by Greg Barron
Ross hears footsteps and looks up to see Ken Mainey just returning from his down time, opening the door of the van and sliding inside.
‘How’s it going?’ Ken asks.
‘Number three’s a little bit slow. Might have to replace that circuit board they checked out yesterday.’
‘They say there’s nothing wrong with it.’
‘Yeah, well I say different. Might be OK, under normal circumstances, but when it comes to missile evasion …’
Just for the hell of it Ross sends the drones high into the air, moving his eyes from tracker screen to camera footage of the lights and back again, just for the pleasure of watching them ascend vertically at mind-boggling speeds, almost as fast as a small rocket. At eight thousand feet, a height at which, even in daylight, they are visible only to eyes that are actively looking, he leaves them hovering in mid air. He swipes the log-out bar at the bottom of the control unit. ‘They’re all yours. Have fun.’
Ken takes his place in the control chair, and Ross watches for a few moments before he slips out of the van and walks away towards the catering van, rubbing his hands together to fend off the cold. There is a table set up where a couple of technicians are eating, the caterer chatting good-naturedly in a Yorkshire accent.
Ross’s mind is on the drones. This is one of the final stages of testing, the durability tests — mindless hours of flying, day and night — logging power consumption of the hydrogen fuel cells, wear and tear, repairs. The price tag of these things, taken as a set, is going to be somewhere in the vicinity of fifty million dollars, and defence departments don’t spend that kind of money on things that break down, that do not achieve their durability stats, and do not offer significant air time. The testing is important work, but Ross cannot help his impatience. The pay-off can’t come quickly enough.
At the moment they are limited to a C-Band data link, keeping the control range down to about one hundred and fifty kilometres. Soon, however, they will be permitted to test with the Ku-Band, allowing them to be controlled from anywhere in the world, just like drone pilots control their Reapers over the air in the Middle East from the safety of Creech Air Force Base, Nevada.
Ross takes a seat and accepts a cappuccino in a foam cup, along with a plastic plate of steaming chicken curry and a bread roll. He eats and drinks quietly, alone with his thoughts while the technicians talk among themselves, something about the circumstances in which nitrogen in the fuel edges over the required tolerance level. Ross stops listening. These days and nights in the field are long. Sometimes it is necessary to switch off.
Draining the coffee, a wave of fatigue hits him. He closes his eyes and leans back in the chair.
TWENTY-EIGHT
LONDON
LOCAL TIME: 0100
PJ has been in a state of near torpor for some time. Able to function, but his mind drifting incessantly. Occasionally his eyes close — just for a few seconds before opening again — assessing for change. This kind of half rest is a learned skill that enables long sequences of active duty without actual sleep.
The tech’s voice brings him instantly and fully awake: ‘OK, we have some action.’
‘You sure?’ PJ asks.
‘Most definitely.’
After two hours of nothing, a pair of black Mercedes M Class luxury vehicles have pulled up outside the flat, out of place among the older Toyotas and Vauxhalls that line the road. Men left the vehicles and disappeared into the units, but there is no sign that they have entered the target flat.
PJ scarcely dares to hope, but wrapping up the operation to recover the anthrax spores — an operation that started ten months earlier in Iraq — before leaving the DRFS forever is his keenest wish. If that flat is indeed the source of a coded message on the EMK network, and those men in the vehicles are linked …
The array is focused onto a frosted glass window.
‘I can’t hear anything,’ PJ says.
A door slams. ‘That’s because they’re coming straight back out again.’
PJ swivels, looking from the screen to the front of the house.
Eight men leave the flats, loaded down with plastic crates and sports bags. They come down the path towards the street. Six wear black jeans and sweaters, the others hooded jackets and denim. The ones wearing black have the look of bodyguards.
‘I think we’re onto something,’ PJ growls into the GU.
