Without warning

by John Birmingham

  ‘General, execute Oplan Damocles,’ Ritchie said. No one listening should know what that was. If they watched their news feeds, they’d know soon enough. But had he stepped over the line? he wondered. Hell, where was the line now?

  Franks paused for a mere second before saying, ‘Copy that, Admiral.’

  See how the Iranians like that, Ritchie thought before he continued.

  ‘We’re in dangerous, unchartered waters here, gentlemen, if you’ll forgive me the maritime analogy. This isn’t just a military problem, it’s political. But we have no political authority to lead us, and frankly I don’t see that changing any time soon. The civilian leadership here is barely coping with local responsibilities. Just feeding the islands and maintaining order is keeping Governor Lingle busy twenty-five hours a day. She makes the point, quite reasonably, that she can do infinitely more in her current office. After all, her state government instrumentalities remain completely intact and functional, whereas almost everything at the federal level has disappeared. I get the same line from Alaska and Washington State. They might be bucketing out a sinking boat, but we’re asking them to give up the bucket and the boat just to help us out. I don’t think we should plan for a new executive to emerge any time soon. Certainly not soon enough to deal with your immediate concerns, General Franks.’

  A brusque nod from Franks signalled his agreement. ‘So, what do I do, Jim?’ he asked.

  The words seemed to come from outside Ritchie. ‘If there is no political solution, we will have to find a military one. And fast.’

  * * * *

  21

  17TH ARRONDISSEMENT, PARIS

  Sleep finally claimed her, but only after hours of pain, dulled in the end by a dangerously large dose of Advil. The argument with Monique had been titanic and galvanising, and she feared that it had cost her more than just a few hours’ rest. Caitlin felt as though something vital had torn inside her head. She had lost her temper, and lashed out physically at one point, pushing Monique away from her, which only served to reinforce the French girl’s certainty that she held the moral high ground. After Monique’s initial shock at being pushed into the wall, Caitlin was sure she’d seen a smile and a small measure of triumph on her face.

  ‘So, in the end it is always the same, Caitlin, yes?’ she’d teased. ‘If you cannot win by reason you will do so with violence.’

  Caitlin had been unable to reply. She’d staggered backwards, suddenly losing her balance to a strong surge of nausea and a blinding stab of pain behind one eye. She’d collapsed and vomited up all of her dinner. Monique was beside her immediately.

  She had to hand it to the chick, she didn’t hold grudges. From a crazed harpy, screeching at Caitlin that she knew nothing about her boyfriend, she had switched without hesitation – propping her up, wiping the sick from Caitlin’s face with the sleeve of her shirt and helping her over to the tatty, uncomfortable couch, where she lay, shivering, for the next hour, sipping a glass of cloudy, brackish tap-water. Monique had even apologised repeatedly for upsetting her when she was so sick.

  She was genuinely remorseful. Caitlin didn’t know whether to be aggravated or touched, and in the end it hadn’t mattered. She was too sick to care. Sleep had only been possible after taking the painkillers, and she’d only managed that after three attempts. Her stomach was rebellious and disinclined to keep anything down. Eventually, however, she had drifted into a feverish, unsatisfying and fitful doze, waking frequently, or thinking she had, but never gaining full consciousness. The couch was just a few inches too short for her to stretch out comfortably, and the cushions were old and hard. She was so tired and drained, though, that it didn’t matter. Her body needed to rest.

  She found some peace by emptying her mind of all the troubles piling up around them, and imagining herself young again. Really young. Perhaps fifteen or sixteen, on a family beach holiday in Baja. Her dad was newly retired. Her older brother, Dom, was just about to leave home to take up a basketball scholarship all the way over in Vermont. Mom was still healthy. Caitlin lay shivering now in the darkness of the small, unheated apartment in a city tearing itself apart, and recalled an endless couple of weeks, surfing, swimming and hiking with her family. She managed a sad, lonesome smile at the memory of the surfing lessons she’d tried to give her parents. Her mother had wisely begged off after ten minutes, but Dad, he’d always been up for anything, and without the air force telling him what he could do with his life twenty-four,’ seven, Dave Monroe vowed that he would spend whatever was left of it living as a surf bum. He was probably joking. He already had a civilian job lined up with an air-freight company run by some buds who’d handed in their uniforms a couple of years before he did. But it was nice, Caitlin thought, to have him there to herself, with no prospect that he would ever again be called away to some third-world suckhole to get shot at by whackjobs and savages. It was nice to think of him living a life of ease, if only for a little while. And it was a pure delight when she finally taught him to stand up and dial into a little baby wave that carried him all of ten or twelve feet, whooping and hollering before he went A-over-T into the drink. She fell asleep with that happy memory as her last thought.

