Pandora's Brain (12 page)

Norman left the room, saying he was going to get someone to run some checks on Matt’s story. While he was out, Vic did his best to console Matt, while maintaining a certain distance in case the story didn’t stand up.

‘Before we head down to the situation room – assuming your story checks out – I think we should arrange for your mother – and your uncle Leo – to be brought here. I’m sure they will feel the same way about being present as you do, and there is also the
question of the risk to them. If Ivan has either or
both of them under surveillance, there is the possibility that he may order them taken hostage once he becomes aware of the attack. What do you think?’

Matt couldn’t speak. Feeling overwhelmed, and with tears in his eyes, he nodded agreement. It would be a huge relief to have them join him, and to be able to tell them the truth at last. The situation he found himself in was better than he could have hoped for a few hours ago, but his nerves were frayed, and his father was still in grave danger.

Matt and Vic sat together in silence for a few minutes, each lost in his own thoughts. They looked up as Norman opened the door and came back into the room. He was smiling grimly.

‘Looks like you’re in the clear, kid. The story about your father checks out, and our agent has reported helicopter take-offs and landings on Ivan’s ship which match the movements you describe. I have people following up a few more details, but I think we can assume you’re on the level.’

Matt made no attempt to disguise his relief and his excitement. ‘Shall I call my mum and Leo now?’ he asked eagerly.

‘Here, use this phone,’ said Vic, smiling at Matt’s relief and enthusiasm. ‘I told him that we should bring his mother and uncle here,’ he added to Norman.

Norman nodded, but held up a warning finger. ‘But listen. You can’t tell them anything about the operation until they get here. Just tell them there is an emergency and they must get here, to the Embassy, as soon as they can. On second thought, if Leo is in London he will be able to get here quickly enough under his own steam, but let’s send a car to collect your mother: it will be unmarked but will have police sirens so it won’t get held up in traffic when it reaches London. We could send a helicopter, but that would tip Ivan off if he has people watching your house.’

*

Matt was taken aback by the size of the situation room. He gazed around in amazement at the space, which must take up almost the whole floor plan of the building. There was a massive table in the middle, but what first drew his attention were the huge screens which covered most of the walls. It was like walking into a wrap-around IMAX cinema. The table too, was a screen – in fact it turned out to be touch-sensitive, and could be used to manipulate images on the walls as well as on its own surface. He looked upwards, and was relieved to see a standard suspended grid ceiling, with nothing projected onto it. Norman was quietly enjoying Matt’s reaction. He followed the young man’s eyes upwards. ‘Yeah,’ he grinned, ‘apparently they thought about it during the last re-fit, but decided it would be a bit over the top.’

‘This room is one of the safest places in the whole of London,’ he continued. ‘It’s six floors underground, and it was designed during the Cold War to withstand a direct hit from a nuclear warhead. Through there,’ he gestured towards a pair of heavy metal doors, ‘is a storeroom with enough food and water to keep thirty people alive for six months, so that survivors could wait here until the immediate radiation fallout had dissipated, and also until the threat from less well protected survivors had receded.’

It took a moment before Matt realised what Norman meant. He stared at the soldier, appalled. ‘You mean . . . you mean until everyone else had finished dying?’

‘Exactly,’ Norman said, grimly. ‘In a nuclear war, the people who died instantly in the initial blasts would be the lucky ones.’

Matt shook his head, feeling suddenly oppressed as the horror of the world the planners of this room were preparing for became a backdrop to the peril of his personal situation. ‘We’re such an inventive species, aren’t we?’ he muttered bitterly.

Seeing his weariness, Vic put his hand on Matt’s arm. ‘We’re not all bad, Matt. Yes, there is Hiroshima, the Holocaust, the barbarity and the grinding poverty.
But there is also love, art, science – and humour. Think of Newton and Einstein, Michelangelo and Mozart. I think Mother Nature should hang on to us for a bit longer; don’t you? At least until we have fashioned our
successor.’

Norman smiled, joining Vic in trying to lift Matt’s spirits. ‘Vic is the team philosopher. Anyway, Matt, welcome to the control room for Operation Drunken Sailor.’

