Enemy Within: A heart-wrenching medical mystery (British Military Thriller Series Book 3)

by Nathan Burrows

  “Dirty bastard,” Lizzie replied. He could see her grinning on the screen. “Actually, there is something I’ve been thinking about?”

  “What’s that?”

  “It was after our conversation the other night, when you offered to send me some of your porn?”

  “Right,” Adams said warily.

  “Just something I’m thinking about trying, to see what it’s like.”

  “Right,” Adams repeated himself, more slowly this time.

  “Have you got any with one woman and like, two or maybe three blokes,” Lizzie said, starting to giggle. “One who’s your size, and the other two maybe bigger. But the men have to be interactive, if you get my drift.” Her giggles turned to laughter, and Adams could see tears at the corner of her eyes.

  “Lizzie?”

  “What?” Lizzie could barely speak she was laughing so much.

  “Line’s breaking up, Lizzie. You there?”

  “I’ve got chest pain from the look on your face, Adams,” Lizzie said. “You are so easy to wind up. Now go to bed. And Adams?”

  “What?” Adams asked, smiling at her.

  “Sweet dreams!”

  70

  Waterfield wasn’t used to being under such scrutiny, and when it was the Prime Minister himself who was doing the scrutinising, that made it even more uncomfortable.

  “So, General, er,” the Prime Minister glanced down at his notes, “Waterfield.” Waterfield knew that the man knew full well what his name was, but was using a power play to exert his dominance over him. He knew this because it was a trick he often used himself. “Remind me again exactly what is missing?” He was the only one speaking, but the COBRA meeting room was again full.

  “Two SA80-A2 assault rifles and two full ammunition containers. Also—”

  “Wait.” The Prime Minister held his hand up. “How many rounds are in each of these containers.” Waterfield looked to his staff officer, who whispered in his ear.

  “Eight hundred and sixty.”

  “In each one?”

  “Yes,” Waterfield replied.

  “Fuck.”

  Waterfield waited for a few seconds to see if the Prime Minister was going to elaborate, but when he said nothing, Waterfield continued.

  “So, there’re the rifles and rounds.” Waterfield flipped the page of his notebook. “As well as those, twenty kilograms of Composition C.” He paused. The Prime Minister’s hand was back in the air. “C-4, Prime Minister. It’s a high explosive.”

  “Thank you, general. How much damage can twenty kilograms do?”

  “Five kilograms would take out a bus.”

  “Great, so Tavistock Square all over again.” Waterfield paused, again unsure if the man had finished or not. There was another whisper in Waterfield’s ear from his staff officer.

  “Also a L115A3 Long-Range Rifle, with rounds and various scopes.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A sniper rifle, Prime Minister.”

  “Range?” Another whisper in Waterfield’s ear.

  “One point two kilometres. On a good day and in the hands of someone who can use it, a bit further.”

  “Is that it?” the Prime Minister asked. Waterfield nodded his head after confirming it with his staff officer. “You sure? He didn’t manage to sneak out of your base with a couple of tanks as well?” Waterfield didn’t reply. There was no point. “So, let me summarise, we have a highly trained military man on the loose with two assault rifles and lots of bullets, a shitload of high explosives, and a fucking sniper rifle that can reach over a kilometre.”

  “Correct, Prime Minister.”

  “A man who we think is trying to start a race war and who burned a family to death only the other week?”

  “I’m not really sighted on that, Prime Minister,” Waterfield replied. To his relief, someone came to his rescue. A balding man in a dull grey suit spoke up, pushing his glasses up his nose before he did so. Despite his diminutive size, his voice was full of authority.

  “We believe so, Prime Minister,” the man said.

  “That’s Clive Cartwright, head of MI5,” Waterfield’s staff officer whispered. How the staff officer knew who the man was when Waterfield wouldn’t recognise him from Adam was beyond him.

