'How far north do we have a Fuchards pendulum?'

'Fuchard's pendulum?'

'Yes, you know, the long pendulum that reacts to the rotation of the earth. There's one here in Paris, if we can find one further north, there may be some difference in its readout.'

'It sounds as if you are clutching at straws here.'

'No, Mantel, it is a pendulum, you know,' she indicated a swinging motion with her hand, 'a swingy thing.'

He thought for a few moments,

'Oui, oui.' He said waving his hand as he lapsed into his native French, 'I think there is one somewhere in the north of England. I will have to ask around.'

'It's a long shot, I don't even know if these things are sensitive enough, or reliable for that matter.'

'You trot along to ours, I will see if I can get a report from one further north.'

He contacted his opposite number in London. Another Fuchards pendulum was found to be still operating in Preston, Lancashire. The Harris museum was not yet open, so there was less chance of wind disturbance of the delicate instrument. An employee was found, and then instructed what to look for, but the readings were found to be useless.

When asking his contact in England for help, Duchamp told him of the strange discovery made by his unit. The British scientist thought it should be mentioned to some ministry; scientists like to have things documented, no matter how slight. The report found its way to Mi6. No-one knew what to do with the snippet of information, so it was thought that Codes and Cyphers deal with weird bits of information, so maybe they could file it away.

When Katherine Angel co-ordinated the files they had on events that happened at 10.15 on that fateful day, this seemingly unimportant fact came to light.

She rang Charmaine,

'Bonjour. My name is Katherine Angel. I work for the Codes and Cyphers section of Mi6. We have a strange anomaly that happened at exactly the same time you have reported a hiccup in the rotation of the earth.'

'Interesting. What is the nature of your anomaly?'

'There seems to have been some sort of disturbance around La Coruna, in Spain. Everything electronic stopped.'

There was quiet as Charmaine thought for a moment,

'Someone has found a way of influencing the magnetosphere.'

'You mean that the effect, whatever it was, actually reaches beyond the atmosphere, out into space?'

'You will have to talk to a Theoretical Physicist to be sure, but that is how it is beginning to look.'

The conversation did not go any further; the phones went dead. Everything in and around Paris went dead.

The airports, le Bourget, Orly and Charles de Gaulle suddenly lost all radio contact with the airliners they were shepherding. Somewhere in the region of 34,000 passengers were in the air over Paris at the time.

Kim and her daughter were returning from a brief holiday in Cornwall, England. They had been stacked for some twenty minutes now.

Eleven year old Shirley reached across her mother to look out of the window as she said,

'Will we be landing soon, mummy?'

'Yes, it won't be long now honey.'

'Will daddy still be waiting for us?'

'Sure he will dear; they tell him when we will be delayed.' She knew he would be watching the arrivals board.

As Kim turned her head to look out of the window she noticed that the right wing, the one on the side she was sitting on, began to dip again as they began another turn. More and more ground came into view as the horizon gradually moved up the window. Shirley's bright auburn hair cascaded down her mothers front as she tried to see details on the ground below. Things began to look promising as the flight crew began taking their positions for landing.

'Come on, now dear. Get back into your seat properly.' She said to her daughter when she saw the seat belt was slipping lower down Shirley as she squirmed about.

As the little girl settled back into her seat a deathly silence fell on the aeroplane.

The engines had stopped. They were all controlled by a central engine management system; this computer had now been fried, along with every electronic device within a five mile radius. In complete shock some passengers began trying to use their mobile phones - to no avail. Inside the cockpit the pilots found that they were passengers too. With no manual reversion on the controls the aircraft was stuck in the turn; but without thrust from the engines it soon began to drop. Because of the rapid decent the airspeed was maintained, but the airliner was tilted to one side, so there was less lift coming from the wings, the turn tightened up as the 250 ton aircraft began to fall. Gravity inside the cabin was replaced by centrifugal force. The increasing speed of the airflow began setting up vibrations. People began to panic; but there was nothing that could be done.

All over the city aircraft began crashing into the ground. Seventy eight aircraft were in the air at the time the QED device went off. Some were on the point of take-off, others were lined up to land. One crashed just short of the runway at Orly. The one behind it crashed two miles further back. The one behind was not effected, but the aircrew and passengers were in shock when they arrived at the dead airport; aircraft on take-off had ploughed straight into the suburbs just outside the airport perimeter. All landing aids had stopped working. There was no contact with anyone on the ground. The pilot could see aircraft waiting to take off. Luckily the runway was clear, so he landed, and then taxied clear. A Boeing 747 dropped out of the sky to his right. The 237 ton glider could no longer stay in the air. All 386 people on board died instantly, taking another 149 people on the ground in the centre of the city with them. The fires started would add to the number.

Other fires were started, but there was no reaction or defence. The fire service could not be contacted. If they noticed what was happening there was nothing they could do about it. They could hardly ignore what was happening; in one station a loud crump was heard, the whole station shook. Upon looking out they saw a pillar of black smoke begin to raise from a few city blocks away. They donned their mirror silver helmets, and ran to their machines in silence. There was not even the sound of alarms. Everything that went through an electrical circuit was fused by the Quantum Electromagnetic Dynamic force. In silence they prepared to fight fire and save lives. But the doors would not open. The fire engine would not start. They did not have time to think what was happening, they opened the doors manually. But the fire engines would not start.

.  
Chapter 14

The Other Side.

With the lead scientist setup at Gostra, it was imperative that the location be kept secret.

The coded and encrypted messages gave no clues, Katherine Angel and Neil Sherwood met up at a secure location near HCHQ, Cheltenham. Sherwood was introduced to Jim Proby, a Nuclear Physicist. They went to the Doughnut, after visiting the workstations within the building, as they walked among desks with mainly men working on two or three computer screens each. With gigantic screens all over the room, Katherine explained,

'Most of these people are working on stories from all over the world. They scan everything looking for stories that may be of interest to us. Most of them are mundane, but usually need a little more detective work to make sure that people who are of interest to us are not involved.'

She led him to an office. Inside there was the definite smell of coffee. At a table set in the middle of the meeting room was a well dressed man in his early forties. Katherine introduced him as Undersecretary Samuel Ward-Blair.

He began the meeting in his fine Edinburgh brogue,

'Right Katherine, what do you have for me?'

'There is an outfit out there that has developed some sort of Electromagnetic Pulse weapon.'

'How do we know this?'

'We have an agent in the field who experienced it first hand.'

'Lucky to have someone on the exact spot, I would venture to say.'

'He wasn't in the service at the time.'

'Not in the service you say? How did that work out?'

'He's a retired agent who happened to be in La Coruna when they did a test.'

'And this retired agent actually experienced the effects for himself?'

'You do not feel anything yourself personally, but everything electronic around you freezes up.'

The Scotsman pondered a moment before replying,

'We learned something about this during American testing during the 50's, I seem to remember. Wasn't there a test in the early 60's? Starfish Prime I think it was called, to find out if EMP was as real a threat as the fiction writers made it out to be.'

Sherwood added,

'The American hawks wanted to know if a strong EMP could neutralize Soviet weapons, so as I recall it, a 1.4 megaton bomb was detonated 250 miles above the Pacific.'

Ward-Blair continued,

'The report was somewhat exaggerated; it was expected that lights would go out, phone lines would go dead, even motor cars would stop - in the 1960's for Christ's sake. There was nothing sensitive on the Ford Anglia; you could start the engine without the benefit of a car around it. How people believed it could be effected by a bomb out in space is beyond me.'

Katherine moved a glass on the table as she said,

'This time it is different. Our man reports that watches stopped, lights really did go out, almost all vehicles were stopped in their tracks - immediate gridlock. Today we are more reliant upon delicate electronics; even cars are dependent upon electronic ignition. The only form of transport unaffected appears to be scooters.'

Sherwood said,

'They still have a purely mechanical system to provide electricity, no electronics needed.'

Ward-Blair still needed clarification,

'There have been no nuclear explosions anywhere on earth this year. How did they generate this pulse your man tells us about?' he turned to Katherine, 'Who is this anyway?'

'He's an agent from almost twenty years ago, Steve Steele. He thinks the effect was generated from a heavy goods vehicle.'

'Was a nuclear explosion involved in any way?'

'No. He tracked the vehicle to a setup in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. But he has now disappeared.'

Ward-Blair turned to Sherwood,

'Do you have any leads on these people?'

'Not enough to justify mounting an attack. There has been a lot of radio traffic emanating from this place, so we suspect that it is only a satellite establishment.'

The Scotsman knew that Katherine was involved in codes, cyphers and communications, he asked her,

'And do we know where in the world this traffic is coming from?'

'I'm afraid not. The whole system is linked in with the Internet. The net effect means that signals are not trackable.'

'Do you have any leads at all?'

'Steele is chasing something up in Spain, but we've lost him.'

A look of mild annoyance came over Ward-Blair's countenance as he replied,

'Lost him? Lost him?'

'Yes sir, we last heard from him near Santiago de Compostela, but he has not been able to contact us for a little time now.'

'Ahch, so you know where he is. You have no lost him, but simply cannae talk to him.'

'Put that way, yes sir. But we have no idea how this effect is achieved. It seems to relate to nuclear physics in some way, but we have not detected any activity anywhere in the vicinity.'

Ward-Blair turned to Proby,

'I suppose this is where you fit in, Professor?'

'Yes, this is my field of expertise. But I have never heard of anything that can do this - especially on a mobile system.'

Ward-Blair responded,

'Well, what would you need, man?

Proby addressed the whole group,

'We must work this problem from the other side; we know what the effect is, more or less, now let us look at what is likely to be needed to produce this result.'

He moved over to a wall mounted blackboard, and like any self respecting scientist began drawing on it, at the same time he gave a commentary,

'I'll try to keep this a simple as I can. In order to produce a nuclear explosion first you have to split the atom.'

He drew the familiar picture of an atom with centre dot as nucleus, surrounded by whirling neutrons. 'These atoms are held together by what we call the strong nuclear force. When this is broken it releases vast amounts of energy; so much that the resultant sub atomic particles crash into other atoms, and split them the same way. It is impossible to say how many are split originally because the reaction is so fast and powerful.'

He moved to the end of the table, 'It is as if this whole table was covered with snooker balls made of TNT. One of them explodes, setting off the rest. Bits of snooker balls all over the place.'

His arms waved about almost manically before holding one finger in front of his face,

'But, as you can imagine, the exploding snooker balls do not limit themselves to the top of the table. There would be bits of balls, table and everything else involved in the explosion thrown into space.. Proby's fingers spread wide as he described the inner workings of an explosion. 'The same happens at a sub atomic level, but some strange things happen here.' He stabbed his chalk at the blackboard. 'Now we enter the weird world of Quantum Dynamics. All of these neutrons,'

He indicated the dots that surrounded the nucleus of the atom he had drawn,

'have their own sets of properties.'

He moved back to the table where the three people were entranced by this clear explanation,

'Some are anti-matter, which means they annihilate themselves as soon as they meet any kind of matter. Some are attracted by gravity, others repelled by it.'

Katherine was following this, she remembered her conversation with Charmaine in France,

'Could this effect influence the Magnetosphere?'

The question seemed to come out of the blue. Katherine was surprised to hear herself saying the words.

Proby though for only a few seconds before replying,

'Yes; especially if one or more of the particles were repelled by gravity.'

'My contact in France told me that there was not only one event described here. They have detected five all together. They have tried to triangulate these by using objects called Fuchard's Pendulum.

But these things are nearly two hundred years old, and are far too crude to be of any use.'

Ward-Blair needed a link,

'And just exactly how does all of this drive us any further forwards?'

Proby sat down again,

'If we can figure out how these particles are generated we can fight on a more equal footing.'

Ward-Blair said,

'And how are they generated? There is no explosion involved.'

'The only other way to separate particles from atoms is in a particle accelerator.'

Ward-Blair was taken aback, but not for long,

'Oh, that's fantastic! Who the hell owns one of those?'

Neil Sherwood said,

'We do; CERN is the biggest in the world, the Americans have FERMILAB. We do not know of any more, but they can be built underground; like CERN. But smaller ones cannot produce the speeds needed to do really advanced experimentation.'

Ward-Blair interrupted,

'So we are looking for something that could be built underground, anywhere in the world. Not an insurmountable task, I'm sure you'll agree.' He turned to Katherine, 'We're in your hands now, my dear. You must get your boys on to this, and narrow down the field. Christ, we don't even know which hemisphere to look in.'

Katherine recounted the work already done,

'We have been beavering away since the first reports came in. It is easy to filter out which messages are theirs; they are encrypted to a high degree. We have been able to get to the bottom of it yet. In fact we cannot make anything from it yet.'

Sherwood asked,

'Is it different from other codes?'

'Yes, definitely. There seems to be an unusual thread running through it, but without knowing the root of that we are fumbling around in the dark.'

'What, like a language?'

'Yes, that is exactly what it looks like. But we have tried all of the usual languages'

We think it emanates from South America somewhere, so we tried all the known dialects and languages native to South America. We have even tried dead languages like Aztec and Inca. There are hundreds of languages across Russian and China. But we have them covered automatically; this is something that is so far out of the usual that it prevents us getting through.'

Sherwood offered,

'During the Second World War the US Navy used Sioux or Arapaho, or something like that to fool the Japanese code breakers. Is this a similar thing?'

'Exactly. Can you imagine trying to read something in Urdu, and you think it may be Greek? We are working in the dark.'

Ward-Blair seemed to be impatient as he said,

'Katherine, you have the full resources of Her Majesty's Government Code and Cyphers offices at your disposal. Every department is with you in this. It is imperative that we find out where these threats are coming from, and the way ahead looks like interpreting these messages.'

'Yes, I agree with you; we have easily identified the messages, and isolated them - mainly due to their peculiarities.'

'And what, pray, are these peculiarities?'

'Well the main one is that we cannot decipher them. All codes have a 'calling card' if you will. A sort of handwriting fingerprint. This one is no different.'

'Can you use this to break into the code?'

'No, If someone was writing in German, you could not work out what they were saying just by the way they put it down on paper. If you didn't speak German it would always be a mystery.'

'So the language used is of paramount importance?' he seemed to gather some understanding.

'Yes. Until we can find out what language is being used we are completely stumped.'

.  
Chapter 15

Big Chain.

Steele tried to keep a level head. That was made difficult by the headache throbbing through his brain. He blinked in the dusty gloom as he looked around him. There were no windows, he felt a gentle slope to the wooden floor. It could do with a good sweep. A gentle consistent vibration and rocking motion told him that he was in some sort of container. He slowly got up; slowly so as to avoid hitting his head on some non-existent iron beam generated by the pain in his skull. There was nothing in the room except him. The wooden walls had metal panels with holes let into them. Steele felt his way along one of these as he made his way to the back of the container. The light was good enough to see because of the translucent roof, but his aching, throbbing head made his eyes sensitive to the light. The doors occasionally let a shaft of light through as the vehicle bounced along the road. Steele explored these gaps, but there was no way he could open them from within. His pounding head prevented him from reasoning what he would do if he could get a door open on the move.

He sat on the floor by the doors, but soon realized that the fresh air he thought was coming in through the gaps was actually more dust. The bouncing and jostling was quite severe due to the container being empty. Reluctantly he stumbled to his feet. The stumbling continued as he walked up the dusty wooden floor to the far wall where the bouncing was not as severe.

Before long the bouncing got as bad here, but as he looked at the rear doors he saw that things back there were a lot worse. The road they were now traveling on was a lot rougher. As the vehicle swung hard left Steele was thrown from one side to the other, and then it stopped. He stood and brushed himself down as best he could.

Presently the rear doors creaked open. As the slits of light opened wider two men came into view, then three, and there must be one pushing the door. Then one appeared with a shotgun, the original men were armed with pick-axe handles.

