“We haven’t got the time or the know-how to build anything,” Cutter answered. “If we had we would have done so before — it’s not as though this kind of equipment is readily available.”
“Oh, what a shame.” Shvachko’s voice dripped with contempt.
“We don’t have to,” Connor said, “because you’ve already got them.”
“I have?” Shvachko said.
“The Russian Federation has,” Connor told him. “I had a couple of glances at your mate Umarov’s laptop, remember? All that classified stuff. You’ve got all sorts of goodies available, thanks to your military satellite coverage. Russia’s secret Star Wars weapons are circling right overhead. I didn’t have long to browse, and I didn’t have the privilege codes, so I don’t know what the full potential is, but you’ve definitely got a HERF cannon up there, and I’m pretty sure you’ve got some sort of EMP-based airspace denial system for crunching the electronics on planes and missiles.”
“And that’s what we should use?” Shvachko asked. But he looked vaguely impressed.
“Yeah,” Connor said, and he nodded enthusiastically. “You use your authority to get one of these orbital platforms re-tasked, and you take a pot-shot at the anomaly. You can’t miss it. This impact site with the radiating tree trunks makes a great big hot target that’s got to be visible from space.”
“So, what you’re suggesting is... to counter the threat of this ‘anomaly’,” Shvachko said, making quote marks with his fingers, “we should reveal to you the nature and potential of our ultra-classified orbital weapons program, and show you how to use it?” Shvachko looked at Koshkin. “And you question why I’m so concerned with federal security?”
“You have to listen to them,” Koshkin said flatly.
“No, I absolutely do not,” Shvachko replied.
Koshkin went for him.
The motion was so sudden and fluid, it took everyone by surprise — except Shvachko. With equal speed his hand snapped up and pressed the muzzle of a double-action combat pistol into Koshkin’s cheek.
Koshkin froze.
“Whoa!” Connor yelped, recoiling.
Medyevin squealed and dived off his stool with his arms around his head.
Shvachko shoved with the end of the gun, and Koshkin sat back down. At a brisk command from Shvachko, two soldiers hurried into the shelter. There was snow on their shoulders.
“Put them with the others and keep them secure,” he commanded.
“Even me?” Medyevin yelped. “I’m not with them!”
“Cheers for the support, mate,” Connor said.
“I thought you subscribed to this hole in time theory, Doctor?” Shvachko questioned the scientist.
Medyevin swallowed hard and carefully considered his options. He made another important career decision.
“Of course not,” he said. “It’s patently preposterous.”
Shvachko looked at the solders.
“Just those three, then. With the others.”
The soldiers got Cutter, Connor and Koshkin on their feet.
As they were led out of the command shelter, Cutter looked back at Shvachko.
“Looks like the end of the world is going to be on your shoulders,” he said.
FORTY-EIGHT
“What’s taking them so long?” Jenny asked.
Hemple shook his head. The wind was howling around the medical hut, the largest shelter at the campsite. The staggering buzz-rip-boom! of the lightning discharge over the forest was making Antila’s instruments rattle.
They had crowded into the shelter to let the medical officer run her tests: Abby, Jenny, Suvova and Bulov, along with Hemple and his team. Redfern took off his coat and exposed his arm to let Antila take a blood sample, and the medic looked appreciatively at his bicep.
“Easy, tiger,” Abby sniggered.
Jenny was perched nearest to the hut’s chugging fan heater unit, chaffing her hands.
“It does seem to be taking them a long time,” she said.
Hemple grinned at her.
“So you keep saying.”
“But it is, isn’t it?” Jenny persisted. “I mean, what are they talking about?”
“The end of the world, probably,” Abby said.
“Okay, listen, about that,” Jenny said. “You keep saying that as if it’s funny, and it doesn’t sound funny to me.”
“It really isn’t,” Bulov agreed.
“Is that why we’ve come back here?” Jenny continued. “When Cutter said we’ve got more important things to worry about, is that what he meant?”
“It’s exactly what he meant,” Abby said. “Cutter is sure that an extinction event is about to occur.”
