The Secret of Excalibur

  ‘You’ll have them, you mean,’ Chase corrected. ‘I don’t see Kruglov letting me stroll in there with one of these. And speaking of that, how’re you going to get in there?’

  Mitchell indicated a case. ‘Another DARPA toy.’ He checked his watch. ‘In fact . . . I should start prepping it about now, so give me a hand.’

  The case contained what looked like a large, hard-shelled backpack. Mitchell slid the rifles into a compartment inside it, then climbed into a black one-piece flight suit and zipped it up. He donned the pack with Chase’s assistance. ‘Latest thing we devised for airborne special ops,’ Mitchell told him as he fastened an electronic control unit to his wrist. ‘And this one is going into service, within the year. It’s a glidewing - we wanted to call it the Batwing, but we’d probably have some trademark problems if we did. Can carry a SEAL and all his gear. Once I’m in freefall, the wings extend - they’re carbon fibre - and I can glide way further than I could in a HAHO parachute jump.’ He put on a cheesy commercial announcer’s voice. ‘But wait, there’s more!’

  ‘Are these engines?’ Chase said, seeing cylindrical protrusions on each side of the pack.

  ‘Yep. Mini-turbojets, three hundred pounds of thrust between them. There’s about fifteen minutes of fuel, but I can use them in bursts to gain height and glide. Then when I want to land, I just pop the ’chute. A good pilot can hit a fifty-foot target area from over a hundred miles away.’

  ‘And you’re a good pilot?’

  ‘Not bad. The controls are very intuitive - just pretend you’re Superman.’ He smiled, then became all business. ‘After I bail out, I can land in Vaskovich’s facility without anyone even knowing. Then I’ll come find you and Nina.’

  ‘What about extraction? How are we getting out?’ One of Vaskovich’s demands had been for their jet to take off and return to Moscow immediately after delivering Chase - and being searched for uninvited guests.

  ‘It’s all taken care of. Trust me.’

  Chase didn’t like being left in the dark - especially when his and Nina’s lives were on the line - but it was clear that Mitchell wasn’t going to tell him anything else until he had to. Some kind of US incursion into Russian airspace would explain why he was being so secretive - Chase couldn’t reveal information he didn’t know.

  Mitchell finished strapping on the pack, then took a full-face helmet from the case. ‘Okay, I’ll kick the cases out before I bail so nobody wonders what was in them - you’ll have to close the door after I jump. Try not to fall out, huh?’

  ‘And you remember to pull the ripcord before you hit the ground,’ countered Chase with a grin. ‘You know, for a navy man, you’re not such an arsehole after all.’

  ‘Oh, I’m an asshole,’ said Mitchell. ‘I’m just on the right side.’ He clapped Chase on the shoulder, then donned the helmet as the pilot called a one-minute warning from the cockpit. ‘Okay, here we go!’

  Weighed down by his equipment, he moved to the cabin door as Chase brought over the empty cases and secured himself to the wall. ‘Thirty seconds!’ the pilot shouted.

  ‘See you down there,’ said Chase. He pulled the lever to open the hatch.

  The noise and wind were horrific - even though it was slowing and descending, the Cessna was still cruising at over two hundred knots and nine thousand feet. Gripping the door frame, Mitchell booted the cases out, then hurled himself into the black void. He was snatched away by the slipstream, barely missing the jet’s low wing as he fell.

  Buffeted by the freezing wind, Chase pulled the lever to close the hatch. Shivering, he returned to his seat, hoping Mitchell knew what he was doing.

  Ten minutes later, the jet was on the ground.

  Vaskovich was taking no chances; before Chase was allowed to exit, three armed men came aboard and searched the aircraft. All they found were the pilot, Chase, and the aluminium case in his lap. After frisking him thoroughly for concealed weapons, they waved him out at gunpoint.

  Even though the wind was low, the cold hit him hard. Grozevny was on the very rim of the Arctic Circle at the entrance to the Barents Sea, situated on the edge of the marshy tundra about a hundred and eighty miles from Archangel’sk, the nearest city. During the Cold War it had been a naval base, a hiding place for the Soviet Union’s ballistic missile submarines. Now, that perverse non-conflict long over and the base’s secrets laid bare for anyone with an internet connection and Google Earth to see, it had passed into the hands of one of Russia’s new oligarchs.