'Five should be enough.' Thought Steele.

Shotgun man said,

'Come on out; and give me chance to use this, per favor.' He brandished the gun.

Steele blinked in the harsh sun. Before jumping down from the container he took a good look around. Directly across the dusty road he saw stack upon stack of logs. In the distance stood a saw-mill. When he got down he immediately felt a blow across his shoulder blades. He had caused a lot of damage and killed people at the garage, and he had no doubt that he was in for a bad time, now that it was pay-back time.

He thought of Wendy and Josh, he wondered if they were still on board the ship, had it got out of harbour and returned to England perhaps?

One of the men had a big chain, which he swung menacingly. Steele saw the men close in on him he tried to work out who he should take out first when the big steel chain hit him behind the knees, wrapping itself round his legs, causing him to collapse in the dust. He saw shadows as the men with pick-axe handles moved in for the kill. He couldn't move; his legs were bound securely by the chain.

The man with the shotgun called something in Spanish, and the men held their advance on the prone agent.

'For you this is only a postponement of your punishment.' He said to Steele, then he turned to his would-be attackers, 'Get him up, and take him inside.'

Three of the ruffians lifted Steele, and took him to a back door. The chain was wrapped around his waist, trapping his arms to his sides. A tap from a pick-axe handle on his throbbing head kept him from plotting an escape.

He was bundled into a lift, face pushed into a corner. Voices around him spoke in Spanish, he could not tell what they were saying, but it all sounded very threatening. Someone stood on his foot; a minor irritation, but intimidating nonetheless.

He felt the lift stop, heard the doors behind him open, then strong arms pulled him out of the lift, onto a carpeted floor. This was all he could see; now he found it difficult to straighten up, and there were bodies all around him. They entered a room, then into another room. He heard another door open before being pushed unceremoniously in. Someone thoughtfully caught his trailing foot and pushed it against the other one as he entered the room. This made him sprawl on to his face; the weight of the chain not helping at all. The door closed, and was locked.

Slowly Steele began to turn on to his side. There was a pool of blood on the carpet where his head had been resting. His nose took the full impact when he entered the room. The chain rattled, but did not give; there must be a lock or something somewhere. He tried to move his arms, he lay on his left side, and then tried to free his right arm, but it was impossible to move the elbow.

He heard the door open.

'Not very dignified, Mr Steele.' The Kommisar, Sauvage Cringle and Cracknore Hard stood over Steele. 'I think it is time we had a little talk. This is our Mister Cracknore Hard, and Mister Sauvage Cringle, that is also their forte.'

Steele spat out blood that had trickled down from his nosebleed as he said,

'Oh yes; good at beating up helpless people are they?' then he looked up at the Kommisar, 'YOU!'

'Yes me, Mister Steele. You have caused me considerable inconvenience with your interference. But that is all over now, and so are you.'

'You still have disarming conversation.'

'Not quite as disarming as my colleagues here.'

Hard and Cringle took hold of Steele by the shoulders of his jacket. They raised him up until he could stand, the Kommisar mover a chair in behind Steele,

'Please take the weight off your feet.'

He was plonked down hard into the seat. Hard and Sauvage tied thin rope around his neck, and attached it to the chair, pulling tight to give Steele a feeling of what would happen if he tried to move. The chain rattled as Steele moved his lower arms to ease to a more comfortable position. As he looked down he saw how the chain was held in place. It was not a lock, not even a nut and bolt. A piece of wire was threaded through two links to hold the whole assemblage together.

'Before leaving us Mister Steele,'

The Kommisar nodded to the chain, 'that chain looks like a nice buoyancy device,'

he said sarcastically,

'you may as well unburden yourself of the information you have acquired about our operation.'

'Wouldn't you like that?'

'Yes, and that is just what we shall get.'

Steele felt as though the back of his head had exploded as someone behind hit him hard. As his head fell forwards with the impact the thin rope around his neck pulled on his windpipe.

'Come now, Mister Steele; these men are experts in extracting information. Exactly how long do you think you can hold out?'

Steele's head lolled back as he felt a savage blow on his right shoulder. So hard to nearly knock him off the chair, then a blow on the other side canceled out the movement. His throbbing head was thrown from one side to the other. Blood from his bleeding nose flew in all directions.

His legs involuntarily stiffened. He felt the chair beneath him become unstable as another blow hit him on the right again. As the opposite blow landed the chair gave up the ghost, and fell backwards. He tried to prevent his head from hitting the ground, but by now his neck muscles were severely weakened. As the back of Steele's skull hit the ground there was a sickening crash, amplified by the chain. This rendered him unconscious. Blood from the now profusely bleeding nose stained the carpet bright red. The Kommisar looked at the pool, and immediately turned on his colleagues,

'You bloody fools. You were supposed to get information out of him, now what do we know?'

Cracknore Hard knelt on one knee to check on Steele's vital signs,

'There's a slight pulse.'

'I'll slight pulse the two of you if he doesn't recover. Take him out of here. And be careful.'

Sauvage Cringle and Cracknore Hard lifted Steele's limp body; as his head lolled back the blood ran into his eyes.

The two gorillas moved the body into an adjacent bedroom. The sheets on the bed were immediately stained bright red.

.  
Chapter 16

Blind Trio.

The people at GCHQ were working flat out to solve the mysterious code. All leave had been canceled, people who were experts in their field either came in to work on the problem, or worked long hours from home.

One such person was Richard Jenkins. Nearly a year since his retirement, Richard had returned to the borders between Shropshire and Wales, in a small village called Craven Heifer. Far removed from the top secret world of GCHQ; people really did not bother locking doors, and all of the houses were open to their neighbours. The only exception to this openness was Richard's computer. Heavily encrypted by the people at GCHQ, this machine was bolted to the floor of his workroom. Richard liked to keep in touch with his old comrades at Cheltenham. He knew that when you retire, your mind does not. Some problems faced by GCHQ can be solved by using a sort of 'Crowd Funding', where so many people work the problem it is solved by sheer numbers. Since the advent of computers and the Net it has become possible to utilize vast numbers of people all over the world to address problems that require lots of computer input. By using perhaps thousands of home computers linked together they become a vast powerful single electronic brain. GCHQ cannot of course use this scheme to its fullest extent; there are too many security implications. But they still use retired employees who's expertise has been accrued over many years. Richard was one of these hidden workers.

He was working through the hundreds of languages when he remembered that over one hundred and fifty years ago the mining areas of southern Argentina needed miners. They came to South Wales to recruit from the coal mines. He had heard that this area in Patagonia still speak Welsh. He fed the required information into the netted system, and the first word he recognised was cyflymder; Welsh for speed. With one hand rustling through papers, he picked up his cell phone with the other hand and rang Katherine Angel,

'I think we've cracked it. The mystery language is Welsh.'

He paused, but not for long enough for Katherine to ponder, in his fine south Wales drone he continued,

'I put it through the system, and there are definitely Welsh words in there.'

Katherine recovered from her surprise,

'That's great news. I will put everyone on to it immediately. Any chance you have managed to find a location for the threat?'

'Not yet, Katherine. I rather think that we will have to plough through a lot of transcripts before we get any really useful info out of it.'

She finished the phone call, and then rang Neil Sherwood with the good news, he responded quietly confident as usual,

'As soon as you have anything concrete, let me know, we have a set-up ready here to put a plan into effect.'

\- - - - - - -

Three people met. Katherine Angel and Sherwood met the Scottish diplomat Ward-Blair.

'A thousand transcripts.' Katherine Angel told Ward-Blair at their next meeting. 'We have decoded one thousand transcripts, and there is still very little to go on regards the exact location of their headquarters.'

'Well it's no good going after them until we know where the head of this particular snake is.'

'The European part of the operation is a lot clearer to us. We have established that la Coruna was only where they tested the device - there seem to be two bases of operations in Spain. The transport hub is near Santiago de Compostela, but most radio traffic seems to come from a little place in the centre of Spain - Salamanca.'

She poured out a glass of water,

'In fact there is more radio traffic that seems to emanate from Salamanca than almost anywhere else in the Iberian Peninsula.'

'And what, pray, does all of this traffic say?'

Katherine took a sip of water,

'Damn! No gin.' She looked directly at Ward-Blair as if it were his fault, 'Most of it is scientific mumbo-jumbo. We have passed this on to our people in Cambridge, but there has been mention of our man Steele, they have him in Santiago de Compostela.'

Neil Sherwood said,

'Do you have any information as to where he is being kept? I suppose I should go and help him out.'

Ward-Blair butted in with his rich Edinburgh brogue,

'You will do no such thing Mr Sherwood. We will not have you swanning about in Spain. No, we shall hold you in reserve for when we find out where this hydra has its head. Mr Steele has rather given the game away and let them know we have an interest in their activities. We do not want them to know how much, or how little, we know about their sworded little affair.'

Katherine was not happy about this,

'We can't just abandon him out there.'

'We have precious little choice, my dear,' the Scotsman continued, 'they have all the cards.'

'But he is not even an active agent. We are not Americans with their 'deniable' missions. We cannot simply abandon him out there.'

'And what do you propose we do? Send in the Argyle and Sutherland, bagpipes playing, and kilts swaying? We can't because the part-time temporary politician of the day disbanded them; anyway the Spanish would never allow it - a mob of hairy-arsed Scotsmen roaming all over their desert.'

Sherwood kept quiet. Katherine shrugged in desperation. She looked at Ward-Blair, but found no words.

Ward-Blair continued asking about the information so far gathered,

'Can you shed any light in the device they are using?'

'Only that it seemed to be some sort of particle beam device. We have no idea how it was triggered, or indeed how it was generated, or transported.'

'In fact, what you are saying is that we know very little about this threat.'

'In a way that is true; we know very little actual hard facts, but we are gaining an understanding of the threat. It would appear that they can trigger this device wherever they please. We can only guess at the exact range of the effects, but it would appear to be in the region of miles instead of feet. What we are worried about is, what would happen if they triggered one off near an international airport?'

Ward-Blair tried to grasp the full implication and power of this thing,

'Is there any shielding that may block these effects?'

'Not in the least. These are sub-atomic particles, they are smaller than atoms; they pass through everything.'

'And then kill all of the electronic equipment?'

'Yes. That is the threat - If it were only someone's digital watch, or cell phone that went down it would be bad enough. But there is a very great danger that it would effect aircraft, including the communications set ups.'

She waited for that to sink in, 'We believe that if this thing were unleashed near an airport any aircraft within range would be rendered inoperable. The main effect is caused by the need for computers to keep their engines and all systems running. On a modern flight they cannot even boil a kettle without computers. The first we hear of this would be crashing of airliners into the ground. They would not even have chance to tell anyone what was happening. Modern airliners do not have manual reversion in their controls. Once the computers go off they are stuck in the configuration they were in, the pilots would be passengers in a 300 ton glider.'

The two men listened in silence, not unmoved at all, more out of respect for the facts unwinding before them.

'The emergency services would be helpless, even if their communications equipment worked, which I doubt, the ambulances and fire engines would not run.'

Silence fell on the room. Eventually Ward-Blair spoke,

'What is it? How can they threaten to unleash such devastation? Is there anything we can do? We must do something.'

Sherwood thought carefully before quietly saying,

'The main thing we know about how they operate is that they have to use really big vehicles. It would appear that the equipment, whatever it is, has to be massive and heavy. But that is about all we know. They use trucks that look every inch like normal articulated vehicles.'

He turned his hands over to expose open palms,

'The only clue here is that they must be heavily adapted to keep running after the effect they have set off. We have been working on this for quite some time now, and the only thing we can think that may make them stand out is that they cannot have anything electrical on them. We know that the diesel engines can be adapted to run without electricity, but they cannot get around the fact that any kind of wiring will not work afterwards; that means that they cannot have any lights at all - no brake lights, no indicators.'

He threw his hands into the air,

'That's all we have to go on - they may use sacrificial wiring to allow them to not stand out, our only hope is that they do not.'

Ward-Blair was not having any of this,

'So you expect Interpol to pull any vehicle without working lights? Come on, man; they already do. And we must not forget that the enemy has gone to a great deal of trouble to get this thing working - do you not think that he would also go another few inches to avoid his vehicles being detected?'

He closed his notebook as if there was no more to go into it,

'So what we have is the need for heavy goods vehicles, we do not know how many, in what countries, or what kind of facilities they may need. Nor do we know how on earth the whole process works.' He looked at Sherwood, 'Would you say that was a fairly concise appraisal of the situation?'

Sherwood nodded in agreement,

'We don't know who's backing this operation, either; so we do not even know which continent or in which hemisphere to look. That could be part of this problem, but as you say, there is no communications with anyone within the scope of this.'

Ward-Blair asked Katherine,

'What information did you get from Steele before he disappeared?'

'He was in Spain, a place called Santiago de Compostela. He had found the vehicle, that's how we know what it was. But did not have chance to examine it. Oh, and we found out that this organisation has access to such things as helicopters. And sophisticated surveillance equipment as well as the scientific nous to put this whole thing together. Are we going to rescue Steele? He is a civilian in a foreign land, and has got caught up in something he did not need to get involved in.'

The dour Scot did not mince words,

'I don't see that we can intervene; there is no diplomatic privilege involved here. Quite frankly, my dear, I don't see any way we can help him. Remember that he was captured in a transport base - that simply means that he could have been transported anywhere by now. I'm sorry, there is nothing we can do at the moment.'

Sherwood looked at Katherine, and seemed to concur.

'Well, I think it's wrong.' She exclaimed.

Ward-Blair, typical diplomat, agreed,

'Yes, I quite wholeheartedly concur, but there is nothing we can do help Mr Steele at the moment.'

She looked at Sherwood for support in this, but he seemed to be stepping back from the problem.

'You can't just cut him off without even lifting a finger to help. Remember that he didn't have to get involved, he found himself stuck with a problem, and decided to help us. Now it's him who needs the help.'

Ward-Blair shrugged,

'I know, I know, but my hands are tied. I will make inquiries.'

He placed his papers in his briefcase, then made his exit.

When he had left the room Sherwood said to Katherine,

'Don't worry about Steele, I have my own plan.'

.
Chapter 17

Anita Valdez

The Centro Nacional de Inteligencia (CNI), the Spanish version of the CIA, has come a long way since its days under the Facist dictator Franco. For 36 years this was part of an organization who's main purpose was to prop up a dictatorship. Their main weapon during these hard times was to simply take any possible opposition to the dictator Franco out of circulation, and make them disappear. As a result of this Spain has now more people disappeared than any other country apart from Cambodia.

The Central Documentation Service was first transformed into the Brigade for Social Research. As such it was still as a special branch of the Plainclothes Corps of the political arm of the military (this does not sound kind and innocent). As Spain changed from a dictatorship to democracy the role of the secret service changed from bolstering the political position of a government to investigating threats that may emanate from outside the country.

CESID found that its General Commissariat of Intelligence, and especially the National Police Corps with the Foreign Intelligence Brigade was moving towards a more specialized and modern intelligence service. By the mid 1980s it had to constantly change and develop the capacity to deal with external as well as internal threats. At the same time it was realized that women must serve more active roles at all levels of the organization. This included field work.

To this end seven volunteers were sent to Israel to train with the Israeli secret service, Mossad.

One of these was Anita Vigo de Valdez. Originally from Chamartin in Madrid, Anita had studied international affairs at university. During this time she joined the campus karate team. Later she joined the Codes and Cyphers section of CNI as a secretary. The organization was still finding it difficult to involve women in it's numbers.

