Elephants can't hide forever

by Peter Plenge

  He was hoping this might suffice, but Dave Penny was quick to respond: “How the fuck do you propose to get three long termers into this hospital at the same time?” he enquired.

  Mike knew this was the difficult bit. “In my line of business” he responded “There are times when we come into contact with the most unlikely of people. Several years ago, I made friends with a scientist who worked on contagious diseases; he worked out of the Ministry of Defence establishment at Porton Down. This was a highly secret Government establishment which explored unethical methods of warfare such as chemical and germ weapons. These people developed all kinds of lethal agents designed for mass killings that were to be used as an alternative to nuclear weapons. The government felt at the time, that such deadly silent weapons would be more of a deterrent than conventional nukes.”

  Mike could see Cathy wasn’t liking this, or where it was going, nevertheless he continued:

  “The Porton Down project was shut down and my scientist friend transferred to the Hospital of Tropical Diseases in Tottenham Court Road, where he still works. With a little persuasion, my proposal is to obtain from him a virus which would be smuggled into the prison for the three guys to take simultaneously; it would have to be one with scary visual effects. The prison doctors would not risk keeping such people in the prison medical centre, and so would transfer them to a secure quarantine facility within St Marys Hospital. As they were being moved, we would take them then, and I would have a vaccine to administer, and away we go.”

  “Jesus Christ,” was Cathy’s response.

  “So, and I may be being stupid here, but should any thing go wrong and you can’t get them the vaccine, they die of some fucking tropical disease?” was Dave Penny’s incredulous question. Mike knew this was coming. “And Jane dies with them, so I won’t let that happen” was his calculated reply.

  “And if all this comes off, there is still the small matter of getting off the Island, after all once you’ve grabbed the men, all hell will let loose, you won’t make it to the ferry.” Cathy remarked.

  “That shouldn’t be too much of a problem” Mike replied “There are lots of quiet coves along the coast, all within ten minutes from the hospital. I can get my hands on a small inflatable motor torpedo boat, which I can hide the boat in prior to the snatch, and we’ll be across in no time. However, if we go with this option I intend to explore the possibility of arriving at the hospital in an ambulance and blag our way in under the pretence of transferring the guys straight up to London. This would get us enough time to get across the water before the shit hit the fan, and maybe we wouldn’t have to use force, but keep the boat at the cove as a fall back.”

  “Well, you’ve certainly got balls, I’ll give you that.” Cathy addressed Mike, “However, it’s insane, and you guys might get away with such a scam in the Army but I’m not prepared to put my man at risk to this degree. Tomorrow I’m due to visit Mouse, so I’m going to tell him of both plans and that I’m instructing you to purchase the house, we go with the tunnel and that’s final.”

  Mike was crestfallen, just when he thought he’d got through Cathy had put her foot down; his only hope was that Mouse would overrule her, but if he had read things correctly that was unlikely to happen, therefore he knew somehow he now had to concentrate on getting Jane away from her captives. He would have to wait until an opportunity arose where he could make a couple of calls.

  Chapter 31

  No 2 Visiting Booth HMP Parkhurst

  As soon as Cathy entered the Visitor’s centre, she had a feeling of deep unease. She hated this place, but never showed it to Mouse; it was after all her job to keep his dwindling spirits up, so when Mouse appeared she was all smiles. She sat in front of the glass window, and they both picked up the phone, the only way they could speak through the plate glass.

  “Hello darling, how are you faring?” she asked.

  Mouse forced a smile. Cathy could see something was troubling him deeply.

  “I’m just fine,” Mouse lied, “tell me about our friend, and make it good news please.” he almost implored.

  Although they were free to speak privately, Cathy went into a whisper, telling Mouse the good news that their captive was co-operating, and how he had a very plausible method to get them out. She also talked of the other option and laughed it off as total madness, just really to affirm to Mouse that even in his desperation to get out, she wasn’t having anything so desperate and was prepared to wait the extra time for a safer but more realistic option.

  Mouse looked long and hard at his wife, his eyes unusually rheumy and dull. Eventually he spoke:

  “Cathy, I wasn’t going to tell you, but now I have no choice. I’ve been having tests recently on what I thought was a persistent sore throat, anyhow yesterday the Governor called me up to his office.” Cathy was beginning to feel her stomach knot up, Mouse continued:

  “There’s no easy way to say this, I’ve got cancer of the throat and it could be terminal.”

  Cathy started to shake uncontrollably before dropping the phone in a flood of tears. How could this be, Mouse was such a strong man, he just wasn’t the type to get a cold let alone the big C. Eventually Cathy composed herself enough to listen to what Mouse had to say, although right now she felt she was in the middle of a nightmare.

  “Now listen Cathy, no one knows if this will kill me or when, but what I do know is I’m not going to get the help I need in this shithole and I’m not going to die in here. The Governor said he had spoken with the medics and I may have two years, maybe more, whatever the case, the sooner I get out of here the better my chances, so if I’m going to croak then lets make the most of what time I’ve got left.” Cathy was devastated and couldn’t speak. Mouse told her to leave and come back the following week when it had sunk in. She could only nod her agreement, and with that she unsteadily made her way out.

