Matt Reilly Stories Read online

  And with that, the domed headset was lowered over Black’s head and within moments his eyes closed…

  Dinosaurland

  …and he found himself standing on the low hilltop overlooking Dinosaurland. The River Thames lay before him snaking through the primordial forest.

  On his hilltop sat a concrete structure, with a helipad and a shed on it. In the shed were racks of superweapons used by tourist-hunters to bring down dinosaurs: Remington mega-shotguns, plasma-based RPGs, Steyr pulse rifles. Black took one of each, plus boxes of ammo and a few sulfuric acid grenades.

  A noise disturbed him.

  He spun—shotgun up—to see the D i n o s a u r l a n d hovercopter landing on the helipad outside.

  It was the author, Mitchell Raleigh, with his computer-generated pilot, returning from their scenic tour of Dinosaurland.

  Raleigh got out of the hover-chopper, saw Black.

  ‘Hey there! Geez, this is awesome—’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Raleigh,’ Black said quickly, ‘but a situation has come up. I need you to come with me and exit Time Tours right now.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  Black told him as they walked.

  ‘He drugged us all…’ Mitch said. ‘Is there any way I can help?’

  ‘The best way you can help me is just by going home.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Mitch, Black and Pi made their way to the meadow that would one day house Westminster Abbey. There they found a small steel cabin the size of a telephone booth: the Emergency Exit Portal. Near it was another weapons shed.

  Mitch said to Black, ‘Go. Go and save Laura. She’s a friend of mine. I can get back from here. You need to hurry.’

  Black nodded, then he stepped into the steel booth, pressed a button and— ZAP! —the booth blazed with white light and he was gone.

  Mitch shrugged, turned to Pi. ‘Thank you for the tour, Pi. You were great.’

  ‘It was my pleasure, Mr. Raleigh. I shall endeavour to have one of your books downloaded into my program files, so that next time we may converse about it.’

  ‘Cool.’ Mitch stepped into the booth, saw a wall-panel with a button for each world plus a large red button marked ‘EMERGENCY EXIT’.

  But then he paused.

  He was worried about Laura, and he wondered if one man, Black, was enough to save her from Humbert Hughes’s super-army.

  Surely it couldn’t hurt to take a look…

  He pursed his lips, and made the call.

  And stepped out of the booth. ‘Hey, Pi. Got any more of those big-ass dino-guns nearby? I think we should visit Superstar.’

  Entering Superstar

  Blinding light. Then normal vision returned...

  ...and Mitch Raleigh found himself standing in a silver booth positioned in the uppermost chamber of the belltower of Westminster Abbey, not far from the Abbey’s ten-foot-high bell.

  He peered out the doorway of his booth—

  —just in time to see a joint of Nazi paratroopers emerge from the stairwell and shoot about a million bullets into Nathan Black.

  Black shuddered and convulsed under the hailstorm of bullets before he fell, dead.

  Mitch stared, horrified.

  Back in Austin

  Nathan Black instantly awoke. Since he had only been in a light coma, his death inside Time Tours had simply woken him up.

  ‘Shit!’ he growled. ‘They got me. They’re guarding the portal.

  There’s no way in.’

  Tad Ellis went white. ‘What are we gonna do now?’

  ‘Wait a second…!’ the tech at a viewing console called.

  ‘There’s someone else in there. In Superstar. At the EEP. But it’s not a computer entity. It’s…it’s a guest signature. It’s Mitchell Raleigh.’

  Mission: Superstar

  Mitch peered out from his booth, eyeing the body of Nathan Black, dead at the top of the stairwell.

  Suddenly, a fat figure stepped into view, and all the WWII troops immediately stood to attention.

  It was Humbert Hughes. And with him was—

  Laura.

  Her face was tear-stained, her eyes red.

  She was still dressed in her glittery opening-night dress.

  Hughes growled at her: ‘This was the man they sent to rescue you and to abduct me.

  Not to be.’

  He threw her to one of his men. ‘Take her the Tower. 24-hour guard.’

  Laura was hustled away.

