The Extinction Code (12 page)

Ethan cursed under his breath as he heard another rattle of gunfire and saw in the distance one of the facility guards stagger backwards and collapse onto his back, his weapon falling uselessly alongside him.

‘There’s too many!’ cried the remaining guard, his features stricken with fear as he looked over his shoulder at them for assistance.

‘Get him out of sight,’ Ethan snapped at Lopez as he dashed forward toward the entrance.

The remaining guard fired another few rounds into the snow outside, falling back as a hail of gunfire raked the wall alongside him and sent clouds of debris spraying across the hall. Ethan slid down alongside the fallen guard and grabbed his rifle, checked the chamber before he tucked in alongside the wall opposite the remaining guard’s position.

‘How many are there?’ he asked.

‘Ten, maybe twelve,’ the guard replied, adrenaline coursing through his veins and causing him to breathe heavily. ‘We got three of them but I’m almost out of ammunition.’

‘Any way to call for back–up?’

The guard shook his head. ‘There’s supposed to be a secure underground communications link to the town but it’s out of action. They must have either cut it or jammed it somehow, and we’re too far away from the town for anybody to hear the gunfire!’

Ethan ducked down as more gunfire raked the wall nearby, scattering clouds of stone chips across his jacket as he retreated down the corridor.

‘Where the hell did they come from?!’ Lopez shouted.

‘They must be following us!’ Ethan yelled back above the clatter of gunfire now being amplified by the confines of the tunnel. ‘Maybe Majestic Twelve have taken the gloves off and decided it’s time to get rid of us for once and for all!’

‘Good place to do it!’ Lopez shot back. ‘We’re unarmed and there’s no way out of there but through that entrance!’

Ethan looked back at the entrance, where the guard was still trying to hold off the attackers outside. ‘There’s no way out of here!’

Lopez looked back at him but she said nothing, clearly knowing just like Ethan that the only way out of the facility was right through the hail of fire coming from the entrance.

‘You got any smart ideas, now would be a good time to use one of them!’ she finally yelled back.

Ethan looked at the beleaguered guard and the entrance, and made his decision.

*

‘Forward!’

Jake Viggen waved his arms forward and urged his men on, half a dozen of them breaking cover from behind their vehicles and rushing the entrance of the massive vault. Viggen saw the security guard loose off a few more rounds, and then his courage failed him before the charge and he disappeared inside the facility.

‘Go, now!’

Viggen leaped out from behind the jeep in which he had arrived and sprinted up the icy track to the entrance. His men plunged into the facility ahead of him as a salvo of gunshots burst out and thumped into the walls around them. Viggen hurled himself against a wall as he saw one of the rounds smack into the forehead of one of his men and exit the back of his skull with a puff of scarlet blood that splattered the pristine ice around his boots. The gunman, a former Army trooper named Granger, dropped almost vertically, the life gone from his eyes as his rifle toppled from his grasp and landed beside his corpse.

More gunshots rattled out and Viggen crouched out of sight as he watched his men advance by sections into the building. Of the twelve he started with, three were already dead, but he knew that he outnumbered those inside by better than two to one, and that only the guard was armed. He risked a peek down the corridor that led to a gigantic tunnel and saw the guard retreating, firing as he went. Closer, his men jumped over the dead body of the second guard sprawling face down in the entrance.

‘Let’s finish this!’ he bellowed as he stood up and opened fire down the corridor, spraying the walls with gunfire and forcing the security guard to cower out of sight behind a metal stanchion that supported the rocky ceiling of the tunnel entrance. ‘Advance!’

The men plunged into the facility, rushing through the shattered glass of the airlocks as Viggen sprinted along behind them and jumped over the dead guard’s body, firing as he went. Bullets hammered the walls of the tunnel and one of the arcing blue lights shattered and spilled glass down onto the rocks beneath their boots as they rushed into cover against the walls of the tunnel.

The gunfire ceased, and Viggen peered ahead. He could see in an office at the far end of the tunnel a man and a woman crouched behind a desk for cover, and to his left near them he could see puffs of breath from the security guard glowing in the blue lights.

‘There’s nowhere to go!’ Viggen yelled. ‘Come out now with your hands up and we’ll talk!’