  It didn’t last. Nightmares tormented her, some vivid, some half remembered. Her family was gone and she was left to wander a world denuded of love and kindness. She dreamed herself in a city she did not quite recognise, where decomposing bodies hung from lampposts. Swinging on rotted ropes, they twisted in the breeze and revealed themselves as her family – then Wales, even Monique. She ran and ran through the dream, deeper into a city where children laboured under the whip and scourge to build pyramids of severed heads, where monsters capered and ghouls in human form held dominion over all. Every barbarous malignancy of human nature was free to bloom and run free. She passed through this landscape of horrors as a shadow, unable to act, invisible to victim and tormentor alike. Every now and then she would come awake with her heart hammering and her mouth dry and she would attempt to find the happy place where she’d swum and played with her father in the surf off Baja, but to close her eyes meant falling back into dreams where the whole world had become a charnel house.

  In the early hours of morning, sometime before the inky blankness of night gave way to the slightest hint of grey dawn she dreamed herself imprisoned in a cell, somewhere in the old fortress of Noisy-le-Sec. Her captors had beaten her, told her that as a ‘floater’, a deniable asset, she was already dead. She lay on an old cobblestone floor, in a pool of her own vomit and blood, her eyes closed almost shut by swelling. Two teeth were loose, probably knocked free of their roots. The pain from them alone was a hard, white supernova burning one side of her face. She could hear voices discussing her. Gutteral French, a smattering of German, and a few snatches of Arabic.

  ‘She is already a ghost. Let us be finished with it now.’

  ‘But the Americans, they know…’

  ‘But they can do nothing! She is Echelon. She does not exist.’

  ‘They dare to send her against us. They should learn such impudence is always punished.’

  ‘There will be reprisals.’

  ‘But of course!’

  ‘Oh, it is fine for you, al Banna, you are not…’

  She tried to wrench herself back towards consciousness. Al Banna. Her target. Monique’s ‘boyfriend’.

  ‘It is all right for you. You are safe.’

  ‘Nobody is safe.’

  ‘She is not just a spy – she is a killer of the most dangerous kind.’

  ‘Then ensure she does not kill again.’

  ‘Bilal, it is not easy…’

  Caitlin’s head felt as though it was wrapped in heavy blankets. Exhaustion and illness weighed her down, pressing her back into sleep, but a small part of her, an echo of her waking consciousness, forced her up out of the troubled sleep. The dream came apart like mist before a hard wind. Her head reeled with dizziness, but she was immediately aware that the horrendous pain and nausea had gone. Not ju
st eased, but gone, at least for the moment.

  She became aware of everything. Her position, jackknifed on the short, uncomfortable couch. The threadbare blanket with which Monique had covered her. The smell of the meal she had cooked some hours before, and the rank stench of her having thrown it up. The pre-dawn darkness, tinted just the faintest orange by the glow of a far-off blaze. The ticking of a wind-up clock. Footsteps padding about in the apartment above her. And Monique’s voice, talking to someone. Just her voice and occasional blank spots in the rhythm of a muttered conversation. She was on the phone.

  A jolt ran though Caitlin’s body, propelling her up off the couch and across the room. The sudden change left her balance reeling and she barked her shin painfully on a table leg, cursing but hurrying on. A phone call!

  ‘Mother of Christ,’ she hissed.

  She heard Monique’s voice falter, just before the beep of a terminated cell-phone call reached her.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing? I said no calls! Who was that, Monique? Who was it?’ Caitlin found her in the kitchen, pressed into a corner, looking scared.

  ‘I am sorry. I’m so sorry, it’s just I was frightened.’

  The room was dark, the only light the residual glow of the tiny screen. It painted her features a garish yellow, before winking out and leaving them in darkness.

  ‘Did you call your boyfriend, Monique?’ Caitlin’s voice was flat and hard, a sheet of stamped iron slamming down between them. ‘Did you call Bilal?’

  Her reply was an almost inaudible squeak. ‘I’m sorry, Caitlin. It is a new phone. Prepaid. I had to talk to him. I had…’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Monique. How many times did I tell you, no calls to anyone? Let alone your boyfriend the terrorist.’

  ‘He is not a terrorist…’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Did he pinky promise you that? Cross his heart and hope to die? Well then, I guess that’s all right. I’ll just go back to bed.’

  Caitlin spun on her heels and stalked away, heading for the bathroom, where she tugged on the string to power up the one exposed bulb, before bending down to rip back a sheet of mouldy linoleum, exposing the wooden floorboards beneath. She reached one finger through a knothole, gave a tug, and the board came away. Another pull removed the piece of wood beside it. A thick, buff-coloured folder came out first. She sensed Monique coming up behind her but said nothing, busying herself with emptying the small arsenal she had stashed away beneath the floor.

  No conversation passed between them. The only sound was Caitlin’s breathing and the metallic rattle of weaponry and ammunition coming up out of the hiding place. She could feel Monique wanting to say something, the air was almost alive with the tension growing between them. Caitlin didn’t trust herself to respond rationally, however, so she decided to short-circuit any confrontation. ‘There’s a sports bag in the bedroom, would you please get it for me?’ she asked, in as reasonable a tone as she could manage.

  ‘Okay,’ replied Monique in a small, frightened voice.

  She returned a few moments later with an old Adidas bag, empty save for a few shopping items from their last trip out. Batteries, a flashlight, some energy bars. Caitlin began stuffing the guns and ammo into the holdall.