She has her story;

'I did not meet any of the other people on our course. From what I gather no-one knew the other girls,although we were all from the CNI we had never actually met each other before. As we flew into Tel Aviv airport we were dotted all over the airliner as individuals. We only met up as a group when we arrived, that is as much as I can say about where we were. After passing through customs, when everyone else gets taxis and busses, we were bustled into the back of a delivery van. No windows, no view out at all, no seats, we had to sit on our luggage. The journey took exactly one hour and five minutes. I thought that information may come in useful later. But on reflection we could have been going round in circles for half of the time, or taken the scenic route. When we got to our final destination we could have been anywhere from the Golan heights to the Sinai desert.

The first camp was spartan to say the least, and the early training no less brutal. One thing the trainers kept on telling us was that we could leave at any juncture; we were all bound by the secrets laws of our jobs, so security was not a issue. In fact they offered us every incentive to quit. After three days two of the girls gave in. Erica was by far the oldest of us. She was in her early fifties, and the other girl, I seem to remember that her name was Ester, she was weak in body and mind; never cut out for a rough life. So they left us.

We were not allowed anything regular, not eating, sleeping, or even exercise. We were woken up in the middle of the night to do a run of unknown duration. The women who quit said that they did not sign up for this kind of abuse, they wanted to be agents, little more than couriers, not marines.

The next bit was more my cup of tea, unarmed combat. We only had one week of this, and I think some of the other girls could have done with a bit more. It differed a lot from what I have been used to; in unarmed combat there are no rules, no respect for your opponent. I suppose what they brought to us in that section was the determination to kill your adversary.

Then they taught us the basics of ciphers and coding. This was my normal job, so I was able to help my fellow trainee. I suppose this new development was more the kind of thing that Erica and the woman who quit were expecting. But the trainers had to test our resolve in the first instance.

This led on to devices and implements developed specially for the secret agent. I thought that every country had its own stash of secret weapons and devices. And there is a thriving market in espionage and counter espionage equipment out there. I don't doubt that the individual countries each have changes made and upgrades done to the equipment when they get it; a stick is still a stick, even if you put a German flag on it, or a Brazilian one.

This was quite interesting, because I knew quite a lot about the subjects covered; unarmed combat, and codes. But I did not know about the methods used to send cyphers via text, and the specialist developments in that area. Tracking devices seem quite important. There was a gun thing that didn't look like a gun, it silently shoots a tracking device, which can attach on to someones clothing without them knowing about it. They call this the clothes-peg; it can also contain a listening device, which can also be used to bug buildings or vehicles. The actual bug is like a semi-translucent soft ball that has a chameleon-like property to change colour to match whatever it lands on. It then changes shape to become almost undetectable.

They have developed some nice stuff for women. I now have a very nice bracelet; nothing flash of course, stopping short of costume jewelery so that you can wear it every day. Apparently it cost seven thousand dollars. That is because it contains a communications computer that even has a satnav capacity.

A subject that was completely new to me was weaponry; they do not tend to trust women with guns and the like in Spain. There was a British weapon invented in 1943 that folded up into a heavy knuckle duster. It is also a revolver with five parabellum rounds, and a fold away bayonet. You would not believe how neatly it fits into even a small handbag.

But it is mainly by using ordinary equipment that is likely to be ready at hand which we found most useful. An innocuous piece of equipment is the stubby heels I am wearing now. These are made of solid aluminium, and the way of stomping on someone is to leap with knees bent. Then as you are about to land, straighten the legs to increase the power. The aim there is to turn the victim's ribs into daggers which lacerate their internal organs. These heels are very useful for fighting, they can cause untold damage to the top of a foot; coupled with the metal edges on the arches in front of the heels. These are flexible, but sharp; they take the skin off a shin like a donner kebab. We don't use that in karate!

Another move we do not use in martial arts is known as boxing the ears. Put simply, you only need about five pounds of pressure when smacking the ears to cause at least one drum to burst. The recipient will become punch drunk for long enough to allow you to finish him off.

Next came the combination of the earlier field craft and running about with the unarmed combat training.

You must understand that we began the is course as weak, ineffectual women - even insignificant; but that can be a real advantage. Now we had to put our training into effect with real people who may not be expecting us.

We were tasked with infiltrating a camp. We thought it was going to be a camp; they just gave us a map reference, drove us to a a quiet read near a small town, and dropped us off. By now we were down to four; one of the girls, Rosalind, had to drop out — exactly why we would find out later. We found ourselves in a wooden shelter with pink tiles making up the roof, it must be some sort of bus shelter we thought. As the dust of our transport settled we surveyed our situation.

First we had to find out where were were, and where we were supposed to be. They had given us eight hours to get to our target, so we had no idea how far away it was. We had got to know each other a little by now, Nikki and I got on well, and helped each other out when the situation needed. Chrisanna and Olivia (known as Chris and Olive) made up our quartet, we were dressed in jeans and headscarfs so as to blend in. We all had dark hair and olive complexion, so we didn't stand out too much in the country. With my work in codes and cyphers I had managed to decode bits of the written word in Israel. We knew we knew we were still in Israel, because they had supplied us with some Israeli money. A wooden notice board stood by the shelter. We studied this for some time, and worked out that the place was called Moar. I decoded the timetable, and deduced that a bus could be along in twenty five minutes. We looked around at the dusty place around us, we needed a map, or helpful shopkeeper to give us information about how to get out of this place. We decided to split up to explore, but felt it unseemly to be a woman on her own, so we just split into two pairs. We agreed that we should only walk for ten minutes away from the bus stop, then turn to come back in time to catch whatever transport we could. At normal walking pace we could cover half a mile in each direction; that should give us some information to work from.

I have never seen such a desolate place. I went off with Nikki, the only person we saw was an older woman watering her piece of desert. She did not speak English, or Spanish, or German, or Portuguese, then she said, 'Parle vous France?' .

We found that the busses do not run reliably - indeed they hardly ever run at all. She invited us in for tea, there was not much of a likelihood of a bus to get back for, so we accepted. I was worried that this person may be a plant. After all the trainers knew where to drop us off - so I decided not to mention Chris and Olive for their own protection.

'Are you all alone out here?' the woman asked.

'Yes.'

I had to think on my feet now, we had not had chance to invent a good cover story,

'We are looking for a suitable site to start a Kibutz, but our funds do not run to a hire car.'

Luckily her French was not good enough for a full and frank discussion where my story would have developed holes in it.

She offered to take us into town. Chris and Olive would presume that they would have to take up the mantle. Part of our training is to know that if you split a group, then they become separate individual parts until they meet up again. No waiting for the other section.

Luckily the bone-shaker of a vehicle precluded any conversation, and were were deposited in a small provincial town close by the West Bank, still not knowing where the map reference could be.

We decided to follow the cover story about a Kibbutz, and went into a real estate office. They spoke good English and Spanish, but we elected to hide our real nationality. I explained that we were looking for an area to start a Kibbutz, but all we have is the map reference. They looked up the numbers and letters on a large map of Israel. They began to look puzzled as they leafed through books of maps when a dark haired young girl looked up from her computer terminal,

'I think you will have problems opening up a Kibbutz there.' She said with a wry smile.

We all moved over to look at her computer screen. She was on Google Earth. They looked at the place shown on the screen. The middle of a small town showed up.

'Hebron, up in the hills above the Dead Sea.' The assistant told us.

We looked at each other,

'Could this be an office?' I asked us both.

We thanked the people in the real estate office, and made a rapid retreat. We had been out for less than an hour. Upon research we found that Hebron was only about seventy miles away, with seven hours left we were quite pleased with our progress. But we could not wonder about Chris and Olive. We had had to leave them behind when we accepted a lift from the woman whom we did not know. This seemed a logical and sensible way to move, given that we were putting ourselves at considerable risk. But desperate times call for desperate moves. We could have simply bopped the old dear on the head, then pinched her car. But that would have been over the top for a training session.

It took us nearly three hours to get to Hebron, but that was not our main worry. We had been given instruction to infiltrate an enemy camp, but the map reference was in the middle of a town. The clock was ticking, but with nearly four hours to assess the situation we felt quite confident that we could work something out.

Hebron turned out to be quite a bustling little town. The exact spot of where the map reference showed came to be a shopping centre. We went in, found a cafe with good views around, then sat to try to work out what to do next. The myriad of shops and businesses were very confusing to our western eyes. All of the signs were in Yiddish, many had English translations alongside them. We had to try to work out if any had any connection with what we were trying to do. We deduced that there must be some kind of a clue here - if we were in the right place. I noticed a door with no windows near it. The sign on it just said 'FEC'.

We sat and watched the door. Men with packages kept coming and going. After two coffees I asked our waiter if he knew anything about 'FEC'.

He said they do not want to have anything to do with them, whatever their activities were. He then hurried away as if to distance himself from the question. We looked at each other in silence for a moment or two. What we saw next made us both sit up straight, Rosalind, who was not on this exercise, came out of the door marked FEC. She adjusted her hood to cover as much of her face as possible, but it was too late. We did the same; trying to hide as much as possible. Maybe she could lead us to a target.

I indicated that Nikki should continue to follow Rosalind; I thought that one person alone has a better chance of staying unnoticed.

As Nikki began to be covert I turned towards the FEC door. A man approached with his back to us. I immediately hit on a brief plan; I hissed,

'Nikki!'

She slowly looked back, well it seemed slow to me. I nodded towards the man at the door just as it opened. Without having time to think about it, my training took over as I shoulder-charged the man, delivering a hard punch into his kidneys at the same time. He fell into the wall by the door jamb. Nikki had obviously got the message; she barged past me into the opening door. The man behind it was hit by the wooden door as Nikki gave him a straight-fingered thrust to his windpipe. I passed her and charged into the premises. A man behind a desk began to rise to his feet when I landed a good right hook that had more power than usual due to the speed I was moving at. He spun wildly as he fell to the ground. Nikki and I stood back to back as we took a quick look around. There was no-one else in this part of the office. A door at the far end of the room had frosted glass panels in it, through this we could see movement. I pointed to the side of the door, Nikki knew exactly what was needed. I took one side, she the other. The door opened. It was obvious that they had been infiltrated, the first thing to appear was a gun held in a two-handed grip. I came down on one of the forearms with a well aimed karate chop. This hit the radius in the centre. With the weight of the gun at the end, this caused the bone to crack. The man fell into Nicki, who relieved him of the gun, his hold now relaxed by shock. She tapped him on the head with his own weapon to put him out of his pain.

I moved into the room to be faced with another man with a gun. I froze to the spot. Nikki called in colloquial Spanish,

'Move left.'

This I did, the gunman followed my movement with his gun, not knowing Nikki was behind me. This meant that he was at a disadvantage with a gun pointing at him. Nikki began to squeeze on the trigger when she realised that we were only on a training mission. The gun fired, a round passed the mans head, and entered the wall behind him. He slowly laid his gun down on the desk.

Suddenly there was a shout from behind us.

'ENOUGH. EXERCISE OVER.'

It was Rosalind, who had returned when she heard the commotion of us entering the premises.

We stood there; Rosalind was supposed to be one of us, in training. How come she was here calling the shots, as it were?

'We did not expect you here so soon. What happened to Chris and Olive?' Rosalind said as she helped the man from outside into the building.

I did not hesitate to formulate my reply; I heard the words as they came out,

'We! You are one of us, being trained. Not the operations staff.'

Nikki put the gun down next to the one on the table as Rosalind said,

'That is where you are wrong. I was put in with you guys to see if there were any security implication we should be concerned about.'

The man in the office began reviving the man who Nikki had tapped on the head as I asked Rosalind,

'Security implications? What security implications?'

She continued sorting out the wounded by helping the man behind the desk back to his position,

'There are some very cunning enemies out there who would do anything to learn how we operate. To bring anyone in from the outside carries risk, so we take precautions.'

As she looked at the mess we had made, Nikki said,

'Shit, that's extreme.'

Rosalind shook her head as she replied,

'Not really. We are surrounded by enemies; we will only lose once. We do not intend that to happen.'

I then asked,

'What if you found someone had been planted in our group, I don't think there could be. We didn't know each other before, but we all worked at the same department.'

Rosalind shrugged her shoulders,

'There would be a tragic accident during training.'

I looked at Nikki, and said in a quiet voice,

'They are not messing about are they?'

Rosalind returned to the original question,

'When we dropped you off there were four of you, what happened to the other two?'

I told her all I knew, which wasn't much,

'We split up at the bus stop, feeling that two women walking together was less conspicuous than four. We went one way, they went the other. When we came across a woman watering her garden we decided to risk conversation.' Rosalind looked surprised at this, she looked at gunman. I continued, 'We quickly invented a story about us looking for a place to start a Kibbutz. The lady did not speak any English, or Spanish. We don't speak Yiddish, but we found that she could just about manage French. The language barrier worked well for us, any holes in our story did not show up. She gave us tea, and offered to take us to the nearest town. There we went, then we simply asked at the local estate office where the map reference is.'

The phone on the desk in the back office rang. Gunman picked it up.

'Yo.'

He listened for what seemed a long time, then replied something in Yiddish that we could not understand, then he replaced the receiver. He looked at Rosalind, the office had by now regained a look of order; the wounded men had been revived, and were holding sore parts. Ambulances were not needed.

Gunman told us,

'Something has happened to the other two trainees.' We all looked stunned as he continued, 'We sent a taxi down the road you were dropped on. He was one of ours. He drove them to another test. There was supposed to be four of them, but you had gone off in another direction, so we lost control of your part. Theirs we still had control of. They were to learn the lesson that if it's too good to be true, it probably isn't good. The taxi was hi-jacked in the middle of nowhere, as planned. The women were ordered out of the taxi when Chrisanna took one of the hijackers by surprise; she grabbed the barrel of his AK47, and nearly turned it on him. She kicked him in the testicles, and took full control of the gun. She turned it on one of our men, the hijackers were our men, it was part of the test. We do not use blanks in circumstances like this. Sometimes it is necessary to introduce intimidation. Nothing intimidates like the rounds from an AK47 slamming into the ground by your feet. She sprayed the air with automatic gunfire. The 'hijackers' dived for cover. The taxi driver made a dash and made it back into the drivers seat. As he waved for the women to get back in, one of the hijackers shot out the front wheel of the car. All of our men knew there was a Range Rover just out of sight to take everyone back. But now there was the risk of a shooting war. Both sides took cover. Chris was behind the taxi when the fuel tank exploded.'

.  
Chapter 18

Salamanca.

Salamanca, 100 miles from Madrid, in a nondescript industrial unit on the outskirts of town were two articulated trailers. One was being equipped with electromagnets and diesel generators which the other trailer had brought in. There was also equipment both built into the structure and attached to a strange contraption outside.

Estefana Perales and Lyn Ayala stood by the back door enjoying a quick smoke.

Estefana was chief scientific advisor at the setup on the outskirts of Salamanca. Most of the people working here knew little of the strange equipment.

Lyn had a scientific background, having taught it to 10 - 14 year olds. So she had a natural curiosity about the establishment they were building. Both women stood in the Early morning sun for a few moments. Then Lyn asked Estefana,

'Just what is this thing going to do when we have finished? I can see that it is going to use one hell of a lot of electricity, but I can't for the life of me see what the purpose of it is.'

Estefana thought for a moment,

'They intend generating something, I think it is something to do with particle physics.'

'Like the Large Hadron Collider?'

'Possibly, but I cannot see why; the LHC at Geneva is 27 kilometres long, it is the biggest machine ever built.'

'Why is it so big?'

'The size of the ring dictates the speed of the particles inside; the larger the ring, the faster the particles. They say that if they were build a bigger ring, to be of any use it would have to be big enough to reach just inside the orbit of Jupiter. So why would anyone want to build a smaller one? Doesn't make sense.'

Six kilometers away a Gulfstream IV aircraft landed at the airport. On board the luxury airliner were the Kommisar, Henri Salvador, Sauvage Cringle, Cracknore Hard, and six hand picked soldiers of the organisation.