  “The suspect, Robert Hunter, uploaded a video of an individual that appears to be him setting the fire,” Cartwright said. He had notes, but didn’t refer to them. “He then posted it to various forums on the dark web, most of them far right ones. We’ve narrowed down the origin of the upload to RAF Honington, specifically the Junior Ranks block where Hunter lives. By the time the police arrived, he had disappeared.”

  “So he got spooked?” There was a titter of laughter around the room at the Prime Minister’s use of the term spooked, but it soon died away. “Have we got a leak somewhere?”

  “Potentially, Prime Minister. But when he uploaded the video, it was only going to be a matter of time before we traced it. Perhaps he was aware of that and took evasive action?”

  “So, gentlemen,” the Prime Minister said, his eyes roving around the room until they alighted on a woman standing in the back of the room. “My apologies,” he said with a nod. “Ladies and gentlemen. Options?”

  “Every police officer in the country has a photograph of this man and is actively looking for him,” the police commissioner said. “We found Hunter’s car and have apprehended the man driving it in Peterborough, but he claims to have stolen it from a car park in Norwich.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen the footage,” the Prime Minister replied. So had Waterfield. Within minutes of the car being spotted by the police, footage of the heavily armed police officers surrounding it and dragging the driver out was all over social media. Waterfield wouldn’t have been surprised if the police had double tapped the man in the head, but the full extent of Hunter’s exploits hadn’t been made available to rank-and-file police. In fact, there were few people outside this room who knew the full story, and Waterfield knew the Prime Minister would try very hard to keep it that way.

  Waterfield was just taking a sip from his bottle of water when he realised the Prime Minister was asking him a question.

  “What sort of training has this Hunter had, Waterfield? Is he special forces?”

  “No, Prime Minister. He will have had basic training, but as a weapons technician, he won’t be an expert in their use.”

  “Great, that’s reassuring,” the Prime Minister replied, his sarcasm obvious. “Arthurton? What are we doing with the media?”

  The Home Secretary stepped forward and glanced over at Waterfield before he replied.

  “We’ve got his image out, linked to the fire. The fact that he’s possibly armed and dangerous. Usual sort of thing.”

  “Sorry, Arthurton,” the PM replied, obviously exasperated. “There’s nothing usual about this. Should we put the alert level up to critical?” Critical was the United Kingdom’s highest threat level and meant that the threat of a terror attack was highly likely soon.

  “Bollocks,” the Prime Minister said before glancing at the woman at the back of the room. “Sorry, uncalled for.” Waterfield saw her nod in response to his apology.

  Arthurton glanced over at the police commissioner, who returned the look with a discreet nod before replying.

  “We think we probably should, Prime Minister,” he said. “Notwithstanding this, if Hunter’s intent, which at this time is unknown, is to do something and the press finds out afterwards that we knew and didn’t raise the threat level, well…” His voice tailed away.

  “What do you mean, his intent?” the Prime Minister asked, staring intently at the head of MI5.

  “I’m just saying there’s a difference between setting a fire and launching a one-man terrorist attack.”

  “There is? I’m not sure about that. He has to be found and quickly, before the press properly gets hold of this. Waterfield? What about the base he’s from?”

  “It’s locked down, Prime Minister. But wit
h a couple of thousand people on the base, that can only be done for so long,” Waterfield replied.

  “Right, Arthurton, you’re in charge.”

  “Me, Prime Minister?”

  “You’re the fucking Home Secretary, aren’t you?”

  Waterfield had to suppress a smile at the sight of his acquaintance being thrown under the bus. If this all went wrong, and it couldn’t get much worse, then the Prime Minister had already put a sacrificial lamb in place.

  “Very good, Prime Minister,” Arthurton replied.

  “So find him.”

  “Find him, and?”

  Waterfield looked at the Prime Minister carefully. Was he about to give a kill order in the middle of a crowded room, even if everyone in the room was cleared to the highest level?

  “Find him and do what you need to do to neutralise the threat.”

  Waterfield smiled. Almost a kill order, but one that was deniable. Like him or loathe him, the Prime Minister was a slippery old fish.

