Silence followed…
From behind came a strange creaking noise. Alix focused his senses; the landing area was vast, and littered with burnt out debris. It was a sniper’s heaven. But the problem was; Alix wasn’t a sniper!
How many killers and guards had really been left behind?
There had been three guards, all were now dead. Four Assassins had entered the facility. Leaving only the shooter who had gone over the rampart, that left, he saw them out of the corner of his eye, two Assassins — they were operating as a unit. As he watched, they moved fluidly in and out of the shadows beside the burnt out stack of fifty-gallon drums — Alix watched them climb smoothly up and over any obstacle that stood in their way, as they disappeared from view. His eyes flickered on the burnt-out remains of the Bell Robinson helicopter in the middle of the landing bay.
Alix remained in a crouch. Remained perfectly still, only his eyes moved, scanning for any movement through the smoke filled area.
Imminent danger… And not from the obvious quarter. No, this was a premonition from deep within him.
Alix saw the Priest; he moved warily from the shadows and Alix realised, too late, that the Assassins had out maneuvered the big man and were positioned above him now. Alix raised his gun and started firing.
Bullets struck sparks from the metal fifty-gallon drums, and ploughed furrows in the stone walls. The Priest spun — and with surgical precision fired one long burst of the MP5 on automatic at one of the thick overhead cargo carrying cables. With a shearing of tortured metal it snapped, sending deafening echoes reverberating across the vast area and out into the mountain range. As the cable snapped, one half snaked its way out of the pulley assembly and slinked over the rampart, to fall away into the valley below — the second half whipped around the landing bay, a wrist snapping garrotte that slashed through the drifting smoke, slicing through anything that got in its path and snaked across the ground.
The Priest leaped, moving fast in the long black leather coat. The two Assassins opened fire from their vantage point, bullets whining from Uzi mini sub-machine guns as the cable was drawn back to connect with the other pulley assembly — it tossed fifty-gallon drums aside as the thick steel cable was heaved upwards, tearing through everything that stood in its way; it struck a stack of fire charred cargo crates with deafening booms, and then with a final swish and a final thwackas it struck the roof of the landing area and its momentum expired…
Off balance, the two Assassins leaped to be free of the danger. Alix’s MP5 cut them both in half.
Finally everything became settled into stillness; through the drifting smoke and out across the mountain range, the rain was still falling heavily, and Alix still crouched as if to spring, uncoiled and nodded towards the Priest. They both moved warily towards the entrance to the facility, and gazed back at the destruction — the snapped, blackened cable, the fifty-gallon drums split open like sardine cans, the bodies of the dead guards and Assassins, and the flaming remains of the Bell Robinson six-man helicopter.
“Nice and quietly, does it then!” Alix said, rolling up his balaclava. He wiped a sheen of sweat from his face, and lit up a cigarette.
“It might have gone smoother, I’ll grant you. But God moves in mysterious ways, my son.” Acknowledged the Priest slowly.
“Wait, listen up. Do you hear what I hear?”
“Yes.”
“I’d know that voice anywhere.”
“Jake Dillon!” They both said it at the same time.
“Maybe God was smiling down on us after all. Perhaps he’s found Kirill?”
“We’d better go in carefully, just in case there are any more of those nasty little buggers in there with him.”
“Quite so,” said the Priest with pious sobriety, and moved forward towards the entrance of Kirill’s facility.
Alix took one long last pull on his cigarette, and then flicked the stub high into the air.
“Okay then, Kirill. Let’s see what secrets you’re hiding in there,” he muttered, calming his fluttering heart. He followed the Priest and both men were soon concealed on either side of the open doorway, hidden by grey granite walls of mountain rock.
Claudia Dax paused; stared around guiltily, like a child caught stealing a toy, sweat pouring down her forehead as she moved closer to the large wall panel.
Her flattened palm pressed against the cold black glass of the bio-metric reader. She held her breath.
The panel slid open; a soft-touch keypad was exposed — she keyed in a complex series of digits.
Then the inner sanctum opened, to reveal the core processor, the nucleus of the mountain facility. The core processor that not only controlled the facility’s environment but also, because she had been the one who had hidden it there, it held the final codes to complete the Chimera Programme which could allow it to operate at 100 %! Kirill’s very own core processor held the key to Chimera…
…and Claudia was the only one who knew that the key had been under his nose all this time!
She tapped in a few digits; there was a hiss, a disk slid into place and within ten seconds it was done. She pulled free the tiny silver optical disk and stared thoughtfully at its mirror-like surface.
To hold the most damaging data in the world in your hands, she thought: every scrap of information about the Chimera Programme. How it worked — its entire design — its heart…
The blueprints for Chimera’s soul.
She smiled nastily to herself. Fuck you, you murderers, she thought; I have something you not only want, but you need! The final scripts had been there all the time, you just didn’t know where to look, and now I have the data I need to create a Chimera that will operate at one-hundred percent.
And what’s more, I can now build as many Chimera Programmes as I like…
Claudia thought back to all the blueprints, the designs. Chimera was a programme that, once loaded onto even the most basic PC, could launch itself onto the world-wide-web and leech data, constantly self learning, and taking whatever it wanted, when it wanted. Carry Chimera loaded onto a WiFi enabled laptop into any public building; within five seconds it would, without alerting even the most sophisticated spyware, have entered the network and taken control of every machine within the building. At twenty seconds it would have replicated a billion times across the globe, taking control of satellite links, weapons systems, government mainframes, and the world’s stock markets. In effect, whoever launches a Chimera running at one-hundred percent — has total control!
It was a malicious parasite.
It could go anywhere, control anything.
It would make whoever controlled the source of the programme, the most powerful person on Earth.
Chimera undeniably worked at its optimum in amongst the most sophisticated of processors and programs. Designed to learn and adapt with stealth at lightning speed, and without leaving a spec of evidence that it had ever been on the host hard drive. Chimera was one of a kind. The most advanced mal-ware programme on the planet — and Claudia Dax had not only created it, but she now had the completed programme in the palm of her hand…
Claudia Dax reached forward, and then stopped. She glanced over her shoulder, half expecting to see an Assassin with the muzzle of its Uzi pointing at her.
But she was alone.
Claudia had found a black satchel type bag; she dropped the disk into a zipped pocket inside and turned… Only then did she see the red flashing LED light on the side of the black box like device attached to the side of one of the main server units.
As she stared at the device, the red flashing light changed, to amber…