Don Pendleton - Fireburst

In the distance, thunder softly rumbled.

He only hoped it wasn’t already too late.

CHAPTER TWO

Bern, Switzerland

A thick blanket of glistening snow covered the jagged mountains surrounding the valley, puffy white clouds drifting lazily along the granite tors and snowcapped peaks.

Joyful singing could be heard coming from both the church and the synagogue. A frozen lake reflected the majestic Alps, the image slightly distorted by the laughing people skating arm in arm. Numerous people in snowmobiles scooted along the gentle hills, and a deadly serious snowball fight was raging out of control at the elementary school.

The town of Bern was a combination of the old and the very old. A stone tower attached to city hall boasted a gigantic clock with human-size figures that came out and performed a robotic dance every hour on the hour. There was an artesian well in the town square where people still drew water, even though they had modern plumbing, and there was the jingle of bells as teams of horses pulled colorful sleighs along the snowy streets.

Every wooden building was decorated with ornate carvings, every brick structure painted with highly stylized hex symbols of good luck and prosperity. The satellite dishes were concealed in the nearby woods, the cables laid under the ground so that they wouldn’t mar the appearance of a classic Swiss village, and the fully functional Second World War antiaircraft cannons were well-hidden inside concrete bunkers designed to resemble stone cottages. As with just about everything else in the mountainous country, nothing was precisely what it seemed to be at first glance.

Just down the block from the town square was a crowd of people in heavy parkas and gloves. Standing politely behind the bright yellow “danger” tape, they talked in hushed whispers and took endless pictures with their cell phones.

On the other side of the barrier, gray smoke rose from the mounds of hot ashes and burned timbers that used to be a small bookstore. The firefighters had gone home hours earlier, and the chief constable of the village had trundled back to the station to write a report on the incident.

Suddenly, there was the roar of an engine, and a shiny Harley-Davidson motorcycle charged across the new bridge spanning the frozen lake. Revving the twin-V88 engine to maximum, the driver banked low around a corner, both wheels slipping in the ice under the snow in spite of the winter spikes. Cursing vehemently, the driver fought for control of the bike, and managed to right the Harley before jouncing over a frosty granite curb. For a split second, man and machine were airborne, then they came down hard, skittering along the slippery sidewalk until coming to a ragged halt at the danger tape.

Many people in the crowd frowned at the rude arrival of the outsider, but said nothing, merely moving aside to give the stranger a better view of the wreckage. Sitting on the purring motorcycle, the driver did nothing for several minutes but stare at the gaping black hole in the ground only a few yards away.

Turning off the Harley, the man kicked down the stand and walked to the edge of the pit, still trying to comprehend what he was seeing.

“Impossible,” he muttered, lifting his visor. “This is impossible!”

Just then, cries of surprise rose from the skaters on the lake as a BMW snowmobile rocketed across the frozen expanse. Narrowly missing the scattering villagers, the big machine zoomed straight up the bank onto the snowy street and across the village green.

At breakneck speed, the driver dodged the well and several children and slammed through a snowman, reducing it back into its basic component. Blinded by the explosion of flakes, the driver zigzagged down the street, nearly clipping several parked cars and another snowman before crashing into the granite cornerstone of the local bank. Stone chips went flying, the fender crumpled, and the engine sputtered into silence. However, the driver managed to stay in the seat just long enough to ride out the recoil before hopping off and yanking open a rear compartment to haul out a bulky toolbox.

The driver was clearly a woman, and wearing the incongruous outfit of a ball gown and a thick puffy winter jacket. Satin slippers jutted from a pocket, and she was wearing heavy black snow boots.

“Damn it, Della, it took you long enough to get here,” the driver of the motorcycle said, removing his helmet.

“Shut up, Zander. I live farther away than you do,” Della Gotterstein countered, striding toward what remained of the bookstore. “How bad is the damage?”

“Total,” Zander Meyers stated.

She scowled. “Bah, that is not possible.”

“See for yourself!” Meyers said, making a sweeping gesture.

Pushing her way through the rapidly thinning crowd, Gotterstein halted at the danger tape to stare down into the charred hole.

“Good God,” she whispered, setting down the toolbox to remove her own helmet. A wealth of golden hair cascaded to her trim waist.

“Told you,” Meyers said, running a hand over his thick hair, the expensive toupee shifting ever so slightly.

“How in the… I mean…what could…” She glanced around at the surrounding building, then swallowed hard. “Is this an echo?”

Meyers frowned at that. Echo was code for a terrorist attack. “To be honest, I have no goddamn idea.”

Displeased, Gotterstein pursed her lips at the blasphemy, but held her tongue. The man was an electronic genius, and that was all that mattered at the moment. His ridiculous belief in evolution was his own private affair.

As the last of the crowd politely departed, Meyers and Gotterstein ducked under the tape to walk carefully into the smoky crater. Only stacks of ash remained from the thousands of burned books, but there were also several puddles of congealed plastic, as well as a lot of melted wiring, and what might have been fried circuit boards. They were in such poor condition it was hard to tell.

“What do you think?” Meyers asked hopefully.

“Are you expecting a miracle?” Gotterstein retorted angrily, kicking over a bookcase. Underneath was a smashed keyboard. “Neither of us can repair this. There’s nothing left of the bank’s mainframe. It does not exist anymore!”

“Sadly, I concur.” Meyers sighed as a light snow began to fall. The flakes vanished with a hiss as they landed on the broken timbers and smashed bricks.

“Billions of euros lost,” Gotterstein said, glancing at the sky. “Are you sure this was not an echo?”

“According to the preliminary report from the fire department, this was caused by lightning,” Meyers said, turning up his collar.

“Bah, impossible!” the woman scoffed. “The Swiss banking consortium had us install every safeguard known to modern science. No amount of lightning could have done this!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes! It would take hundreds of bolts to smash through all of our shielding, antistatic defenses and Faraday cages!”

“So maybe there were hundreds of bolts.”

“Are you insane?”

“Then how do you explain it?”

“I…I cannot.”

“Let’s check the garage,” Meyers said, starting back toward the street.

The snowy town seemed deserted as the man and woman crossed the street to an old barn. The side door was painted to resemble wood, but up close it was clearly welded steel. Unlocking the door, they stepped inside and waited. After a few moments, the ceiling lights automatically flickered into life.

Proceeding along a bare concrete tunnel, they passed several massive cannon emplacements and ammunition bunkers. The air of the disguised fortress was stale, and the dust on the floor showed that no one had been inside the building for years.

At the end of the tunnel, they each inserted a special key into a pair of slots and turned them in unison. There was a low hum, and the wall broke apart to reveal a computer workstation.