Ultimate Sanction

by Sarah Luddington

  “It’s the worst part of any operation,” he grumbled.

  I glanced at him. “Why?” I asked. We’d been friends for a long time but as lovers I needed to learn about him anew.

  In the dark, with the occasional set of headlights sweeping over us, I caught his shrug. “I dunno really. Most of soldiering is waiting, even the training we do is an active waiting, all we really want is to get into the field.”

  “How are you going to handle the lack of action if you leave the Regiment?” I asked.

  “I won’t need to be active, so I guess I’ll get used to it. You worried I won’t cope with civilian life? Think I might get bored and wander off?” His eyes were dark now with the lack of light and I couldn’t see his expression. It made me uneasy.

  “I wasn’t until you mentioned it,” I said. “But civilian life is one hell of an adjustment. It’s not a smooth transition.” I remembered how violent I’d become while living in Spain. I thought the beer and sun, and the easy-going lifestyle would smooth out my sudden departure from active service. It hadn’t worked very well.

  “You’ll be there to help,” he said, placing more faith in me than I deserved.

  “Of course I’ll be there, but you might want to consider whether you’re ready to leave the action behind.”

  He held still for long seconds. “You are though, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not talking about me. And yes, I’m ready, more than ready in some ways, but I never considered returning to soldiering after being thrown out of the Regiment. They even drove me out of the country, so the job in Kinshasa, as a trainer, suited me.”

  “You certain you can’t go back?” he asked. “I mean, I know Danny isn’t very pleased with the whole gay thing but… Well, you sure it’s not worth talking him around?”

  “Even if I manage to talk him around, I can’t talk the rest of the country around,” I said.

  “Doesn’t answer the original question though, Mac. Are you willing to return to action?” he asked.

  “Brant’s offered us a job, as one of her teams in Unit 12.” I admitted this quietly because I still wasn’t sure it was a good idea.

  Jacob twisted so he could look at me properly, taking his attention away from the road. “Really?”

  I nodded. “Yep. Better pay, better general conditions when we’re not in the field, better pension if we live long enough to claim it.”

  “Cool.”

  The comms unit in my ear crackled to life. “Echo One.”

  “Receiving, Zero.”

  “Target 50 metres out and counting. Estimated speed, 60 kmph.”

  “Ready?” I asked Jacob. We both pulled up our shemaghs to hide our faces and pulled down the woolly hats. Ski masks would be better, but we hadn’t found any so this would do for disguises.

  Jacob’s grin reached his eyes and it gave me all the answers I needed to several questions buzzing in my mind. He still lived for this and I couldn’t blame him.

  I tapped my throat mic into life. “Moving to intercept point.”

  “Roger that, Echo One. Detonation in 3, 2…”

  Jacob and I rose from the ground but kept our heads turned away and eyes closed to preserve our night sight. The blast made the ground shiver and we both heard the metal screech even above the noise of the explosion. The squeal of tyres and crunch of metal made us run to the road. We both carried our sidearms in to the conflict as the large calibre rounds of the other weapons had more chance of hitting civilians at such close quarters. The SAS developed and specialised the double tap to take down terrorists in confined spaces with a lot of civilians in the mix. We practiced it above all other things, so our urban warfare remained true to our core beliefs – preserve life wherever possible.

  By the time we reached the Mercedes it had become entangled in the crash barrier. The other traffic on the dual carriageway had ground to a halt with blaring horns. I scooted around a small Toyota, banging a hand on the bonnet to keep the people trying to leave the car safely inside. Our target vehicle, now at a standstill at almost 90 degrees to the road and crossing both lanes, popped its doors.

  “Contact,” Jacob shouted, coming in from my left and loosing three rounds. The first man went down, head spraying a mist of red against the window of the passenger side window, easy to see in the lights. Yellow hazard lights flashed out of beat with each other as people screamed and tried to drive through or away from the explosion of violence.