  Then Hughes said to his paratrooper captain: ‘Keep two squads stationed in this chamber. Cover the portal. Kill anyone who comes out of it.’

  Hughes swept out of the belltower.

  Those paratroopers who remained there never noticed the two tiny figures dangling by their fingertips from the parapet of the belltower, three hundred feet above the ground.

  Mitch Raleigh and Pi.

  The Rescue Part I

  ‘They’re taking her to the Tower of London,’ Mitch whispered, still hanging from the belltower. ‘Once she’s there, we’re screwed. We’ll have to snatch her en route.’

  ‘But how?’ Pi asked.

  Mitch peered down the side of the belltower. After a few minutes, he saw the tiny figure of Laura emerge and get shoved into an open-topped Army jeep. Hughes followed shortly after, climbed into a limousine. Both cars were surrounded by a motorcade of several tanks and a few turret-mounted Allied and Nazi jeeps.

  ‘You got a parachute?’ Mitch asked.

  ‘I am required to wear one at all times.’

  ‘Directional?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Room for two?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then let’s do some rescuing,’ Mitch said, swinging over and grasping Pi around the waist. ‘Bombs away.’

  And with that, Pi let go of the parapet.

  In the Control Room

  ‘Oh, Christ! Raleigh just fell from the top of the belltower...’

  Everyone in the control room froze in horror.

  The Rescue Part II

  Mitch and Pi plummeted down the side of the belltower, the building’s vertical wall rushing by them in a blur of speed, before—WHACK!—a square-shaped parachute blossomed above them, issuing from Pi’s backpack.

  And suddenly they were gliding downwards at a steep angle heading for—

  Hughes’s now-moving military motorcade.

  The gun-turrets on two of the escort jeeps opened fire, but Pi fired back with his (far more powerful) pulse rifle, and with one shot, blew one of the jeeps to kingdom come. A second shot sent the other jeep careering off the road and into a shop window.

  Then a Nazi Panzer tank swiveled its canon turret, readying to fire, but this time it was Raleigh who responded, awkwardly shouldering his rocket launcher and firing it at the beast.

  The rocket lanced through the air before it slammed into the tank, incinerating it.

  Pi then zeroed in on the jeep carrying Laura, guiding the directional parachute toward the fleeing car.

  The parachute came over the speeding jeep and while Pi took out the two men guarding Laura with two brilliant headshots, Mitch then leaned down and kicked the driver clear out of the jeep. Then he dropped into the passenger seat while Pi released the chute and landed in the driver’s seat and took the wheel.

  Pi spun them around, and headed back for Westminster Abbey, the rest of the motorcade in hot pursuit.

  They skidded round a corner, shot past Parliament. Big Ben towering above them.

  Mitch turned to Laura, ‘Hey there—’

  He cut himself off, disturbed by a shocking sight in the distance.

  An entire army of Allied and Nazi troops was crossing the Parliament Bridge, coming right for them!

  It was at least 40,000 men: on foot, on jeeps, in tanks and on motorbikes.

  ‘We need to buy some time,’ Mitch said, thinking fast. ‘Pi, what’s the most powerful RPG you’ve got?’

  Pi pulled a rocket-propelled grenade from his be
lt. It had a glowing purple light on it. ‘Liquid plasma. Blows big.’

  Mitch took the plasma grenade and loaded it into his rocket launcher. Then, from the passenger seat of the speeding jeep, he aimed it at Big Ben. ‘I can’t believe I’m going to do this...’

  He pulled the trigger.

  The plasma grenade shoomed out from the launcher and slammed into the exact middle of Big Ben just as the jeep zoomed past the historic tower.

  Impact. Explosion. A starburst of bricks and glass blasted outwards from the historic clocktower.

  Then, like a slow-falling tree, Big Ben began to fall.

  Fatally wounded in its middle, the great two-hundred-foot-tall tower toppled across the roadway, hitting the ground with a momentous crash. The famous clock at the summit of the tower shattered into a million pieces as it hit the bitumen.

  And now the tower lay across the roadway, like a giant fallen tree, blocking all of Mitch’s pursuers, exactly as Mitch had planned.