“That’s exactly what Helen Cutter said to me,” Jenny told her. “She said a comet was about to wipe out the dinosaurs. But that’s there, isn’t it? Back then? That’s not here, surely?”
“Forgive me if I’m wrong,” Hemple said, “but aren’t we sitting on top of a gigantic doorway that opens right into the land of the dinosaurs?”
“Exactly. The comet strike will effect this world, too,” Abby explained, “if the anomaly is open. Cutter’s trying to convince the Russian dude to help him close it.”
“I wish him luck,” Suvova said, as she held out her arm for Antila’s next syringe. “Shvachko is not the most imaginative fellow.”
“Huh!” Antila muttered. “Pig-man!”
“Shouldn’t we just evacuate this area, then?” Jenny asked.
“I think you’re underestimating the effective range of this impact,” Bulov said to her. “There’s nowhere to evacuate to.”
The shelter door crashed open and let in a flurry of snowflakes. A crowd of Russian soldiers stomped in out of the wind and aimed their assault rifles at the occupants of the hut. Hemple and his men leapt to their feet, but there was nothing they could do. With multiple AK-74s levelled at them, they raised their hands.
“What is meaning of this outrage?” Antila protested loudly.
“Be quiet, please,” Zvegin, the adjutant, replied, entering the hut. He issued quick instructions to his soldiers. Two of them gathered up the alpha team’s weapons, and then began to unclasp their body-kit items.
“You will not do this in here!” Antila yelled.
“Again, shut up,” Zvegin told her.
“What’s going on?” Abby asked. One of the soldiers with Zvegin was Yuri Torosyan.
“Yuri, what the hell’s going on?” She directed her question to the good-looking soldier.
Torosyan looked awkward.
“Sorry, Abby,” he replied. “Orders from Shvachko.”
“Pig-man!” Antila exploded.
“Come on, Yuri,” Abby pleaded, “what happened to fraternisation?”
“It is orders,” Torosyan insisted, keeping a firm grip on his weapon.
At Zvegin’s instructions, the soldiers herded Abby, Bulov and Suvova to one end of the room with Antila, and prepared to escort Jenny and Hemple’s alpha team out of the hut.
“Hold them here,” Zvegin said to Torosyan, nodding towards Abby’s group.
“Where are you taking us?” Jenny demanded.
“Yeah, where are you taking them?” Abby yelled.
“Shut up!” Zvegin replied.
“Why are you separating us?” Abby persisted. “Tell me!”
Zvegin looked at her.
“Because we know who you are. We brought you here. We know where you came from. This woman and these men, they are unknown to us. This is a security issue. You will be held here. These persons will be transported immediately to the advance camp for security evaluation and interview.”
“I’m not going anywhere!” Jenny announced.
“You do not have a say in it,” Zvegin stated. “Move them!”
The soldiers bustled Jenny and the members of alpha team out of the medical shelter.
Abby, Suvova, Bulov and Antila were left behind with Torosyan and two other armed guards. The shelter door slammed
shut.
“Oh, this is not a good development,” Abby said.
The soldiers marched Jenny and the alpha team squad out through the snow towards a pair of waiting vehicles. The wind was even more fierce than before, and the forest around them was thrashing and swaying. Snowflakes dazzled in the headlights of the trucks. Jagged lightning displays tore the sky.
“Oh crap,” Redfern muttered. “Look at that.”
The terrible weather had cut light levels badly, but beyond the camp, through the driving snow and swaying trees, they could see a broad golden glow in the distance.
“That isn’t coming from the impact site,” Hemple said. “What the hell is it?”
“Firestorm,” Zvegin said. “The lightning has set off a major forest burn. This happens often. The wind is fanning it and driving it.”
“That’s a fire?” Jenny said. “It’s huge!”
Zvegin shrugged.
“In Sibir, nothing is small measure. If fire continues to sweep this way, the camp will have to be abandoned. Not your concern, however. You will not be here.”
