Danny’s earpiece vibrated. He raised an eyebrow, listened intently. Tori taped up Jacob’s cut. He enjoyed the feeling of her hands on his chest. Then she cut the tape that held him down.
‘Up you get, big boy. What is it Danny?’
‘Really bad. There’s been a damned nuke attack on one of our carriers in the Middle East. We don’t know if it was Iran or al-Qaeda. The President is being moved downstairs to the safe room now.’
‘Christ. Where is that? In relation to here?’
‘Hester,’ said Jacob. ‘He’ll know what’s going on.’ He glanced at the congressman’s body, felt sure that Vierte was somehow involved in the blast.
‘You stay here,’ said Tori to Danny. ‘I’ll go get him.’
She left, wondering. Where’s all this leading? There’s something we don’t know. She found Hester dead, the same sick froth around his mouth, his eyes bulging, his face locked in a silent scream. When she found him she panicked a little. But she kept it together enough to find his key.
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s dead. Cyanide.’
‘This is all very World War Two,’ said Jacob.
‘Hang on,’ said Tori. ‘When we took the elevator down here, there was another button under ours.’
‘So there must be another floor down there,’ said Danny, pointing at the floor.
Jacob sat up, said ‘What the fuck could they be hiding that’s worse than all this?’
Hugo sweated. Operating the whole system alone was, essentially, impossible. But he’d ordered his team not to show up for the shift. Just don’t come to work. Clear? None noticed, or cared, that something unusual was going on, each one too self-absorbed.
The temperature in the reactor control room was rising, but his forehead was cold. The uranium fuel rods were almost completely removed from the graphite moderator. He checked his phone again. No message from the Leader. He means for us to go through with this!
‘He means for us to go through with this,’ he said to the armed man beside him.
‘Good. We need to end the regime.’
The technician checked his screens, reviewed all the flashing warnings, the audio alarms long silenced. How many skulls and crossbones and exclamation marks can you fit on a computer screen? This many. He adjusted the withdrawal speed, slowed it down a tad. The gamma radiation levels had increased dramatically.
‘Their detectors will spot us soon. But there’s still time to stop it. Have you heard anything from the Leader?’
Grey shook his head. ‘Nothing.’ He found his phone in his breast pocket, checked it, shook his head again. ‘How long do we have?’
‘Probably twenty minutes. Just five to stop it.’
‘Okay. At five, we’re leaving. Got that?’ He checked his watch. The numbers swam as his heart vibrated faster, faster still, but he figured to start counting, deep in the back of his brain, look for three hundred.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
We’re going to kill the awful bore.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
Eight.
Then we’re gonna spread the hate.
‘I’ve got something on the CCTV,’ said the technician. ‘People outside.’
Grey cocked his MP5 submachine gun, leaned in towards the HD screen.
‘Cops. Can they get in?’
‘Only if they know the code. But how did they get this far?’
Grey watched the figures as they entered the long hall that led to the reactor control room.
‘Two obvious cops, a man and a hot woman, and two civilians picking up the rear,’ said Hugo. I know that face.
‘Men!’ shouted Grey. ‘Contact!’
Three more of Vierte’s stormtroopers emerged from the sweating, flashing shadows, the warning lights gaily painting their unpleasant faces.
Four submachine guns were trained on the door.
Grey turned to Hugo. ‘So, is there no way to stop it after five minutes?’
‘See this switch here?’ pointing to a little black button, ‘Fail-safe can minimise the effect of the meltdown. Maybe. It pushes the rods back into the moderator an half a second.’ Sicher nicht.
‘Okay. I think we’re done here.’
Then Grey took his Glock Model 17 polymer handgun from its holster and fired a 9mm round into Hugo’s chest.
Sixty-five.
Sixty-six.
The President, his wife, his immediate security party and some of the house security emerged into the safe area, below ground level.
It was an open plan room, desks and chairs, some art on the walls, couches at the far end, a little kitchen to one side, a bar, big screens showing news channels. The first live feeds from the scene. Sunrise.
‘Get me a whiskey.’
‘Coming up, Mr President.’
‘Bring the Briefcase. Set it up.’
