Night was turning to dawn across the Scottish Highlands. Outside, the temperature had plummeted and the sky was perfectly clear, stars fading into temporary oblivion as the sun embarks on its daily journey. Kirill still sat in his chair, the room now in total darkness, only the glow of a cigar in his hand evidence that he remained in the deep underground office, awake, alert, dark eyes glittering. He scratched at the scar on his belly self consciously.
He stared at images of the mountain range, just a blackened outline in the low cold light of dawn, stark and foreboding on the monitor screen. Nothing stirred; there were no lights, no movement, and no intrusions. This place was emptiness; this place was a void. The establishment was invisible; a non place; a deniable spectre in the maw of the Scottish wilderness.
Kirill smiled softly to himself.
All around him, in the silence, he could almost feel the hive of activity. A small army of workers: programmers, hardware engineers, hackers, the world’s finest computing minds working together on some of the most excitingly advanced projects ever embarked upon.
The Chimera Programme. The first-ever self-learning chameleon virus programme.
The prototype of an artificial mind. That knows no boundaries.
The ultimate virus…
Kirill had created Chimera to be used against terrorists and organised crime syndicates. But had soon realised that with some fine tuning, it could be used to bring down, almost any network including; banks, military installations, police and other emergency services and government departments: it could infiltrate any type of computer, and, within the blink of and eye, access encrypted files and extract every scrap of information, before shutting the computer down. Permanently. It would be the perfect weapon. It would make him, and Ramus, and the others… it would make them rich, it would make them powerful but — more importantly…
It would make them God.
Kirill sighed, exhaling a spiral of white smoke into the darkness. Diffused light invaded the black. A figure stepped forward, and soft bare footsteps approached.
He gazed up at the figure, naked now, body perfectly toned, perfectly formed; muscular and tanned. Kirill licked his lips and met the blue-eyed gaze of the young blond-haired woman. To Kirill, this was his idea of the perfect female — athletic and nubile.
Kirill’s gaze travelled down, and then back up again across the perfectly formed thighs, hips, stomach, breasts — and to the face. The tanned skin with her piercingly blue eyes.
The face was beautiful.
Cold and beautiful.
Kirill smiled a strange twisted smile.
He could feel desire and lust rise up through his body. “If only you were real,” he said picking up the remote handset off of his desk, and ending the three dimensional hologram programme, the room was thrown back into total blackness.
Chapter 13
Dillon knew it was a dream, and yet somehow that made it worse. While awake he had some element of control; but in the dream he was merely a spectator and already knew the order of events and the outcome. Knew what happened, knew about the organised crime syndicates and drug cartels, and knew about the shocking after-effects when the specialdrugs were handed out freely to those addicted, to what had become known as Death Candy, in every major city around the globe… and yet, again and again he could relive those dark moments with dismay, anger and pure hatred — but without control or the ability to stop the potential death toll rising into the tens of millions…
He stood, his boots planted firmly on the wet slippery deck of the huge oil tanker that cruised through the dark black waters of the Barents Sea. Dillon’s eyes were dark, deeply ringed, and the black uniform he was wearing smeared with grime and dried blood. The cold sea-breeze had turned his face numb, the tips of his ears tingled with the first signs of frost bite. His gloved hands clasped the Heckler & Koch machine pistol, the magazine fully loaded with mercury tipped rounds.
The British nuclear powered submarine had been on a hunterkill mission to intercept and board a Colombian owned oil tanker carrying Death Candy that was destined for every European city. What Dillon, and the submarine’s attack force, had found the mind could not comprehend. The entire hold of the tanker was full of drugs… Death Candy.
It left a bad taste in Dillon’s brain, like a poisonous line of cocaine.
A laboratory manufactured hallucinogenic drug, Death Candy was destined to be handed out like a plague across all of the European states.
The tanker was huge, had beenstripped of anything unnecessary, so as to hold the maximum cargo. The drugs, man-made and devastating, would have done the job they had been designed to do, if the submarine had not found them in time.
Dillon was stood on the slippery deck, machine pistol cold. One of the assault team’s junior officers waved, moved towards him, and their bleak gazes met over the millions of tons of Death Candy.
“There’s activity,” said the Lieutenant coldly.
“So I heard over the comm.”
On their way to intercept the tanker, the submarine had picked up radio chatter between the tanker’s captain and what sounded like the owner of the lethal cargo. And just before the crew and captain were overthrown, a distress signal had been sent out by the tanker’s wireless operator. Its message simple, under attack…
Dillon and the young navel officer sprang into action, along with all the other men from the submarine’s attack force.
Helicopters roared overhead, forward machine guns blazing, spitting bullets across the decks of the tanker and into the sea, and Dillon and the young naval officer sprinted forward with Heckler’s juddering in their grips, faces grim, giving covering arcs of fire for one another as they crouched, bullets ricocheting on the heavy metal deck beneath their boots. Terrorists dressed in military style combat uniforms abseiled from the helicopters, Kalashnikov mini machinepistols blazing as they ascended to the deck of the tanker.
Dillon spun and put a bullet in the face of a terrorist… but, almost by reflex, the terrorist’s gun was firing, pumping bullets.
One caught Dillon square in the chest, his bullet-proof body armour saving him. With a gasp he was lifted off of his feet, punched backwards with a fist of iron and thrown down heavily onto the oily deck…
He landed, the wind knocked out of him, momentarily dazed, as all around him, wildfire was let loose and the death toll started to rise. The attack force was overcome in minutes, so many terrorists, too much firepower. And then the heavy blow that sent him spiralling into blackness…
“Whoa!”
Night had fallen over Santorini. Dillon awoke with a sudden start, a terrible searing pain inside his head. He could smell wood burning outside and pushed himself up into a sitting position, the events of the dream flooding through his mind in waves.
Tatiana was there, sitting by the side of his bed. Her hands were cool against the clamminess of his skin as she laid him back down and pulled the single sheet up over his naked body. Dillon’s eyes focused and he realised that the room was dimly lit by a single candle. The noise of insects spiralled in through wooden shutters; below them was a hive of technological advancement — a state-of-the-art spy station disguised by a simplistic mask. Distantly he heard the crackling of a fire and the subdued voices of the armed guards. Dillon rubbed his head. “Any painkillers?”
Tatiana handed him tablets and a glass of iced water. “You dreaming about terrorists and drugs again?”
He nodded. “Yeah, that and death.”
“Death?”
“Don’t worry about it.” He took the painkillers and washed them down with the mineral water.