At the rear of the passenger cabin there was a black heavy plastic body bag, not quite zipped up, laying on a stretcher.

As the aircraft door opened two of the soldiers took the stretcher, and followed the others to waiting limousines. The stretcher was unceremoniously loaded into a black van. The small convoy drove out of the airport without delay. It made its way through the outskirts of Salamanca without stopping.

Every flight has to log its intended flight plan. The Gulfstream IV was no exception. Information about all flights out of Santiago de Compostela was passed to the interested security services. This net of organisations included the Intelligence Branch of the SAS; this in turn included Neil Sherwood. When a strange convoy of black vehicles drove towards an innocuous looking set of buildings on the outskirts of Salamanca he arranged for a long range high altitude drone to be positioned over the city.

The images fed down to earth, and were then shared out with the security service net.

Anita Valdez had her attention drawn to these vehicles long before they reached their destination.

The pictures from the drone showed a helicopter flying at the same altitude, keeping pace with it. On that helicopter was Anita Valdez. Over a secure comms setup she had already confirmed the registration number of the Gulfstream IV. Sherwood began searching the flight plans for this aircraft. He found that it had originally come from somewhere in Pategonia.

He called Katherine Angel,

'Of course it now makes sense;' He said, 'in the 1860's coal miners were imported into Pategonia from Wales. A lot of the people around Pategonia still speak Welsh as a first language. Some say there are more people speaking Welsh in South America that there are in Wales. That explains the Wales connection in the code.'

'Did you get any clearer picture of where the plant may be?' she asked.

'Sort of. We backtracked a private jet to Buenos Aires, then to a small provincial airport out in the sticks - well desert actually. The authorities down there are not too keen to share information with us Brits, so I will have to go and find out who was on the aircraft, and, more importantly, where they came from.'

Anita did not have to wait that long. At a safe altitude of ten thousand feet she watched the convoy as it pulled into a square of buildings. The van continued to a less salubrious-looking building.

She put down the binoculars, and turned to the pilot,

'Right. I'm off.' Was all she said as she began putting on a parachute.

When she opened the sliding door she was surprised to see a white pencil-like line streaking up to meet them. She called out,

'Missile, missile!' then jumped clear.

The pilot threw the chopper into a rapidly turning diving corkscrew. The missile tried to follow, then it locked on to the much smaller drone. It decided that his was an easier target, so it went for that instead.

Anita did not open her chute immediately; she free fell for eight thousand feet. She pulled her rip cord to open the parachute. As the canopy cracked into its open position she heard another, louder bang. They had launched another missile at the helicopter.

Anita carefully made her way towards the building. The camouflage of her outfit hid her from the possibility of being spotted; but that was less likely than usual because there was a distraction at the front of the building. A black body bag was being delivered. Nothing could be seen, but there was a fascination that compelled people to watch.

She quietly moved up to a window but could see nothing through the grime of desert encrusted glass. She managed to clean a small part of the corner of the window. Moving up to the streaked area. By cupping her hand around her eyes she was barely able to see through to the darkness beyond. Then she saw a shaft of light as a door was opened. Two men carried a stretcher in, unceremoniously dumped it down on the ground, turned and left, closing the door behind them.

She stepped back, and looked at the window frame. It didn't look like it was about to fall out without making a lot of noise. She carefully moved along the building in search of a way in. As she reached the corner she saw the van pulling away - how many were in the van before? Now many are in it now? Were there any left behind? These three questions she could not answer - there may have been people in there before the visitors arrived. She would have to be very careful if she was to gain entry without being noticed.

On the side of the building she found a small innocuous-looking door. She tried it - it was unlocked; there is little need to lock doors so far away from civilization. Gingerly she opened the it. Inside she could be going into anything; the directors office, works canteen, laboratory, or an empty room. Slowly, with a slight creaking of dry hinges, the metal door opened outwards. All of the possibilities mentioned did not happen. It opened into the end of a corridor, Anita slipped quickly inside, then silently closed the door before anyone saw the light coming in.

She placed her back on to the wall whilst her eyes became accustomed to the darker interior.

Lyn Ayala thought she was alone with the body bag. But then she thought she saw a brief shot of light coming from a direction it should not be coming from. She blinked and screwed her eyes up as if to recall something about the strange light. Slowly, cautiously, she began to move towards the corridor.

Both women were moving slowly and silently, neither knew of the other, but each one knew that there was a good chance that someone else was in the building.

As Lyn was about to open the door into the corridor where Anita was hiding, the outer door opened and two soldiers entered.

She held out her hand, as if the hush them. And then pointed towards the corridor.

Anita saw the light change as the men entered; so there was now either someone else in, or someone had just left. She decided to take a cautious step, and moved into a doorway. Here she almost stopped breathing in order to sense if there was anyone there. She could feel a door handle in the small of her back. Slowly, very slowly she tested it. It moved; so the door was not locked. Hoping that any slight sound of the handle operating would be at least muffled by the bulk of her body masking it. The portal opened. She quickly and silently slipped into the room. There was no furniture in the room at all; it was completely bare except for a body bag in the middle of the floor.

Anita could not see where anyone else was. The other door out of the room was closed, but she knew that if there was someone else in the building, then they would be outside that door. She went over to the body bag, and tried to undo the zip quietly - not an easy task as she found out. Inside she found the body of Steve Steel. Anita looked around the room as she placed her hand inside the bag to check for signs of life. There was a slight pulse in the neck, but no other indications of life. She removed her hand. Moved part of the plastic to give a good view of the face. Then placed an arm out of the bag. She then gave an almighty whack to the side of Steele's face, and moved quickly into the darkest corner of the room.

The two soldiers rushed in, saw the bag opened, and the arm out.

They immediately thought that Steele had regained consciousness and had begun to try to get out of the bag.

They did not even look anywhere else in the room.

They began to go towards the bag when two gunshots rang out in very quick succession.

The soldiers did not make it very far. They hit the floor before Lyn could get to the door behind them, so she ducked back before Anita could see her, who had now blown her own cover.

Hoping the threat was over, Anita moved back to Steele. He was no longer unconscious, but by no means firing on all cylinders. She began helping him out of the bag when Lyn Ayala quietly walked in through the open door,

'How very touching.' She said, 'Now either get into the bag with him, or put your gun down over there.' She waved her .45 automatic towards the far corner of the room.

Steele straightened out to his full height as he looked at each woman in turn and said,

'Now, I don't want any squabbling over me.'

Anita clipped him a slap across the back of his head as she slid her gun to the rear of the room. At the same time she noticed that the two dead soldiers had both dropped their weapons as they fell to the ground. All of these guns were closer than her own weapon.

'Kick me.' He whispered to Anita.

As if to follow up her slapping his head she gave him a kick on the backside. His feet were still in the bag, so he had no choice but to fall over towards Lyn. As he measured his length he grabbed hold of the barrel of an AK53. He quickly swung it as hard as he could at the side of Lyn's knee. Not knowing who to aim her gun at, she was not aiming at anyone when her semi-automatic weapon fired three shots as her knees buckled. Steele passed the assault rife on to Anita without it changing direction of travel. She took hold straight into firing position like a well-polished circus act. The barrel of the gun was now pointing at Lyn as she thought to re-aim her gun. Anita simply shook her head and made a quiet tutting sound as Steele went to pick up the other AK53.

Chapter 19

Pategonia.

It may look like a rushed mission when the SAS go into action, but nothing could be further from the truth. Each mission is planned meticulously. At their HQ at Hereford the planning for the latest mission, to Argentina, was set in motion.

Neil Sherwood intended to take five men with him, plus three women.

All of these people went by Christian names only. Even the two corporals, Karen, an ex-nurse with medical experience and Dave, who was a natural to take charge in any given situation. His dark eyes did not miss a thing. The others were Mick, who hailed from Manchester, but had also spent some time in London supposingly studying art before joining the army. The small beard was to conceal a double chin he thought he had begun to develop. John was a very tall Scotsman, known to all as McTiny, he had found more difficulty than most to get through selection, mainly due to his height. It had been found that to put females through normal selection gave you very tough, strong women who stood out in a crowd; not what the SAS wanted. So special arrangements were made to recruit women from sources outside the normal catchment area, the Army. Lucy came from London Police, the Met. She was working in the Crime Scenes Investigation unit when the call went out for ladies who wanted a bit more than the hum-drum routine of normal police work. They had to be tough, but more important than that, they had to be able to go unnoticed. Lilian did not look like a soldier - just what the SAS were looking for. She was short with the athletic build of a swimmer, and she could move extremely fast. Marc was the son of a butcher in a provincial northern town. H tired of the boring day-to-day drudge of working in his dad's shop, so he took his butchery skills to the army, who then put him into the catering corps. This was better. But he wanted more action, so he moved on to the Paras, where he met John. That was where he gave him the nick-name McTiny, he was also looking for some action, so they both volunteered to do The Selection.

Sherwood addressed this force in the briefing room at Hereford,

'This op is quite a big job for us; as you can see by the sheer number assembled here.'

He swept his hand indicating the group,

'The main reason for that is the sheer lack of intel; that is where we come in. There is a threat being developed that can cause international disruption and thousands of fatalities. We don't yet know how it works, but there is evidence that it has been tested in Europe.'

He referred to the map before them on the table,

'Here in northern Spain a whole town was brought to a standstill by an unknown force that killed off all of the electrical equipment. This is similar to the EMP of a nuclear bomb; but there was no bomb. Someone has developed a weapon that can cause mayhem at the throw of a switch.'

He drew their attentions closer to the map,

'Here in la Coruna we found evidence that a test had taken place.'

'We found evidence sounds like there's a bit of guesswork involved.' Pointed out Dave.

'Well, the evidence is a bit more than guesswork; the whole city was plunged into an electronic meltdown. A retired British agent found a possible source, but he has disappeared. The activity he found has been backed up by my own investigations, and a flight to southern Argentina has pointed towards the area where the whole operation is based.'

Dave interjected again,

'Bloody marvelous, I don't know about anyone else here, but I don't speak Spanish, or Portuguese, or whatever language it is they use down there.'

'It may surprise you, but the main language in that part of Argentina is actually Welsh.' Sherwood explained.

This caused some mutterings within the group.

Presently Lilian spoke up,

'That's a coincidence, I can speak Welsh.'

'So can I.' Added Karen.

Sherwood continued,

'That is no coincidence, you were all picked for your special talents.'

He shuffled the maps around as he said,

'We will be using a Cessna Citation from the guys at Farnborough on this trip.'

McTiny commented,

'Thank goodness for that, I hate the bloody Hercules we usually get.'

'The Herky-bird is too slow, and anyway we don't want to look like a military outfit, and this way we can all infiltrate together. There was talk about us flying in on a normal commercial jet, but that was too complicated and uncertain.'

He found a map of Pategonia.

'There is a little village here called Gostre, and a little airstrip twenty five miles away. turns out that there is an unusually good bus service into the village, and some strange activity since a meteorite landed there some years ago. After the meteorite struck there was the usual scientific interest, but that died down after six months. Then an industrial outfit began operating from the place. They have taken over most of the buildings, and erected a lot of their own.'

He flashed up on a central display an image of an aerial shot of an industrial complex,

'This has been set up very craftily; there is a river on one side, a railway line runs along the other side, making access very difficult. There is only one road in and out, and that is after you have passed under a very small railway bridge. The vehicles using this are specially designed to be low enough to pass under the arch; anything bigger than a Transit van would not get under. Alongside the gateway is razor wire, and anti-tank traps, including girder work and God knows what kinds of explosive devices.'

He looked up at the surrounding team, 'So the obvious choice is boats. Luckily we have our own transport in, but we shall need three pickups to move the boats from the aircraft to the complex. Another problem is the landing. This is simply an airstrip; there are no facilities, which means that there will be on-one watching us. It also means that there are no landing aids. We will be landing at night, and there are no landing lights - or any kind of lights, so we shall have to make our own arrangements. After unloading the boats and other personnel the Cessna will depart to the nearest provincial airport, which it was supposed to go to according to its flight plan. It will wait there for the message to exfil from me or whoever the team leader happens to be.'

He leaned on his fists as he looked at the group and said,

'Are there any questions?'

There were none, mainly because they all knew that he was not yet finished,

'We have an element out there, sent Phil out to prepare the ground for you guys. He tells me that the airport is closed pretty well during the hours of darkness; by 10 o'clock they have all gone to bed. So we will be dropping in at midnight. Phil will by then have arranged three trucks, and got some lights rigged up to help us get in.'

McTiny quietly said,

'That's where the little schiver went.' His Scottish accent caused the r's to roll.

Midnight, near Gostre, Pategonia. A Cessna Citation circled in the dark skies. The half moon gave some light, but not enough to land a plane. Nine pairs of eyes scanned the slumbering countryside.

McTiny called,

'I cannae see a fucking thing oot o my side. Will someone tell him to try dropping this wing?'

Mick replied,

'We put you on that side because you are used to being on high.'

The pilot interrupted,

'Approaching target.'

He dropped the wing. As the aircraft leveled out, as if on cue, a truck's lights came on, then another alongside it, then a car shone it's rear fog lights a little closer the them. This told the pilot exactly how wide the runway was, and how long it stretches. The radio altimeter and the terrain avoidance radar told him if there was something in his way down to the runway. Phil stood by the car with a range-finder to report to the navigator how far they had to go before reaching the runway. This information was given to the navigator because he had to work out the glide angle that they had to follow to get down safely.

'Like shooting ILS at Samlesbury.' The pilot said, 'Bear left to avoid Mellor church, then drop down straight on to the concrete.'

The navigator didn't bother looking in his direction; in the poor light he knew he wouldn't see anything as he said,

'Dodging the dead Canberras.'

The pilot smiled as the wheels touched the ground. All of the lights were extinguished.

A car pulled up alongside them as they slowed from flying speed. It pulled level to the nose on the right-hand side. Phil rolled the window down as he said into the radio,

'There is no wind, so I suggest that you spin round at the end and take off the way you came.'

'Roger that.' The pilot said.

Two-thirds of the way down the runway Phil put his lights on. The Cessna already had his landing lights on to help him follow the line down the centre of the runway. At the same time the trucks at the end of the runway showed up clearly in the combined lights. They could easily be identified as big, VW pickups. Each had seating for six, in the back there was plenty of room for their equipment. The vehicles had now turned sideway on to the approaching aircraft. The aircraft began to turn round as it approached the trucks. It stopped close to them, half way round it's 180 degree turn. The troops piled out and began moving equipment in the light provided by the aircraft's internal illumination. A large cargo door on the side of the plane opened and shed a pool of yellow light on the surrounding vehicles. Large, unwieldy boxes and packages were rapidly piled into the backs of the VWs. Some were placed in the trunk of Phil's car. Not a word was said during the seven minutes it took to unload the Cessna. The aircraft doors were closed at the same time as the car doors and the trucks swallowed up the dark figures. The road vehicles and aircraft went their separate ways.

As the Cessna hurtled down the runway the three vehicles drove towards the south side of the airport, away from the buildings. As the aircraft's wheels left the runway the landing lights were extinguished. On the gloss paint of the fuselage there was a faint blue light flickering.

The vehicles were now led by Phil who had thoughtfully disassembled the perimeter fence to allow them to pass through. That is, they would if it were not for the nine Police and Army vehicles blocking their path.

.  
Chapter 20

Ring of Fire

The sound of gunfire had alerted other people on the site at Salamanca. Henri Salvador and Armando knew there was a prisoner in a body bag in the area from where the noise seemed to be coming from. They were first to arrive. When they reached the outer door into the building they hesitated, knowing a short gun battle had just taken place inside. All was quiet now. The chances were that one side had won, and they didn't know which side. Six soldiers were running towards them. Armando enthusiastically waved the men on, he even held the door open for them.