It was placed before him, on a desk. The case was unlocked. The original Pandora’s box was actually a jar which, when opened, released all the evils in the world. The President’s briefcase was more of a world destroyer, capable of unleashing five thousand city killers upon the Earth.
The aide activated the case, asking the President to allow his thumb and retina to be scanned. The Vice President stood by, at his shoulder.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Until I know for sure that we don’t have any missiles heading our way, I’m prepared to nuke Iran. Key up Attack Plan Six, please. That’s an order. Now get me some data.’
More briefcases had been activated, pulling in real-time status feeds from the Pentagon, plus raw data from satellites, spy planes, drones, social media and boots on the ground, building up a picture, deciphering the situation.
Is this the end?
Or?
‘No launches reported, sir.’
‘The detonation was not caused by a missile. Seems to be a rogue device.’
‘What’s base telling us? Come on, people!’
‘We lost the Old Salt, sir. Six thousand souls.’
‘Damn it all. To hell and back.’
‘Was that a shot?’ asked Tori.
‘What an odd place,’ said Sophie. ‘Look, Jacob. What do the German words on these doors mean?’
‘Emergency exit. Staff quarters. Another exit. Control room.’
‘Interesting,’ said Danny. ‘Must be something big down here. And we’re being watched. Where are the watchers? Control room?’
‘As good a place as any,’ said Tori. ‘You guys better pick up the rear. Let’s go, Danny. I’m going to go with one-nine-four-five. End of the Third.’ The handle turned and clicked.
One hundred and four.
One hundred and five.
She pushed the door open and met an eight-hundred mile an hour hail of steel-coated lead.
The noise shocked, the smell of cordite burnt.
She took a bullet in her left shoulder, the force throwing her like she was dancing the twist or something.
Danny was at her right before she had her gun on target, dark shapes in a dim room.
They fired together.
The door slammed closed, the bullets helping now.
Tori fell to the floor, her shoulder shredded.
Danny had a red hole in his thigh.
He took off his jacket and pressed it down on Tori’s shoulder. Nicked an artery. Bad. ‘You’ll be fine, Tori. Just hang in there. Jacob, Sophie, can you call 911, get an ambulance. Or two.’ The intense pain of a shattered femur suddenly hit. ‘And you have to get to the President, tell him to get the fuck out of Dodge.’
He passed out.
Jacob looked at Sophie, said ‘Well I don’t have a phone.’
‘Oh shit!’
Julia tilted an empty Champagne bottle. And another.
Then she found one with a good glass left in it.
She drank it and wanted more.
The room was quiet. The waiting staff cleared up. Most of the guests had gone, in a mild panic, the Presidential party exiting the vulnerable location at the first hint of war. And this would mean war. Just how much war was the question.
At the bar, she ordered a Martini.
She tipped the barman with a hundred dollar bill, checked the time on the phone in her purse. I don’t know what time he left, the bastard. I was enjoying the Champagne too bloody much.
She decided that the reactor could go off at any second. Or not at all.
The situation seemed to add an extra intensity of flavour to the drink. Surely our own chemical composition makes every sensory event subjective? And unique. There’s one for Jacob. Now what to do?
‘Jacob,’ she said aloud.
‘Sorry?’ said Salem, beside her at the bar.
‘Nothing. Are you leaving?’
‘I’m having one for the road. Will you join me?’
‘A drink, yes. The road, no.’ She took his elbow, led him to the window. A decision. ‘I’m going to find my brother. Try and reason with him. We can make the deal. It doesn’t have to be like this.’
Salem watched her, drank his Bordeaux, smiled involuntarily. He worried about the Library. Better to let it blow, destroy the lot. Can she stop him?
‘Julia, you can’t.’
‘I can’t let this art go up in smoke, Salem. Look, that Van Gogh!’ She put her glass down, stared into a little mirror.
‘Then let me go with you. Please.’
‘Fine. Thank you.’
The displays raced further into the red.
Two hundred and thirty-six.
Two hundred and thirty-seven.
‘Nearly there. In one minute we can evac. Jack, Will, take a look outside.’
A gunman opened the door, looked out into the hallway. The two cops lay on the ground, the guy on the woman. Dead, maybe. Lot of blood.
No sign of the other two. They walked out carefully, guns moving, pointing in every direction.
