The Mind's Eye Read online

  For centuries, men have been dreaming of telepathy, the power to read and influence the minds of others. Now, all around the world, telepaths are finally starting to appear. Men and women are developing awesome powers with the potential to dramatically change society. Governments are soon starting to become aware of them, even recruiting them, while striving to keep knowledge of their abilities hidden from the general public. Academic researchers too are discovering telepaths and it isn’t long before awareness of their existence starts to spread. But non-telepaths, ordinary people, don’t want to have their minds read or controlled; the telepaths soon find themselves widely regarded with fear and hatred. Inevitably, some of them want to fight back.

  In this alternative history, albeit set in the near-future, Christopher Nuttall explores the likely impact of the appearance of telepathic abilities in some members of the human race. While telepathy and related psionic abilities have long been a mainstay of science-fiction, the impact of their emergence has not been as well imagined as, say, that of fantastic mutations. Almost everyone has something to hide, thoughts they wouldn’t want made public. Governments have secrets they wish to keep, whether for national security or just to hold on to power. How would the general populace react to mind-readers in their midst? How would telepaths respond when threatened by a frightened mob, or constrained by politicians fearful of the disclosure of scandals and long-buried secrets. Intelligence agencies would be both alarmed at the threats and intrigued by the possibilities. Would all nations respond in the same way?

  And then there’s the endless possibilities for criminals and terrorists…

  THE

  MIND’S

  EYE

  Christopher Nuttall

  Elsewhen Press

  ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER NUTTALL

  Royal Sorceress series

  The Royal Sorceress

  The Great Game

  Necropolis

  Bookworm series

  Bookworm

  Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling

  Dizzy Spells series

  A Life Less Ordinary

  INVERSE SHADOWS UNIVERSE

  SUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY

  The Mind’s Eye

  First published in Great Britain by Elsewhen Press, 2014

  An imprint of Alnpete Limited

  Copyright © Christopher Nuttall, 2014. All rights reserved

  The right of Christopher Nuttall to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, telepathic, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  Elsewhen Press, PO Box 757, Dartford, Kent DA2 7TQ

  www.elsewhen.co.uk

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-908168-47-4 Print edition

  ISBN 978-1-908168-57-3 eBook edition

  Condition of Sale

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  Elsewhen Press & Planet-Clock Design are trademarks of Alnpete Limited

  Converted to eBook format by Elsewhen Press

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, colleges, news organisations, government agencies and events are either a product of the author’s fertile imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, state or commercial organisations, institutions, places or people (living or dead) is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Interlude One

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Interlude Two

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Epilogue

  To my sisters, Elspeth and Catherine

  Chapter One

  ...In pursuit of Operation Soaring Eagle, US Marines are apparently carrying out operations in an unspecified country. They’re not giving anything away tonight, folks.

  -AP News Report, 2015

  “It’s quiet,” Gunnery Sergeant David Bass muttered. “It’s too quiet.”

  Lieutenant Art Russell swallowed several responses that came to mind, none of which were very helpful. The twenty-four Force Recon Marines had spent the last few hours walking from the Forward Operating Base to the small complex up ahead, hoping that the insurgents – Taliban, terrorists or simply drug runners – wouldn’t notice the advancing American force. The locals were thoroughly cowed by the enemy and, despite the presence of most of the 1st Marine Division, weren’t inclined to offer aid and comfort to the Americans. Art couldn’t blame them. The day the Marines had moved into the area, a local headman and his family had been beheaded by the Taliban – the women had been raped first, according to the locals – as a warning to others who might be considering assisting the enemy. The Marines couldn’t count on any help and, if a local who had a cell phone saw them, he might just call them in to the enemy.

  He rubbed his forehead, cursing the headache that had appeared several hours after they’d departed the base and made their way towards the small cluster of buildings. A person who had never seen Afghanistan would not believe that it could get so hot, but Art – who had served two terms in Iraq – had rarely been in a hotter country. The heat beat down on the Marines, sending rivers of sweat running down their backs, despite the latest cooling battledress. His aching head was just another problem. He should have called it in, he knew, and allowed someone else to take his place, but he was no quitter. Besides, calling for a helicopter to evacuate him back to the FOB would have blown their cover. The NATO forces in the area had been quietly placed on alert to support the Marines if they needed it, yet they’d been told to stay away from the complex. The last thing they needed was to alert the High Value Target – HVT – who was supposed to be based there.

