State of Emergency

Table of Contents

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
About the Author
California Conference Center Schematic
Part One COME TOGETHER
Part Two ENTER THE DRAGON
Part Three STATE OF EMERGENCY
Part Four GOING UNDERGROUND

Sam Fisher is the pseudonym of thriller writer Michael White,
author of the acclaimed international bestsellers
Equinox
and
The
Medici Secret
. He lives in Sydney. He is currently at work on
E-Force's next mission, entitled
Aftershock
. Visit his website at
www.michaelwhite.com.au
.

STATE OF
EMERGENCY

SAM FISHER

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet
search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying
(except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the
Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by
any information storage and retrieval system without the
prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any
unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct
infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and
those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

State of Emergency

ePub ISBN 9781864715231
Kindle ISBN 9781864717891

A Bantam book
Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Level 3, 100 Pacifi c Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060
www.randomhouse.com.au

First published by Bantam in 2009
This edition published by Bantam in 2010

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by
any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except
under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968),
recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without
the prior written permission of Random House Australia.

Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found
at
www.randomhouse.com.au/offices

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

Fisher, Sam.
State of Emergency.

ISBN 978 1 86471 121 9 (pbk).

A823.4

Cover photograph by SuperStock
Cover illustration and design by
www.blacksheep-uk.com
Internal illustration by Ice Cold Publishing

Part One
COME TOGETHER

1
Crete, Greece

To the tourists waiting at the entrance of Hotel Knossos,
the coach seemed to appear out of nowhere. The rain was
coming down in torrents, smacking out a heavy rhythm on
the roof of the reception area. The huge shape that rounded
a fountain in the courtyard looked like a giant beetle coming
at them through the rain.

A cheer went up from the group. The coach was late and
now they had less than an hour to reach the airport, almost
twenty miles away. A few minutes later the passengers were
all on board, their luggage stowed. The driver shouted
something to one of the hotel staff as the doors hissed shut.
With a hand-rolled cigarette dangling limp from his lips, the
driver swung the big steering wheel and the vehicle nosed
onto the mountain road.

The coach smelled bad. A blend of sweat and damp
clothes and the fug of the driver's cigarette. There was also
an animal smell, the smell of fear. The road from the hotel to
the airport wound around treacherous hairpin bends. It was
pockmarked with holes and irregular tarmac. All that could
be seen through the curtains of driving rain was an empty
void. A few feet to the right the cliff fell away to nothing.

But the driver had no fear. He swung the coach around
the bends with the confidence of a man who had driven
along these roads a thousand times and knew every bump,
every ripple in the tarmac.

Outside, it was growing dark. An unnatural dark. Roiling
storm clouds blotted out the last of the Greek daylight.

The driver cursed and braked sharply. The coach skidded,
the tyres screeched. Great plumes of water leaped up the
side of the vehicle. A woman screamed. Swinging the wheel
dexterously hand over hand, the driver pulled the coach
hard to the right and stopped an inch from a sheer wall of
rock. A little white Renault, its headlights ablaze, edged past
on the left. It left almost nothing between it and the edge
of the cliff. The car accelerated away. The driver leaned on
the horn.

The coach had stalled. The driver fired up the engine
again, tugged on the heavy gearshift and swung the vehicle
back into the centre of the road, around the next bend and
on to a straight, narrow stretch. To the left, the passengers
could see the lights of a village. White buildings nestled
in a ravine. The view was blurred by the torrential rain.
Twin shafts of yellow from the headlights danced in the
murk. The driver pushed down on the accelerator. The
speedometer nudged 60. To the right, the rock face flew by
in a wash of grey.

The straight went on for more than a quarter of a mile,
but up ahead the road curved sharply to the right. From
there, a series of sharp turns led to a short tunnel cut into
the rock. Beyond that stretched the long, slow descent to the
highway and the airport.

The needle on the speedometer touched 65. Passengers
exchanged nervous glances. An elderly man tried to get out
of his seat to speak to the driver but his wife pulled him back.
'Don't be a fool,' she snapped. 'It'll only put him off.'

The headlights of a car appeared around the bend a
hundred feet ahead.

The coach driver knew immediately there was nothing
he could do. He tried easing his foot on the brake pedal,
but there was no grip. The coach barely slowed. He pushed
harder, knowing that too much pressure would send the
coach aquaplaning to disaster.

The front left wheel hit a large bump in the tarmac. The
driver tried to compensate, overdid it, and sent them too
far right. The nearside wing mirror smashed against the
rock wall. Lumps of glass and plastic shot along the narrow
gap between the wall and the main body of the coach. A
metal bolt ricocheted through a window two-thirds of the
way along the coach and slammed into the right eye of the
passenger in 23B, a young woman on her honeymoon. The
bolt ripped through her brain, exiting close to her right ear
and taking a large chunk of cranial bone and hair with it.

The driver panicked and slammed his foot hard on the
brake. The rear of the coach almost lifted off the ground.
The front suspension roared and the plastic front bumper
hit the road and shattered. The back of the coach swung
around as the vehicle aquaplaned on the wet tarmac. A
wall of water shot up the side of the coach, which smashed
into the car coming towards it. The car flew over the
side of the coach and almost disintegrated as it landed
on the road. The chassis separated from the body of the
car and smacked into the rock wall before bouncing over
the cliff.

The coach kept sliding along the road. The front of the
vehicle collided with a knob of rock protruding from the
corner. It spun around and thundered into the rock face
side-on. A chunk of rock the size of a bowling ball broke
away from the wall and rocketed through the windscreen,
decapitating the driver and pulverising his head against the
steel support behind his seat. The windows shattered and the
passengers were thrown around like clothes in a dryer. The air
was filled with the sound of crunching metal and screams.

Rebounding from the wall, the shuddering coach spun
around. The back hit a rocky outcrop, sending the vehicle
onto its side – and over the cliff edge.

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