They stepped over the cops.
Then one of the cops moved, the woman.
Tori shot them one in the head, no point in a torso shot with all that Kevlar. He dropped. The other turned, started to turn. He was hit in the thigh. He slumped to his knees, took one in the head.
Two more arrived at the door, the boss and the last. Tori was facing the wrong way.
Then Sophie appeared from the end of the hall. She had Danny’s gun, cocked for her by Tori, safety off.
Two hundred and sixty-two.
She shot. She shot. She shot. Then she hit Grey in the face with her fourth bullet.
Tori had time to turn, hitting the other just as he loosed a burst towards Sophie.
In the control room, Hugo twitched.
The firing had triggered something in his hypothalamus, flooding his body with adrenalin. Grey’s round had bounced off his breast bone. It was broken, for sure, but his heart and other critical, mysterious organs - who truly understands their spleen? - were intact. He’d live.
But the pain was crucifying. He could not move.
He couldn’t see the control desk from the floor, just the tops of some monitors. He didn’t really need to see them.
Three hundred.
New alarms sounded.
There was no way of stopping meltdown. Only fail-safe could make a difference.
He tried to talk. To call someone.
Julia and Salem reached the lobby, the elevator full of jumpy guests. But everything had gone so well, they said to her. She was pleased, tipsy.
In the lobby, Julia met one of the mysterious people that protect the President twenty-four seven.
‘Is it possible to see the President? Please?’
‘He’s gone. The Vice President is exiting now.’
Julia glanced at Salem. One more chance.
The Vice President came out of a stairwell, smiled when he saw Julia.
‘Hi Julia. No news yet. But it doesn’t look like World War Three. Which is good.’
‘Which is very good. Bill. Listen. Would it be possible to talk to you about a new gold-backed currency and debt write-off? We can fund it.’
‘Debt write-off sounds good. This incident may push us over the tipping point. But I don’t want to sell out.’
Julia gave him her big eyes. ‘Bill, we can fund all of it.’
‘I am intrigued. But I have to go.’
‘I could meet you anywhere, anytime.’ She let that sink in. ‘And my economic associate Salem has all the numbers well-crunched. Can I arrange for him to talk to your people?’
‘Yes,’ and he turned and was gone.
‘Congratulations, Julia,’ said Salem. ‘But what will Sam say?’ He leaned towards the exit. ‘I’m leaving. You should do the same. Good night.’
‘Good night,’ to his back.
Sophie stopped, took a deep breath.
Then she opened the door to the control room. Expecting? She didn’t know what. Jacob had been shot, just a graze on his forehead. More blood on him.
The flashing lights, the waves of heat, the booming alarm, the evil smells – is this hell? Am I dead? And what the fuck is that?
She saw a man on the floor. He looked pale, dead. No, wait, he’s saying something. She went to him.
‘You’ve been shot.’
More usefully, she took off her apron, found the clean bit and pressed it against his chest, easing off when he screamed like a banshee.
‘Sicher nicht,’ he said.
‘Sicker what? Oh my Jesus. Jacob!’ She turned to Hugo. ‘Wait. My friend speaks German.’
She retraced her steps, found Jacob in the hallway outside. He had Danny’s phone but he couldn’t get the damned pattern code working, didn’t realise that he could make an emergency call anyway and then Tori shouted at him and he got through, but couldn’t understand what they were saying and was talking anyway saying Help! and Tori was shouting Give me the phone! and then Sophie appears shouting Jacob! Sicker nicked! What in God’s name is it?
‘Fail-safe.’
Time to save Wall St. Or?
So Sophie found the switch.
She saw Hugo smile, knew that she could get out.
‘Jacob, you stay here with Tori. I’m going for help.’
She went to the door marked Ausgang and pushed down the release bar, Schrödinger’s cat opening her box.
Life?
Death?
The door opened onto a stairwell. She clanged and pulled her way to the top, where another door opened onto an alley. A stinking, dirty, glorious, beautiful New York alley.
She inhaled the night and the ground trembled.
THE END
To Eat the World
By Gary J Byrnes, 2014
http://www.roubaixinteractive.com/PlayGround/Binary_Conversion/Binary_To_Text.asp
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