Norman guided him towards a group of a dozen soberly dressed men and women who were conferring in front of a giant screen showing the schematic of a ship. Matt knew immediately that it was Ivan’s.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Matt Metcalfe. Matt is joining us today because his father is being held hostage on that ship.’

The analysts’ surprise at this news was visible, but professionally muted: just a couple of cocked heads and raised eyebrows. Norman summarised the series of events which had brought Matt here, and one of the analysts stepped forward and offered Matt his hand.

‘Welcome aboard, Matt,’ he said, as Norman left to speak to Vic. ‘My name is Jeff, and my job is to obtain as much information about this vessel as possible, and make sure everyone on the team knows exactly what they need to know about it. I’ll let the others explain what they do as we go on. Let’s start with very brief introductions, and then jump right in by debriefing you about your experience on board the ship.’ He stopped himself, and smiled at Matt. ‘Sounds as though you’ve had a rough time, young man, so let us know if we push you too hard. We are liable to get a little task-orientated on these occasions.’

‘I’m happy to help however I can,’ Matt replied, ‘I didn’t see much of the ship, because I was unconscious both arriving and leaving. But I’ll do whatever I can to help you guys keep my father safe.’

One by one, the others came forward to shake his hand. It didn’t take Jeff long to find out what Matt could add to the information they already had about the ship.

Norman and Vic rejoined the group. ‘As far as we know,’ Norman explained ‘Ivan has no clue about this operation yet. He thinks his location is unknown, and he will probably over-estimate the defensive capabilities of his vessel. That ship has pretty good firepower, but our agent on board will disable that as the strike team arrives on the scene. We know he has at least a couple of highly trained military personnel in his organisation, but we don’t know whether they are on the ship at the moment, and our team outnumbers them comfortably. So we have the advantages of surprise, superior combat skills and superior communications technology. The main unknown and risk we face is that we don’t know what kind of fallback plans Ivan might have.’

‘Yes,’ Matt nodded, reflecting on some of Ivan’s comments. ‘He thinks he is competing with the US military. He takes that idea seriously. He will be well prepared.’

As Norman and Matt were speaking, Jeff took a call. ‘Here we go,’ he said. ‘We’re about to go live with the assault team.’

They turned back to the screen showing the schematic of the Eleusis. Some of Jeff’s colleagues were tracing the ship’s defence circuits again, re-checking one last time that there were no fallback systems which had not been identified. There were three main circuits that needed to be shut down, and the plan was for the agent on board to cut all three simultaneously.

‘Gentlemen, we’re ready to patch in Captain Fitch and his team,’ Jeff said, putting on a pair of headphones. ‘Good afternoon, Captain. This is agent Jeff Webb speaking, from the situation room at the US Embassy in London. I’m going to put you on speaker. And please ask your colleague with the main mission camera to transmit. Over.’

‘Copy that,’ came a crackly voice. The sounds of a helicopter boomed into the room, and at the same time a huge, grainy image of a soldier squatting inside a cabin flooded the screen, bumping the schematic onto a neighbouring wall. A couple of other stern faces were just about visible behind Captain Fitch.

‘Captain, you’re talking with Colonel Norman Hourihan, and members of my team. Also in the situation room here is the son of the scientist who is being held hostage on the Eleusis. I know you’ve been briefed about this already.’

‘Yes sir. We are aware of Dr Metcalfe’s situation, and we will do everything in our power to protect him. As you know, this is a Navy Seals operation, and I’m privileged to be leading some of the most
highly -trained forces in the world on this mission.
We
have good intel, we have the advantage of surprise,
and I’m confident this will be a clean and successful mission.’

Matt was unsure whether he was expected to say something, and looked to Norman for a cue. He felt completely out of his depth. Fortunately Norman seemed not to expect anything from him, and carried on his conversation with Fitch.

‘Thank you, Captain. That’s good to hear. What is your current location, and when do you expect to reach the Eleusis?’