  As Chase stepped on to the runway he saw the cold sea off to the north, a cliff rising up along the curving coastline to the east. About a mile away, a long L-shaped jetty protruded into the waves from its base. He guessed the sub pen was under the cliff. Beyond it, the ground rose to a small hill, at the top of which was a brightly lit building, but it was too far away for him to make out any details other than its size, which was considerable.

  More of Vaskovich’s men surrounded the jet, weapons at the ready. Kruglov stood at the foot of the steps, Maximov beside him. ‘Is that the sword?’ Kruglov demanded, pointing at the case.

  That Kruglov hadn’t killed him on sight suggested Vaskovich intended to honour at least part of his deal. Chase opened the long case, revealing Excalibur nestled on a bed of foam within. ‘Where’s Nina?’

  Kruglov glanced in the direction of the distant building, then indicated the nearer of two black Mercedes GL Class SUVs. ‘Get in.’

  Sandwiched between Maximov and another guard in the back seat, Chase was driven along a road on the coast. The view ahead confirmed what he’d thought: the jetty was indeed connected to the sub pen, a vast concrete arch set into the cliff face, lights blazing within. The jetty ran from the end of a dock on the pen’s far side, a rusty crane overlooking the water.

  To Chase’s surprise, the dock wasn’t empty.

  The little convoy drove along a road at the base of the cliff and into the pen itself, giving him a grandstand view of the colossal vessel within. It was a submarine, a Typhoon-class ballistic missile boat, the largest type of sub ever built. As big as a Second World War aircraft carrier, only six Typhoons had been constructed by the Soviets, and just a single example remained in active service, the others either scrapped or supposedly held in reserve. Chase now knew where one had ended up.

  But whatever the Typhoon’s purpose here, it wasn’t as a weapon. The vessel wasn’t seaworthy: a large section of deck aft of the squat sail had been removed to expose the twin pressure hulls within, dozens of heavy-duty electrical cables leading out from the hole to a pylon by a tunnel entrance on the opposite side of the dock. It wouldn’t be going anywhere in a hurry - at least, not if it wanted to stay afloat.

  The SUVs drove over a bridge at the dock’s rear, then back along the other side of the sub to stop at the tunnel. ‘So what’s this?’ Chase asked as he got out of the Mercedes. He mimicked Sean Connery in The Hunt For Red October. ‘You going to shail into hishtory?’

  Kruglov ignored him, directing him into the tunnel towards the lower terminus of a funicular railway rising out of the grim concrete cavern. The track was steep, ascending the hill above at a steady forty degree angle. A boxy carriage waited for them at one of the two gates.

  Everyone entered the carriage, all guns pointed at Chase as it began to climb the track. He looked up the hill as they emerged from the tunnel. A second car was descending from the top of the track, the two linked by cables and counterbalancing each other. A road followed a long zig-zag path up the hillside from the base, the funicular sometimes passing over, other times under it on its ascent. To each side, the hill was covered by what at first glance he thought was a forest of leafless trees . . .

  ‘Christ,’ he said, seeing what they really were. ‘Your TV reception must be pretty crappy if you need that lot to get a decent picture.’

  The ‘forest’ was man-made, metal: a vast antenna array stretching round the entire hill and on to the tundra beyond. The receiver for Vaskovich’s earth energy station,
Chase realised, like the American HAARP facility Mitchell had described, only on a much greater scale.

  He got a better view of the large building on the hilltop as they approached. It was circular, with a domed roof resembling an observatory. More electrical cables were draped down the sides of the dome like morbid streamers, linking it to the array.

  The funicular reached the upper station. Two more waiting SUVs took the group the few hundred metres across the freezing hilltop to the facility. Inside, Chase was hustled through the building’s blank corridors to what resembled an airport’s security screening station. Warning notices in Cyrillic plastered the walls; he had no idea what they said, but the stylised symbols accompanying them suggested danger from both high voltages and magnetism. A thick line of striped red and yellow was painted on the floor.