  Laura looked sideways at Mitch. ‘You totally enjoyed doing that.’

  They headed for Westminster Abbey.

  The Abbey

  They hit the Abbey at a sprint, clambered up the stairs, came to the chamber at the top of the belltower...

  ...only to find Humbert Hughes and his team of Nazi SS assassins waiting for them.

  ‘I knew you’d come back here,’ Hughes sneered. ‘It’s the only way out. You’ve fought gamely, Mr. Raleigh, but while I need Miss Bush, I have no need for you.’ He turned to one of the Nazi men. ‘Sturmbann-fuhrer. Kill him, please.’

  The Nazi raised his Luger and fired.

  Mitch had no time to react.

  The gun went off, just as a blur of colour swept in front of Mitch and he suddenly realised that Pi had thrown himself in front of him, and taken the bullet!

  The Nazi captain was stunned. So was Hughes.

  Mitch, however, seized the opportunity and snatched an acid grenade from Pi’s belt, pulled the pin, threw it. Then he yanked Laura down through the stairway hatch.

  Bam—splat!

  The grenade went off, sending a powerful splatter of stinging sulfuric acid spraying throughout the confined space of the belltower.

  Screams followed.

  Mitch burst up through the hatch, Remington shotgun booming, taking out the acid-scarred Nazis on every side.

  Humbert Hughes had also been hit by the acid grenade. He lay crouched in a corner of the chamber, hands clawing at his eyes.

  ‘My eyes!’ he screamed. ‘My eyes!’

  Mitch leaned close and spoke...in German:

  ‘Herr Hughes, come with me. The author is dead and we have the girl. But we must get you to a field hospital. Come, let me guide you.’

  Blinded, Hughes took Mitch’s hand and allowed himself to be lead...willingly...into the Emergency Exit Portal in the corner of the chamber.

  With Laura beside him, Mitch closed the booth’s door and hit the big red button marked: EMERGENCY EXIT.

  The chamber flashed white.

  Back in the Real World

  Mitch Raleigh’s eyes sprang open and he sat up from his dentist’s chair with a lurch.

  Then he vomited.

  A Time Tours technician helped him stand. ‘Welcome back, Mr. Raleigh. You’re a goddamn hero.’

  Indeed he was. The drama of Time Tours’s launch, and Mitch’s role in saving the President’s niece, featured in news bulletins around the world. His delighted publisher could not have asked for more publicity.

  Humbert Hughes would end up in a psychiatric facility.

  Time Tours would go back into research and development.

  Mitch ended up watching the news broadcasts with Laura and her family in Dallas. There he saw himself on the TV being asked: ‘So, Mr. Raleigh! Mr. Raleigh! Will you be taking another trip on Time Tours again?’

  ‘Not for a while,’ he’d replied.

  As it happened, Mitch would indeed return to Time Tours—several times, in fact—to meet up with his new friend, Pi, the man who had thrown himself in front of a bullet for Mitch.

  Of course, by then Pi had been fully regenerated in the computer world of Time Tours. He had even had Mitch’s latest book installed in his programming so they could discuss it.

  ________________

  ALTITUDE RUSH

  _________________

  Empire State Building

  100th Floor

  New York City, 6:50 a.m.

  There came a shrill electronic beep as the masked intruder removed the small rectangular case from its recess beneath the desk’s clear-glass top—and suddenly the clock was ticking.

  Twenty-five minutes.

  The response team would be here in four.

  The intruder wasted no time.

  As he strode toward the office’s corner windows, he slid the rectangular glass case into a small chest-pack hidden underneath the front of his black jacket.

  He came to the north-east-facing windows, where he was met by a view of midtown New York City.

  It looked like a mountain range of skyscrapers—all cluttered and crowded. He saw the top of the Chrysler Building, its crystalline pointed peak shimmering in the dawn.

  The iron-lattice Queensboro Bridge and the wide expanse of the East River hovered in the background beyond the Chrysler. In the concrete jungle in between the river and the Empire State, the keen tourist would find Grand Central Station, fashionable Fifth Avenue, and on the banks of the River itself, the UN building.