‘We’re about twenty miles east of the Eleusis, Sir. We should have visual contact in a few minutes. Our forward reconnaissance camera drones should be on location in a couple of minutes, and we’ll relay you the visuals we get from them as soon as we . . .’ He broke off, interrupted by one of his men, and then spoke again. ‘OK, here we go.’

‘Put the drone visuals up on the screen to the right, would you, Jeff?’ Norman asked.

Jeff was controlling the screens with a tablet. He made a couple of sweeping gestures across the device, and an image of open sea appeared to the right of the picture of Captain Fitch.

‘The drones are monitoring the ship until the choppers arrive,’ Jeff explained, ‘and making sure the crew isn’t showing any sign of awareness of the operation. They are too small to be picked up by the ship’s radar. When the choppers arrive the drones will move in closer: some of them will take up positions above the ship and some of them will actually move inside it.’

‘Captain Fitch will issue an ultimatum to the ship’s captain,’ Norman picked up, ‘telling him to accept a boarding party or be fired upon. We’re not going to give Ivan a whole lot of time to think about that: our agent on board will cut the defence circuits at the same time as we hail the ship, and if Ivan doesn’t surrender immediately, the first helicopter will make a rapid landing, and the boarding party will assume control of the vessel using whatever means necessary.’ He turned to speak to the Captain. ‘Captain, will it be your helicopter that makes the initial landing?’

‘Negative sir, that will be Bravo chopper. Captain Graveney is responsible for the initial set-down.’

‘Copy that, captain.’

‘I’m going off-line now, colonel: we’re just a couple of minutes out. I’ll come back on-line when the operation is complete. Meanwhile you can listen in on general comms. Out.’

‘Understood. Good luck, captain. Bring your men back safely. Out.’

‘And my dad!’ added Matt – to himself, but audibly.

‘Amen to that, son,’ replied Norman, turning towards him. ‘Captain Fitch is a very good man. If anyone can pull this off, he can. He was selected in part for his experience in pacifying hostiles in hostage situations. Don’t forget we also have an agent on board the Eleusis, and we fully intend to bring him home safely too. This is not the most challenging mission Captain Fitch has ever led, I can assure you of that!’

On the main screen, Captain Fitch was addressing his men, using a different channel from the one audible in the situation room. His speech was accompanied by a series of fast, sharp hand movements, and as he spoke and gave his final orders he was also checking his equipment. The other men were mostly in shadows, also making final equipment checks. When they looked towards the camera, Matt could see a calm determination in their eyes that allowed him to hope that this would work out well.

On the second screen, the image of the ship was clearer now. It looked peaceful, unsuspecting, making gentle headway in calm waters. The drone whose camera was on-screen seemed to be no more than fifty feet above the sea, but so far it was evidently inaudible and invisible from the Eleusis.

This was the first time Matt had seen the whole ship, apart from the schematics, which had not given him such a good idea of its size. It was huge, almost like a cruise ship: as big as any billionaire’s yacht that he had seen pictures of. At least, he thought, there is plenty of room to land helicopters on the thing.

As the helicopters approached the Eleusis, the screen with the feed from the leading drone showed the sea bristling with the downdraught of the choppers’ blades. The sea was calm, but the afternoon light was fading, which added to the sense of urgency in the situation room.

Other screens came online in the situation room as new feeds became available, some from drones, some from soldiers’ head cams. As the drones closed in on the ship, Matt could see people running around on her decks. Soon some of the screens began to show individual crew members. The choppers kept their distance for the time being, circling the vessel, hunters stalking a big beast. They knew they would bring their prey down if they were skillful, but they also knew it could inflict grievous damage on them in the process.

The ultimatum issued to the Captain of the Eleusis rang round the situation room. Jeff was admitting just one audio feed to accompany the numerous visual feeds.

‘This is the US Navy to the Captain of the Eleusis. We have a warrant to search your vessel under international Admiralty law. Prepare to be boarded. Do not resist, or you will be fired upon. Signal your compliance immediately.’

