Nano by Sam Fisher Page B

ground. The sides of the fissure parted steadily until a hole some 4 metres square had opened up. He looked down into a cubic space the size of a well-proportioned room. To one side, a metal ladder was clamped to the wall. It descended to the floor of the chasm.
    Sitting in the middle of the space was a gleaming microlight.

23
    Floor 199, Cloud Tower, Dubai, 9.11 am
    Outside, in the mall, there was white powder everywhere. It had already formed a thin, pearlescent layer over everything. But Abu was not paying much attention. He was transfixed by the scene of devastation.
    â€˜What in the name of Allah has happened?’ he said aloud.
    Back in the store, he had half-convinced himself that something had blown in the shop and that it was not some horror affecting the entire floor or even, Allah forbid, the entire tower. But now the full truth hit him, hard. This was much, much bigger than he could have imagined. Either a bomb had gone off, or it was a repeat of 9/11.
    Floor 199, like all the floors in the Sky Mall, was triangular- shaped, 70 metres a side. There were 10 stores on each of the three sides and a vast open space in the middle. In the centre of the space was a parapeted area with a large contemporary fountain sculpture rising up from a pool. Every shop window was smashed to powder, most door frames and window frames had been mangled. The statue had fallen, smashing into a cluster of what had once been tables and chairs outside Café 199.
    Through the miasma of white powder, Abu could see the shapes of crushed and torn bodies and pieces of human being. A few survivors stumbled around, their clothes ripped and stained, covered in white dust. A woman ran towards him. She was screaming hysterically, her face lined with cuts, caked in powder and blood dripping from her chin. Abu tried to stop her, to talk to her, but she pushed him aside and staggered off towards an exit sign.
    Abu could hear a horrible menagerie of sounds: moaning, screaming, crying. Mingled with this came the creaking of strained metal, a scraping and groaning of steel and concrete. Then came a crash and the splash of glass on concrete. He whirled around and saw immediately where the sound had come from. The back walls of all the shops in the triangular floor contained massive windows offering incredible views out to the desert. One of them had just imploded.
    Air rushed in from outside. It was a freezing wind that ravaged the hovering haze of white powder, scattering it all around. Then something appeared at the very edge of Abu’s vision: a dark shape. He ducked instinctively and a screaming human being flew across his field of view no more than 2 metres away. The person had been spat out of the store where the window had crumbled. The body slammed into a concrete column and slid to the floor like a thrown tomato.
    Abu tried to think, tried to assess the situation. His father had insisted he attend survival classes when they were offered at school. It was something he hated intensely. In Term 1, they had gone out into the desert and learned how to find water and food, how to live in one of the most alien environments on earth. It was absolutely horrible and the others in his class had teased him, calling him a sissy and a wimp.
    In Term 2, they had been taken to a network of caves almost 50 kilometres outside the city. As they were leaving, there was a cave-in and they became trapped. Worse still, the radio had smashed under a rock fall and the teacher had broken his leg. He and his school friends had been shocked but then natural instinct kicked in. They did all the right things – preserved their strength, found water and kept the teacher warm after binding up his leg with a makeshift splint. But by the next morning some of the boys were beginning to panic. Abu kept his head. Retreating to the back of the cave with just a torch and a screwdriver, he fixed the radio, called base camp and two hours later they were taken home. After that,