The Secret of Excalibur

‘He got picked up from Russia by a sub. An American sub, inside Russian territorial waters.’ Amoros reacted with clear surprise. ‘I saw the hull number,’ Chase went on. ‘I looked it up - SSN-23, Seawolf-class attack sub, USS Jimmy Carter. Mitchell’s old boat. And funnily enough, it’s been modified for Special Forces operations. Be a bit of a coincidence if it just happened to be there.’

‘There’s no way he could have that kind of authority,’ protested Amoros. ‘Even black projects report to somebody.’

‘Doesn’t seem to bother him much. He had a little rant about what he was doing being too important to leave to politicians. The bastard’s gone rogue, Hector - and he’s got Nina, and the sword, and everything he needs to make his weapon work. I’ve seen one like it in action; it’s pretty fucking nasty. So I need you to help me rescue her - and stop him.’

‘How? I don’t know where he is.’

‘Someone does,’ said Chase, leaning back in the chair. The gun drifted away from the former admiral, very slightly. ‘He might be running a black project, but he’s using regular military assets as well. Intel and civilian ones an’ all. The sub, helicopters, jets, cars, even the weapons he’s requisitioned - there’ll be a paper trail, somewhere. Somebody at the Pentagon knows how to find him. You must still have lots of old mates there. Get on to them.’

Amoros shifted uneasily. ‘That would mean I’d be revealing knowledge of a black project I wasn’t cleared for. I wouldn’t just lose my post for that - I could go to prison for it.’

The gun moved back. ‘At least you’d still be alive to go to prison.’

Amoros stroked his beard, considering it. ‘I’ll . . . make some calls.’

33

The Norwegian Sea

Nina jumped from the bunk as the cabin’s steel hatch was unlocked and swung open.

‘Whoa, now,’ said Mitchell, his open palm snapping up to intercept her fist just before it smacked into his face. He closed his fingers round it and forced her arm back down. ‘Guess it’s true about redheads having a bad temper.’

She narrowed her eyes in pain as he squeezed her hand; then she lashed out with one foot at his kneecap. He jerked back, her heel barely missing him. ‘I’m going to kill you,’ she promised.

‘No you’re not,’ Mitchell replied, unconcerned. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Go where?’ The initial helicopter flight the previous night had been short, transferring to a private jet at Southampton airport that then flew the length of the country to Wick, on the north-eastern tip of Scotland. Another, larger helicopter was waiting for them there, quickly taking off and pounding northwards over the dark wastes of the North Sea, the flares of oil platforms below the only markers of the passage of hundreds of miles. Eventually even these fell behind, nothing outside except blackness.

Until a ship appeared ahead, a blazing beacon of lights in the void. It seemed to be a cargo vessel, the main deck loaded with stacked containers. The chopper landed on a pad overhanging the stern, and Nina was bustled through the ship to the windowless metal cabin. After being released from the cuffs, she had been left by herself.

Her fear for Chase and Holly gradually gave way to a simmering fury. Despair would get her nowhere. What she had to do now was stop whatever Mitchell was planning, and make him pay for everything he had done.

‘To Excalibur,’ said Mitchell. ‘It’s in place, the system’s ready . . . there’s only one thing we need.’

‘Me.’

‘Yup. Let’s go.’

There were two large men accompanying Mitchell, one with a pair of handcuffs attached to his belt, but they weren’t needed; Nina was all too aware that even if she broke away from her escorts, there was nowhere for her to go. Instead, she examined her surroundings for anything that might help her as they descended through the superstructure. A momentary glimpse through a porthole told her it was again dark outside, a whole day having gone by.

They passed below the level of the main deck and continued to descend. ‘So I’m guessing this isn’t a regular container ship,’ she finally said, faux-conversationally.

‘You got that right,’ Mitchell answered. ‘By the way, this is the Aurora - I didn’t get a chance to welcome you aboard last night.

Guess my manners are slipping. Made entirely out of non-magnetic steel and titanium. It’s DARPA’s latest toy.’

‘I thought you didn’t work for DARPA.’

He smiled. ‘DARPA paid for it - only they don’t even know it. That’s the great thing about having an agency where most of its budget is off the books. It’s hard to challenge the construction of something if no one even knows it exists.’

‘So you’re basically just stealing money from the government. ’

‘Hardly.’ His expression became colder. ‘When it comes to the defence of the United States, any expenditure is justified. And any price is worth paying.’

‘Including murder?’

‘Maybe you should ask Eddie about that,’ he said sarcastically. ‘He didn’t exactly go around handing out candy and flowers while he was defending his country.’

‘He’s nothing like you.’

‘Yeah, you’re right - because he just did what he was told, went where he was sent. Killed who he was told to kill. I’m being active. I’m taking care of threats to my country before anyone even knows they exist. You should be thanking me for what I’m doing.’

Nina laughed incredulously. ‘Y’know, I really don’t think I want to be indebted to you. Or anyone like you.’

‘Then it’s a good job we never ask for those debts to be paid. What the hell would you know about making sacrifices for a greater cause, anyway?’ He shot her a scathing look as they continued down another flight of stairs. ‘My work cost me my marriage, but I’d do it all again, because it has to be done. What’ve you done? Poked around in the mud finding trinkets. And don’t give me any crap about it being for the benefit of humanity - it was all for your own personal glory, don’t try to deny it.’

Nina snorted. ‘A little defensive there, Jack, ain’cha? All those lonely nights getting to you?’ Mitchell ignored her, prompting her to let out a self-satisfied ‘Hah!’ under her breath as they reached the bottom of the stairs.

He went to a large metal door and pushed a button beside it. It slid open with a hydraulic hiss. ‘This is it,’ he said, directing her inside.

Nina stepped through to find herself in a control room, surprisingly similar to the one at Vaskovich’s facility. There was even a view through a large window out at another huge piece of machinery . . . but where the Russian generator had been built vertically, descending into the hill, this one lay horizontally, running along the length of the cavernous hold. The rings of electromagnets, more of them than in the Russian system, receded hundreds of feet into the distance. Knots of cables wrapped around everything like black veins gave Nina the feeling of being inside a monstrous biomechanical ribcage.

At the far end of the hold, spotlights picked out a gleaming silver cross at the bottom of the final ring.

Excalibur.

‘This is our earth energy generator,’ Mitchell announced proudly, ‘and it’s better than Vaskovich’s system in every way. For a start, it’s mobile; the lines of energy aren’t limited to dry land. They occur at sea, too, and we can move the ship to wherever the flux convergences are the strongest.’ His smugness increased when he saw that Nina was unable to conceal her awe at the scale of the structure. ‘So what do you think?’

‘I’d be a lot more impressed if it hadn’t been designed to kill people,’ she said acidly, taking his smile down several notches. She turned to a large screen on one wall which displayed a map of the North Pole, the shapes of the continents distorted around it. She located the United Kingdom near one edge of the map and looked polewards from it, seeing a green circle marked with longitude and latitude co-ordinates in the sea at the edge of the Arctic