The choppers held back, waiting for a reply. There was intense activity on board the Eleusis, crewmen running in all directions, some carrying small arms. But there was no reply to the ultimatum. Two of the drones converged on the bridge, and screens showed the images they captured. Ivan was having a furious argument with someone.

‘That’s the Captain,’ said Norman. ‘Looks like he’s telling Ivan they have no choice but to surrender, but Ivan’s not having it.’

‘Will Captain Fitch be seeing this too?’ Matt asked.

‘You bet,’ replied Norman. ‘Of course he’s got a hundred other things to worry about at the same time, but my guess is this is the feed he’s paying closest attention to right now.’

Ivan pushed the Captain to one side, and began working some controls on a desk. Although the drone was not close enough to capture the expression on his face, it was clear that he was angry and frustrated. He banged his fist on the console.

‘Looks like he has just discovered that his weapons system is down,’ Norman grinned. ‘Next he’ll try the jamming system, but he’ll have no more luck with that.’

Ivan grabbed the Captain’s sleeve and started remonstrating with him, gesturing frantically at the console. The Captain was evidently in full retreat, wanting nothing to do with Ivan’s desperate attempt to fend off the inevitable outcome. To the astonishment of everyone in the situation room, Ivan pulled out a pistol and pointed it at the Captain, waving him back towards the console. Slowly, reluctantly, the Captain sat down at the console and began trying to activate the controls.

Ivan looked around the bridge, shouted some instructions, and stormed out.

‘Jeff, can you get one of those drones to follow Ivan? I want to know what he’s up to.’

‘I’m on it,’ Jeff replied, frowning in concentration.

The chopper’s loud hailer rang out again.

‘Captain of the Eleusis. We are boarding now. Do not resist or you will be fired upon.’

‘Here we go . . .’ said Norman through clenched teeth.

The drone had lost Ivan, but all eyes were now on the lead helicopter, which was preparing to land on the largest of the Eleusis’ two helipads. The sea was calm and there was an hour or so of daylight left, and the pilot was one of the most experienced and skillful in the world. The only question was what sort of reception he would receive.

Two of the Eleusis’ crewmen rushed out onto the deck, and on the screen which had shown Captain Fitch, Matt could see that soldiers in the second helicopter were training guns on them. But the crewmen were waving signalling paddles, partly to assist the pilot, but mainly, Matt suspected, to indicate their full co-operation with the boarding.

‘So far so good, but I’d dearly like to know what Ivan is up to . . . Oh shit!’ Norman’s voice rose to a shout: ‘Jeff! Screen five! Tell Fitch that Ivan has a SAM launcher!’

A loud whoosh, and then a huge explosion. A bright flash wiped out most of the screens for a couple of seconds. The helicopter had not touched down, and when the screens came back to life they showed that it had been shoved sideways in mid-air and tilted at an impossible angle by the missile’s close-range impact. The helicopter’s nose was destroyed. The cabin looked intact, but fires were raging in various parts of the machine. Men started jumping out to escape the fires, some onto the deck, some into the sea. The ones landing on the deck were jumping fifteen to twenty feet. Some managed to roll with their landing, but several landed awkwardly, collapsing sickeningly onto the deck and then writhing, their broken bodies struggling to get away from the falling body of the helicopter and burning pieces of debris.

‘My god. The son-of-a-bitch . . . Jeff, get me eyes on that bastard. I want him in one piece. Or at least alive.’ But Ivan had disappeared again.

The helicopter slammed into the deck, a wounded beast. The blades hit first: they crumpled, slicing into the deck surface, shearing the gearbox, leaving the engine to scream as it lost its load. A marine was sliced in half as the blades hit, and several others were wounded as the cabin crashed onto the surface, with the landing rails dangling over the side. The body of the machine was balanced precariously at the edge of the ship, and slowly it tilted away from the surface. The noise of the engine subsided, but the sound of metal grinding against metal was hideous.

‘She’s going over!’ Norman shouted. ‘I hope everybody is out of that thing!’

