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genetically-enhanced grass surrounded the Complex in a lush green oasis. Coleman knew the lawn was fundamental to the operation of the Complex, but that was all he could discover.
                Where do they get the water for all that grass? he wondered.
                ‘Okay. We’ve just lost GPS navigation,’ advised the pilot. He spoke quickly into his headset and then shook his head at the co-pilot. ‘I’ve lost the other birds.’
                ‘It’s their security system,’ confirmed Coleman, leaning forward to talk over the chopper drone. ‘The signal jamming should start about five clicks out if all their C-Guards are fired up.’
                ‘Spot on,’ confirmed the co-pilot, checking his instruments. ‘Five clicks. That’s some impressive jamming hardware.’
                No landlines served the Complex. It was all wireless. In a world where every cell phone could transmit images and data around the world, the C-Guards offered the only secure option.
                Coleman had experience with the types of C-Guards used for protecting VIP convoys, but never anything on this scale. C-Guards were very high powered radio jamming devices. During a security alert, such as the theft of sensitive research data, no electronic signals could breach a five kilometer zone around the Complex. This prevented the stolen data being transmitted off site. T he devices shrouded the Complex in a zone of radio silence.
                But not for long.
    Coleman pointed out the windshield . ‘There. That helipad’s our drop point.’
    ‘I see it,’ replied the pilot, flicking off a series of alarm switches. The Pave Hawk wasn’t happy about all the jamming to its navigation and weapon systems.
    Coleman checked his wristwatch and smiled. At that exact moment, two Pave Hawks peeled off left and right. The elevator and ventilation plant rooms made ideal infiltration points. One helicopter headed to the west elevator plant room, the other to its eastern equivalent on the right side of the plug. A third bird went humming straight over Coleman’s Pave Hawk towards the northern plant room.
                Coleman struggled to keep the growing excitement from his face. A wave of anticipation crested through the helicopter’s passengers, Marines and weapons inspectors both.
                It was show time, and his team were taking the front entrance.
     
    #
     
    Gunmen poured from the freight containers, leaping over Ralph’s body. They moved fast, with purpose, securing the storage area, then the freight lift, then the entire south-west quadrant of the basement level.
                ‘All clear,’ reported the lead gunman, a huge man with the body of a competitive weight-lifter. ‘Zero resistance.’
                At that signal, two men stepped from the first container.
                They couldn’t have looked more different from one another.
                The face on the left was so angular that nervous sweat dripped from the tip of his nose. His brown hair clumped straight back like a rat squirming from a sewer. He looked prematurely aged, with deep lines surrounding his sallow eyes like cracks in a drying saltpan.
                Dressed in the same grey military-style fatigues as the gunmen, he was the only person not wearing a headset radio and a grey bullet-proof vest.
                This was Francis Gould.
                But it was the second man who dominated the scene, diminishing Gould’s presence to an insubstantial shadow.
                Turning his head slowly, absorbing the scene from left to right, Cameron Cairns’s rugged features exuded a cold aura of barely-restrained violence.
                Cairns’s presence triggered instinctive fear in strangers. When he entered the room, you immediately appreciated your own mortality. When he