The Covenant of Genesis

more attack, and he would be through . . .

She jumped away just as he lunged again. The door flew open, the intruder stumbling as he burst into the room - but Nina tripped too, the swinging door catching her and sending her tumbling into the server racks. She tried to pull herself up, her fingers finding purchase on the recessed handle of one of the drawer-like server blades above her.

The man was quicker to recover. He saw Nina on the floor and plunged the knife at her chest—

She yanked the server out of the rack. There was a splintering crack as the carbon fibre knife stabbed through the circuit board just above her head. The man tried to pull it out, but it was stuck, the server rattling in its frame.

Nina kicked at his knees, rolled to her feet and ran down the length of the server room. There was only one exit, the door through which she had entered. Even if she rounded the central island of workstations, her attacker would still reach it before her.

Unless he couldn’t see her.

There was a red fire alarm box on the back wall. She yanked its plastic handle, taking a deep breath. A whooping klaxon sounded, which would summon help - but it was the fire suppression system itself that could give her a chance to escape.

In a closed, windowless room inside a skyscraper, filled with banks of computers holding vital classified data, water was not an option as an extinguisher - it could potentially cause even more damage than a fire. Instead, valve heads in the ceiling spewed out powerful jets of halotron gas, a swirling white cloud rapidly filling the space.

And hiding Nina.

One hand over her nose and mouth, eyes half shut as the dense mist enveloped her, she ducked and moved as quickly as she could round the central workstations. The man coughed violently, caught unawares by the cold, choking vapours. He was still by the open server rack, trying to retrieve his knife. If she reached the door quickly enough, she could get out before he recovered.

If she could find the door. The fog was already so thick that she couldn’t even see an arm’s length ahead, the overhead lights just a faint, diffuse glow - and the red-lit exit sign above the door completely obscured. She groped blindly through the haze. The room wasn’t that big - surely it couldn’t be much further—

She bumped into a chair, which knocked against one of the desks. Something fell over, plastic clattering.

The coughing stopped. He knew where she was.

Nina sprang upright, no longer caring about stealth as she ploughed forward. One shin barked against something hard-edged; she ignored the pain, staggering on until her hand closed round the corner of a desk. The door could only be a few feet away. She looked up and saw a faint red glow. The exit sign. She rushed to it, outstretched hands finding the door.

Where was the handle, the handle—

There!

She rushed through into suddenly clear air. The security doors were still sealed; the fire marshals hadn’t had enough time to respond. She slammed the door, muffling the hiss of the gas jets, and ran for her office. Her attacker would hopefully lose several precious seconds trying to reach the exit. If she could find her keys and get back to the security doors before he emerged, she could take the stairs until she met the first responders coming up them—

She heard the hiss of gas over the fire alarm as she reached her office. He had opened the door - and would be coming after her.

Could she barricade herself in her office’s private bathroom? Maybe, but the door had only a simple bolt - a couple of good kicks would break it, and then she would be trapped in an even more confined space.

Phone—

Not her desk phone, its cable severed, but her cell. It had been on her desk before the fight - where was it now? She searched for it amongst the scattered papers. There - below the windows. If she could hold him off in the bathroom even briefly, the knowledge that she had called for help might force him to retreat before the building’s exits were secured . . .

She grabbed the phone and turned to run for the bathroom—

He was in the office.

No way she could reach the door. She backed up as he advanced. He no longer had the knife, but his fists were raised, ready to beat her, grab her, choke her.

Nina pulled her chair between them in a last-ditch attempt to block him. The man kicked it forcefully back into her. She thumped against the desk - and he grabbed her by the throat, thumbs gouging hard into her windpipe as he forced her to the floor.

She tried to scratch at his eyes, but his arms were longer than hers, her nails falling just short. His grip tightened. She clawed at his arms, his chest, but to no avail. The pain rose as she struggled to breathe, hands flailing over the carpet, the spilled papers—

Electrical flex—

With the last of her strength, Nina jammed the severed power cord into his eye.

There was a harsh electrical spark inside his eye socket - and the man sprang upright, reeling back against the window. The cracked glass broke, wind gusting through the jagged hole. He clutched his face, smoke coiling out from beneath his hands.

Nina had felt some of the electric shock, but only a fraction of what the assassin had experienced. Still choking, she dragged herself up on the desk and looked round. He stared back - with only one eye, the other an oozing burnt hole. Agony was overcome by pure fury as he saw her—

With a yell of equal rage, Nina snatched up her battered laptop and swung it at his head.

Keys scattered as the machine smashed in his face, knocking him into the window . . .

Which gave way.

He toppled backwards over the sill and plunged screaming for over twenty storeys in a shower of glass - and hit the pointed top of a flagpole in the plaza below. The gilded wooden spike punched straight through his ribcage, his body slowly slithering down the pole on a trail of blood.

Bruised and bleeding, Nina staggered back to reception, where she held Lola until the fire marshals finally arrived.

10

Cuba

The American naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was a freak of international diplomacy. The land on which it stood granted in perpetual lease to the United States by a treaty with the then US- FRIENDLY republic in 1903, the base became a huge thorn in the side of the Castro regime following the revolution of 1959. But Cuba lacked the firepower to retake it by force or the legal authority to evict the occupants under international treaty law, so eventually settled for surrounding the base with cacti and landmines and trying to ignore its very existence. This suited the United States just fine, so for decades the name ‘Guantanamo Bay’ remained nothing more than a curious footnote for military and political historians.

Until 2002, when it became infamous around the entire world.

Chase had been to Cuba before, albeit undercover, during his military career, and had even very briefly passed through the US naval base between legs of a long flight. But following the tedious journey from Dubai, it wasn’t to the base proper that he was taken by the grim, taciturn men who had intercepted him.

It was to the notorious military prison.

An escort of armed Marines met their unmarked plane when it landed. Chase and the three men were put aboard a bus and driven round the ragged-edged bay, passing through ring after ring of high fences and security checkpoints to an isolated group of buildings near the island’s southern coast.

It was the most secure, most secretive, and most feared part of the entire facility, remaining active even when the rest of the detention centre had been closed down. Its only official name was nondescript, uninformative, yet somehow chilling. Camp 7.