  The driver and other passenger exited the vehicle. I saw the lead Merc screech to a halt, maybe 75 metres ahead of us. Three men debussed from it and lifted weapons in our direction. Jacob, having taken a little longer to move around the cars so he had a better angle, holstered his sidearm and raised the assault rifle. He loosed off rounds and took down one of the men further ahead.

  I engaged the other two, moving with a smoothness reminiscent of my youth, and dispatched one as if I were in the kill house at Hereford performing one of the endless practice scenarios. I heard the louder ca-cack of Jacob’s rifle against the smaller pop-pop of my side arm. The final man I needed to take down confused me for a moment when he threw his gun down and raced at me.

  Fighting anyone open handed who worked for the secret service in Korea seemed like a really bad idea. I wouldn’t stand a chance in hand-to-hand combat. They would all be trained martial artists in skills I couldn’t hope to match. At times like this it paid to have a lack of ego. I changed magazines with ease and let two shots go as the man covered the distance between us. Hitting a moving target, even at 10 metres isn’t always a guarantee and the first one missed due to me being unfamiliar with the gun I carried. The second winged him but he wasn’t slowing down, despite twisting to one side.

  I took a better stance. Three metres. The man had a knife in each hand. He wanted to cut me to shreds. Fuck. I fired again, hitting the centre body mass and he dropped. Blood hit me from the blowback of the penetration. I ignored him and ran to the vehicle.

  22

  With the door open I approached with care, my sidearm close to my chest, muzzle pointing down. “Come out with your hands above your head,” I yelled. “Echo Two, sitrep.”

  “Echo Two clear, alternative vehicle leaving the scene, one tango down.”

  “Understood, Echo Two.” I didn’t like the silence coming from the interior of the Mercedes. “I am armed, please remain calm. No sudden movements.” From the rear of the vehicle I approached, moved into position to fire if necessary and looked into the car.

  Blood covered the cream leather interior from the first man down. A small woman now huddled in the back, silent because of the gag in her mouth and hands zipped tied in front of her.

  “Do you understand me?” I asked.

  She looked at me with large brown eyes, cast in the sickly glow of the car’s interior light.

  “Nod if you understand me.”

  She nodded.

  “Are you alone?”

  She nodded.

  “Are you Dilras Begum?”

  She nodded.

  “We are the British Security Service, you understand? We are here to help you. I am going to reach inside the vehicle and help you exit into our custody. Please do not panic you are perfectly safe,” I said, maintaining eye contact and explaining my movements so she could anticipate me, giving her a sense of control. It always helped hostages if you gave them back the illusion of control in a combat scenario. They tended to calm down a lot faster.

  I held out my left hand, the right still holding my sidearm and she slid closer to me. She was younger than I expected, her personnel photo didn’t do her justice despite her obvious fear and exhaustion. The moment I had her forearm in my hand I pulled her through the car and out into the night. Jacob had now returned to cover our retreat even as sirens wailed in the background.

  We took an elbow each and left the road, the other carriageway also a standstill because of the chaos. Brant and Lydia left their positions. We hadn’t needed covering fire, so no one knew the
y’d been present. I should imagine there’d be cell phones taking video but with our faces covered we’d be anonymous.

  Within 30 seconds we’d recovered our vehicle, put Ms Begum between Brant and Lydia in the back and I drove smoothly, with my headlights off, down the road we’d parked in so we could take back roads to the A188 and return to the city. We left the scene with no one the wiser, at least for the moment. Providing no one heard us speaking English we should be free and clear of the authorities.

  Keeping a watch on the rear-view mirror for any signs of pursuit I watched Brant remove the tape and the wad of fabric in Ms Begum’s mouth. Lydia cut her hands free and handed the small woman a bottle of water. She took a long drink, replaced the cap and lunged out of her seat to hit me with the water bottle – repeatedly.

  I braked hard and the vehicle juddered to a halt, the ABS kicking in.

  “What the fuck?” Jacob snarled, snatching the bottle out of her hand, while Brant and Lydia sat on her. I reached up and switched on the interior light.