One of the bodyguards appears to be more alert than the others. Medium height. Light on his feet. PJ knows the body type. Probably boxed to pro level at some stage. This one shepherds the others towards the car while looking in every direction. The most likely hiding place is the trunk of a plane tree, and PJ notes how he arches around it, making sure no one lurks in the shadows there.
‘OK,’ whispers the tech, ‘we’ve got facial profiling coming up.’
PJ watches the profile image come up on another screen. Facial recognition software running in real time. ‘The man in the front is known as Sami. On the payroll of EMK Corporation. Bingo.’
PJ, having had the GU up high, on his hair like sunglasses, pulls it down over his eyes and voice activates it into operational mode.
‘The second guy hasn’t got a match yet, and the third …’
PJ is staring at the third man in line, amazed, like a poker player with three aces who has just been dealt a fourth in the redraw.
‘SITPOL, are you seeing what I’m seeing?’
PJ is one hundred per cent certain, even without digital confirmation, that the third figure is the Most Wanted Man in the World. Badi. The Syrian. The man who escaped custody and who they have now hunted for months without finding a trace. At this moment he is right in front of their eyes and about to get into a vehicle and speed away.
One of the techs is speaking, trying to keep the excitement from his voice. ‘OK, we’ve got a match. It’s him. Also, we just ran the licence plates on the Mercs. They’re not genuine — stolen from a couple of cars on a street in East Ham four hours ago.’
One of the men dressed in black crouches down, checking each wheel arch of the cars, then shines a flashlight underneath. Then he stands and scans the area.
They are cautious — pros, PJ thinks.
‘You want a piece of chewing gum?’ the tech asks, holding out a packet.
Jesus, not now. ‘Hang on for a minute.’
PJ, watching through the tinted windows, registers the moment when the bodyguard sees the surveillance van. At first the man seems unsure, then walks closer, stands just ten paces away from them, in the middle of the road, scarcely bothering to move as a car comes along.
He calls and two of the others head towards him, taking up positions on either side. From inside their coats they bring out automatic weapons. At first these look unfamiliar — and then PJ recognises them from the distinctive, straight white box magazine.
3D-printed weapons. The latest scourge. The three of them open fire in a series of alternating bursts.
The van windows shatter into bright icicles of flying glass. Screens explode into a million plastic shards. Men go down in the van. Response to such an attack is a matter of training, including live-fire exercises, yet the first instinct is to get heads down rather than to resist.
The tech beside PJ takes a hit in the head, packet of gum still in his right hand. The van is absorbing fire from one end to the other.
The gunmen turn away quickly, walking back to the closest Merc and climbing inside. The two cars merge out onto the street and speed away.
PJ reaches for the side-door handle and wrenches it open, spilling out onto the street. He has the Warlock out in a moment, fires three shots at the retreating vehicles, knowing that they are far past effective range.
The thump in PJ’s chest won’t let him forget that the Most Wanted Man in the World is about to get away. That cannot be allowed to happen.
He realises that he has lost the GU, but there is no time to go back in for it. A car heads down the street towards him, and he tr
ies to stop it, waving his arms like an athlete performing star jumps. The car, an old Rover, drives around him, tyres screeching. The bystander effect — not wanting to risk involvement.
A motorbike comes next. PJ tries a less aggressive approach, and as soon as it nears, waves it down to a stop.
‘Police, quick. I need the bike.’
He shows no badge, but the half-forgotten revolver, still in his hand, appears to be authority enough. The man gets off abruptly.
‘You’ll get it back, don’t worry,’ PJ assures him, taking hold of the hand grips, engine still running. The bike is a Triumph Tiger Sport 1050. One of the 2CG guys owns one. PJ knows that it will do one hundred and thirty miles per hour plus on the flat. It’s a tall machine with a high seat, and big inverted USD telescopic forks on the front.
‘Here, give us the helmet.’ Riding without one might make him stand out to the people in the cars he is tailing.