The transport consisted of an ATV and a smaller, six-seater truck. Zvegin insisted that Jenny and Hemple — “the leader and the woman” — would ride in the truck with him, a driver and a guard. The others were bundled into the ATV.
The vehicles set off, slithering and revving through the fast-settling snow.
FORTY-NINE
Hunched against the snow stinging their faces, the two soldiers led the three prisoners away from the command tent and through the camp towards the medical hut.
“Forest fire,” Koshkin grumbled, looking at the glow in the east. “A bad one, too.”
“Something else to worry about,” Connor said.
There was a vivid flash as a luminous spur of lightning hit part of the tree canopy fifty metres away. It was like a bomb going off. They all froze, stunned for a moment.
Koshkin chopped his hand into the neck of one of the soldiers, and the man crashed over into the snow. Before he’d even landed, Koshkin had grabbed the other one, kicked his legs away and thrown him over his shoulder. Koshkin landed on top of the second man, delivered a brutal punch that guaranteed the soldier wasn’t going to get up again in the near future, and then tore the AK-74 off him, breaking the strap. Pivoting around, Koshkin hammered the stock of the weapon down on the helmeted head of the first soldier, who had just begun to rise.
Three crunching seconds, and both of their guards were unconscious and in need of hospitalisation.
“Flaming hell!” Connor gasped.
Koshkin got up, and aimed the captured weapon at Cutter and Connor.
“Am I a fool to trust you?” he demanded.
“What?” Cutter stared at him.
“Have you lied to me all along? Is this a trick, like Shvachko says it is?”
“No, it’s not.”
There was a long pause. Koshkin glared at Cutter. Flakes of snow billowed between them, and the thunder assaulted the sky.
Koshkin slowly raised the weapon so it was no longer aimed at them.
“Very well,” he said. “I needed to know, to be sure, before I crossed a line I could not uncross. Help me move these men into cover.”
Between the three of them, they dragged the unconscious troopers into a supply tent. The Russian helped himself to both AK-74s.
“What are we doing exactly?” Connor asked.
“We’re taking control of the situation,” Koshkin replied, taking some spare clips from the belt pouches of one of the men.
“What’s your plan?” Cutter wanted to know.
“I get hold of Shvachko’s laptop,” Koshkin explained, “and I supply you with the necessary entry and authority codes. You close the anomaly.”
“You reckon you can do that?” Cutter asked. Connor suddenly realised that Cutter was talking to him, not the FSB agent.
“What? Huh? It’s suddenly down to me?” he stammered.
“You’re the specialist,” Cutter said.
“Yeah, okay, thanks for the compliment,” Connor responded. “But this is the end of the world, not a high score on Command and Conquer, so hello? First of all, no pressure, eh? Second of all, even with the fancy secret codes and everything, you’re really asking me to use a military-grade laptop that I’ve barely had a chance to examine to re-task a mega-classified piece of orbital weapons hardware, and then aim said space weapon platform at a specific target and fire it?”
He paused.
“And not, during the whole procedure, cock up any of that?” he added.
“Yeah, that pretty much covers it,” Cutter replied. “Sound about right to you?”
Koshkin nodded.
“It’s an accurate summary.”
Connor looked stunned.
“Okay,” he said, “you’re both completely barmy.”
“Probably also an accurate summary.” Cutter looked at Koshkin. “Let’s go.”
The Russian nodded again. He had one of the captured AKs in his hands, and the other looped over his shoulder.
“One thing,” Cutter said. “You don’t ever point a gun at me again.”
“That’s only fair,” Koshkin agreed.
“This is wrong, Yuri,” Abby said.
Torosyan sighed.
“Please, Abby, you have lovely face, and I would happily listen to your sweet voice for many times, but you are going on and on.”
“You should listen to her,” Antila said.
“Not so much from you any more, I think,” Torosyan barked at the medical officer.
“Wooo, big man,” Abby said.
“Yes, indeed,” Antila agreed. “Big man, threatening a female with only a machine gun to protect him.”
“You’re as bad as each other!” Torosyan exclaimed. “Be quiet!”