The helicopter stopped moving as its landing rails smashed through windows in the side of the ship and arrested its fall. But it was obvious the weight of the machine would break them, and after a few agonising moments, the rails collapsed, and sections of the panels in the ship’s flanks tore themselves free and peeled back from the vessel, like a can’s lid being prised off with a tin opener. The helicopter continued its slow-motion grinding metallic slithering and screaming down the side of the Eleusis towards the sea. It crashed into the water, and the fires burning its guts fizzed, popped, and illuminated the darkening sea. Its rails and other talons released the sections of ship plating they had grasped, and it surrendered to the cold water, disappearing slowly from view.

Marines were already descending ropes from the second helicopter to the deck, and the third helicopter
was hovering over the water as close to the ship as it dared, near where the first machine had gone down, looking for survivors in the sea. Wounded marines were being winched aboard these two remaining choppers. Their faces could not be seen from the situation room, but it was clear that several of them were in agony, with broken limbs and serious wounds, some of them bleeding profusely. Their colleagues struggled to haul them inside the helicopters and apply battlefield first aid.

The Captain of the Eleusis was on deck, talking to Fitch. One of the screens showed his distraught face, and his pleading gesticulations. Fitch leaned in towards him, ordered him to be quiet and listen, and asked him a question. The Captain pointed towards the stern of the ship, and then downwards. Fitch pointed towards the bridge, barked an order, and shoved the Captain in that direction. Fitch turned and signalled to four of his men to follow him, and ordered the rest to go with the ship’s Captain to the bridge. Fitch’s party ran towards the stern.

‘He’s going after Ivan,’ said Norman. ‘Jeff, can you get him online and ask where Ivan is? Put Fitch on the main audio. And can we get drones to follow him, and get to where Ivan is ahead of him?’

Jeff relayed the question through his headphone mike, and Fitch’s reply came into the room for everyone to hear. He was breathing heavily but sounded completely in control.

‘The Captain says there’s a mini-sub near the stern, and he reckons that is where Ivan is headed. He is going to try and disable the sub from the bridge, but it has autonomous power and control systems: it’s designed to operate in the event of a general power failure throughout the rest of the ship.’

The analysts looked at each other, shocked by this mention of a mini-sub. Three of them began inspecting the screen showing the schematic, searching for its most likely location so they could send it to Fitch.

‘Will there be resistance from anyone else apart from Ivan?’ Norman asked.

‘The Captain doesn’t think so. My men are going with him to the bridge, and one has gone to the small arms locker. The Captain doesn’t think there are any more SAMs on board – but then again he says he didn’t know about that one.’

‘Have you made contact with our embedded agent yet? Or the scientist, Dr Metcalfe?’

‘Not yet, but I understand the agent’s orders are to remain on or near the bridge once he had disabled the defence systems? In which case my men will sweep him up. We’re looking for Dr Metcalfe, but there’s no sign of him yet. The Captain didn’t know about him. I presume your agent didn’t either.’

‘Correct,’ Norman confirmed. ‘We’re sending a couple of the drones on ahead of you so we have eyes on the mini-sub before you get there.’

‘Roger that. Out.’

Norman turned away from the screen. ‘Where are my drones, Jeff? I don’t see that sub yet.’

‘The sub wasn’t on the schematic, sir.’ He pointed at two screens on the other side of the room. ‘Those screens are showing the feed from the drones we have looking for it.’

‘There!’ cried one of the other analysts, as one of the screens centred on an orange vehicle about the size of a transit van. It was rocking gently, suspended on rails which led to a pair of bay doors, and beyond them the open sea. As the drone got closer, they could see that two men were preparing to enter the sub. As the drone got closer still, it became clear that one of them was holding a gun in the back of the other.

‘Dad!’ Matt screamed. Norman had realised the same thing and was relaying the information to Captain Fitch.

‘Fitch! Ivan is boarding the sub with Dr Metcalfe as a hostage. Are you nearly there?’

‘Not far off. Is he armed?’ the Captain replied.

‘Looks like he has a pistol,’ Norman said. ‘But we don’t know much about the sub. Ivan may have guns on board, and the sub may have a weapons system of its own. Proceed with caution. Dr Metcalfe’s safety is priority, and take Ivan alive if you possibly can. But whatever happens, do not allow that sub to leave the ship!’

