Maloo pushed Gabriel through first into the tiny airlock and then climbed in after with the other member of the extraction team. The door’s bolts slid home with a pneumatic swoosh and the air in the air lock was filtered with the giant extractor pulling the tight bodysuits in its direction with its force.
The ‘clean air’ light went on and Maloo leaned over Gabriel and hit the button to open the door to the main capsule. The Mole disengaged from the White Room with a jolt and began its journey back up the tunnel it had created getting here.
Cochran and her partner Sunita Shido had just finished their appetizers, when Cochran’s Devstick screen flashed red. She picked it up and held it to her ear, glancing around at the other people seated near her in La Maison.
Her mouth open, she gasped, and exclaimed, “What!” Cochran’s eyes flitted around at the people near her again to see if they had noticed. No one had heard her except Sunita, who laid her knife and fork down on her plate and placed her hands on the table beside it. Sunita swallowed the oyster that was on her tongue and reached for her glass of red wine.
“When did this happen?” she heard Cochran rasp in a harsh whisper into her Devstick. “Ten minutes! Why have you taken this long to notify me? Never mind, there is no excuse. All right, lock down the area and no news of his escape is to be broadcast, not until I’m there, do you understand?”
She put the Devstick back on the table in front of her and picking up her wine glass, swallowed its contents. Sunita said, “Trouble at UNPOL?”
“The runner I was telling you about just escaped. I’ve got to go,” Cochran said, and stood, picking up her Chanel purse. “Don’t wait for me — this could take some time.”
Sunita nodded and took another sip of wine. “Go, Sharon, go, stay safe,” and tilting her head towards the French doors behind Cochran, she smiled.
Cochran gave her a small tight smile back and, with a slight shrug of her shoulders, turned on her heel, head down, and strode out of the restaurant, leaving through the sliding glass French doors, her Devstick to her mouth as she walked. They had chosen La Maison, the intimate Topside French restaurant of the Hyatt Hotel. Just off to the right of the restaurant was its tropical Balinese garden with a large area of green lawn framed by shallow swimming lanes stepped at different levels. As she walked over the patio, a Helium Copter glided down, its electrically driven propellers turning silently in the dark cool of the evening. It was twenty-one degrees cel, a cool night for New Singapore.
The reflection of the flashing blue light slowly shrank in size on the green lawn as the Heliocopter came in to land. The door slid open to receive Cochran as, Devstick still held to her mouth, she gave instructions, speaking urgently. “Place immediate satimage coverage of Jurong. If we don’t get him within the next five minutes, expand that coverage to New Singapore and the equivalent ocean area. I assume that you have locked down all transit points. Please confirm.”
She climbed into the Heliocopter, and the door clunked shut. Already in the air, the craft dipped its nose slightly and headed for Jurong Island eight kiloms to the south-west. The craft quickly picked up height and speed and soon the chop whir of the propellers was audible in the cabin. Cochran sat listening to and watching the different voice and image channels coming in over her Devstick, her thumb frantically scrolling the images.
She flicked from the image of the Lev and airship ports of Changi. He wouldn’t be crazy enough to try to get through there, she thought. He’s got to be somewhere close and he’ll try to get out by sea. That’s what I would do. Again she held the Devstick to her mouth. “Make sure all ocean and port areas are covered. Get all UNPOL marine vessels on high alert. Anything that has moved from port to ocean in the last five minutes, board and search. Use UNPOL Blue Notice as required, upon my authority.”
She listened and watched as the activity driven by her commands picked up pace. He couldn’t have gone far. She checked the time on the Devstick: 8:45pm. She realized she was seriously panicked. How could this have happened on her watch?
Sitting on the hard metal seats that ran along the cabin, she didn’t bother with the safety webbing, couldn’t waste the time to put it on as she was focused on the action on the screen of the Devstick. The Heliocopter came in fast, landing with a thump, a bounce and slight grind of a skid on the roof of the UNPOL Executive Club. She disembarked, one hand heaving her out of the cabin, and ran in a crouch towards the stairs leading to the Lev port that would take her down to the command center. She had to catch him: this couldn’t happen, not on her watch.