  Cathy stood just outside the main prison entrance on the Clissold road. Still in a trance, but slowly regaining her thought process, she pulled out her mobile and dialled the GPS phone sitting on the kitchen table back at the house.

  “Hello Cathy” Dave Penny answered.

  “Put him on,” Cathy ordered in a shaky voice. Mike took the phone.

  “Its plan B, and it had better fucking work or you and your girl are both dead,” Cathy barked and with that she broke down sobbing.

  Chapter 32

  A Pub Just off Tottenham Court Road

  Mike Tobin had been shocked at how distressed Cathy had been when she returned home that night from the Prison two weeks ago. She had eventually opened up after a couple of very large brandies and told the men of the Mouse’s condition. As tough as the men were, they were genuinely sympathetic to the plight Cathy was in. Mike tried reassuring her that the hospital job would be a piece of cake but it fell on deaf ears. Mike, of course, was very pleased with the outcome, although as a decent man he would not have wished it this way.

  And so it was that Mike found himself sitting in The Dog and Gun, a plush pub a stones throw from the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, waiting to re-acquaint himself with Professor Don Gooch, who, despite his grandiose title, was still a young man in his mid thirties. Don had always loved working with the action men of the SAS, and secretly wished he had had the guts to enlist instead of following the academic route of Medicine. Mike remembered the continual questioning he and his mates would receive from Don when they were working at Porton Down, in fact the SAS troop, totally contrary to Army rules, as Don was classified as a civilian, once took him back to the barracks at Hereford and let him train in the infamous Killing House using live ammunition. It remained the highlight of Don’s life, and Mike was hoping that episode would hold him in good stead for what he was about to ask.

  Dave Penny sat in the corner of the pub. As much as Mike had tried to persuade Cathy to trust him alone, she had, wisely, refused and insisted Penny travel everywhere with him on the mainland. However, she had agreed that for the purpose of the operation Mike co
uld speak alone with Gooch, as long as Penny was always in eye line.

  Mike had worked out his angle of approach to the Professor, and was turning it over in his mind for the umpteenth time, when the man himself walked in. Mike, spotted him first and strode over to him, embracing him in a man hug as affectionate as if he were a long lost brother.

  “Prof, you look great, you must have discovered a drug to keep you young” Mike quipped.

  “You haven’t seen the portrait in the attic,” the Professor smartly replied, but this went right over Mikes head, Oscar Wilde was not his thing. Both men grabbed a pint and retired to the booth, where they could not be heard.

  “Well Mike, as much as I’m privileged you’ve taken the time to look me up, I’m sure you’ve got an ulterior motive. Are you still in the unit?” Don asked.

  Mike put his finger to his lips, more for effect than anything and lied, “Sure am, Prof, and yes, as good at it is to see you, we have a really tough challenge, ordered directly from the Home Office. In fact, and this is top secret, the Home Secretary is making noises about shutting the unit down, saying we’re too archaic, and too expensive, so we’ve been given a mission to prove we can still operate in the most stretching circumstances.”

  “And you need my help?” Don asked, hoping the answer would be affirmative.

  “Don, to a man the squad agreed that for what we’ve got in mind you are the only man we could and would trust. What’s more, pull this off and the Boss says you can go up to Hereford and spend a week out on the Beacons in one of our hide and seek programmes.” Mike was finding this lying a bit too easy.

  The Professor stuck his chest out a few inches. Training with the SAS would be so cool, and give him street cred for a very long time.

  “What can I do?” he asked.

  This was the question Mike had been playing him into. Mike explained how the squad had been tasked with breaking out three members of their team who had been, placed, and now incarcerated, in one of Her Majesty’s Prisons. The mission had been made harder by the fact the prison was Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight. Mike said that actually one of the squad who was in the stir the Prof might remember: Jock Wallace. Yes, the Prof remembered Jock from the Killing House; he had almost blown his head off in the dark, live ammo as well. Mike of course was banking on this.

  “Mike,” said Don “It sounds tremendous fun and so exciting, but just how can I help?” He was genuinely perplexed.

  “Let me enlighten you dear boy,” Mike said in his most endearing tone. “We need to get these lads into the hospital across the road, we need them all there together on the same day, so we need to fake an illness that looks so serious the Prison medics freak out, and ship them out for fear of infecting other inmates. So we need to infect our boys with some kind of virus that does that, then when we get them over the road, we give them a vaccine and whisk them back to Hereford, and the boss calls the Home Secretary with the good news there out, and that’s where you come in, you up for it, so the question is, is there something available that you know of and can obtain that we can give them?” The sixty four thousand dollar question was out.

  Professor Don Gooch, thought for a moment then looked sternly at Mike and uttered one word,

  “Ebola”

  Mike, for once rendered speechless, eventually found some words.

  “Fair enough, you don’t want to fuck about then.”

  Don looked at Mike, after several seconds both men broke into spontaneous and uncontrolled laughter.

  The reason both men found the word Ebola so funny was not that it was humorous, far from it; to those in the know Ebola is probably the single most dangerous virus known to man since the Bubonic plague, and the eminent Professor was coolly suggesting they let it loose in one of Her Majesty’s Penal Establishments. He truly was SAS material.