  “No argument,” Art muttered back. The small complex – nine small buildings and one large warehouse, clearly built during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan – appeared deserted, at least from the outside. But then, it was dangerous to assume that proved anything. The Taliban had a reasonable idea of just how good the American surveillance and communications systems actually were and knew better than to show their faces without good cause. A seemingly deserted building might hold an entire enemy unit, hidden away under cover. Or ma
ybe the locals had abandoned the area after the Russians had pulled out and left it alone. Afghanistan was a land of contradictions, where timeless beauty went hand-in-hand with mindless brutality and enough barbarity to make a Roman Emperor sick. “Spread out and check the area. My spider-sense is tingling.”

  Bass nodded wordlessly and used his hands to signal to the other Marines, who slowly started to creep out around the buildings. If they were seen, a fire-fight would break out almost at once, but the Force Recon troops were expert in operating without being seen. They’d trained against opposition forces with night-vision gear and the latest in remote sensing equipment, although they’d also trained in low-tech environments. The Marine Corps had been in the forefront of counter-insurgency campaigns for a long time and knew that a low-tech environment could be just as dangerous as a high-tech environment, perhaps more so. There were too many people in the rear who would refuse to believe in the existence of an enemy force if it wasn’t radiating radio or cell phone transmissions, but the Marines on the ground knew better. The enemy could be anywhere, or anyone.

  The headache refused to fade as the reports came back through his earpiece. The Marines used a subvocal communications system to allow them to talk to one another without being overheard, or detected by any means the Taliban were known to possess. Art had never taken that for granted; the Russians or the Chinese might well have sold them some advanced detection gear, perhaps calculating that the longer the Americans stayed bogged down in Afghanistan, the greater the opportunity they’d have to reshape their regions to their own best advantage. The Russians hated the Taliban, but if they were willing to get into bed with the Nazis, they’d probably be willing to get into bed with the Taliban as well. His lips quirked into an amused smile as he contemplated the mental image for a long moment and then shook his head, dismissing the thought. Headache or no headache, he had a job to do.

  “The snipers are in position,” Bass said, as he crawled back to where Art was waiting. He gave the Lieutenant a concerned look as he settled up next to him. The NCO had over twenty-five years of experience in the Marine Corps – he’d taken out plenty of green lieutenants before and saved them from making stupid and career-ending mistakes – and he could probably sense that something was wrong. “There’s still no sign of…”

  “Contact,” one of the snipers hissed. Art froze at once, feeling his body and mind jerk into overdrive. The absence of gunshots probably meant that they hadn’t been spotted, but the enemy could be playing it cute. “I have four jingly trucks on their way up to the complex, each one carrying at least twelve bearded men.”

  Art and Bass shared a glance. The Taliban, among the other bizarre rules they had fought to impose on Afghanistan, insisted that every man should have a beard – and jailed everyone who refused to grow one. The presence of beards meant nothing in and of itself, but there were no Afghanistan National Army or Afghanistan National Police units in the area. Anyone coming to the complex was almost certainly hostile. The presence of so many men suggested that they had something else in mind than a social visit. Did they intend to escort the HVT out of the area?

  He frowned as he pulled his terminal out of his belt and accessed the direct feed from the orbiting UAV, so high up that no one, even Bass, could see that it was there. The trucks had been tracked as soon as they’d entered the area, coming out of no man’s land to the south, towards Pakistan. It was another strike against them. Anything crossing from Pakistan to Afghanistan should have been declared at the border, but then no one would bother unless they were stopped at gunpoint. Art found it hard to blame them. Years ago, someone in the West had drawn arbitrary lines on a map and separated Afghanistan from Pakistan – it had been part of India at the time – and torn tribes and families in half. The tribesmen refused to accept the border as possessing any influence on their lives and crossed it freely, creating lines of communication that could be used by the Taliban and their supporters. Afghanistan was a witches’ brew of factions, each one determined to see that they came out on top, with NATO in the middle.

  Bass tapped his side. “Sir,” he muttered, as the trucks came into view. “Look!”

  Art followed his gaze. The large building at the centre of the complex had suddenly come to life. Seven men had appeared at one side of the building, one of them very familiar. Mullah Mohammed, as he called himself, had a sizable price on his head for terrorism and other crimes against humanity. He was, at least as far as NATO intelligence could put together, the Taliban’s district commander, with control over terrorist groups and cells in the entire region. He’d been marked for capture or death as soon as NATO had identified him, but no one had tracked him down, until now. He watched as men leapt off the trucks and embraced their comrades. The Marines were heavily outnumbered, yet Art found it hard to care. They had the greatest weapon of all on their side. No one suspected their presence.