The Mole shot out of the hole it had first made six days ago in the floor of the warehouse in Jurong Port, and skidded to a stop just before hitting the wall. Gabriel glanced at the time on the Dev screen hanging from the ceiling of the mole, 8:40pm, and hit the open door release. The door hissed open and swung free. He jumped up from his crouched position and, one hand on the circular titanium frame of the door, jumped to the floor of the warehouse. Maloo and Isaac quickly followed and the three of them walked over to a large plastic sheet laid on the floor of the warehouse. No one spoke. They knew what they had to do and they had already agreed on the best way to do it. Maloo and Isaac stripped off everything they were wearing, dropping it to the plastic sheet. Gabriel, already naked, walked over to a shelf with three deep-sided trays stacked one on top of the other. He picked the stack up and walked back to Maloo and Isaac who had finished stripping and were folding the plastic sheet into a small block.
Gabriel laid out the three trays side by side with a meter in between and the three men each sat in front of a tray. Inside was the identity, the person they would become to enable their escape. Running. An identity designed to be anonymous, to fit in with the masses, to not be an anomaly, and therefore to pass under the radar to the other side. In the single nation an individual can travel anywhere provided he acknowledges the right of the nation to know who he is and what he is doing at any time.
As individuals travel through security zones, PUIs, or Tags as they are called, are activated and visually compared to known statistics and image. Everywhere on the Earth, the Moon and Mars, the three 'worlds' human beings occupy, this invasion of privacy is accepted for the right to travel anywhere freely. Every day in New Singapore, half a million people travel through the city and its surrounding area. To run, you need an identity that will appear in its movements and digital actions not to be suspicious, but to be normal. And they each had a tray of normality.
Gabriel, on the far right of the others, glanced to his left. Maloo was struggling into the brown boots he’d selected. With a final tug he laid back his elbows on the cement floor and said, “Well brother, do we look like Haulers?”
“You’ll do,” said Gabriel, and walked over to the wall of the warehouse. A section of the wall stood detached from its space that was just big enough for them to squeeze through. Gabriel went first and the others followed, each turning sideways through the narrow gap. Once on the other side, Gabriel and Maloo pulled the piece of the wall into place and Isaac picked up a tube of instant cement. As soon as the wall fit he pulled the trigger and the cement gun spurted a thin tube of expanding cement from its nozzle. Gabriel and Maloo quickly walked across the floor of the warehouse and went through the next space.
Two warehouses over from the one the Mole had made its exit, a seventy-five meter articulated chrome- plated long-hauler stood waiting with all systems running. The last wall space closed and cemented, the three men headed for the entrance to the long hauler. The door was open and Gabriel made his way up the winding staircase until he reached the bridge. He sat down in the primary driver’s seat and pulled the View Devscreen closer to his eye position. Maloo climbed into the seat next to him and Isaac disappeared down the companionway stairs.
“Activate mapped course to Jakarta, full autopilot on,” Gabriel said into the mic that distended from the edge of the Dev screens. It looked like a fly hovering just a cent from his mouth. Telemetric data from the vehicle flooded the Devscreen with numbers scrolling in a constant flow across images which showed the warehouse from the front, rear, side and top of the vehicle.
Gabriel looked out of the front windshield of the bridge, over the sloped chromed snub-nose of the long- hauler, at the cement floor twenty meters below him. The roof of the warehouse was just high enough with only ten cents clearance between the top of the long-hauler and the ceiling. The doors to the warehouse slowly slid open and the long-hauler pulled out onto Wharf One of Old Jurong Port. Gabriel glanced at the time set into the sweeping console of the bridge in front of him. 8:49pm — slightly ahead of schedule.