  The station was manned by two men in orange overalls. When Kruglov stepped up to them, one man ran a sensor wand over his body while the other monitored the results on a screen. The machine bleeped several times. With a look of resigned annoyance, Kruglov emptied out his pockets, placing all his metallic belongings, including a gun, in a plastic tray. The first man ran the wand over him again. Satisfied with the result, he put the tray in a nearby locker and waved Kruglov over the painted line.

  The process was repeated with the other members of the group.

  Chase went next, having to turn over his watch, keys, phone and - to his irritation - leather jacket. The teeth of its zip were steel, susceptible to magnetic fields. The titanium pins in his left arm initially caused some consternation, but once it was determined they were non-magnetic he was sent through. Presumably the plate in Maximov’s skull was also non-magnetic; if not, he would get very attached to the machinery when it was switched on.

  The one item that set off warnings yet was still allowed through was Excalibur. Carrying the case, Chase was led from the entrance into another room beyond, the facility’s control centre.

  Waiting for him was Nina.

  The makeup and dress from the party were gone; she looked pale and vulnerable in a set of ill-fitting overalls. ‘Eddie!’ she called, relieved, but also worried. Vaskovich, standing beside her, was now in complete control.

  ‘Hi, honey,’ Chase replied. He was just as delighted to see her, but forced himself to remain outwardly cool. ‘You okay?’

  Nina made a sarcastic noise. ‘Oh, super fine, really! Apart from the prison outfit.’ She plucked at her baggy orange one-piece.

  ‘Yeah, I think the black rubber number definitely wins out.’ He turned to Vaskovich. ‘I brought the sword. Now let her go.’

  ‘Show me,’ said the Russian. Chase opened the case. Vaskovich regarded Excalibur with a look somewhere between awe and greed, then carefully lifted it from the foam, holding the polished metal up to the light. ‘I wasn’t sure if you would really do it. I have a hard time believing Jack would let it go so easily.’ Suspicion crossed his face. ‘Let’s be sure he really has.’

  He clicked his fingers, and one of the control room technicians hurried over bearing an electronic device. Vaskovich carefully placed the sword on a table; the technician clipped a pair of electrodes to it, then switched on the gadget. He watched its display for several seconds, then nodded to his boss.

  ‘It really is Excalibur,’ said Vaskovich, sounding almost surprised as he picked up the weapon again. ‘A genuine high-temperature superconductor.’

  ‘If I say I’m going to do something, I do it,’ Chase told him.

  ‘And so do I. You can have Nina back, Chase - after I test my system with the sword in place.’

  ‘Don’t seem to recall that being part of the deal,’ said Chase icily.

  ‘I think it was implied.’ Vaskovich smiled slightly, then handed Excalibur to another technician, who climbed down a ladder leading through an opening in the floor. ‘Take a look,’ he said proudly, striding to the room’s glass wall and opening his arms wide to encompass the much larger chamber beyond. ‘This is what I have been working for. This . . . is the future.’

  The control room overhung the edge of a huge concrete-walled circular pit, a hundred feet across at its top and over twice as deep, narrowing as it descended. Overhead was the dome, the cables Chase had seen earlier hanging down through open louvres to the vast machine below. A hexagonal framework running down to the base of the pit supported a series of massive rings of electromagnets, suspended from electrical insulators. Outside the frame were three catwalks, one just below the level of the control room, a second midway down, and the third near the bottom of the apparatus. A small elevator platform was descending the framework, the technician taking Excalibur down to the lowest level. It was unmistakably some kind of generator, but on a truly enormous scale.

  Chase wasn’t impressed, however. ‘Yeah. The future of war.’

  Vaskovich shook his head. ‘Do you know the purpose of war, Chase? The true purpose? It has nothing to do with ideology, or morality. It is about resources. Right now, it is all about oil. But there will be wars for other resources in the future - gas, uranium, even water. Control the supply of resources, and you control entire nations.’

  ‘But you already do,’ said Nina, stepping forward to join Chase and taking his hand. ‘You control a huge chunk of Russia’s oil and gas reserves. You already have that kind of power.’