He slams the open-face helmet down onto his head, straddles the seat, thrusts the revolver back into the holster, engages gear with a flick of his clutch hand and a nudge of the gear lever. Twisting the throttle, he screams away after the disappearing vehicles.
The Blair Room is in uproar, only Tom Mossel seemingly in control.
‘There are dead and wounded in the van. We need CASEVAC on site ASAP. I want 2CG Team Three on the ground there in five minutes. Any air assets we can get searching for two black Mercedes cars.’
‘We have a BAE Systems Fury UAV on the way.’ The Fury is American company General Atomics’ replacement model for the long-running Predator series. Larger, faster, and packing a bigger weapons payload, the British DOD runs half a dozen of them.
‘Any response from PJ?’
The screen switches over to the view from PJ’s GU, sitting unmoving on the floor of the van. It shows the inert body of one of the techs. ‘Sorry, sir. It seems likely that he’s been killed or incapacitated in the attack on the van.’
Mossel’s composure evaporates. ‘Bloody damn these people.’
Footage now, a chopper dropping into the site. Vision at crazy angles and flicking from camera to camera.
The smoking van looks like something from the streets of Baghdad or Kabul. A crowd of bystanders is starting to gather, stepping out of their homes in dressing gowns. Curiosity overcoming fear.
‘OK,’ Mossel says, ‘we have to find those cars. If we let that Syrian bastard through our fingers again … this time all our lives might depend on it.’
TWENTY-NINE
SYDNEY
LOCAL TIME: 1200
There are other tests that Jan is able to initiate while he waits for the anthrax cultures to grow.
Endospores are a smaller version of the bacterium, which become dormant under poor conditions. As spores they can stand climatic and environmental extremes, and last for many decades. When exposed to moisture and mammal body-temperature conditions they become vegetative, meaning that they will hatch and grow.
Spores are so long-lived that infections have resulted in humans decades after burying anthrax-infected livestock, merely from coming into contact with the surrounding soil. That life-span makes large-scale broadcast of the spores problematic. There is no way of disinfecting a city, for example; the spores simply wait for a lung to breathe them in.
Anthrax bacteria are rod-shaped and non-motile. They divide through the simple technique of binary fission — each cell splitting into two daughter cells that are genetically identical to the original. Exponential growth of a culture results, given unlimited nutrients and suitable media.
The capacity to form endospores, lethality, reproductive fecundity and ease of handling … these are the reasons why anthrax is still the most perfectly suited organism to weaponisation on the planet.
The first task is to confirm that these spores are indeed Bacillus anthracis. In the past there would have been nothing Jan could do but wait until the cultures had grown. Now, however, there are faster techniques to identify a microbe.
He uses a robotic arm to place a slide prepared by young Mary — a mixture of spores overlaid with matrix solution — into a Maldi-TOF mass spectrometry machine. The results will be cross-linked to a database of pathogens, including, in the REDPATH facility, all bio-weapon candidates, even extinct organisms such as smallpox.
‘Nice work on the slide,’ he says automatically. He’s learned to say such things as part of being a team leader. People like praise. Young Mary nods, pushes a stray hank of hair back under her hood and goes back to work.
The machine takes less than half an hour to give him a match. Jan is already certain, but the read-out tells him that the spores he extracted from that tank are undoubtedly B. anthracis.
This, immediately, is both significant and reportable. His first act is to move to the phone and call a Canberra number. He knows that the man he is calling does not have an official, or at least not public, job title, but is nevertheless a powerful man.
‘This is Jan Sloven.’
‘OK, you got anything for us yet?’
‘Not yet.’
A long deep breath at the other end, then: ‘Are they all viable?’
‘You should assume so, but we won’t know that for sure until we get growth on the cultures. Twenty-four hours at least.’
‘That’s too long.’
‘These are living creatures, sir, we can only operate within the parameters of that life form. If you want guesses, go to a clairvoyant.’