  The Ebola virus was first discovered as recently as 1976, although it had undoubtedly been rampant on the African continent long before. It was named after a river in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the first outbreak occurred. The World Health Organisation quickly categorised it as a Class A Pathogen, and soon after it became listed as a biological agent, capable of use in bioterrorism- no surprise as it is notoriously deadly with an up to ninety percent fatality rate. It was widely believed by the Intelligence services at Langley and Washington that the developments of these super killers were the main reason 9/11 was so successful for Al Qaeda. It was felt that the security services of the major world powers had all but abandoned the threat of an airborne or even nuclear strike, and such like, as these biological weapons were far easier to deliver and far more deadly, so they had taken their eye off the ball, just not expecting such an antiquated attack from the skies.

  Don Gooch, however, was no fool, he understood Ebola well, and the symptoms were visually horrific. Red streaming eyes, a violent rash, high fever and external bleeding from the nose and ears- just what the SAS trooper in front of him required. Don also knew that whilst the virus was deadly, it was not airborne, and to catch it contact had to made either via blood, faeces, saliva or, as he was proposing, direct exposure. In other words, whilst he could instantly infect the three troopers, there would be little chance of this spreading to any other prisoner; it was controllable in his naive opinion.

  The last piece of this bizarre jigsaw was that as far as the public at large were aware, there was no known vaccine, and that was why it had such a fearsome reputation. However, this was not true; a vaccine had been developed during the Porton Down years, but the Government had decided, in the interest of national security, to keep it under wraps, allowing several thousand Africans to suffer death rather than announcing it had a cure. The vaccine was a hundred percent safe, and the guinea pigs that it had been tested on had all returned to normal health relatively quickly, and that was why Professor Don Gooch was more than happy to assist his Army colleagues in this little scam; after all the disbandment of the SAS would ultimately be a bad move for the country. And, Don thought, if he could help in securing the future of the Special Forces Unit then ultimately he was helping the security of the Country. His conscience would be clear and in his own mind he was taking the moral high ground. Don Gooch had unrestricted access to both the virus and vaccine, within his workplace- perfect.

  Don had explained all this to Mike, and Mike quickly realised that not only was the Professor up for this he was positively relishing the chance. Every officer in the British Army is taught that in warfare, whether open or clandestine, the theatre of battle can change; plans go astray, a sudden sandstorm, cloud cover, the introduction of nukes, a million unseen and unplanned occurrences, and this is when battles are won or lost. The commander who can change with the changes and turn them into opportunities will, almost always, be the victor, and Mike had recognised his chance.

  “So, Don,” he said, scratching his nose, “This seems almost too easy. We get one of the lads inside to identify a bent screw, there must be a few judging by the amount of drugs floating about in there, tell them we need some drugs smuggled in to our men, bung the screw a good drink, the boys take the goods, and hopefully go down with the virus all at about the same time?”

  “Basically Mike that’s it,” Don replied, “However, to guarantee the lads start showing the symptoms pretty much on the same day, they would have to inject the dosages rather than swallow them. The incubation period is between two and twenty days which would be no good, so by intravenous injection as the virus would get straight into the blood stream they would all be a right state in forty eight hours. I’m sure your boys know how to administer drugs intravenously.”

  Mike was gradually building up to the big question.

  “So Don, the lads get shipped out to St Mary’s Hospital right opposite the Nick as soon as the prison medics realise they’ve got a big problem, once there we intend to grab them and make a run to the ferry. I don’t suppose there’s any chance somehow you could be around to identify the symptoms, and then call for an immediate t
ransfer to your place, which would be me and a couple of the lads arriving in an ambulance. That would give us some breathing space and legitimise us getting straight on the ferry, and by the time people realised the scam we would be back in Hereford and the boss would have called in to the Home Office that the mission was a success.”

  Professor Don Gooch was capable of achieving almost anything in the medical world, but spotting a scam in the real world was way beyond him, and his trust in Mike Tobin and the SAS was absolute.

  “That can be arranged, I can always find a reason to visit our NHS hospitals,” he answered, not for a nano second realising Mike Tobin had become a rogue elephant.

  This was better than Mike could have dreamed of, and option two had suddenly become less risky than option one.

  The rest of the evening was spent discussing the finer details- how long would it take Don to get hold of the virus? Don had unrestricted access to the secure room, would tomorrow be alright? The virus would be measured out in a dose relative to each of the three men’s approximate body mass, to heighten the chances of the symptoms showing simultaneously. How long would the Professor need to set up a meeting or such like down at St Mary’s? No problem, he would be known by reputation by the hospital authorities and welcomed without any prior notification. Wouldn’t it seem suspicious after the break out that an eminent Professor from the Hospital of Tropical Medicine had arrived at St Mary’s Hospital just as the first case of Ebola in Northern Europe was materialising? Yes, of course, but not in the first few hours; by which time the troopers would be back in Hereford and the Home Office would have alerted the hospital and prison services that it was all a covert operation ordered by the Home Secretary, no less.