The guard’s voice shouted back at them, heavily accented with Norwegian. ‘If you’d wanted to talk, you wouldn’t have opened fire on us!’

Viggen shrugged. ‘We’re not here for you! We’re here only for the Americans! Stand down, and you’ll live!’

The guard’s reply echoed down the tunnel. ‘Go to hell!’

Viggen grinned and shouted back. ‘You first! Take them all down!’

His men burst from their hiding places, and Viggen heard a crescendo of shots blaze down the tunnel. He was about to follow his men when he realized that they had not yet opened fire. Bullets smashed past Viggen and he saw them hammer into the backs of his soldiers, cutting them down like an invisible scythe as he whirled, brought his rifle around and caught sight of the “dead” security guard standing in the entrance, his rifle blazing.

Viggen tried to take aim, but the first round hit him in the chest before he could pull the trigger, and then the second slammed into his shoulder and he spun as he collapsed onto the ice, his rifle tumbling from his grasp.

*

Ethan, standing in the dead guard’s ill–fitting uniform, fired his final rounds just as one of the black–clad soldiers realized what had happened and turned to try to return fire. Two rounds cut him down and he tumbled aside as the last of the soldiers was cut down with a bullet landing square between his shoulder blades. A cloud of bright blood burst from his chest and his cry of agony was cut short as he collapsed onto the rocks.

‘Clear!’ Ethan yelled as the gunfire ceased and echoed away through the tunnel and out toward the entrance.

Lopez and Schofield broke cover along with the remaining security guard and hurried to Ethan’s side as he crouched down to where one of the soldiers was lying on his back on the icy rocks, blood spilling from a wound in his chest that had caused massive trauma to his back as the bullet had exited his body. More blood spilled from a second wound in his shoulder as Ethan grabbed his rifle and used the ammunition to reload his own weapon.

‘Nice move,’ said the guard as he joined Ethan, who began shrugging off the dead guard’s uniform. ‘Who are these people?’

‘That’s a long story,’ Lopez said as she joined them and looked down at the fallen soldier.

He was alive but he wasn’t moving. Ethan figured that the bullet had probably severed his spinal cord on the way out of his back, but he was likely still able to talk. Ethan crouched down again alongside the man and spoke in a quiet but firm voice.

‘You have about three minutes to live,’ he informed the injured man. ‘Tell me who sent you, and I’ll patch that wound and you’ll survive this. Refuse, and we’ll walk out of here and leave you to it.’

The soldier offered Ethan a grim smile. ‘Drop dead.’

‘You already have,’ Ethan replied.

He stood up and marched away. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’

Lopez, Schofield and the guard moved to follow, but they were stopped by a shriek from the fallen man.

‘Wait!’

Ethan turned and moved to stand over the fallen soldier, his rifle resting on his shoulder. ‘Make it fast.’

‘They sent me an e–mail, from Italy,’ the fallen man gasped, tears welling in his eyes as blood snaked across the rocks around him and his skin began to turn pale. ‘Named you as a target, you and the Chiquita.’

‘Who sent the mail?’ Ethan demanded.

‘No names,’ the soldier whispered, struggling to stay conscious. ‘But the e–mail was sent from a top hotel in the city, some super luxury pad, I can’t remember the name…’ The soldier’s eyes flickered as a tear spilled down his cheek. ‘Please, fix the wound.’

Ethan looked at the lake of blood already drenching the ice around the fallen soldier, and knew that there was nothing that he could do to save him, but of course the dying man didn’t know that.

‘Go fix it yourself,’ Ethan uttered, and marched away.

He led the way out of the tunnel, walking fast as the pitiful cries for mercy faded away behind them. Lopez, Schofield and the guard followed.

‘What the hell was that?’ Lopez asked as they strode outside.

‘He was already dead,’ Ethan replied without looking at her. ‘There was nothing that we could do.’

‘Yeah, but..?’

Ethan glared at her and she fell silent. ‘They started this war,’ he pointed out. ‘They wanted it, and they’ll damned well get it.’

Lopez lifted her chin as she confronted him, the snow whipping around them. ‘I just don’t want to see you turn into another Aaron Mitchell, is all.’

