Anthrax Island

by D. L. Marshall

  The footpath narrowed and curved. I staggered along it for a while, putting some distance between me and the bridge, then turned back to it, crouching in the weeds. The helicopter was deafening now. It would aim for the vehicles. Hurley would need to get to it – which meant he’d have to cross that bridge. Like I said, classic choke point.

  I crept forward, working myself into a ditch, rifle up, short barrel jutting through the ferns. Freezing stream water trickled underneath me, eating into my legs, but I didn’t move. Blood flowed from reopened wounds, warmth soaking into the waistband of my trousers, but I stayed rock-steady. The rifle was sticky with blood against my cheek as I squinted down the sights, watching the little red dot dancing along the bridge, bright against the dirty haze.

  The helicopter roared overheard, whipping the bushes, churning the stream. I was worried it hadn’t spotted the cars but the pilot banked, bringing it slowly back up the road. It paused to hover over the gorge, shaking the branches of the trees, stirring the fog, kicking up gravel, pulling on the sleeves of my jacket. I thought about the observer looking down through that thermal imager, realised he could probably see both of us but wouldn’t have a clue what was going on. The helicopter jinked side to side a few times then backed off, looking for a spot to set down. I remained motionless. I was done in, my arms ached, I started trembling, but I kept my finger on the trigger, kept up the pressure, ready to release a bullet. I was looking down the bridge, at the woodland and rocks fading into the fog.

  The pitch of the rotors increased, they were setting down somewhere up by the road. Time’s up.

  The rotors whined, the breeze blew, the fog lifted, for a couple of seconds I could see the trees on the other side of the gorge. A bloodied Hurley limped cautiously down the middle of the bridge, arms outstretched, gun ready, barrel pointing in my direction.

  A flash, he’d already fired. So had I. A bullet drilled the bushes beside me, another slammed into the dirt. Too far for accuracy on his part, no point in me hiding, I’d the same chance of being hit wherever I was. I crouched in place, my rifle trading fire with a less accurate pistol. Another flash, the bullet ricocheting off a rock behind me. Grass and dirt exploded across my face as a batch of lead smacked the path centimetres from my head. I didn’t blink, just switched to auto and replied with rapid bursts, emptying the last of the magazine into the bridge.

  The bullets stopped, the fog rolled back across the gorge.

  I jumped up, sprinting into the murk. Seconds later I was on the bridge, walking into the void with the rifle still held high. I’d emptied the mag, but Hurley wasn’t to know that; if by any chance he was still alive this would give him pause.

  The bridge bowed under my weight, trembling with each step. Deep gouges in the wood showed where my bullets had ricocheted, some had gone clean through the boards, creating splintered holes straight down into the waterfall. Some had gone through Hurley first, sprays of blood and red boot prints; he couldn’t be far. A section of safety fence had caught a round and been torn loose, and suddenly the trembling bridge didn’t feel that permanent. I crept onward, doing my best to avoid the bullet-weakened planks that creaked and bent under my boots.

  I found Hurley slumped over the fence just past the middle, his life force pooled under him and dripping down into the abyss. My pistol lay a few metres away. He wasn’t moving.

  I advanced steadily, gun first. His postie jacket didn’t move, only his hair ruffling slightly in the breeze. A hole in the jacket dribbled blood down his back. I prodded it, but still nothing. Keeping the gun on him I circled, leaning away, pressing myself into the opposite barrier, out of reach.

  As I rounded him I could see why he wasn’t moving. His right arm hung uselessly, jacket shredded where multiple bullets had pulverised the shoulder and forced him to drop the gun. Another through the torso, a bloody tear in his jeans. A & E couldn’t do anything for him, but I didn’t feel sorry for the bastard.

  I held the rifle with one hand, creeping the fingers of my free hand into his coat pocket. Nothing; I tried the other, but that was empty too. I moved closer and reached into the inside pocket, and there was the vial.

  I didn’t feel the slice across my skin, or the blood running freely down my arm, it was the flash that caught my eye as he withdrew the knife. My hand automatically sprang open before I could pull the vial clear, the rifle fell. His eyes opened, furious, mouth twisted, ready to slash again. I clutched my fingers, backing away, finally feeling the blood hot against my cold skin.