  ‘Oil and gas will not last for ever,’ Vaskovich said. ‘I know what governments say, even here in Russia: that peak oil production is a long way away. But I know the truth - we have already passed that point. The price will only go up from now on. You think over a hundred dollars for a barrel of oil is expensive? Soon it will be two hundred. Then three.’

  ‘And you get to profit from it all,’ Nina said scathingly.

  To her surprise, Vaskovich responded with anger. ‘No! What use is money if Russia freezes and starves? This is my country - my homeland! I will not let that happen!’ He calmed slightly, looking back out over the generator. Below, the technician was carefully lowering Excalibur into a piece of equipment at the bottom of the pit. ‘This will change all that. This will change the world - and Russia will take her rightful place as its leader.’

  ‘By threatening to blow up everyone else with this thing?’ Chase asked.

  Vaskovich rounded on him, angry again. ‘This is not a weapon! Whatever Jack has told you, it is a lie. This is a generator, a power station - which turns the earth’s own natural energy into that power. It is clean, it is safe - and it is limitless. With more of these stations built on the points where the lines of energy converge, I can power the whole of Russia, for nothing. A productive use for my billions - my gift to my country.’

  ‘Which won’t exactly hurt your political ambitions,’ Nina realised.

  Vaskovich smiled triumphantly. ‘Who wouldn’t vote for the man who restored Russia to greatness? And it is a war Russia has already won. Anyone else who wants this technology will have to come to me - because I am the only person who has it.’ He looked through the window. Excalibur in place below, the technician was ascending again. ‘And now, I can make it happen.’

  He issued an order in Russian. The technicians turned to their consoles, activating the system. Vaskovich’s attention was on the machines; Chase surreptitiously looked round for any opportunity to escape. Kruglov and Maximov, he saw, were watching him. A corner of Kruglov’s wide mouth twitched mockingly - the Russian knew exactly what he was thinking. He opened his jacket and revealed a knife, with a black carbon-fibre blade. Non-metallic. Chase mouthed ‘Fuck off ’ at him, then returned his attention to Vaskovich.

  A deep electrical hum rose in volume. The sharp tang of ozone filled the control room as the air took on a strange, almost tingling quality, literally charged. Nina flinched at a sudden lightning-flash from above, a crackle of electrical energy arcing between two of the cables descending from the dome. More bolts flicked across the generator as the power rose.

  Vaskovich pointed out a particular digital indicator. It read 0.34, and rising. ??
?This gauge shows the system’s power level,’ he explained. ‘Right now, all the power is coming from the submarine’s nuclear reactors.’

  ‘That’s what it’s for?’ Chase asked in disbelief. ‘You’ve got the world’s biggest missile sub downstairs, and you’re using it as a generator?’

  ‘It produces nearly four hundred megawatts of power. But even if we fed all of Russia’s electricity into it, it wouldn’t be enough. Not without the superconductor.’ He looked at the gauge again, which had now reached 0.47. ‘The highest it has ever gone is zero point seven two. If it goes higher, then the superconductor is working - it is channelling earth energy into the generator. But it will still consume more energy than it produces . . . until the gauge reads one. That is the point where the process becomes self-sustaining. ’

  ‘And then what?’ demanded Chase.

  ‘And then . . . you can leave.’

  Nina regarded him suspiciously. ‘You’re really going to let us go?’

  ‘Your fiancé gave me his word that he would bring me Excalibur. I gave him my word that I would release you in return. I have what I want - there is no need for more violence.’

  ‘Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you sent your little gang of psychos out to get it,’ Chase snarled, with a hate-filled glance at Kruglov.

  ‘If Jack had not been working against me, I would not have had to. He is as much to blame for what has happened as I am. For what it’s worth, I regret the loss of life.’

  ‘What, and you think saying sorry makes everything all right?’ said Nina bitterly. ‘You hypocritical bastard. Just because you send other people to do your dirty work doesn’t mean your own hands are clean!’

  But Vaskovich was no longer listening, his attention focused on the gauge. 0.68 . . . 0.69 . . . More electrical flares lit up the huge chamber, the hum of the machinery rising in pitch. 0.71 . . . 0.72 . . .