  Nice view, the intruder thought. As one would expect of a member of the US Federal Reserve Board.

  The intruder, however, didn’t stop to admire it.

  He just drew a silenced Sig-Sauer pistol from his thigh holster and blasted one of the corner windows to smithereens. Then—100 storeys up, 1000 feet off the ground—he leapt out through the hole and the chase began.

  -----------------------------------------------------------

  OFFICIAL STAMP 046-24 --DOCUMENT NOT DELIVERED

  (7 DECEMBER, 1941) --DESTROY ALL COPIES --DESTROY ALL COPIES

  –-DESTROY ALL COPIES –-DESTROY ALL COPIES

  -----------------------------------------------------------

  6 December, 1941

  Dear Herr Hitler,

  AERIAL RUN

  The flying fox was waiting for the intruder outside the blasted-open window.

  After the man—his call-sign for this mission was, appropriately, Robin Hood—had entered the plush office via an elevator shaft inside the Empire State Building, he had attached a radio transponder to the ceiling over by its corner windows.

  It was a homing transponder.

  Sending a signal to his companion—call-sign Little John—over on the flat-topped roof of Horwicks Tower, an ordinary-looking 45-storey building two blocks to thenorth.

  The rope that now connected the two buildings was very, very steep.

  As he’d taken the rectangular case from the desk, Hood had heard a loud whump! —the sound of a rocket-propelled concrete-piercing hook slamming into the thick concrete beam above the corner window. Attached to the hook was a rope; attached to the rope was a state-of-the-art flying fox.

  Robin Hood grabbed the flying fox’s handlebar-like grips and slid like a rocket down its steeply-slanted zip-line, soaring clear over 34th and 35th Streets and the low city block in between.

  As he approached the roof of Horwicks Tower, Hood applied the handbrakes on the fox and it slowed, bringing him to a sharp swinging halt a couple of feet above the tower’s roof.

  Little John was waiting for him.

  True to his namesake, he towered over Robin Hood. Whereas Hood was small and wiry and compact, Little John was big and barrel-chested and strong. At the moment his bushy black beard was covered by a black ski-mask.

  ‘Thirty-eight seconds,’ he said as soon as Hood landed. ‘I thought you’d be faster.’

  Hood said, ‘Sorry, but I didn’t want to break my legs on the landing.’

  Little John
was already hustling toward the other side of the roof. Hood took off after him. Rooftop wind whistled around them as they jogged.

  ‘The Americans are on their way and they’re really really pissed,’ Little John said.

  ‘Their radio networks went berserk as soon as you lifted the pressure case from the desk. They’re sending three teams from the George Wahington. ETA: two-and-a-half minutes.’ He turned to Hood meaningfully. ‘SEAL teams.’

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  ‘That’s what I said. Aren’t we supposed to be doing exercises with them next week?’

  ‘Yep,’ Hood said, ‘which means the Yanks are not going be happy if they catch us today. And what’s this about two-and-a-half minutes? I thought we had a four-minute lead time.’

  ‘Intelligence fucked up,’ Little John scowled as he ran. ‘The Washington is in Dock for the weekend, not Dock 46. They’re closer.’

  They came to the parapet. The roof of another similarly-sized building sat across 36th Street from them.

  Little John threw a pair of handheld suction cups to Hood. ‘Just in case you turn into an unidentified falling object.’

  It was then that Hood saw that John had already connected these two rooftops with another flying fox.

  Little John turned to face him. ‘So, my friend. You ready to get vertical?’

  NOT YOUR AVERAGE DOCUMENT CASE

  Hood and Little John’s rather irregular form of movement was governed by the pressure case they had stolen from the Empire State Building.

  Constructed of superstrong Lexan glass and about the size of a slim laptop computer, the case was manufactured by the WR Grauss Company of Switzerland, and it was unique.

  Novelty, however, comes at a price. And with starting prices of $6 million for its custom-designed document containers, the Grauss Company of Switzerland has a rather elite clientele.