  ‘I am sorry, Caitlin… It’s just…’

  ‘Forget it,’ she snapped. ‘It’s my fault. ‘I should have found the phone and taken it off you. You were always going to call someone. I should be apologising. I’ve lost my edge. This fucking tumour, the Disappearance, or whatever – it’s fucked me up and we are going to get killed because of it. Not because you made a mistake. That’s just… you. You’re not trained. You have no experience. You don’t think things through the way you need to now.’

  She finished topping off the bag with the three passports and a stack of currency. After a pause, she tossed the greenbacks. They were just deadweight. The euros, about fifteen grand’s worth, still had some residual value. Probably about half the purchasing power they’d had before Friday, 14 March. Caitlin hurried through to the small living area.

  ‘I’m outta here. You can stay or come with me. If you stay, there’s a good chance men will be here with guns very soon.’

  ‘Because of my call.’

  ‘Because of your call. To Bilal.’ Caitlin turned and looked at her with real anger. ‘If you come, there’ll still be men with guns. At first it’ll be like at the hospital – professionals, playing by the rules. Even if the rules have changed, and I don’t know what the fuck they are anymore, there will be rules. But soon, very soon… no more rules. Just violence like you cannot imagine. You will have to change, Monique. You will have to grow up.’

  ‘To be more like you?’ Her tone was reproachful, almost sarcastic.

  ‘To be like me. And Bilal.’

  At that Monique rolled her eyes again and Caitlin pushed past her, not wanting to be delayed by another tantrum. She retrieved a small backpack from the bedroom and began cramming food into it. Trail food that she’d picked up from a camping store: freeze-dried meals, more energy bars and a couple of British-surplus MRE packages. It was getting lighter outside, the glow of the fires beyond the edge of the old city were throwing less of a dramatic light on the low, scudding toxic clouds that hung over Paris. Which hung over everything, she reminded herself.

  ‘I am sorry…’

  ‘Would you for chrissakes stop saying that and pack. We have to get out of here,’ Caitlin insisted. ‘Come on.’ She led Monique through to the bedroom and pointed at another small backpack. ‘Pack clothes and food. More of the latter,’ she ordered.

  ‘Okay, okay. But you are wrong about Bilal. I told him what you said…’

  ‘A week ago that would have got you killed, but right now, slow packing is what’s threatening to end your life. Come on – move.’

  Caitlin’s ears pricked up at the sound of a distant siren. Her heart jumped forward a beat, but the sound tapered off. As Monique began to fill her pack with more supplies, the American retrieved a pistol from the holdall. A Glock 19 for herself and a.38 revolver for Monique, if needed.

  ‘So what did he say exactly, your boyfriend, that is?’

  Monique cinched shut the top flap, and flapped her arms theatrically. ‘He said you were crazy. He was very understanding. He thought the Disappearance had driven you mad. There have been many instances amongst the Americans in Germany. Suicides, breakdowns and such.’

  ‘So he’s in Germany? At Neukцlln, perhaps?’

  Monique froze, a suspicious glare fixed on her face.

  Caitlin smiled. ‘That’s right, I know where he lives. With his mom. Be cool – he is so off my to-do list now. Remember, I’m unemployed as of last week.’

  The other woman eyed her doubtfully but finally swung the pack over her shoulder, ready to go. Caitlin rushed to put on a fresh pair of socks. She slipped into her old boots, donned the leather jacket she’d stolen from the hospital and loaded up. She wouldn’t normally hit the streets weighed down with so much artillery, but any encounter they had with the cops was going to turn nasty. She had no doubt that both she and Monique were on watch lists with every agency of the state by now. The only question for her was whether the state would fall apart before it laid hands on them.

  She checked her watch – 5.45 a.m. Fifteen minutes until the curfew was over. Fifteen minutes they probably didn’t have.

  At least the drizzle had stopped for now. She could see that the pavement and the road were still slick with acidic rain, but for now they could move about without the irritation of burning skin and stinging eyes. Caitlin checked the room for the last time, making sure they weren’t leaving some vital piece of kit behind in the rush. The GPS batteries were dead but the satellite system itself, or at least the link to it, was increasingly sketchy, so the unit stayed on the table where she’d dropped it. Between them, they knew enough of the city to get away.

  There was nothing to identify her. Unless the French security service had her DNA on file somewhere, and anyway, that sort
of obsessiveness was no longer necessary. She’d already been blown. Echelon was gone. She was simply looking to save her own skin now, not to maintain operational security. It was liberating in a way – she could play a lot faster and looser because there were no rules. They might just make it.

  If her illness didn’t finish her off first.

  * * * *

  As soon as they hit the street, both women were struck by the strength of the contamination still befouling the air. Caitlin had a flashback to her first time in India, when she’d stepped into a small curry house and had to step out again immediately, her eyes streaming and her throat burning from the dense mist of powdered chilli dust she’d inhaled. This wasn’t quite that bad. It was at least bearable. But the deterioration in the atmosphere was still severe. At ground level the number of dead birds was spectacular. Perhaps the night had claimed more of them. They didn’t quite carpet the ground, but it was impossible to walk in a straight line for more than a few metres without stepping on one.