  He keyed his radio, taking care to keep his voice below hearing level. The tiny mike on his throat would pick up the words and transmit it to the waiting Marines. “Get ready to move,” he ordered, scanning the remaining enemy fighters as they clambered out of the truck. They moved rather unprofessionally, part of his mind noted; they clearly weren’t expecting trouble. His headache seemed to grow worse every time he looked at one of the enemy fighters, so he tried to look away from them. He verified his equipment with one hand as the Marines checked in, the snipers leading the way. The enemy, nicely bunched up as they were, would provide easy targets for the sharpshooters. Even the Taliban had learned to fear the NATO snipers. “I’m calling the contact in now.”

  Art tapped his terminal, sending the call to arms back to the Marine FOB ten miles to the north, and then checked his weapon one final time. The attack helicopters would be spinning up their rotors now, preparing to come out and join the fun; the transport helicopters, carrying additional Marines, would be right after them. The fighters and bombers NATO kept orbiting over the area – a mixture of American, British, French, German and Dutch aircraft – would be receiving the alert seconds later. A thunderstorm was gathering and it was about to pour itself down onto the unsuspecting terrorists. They had no idea what was coming their way.

  He keyed his radio again. “Go,” he ordered. His headache sparked and he winced in pain. Bass frowned, but said nothing. “Open fire.”

  The snipers opened fire at once. They were used to firing from much greater ranges than they were faced with and the enemy fighters didn’t stand a chance. One by one, the terrorists started to topple over before they realised that they were under attack, the ones who had been identified as commanders going first. A handful started to blaze back towards the snipers with AK-47 rifles, but their bursts went wide of the mark. The Marine Corps trained its snipers well and armed them with the best; there was literally no flash for the enemy to use as a target. The smarter enemy fighters – including the Mullah, Art noted absently – had ducked back into the complex, trusting in its Russian-built walls to protect them from enemy fire. They were probably right. The Russians might have deliberately built ugly and soulless buildings – the true nature of communism could be seen in the buildings the communists had gifted their unwilling allies – but they were strong and certainly resistant to sniper fire. A single air-dropped bomb would smash the building, of course, yet there would be no chance of taking the HVT alive.

  Art swallowed a curse as enemy fighters began firing from the buildings. Their shooting wasn’t particularly accurate, thankfully, but it was making life interesting for the snipers and the other men, who were crawling closer and closer to their targets. His radio buzzed with a report of four men who had attempted to escape from the other side of the building, only to run into fire from the three Marines who were advancing on the enemy rear. The four men were dead and the Marines had the remaining enemy forces trapped. A smart enemy commander would have offered to surrender, but the Taliban rarely surrendered, even when their enemy wouldn’t simply kill them out of hand. Afghanistan’s war
rior mentality bred tough fighters. The ones who learned to think like true soldiers were formidable opponents.

  He picked himself up and half-ran down towards the complex, while the snipers provided covering fire from their positions. Now that every enemy soldier in the open was dead, the snipers had started to fire into the buildings, aiming their shots through portholes that had been used as enemy firing positions. The snipers who saw their opponents could shoot them, perhaps even kill them, even when they were firing from cover. The ones who couldn’t see their targets directly could still discourage the enemy from firing by shooting a handful of shots through the portholes. Who knew – perhaps the ricochets would take out an enemy fighter or two.

  A deafening explosion echoed across the compound as one of the trucks blew up. Art’s radio buzzed a second later, filling him in; the enemy had attempted to use one of them as a firing position, so a Marine had tossed a grenade into the vehicle. The force of the explosion suggested that the truck had been transporting explosives and ammunition to the Taliban in the area, ammunition that would be turned against the Marines and the remainder of the NATO forces. The Marine who had tossed the grenade was uninjured, but stunned, so Art ordered him to stay back until he had recovered. His headache was growing worse…

  He pressed himself against the side of one of the smaller buildings, certain – somehow – that there were still enemy forces inside. There was only one way into the building – through the door – and he cursed under his breath. The enemy would have to know that, because no one larger than a child could fit through the portholes that passed for windows. The Taliban had been known to use children as suicide bombers – sometimes knowingly, sometimes without telling them what was at stake – and Art kept one eye on the window, even as he pulled a grenade off his belt. Bass caught his arm and shook his head, motioning for two of the junior Marines to lead the way. Art wanted to swear at him – if something happened to Art, Bass was perfectly capable of running the entire force on his own – but there was no time for an argument. The lead Marine held up five fingers and counted down, while the others prepared their grenades. At zero, they tossed their grenades through the window and explosions shattered the door. A moment later, the Marines were through the remains of the door, weapons raised and looking for trouble. There were seven enemy bodies in the room and one living enemy fighter, who Art suspected rather wished he was dead. His legs had been blown off and he was bleeding badly from a gash in his left arm.