array deployed, it wouldn’t be long. Could he sabotage it?
The gear attached to his webbing clinked against the support. An idea formed . . .
‘What the
Chase saw him coming as he jumped from the frame and stood beneath the magnetic ring. He had his remaining pistol in one hand . . . and a grenade in the other, fingers lightly gripping the safety handle. He held his arms wide to make sure Mitchell could see what he was holding. There was still a chance he might just shoot him anyway, but as he’d hoped the American was being cautious, not wanting to risk any damage to the generator.
‘Hey, Jack!’ he called as Mitchell drew closer, rifle raised. ‘Nice boat!’
‘Put the pin back in, Eddie,’ said Mitchell angrily.
‘I dunno, I’m curious. You said bad things’d happen if the magnets got damaged - sounds like it might be worth seeing. Or you could let Nina go and we’ll just leave.’ He looked up at the platform. Nina had seen him by now, watching the distant scene play out.
‘That’s not really an option.’ Mitchell clicked the ammo selector to a new position and took more precise aim. ‘I can blow your whole arm off at the shoulder, Eddie - and who knows, your hand might even keep hold of the spoon. Even if it doesn’t, the magnets will survive, they’re tough.’
‘So tough that you need a room full of spares?’ Chase countered. ‘Let Nina go, or I blow this place to buggery.’
‘And you with it?’
‘If that’s what it takes.’
Mitchell shook his head. ‘No. I know you by now, Eddie. You’re all about the mission, just like me - and your mission’s getting Nina out of here alive. If you blew yourself up, your mission’d fail, and I know how much you hate that.’
‘We’ll see.’
Mitchell just smirked. Other men ran up behind him. Some were armed with XM-201s, others with more conventional side-arms. Mitchell glanced at them, then erupted in anger. ‘What the hell are you doing? Non- magnetics
‘No idea,’ Chase answered truthfully. ‘I dropped it, could be anywhere. No telling how much damage it might do if it gets pulled into the magnets, eh?’
‘Spread out,’ Mitchell ordered his men, keeping his gun aimed at Chase. ‘Foreign object sweep. There’s a gun around here somewhere - find it.’
Chase adopted a casual, not-a-chance expression, but it wasn’t long before one of the men called out and recovered the fallen USP from behind a skein of cables. ‘Bollocks,’ he muttered.
‘Nice bit of improvisation, Eddie,’ Mitchell said, ‘but it didn’t work. You’ve got nothing. Now put the pin back in.’
With a resigned shrug, Chase flipped the grenade round in his hand to reveal that the pin had been in place all along, hidden by his thumb. ‘Worth a try.’
‘Search him.’ Two men went to Chase and frisked him, taking his few remaining belongings. ‘Okay, get those out of the field limit. Move it, Eddie.’ He jerked the XM-201 towards the control room.
‘Not going to kill me?’
Mitchell smiled. ‘Oh, hell yes. I just don’t want any bullets flying around in here. Go on.’
Chase looked helplessly up at Nina, then started for the control room, Mitchell tracking him with his gun. All but one of the other men exited the hold ahead of them, the last also aiming a rifle at Chase as he followed him to the stairs. ‘So what’re you going to blow up? Iran? Russia? Venezuela?’
‘Close with the second one,’ said Mitchell as they entered the control room. ‘Are we at stage one power?’
‘Yes, sir,’ a technician answered. ‘We’re at the convergence point of five flux lines, and already drawing zero point three seven from them. Everything is green.’
‘Then fire it all up. Full power.’
The technicians worked their consoles in unison, the deck trembling as a thrumming electrical rumble began to rise. Mitchell moved to watch one display in particular, a digital readout of the system’s power, just like the one in Russia. It climbed smoothly past 0.50 as power was fed in and the magnetic field increased in strength, channelling more earth energy through the system.
Through the superconductor. Through Excalibur.
Chase could still see Nina at the far end of the hold, pinned in the bull’s-eye of the last ring. The sword glowed ever brighter in front of her. Unable to shield her eyes with her hands, she turned her head away from the glare.
A bolt of electricity sizzled across one of the nearer rings, dancing between the magnets. Other flashes built up around the generator, the sharp smell of ozone hitting Chase’s nostrils. ‘Will she be okay up there?’
‘I wouldn’t have put her there if it was going to kill her. I need her alive.’ The gauge ticked rapidly past 0.80. ‘Confirm antenna alignment.’
‘Confirmed, sir,’ a man replied. ‘Ionic reflection is calculated and set, and we have target lock.’
Mitchell nodded. 0.90 flicked past, 0.95 . . . ‘We’ve reached threshold!’ he exclaimed, banging a fist on the console as 1.00 came and went without pause, the numbers climbing at an increasing pace.
‘Confirmed!’ said a technician with equal excitement. ‘The process is now self-sustaining, and rising along the predicted curve.’
‘Magnetic field status?’
‘Firm, and also rising.’
‘Keep it going,’ Mitchell demanded. ‘Ready firing sequence.’
Chase watched Nina as electrical flares crackled around her, and then his gaze moved across to the support beam on which he had landed after dropping from the duct. Staring intently at one particular spot, he whispered, ‘Come on, come
Mitchell looked sharply at him. ‘What was that?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ Chase said. ‘Just that, you know I had a hand grenade when you found me?’
‘Yeah?’
‘When I came into the hold, I had
Mitchell whirled to stare up at the beam, opening his mouth to issue a frantic command—
Too late.
Chase’s other grenade had been hanging by its pin from a hook supporting part of the generator’s miles of wiring. As the magnetic field rose in intensity, the grenade’s steel casing was pulled towards the nearby ring of electromagnets, dangling perpendicular to the floor below. At first the pin held, but as the invisible force grew stronger and stronger, it began to bend . . . before breaking.
The grenade shot across the gap and smacked against a magnet, its safety handle springing loose and clanging beside it. The fuse counted down the seconds, three, two, one—
The explosion blew the electromagnet to pieces. Shattered fragments were snatched up by the intense magnetic field and whirled around the generator to slam into other components, tearing them from their supports. Massive electrical arcs seared across the hold, sparks and flames gouting into the air where they struck.
Another magnet overloaded and exploded, debris smashing the control-room window. Mitchell dived behind a console - and Chase spun and drove his fist into the face of the stunned man guarding him, mashing his nose up into his brain with a hideous crunch.
He grabbed the dead man’s XM-201 as he fell. It was useless to him as a rifle, the biometric lock in place. Instead he stabbed at the button of the grenade launcher.