Steele and Anita quickly saw what was about to happen. Lynn stood vulnerable; between them and the door through which a bunch of heavily armed soldiers were about to enter. All three of them immediately recognised the danger.

Anita pointed at the corner of the room closest to the entrance, this was also near to the door which led into the corridor Anita had moved in from. Steele and Anita stood in the middle of the empty room with no cover whatsoever when the outer door opened. Lynn was quick to realise what was likely to happen; to this effect she quickly moved to the indicated corner.

As the soldiers burst into the dark room all they could see was two AK53s open up. The bright flashes were the last things they saw as the automatic assault rifles cut them down - except the last man, who ducked back just in time. Wide-eyed he looked straight at Armando. No words were spoken. He hesitated briefly, and then turned on his heels and began running away. Armando withdrew an automatic handgun and shot the man in the back.

Through the acrid cordite smoke Steele saw Lynn make a dash for it down Anita's corridor. As he swung his gun towards her, Anita took hold of the barrel to prevent him drawing a bead on the runner. She shook her head as she indicated the open door in front of them with Armando and Salvador outside. The barrel was hot, so she did not linger with her grip on it. Steele agreed. He nodded towards the door. Anita knew exactly what he meant. They both ran towards the corners either side of the door. As a hand grenade rolled in, Steele tossed his AK53, and caught it by the barrel,

'Shit.' He exclaimed as he felt the over-warm barrel in his hand. He took a cricketing swing at the grenade before it had stopped rolling, propelling it back in the direction from which it had come. He gave the gun another toss to return it to the normal firing position as he and Anita retreated to their positions either side of the door.

Armando was first to see the threat; he grabbed hold of Henri Salvador, and thrust him between himself and the grenade. Salvador did not stand a chance. Before he could move out of the way the grenade exploded. Armando dropped the dead man as he gripped his own ears. The blast wave from the explosion had burst his eardrums, causing bleeding. He screamed in pain as the blood ran down his white shirt cuffs to his elbows. He did not hear himself, nor did he hear Steele and Anita come out of the building. They had no hesitation in shooting him.

They were surprised to find the area brightly lit as they sprang out into the open area, guns at the ready. To their surprise they found the road empty. Steele saw an alley close by, he turned to Anita, and nodded to indicate they should go down there; this area was now very hot.

Manfred Bogarts heard the shooting from his temporary office. Most of the depot staff he brought with him were ex-Totenkopf from WWII. They were here to provide an inner core protection for the officers of the organisation. To help them do that they were equipped with three open-topped Land Rover Defenders with twin 30 cal heavy machine guns. They were more offensive than normal defenders. These vehicles sped away from their depot with Bogarts in the lead. They knew where the trouble was coming from. Before they left on their final mission, Armando and Salvador had alerted him to get his troops organised. They split up as they approached the building where Steele and Anita were held.

At the end of the narrow gap between the buildings the Brits did not hesitate as they turned left without knowing where they were going. As they reached the end of this structure they came upon a car park. Steele thought of stealing one of the cars to aid in their getaway. He was just about to dive across the clear area between them and the cars when he noticed a courier's van moving, but that was much further away. He identified a car he knew he could get into and start, he signaled to Anita. They began their run towards the cars just as a Range Rover emerged at speed from between two buildings. The twin 30 cals opened up before the vehicle had finished its turn towards Steele, who was now in the middle of the road, with Anita close behind him. Mounds of earth spouted up, several cars began sporting big ugly holes as the heavy shells went straight through them. Fragments of glass flew, then one car exploded, then another as the gunner tried to aim from the bouncing, turning Land Rover.

Steele immediately stopped, ducked, and turned back. Straight into Anita, who did not have time to react. They looked at the Land Rover as it over-corrected its turn. This threw the gunner off his aim. The stream of shells snaked through the car park destroying cars in a crazy pattern as the intended targets made a quick dash back the way they had come.

They looked down the alley, and immediately knew that they would not make the end before the machine gunner reached the other end of their lane. Steele began looking for a door. He found one, but it seemed to be locked. He and Anita stood back and prepared to shoot the lock off when the Range Rover appeared, guns already pointing in their direction. They threw themselves against the wall behind them, moving into a doorway in an attempt to get out of the line of fire. The AK53s they carried added to the din in the narrow alley as they opened up on the car. This caused the crew to abandon their vehicle. All, that is, except the gunner behind the twin 30 cals. As he sprayed the alley with deadly lead the ground erupted, he moved his aim a little higher. Brickwork exploded as the sides of the buildings were sprayed with shells. Steele watched as grotesque holes appeared in a snaking pattern on the opposite wall. Windows were smashed, a wooden door disintegrated - the door disintegrated! He grabbed Anita's arm as she took careful aim at the gunner. A single shot rang out, the gunner fell to the ground. Other men by the truck continued firing. Steele put his weapon on to automatic, so did Anita, they both let fly with their AK53s together to make the Germans keep their heads down. Firing as they went, the two agents made a dash to the broken door. As they made it into the comforting inside of the building they found themselves in a large room. Stray bullets had knocked plaster off the walls. A pair of double doors led out of the room, Steele made a dash for these; he knew the pursuers would not be far behind. The doors were locked. Anita tried giving them a savage kick, but to no avail. She leveled her AK53, selected single shot, gave the lock a couple of shots, Steele hit the doors with the but of his assault rifle, and they flew open. Anita looked quickly round the room before moving from the room they were in, she spotted a single door to one side. It had taken a hit near the hinges, and was not sitting neatly in its jamb. She called to Steele,

'Here - this way.'

They both knew that the pursuers would presume that they would be going through the double doors they had taken the trouble to open; and go the wrong way.

Steele and Anita carefully kicked the small door in. They had barely got in to the next room when the Germans entered the first room. The two agents tried to work out how many men were on the Range Rover. The machine gunner was hit, that made one less, but that did not give them much idea. Five men came into the room, and surely enough they made straight to the double doors. They spread either side of the portal, being careful in case there were assault rifles waiting for them on the other side. Someone threw a grenade into the room, then all five threw themselves against the wall either side of the doors. The guy on the far right side noticed movement inside a small door to his right.

Just then two agents carrying assault rifles appeared in the doorway. The man reached down for his Sub-machine gun as he called out something in German to alert his comrades. There was nowhere for them to go. A grenade was about to go off in the room next door. The man next to the door raised his weapon. Both agents opened fire together as the grenade exploded.

With the immediate threat disposed of the pair turned back into the room they had emerged from. Here they found a staircase going downward. Without hesitation Steele charged down, at the bottom they found something completely unexpected.

Anita almost ran into the back of Steele as he suddenly stopped at the sight before him.

They were the equivalent of some two storeys below ground. Stretching out before them in both directions they found what can only be described as a large enclosed tube in a tunnel. It seemed to curve away from them as they looked at it. The tunnel was easily big enough to stand up in, and lights stretched away showing vast amounts of cable and electronic boxes attached to the tube.

They knew that there must be others out looking for them, so they chose to not hang about, they began exploring the tunnel.

As they moved cautiously along he examined the tube that ran through the subway. He surmised that this was very expensive, and important to the operation. He lightly tapped the tube with the butt of his AK53. It did not sound thin.

Outside the men in the two armed Range Rovers found the first vehicle. Bogarts jumped down from the lead vehicle, he was first into the building,

'If they were still outside they would have taken the vehicle.' He presumed.

He waved for two of his men to follow him into the building. They found the rest of the crew, and the blast damaged room. As he returned to his men he noticed the door to the side room. He stopped, looked at the bodies sprawled around; saw the blood splattered walls, and the marks the bullets made on the wall behind the men who were shot. From this he deduced that they were shot from that direction.

He stuck his head round the corner into the small room, he knew where the room led.

There were nine of them stood in the room where the first group died.

'You, you, and you,'

He indicated three men,

'take the car and go to 23-472, and go down to the collider there.'

He turned to another three,

'You three go to 23-642, go down to the collider there.'

He addressed the whole group,

'Remember, there must be no shooting down there - at all; from any side. Now let's go.'

Two of the Land Rovers shot off on opposite directions, Bogarts and his crew began moving carefully down the stairs.

'  
Chapter 21

The Ugliest Building in the World.

In the glare of the police lights at Gosre airfield, Sherwood and his troop realised it was pointless trying to be stealthy.

Two army wagons blocked the way out. The SAS soldiers in the first vehicle began firing automatic weapons to keep the police heads down. Phil took a rocket launcher out, and blew up one of the blocking vehicles; thereby making it much more effective as a barricade.

The three SAS vehicles took a hard turn to the right, Phil was in the second vehicle. He found that he was now in the lead as the cars all doused their lights. The police and army found that their barracade now worked both ways; they could not get into the airfield.

Their Cessna took off as the SAS sped into the night before any return fire could be brought to bear. Phil led them to the south side of the airport, here there was a simple chain link fence. The cars stopped at the fence. Phil jumped down, with nothing but his bare hands he opened the fence. As he got back into the car McTiny asked him,

'Hoo the fuck did yee do that?'

'Simple; just unstitched it.' He waved one finger in the air.

The vehicles sped on into the night.

By dawn they arrived at Gosre. A small settlement, smaller than a village, set in the middle of a featureless desert. There seemed no reason for an industrial unit to be there.

Three pickups stopped outside the industrial complex, and Sherwood held a war council.

Sherwood spread satellite photographs and Google Earth pictures on the hood of the red VW. Lilian had to stand on tip toes to see properly,

'What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a very high security setup. I suspect that they are relying on the remoteness of the location to protect themselves to some extent. But that also shows up any collection of strangers who immediately expose themselves as possible threats.'

He tapped the bonnet of the vehicle,

'For that reason, and for tactical reasons, we will split up from here.' He shuffled through the photographs,

'The main problem is the access.'

He turned to Phil,

'Did you get everything?'

Phil answered without hesitation,

'The boats were such a big problem, we had to move them in in the Diplomatic bag, along with quite a lot of the stuff, but I think you will find everything you need.'

'Good.' Sherwood picked up two A4 sized pictures, 'The main problem we have got is access, but by using two boats we can put two elements on the river. That will be Mick and McTiny in one boat, Dave and Lucy in the other. Karen and Lilian, we need you monitoring the radio and providing exfil.' He looked at Mick and McTiny,

'Boat number one, with Mick and John in it, radio call sign Black Prince, you will sail to this area. There seem to be lots of pipework around this place; should make a nice series of bangs.'

He pointed his pen at Dave and Lucy,

'You two, radio call sign Red Queen, Your target is this large building here, this strange circle seems to meet up with itself here.'

Turning to Phil he said,

'We will take the black vehicle down the tracks and see if we can find another way in. We will be black Knight,'

Phil added,

'I think there may be a blind area around here.'

The pen was waved in the direction of Lilian and Karen,

'You will be White Knight, take the blue truck, and position it here, by the tracks between us and the main entrance. The other truck will be parked out of direct sight here, keys in a magbox in the front offside wheel-arch.'

He punched Phil in the chest as he continued,

'Phil and I will be Grey Rook. The big building here seems to be quite important. To this end we shall all aim to get to it by 02.30. That gives 90 minutes to make our way in. Anything that looks important on the way, place timers on them to go off at 03.30.'

The assembled SAS people studied to photos for a few minutes, then Sherwood interrupted them,

'Right, troops, we had better get somewhere to lager down until dark. We go in at 0100.'

.....................

There was no starting gun. A black inflatable nudged into the banks of a small river. Two people got out, hid the boat, and began to carefully make their way ashore in complete darkness.

The SAS operatives who made up Red Queen, Dave and Lucy, carefully moved away from the hiding place, then stopped. They watched from a place of concealment to make sure they had not been detected landing.

When he was sure that there was nothing out there moving, Dave indicated to Lucy that it was safe to move on. She concurred by a simple thumbs up.

Distant lights showed them the general direction in which they should head. As they neared the building the lighting around them improved. Moving silently from bush to bush the team carried haversacks and bags; these would not hamper them on their way back. Their actual orders were deliberately vague. This is to allow for the fog of war, detailed plans tend to hold together until the first shot, or you find something unexpected.

Further along the river another black boat landed, the same procedure was followed by Mick and McTiny.

Phil and Sherwood took the VW pickup and, using it's four wheel drive, explored the area of the fence that Phil had identified as being most vulnerable. They began their exploration later than the boats in order to give them chance to get safely ashore. They knew that they were most likely to trip off some device, or be spotted.

At 0110 Phil took the car to the railway line. This was your typical desert railway; no fences or safety devices to prevent access to the rails. The VW was stopped well on their side of the lines. Sherwood and Phil alighted to explore the situation. It was not fully dark, and by now their eyes were completely accustomed to the night, so they were able to see quite well. They stayed honkered down by the side of the track, looking and listening. The desert sounds were low key. A gentle breeze, the occasional nocturnal insect. The sleeping industrial complex they were looking at gave no sounds. The lighting in there was useful; there were lots of shaded areas. Pale yellow light pooled down around each lamp standard, and did not extend much beyond each individual post.

Sherwood looked to his left, down the tracks towards the only gate would be Lilian and Kate in the other truck, monitoring the radio waves. They knew that a plant of this size and complexity must rely heavily on radio communications. Telephone wires in the desert would be too unreliable and prone to sabotage. Lilian went off with an infra-red monocular to watch the only place where they knew there would be people moving about.

She began by examining vehicles near the only entrance into the plant. There were no heat sources amongst the vehicles. The instrument she was using could detect the heat of a car's engine even after it had been parked up for a while. Behind the little gatehouse, some way into the complex, stood the ugliest building in the world. Black windows looked out over the site from a dull, dirty building. Lilian did not see it until she used the infra-red monocular. The heat coming from these same windows almost blinded Lilian as she moved it towards the object. She lowered them, and looked in the direction of the building. Nothing. The building was almost invisible, she could only just make out the shape. She squinted and looked sideways to use a different part of her eye, as if that would make any difference. There was a strange heat source emitting from there.

Karen was using a heavily modified radio scanner to monitor the frequencies.

'There is something over there.' Lilian said as she passed the monocular to Karen.

Karen said nothing as she swept the area. As she reached the ugly building a green light shone on her eye. The eerie light spread across her cheeks as she lowered the monocular. The advantage of using this instrument was to preserve night sight in one eye in the event of over-exposure; as in this case.

'Well, it certainly looks as if someone is home; I don't think that they have just left the kettle on.'

Phil approached the wire fence. A simple chain link, it was easy for him to unstitch a hole big enough to get the VW pickup truck through. Sherwood drove through. They were as far away from the gatehouse as possible. As Phil made good the fence, Sherwood scanned the plant with a monocular. The little street lights shone with a strange green glow. Then he came upon the big ugly building with its bright heat source.

He broke radio silence,

'Grey Rook to Black Prince, a sentinel for you.'

'Roger.'

Mick looked through his monocular. He soon found his sentinel.

'Ok, that's for us.' He nudged John, passing the monocular, pointing with it at the same time.

'Interesting.' McTiny said quietly.

As they moved closer to the building, they saw streaks of dirt running down the sides of what may have once been been white walls. The squareness of the main part being emphasized by the single dirty brown tower in the middle of the side facing them. The top of this held an angular block of black windows. McTiny moved around to the side to see if there were some vulnerability they might exploit. This side opened up into three blocks with large black windows. He turned the sensitivity of the monocular down to its lowest setting, then looked at this side. As Mick joined him the Scotsman looked at the windows. Light green light spilled out of them. He handed the instrument to Mick, who began inspecting the structure.

Mc Tiny nudged his comrade,

'Bet I could put a mortar through each one of them windows.'

'Bollocks you can.'

