Torchwood: Exodus Code

Harkness’s history, that wouldn’t surprise me one damn bit.’
    ‘Sir, I’ve had an eye on Harkness off and on for months and he’s been nowhere near any of these geysers… Except…’ Darren paused, letting his words trail off, realising he may have made a mistake.
    ‘Except what?’
    ‘Well, sir, I’m not sure but I think I remember reading an intel report that Gwen Cooper from Torchwood was one of the victims of that “masochistic madness” that so many women are suffering from. She was institutionalised for trying to shoot her husband. Hang on, let me check.’
    Darren opened another page on the screen, bringing up Gwen’s file. He double-tapped a small section at the bottom. ‘Oh shit.’
    ‘Oh shit, what?’ yelled Rex.
    ‘Gwen Cooper escaped from the hospital.’ He turned and looked at Rex. ‘On the day the vent chimney burst through the surface of the Bristol Channel. That’s near Wales, isn’t it?’
    Rex slammed his hand on his desk. ‘Yes, it’s near Wales. Doesn’t anyone study geography any more? I knew Harkness was involved in all this.’
    ‘But what could Harkness know about the geysers that we don’t? The best scientists in the world are trying to figure them out.’
    ‘Just because we have every scientist in the world testing those fountains every way possible doesn’t mean a goddamned thing because it hasn’t stopped any of those chimneys from growing,’ said Rex. ‘Harkness knows a lot of things most of us do not. Believe me.’
    ‘So what’s he doing in Peru? The closest geyser to that part of South America has already sealed itself, and the authorities are evacuating the locality.’
    Rex stared at Jack’s image. ‘I don’t know what he’s doing, but I’m going to find out.’
    ‘Sir, I still think it might just be that he’s figured out on his own the relationship between Donoso and the three families. Maybe he’s going to try to get to Donoso before we can. We should warn our tactical unit to keep him on their radar.’
    Rex walked closer to the screen and stared at Jack. ‘Does Harkness have any support down there?’
    ‘No. Everyone in the village was marked when our team arrived.’
    ‘If he was bringing in any support, he’d have been smart to arrange for it to arrive after we’d placed our people.’
    Darren fast-forwarded the video feed to the dust cloud coming over the horizon on to the meseta, the camera lodged high in the wall of the canyon.
    ‘The minibus,’ said Darren. ‘If he’s got any support, they were going in on that bus with Donoso. There’s no other way in and out of the hacienda right now.’
    ‘Still nothing from Carlisle?’
    ‘Nothing, but things went pear-shaped pretty fast down there once the girl crashed the bus.’
    ‘Shit. I hate kids.’
    ‘Sir, keep in mind this is a live feed and this video is only about eight or nine minutes behind. We may still be able to salvage something, including Donoso. Carlisle wasn’t alone. We’ve a full tactical unit in the piazza. Their orders are to wait until Asiro kidnaps Donoso and takes him into the compound, then they’ll move in and kidnap him from the kidnappers. It lets us keep his disappearance invisible if he is connected to the families. They won’t know we’re getting closer.’
    ‘I know what the plan is on paper, agent, I designed it. The problem is when you mix in people things shift pretty quickly, and Harkness is no ordinary person.’ Rex shoved his hands into his pockets to stop himself from punching a big hole through the highly polished mahogany walls of his stupid office. I should have gone in with tactical, he thought. What am I doing, delegating from a fancy office?
    ‘Where are we monitoring this from?’ he asked Rex, jogging out of his office and into the hallway.
    ‘A warehouse in Cuzco via Tactical Room 14,’ said Darren, holding open the door to the stairwell. ‘This will be faster, sir.’
    Both men sprinted down the stairs, Rex moving faster than his agent. ‘I want to see everything that’s going on down there,’ said Rex, ‘and I want a direct line to the unit’s commander in the piazza. Yesterday.’
    When Rex was in the tactical monitoring room and the feed from the piazza was running live, Darren finally sheepishly asked him, ‘What’s your plan, sir?’
    ‘To figure out what the hell Jack Harkness is up to.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘And either stop him or help him.’

Isela

60
    Southern Peru, present day, minutes before