Instinct (2010)

by Kay, Ben

  ‘I’ve got a rogue hawk approx one K from target, please advise, over.’

  ‘We see it, Candyman. Hold fire until instructed otherwise.’

  The bomb was heading straight for the Spartan. Madison could see it coming but didn’t have enough lift to bank out of the way.

  He was yanking the control stick back and right as hard as he could, sending the plane into a steep climb. The elevators on the tail were fully tilted, and the pedal was pushed into the floor.

  They were a hundred yards apart now, and closing at a thousand miles an hour.

  The plane kept banking and climbing.

  The bomb kept burning through the air.

  At the moment of impact the Spartan lifted another inch. As it rose, the bomb’s tail fins scored the back wheel of the plane, puncturing the tyre, then passing on.

  Everyone felt it: a wavy bump that flicked the tail out again, sending the plane upwards at a perilous angle.

  ‘I can’t … fucking hold … it,’ grunted Madison, gripping the control stick like he was on a rollercoaster.

  Behind them, 400 kilotons of bomb plunged through Bishop’s spine and into the doors of the white building.

  The explosion was instantaneous. Thousands of tons of earth flew upwards as if wrenched by a giant earthquake. The jungle, clearing and runway seemed to jump in the air as the violent shockwave whipped through them.

  The Spartan, still yawing perilously to the left, took another hit of pressure. The explosion of dirt flew up around it, rattling the tail and sending a plume of dust around the back windows. The plane lurched again, throwing Susan and Mike out of their seats.

  ‘Hold on … everybody!’ grunted Madison.

  It was his will against the force of the nuclear explosion. The Spartan was gaining distance, but it was heading into a flat spin that could easily send it diving back into the jungle.

  Laura and Andrew gripped their seats as cargo crashed and flipped around them. George took a fierce knock to the head from a flying toolkit, drawing a trickle of blood from his temple.

  The roar of the engine was so loud it invaded their ears like a white-hot sledgehammer, driving out the ability to think, but expanding the fear.

  ‘AAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!’ screamed Madison.

  With that scream, the plane seemed to reach a peak. Surrounded by dust and pointing upwards at sixty degrees with a noise of tortured metal, it dropped ever so slightly.

  The sound calmed a little and they began to escape the dirt.

  Blood returned to white knuckles, and teeth that were clamped tight slowly loosened and separated.

  They could hear Madison breathing hard, but slower.

  ‘OK, everybody. I think we’re going to make it.’

  The F-35 banked round over MEROS. Flying directly back over his approach route, Captain Fox watched a little pocket of Venezuelan jungle transform from verdant foliage to a blinding flash of brilliant white in the blink of an eye.

  ‘Candyman to base, the toad is in the hole, repeat, the toad is in the hole, over.’

  ‘Base to Candyman, we copy. Return to base immediately.’

  ‘Roger that, base. I still have the rogue hawk in my sights. Should I engage, over?’

  ‘Negative, Candyman. Return to base as instructed. Over and out.’

  Captain Fox was happy to obey orders, but he didn’t think it would hurt to let the Spartan know he was there.

  He switched to supersonic and blew past the larger plane at a distance of ten metres before heading north-east to his base.

  ‘Jesus, what the fuck was that?’ yelled Madison as the F-35 shot past. It was one last ripple that had to be dealt with. Like a storm wave hitting a fishing trawler, the turbulence sent the Spartan tossing from side to side.

  ‘Asshole!’ Madison screamed at the disappearing bomber. A little more attention to the control stick and the plane settled down.

  ‘OK, folks, I think that’s it. I got nothing on my radar, so we should be looking at a flight time of approximately four hours to the land of no fucking bugs, but many, many mojitos.’

  95

  Laura looked out at the jungle. She had only arrived yesterday – or was it the day before? She checked her watch. Its face had been shattered somewhere along the way. It was the only thing her husband had left her, and she wondered if there was a point when it might have been broken saving her from a set of grinding jaws or an intent stinger.

  On the plane, there was a shellshocked silence. There was nothing to say beyond looks and gestures as several of the passengers collapsed with exhaustion and sank into a treacly sleep.

  Looking across, Webster caught Laura’s eye. He slipped out of his seat and came over to where she and Andrew were sitting.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, just loud enough to be heard above the sound of the thundering engine.

  ‘Hi,’ replied Laura.

  There was an awkward pause while Webster tried to articulate a million thoughts. In the end, Laura spoke first.

  ‘So what happens now?’

  ‘We’re going to head to the base in Costa Rica. It’s not a hardcore military operation and we’ve got friends there who’ll make sure we can all go on to where we want to be. I assume for you that’s England.’

  ‘Definitely,’ said Andrew, just in case his mum was thinking of anything else. Laura put her arm round him.

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘Me? I don’t know. MEROS has been the closest thing I’ve had to home for a long time. Got no roots elsewhere, so I might hang in Costa Rica for a while until something comes up. I hear there’s good fishing there this time of year.’

  There was another pause as they both avoided being the one to speak next and willed the other to do it instead.

  ‘Well, I just want to say thanks,’ said Laura.

  ‘What for? Kidnapping Andrew? Dragging you out to the land of giant killer insects?’

  ‘Obviously. No, for keeping us alive. Without you we’d still be down there.’

  ‘Without me you’d never have been there in the first place. I owe you a lifetime of making up. You too, Andrew.’ Webster reached into his trouser pocket. ‘Maybe I can start with this.’ He pulled out the chunk of bloody metal and passed it to Andrew.

  ‘My knife!’

  ‘It was on the stairs. I saw you playing with it yesterday. Figured you’d want it back.’