  71

  “Liam, it’s me,” Eleanor gasped into her mobile as she jogged toward her car. “I’ve done it. I’ve more than done it. Meet me at the prearranged spot in twenty minutes.” Without waiting for a reply, she disconnected the call and broke into a run. A few seconds later, there were two new rubber marks on the tarmac of the car park as she sped away, laughing hysterically.

  Eleanor forced herself to slow down as she reached the main road that led back to Norwich. The last thing she needed was to get pulled over by the police. She kept laughing, though, tilting her head back every few seconds. She’d not felt this elated since her A-level results had come in and she’d realised that she had done much better than she’d expected to. This was exactly the same sensation.

  She cast her mind back to leaving the laboratory corridor. Only a split second after the door that led to Laboratory B had closed, the door to the presentation suite had opened, and the students had filed out. From the looks on their faces, the presentation hadn’t been the most exciting. Sue gave her a brief smile and a wave as she walked off toward the other laboratory, followed by the morose students and their teacher. Too late to do anything about it, Eleanor realised she was standing in her stockinged feet in the foyer. Sue hadn’t seemed to notice, though, and as Eleanor slipped her shoes back on, she glanced over at Jimmy’s cubicle to see if he’d seen her barefoot.

  Eleanor was going to feel bad about Jimmy. She knew he would be in a world of shit when her espionage was discovered, but there wasn’t anything she could do about that. Hopefully, she would never see him again. By the time she had put her hair back to its normal colour and got rid of the coloured contact lenses, he probably wouldn’t recognise her, anyway. For a security guard, he didn’t seem to be the most observant of people.

  There was a traffic jam on the outskirts of Norwich, just outside the town of Thorpe St Andrew, which was her ultimate destination. Liam had got them an Airbnb for a couple of weeks. Eleanor had wanted to go much further away and had even mentioned Cornwall, but Liam didn’t want to go too far from home. She could hardly blame him. Fiona hadn’t even been buried yet as the coroner hadn’t released her body, and Liam was talking to his girlfriend’s parents most days. Especially Fiona’s mother, who was taking her daughter’s murder hard.

  Eleanor turned onto Plumstead Road and slowed down, looking for the address Liam had given her. They were far enough away from the Ascalon Institute to not bump into any of the employees there, but if the contents of the USB drive were as explosive as Eleanor thought they were, then she was going to hide up somewhere much further away to write her story. She paused as a middle-aged man walked a dog across the driveway to the property Liam had hired. The dog walker’s rugged good looks were spoiled slightly by the look of vague disappointment on his face as he pulled at the dachshund, which was barking furiously at Eleanor’s car. Perhaps he wished he’d bought a more masculine dog, Eleanor thought as she pulled into the driveway and into the garage. Liam had complained about having to hire an Airbnb with a garage, but she had insisted, not knowing what the Ascalon Institute’s reaction might be. When she had reminded him they still didn’t know if the institute was behind Fiona’s death somehow, no matter how unlikely that might be, he had agreed.

  “Liam, I’m here!” Eleanor called out a moment later. Her brother appeared, a look of excitement on his face.

  “How did you get on?” he asked her.

  “Oh, mate,” she replied. “I’ve got footage inside the lab showing the mice and downloaded the entire hard drive of the laboratory’s computer.”

  “Seriously?” Liam said, his eyes shining. “My God, that’s amazing.”

  Eleanor looked at the hope on his face. He hoped that there was something in what she had stolen that would link the institute with Fiona’s death. She didn’t think there would be. The institute was definitely up to something, but she didn’t think it included murdering people.

  “I’m still shaking, Liam,” Eleanor said, holding her hands out in front of her and laughing. “Come on, let me show you what I’ve got.”

  A few moments later, having shown him the footage from the camera on his television, Liam’s disappointment was obvious. She looked at him and frowned.

  “Don’t you see, Liam?” Eleanor said, pointing at the screen. “They shouldn’t have a laboratory like this one. They don’t have a licence.”