The other two soldiers shuffled uncomfortably, but they kept their weapons aimed. With an exasperated puff of breath, Torosyan reached for his cigarettes.
“Not in here!” Antila ordered. “I have that much authority left, at least. You don’t smoke in here. There are volatile chemicals present.”
Torosyan sighed again, and left his cigarettes alone.
“There’s an awful lot at stake, Yuri,” Abby said in a more reasonable voice.
“I don’t care.”
“You should care,” she said. She had been crowded into a corner of the hut with Suvova, Bulov and Antila. Her shoulders were up against a support post, and the post was pressing something into the small of her back. Bulov’s CO2 pistol was still tucked into her waistband, and it was loaded.
For a moment, she considered trying to grab it. But she quickly realised that it would be an incredibly stupid thing to do. Even if she got the capture gun out, and managed to fire it, and actually hit one of the soldiers, it was a single-shot gun and there were three of them. She had the small bag of darts over her shoulder, but it took a moment to reload the weapon.
The soldiers had assault rifles. If they opened fire, it wouldn’t just be her that got hurt.
“You really should care, Yuri,” she said, trying again. “A terrible thing is going to happen and —”
“Please, please, Abby, Abby,” Torosyan said, “you make my head hurt. You don’t know these things for sure. You don’t know anything about —”
“I do,” Bulov interrupted. “I know what will happen.”
He looked at the soldiers, and then dragged out a folding chair and sat down on it heavily.
“A comet is going to hit the Earth,” he said. He brushed flecks of dirt off his trousers with a slightly over-fussy gesture before continuing. “It’s basically a lump of rock about ten kilometres wide, and it’s travelling far faster than the bullets that come out of your rifles. A nanosecond after it hits, there will be a release of energy greater than if you exploded hundreds of atomic bombs at the same time. The blast will be hotter than the heart of a star. One trillion megatons. Seas will turn to steam. It will dig a crater in the planet’s crust 200 kilometre
s wide, and hurl a hundred trillion tons of molten rock into space.
“The planet will convulse with massive earthquakes. The impact shockwave alone will shred the atmosphere. There will be these things known as hypercanes, which are hurricanes dozens of times more powerful than we have ever, ever seen. Nitrous oxides mixed up by the fireblast chemistry will wipe out the entire ozone layer. There will be tsunamis. They will drown continents.”
Bulov paused. He fussed at a loose thread on his jacket.
“And that will be merely the beginning,” he resumed. “All the rock that was blasted into space, all one hundred trillion tons of it, will fall back. Rock will rain down, irradiating the surface of Planet Earth with the heat generated by its re-entry, and turning it into a furnace, an oven that will cook pretty much anything and anyone unfortunate enough to have survived. And even then, it won’t be the end.
“The grotesque amounts of sulphur added to the atmosphere will cause acid rainfall. So will the raging, global firestorms consuming all the forests. The toxic pollutants in the smoke, together with the acid rain, will comprehensively poison the oceans and exterminate all marine life. By then, dust will have blocked out the light of the sun.
“Night will last for decades, maybe centuries. Average global temperatures may drop by as much as fifteen degrees Celsius. This is the impact winter. When the sun finally returns, it will bring the ultraviolet spring. With the ozone layer depleted to nothing, ultraviolet radiation will scour the planet.
“Let’s suppose, in an optimistic moment, that some few shreds of life have endured to this point. The ultraviolet radiation will cause fundamental DNA damage, producing cataracts, mutations, cancers.”
Bulov looked up at the soldiers.
“This is what will happen,” he said. “So don’t tell me what I know or do not know.”
The soldiers looked nervously at one another. Torosyan shook his head, a sick look on his face.
“Watch them,” he told the other two. “Just watch them.”
Torosyan strode out of the hut into the snow and pulled out his cigarettes. He tried to light one, but the wind was too strong, so he hunched up and shuffled around to the rear of the medical tent.
The rear wall of the tent offered a little more shelter from the wind and snow. His hands were shaking. In the lee of the tent, he lit his cigarette and took several deep drags. The cigarette smoke smelled particularly strong in the biting cold air.