McTiny took some equipment from his bergen, and set up three mortars, being careful to cover them up from casual searches. He took especial care when lining up, switched some equipment on, and then stood back,

'We'll see.' He said as they made their way to the main building.

Dave and Lucy hid their boat in the same manner as Mick and McTiny, then began making their way inland. On their left they saw what looked like a processing plant. Through the monocular Dave made out streams of green 'smoke' coming from a row of chimneys on the right of the structure. Pipes seemed to be running all over the plant from this building.

'This looks like a viable candidate.' Dave said.

As they moved closer Lucy spotted two dark shapes outside the plant,

'They look like generators, and alongside them what looks like a row of transducers or inverters or something important.'

'That's a good idea, I was going to go for the pipes.'

'Too easy,' she shook her head, 'How would you get at the top ones? The best way is to throw a bit of heavy kit at them; hit the electricals with enough bang; and you should take some of them out.'

'OK, let's do it.'

They placed explosives below the apparatus in such a way as to propel any debris into the mass of pipes.

All timers were set for 04.00.

Sherwood and Phil were first to reach the main building. They found a way in. A window had been left unlocked; it was seven feet off the ground, but it was actually open. Phil was the lightest of the two, so Sherwood pushed his foot up to help him reach the opening. Once inside, he leaned out as far as he could to grab Sherwood, and help him in. They found themselves inside some sort of office. In the interior of the building they could see some sort of control room, but found that the office door was securely locked. As Sherwood got on the radio, Phil lowered a thin rope down from the window.

'Grey Rook to all units. Inside target. Rendezvous here.'

Lilian and Karen were to await developments. Stay where they were, and do some preparatory work, but all the others were to find their way to the target building. Dave and Lucy were first to find the rope. Lucy grabbed the line, turned to Dave, and said,

'I'd better go first, you may break it.'

He gently nudged her in the ribs as she began climbing, and he watched the surrounding darkness for signs of movement. As Lucy gained entry to the room she turned and continued the watch as Dave began the climb up. As he reached the top he felt a tug on the rope. McTiny and Mick had got to the position without being seen by anyone.

With all six SAS operatives in the same room, and with a good overview of what looked like the operations room, Sherwood gave thoughts to the final plan,

'We don't have too much time in here, so let's get a shake on.' He looked through the window into the inside of the building. 'This looks important. If we split into separate units we can get it done quickly, and get out of here.'

All six people were lined up alongside Sherwood. He selected the person on the far left, and worked his way along them,

'McTiny, You take the left wall, Mick, the far wall, Lucy the right wall, Phil, if you can find anything to blow up on this wall, do it. Dave, you and I shall see what is beyond that double door over there. Everyone clear?'

Five people quietly said 'Clear.'

Sherwood nodded towards the still open window through which they had all entered, he said to Lucy,

'Close that if you would, please.'

He leveled his gun at the still locked office door.

The Heckler & Koch silenced unlocking device never fails. Sherwood and Dave moved out silently into the ops room, whilst the other four quickly planted devices around the first room.

Phil was first to speak,

'There doesn't seem much here'

McTiny added,

'This seems to be an outer wall.'

Sherwood found a flight of stairs leading down into another area. Looking around quickly, he noticed a balcony with machinery on the right hand wall.

As the others joined him he said,

'Phil, you go up there, McTiny, with me.'

He then walked across the room to the set of double doors on the far wall.

The Heckler & Koch spat again. Wood splinters flew all around as the doors swung open. Inside they found another flight of stairs. Without hesitation he led his little party of explosives carriers down the metal staircase. Hurrying now, they were not too concerned about noise.

Below them they found lights were blazing in a very large tunnel.

McTiny commented,

'Looks like the bloody Bakerloo line.'

The sounds of hurried people carrying bags down a metal staircase in the early hours of the morning was unusual. So the men working in the tunnel knew that there was something amiss. Twelve men were in the work party only five hundred metres, from Sherwood. Seven of them left their colleagues to see what was happening. As they came around the bend they saw three black clad SAS people coming down the stairs. Three MP5s opened up; one had a silencer on it, the other two did not. Sherwood fired eight rounds. The other two only got off five each before the seven men were sprawled out all over the space between the tunnel wall and what looked like a gigantic tube that seemed to be running through the tunnel. This now had several holes, and blood splattered over it.

Sherwood wanted to avoid any further military action; it would only get in the way of their mission.

By using hand signals he told Phil and Mick to wait here for five minutes in case any more men came down the tunnel. He and the rest of the team began to explore the tunnel in the opposite direction. There was a slight curve, but other than that, no change in the strange contraption running through. Ice hung from it, there was some serious refrigeration going on here. Masses of heavy duty cables ran all over the place. Sherwood pointed out that there were important-looking boxes here and there along the pipeline. He indicated that that was where they should place explosive charges. As they were involved in this, they heard automatic gunfire coming from where they had left Phil and Mick.

The two SAS soldiers had decided to check to see if there were other people in the tunnel, who could raise the alarm about their presence and possible activities.

There was little cover in the tunnel, but Mick led the way, dodging between whatever cover he could. Their training had given them a considerable edge in this kind of contact. As each one broke cover, the other would cover him until he got to another position, then his comrade would move. That way, there was always one soldier waiting to take on anyone who may come into view. Silently they moved forwards in this manner. The remaining five workmen were found; three of whom were armed and ready for the two soldiers, but they were slower than the Brits. Two Heckler and Koch automatic sub machine guns cut down all five. One had a telephone in his hand. Mick went over to him, took the receiver from his dead hand, saying,

'Shit.'

He listened, and said into the mouthpiece,

'Sorry old chap, wrong number.'

Then hung up as the confused voice at the other end began babbling something undecipherable in a mixture of Spanish and Welsh.

Mick turned to Phil,

'Let's take care of the entrance.'

They hurried back to the staircase from where they entered the tunnel. They rigged up a tripwire system using several small explosive packages. These would be triggered by anyone entering that part of the tunnel from any direction.

Running to meet up with the rest of the team, they told Sherwood that the way back was unobtainable, and that they will have to continue in the direction they were now moving in.

Mick said,

'We can't go back, Chief. We've rigged the stairs to blow to prevent unwelcome visitors.'

'Well, I suppose that makes sure there is no longer any threat from there'

'If anyone tries to come from that direction, there will be a big bang first.'

'Great!' Sherwood threw his head back, 'This is a bloody tunnel. Where do you think that blast wave is going to go?'

Mick realized his blunder, he looked around, then saw in the roof some sort of door, then another one, and another. He pointed to these,

'They must be access panels used during the construction.'

He aimed at the nearest one. The sub machine gun stitched a nice dotted line in the wooden construction.

'That should weaken it enough to allow the blast to escape.'

He moved closer to the next one, and gave it the same treatment.

Sherwood did not look too impressed,

'I don't think that will be enough, come on.'

All six soldiers began running away from the staircase. There was little respect given to tactical moving, it would slow them down.

The tunnel continued its curve; it was now obvious that it was a circle. As they approached another staircase they saw that people were beginning to move down towards them. By firing on the run they SAS saw the threat off before anyone could take action. Machine guns opened up from below on the run. Phil, who took up the last place, dropped to one knee and waited until his comrades were out of sight. He watched the bodies of the people who had come to stop them. He also watched the door from where they had emerged. As the sound of SAS soldiers faded down the corridor, a head appeared in the door. Phil watched and waited. He was positioned so that little of him was visible from the door. Slowly at first, then with more urgency as they realized that the threat seemed to have passed. Four more heavily armed security guards emerged through the door and began down the open metal stairs. As soon as he was sure there were no more coming through the door he let fly. Sparks, dust and bodies went flying for the two seconds it took to kill the guards.

Before Phil could catch up with the main force, they found a set of big double doors in the inside of the tunnel. They knew that the element of surprise had been lost. They still had some explosives left. Small charges were placed around the door, in such a way as to allow the main part of the blast to follow the doors as they flew out-wards. Before detonation Sherwood sent everyone well away from the doors. This was not only to avoid being hurt by the blast, but to avoid being hit if there were any hostiles on the other side of the doors.

Their work being done Sherwood got on the radio and called to Lilian and Karen,

'All units exfil, exfil. Plan Alpha Echo active now.'

Then he blew the doors off. The force shattered the doors out-wards. Five men were walking towards them. They did not stand a chance; the wooden splinters lacerated their bodies beyond recognition.

At exactly the same time the main gatehouse, some quarter of a mile away, erupted in a massive explosion. Lilian had been setting this up. Karen gunned the VW pickup truck towards the pall of smoke that was all that remained of the gatehouse. With the darkness, and smoke neither of them would be able to see; were it not for the infra red sights they both wore.

Once inside the compound, Lilian jumped on to the back of the pickup, and cocked the pair of .30 calibre heavy machine guns. A camouflage net was draped over most of the vehicle, she had to throw this to one side in order to use the mount properly.

Sherwood and his men knew where to go. They were out in the open now. Running in tactical formation, with Phil still taking up the lone long rear cover position. With him there there was no chance of a flanking manoeuvre on the running group. Twice, three times the enemy tried to attack in such a way, but Phil was able to cut them down before they realized that he was there.

Karen aimed at the biggest heat source she could see; the burning doors, but this was getting indistinct. Sherwood saw the VW, camo nets flowing, and called her to stop,

'White Knight stop. Eyeball on.'

Before mounting the vehicle, the group formed a protective cordon around it, and kept away any hostiles who ventured near. Phil was still ducking from cover to cover. When he heard the distinctive sound of the 30-odd guns thumping away he knew the exfil was waiting for him, and are now working their own defense. He looked around quickly, then hit the road running towards the vehicle. When he got close he took cover again, and called,

'Blue on Blue.'

The firing stopped, as he ran towards the vehicle, three soldiers dressed completely in black got into the double cab. The rest piled onto the open back, as Phil hit the tailboard, Karen hit the accelerator, and they sped off into the night.

Within minutes they were in the remote darkness of the Pategonia desert. As they raced through the darkness Dave spotted small pinpricks of light ahead of them.

'Hold on a moment.' He called to Karen, 'What's that over there?'

She slowed the vehicle.

As they moved more slowly more dots appeared.

Lucy said,

'Pull over a minute, I'll go and have a look at this.'

Karen gently stopped the vehicle, as if to not disturb anything.

As Lucy got out Phil leaned over the side from the rear,

'What's up? Need a visit?'

All Lucy said was,

'No.' As she pointed towards the mysterious points of light she could now see that there were hundreds of them.

Phil jumped down to the dusty ground. They began advancing towards the strange lights. Upon closer inspection they could be seen to move. The lights from the truck began to fade and spread as the duo moved away from the vehicle, the moving dots of lights could now be seen to be in pairs. They did not hide, or decrease - in fact there seemed to be more on both sides of the road.

Phil cried out in shock as he saw what they were advancing towards,

'Jesus fucking wept!'

Lucy saw the same thing at the same instant.

The two stood rooted to the spot as they saw three, then eight, then about twenty giant spiders raise their front legs and begin a charge.

The two soldiers were carrying their MP3 machine pistols. These they instinctively brought to bear on the spiders, each one the size of a domestic cat. The machine guns opened up together. Spiders were sent splattering all over the place. Then they realized the size of the problem. As the front lines were pulverized by automatic gunfire, the ones behind simply kept on advancing through legs and bodies of their companions. With six legs running they made good ground. The road began to darken with these hoards. As they gained the level surface they seemed to increase in speed. The soldiers could now see the complex teeth and mandible setup that seemed to work in two directions at once.

Lucy and Phil turned and began to run, but they only had two legs each. They were no match for six legs. As the first spiders caught up with the fleeing feet they tried to grab them with their two raised front legs. Lucy felt first one, then another grabbing at her trouser bottoms. She swiped down with the but of her MP3, one spider went spinning off, the other did not. As it prepared to bite into her leg she kicked violently forward, with so much force that it landed in front of them.

As it was caught in the headlights Karen saw exactly what was happening. She quickly put the vehicle in gear, and flattened the accelerator.

Lucy and Phil parted to allow the vehicle to pass between them. As the cab passed, eager hands reached out to grab the pedestrians. As they were scooped up into the rear, rifle butts were used to clear more spiders as they clung on to Lucy and Phil's legs. Any spider that fell into the truck was dealt with by army boots stamping down.

As the truck moved forwards faster they ran over more of the arachnids, squashing them as they tried to gain access to the vehicle. They were now jumping up on to the bodywork, but the smooth metal gave them nothing to grasp on to. The people in the back used the back of their weapons like cricket bats on any unfortunate spider that managed to reach the top of the sides and rear tailgate. Karen moved the vehicle from side to side in an attempt to dissuade the attackers from mounting their vehicle, some of which were getting clever. As they saw the vehicle approaching them they joined together in launching one of their number higher. These usually hit the windscreen, and bounced off, but occasionally one would land in the back amongst the people there. At first a surprise, these were soon dealt with; Phil had no hesitation to grab a twitching leg, and slinging the spider away.

It seemed like hours, but in less than five minutes the danger was past. As the truck plunged on into the night, McTiny was heard to say,

'I wonder if you could eat them?'

Mick looked back into the darkness, and commented,

'Well, they have plenty to eat now.'

They did not stop until they overlooked the little airstrip where they had originally landed.

The authorities immediately began searching to see what theses infiltrators had been up to.

The first thing they did was to follow the path the intruders had originally taken into the tunnel. Then they found the trip wires. The resultant explosions not only destroyed the staircase and killed some nine or ten people, it made everyone else stop.

At 0400 precisely the first of their planted explosives went off. This interrupted the electricity supply within the plant. That included a strong electromagnet which was part of a QED device. The sub-atomic particles escaped; all electronic devices were immediately fried. This included the switchgear to the detonators on all of the other explosives.

Fortunately the surge impulse was more than enough to trigger the explosives. The whole lot went off simultaneously. The three mortars that McTiny had set up to drop into the black windows of the ugliest building the the world were bang on target. Each one broke straight through the dead centre of each pane, they then exploded together. This did not take the roof off, but caused it to lift a little, then drop down into the building, pushing walls out. Thus causing the whole edifice to collapse upon itself.

Sherwood and company were close to the airstrip when their vehicles were impacted by the QED pulse.

The lights went out. And the engines stopped running. They got out of the vehicles to assess the situation. All radios stopped working; so they had no communications with the aircraft. Moreover their torches and lamps they were going to use to guide the aircraft in were also useless.

Sherwood looked at his watch, then at the darkness around them,

'The airfield is that way. Get whatever you need from the trucks, leave no clues about us, we will have to leave them here. Whatever we can't carry will have to deal with.'

A small pile of stuff to be disposed of was carried a little way into the desert. Dave ran a wire from the pile to a safe distance. When he turned the detonator handle nothing happened. Twice he twisted the device time and again. Checked the connections, but the device had been effected by the QED.

He returned to the group,

'Do we have any ordinary det cord?'

Phil rummaged in his Bergen,

'Yes, I think I have some instant.'

This was fuse-wire that you light with a match, or other such flame. It burns almost instantaneously.

'How much have you got? I need to be quite some distance away from this lot when it goes off.'

'Not that much;' Phil held up a reel, 'less than a second I should say.'

Mick produced another reel,

'Here, this is better; a bit of slow match.'

Five minutes later the pile of kit was scattered all over a wide area of desert.

The team heard an aircraft approaching. It was still as dark as your grandfathers. The aircraft was flying low. It was low enough to be making a final approach to landing. The landing lights came on like airborne searchlights. The pilot would not be able to see much before they came on. At the height he was at now he wouldn't be able to see much, they were just being used to illuminate possible hazards. The aircraft landed first pass onto a completely dark airfield.

Sherwood complemented the pilot on the landing in what must have been very difficult conditions,

'Bloody good show, you must have been completely blind during that approach. How did you do it?'