  “You mother-fucking idiots. You total blithering fools. You nincompoops.” A long tirade of what sounded like Hindi burst out of her. Jacob and I twisted in our seats to figure out what the hell was going on.

  Brant couldn’t get the woman to calm down. Jacob opted for the direct approach, he drew his sidearm and pressed it to her throat. “Shut up,” he ordered.

  Her eyes widened. I had to admit if he looked at me like that, I’d have shut the fuck up as well.

  “Alright, that’s enough,” I said, placing a hand on the barrel of the pistol and pushing it down. “What seems to be the problem, Ms Begum?”

  “I’ll tell you what the problem is, you overgrown fucking ape, you left my bugs behind in the other car. Who the hell are you people?” Her rage filled the vehicle. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t expecting a medal for our action over the last few days but a ‘thank you for risking your life to save mine’ might be nice.

  “We work for the Security Intelligence Service, Unit 12,” Brant said. “This is Sergeant Greenbrook, Lance Corporal Hayes and Sergeant Macalister. I am Colonel Elizabeth Brant. The SAS were supposed to retrieve you from the Congo but didn’t make it, so we stepped in. Why are you talking about bugs? We know why you were in the Congo. We know about Porton Down and your research.”

  The Bug Lady snapped her mouth shut and glared for several seconds. I could almost see the wheels racing as she built up another head of steam. “When they took down my security detail and my lab technicians they didn’t just take me, they took my research. The hard drives. They also took several of the containers carrying my research.” None of us had a clue what she was talking about. In frustration at our lack of understanding she almost shouted, “They took my mosquitoes. They have the weaponised mosquitoes in that car! I wasn’t taken by Boko Haram. The men who came to the camp were professional soldiers made to look like Islamists.”

  Silence in the car.

  “Maybe you should start at the beginning,” the colonel said after a lengthy interval filled with Begum’s heavy breaths.

  Tears welled in the big brown eyes and they were dramatic enough to make Jacob and I back off. “I can’t, I just have to get my bugs.”

  “I fucking knew it,” Jacob said. “Anyone working with bugs is a crazy person. She’s a bug lady.” He shuddered.

  “Why are these insects so important to you?” asked Brant. “If they get out can they really do that much damage?”

  “They are vectors, carriers of diseases we’re working on, partly to find cures in case anyone else is doing the same thing, but also so we can dominate the market. It’s a financial advantage to have the best weapons.”

  “I don’t understand,” I confessed.

  Begum looked at me. “We’ve been weaponising insects since the time of the Greeks. Beehives and wasp nests would be catapulted over city walls. Maggot infested pig corpses, thing like that. The Second World War saw an explosion in this research, most of it done by Japan on the Chinese, the Germans and strangely the Canadians. Everything that can bite or sting a human has been experimented on and used. Even bugs that can destroy crops can be weaponised. I have weaponised the malaria carrying Anopheles genus mosquito to carry the pneumonic plague and I was in the Congo to be close to the source of both pathogens and any local knowledge that might be in the jungle so we can help find a cure for any of these potential diseases. If we are doing it, so are our enemies and we have to be prepared. You must go get my bugs because if they end up in North Korea, they won’t need me to turn the world into a zombie fucking apocalypse film they’ll have the bugs ready to go.”

  “You put the Black Death into a mosquito rather than a flea? For money?” Jacob asked. “Because the government told you to?”

  “Essentially, yes. It’s a bit more complicated –”

  “Like we don’t have enough problems in the fucking world,” he snarled. “We now have to fight insect wars as well. Fuck me.”

  I put the car back into gear and drove through the quiet suburban area of the sprawling city. This suburb didn’t consist of Soviet style housing blocks, modern housing estates were the order of the day and in the distance, I could see the mountains, a darker black against the night sky.

  “Do you know how they were planning on taking you into Korea?” asked Brant.

  Begum shook her head. “I’m sorry. They only spoke in English to give me orders. They gagged me when I tried to call for help at the airport. I’ve been fighting for so long I don’t know how to stop.” She hiccupped and I watched her in the mirror as the defence mechanisms began to crumble. “They shot my security team and took me from the jungle. Murdered the staff I’d employed locally and raped the women before cutting off their hands.”