‘Understood. Out.’

Within a few moments, Fitch had the sub surrounded, but he and his men couldn’t risk approaching it more closely until they knew its weapons status. The drones were inspecting the exterior, and there were no obvious gun ports. Just then a voice was heard coming from the sub.

‘Hello gentlemen. Forgive me if I don’t offer you a gracious welcome. I assume I am speaking to Victor Damiano and his soldier friend, Colonel Hourihan? I’m sorry about your helicopter, colonel. That is a regrettable incident which is no doubt going to cause a great deal of trouble. It’s a pity you couldn’t have made a more conventional appearance and we could have sorted this out like civilised men.’

‘Son-of-a-bitch,’ muttered Norman, but addressed himself to Fitch. ‘Can you hook us up so I can talk to this cocksucker?’

Fitch answered by addressing Ivan. His voice seethed with controlled fury.

‘Ivan, my name is Captain Fitch. I’m in charge of the boarding party. You have killed at least two of my men and wounded several others, but my orders are to escort you to the US alive, and that is what I intend to do. Colonel Hourihan can hear you, and I’m patching him through to my hailer so he can talk to you direct. Go ahead, colonel.’

‘The game’s up, Ivan.’ Norman said. ‘You know that. I’m not going to offer you an amnesty or any other kind of deal because I know you wouldn’t buy it. But things can get much worse here if we don’t all play our cards sensibly. First thing you need to do is to let Dr Metcalfe leave the sub. Do it now, Ivan.’

Ivan’s reply was deadly calm. ‘But David here is my only trump card, colonel. Please don’t treat me like a stupid person. It is unhelpful as well as impolite. Now here’s how this is going to play out. You want David here, and I want to depart in peace in my little submarine. I am happy to return David to you: it will be some considerable time before I could use his services again anyway. But obviously you won’t allow me to leave if I release him now. So he is going to have to accompany me until I arrive at a safe port. Then he can go; you have my word on that.’

‘Now you are treating us like stupid people, Ivan. How do you expect to proceed on the basis of a verbal reassurance from a man who has murdered at least two scientists, kidnapped others, and killed and wounded a number of marines?’

There was a pause before Ivan spoke again.

‘We seem to have arrived at an impasse, colonel. If I release Dr Metcalfe now, how do I know you won’t let your trigger-happy friend here just blow this submarine to smithereens? He is probably itching for the opportunity. I’m going off-line now. Buzz me when you are prepared to agree to my terms, or when you have come up with a more constructive suggestion.’

A low hum could now be heard in the sub bay. Lights snapped on underneath the vehicle.

‘Colonel,’ said Jeff. ‘I think he’s preparing to launch the sub.’

‘Can we stop him?’ Norman asked.

‘We haven’t found a way to over-ride the sub controls, but there are various pieces of winching equipment in the bay. Some of the larger units can be controlled from the bridge, and Ivan may not be able to over-ride them. We may be able to manoeuvre them into positions which will prevent him from launching the sub.’

‘Do it!’, ordered Norman. Then he addressed Fitch. ‘Captain, we’re going to move some equipment around inside the bay to stop Ivan leaving. Tell your men to watch out.’

‘Copy that,’ Fitch replied.

Jeff and a couple of the other agents studied the schematic of the Eleusis on one of the screens, and compared them with the images of the bay provided by the drones. They talked to the Captain on the bridge. A few moments later, a couple of mobile cranes and some large wheeled winching equipment started to move around inside the bay area. The sub was manoeuvring toward the bay doors, which were now starting to open. The sea was visible just below the level of the doors. One of the cranes clanked against the sub, which rocked a little on its cradle. The other crane and the rest of the mobile equipment were moving to block the sub’s route to the bay doors. The engine noise from the sub grew louder, and the vessel accelerated towards the door. But Ivan had lost the race: the sub ground to a halt, blocked by an ungainly assortment of cranes and winching gear.