'Easy old boy; these new satnavs are brilliant, they log into the aircraft's flight computer. If you have been somewhere before, you simply tell it to remember the touchdown place and speed. It just takes you back to the same place to within eighteen inches. Simply a matter of trusting the stuff.'

'  
Chapter 22

Shangri-la at Salamanca.

In England, Katherine Angel was worried about the agents. She knew about the mission, and where it was happening, but she had lost contact with them some time ago. She went to see Sir John Rimmer,

'What do you want to do?' he asked her.

'Can we organise an emergency extraction?'

'You mean send in the troops?'

'No sir, we do not have time for that. These two operations were timed to go off together. We can only presume that our people over in Salamanca have done their bit, and are having difficulty getting out.'

'Can't have that. I'll have a word with our Spanish allies and see what can be done. The Americans have expressed an interest in this too. They have offered any help we may need.'

Five minutes later he rang Katherine,

'The Spanish have two Harriers, which they call Matadors, on stand by. The Americans say that they are equipped to do any clear-up we may need.'

..................

Anita Valdez and Steve Steele made their way along the strange tunnel near Salamanca. Little did they know that there were forces entering the tube elsewhere. A group of men were going to the entrance in front of them, a group behind them, and a group were going in at the place they had used.

Another thing they did not know was that live firing of any firearms was strictly forbidden in the tunnel. The AK53s they now carried certainly breached this restriction!

Steele looked at the strange tube that ran through the tunnel. As it was curved away to the right, and seemed to describing a very large circle.

'What do you suppose this is?'

He touched it, and found that it was very cold; his hand almost stuck to it,

'That explains why it is so cold in here. Come on, lets see where it leads.'

They began their walk along a pipe that never ends. They were trying to be as quiet as possible, so were the enemy.

The Bogarts element of the enemy consisted of only three men. They followed Steele and Anita by running quietly down the stairs through the same doors that the Brits had gone.

Drud Wagenheim originated from Bavaria, Ewart Wirscing came from Dusseldorf. They were fighting the Russians when their unit became cut off in Eastern Germany. Unable to get back to the German lines, or even communicate with their side, they blended into the rural countryside. Now they found themselves creeping alongside a refrigerated pipe running through a tunnel. They still carried their Schmeitzer machine pistols, but had to stow them in the environs in which they now found themselves. There was a permanent moratorium on firearms in or near the tunnel, whenever it came above ground. The reasons for this are obvious; if the electricity within the pipe were interrupted in any way, the electromagnets would lose their grip on the sub atomic particles within.

Wirscing was in the lead of the silent trio as they reached the bottom of the stairs. He turned left in pursuit of Steele and Anita. Presently he caught a glimpse of Anita as she moved round the tunnel. He moved a little faster as he cocked his Special Purpose Shotgun, loaded with 9 pellet 00 buckshot. This weapon shoots shells loaded with 8.5mm rubber pellets. They will not penetrate metal structures, but will hit a body with varying degrees of incapacity depending on the range and where they hit the body.

As Anita popped into view again, he fired from the hip. The shot spread to cover an area just over one foot across by the time it reached Anita. None of the pellets penetrated her flesh. Four of them missed altogether, hitting the ice covered structure and doing no damage whatsoever as intended. But the remaining five hit their mark; from her right shoulder, to the middle of her back. The force was enough to knock her to the pipe. She put her right hand out to the pipe, as her hand began to slide on the ice, Wagenheim drew a bead on her. He fired, four of his pellets hit the lower back of the struggling woman. Wirscing cocked the gun again, quicker this time, and let fly another shot that took her legs from under her. Steel had by now turned to try to help her, but Wagenheim hit him with a shot that spread pellets over his head and shoulders. Three pellets hit him on the top of his head, two on his left shoulder, and three on his right. Even the last shot managed to graze his chest. The result was that he was thrown back. The collision with the hard frozen floor made sure he was quite fully unconscious. They thought at first they had killed him. Bogarts playfully hit Waganheim with the butt of his gun,

'I wanted to do that. There is a free car on offer for anyone who kills the British agent.'

As he helped Anita up, Wirscing commented,

'It is probably an old Lada.'

Bogarts said to Wagenheim,

'Check the radio. Tell them what has happened here, and ask if there are any more intruders.'

Wagenheim spoke into the radio,

'Weiz und Gelb to Scwartz. We have one live intruder and one dead. Are there any more on site? Over.'

Scwartz to Gelb, we must keep searching. I don't think there are any more, but these people are very unpredictable, we cannot take any chances.'

'Ja.'

Bogarts moved over to Steele,

'I wonder, should I remove the head as a souvenir?'

He reached towards the prone agent,

'I wouldn't.' Steele said as he sat up and held his head, 'What was that?' he said as he checked the top of his head for blood.

Wagenheim and Wirscing pointed their weapons at Steele.

He held his palm out to them,

'Whoa; I don't think there is any need for gunfire.'

Steele did not know the ruling about firearms; but was in no position to violate these rules anyway. He presumed that the guns pointing at him would kill him, and these people already thought they had killed him. Just then the radio came to life again,

'Scwartz to Gelb.' The Kommisar's voice was discernible, 'Bring any survivors to me at once.'

Bogarts knew the gravity of a message directly from the Kommisar,

'We have two here, sir.'

'Then bring them here at once.'

Presently they were unceremoniously bundled into a sort of control room. On the far side of the room the Kommisar turned from what he was doing. When his attention was drawn to the commotion caused by the agents entry he put down what he was doing,

'Ah, Mr Steele. And the delightful Senorita Vigo de Valdez. How good of you to drop in.

'He moved close to Steele,

'Do you know I once danced with the Queen of England?' his manner seemed to be gloating, 'You will be pleased to know that your friends have been busy. Apparently they have visited one of our facilities in South America, but I'm afraid that bird had flown. You see that particular unit, although important, had served it's purpose. The elements that were developed and serviced there had already left.'

He walked across to a gigantic screen, upon which there was a map of North America. Lights flashed in various points in the southern states.

'Here we have our babies. You have no doubt heard about the attack on Paris?'

He looked at the two agents as a teacher who has just asked two pupils if they had heard about some event at school,

'We were stepping up our experiments. I must say, that one exceeded our expectations. So we immediately dispatched our babies here.'

He waved his arm across the map.

'Here we have the positions of the trucks on their way to paralyze the whole of the most powerful nation in the world.'

He pointed at individual lights as he applied detail to his plans,

'This one is headed for St Louis, this Washington DC, he's going to New York,'

he continued to point at individual lights,

'San Francisco, LAX, Fort Worth, Seattle.'

He turned back to Steele, 'You see, they are already on their way. You cannot stop them. Even if your friends have destroyed the plant in Pategonia. And if you manage to destroy all of this, we shall still bring the biggest and most successful country on earth to its knees.'

He marched up and down as he spoke,

'Only a little more than one hundred years ago America was opened up by the railways. These have been replaced by the airlines in moving forwards. And now the advanced electronic communications continue this growth. We have found a way of hitting both of these elements at the same time.'

Steele seemed to find all of this almost boring,

'When you have finished banging on about how great you are, what is the point of all this? Why do you want to kill thousands of innocent people?'

Anita was visibly shocked by this revelation as Steele continued,

'What could all of these people have possibly done to deserve what you have planned? And all of those people in Paris.'

She elbowed the guard behind her, and allowed the forward thrust to move her towards the Kommisar. Another guard moved forwards at the same time to intercept her. She pushed the flat of her hand into the man's forehead. He pushed it upwards and twisted it backwards.

Steele saw his opportunity, he reached out to the Kommisar,

'You can stop all this.'

The Kommisar took a step back as he replied,

'And why should I wish to do that, Mr Steele?'

With that he turned his back on the agent as another burly German entered the fray by knocking Steele off balance.

As he walked out of the room the Kommisar turned to his staff and said,

'No shooting; there is far too much delicate equipment in here. Put these two where they can do no harm.'

The man attempting to twist Anita's arm got a knee in his groin for his trouble. Another guard tried to take Anita from behind at the same time that Steele was pushed into the same area. All three collided, followed by Steel's assailant. Anita managed to jab at the man behind her in the eye, the one with a sore groin was bent double in front of her. He got another knee in the nose, causing an explosion of blood. Steele spun and gave his attacker four straight fingers to the throat. He grabbed Anita by the arm, before the next wave could assault them they dashed across the control room.

Picking up anything they could to throw at the pursuers, the agents gradually opened up sufficient gap to allow them to make an escape. One small door appeared directly in front of them, so they made a dash for it. They barricaded the door behind them before taking in their surroundings.

Even more electronic equipment filled this room.

Steele quickly looked carefully at the monitors and banks of electronics before saying,

'Well, at least I would say that we are safe from being fired at in here.'

Anita was pulling drawers open and examining the contents of cupboards as banging on the door told them that they had not been forgotten.

Steele saw a small door on the far side of the room, then he examined the sides of a large monitor that seemed to have the computer built in.

'If we could find a way to copy this data we would have enough to stop this.' He called.

As the door to the control room rattled with the onslaught from outside, Anita found what she has been looking for,

'Would 64 Gig be enough?' she called to Steele.

'Probably, let's see.'

She passed the memory stick to him. He put it into the side of the monitor. And then stood up as he said,

'Here, you do this, I will make sure our exit is clear, it can't be long before someone realizes that there is another way into this room.'

As he moved towards the door he added,

'Try to get any keys with the program.'

Once out of the door he worked out which way was likely to lead towards the outside. He found another room farther down the corridor. He did not hesitate kicking the door in. From here he could see the door to the control room, and watch the approaches to it without being seen.

Before he could catch his breath a group of German storm troopers approached his position.

Steele hid and tried to control his breath whilst the band of heavily armed men hurried past his position.

As the last of them drew level with Steele he opened the door. The man briefly looked towards it, just in time to see two hands reach out to him. One of Steele's hands took his leather strappings and began pulling him inwards. This made the effect of the second hand even more effective; four straight fingers thrust into the man's throat alongside his Adam's apple. This sliced his windpipe in two. Before he could fall to the ground Steele pointed the stricken man's sub-machine gun at the other Germans. He had no time to check the safety catch, he hoped it was off. It was; the gun burst into life as it took life. The donor of the machine gun still had it strapped to his shoulder as he and his comrades fell to the ground when Steele swept the corridor with lead.

Anita stuck her head round the doorway and said,

'When you have finished - you will wake someone up making a racket like that.'

'I thought one or two guns may come in useful.'

He picked two sub machine guns each and several pouches of ammunition. He took what looked like a grenade from one of the bodies,

'I wonder if these work.'

He removed the pin, then threw the primed grenade to Anita. She deftly tossed it into the room they had recently left, then closed the door and stood with her back to the wall alongside it.

The resultant blast blew the door off it's hinges straight across the corridor. For the first time Steele's hair ruffled as the blast wave moved down the corridor at the speed of sound.

He looked up at Anita,

'What have you done to my nice barricade in there?'

She looked into the room, then back at Steele,

'Ooops. Do you think it might be time to leave?'

'I think we'd better; I don't think they are going to best pleased with what you have done to their nice machinery.'

'That's a good idea, have you got another of those fireworks?'

Steele removed another two grenades, and passed them to Anita as she said,

'I don't think they will be expecting this.'

She went back into the devastated room, towards the control room. As she approached the door with what was left of the barricade she saw people in the control room beginning to move about. The grenades sailed into the middle of the room. One fell down between banks of computers. The went off with two seconds between them.

Steele looked at Anita as she smiled,

'Jesus,' he said, 'the Kommisar was worried about the damage a couple of bullets might do. I think you have managed to surpass his worst fears.' He looked towards the way the Kommisar had left minutes before, 'Do you think we should tell him?'

'I rather think he might not be in such a good mood if he heard the one you threw at me.'

As they began to hurry through the wrecked control room he replied,

'And he didn't look too pleased with us.'

As they gained the far door the sound of heavy boots could be heard coming towards them.

Steele grabbed Anita and thrust her back into the room behind some equipment. He stood by the side of the door, which was not quite on its hinges. As the boots got closer he pulled a grenade out of his pocket, removed the pin, and tossed it down the corridor. All the approaching troops saw was a hand and half an arm throw something. The grenade exploded as if by contact. Steele watched as the smoke cleared. He saw movement towards the rear of the group, so he opened up with the sub machine gun. He then ran to the next turn in the corridor to see if there were any more troops coming. There were none, so he signaled to Anita to follow him.

As they broke out into the broad daylight they saw two Spanish two-seat Harrier jump jets landing inside the perimeter fence. Steele made sure Anita was with him as they made a dash for the jets.

Anyone taking an interest in the aircraft found that there were two agents running up from behind them armed with two sub machine guns each. No-one got close. The canopies on two seat Harriers hinge to the side. As the agents reached the aircraft the pilots indicated the wing tips, the closest part of the airframe to the ground, and furthest away from the engine exhausts. As they climbed up on to the wing the two were very aware that they were now more exposed, so they hurried up the wings to the throbbing engine compartments. Footprints were painted on the tops of the fuselages showing where to walk, and where not to. As they reached the rear edge of the cockpit they found that they had to do a difficult balancing act to gain access to the seat. Steele was first to drop into his seat. As soon as he landed he began spraying the surrounding area to suppress any enemy fire. The pilot closed the canopy at the same time as he began opening the throttle. Like a practiced aerial ballet the two fighters lifted off together.

The pilot called on the radio,

'Matador one and two clearing the area, two on board.'

Some distance away a US Air Force MC130E Combat Talon turned towards the plant at Salamanca. Inside the converted transport aircraft was the biggest non-nuclear weapon in the US arsenal. The Massive Ordinance Air Blast, otherwise known as the Mother of all bombs.

.

'Chapter 23

Mopping Up.

We have chopped off the heads of the Hydra. Now we must deal with it's poisonous tendrils.' Sir John Rimmer was talking to three giant TV screens. On theses screens were three of the most powerful men in America.

Rimmer continued,

'You have seven targets to deal with, gentlemen.'

He hit a key on his keyboard,

'St. Louis, Washington, New York, San Fransisco, LA, Seattle, and Fort Worth are all about to be hit. The airports in these cities are going to be hit by a weapon that can disable all aircraft within their kill radius - especially those in the air! There will be an aluminium avalanche of epic proportions. Even if only one gets through there will be tens of thousands on people killed.

You have all been briefed with the workings of these weapons, and what to look for. We have sent you the raw data of the whereabouts of these vehicles, it is now up to you to find ways of stopping them. But remember that as they are destroyed they are capable of killing everything electrical around them. This includes any attacking aircraft.'

The air force officer replied,

'What kind of radius of damage do these things have?'

Sir John had to think about this. He turned to his adviser, then back to the screens,

'The one that hit Paris seemed to have an effective range of some five miles on the ground, and up to seven miles in the air. But remember that this is almost a complete sphere; anything directly above it is effected too.'

The air force offered,

'It looks like a series of drone operations.'

The others agreed.

..................

The drivers of the lorries with the deadly machines on board had sacrificial radios. These radios also contained the transponders which allowed the authorities to know exactly where they were at any given time.

The facilities at both Pategonia and Salamanca had been effectively dis-communicated by their own QED pulses. So the drivers would not know what had happened.

The vehicle headed for Fort Worth had the shortest journey, Fort Worth was chosen because it is the busiest hub in the world. He was heading east along Route 66. Close by the halfway point between Chicago and Los Angeles in the north of Deaf Smith County when the drone caught up with him.

The drone operator in California carefully studied the area. There were no airports or towns within miles of this location, and Air Traffic Control had cleared the airspace. So he instructed the drone to launch its missile.