  Andrew checked the blades.

  ‘Thanks, Major Webster.’

  ‘Any time.’

  96

  Tobias Paine stood in his garden smoking the cigarettes that his wife would not allow in the house. He took another look at his watch and realized that, if everything had gone to plan, MEROS no longer existed.

  Perhaps there would be questions to answer, enquiries made about the efficiency of his operation. Why was he unable to provide the military resource that was required? Where were the results of all that funding? And, most importantly, when would the bugs be available again?

  But that was the benefit of working in covert operations: within reason he could do things his way without having to justify himself. He could redirect finances. He could wipe out jungles. He could kill.

  But what was that nagging feeling in the back of his mind, the one that made him suck just a little harder on that full-strength Winston 100? It couldn’t be guilt, could it? Not when he ordered and arranged death every day.

  No, it was definitely not guilt. It was something much more unpleasant than that. Like an oily arm around his shoulders, it was the inescapable sensation of failure.

  He had been given another responsibility and, just like those times at college when he hadn’t quite made the social grade, he had come up short.

  And why? Well, it was that prick, Bishop, of course. He might have been his wife’s brother, but the man was an idiot. No matter how many times Paine had found positions for him, he had never b
een repaid with anything approaching competence. At least the posting to MEROS had meant he no longer ruined family Christmases with his execrable attempts at humour and questionable personal hygiene.

  Paine exhaled another lungful of smoke with a raw snort. He had certainly got rid of the little shit now. Harriet would be … dismayed, but it was definitely for the best. They could all make a fresh start; pretend he never happened.

  And once the current difficulties were dealt with and the ashes of Colinas de Edad swept under the carpet, he would be free to move on, unencumbered by mediocrity, compromise and the growing pains of something that had progressed by trial and error. With MEROS out of the way he could now concentrate on the next stage of the bigger picture, the endgame that he had dreamed of from the very beginning: MEROS B, the second bughouse, new and improved with 100 per cent more everything. It would be his shining achievement, his crowning glory, and it would not fail, because it would not be under the control of someone as pathetic as Steven Bishop.

  No, this time he was going to take a personal, hands-on interest in its success. He had very big plans for the continuation of the MEROS project, plans that would make this incident seem like a minor hiccup, plans that would make the world sit up and pay attention, finally allowing him to take what was rightfully his: wealth, power and a place in history.

  He couldn’t wait.

  He took one last drag on his Winston and flicked it through a triumphant arc into the flowerbed.

  97

  Several square miles of jungle that had suffered little interference for thousands of years vanished in less than a second.

  From the physical impact of the missile, a chain reaction began that had no regard for nature or history, laying waste to thousands of years of both in the blink of an eye.

  As the hydrodynamic front moved outwards, radiation rapidly heated everything in the surrounding land to an equilibrium temperature. Waves of thermal radiation sent millions of degrees of heat sweeping from the hypocentre of the blast at a speed of 600mph, sending a thunderous wall of flame to annihilate everything in the surrounding miles. Even the rocks and earth were vaporized instantly, reduced to atoms in the expanding shockwave.

  Then the fireball roared upwards into a mushroom cloud that curled in on itself like a frowning skull and hung over the bombsite as if overseeing the devastation below.

  When at last the smoke cleared, MEROS was a vast, empty hemisphere that pulsed with radiation. Aside from the distant crackle of flames, the air sat heavy with an empty silence.

  In the following weeks, the only changes came with the weather. Rain darkened the soil, wind whipped the ashes of the jungle around in whitish eddies and the sun brought life to nothing.

  When the rainy season arrived, a monsoon lashed the giant scoop of dirt.

  Without trees to break the storm, the gusts tore through the air, sending the rain down in hard, heavy drops to hammer the ground.

  The water pooled in the bottom of the crater, and soon the downpour was churning the surface of a lake of mud.

  In the half-darkness of wet earth, bruised clouds and shadows of frothing rain, it was impossible to make out the whip-thin, grey, translucent rod that rose through the water. It slid upwards, thickening as each new inch was revealed, until it protruded some ten feet from the water.

  It hung still in the air, water collecting at its tip and dripping into the mud in slow, plump splashes. Then, like a shark’s fin slipping through the surface, a second shaft of slim, leathery flesh joined the first.

  Through the driving hiss of landing rain, a furious scream rang out in the darkness.

  It was hungry.

  Acknowledgements

  I’d like to thank everyone who was kind enough to take the time to read this book during its development. You helped take it from a mewling, underweight neophyte to the strapping bruiser you see before you. Biggest thanks must go to my wonderful wife, Gabi, who had to read it enough times to more than justify divorce proceedings. Then, in chronological order: Mum, Dad, Vicky, Toby, Sean and Sian, each of whom gave me invaluable advice and encouragement. Also, thanks to my brother Andrew who set me on the path of a good story well told from an early age.

  My eternal gratitude must also go to Robert, my agent, who took me on in spite of some very good reasons to chuck my manuscript into the nearest incinerator. Here would be a good place to admit to him that I may have fibbed slightly when I suggested that other agents were interested in me. None were. If it wasn’t for him, it’s very likely that this book would not exist.

  Equally deserving of my thanks is my editor, Alex. Not only was he kind enough to want to publish Instinct, he also made many of the most beneficial suggestions that brought about its improvement. Having said that, he sometimes attributed these to a nameless team of people back at Penguin, so thanks to them, too, whomever they may be. And thanks to Sarah, my copy-editor, who cheerfully smoothed off the rough edges on my behalf.

  Finally, I’d like to thank Arsene Wenger for his contribution to my happiness over the last dozen years.