‘Why are you doing this?’ she stammered, trying to distract him. ‘I can help you,’ she said, even though she suspected he could not understand her. She kept her voice soft and tender, trying to sound compassionate and unafraid. ‘Please let me help you.’ She stared into his eyes, waiting for the change in them that would signal his thrust. She would try and block it, move aside and counter. Her instincts would take over and unleash all the power she had until he was beaten.
But instead of tensing for the thrust Durrani remained still.
Christine could sense his sudden hesitation and wondered if he had understood her.
Durrani had indeed paused. He had fully intended to close the gap between them and thrust the knife deep into the blurred outline. But the voice stopped him, the voice of a woman, the first he had heard in a long time. He could not understand the words but he could hear the soft, pleading tones. Indelible memories returned. Since his incarceration with nothing to do but think he had experienced countless recollections of his mother, many of them tormenting. He had also been haunted by memories of the girl in the street when he’d been a boy, and in particular of the one he’d shot in Yakaolang while she pleaded for her brother’s life. Although they had been separate incidents, over the years those women had become one in his mind. And now she was standing in front of him, talking to him, pleading for him to recognise her.
Christine could only guess at the sudden change that had come over the Afghan. She had not expected her words to alter his murderous intent. But, bizarrely, that was exactly what had apparently happened. ‘It’s OK,’ she went on, maintaining the same soothing tone. ‘I know how you feel. I understand . . . I do.’
The room suddenly reverberated with the shriek of klaxons. Durrani snapped out of his trance. His grip on the knife tightened, his jaw clenched, his eyes narrowed. He came out of the fog and back into reality and stepped forward to make his thrust.
The lights went out.
Chapter 15
The auxiliary lights came on in the OCR, triggering a cacophony of alarms, beeps and flashing warning lights as the controller and his assistant frantically moved between computer consoles, operating panels and monitors, trying to figure out what precisely was happening.
‘This is crazy!’ the senior controller shouted, his stress level rising perceptibly. ‘I’ve got pressure differentials spiking all over the goddamned place.’
‘There’s no power from the surface barge!’ the assistant called out.
‘What in God’s name is going on?’
The controller flicked through CCTV cameras all over the prison. Many did not function, some showed quiet, empty corridors while others revealed water rushing in through doors and along passageways.
‘Where’s the breach?’ the controller demanded.
‘There’s more’n one, that’s for sure.’
‘Galley’s showing four bars below normal. If it continues to drop the walls’ll give.’
‘Holy cow! We got a serious drop in pressure on level four. I can’t stabilise it.’
‘There’s no compensation control. Do we have comms with the terminal?’
The assistant grabbed up a radio handset and pushed a pre-set frequency button. ‘Mother one, this is Styx, copy!’
The speakers remained silent.
‘Mother one, this is Styx!’ the assistant repeated. ‘We have an emergency situation, do you copy?’
‘Styx,’ a voice crackled over the speakers. ‘This is mother one, come in.’
The senior controller grabbed the handset from his assistant.‘Be advised we have a serious emergency down here. I’m talking very serious. Remain on standby, OK?’
‘Can you describe the nature of the emergency?’
‘We’re flooding on just about every level as far as we can tell! Stand by.’
The controller hit a speaker button on the phone and punched in a couple of numbers.
Mandrick looked around at the flashing red light on his desk phone, took another glance at the computer monitor to see how the virus was spreading, walked over and picked up the phone. ‘Mandrick.’
‘Warden. We have a crisis situation.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘The pressure’s out of control. We’re flooding. The perimeter’s been breached in several places. We could be heading for total perimeter failure. We’re not sure how or where it started. Maybe C cell. The equalisers aren’t compensating. We’ve got a negative pressure migration to levels three and five which we are currently unable to control.’
‘What about the access doors on those levels?’ Mandrick asked casually, his voice booming over the speakers in the operations control room.
‘When the pressure equalised most of the doors popped before I could set all the manual overrides. We need people to physically close them,’ the controller said, looking at a monitor that showed a torrent of water gushing along a corridor. ‘Right now I don’t see how that’s possible.’
‘Your prognosis?’ Mandrick asked as he reached for his waterproof bag.
‘Well . . . the mains-power outage isn’t good. It’s like the barge has shut down.’ The controller looked at a computer monitor that mirrored the one in Mandrick’s office.‘The auto system has failed or is about to. It looks to me as if the program’s erasing itself. I don’t understand how we can have so many unrelated failures all happening at the same time.’
Mandrick was also curious since his virus program was only designed to affect the pressure compensators. ‘Did you say that the surface power’s been cut?’ he asked, certain his virus was not supposed to cause anything like that to happen.
‘Yes, sir. We’re running on UPS auxiliary, emergency systems only.’
‘Can we consolidate?’ Mandrick wanted to know. The controller looked around the room at the orchestra of complaining systems monitors and at his assistant who gave him a dour look before shaking his head. ‘I’d have to say that’s a negative, sir,’ the controller finally said. Despite the seriousness of the emergency he was well aware of the implications of making such a firm decision. He could already see himself facing the judicial inquiry and being grilled for the reasons behind such a catastrophic assessment. ‘If we move now we might be able to get everyone to the barges.’
‘I understand,’ Mandrick said, pouring himself a Scotch, taking a sip and then knocking it back, wincing as the fiery liquor coursed down his throat. ‘Give the order to abandon the facility.’
The controller looked at his assistant just in case there was anything to suggest that the order was premature. Nothing was forthcoming.
‘Did you hear me, controller?’ Mandrick asked, his voice echoing in the OCR.
‘Will do, sir . . . and sir?’
‘Yes?’
‘Good luck.’
‘You too,’ Mandrick said, replacing the receiver and picking up his bag. He paused to take a last look around, imagining the room flooded and wondering how long it would be, if ever, before anyone set a foot - or a fin - inside it again.
He headed across the room, operated the door which needed his help to open and stepped out into the corridor. Water several inches deep flowed past him from the steps above.
The alarms dimmed as a voice broke through them. ‘ABANDON THE FACILITY!’ it called out in a relatively calm voice. ‘ALL PERSONNEL TO THE ESCAPE BARGES ON LEVEL TWO!’
Mandrick exhaled philosophically. He had done it. It was something he had, bizarrely perhaps, looked forward to for a long time. This was what he called power. He had single-handedly brought Styx to an end, the implications of which would spread around the globe. Some would rejoice, some would despair, while others would be horrified or even amused.