  “But the licence is for what’s in the laboratory, not the level of containment.”

  “What?”

  “I was looking it up. We could build one of them in mum and dad’s back garden, but we wouldn’t need a licence until we put something in it.”

  “Something like a bunch of dead mice, you mean?” Eleanor said, pointing at the screen.

  “But we don’t know what they died of.”

  Refusing to share Liam’s pessimism, Eleanor turned to her laptop and fired it up. There would be something on the USB stick, she was sure.

  “I was talking to Fiona’s father earlier,” Liam said as they both watched the computer come to life. “There was some stuff that she never told me.”

  “What stuff?” Eleanor asked, distracted by how difficult it was proving to insert the thumb drive into the computer.

  “She was ill, Eleanor. Not when she died, not after I’d met her. Before.”

  “How d’you mean, ill?” Eleanor turned to her brother, not liking his expression.

  “Mentally ill.”

  “Fiona?”

  “Yes, Eleanor, Fiona. Who did you think I was talking about?”

  “What was wrong with her?”

  “It wasn’t schizophrenia, it was something close to it. Schizoaffective disorder, he said.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” Eleanor said, turning her attention to the contents of the thumb drive. She selected a document from it at random and tapped at the track pad to open it. A few seconds later, she was looking at a page full of symbol after symbol. “For God’s sake, this is gibberish. I can’t understand it at all.”

  “Eleanor?” Liam said quietly.

  “What is it, Liam?”

  “There’s one symptom of the disease that Fiona had that might be important.”

  “What?”

  “Paranoia.”

  72

  Charlotte looked out of the large oval window of the Gulfstream G650 as the plane banked over Freetown below them. A few moments later, the dark blue of Tagrin Bay came into view, and Charlotte could see the wakes of several ferries crossing in both directions between Tagrin and Freetown. They were still too high to see the ships themselves, but as the plane descended further, she could just make the larger ones out.

  “We’ll be landing in a few moments, Doctor Lobjoie.” It was Simon, the steward. “Can I get you anything?”

  “No, thank you,” Charlotte replied. Some peace and quiet would be good, but seeing as they were landing soon, that was kind of irrelevant.

  “Captain Brown was wondering how long you t
hink you might be?” Simon asked. Charlotte bit her tongue. Captain Brown, considering the amount of money the Ascalon Institute was paying him, would stay until he was needed, but Charlotte couldn’t see any benefit in reminding him of that. This might be her last trip to Sierra Leone for a while.

  “I’m intending on staying for three nights,” she told the steward. “I’ll be returning at first light on Monday, so tell Captain Brown to be ready then.”

  “Sure, Doctor Lobjoie,” Simon replied deferentially. “I’ll let him know.”

  As the plane descended, Charlotte thought back over the last few days at the institute. Following the success of their trials on the first batch of humice on Tuesday, she and Katayama had repeated it twice more the following day, each time with the same results. Then Charlotte had ensured that she could replicate the virus and adjust the incubation period. They had spent some hours going over it again and again until Charlotte had the technique perfected. The two doctors had briefed George late on Wednesday. To say he was ecstatic would have been an understatement.

  Then all hell had broken loose. When Charlotte had arrived for work on Friday morning, there had been a private security firm guarding the perimeter fence. She had approached the guards by the main gate, only to be told that the institute was closed. It was only after several panicked phone calls to George that she’d finally been able to get into the building.

  “What the fuck’s going on?” she had said as she’d walked into the building to see the security cubbyhole empty and the security doors wide open. George had been waiting for her in the foyer.

  “There’s been a breach, Charlotte,” George had said, his eyes full of panic. “Both the new receptionist and the sole remaining security guard have disappeared.”

  “Did they take anything with them?”

  “Katayama’s checking now, but she doesn’t think so. She’s checked Laboratory B, and everything seems to be where it should be.”

  “What about the security systems?” Charlotte had asked. “There’re entry and exit logs, footage, yes?”