Extinction Event by Dan Abnett

Author:Dan Abnett [Abnett, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857680624
Publisher: Titan Books Ltd
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-SIX

“So he’s communicated?” Lester asked. Despite the early hour, and the fact that he’d been rushed to the ARC by an urgent call, he seemed very alert.

“We think it’s probably Connor, actually,” Jenny said. “He’s the e-whiz.”

“Is that a real word?” Lester asked her. “Because if it is, I might have to write to The Times decrying the deterioration of the English language. Again.”

They were striding side by side across the main chamber of the ARC. The morning staff had come on early, and there was a steady bustle of activity. Bright columns of data flickered across the huge main screens. Jenny led her boss down the bright access corridor into one of the briefing rooms that looked out onto the main chamber through a thick window plate.

“The message has come via a tortuous route,” she explained. “We’re still trying to unpick it. It was a very non-standard means of getting a message out. It was concealed, and then attached to something that wasn’t meant to be used as a mail carrier.” She shrugged. “Basically, it’s quite ingenious.”

Lester crossed his arms and looked at her.

“And you’d need to be somebody like Connor Temple to manage it?”

“Exactly,” she acknowledged.

Technicians were clustered around a monitor in the briefing room. The message box was on display. Lester uncrossed his arms and peered at it.

“Bone Idol?”

Jenny smiled.

“It’s alpha team’s code name for Cutter.”

Lester thought about that.

“Do we all have code names?” he asked.

“We do,” Jenny confirmed.

“Do I have a code name?”

“Yes,” Hemple said, striding into the briefing room and joining them at the monitor. He was dressed in full alpha team kit, and an automatic pistol was buckled at his hip. “We’ve locked up the GPS coordinates.”

“Show me,” Lester commanded. Hemple shooed the technicians aside and called up a new screen on the monitor.

“Oh my God,” Jenny murmured. “If we know where they are, we can go and get them.”

“Don’t get too excited,” Hemple said. The screen image was a satellite map, overlaid with indicator graphics.

Lester turned his head to one side, studying the map.

“I give up. Where is it?”

“It’s a tributary of the Podkamennaya or Lower Stony Tunguska River in the Krasnoyarsk Krai,” Hemple replied.

“Really?” Lester raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that near Leatherhead?”

“It’s Siberia,” Hemple informed him.

Lester looked at Jenny.

“Oh that Podkamennaya Tunguska.”

“Siberia?” Jenny repeated, shock making her voice squeak slightly. Hemple nodded.

“Well, that’s rather spoiled everything, hasn’t it?” Lester said. “Inserting anybody into the Russian Federation is going to be pretty well im-possible, let alone an armed retrieval team. The Russians are oddly sensitive about things like that.”

“Rules can always be bent,” Jenny said, struggling to recover herself. “The Foreign Office could —”

“Please try to live in the real world,” Lester interrupted impatiently. “This is a whole new ball game. The Foreign Office is not going to authorise — even clandestinely — what would amount to a military invasion of Russian Federal territory, and the Russians would hardly tolerate it even if the FO did authorise it. And even if those two

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