  He swung the knife with his good arm but it was lazy, he couldn’t move, propped up by the railing. I didn’t give him any recovery time, picking up the rifle and slamming the butt into his face, forcing him back against the rails. I went for the inside pocket but up came the knife again. I swung the rifle at his wrist like a bat, he grunted, the knife fell straight between the planks. His good leg came up into my ribs, I winced. He used his bulk to heave off the railings, pressing all his weight onto me. I slammed against the metal safety rail, felt it dig into my spine, driving the wind from my lungs. I dropped the rifle. He moved his weight closer, edging upwards. My feet left the ground, the railing grating down my back. Near the base of my spine now, he pushed. I felt my centre of gravity edge over the gorge.

  I wrapped an arm around his neck and yanked him backwards over the abyss with me. He panicked, letting go of me, leaning away, scrabbling at the railings with his only functioning arm. I grabbed the railing and caught myself, twisting under his arm as he slumped further forward. I used the momentum to heave his legs, tipping them over the rail.

  He screamed as he slid further, but couldn’t fight back, could do nothing to stop it; he had no choice but to keep gripping the railing with his only good arm. His legs went, dragging his body after, leaving him dangling from one hand. His face was white, eyes boring into mine, fingers locked around the railing. His boots kicked at the bridge as he struggled to get his toes on the lip.

  I picked up my HK pistol from the boards where he’d dropped it, hefted it, slid out the magazine. Nickel glinted just like it had yesterday morning; still loaded.

  Hurley whimpered, fingers slowly stretching on the handrail. I knelt to face him, could feel his breath, panting, shallow, eyes wide with terror. I reached through the railings into his inside jacket pocket, pulling the vial free. I stood, stepped back, watching his fingers extend. He managed to get one foot on the slippery railing and tried to pull himself up. I aimed my pistol at his head and slowly started to squeeze the trigger.

  ‘Don’t you want to know how?’ he gurgled, blood running from his mouth.

  I eased off the trigger and lowered the pistol. He smiled, getting his other foot on the railing and hauling himself upright, ready to climb over.

  ‘Tell it to Ingrid.’ I smiled back and slammed a boot into his knuckles, then leaned over to watch him drop into the grey.

  The crows were silent as he disappeared from view. No screams, no sound at all as he spread himself across the rocks below.

  I slumped to my knees, resting the pistol on the planks, feeling the weight of the last few hours pressing down. I closed my eyes, focused on the crashing waterfall and the wind in the pines, the creaking planks beneath me, anything to take my mind off the blood trickling down my arms, dripping from the inside of my jacket.

  ‘John Tyler?’ a voice called from behind me. ‘You do get around.’

  I turned slowly, staggering to my feet, gun up. A tall man, immaculate in a well-cut suit, was standing on the gravel path. I squinted down the pistol at his crisp white shirt flapping in the breeze. My peripheral vision picked up assault rifles either side of him. The US Marines holding them drifted in and out of the wall of fog.

  Chapter Seventy-two

  We stared at each other, just a few metres of bridge separating us.

  ‘You’re a long way from Langley, Mason,’ I said finally, gun still on him but wavering as my muscles burned.

  He smiled, made a show of looking around.
‘We’re a long way from anywhere, Tyler.’

  Each of the Marines carried a duffel bag, which they dropped at his feet before taking another step forward to block the bridge.

  ‘You used to take the piss out of my suits,’ I said. ‘I heard the CIA had finally dragged you behind a desk.’

  ‘And I heard you’d gone back to chasing cards across the Middle East.’

  He meant the ‘Personality Identification Playing Cards’ – packs of cards issued to the US military during the Iraq war to help them identify the most-wanted members of Saddam Hussein’s government. There’d been good money to be made tracking them down – bringing them to Mason.

  ‘You’re gonna do this, after what we went through in Mosul?’ My gun was really shaking now. I flexed my fingers and gripped the gun more firmly so the Marines wouldn’t notice and mistake it for fear.

  ‘Business, Tyler, just the same.’