  Jacob glanced at me and we both faced front. Another of those conversations Lydia and Brant needed to deal with and now was not the time. We needed int.

  Brant took Begum’s hand. “Can I call you Dilras, Ms Begum?”

  I concentrated on the road and Lydia’s quiet instructions from behind my seat whenever we reached a junction.

  “You’ve been through an experience none of us can imagine and survived. Your strength is incredible, Dilras. I just need you to hold onto it a bit longer and get us where we need to go. Do you know how they were planning on getting you out? Anything you might have picked up could give us a clue. We think they’ll use a hel – sorry – helicopter but I need to know where from. We have a choice of three sites we’ve located. We made plans in case we failed to take you on the road.” Brant had Dilras’s hand in hers and stroked it carefully. Her wrists were chafed and bloody.

  I concentrated on the road. The marks I could see, peeking out of clean but ill-sitting clothing, made my heart burn. The sad reality of my job meant I saw this every time we left Hereford and sometimes among the women my workmates called wives – violence. I always thought it was normal for a straight man to feel angry about violence against those weaker than themselves, but it turned out gay men raged at the same injustices. Protecting people from others had been hard-wired into me and the army used that innate need to protect, honing it, polishing it, firing it back out into the world to create havoc among the enemies who would hurt those people I wanted to defend.

  Protecting Jacob and the others in the car, then the world outside, drove me ever onwards. If I stopped being that man what would I be? Even after leaving the Regiment I hadn’t found any sense of peace until I rocked up in Kinshasa and began training my team. What happened to a person when they were denied the one thing their soul craved? I glanced at Jacob – I knew exactly what happened when someone was denied their soul’s duty or love, they turned into shadows and drifted through life until they had nothing left. That would have been me if Jacob hadn’t returned to drag me out of the shadows.

  “They spoke in Korean most of the time,” Dilras said in a much quieter voice. “But one man, he would speak with people in English, sometimes Russian. I think he ordered a helicopter
to pick us up from the top of a building near Nikolai’s Triumphal Arch?”

  Lydia typed with a preternatural speed. “There’s a car park nearby with a helipad on the top. It directly overlooks the bay. From there it’s a straight run down to the Russian border with North Korea. If we don’t stop that hel before it takes off, we’re fucked. There’s just nothing we can do except get in touch with the American base in Japan and see if they’ll lend us a Hellfire missile or two.”

  “Not really an option, Sergeant,” Brant muttered. “You’ve done well, Dilras. This will be over soon, I promise.”

  I glanced at Jacob again and he shrugged with one shoulder, the other probably painful after the firefight. How was this going to be over soon? We’d never reach the damned hel in time. Unless…

  “Lydia, can you fuck with the traffic systems in the city from your laptop?” I asked.

  She glanced at me in the mirror. “You have no idea how a computer works do you?” she asked, the tartness in her voice making the heat rise in my cheeks.

  “Um…”

  “No,” Jacob said. “He has no idea, but can you do it?”

  She rubbed her face and picked up her phone, one speed dial later and we heard her talking to another woman. “Hi, honey… Yes, I know… Um… Yes… Well… Aria, please just listen for a second… Yeah, I know, I’m sorry.” The ranting on the other end went on for a while. “Have you finished? Good. I need to stop a black Mercedes registered on Korean diplomatic plates from reaching its destination. We have to catch it up. Our registration is…” she reeled off a series of letters and numbers, I would never have remembered. “I can’t do it from here I don’t have the tech.”

  She covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “For your information, Sergeant Macalister, I can’t actually perform miracles, I merely facilitate them.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  Her attention returned to the phone. “Yep, that’s the one. It just needs slowing down,” a long pause, “well, yes, if you can hack the GPS that would be great. Send them all round the houses. We’ll be there asap. Thank you. Yes, I promise I’ll stay safe.”