Ethan pulled his cell phone from his jacket and dialled a number as he walked across to their vehicles and tossed the rifle into the trunk. Jarvis answered on the third ring.

‘What’s up?’

‘MJ–12 have taken the gloves off,’ Ethan growled in response. ‘We just got out of a shoot–out with some of their boys. I need you to do a search on e–mail traffic coming out of Italy’s most expensive hotel: they must have been there recently, and it’s our only new lead.’

‘I’m on it,’
Jarvis replied.
‘What are you going to do?’

Ethan slammed the trunk and made for the driver’s door.

‘Repay them in kind,’ he said simply. ‘Let me know when you’ve tracked them down.’

Ethan shut off the line and looked at Schofield. ‘Tell me everything, before we all end up dead.’

***

XIV

Burj Al Arab Hotel,

Dubai

The huge hotel looked spectacular in the dawn light, glowing golden against Dubai’s vivid beaches, the city skyline glittering like a jewel encrusted into the ancient deserts as the helicopter descended toward a landing pad jutting out from the side of the immense building’s rooftop.

Professor Rhys Garrett gazed down upon the building’s incredible opulence, built as were the churches and cathedrals of old by the hands of the poor, and in this case on land reclaimed from the ocean to create an artificial island almost a thousand feet from Jumeirah beach that had taken longer to create than the gigantic teardrop shaped hotel itself, connected to the mainland by a private curving bridge. The entire city was the poster–child for wealth over practicality, substance over style, Dubai a city built into deserts woefully unable to support it without the arterial lifeline of supplies and land expensively altered to allow the cultivation of green spaces.

Despite his own personal wealth, Garrett had never before visited Dubai and this was in fact his first visit to the Middle East. He had never set foot on their ancient sands and, if he was able, he never would. Garrett looked beyond the glittering, crystalline waters of the bay and out beyond Dubai’s bustling streets and glittering tower blocks and saw there the stain of poverty and disease that was the hallmark of the developing world. He knew, like so many others, that the only wealth in this land was in the hands of the Royal families, and that without their export of oil this city would be as dead and desiccated as the endless deserts that surrounded it. In truth, it wouldn’t even exist. It stood near the site of the old Chicago Beach Hotel, which had its origins in the Chicago Bridge & Iron Company which at one time welded giant floating oil storage tanks, known locally as
Kazzans,
to fuel the export trade that had made so few wealthy and so many desperately poor.

The helicopter settled onto the landing pad, which was just under seven hundred feet above the waves below, and the engines wound down into silence as Garrett unstrapped his harness just in time for a white–suited concierge to hurry to the helicopter’s door and open it. Garrett saw the man smile and bow graciously, and managed to hide his face as he stepped out of the helicopter and into the dawn air.

Even at this early hour he could feel the heat building from the equatorial sun as it rose swiftly in the east, the bright orange sky tiger striped with thin banners of cloud already being burned off by the rising temperature.

The concierge closed the helicopter’s door and beckoned for Garrett to follow him toward a doorway that led into the hotel’s interior. Garrett followed in silence, a single chrome briefcase in his hand that shone like gold in the sunlight. Many people would have preferred to enter the hotel through its main entrance, to boldly state their presence and revel in the opulence of the towering lobby or dine in the exclusive
Al Muntaha
restaurant, which was reached via a panoramic elevator and had views across the Persian Gulf, or perhaps the
Al Mahara
restaurant, accessed via a simulated submarine voyage and replete with a two hundred sixty thousand gallon fish tank. Garrett, however, was appalled by such extravagance, not to mention the publicity it risked by being seen in such a place. Now, more than ever, it was important for him to maintain a low profile.

For this reason, his reservation for the Royal Suite that night had been booked under one of his assumed names by one of his secretaries, and had cost some nineteen thousand dollars.

The concierge guided him to the suite and opened the door for him. Garrett strode inside, aware of the continued opulence around him as the aide began speaking.

‘Welcome to the Royal Suite sir, our finest and most luxurious accommodation.’

‘I’d like to be alone,’ Garrett said softly.

‘As you wish sir,’ the concierge continued smoothly. ‘If you require anything at all, please simply press the call button on the wall by the door’