  He buttoned his suit jacket to stop it flapping. The helicopter whined somewhere in the distance. The crow regained its bravado, cawing again.

  ‘Hurley’s taking a swim?’ Mason asked, peering into the gorge.

  I shrugged. ‘An accident.’

  ‘I never liked him anyway, however, I think you took something from him?’

  I glared, fist clenched tightly around the vial. His face hardened.

  ‘Give me my sample.’

  ‘Yours?’

  ‘You took it from an American. I represent his estate.’

  ‘He took it from Scotland. Go back to Virginia.’

  There was a rustle in the bushes and a third Marine appeared further down the gorge, rifle trained on me. Another appeared out of the fog in the corner of my left eye. Outflanked, outnumbered, outgunned.

  ‘This’ll be difficult for you to explain to Washington,’ I said.

  ‘It’ll be easier if you’re dead,’ he replied, casual as ever.

  ‘Maybe, but you’ll have to explain the dead Marines too.’

  The Marines either side of him visibly flinched. I calculated the odds, wondered how many shots I could get off, whether I could back off the bridge into the fog before those M27 assault rifles opened up. The odds didn’t look great.

  A radio crackled, the Marine to Mason’s left leaned in. ‘Aircraft inbound, ETA six minutes.’

  Mason nodded, eyes not leaving mine. ‘Let’s wrap it up.’ All four Marines took a step forward.

  I thrust my left hand out into space, holding the vial between finger and thumb. ‘Shoot me and you lose this.’

  The Marines froze.

  Mason sighed, weighing things up. After a long few seconds he tapped one of the bags with his foot. ‘As we’re pressed for time, I can offer an alternative.’

  ‘How much of an alternative?’

  ‘They’d negotiated enough to get away.’

  I could feel my energy draining from various wounds, knew I couldn’t keep my arms outstretched for long. I nodded. ‘I prefer that option.’

  A wide smile broke across his face. ‘Less mess.’

  The Marines breathed. I stood the vial at my feet and slowly backed away, switching the gun onto it. He muttered to the Marine on his right, who shouldered his rifle and picked up the duffel bags, carrying them to the centre of the bridge. I nodded and gestured with the gun. He carefully put them down, picked up the vial gingerly, and reversed off the bridge into the fog.

  Mason stepped up onto the bridge and signalled to the remaining Marines. They melted away, leaving us facing each other alone. I looked round, smiled, and finally lowered the gun.

  ‘Dirty bastard,’ I said as I limped forward. He ran to catch me, holding his arms out in an embrace, slapping me on the back. I winced.

  ‘I wasn’t surprised to get your call,’ he said, drawing back, looking me up and down properly. ‘Jeez, you really look like death.’

  ‘You had me going, why the theatrics?’

  He grinned and pointed toward where the helicopter whined up on the road. ‘When those guys debrief they’ll say I at least tried to play hardball. They don’t know you like I do; they don’t know you have no loyalties. Apart from this…’ He kicked one of the bags with an expensive Italian shoe and I pushed it behind me with a scuffed Doc Marten.

  ‘Well I know you too,’ I said. ‘Don’t lecture me on morality.’

  ‘Hey, I’m a good patriot. I’m working for my country here.’

  ‘Five people dead, Mason; supposedly your allies.’

  He shrugged. ‘You’ve done us a favour, Hurley was an asshole. And you know we only specify the ends, not the means.’

  ‘You should have told me – I could have prevented those deaths.’

  He held up the vial of soil. ‘And stopped me getting this?’ He put it in his pocket and took a step back. ‘So what now?’

  ‘Piss off before the cavalry show up.’

  He smirked. ‘We’re not the cavalry?’

  ‘Far from it this time.’ I hefted one of the bags. ‘Out of interest, just how much does it cost to get away these days?’

  ‘That’s four million dollars. We should work together again sometime.’

  He turned to walk away, I waved the gun to keep his attention. ‘You forgetting something?’

  He paused, sighed, reaching inside his jacket to hand me an envelope, the information that was worth more to me than the cash. ‘I was hoping for your sake you wouldn’t ask.’ He pointed at the duffel bags. ‘If you’re going to do what I think you are, I’d advise you to spend that money quickly.’