With the drone at 5,000 feet, an observer standing on the ground would only have a faint buzz to let him know that there was anything up there. In a heavy goods diesel vehicle there is no chance that the driver would know that death lurked behind and above him. Until the missile is fired. Even then he wouldn't see anything. A thin white line left the drone. Seconds later it hit the truck, causing an explosion which destroyed the electromagnets. The brief release of anti-matter particles went completely unnoticed, they killed the drone, but no other damage was caused. The operator knew that his mission had been a success when his screen went blank.

Also on Route 66, but heading the other way, was the truck heading for Los Angles. He was next. As he dropped down through the mountainous region known as Mogollon Rim another drone picked him up. As he approached a bend in the twisting road a guided missile was launched. The truck took the bend, the missile followed. The end was the same as the first one.

San Fransisco was threatened by a Peterbuilt driven by Carlo. He had taken the scenic route east of Prescot. He loved mountains and wild country. This made no difference to the drone following him. The sudden turning and dipping of the truck did, however effect the firing resolution of the missile. Due the trickiness of following a twisting, turning vehicle the missile did not manage a clean lock-on. It still hit the truck - but not in the dead centre. It took off the rear wheels by hitting directly above the electromagnet. The QED pulse did not mind at all. It still shot out of the melee. The pulse killed the drone plus three 4x4s that happened to be in the vicinity, but not Carlo's truck. The trailer was a mass of flames with no back wheels. The Peterbuilt kept running - not moving - unlike the fire raging at the back of the trailer. It was now moving past the vast transformer and heading towards the diesel engines. The heat of this fire was easily hot enough to allow the diesel fuel to ignite once it got to the engines, two of which were still running. Carlo leapt from the cab. Without even glancing back at the conflagration he pulled the release lever to allow the trailer become detached. He felt the heat as he got back into his cab. With a satisfying jolt the trailer parted company with the tractor unit. Carlo drove down the mountain as the trailer was rapidly consumed by fire. He could not help but smile as he looked at the surrounding wilderness.

Dan Goodfellow was driving the truck heading for Washington DC. This was a special truck. The equipment it carried was a special experimental setup with the intention of giving the anti-matter particles a slightly longer life to allow them to reach a higher yield. It was expected that these would have a destructive radius of 25 to 35 miles. With that kind of power it was hoped to neutralize the government of the most powerful nation on earth. Not if the USAF have anything to do with it. Dan was traveling through the vast plains of Kansas and Missouri. Air Traffic were notified, then a missile hit him. The Americans did not know of the extended radius of the weapon on board his truck. Neither did they know about the capability of the Electromagnetic Pulse to travel down power lines. The highway Dan was on had power lines running alongside it. These happily absorbed the electrical power, then transmitted it to wherever they were going, destroying the line as they went. It was all over within seconds, but the destruction spread for more than the 23 miles the QED pulse was effective for. Homes and business along these lines were given a massive over-charge. This resulted in most electrical devices starting fires. Within the dry conditions the effects were devastating.

Manfred Bogarts was heading for JFK airport to kill off the financial centre of the strongest economy in the world.

Rolling down I-44 between Joplin and Springfield, MS, Bogarts was just passing Heatonville.

Master Sergeant Richie was the Drone Controller in California that day. His superior, Major Dave Edwards entered the little room,

'I thing we have a good resolution here, sir. The drone has been on him for nearly two hours now. I feel that the further east he gets the more difficult it will be to avoid any collateral damage. The Sergeant said.

Edwards looked at the overview map.

'Is that a gas refinery there?'

'Looks more like a storage depot.' Richie replied.

'Where's the nearest airport?'

'He's approaching Springfield, about 25 miles, sir.'

'Ok. Hit him at the turn-off for Miller here.' The Major pointed to a road junction. 'That should give him about seven miles from the gas depot; they may be ok.

'Roger that, sir.'

Richie turned to the screen showing exactly what the drone was looking at. An articulated truck was in the cross-hairs.

'Fire in the hole.' He said as he pressed the 'Enter' key on his keyboard.

The two men watched as a white line widened on its way to the truck. Then a blast, followed by smoke before the screen went blank.

JFK was safe.

..................

'

'It was something back there.' Steele pondered as he walked with Katherine Angel through London. They were going to meet up with Wendy and Josh at Northolt airfield. 'There was a spurious signal that seemed to come from closer than Pategonia. Closer even than Salamanca.'

'When was this? She asked.

'Just after we hit the plant. We went through all the trucks on the maps, and sent the information to the Americans. There was a single monitoring carrier signal from somewhere in France.'

'France!' she stopped dead in her tracks, and looked at him with a sideways glance, ' Are you angling for a free holiday here?'

'No! I have just finished one; and look how that ended.'

Katherine took out her i-pad as they got into a taxi.

They both studied the display as they drove towards Northolt.

'Yes, I see what you mean now.' She said.

'Can we tell if that signal is still live? He asked.

She tapped the instrument a few times.

'Yes it is. What does this mean?'

'It means that there could be another vehicle. Can we get a triangulation on this signal?'

'Better than that; the people at Mi 4C have been playing with the software we got from Salamanca and Pategonia. They have been working on the travel plans put in place in the US.' She tapped her i-pad some more, 'I have a live lead to their work. Here we have it. They have found something. It may take a little fettling.' More tapping, then passes the instrument to Steele.

Nothing is said as he takes the display. There on the screen was a map of the south-east of England. A yellow dot was flashing. Steele studied the map. The dot was on the M20 approaching Maidstone.

'We need to look into this.' Steele said as he passed the i-pad back.

After several phone calls from the rear of the taxi there was a drone above the M20 just south of Maidstone.

As the taxi pulled into RAF Northholt the images were downloaded to Katherine's i-pad. As Steele got out to greet his family Katherine looked at the image. She could see the top of an articulated truck. As it moved along the motorway she saw the distinctive colours of Norbert Dentressangle.

.  
Chapter 24

The Last Tendril.

Not knowing how to react, Wendy greeted her husband with dismay,

`Where the hell have you been? What is going on here? and what happened in la Coruna?`

Before he could reply Katherine came running across,

`We`ve contacted the SAS, but they are too far away to be able to help.`

No-one noticed Josh as he began to move away from his parents.

Northolt is not far from the centre of London; the main A4 runs along the side of the airfield. Josh wanted to see the big city - he had no inkling of what his father had been up to, nor how important his work had been. Not knowing even where he was, Josh went to the underground station, but got on the wrong train. He was now heading away from London.

By now he had been missed. Wendy began to panic.

`Where could he go? He doesn`t know his way around here.`

Katherine offered a life-line,

`Does he have a mobile phone?`

`Well, yes.` Wendy was quietening down now - not necessarily a good thing.

`Give me his number.` Katherine seemed to know what she was doing.

Wendy wrote the number down and passed it on to Katherine.

Katherine tapped furiously at her i-pad. And then looked up at Steele and his wife with calm confidence as she said,

`We`ve found him. He`s gone to Northolt station on the underground. He realised that the train was going the wrong way, so got off at Ruislip Gardens is now above ground heading down West End Road.'

Steele slapped his forehead.

`How am I to get him back, at the same time see to this truck?`

He looked around at the airfield. Three helicopters were parked nearby.

As he saw them his expression changed,

`Can I use one of those?` He asked Katherine.

`There is no need to commandeer one; they are military machines. If it would be...`

by now he was sprinting across to the helicopters. He looked in the first oner. He threw a few switches, watched instruments, threw the same switches, jumped out and made for the next chopper, a black Jetranger. As he opened the door Wendy caught him up,

`What are you doing? You can`t drive this thing.`

The same checks. This one looked better. Steele began the start-up procedures as he replied,

`I can actually, but I have something to take care of after I pick up Josh. And it could be dangerous. I wouldn`t want to expose you to any danger, so you had better wait here.`

Wendy was already in the chopper by now,

`You know what you can do with that idea; anyway, if it`s that dangerous, just let me off with Josh, and we`ll find our own way ...`

Steele began to start the engines.

Rotor blades began turning above their heads.

Wendy looked up at the blades as they began moving. Slowly at first, but as the engine noise began building, so did the speed of the rotor blades.

`Are you serious about this? What are you doing?`

`I`m going to fly the pick up our son.` he pointed to her belt, `You had better belt up if you are coming along.`

`You mean to tell me that you really can fly this thing?`

He looked around the instrument panel as he replied,

`Yes. Now be quiet; I need to speak to the tower.`

`Mike Hotel, clear for take-off.`

the tower replied,

`Negative, Mike Hotel. There is no flight plan for you. Who is flying?`

as he opened the throttles Steele replied,

`Mi6, special ops.`

With a twist of the cyclic and a touch on the throttle they leapt into the sky.

Wendy was still struggling with the full harness as they flew low over London. Steele was watching the navigation display, fed in from Katherine, as well as keeping a wary eye out for traffic and obstacles.

As Wendy managed to click the last connection into place Steele banked the Jetranger hard over and began a short spiral into a field. She was surprised as the G-forces pushed her back into the seat.

'Over there.' Steele said. His hands were tied up with the controls, so all he could do was look in the direction of the edge of the field. 'He's there.'

'How the hell do you know that?'

'Simple, he got on the wrong train. He wanted to go into London, but the train went the wrong way. His mobile carrier signal led us here.'

The chopper landed. Steele undid his straps as the skids touched down. The rotors continued turning as he dashed to the edge of the field.

'And just where do you think you are going?' he called across to a completely unsuspecting Josh. 'Do you want a lift?'

'Dad? How? What?' was the only response he could give.

'Come here, your Mother wants a word.'

Bewildered, the young man made his way towards his father.

His eyes lit up when he saw his Mother sitting in a helicopter \- she jumped out when she saw her husband and son walking across the field towards her.

'Wow! Where did you get this?'

'I borrowed it, now get in, and I'll take you home.'

The young lad grinned from ear to ear as he jumped into the helicopter.

As Steele twisted the throttle to lift off Katherine came on the radio,

'He's on the M25 now, Steele. We do not know the circle of effectiveness for his weapon. But we fear that it could hit both Heathrow and Gatwick at the same time from the Leatherhead area.'

'How far is he now from there?'

'Just passing Sevenoaks.'

'And just what do you expect me to do? This is not a gunship, and I am taking my family home.'

'Mi 14C have been working through the stuff sent back from Salamanca and Pategonia. They suggest that he is carrying a bigger experimental weapon. The upshot of that is that if you don't stop him soon you will not be going anywhere - nobody will. The whole of London and the surrounding area will be subjected to being pounded with hundreds if not thousands of falling airliners.'

Steele looked across at his wife. He shrugged as he put the Jetranger into a turn towards the M25.

In the truck on the M25 the Kommisar was not taking any chances. The Kill Switch for the gigantic electromagnet on the trailer was within easy reach of either him or Sauvage Cringle, who was sitting next to him. It was agreed that if anything should happen to either one of them the switch would be thrown. Thereby deactivating the magnet and freeing the sub-atomic particles to do their work.

The Controlled Motorway signs showed 50, but the vehicles around the Kommisar were barely moving. He was in the second lane, the traffic was like a metal river around him. When the Kill Switch was thrown, all of these would cease to function. The truck they were in would keep running, so they would have to force the way across to the hard shoulder in order to make good their escape.

The Kommisar moved around in his seat behind the steering wheel trying to see the sky above them,

'They must have something on us by now.'

But he couldn't see the drones four thousand feet above their cab.

Steele was at three thousand feet. Katherine called him again,

'We have two drones on him at four thousand feet over Oxted.'

At this height Steele could see the traffic below, but could not identify anything. He was heading slightly to the left of south looking for two drones 1,000 feet above him. Smaller than a normal aircraft, they would not be easy to spot. But once he got to the M25 he could follow the road until he saw them - what he was going to do when he found them he didn't know what he was supposed to do.

Over Caterham he saw the M25, but no signs of the drones. Turning right he thought of moving closer to the height of the drones, but decided against it on safety grounds.

A sprawling clover-leaf intersection passed under the helicopter. All five lanes of the motorway were crawling along. First one lane passed the others, then another, almost at random. No, completely at random.

Wendy looked far into the distance to see if there was a reason for the jam, but it simply continued for mile after mile,

'It just goes on and on.'

'Yes. And it must be very frustrating for our friends down there,' Steele briefly looked across at her, 'and that is not good. They could get impatient, and we would all be dead.'

The Kommisar tried sticking his head out of the cab. Pretending to look for the end of the jam, but in fact he was listening for any aircraft that may be close to them. The traffic noise was not as bad as he thought it might have been, but he could not hear anything suspicious; Steele was too far away, and too high. The drones were even higher, and quieter.

Steele looked around for a suitable landing place,

'I'll put you two down over there; this could be dangerous.' He said as he began to bring the helicopter down.

Josh, who had be quiet in the back seat, said emphatically,

'No way, Dad; I'm enjoying this far too much - I ain't going nowhere.'

Wendy responded,

'Well you don't think I'm going to wander about on my own whilst I wait to find out what happens to you two.'

The chopper kept losing height.

'I am not putting you two in harms way. You are getting out and that's an end to it.'

Wendy put a more rational point to it,

'You can't. How long will it take you to get down, then get back up to height? Not to mention trying to get him out of the back. You haven't got the time to spare. By the time you get airborne again it could be too late, and we could be surrounded by falling airliners and you.'

She had clearly been listening to developments, Josh hadn't.

'Falling airliners? What?'

Steele said nothing. He could see the sense in this. He opened the throttle again.

If the Kommisar were sat on the back of his truck he would have seen a helicopter in the distance dip down before disappearing up again.

As he regained 3,000 feet Steele said,

'All right clever dick. Help me find these drones.'

Seconds passed. The traffic was moving a lot slower than they were.

Then Steele cried out,

'Got him! - there.' He could not point because both his hands were on the controls.

Then he saw the other one in front of its comrade.

They were performing a race-track pattern to avoid getting too far in front of the target vehicle.

Below the drones there were at least fifteen heavy goods vehicles, any of which could have been the truck Steele was looking for.

'Katherine, is there any way we can identify the target vehicle?'

'We have a helicopter drone in the area, it is not armed. That is why the big drones have been used; they carry Hellfire missiles.'

'HELLFIRE MISSILES! What possible use would they be on the M25? If everything went pear-shaped there, there would be enough dead vehicles down there - including your drones carrying explosive missiles.'

'I'll call off the big drones now. The little helicopter will land on top of your target vehicle.'

'Roger that.'

One of the aircraft drones stayed on station to ensure that the helicopter drone got the correct vehicle. The insect-like robot landed on the rear of the white-topped trailer.

The aircraft departed the area as Steele saw the helicopter drone alight.

'I got him.' Steele reported.

'What are you going to do?' asked Katherine.

'I don't know, I'll think of something.'

Steele dropped down to 2,000 feet as he approached the vehicle from behind.

When directly in line with the rear of the truck, still at height, he turned the helicopter onto its side.

Spiraling down he leveled off five feet above the truck, facing the opposite way to the flow of traffic.

He saw the wide-eyed expressions of people behind the truck.

Before the Kommisar and his passenger could react, Steele began reversing along the length of the trailer. When the tail rotor appeared over the cab the Kommisar and Sauvage Cringle just looked at it in disbelief. By the time the whole helicopter came into view they just sat there like rabbits in headlights.

When the whole of the helicopter was directly in front of the vehicle Steele dropped down seven feet.

The Kommisar cried out,

'The Kill...'

He didn't get chance to finish the phrase. The skids underneath the Jetranger entered the cab, and decapitated both him and his passenger as they moved from side to side.

Wendy looked away.

Josh's jaw dropped, his eyes nearly popped out of his head. He looked at his dad, the quiet policeman who never talked about his work, or his past.

As he backed the helicopter away from the damaged vehicle Steele reported to Katherine,

'The threat has been neutralized.'

The End.