The next line of attack is to understand the qualities of this particular strain. Jan knows about the years of human tests in Iraq. He understands why and how anthrax increases in virulence each time it passes through a host. The underground laboratory at al-Hajjuf also, apparently, had a fully equipped genetic-sequencing lab. Jan needs to understand what changes have been made to the genome and how it affects the LSS-253’s ability to attack a human host.
When he moves back to the BSC it is to a third module set up by old Mary for a state-of-the-art technique known as PCR, or polymerase chain reaction. This allows the production of multiple copies of a strand of DNA that can then be sequenced. The process will tell them just how far this strain of pathogen has moved from the parent strain.
The first stage is a shoebox-sized robot that he uses to crack the spore, thus exposing the genetic material. Then a series of reagents are added, including primers, a special enzyme called a polymerase to catalyse the reaction, and individual DNA nucleotides to build the new DNA strand from the primer.
The PCR process itself uses an automated thermo-cycler that heats and cools the test tubes containing the B. anthracis DNA.
Now fully prepared, Jan initiates the sequencing process, which will, over hours of work, show if there have been genetic changes from the usual B. anthracis genome.
As his two assistants begin the process, Jan walks across the room to a large stainless steel unit decked out with alarms and lights. This is possibly the most dangerous few cubic metres on the continent.
This cabinet is a living archive of all the most dangerous micro-organisms in the world. Inside are banks of vials containing living samples of other anthrax strains, along with the world’s deadliest bacteria — Clostridium botulinum, Staphylococcus aureus, Treponema pallidum, Mycobacterium tuberculosis … but worse, the devastating Ebola, Variola, and Marburg viruses. All in one cabinet. And we keep it here, in the middle of a city.
Tomorrow, when they have finished testing these B. anthracis spores, a culture will be placed in this cabinet, as a permanent sample of the LSS-253 strain.
Isn’t it true that if we keep them, one day someone will use them?
It happened in America. A lab worker stole anthrax spores from Fort Detrick, the main bio-weapons lab, and sent them through the post, killing five people and affecting seventeen others, prompting a billion-dollar clean-up.
The alleged perpetrator, Bruce Ivins, was never brought to justice, poisoning himself before that was possible. Jan had always imagined that the CIA h
ad fed the offending poison, basically paracetamol, down his throat until his liver packed up, in some ugly ‘wet’ operation that would never see the light of day.
But strong evidence still points to the possibility that al-Qa’ida operatives were behind the mailings, and had obtained their ‘Ames’ strain anthrax spores through a sympathiser. Possibly from archives such as the extensive facility at Iowa State University.
A weapon such as this one has a life of its own, Jan thinks. Someone will use it. A rogue government, a lab worker with a grudge. How can we justify keeping this thing?
Maybe it’s time to start eliminating.
A train of thought gathering steam in his head, he turns and moves back to where the sequencing work is underway.
THIRTY
LONDON
LOCAL TIME: 0230
Tom Mossel leans over the oak surface of the table in the Blair Room. The audio and video on the screen are coming from Ronnie Booth, the Team Three leader on the ground next to the van. Rain is falling, running in virtual drips down the screen, smearing the streetlights.
Ronnie Booth is the oldest member of the 2CG team, the tactical group that operates as a semi-autonomous Special Forces group within the DRFS, rather like the CIA Special Activities Division. The 2CG motto, Where Others Can Not, Where Others Will Not, is no empty promise. Their work is dangerous, and Ronnie is a hard case — enamoured of heavy metal music and a mix of old-fashioned values. As a fighter, however, he is superb, and fears no man or thing on earth.
‘Sir,’ Ronnie says, ‘we have two dead here, and one wounded. I’m just talking to a motorbike owner who had his bike “borrowed” by a man in green overalls waving a gun around.’
Mossel nods, and the sense of relief that he has not lost an agent — and friend — on the job is like a weight removed from his shoulders. ‘So PJ’s on their tail?’
‘Maybe, yeah, but his GU unit was on the floor of the van. He’s got no mode of communication.’