  He didn’t look back, throwing up his arm in a farewell wave as he strode off the bridge, evaporating into the fog. I slipped the envelope and gun into my pocket, swung the rifle over my shoulder, picked up the bags, and followed at a considerably slower pace.

  I’d made it halfway up the path when the drone of the helicopter increased to a roar, blowing the fog towards me. I caught sight of the underside of the Black Hawk as it accelerated away into the grey sky, then it was gone, turbines muffled by the all-enveloping weather.

  I limped through the gate into the parking area, out onto the road, following it back to the cars. I placed the pistol and rifle on the tarmac and opened the Capri’s boot, sat one of the bags on the spare wheel, pulled it open.

  Mason wasn’t kidding. This was what the keys to a bioweapon cost, never mind that five people had to die. I picked up a wad of notes and looked it over. Hundred-dollar bills, banded together in $10,000 bricks. Retirement funds.

  I did say I was a realist.

  Mason and I go way back, though in this life that doesn’t necessarily make for preferential treatment; if we were anything like real friends he’d have given me a heads-up, at least some info I could’ve used to my advantage, but he was right – if he had, he wouldn’t have got the sample. When I’d found out it was Mason that Hurley had called on the Post Office phone, I’d simply called to renegotiate the terms of the sale.

  Didn’t take much; the game was up and Hurley’s card was marked – Mason was right, I’d saved him a job and tied up his loose ends. I love the Americans but they’re fickle and have money to burn. Makes them easy to deal with as long as you don’t trust them – doesn’t matter to them who they’re paying, they’d sell out their own mums if they could be sure they’d get the goods.

  After my call with Mason, I’d phoned the real cavalry.

  The thump of rotors again filtered through the clouds, but I could tell this was a different helicopter, the Merlin that had dropped me off twenty-four hours ago.

  I looked around frantically. The whole area would be cordoned off, they’d have to retrieve the Landy and they’d also do a sweep for as many shell casings as they could find, empty mags, evidence of our presence – before mopping Hurley up from the bottom of the gorge. Big area to cover. I looked from the forest to the ditch at the side of the road and the moorland beyond. Big area, sure, but a tourist area, no decent hiding places, not without a spade and at least an hour’s graft.

  Fuck it. Th
e bonnet was trashed so I yanked out the spare wheel, lobbing it over the barrier, sending it crashing through the undergrowth. I tipped out the bag, cramming as many stacks of cash into the spare wheel well as I could. When it was full I stuffed a few remaining stacks into spaces in the bodywork, behind the rear lights, under pieces of trim. I rolled up the bag and crammed it down behind the seats, then replaced the carpet. I locked the boot, pocketing the keys, then sat on the crash barrier with the second duffel bag between my feet, waiting for the helicopter to land.

  While I waited I thought about how long it would be before the Americans realised the dirt in the vial was worthless. I’d scooped the mud up from the shoreline behind Camp Vollum last night, while Marie had been sorting the pump – it definitely didn’t contain the stuff they were after. There was no way I’d have replaced the real vial of anthrax under the floor, no way I’d risk them getting their hands on it.

  I heard the helicopter set down in the car park. I pulled Mason’s envelope from my pocket, opened it, sliding out a folded piece of paper. A single name.

  I pushed it back into my pocket as a figure strode from the fog with the same assurance as Mason, only this man wore a uniform. The crown and pips on his shoulder indicated he was a colonel in the British Army, but I never addressed him as such.

  Rupert Holderness looked at me, bedraggled, bleeding, broken, sitting in the rain on a roadside in the middle of nowhere. ‘You’ve been through worse,’ was the extent of his greeting, the same voice a harsh father would use to scold a child for falling out of a tree. I was used to his special brand of sympathy, his coaching and motivational techniques. He stared at my car, rubbing his chin. ‘And that does not come under expenses.’

  I stood, steadying myself on the crash barrier. ‘It does if you want this bag.’

  His face lit up. ‘You played a hell of a close game this time. We followed the Americans in and hung back just like you asked. How much did they pay for the sample?’

  ‘Two million dollars.’

  Holderness whistled. ‘Less than I thought, but still a job well done.’