Juggernaut

by Adam Baker

  Jabril brought him water.

  ‘Come to gloat?’ asked Haq.

  Jabril passed a bottle of mineral water between the bars. Haq took a sip and threw the bottle to fellow prisoners cowering at the back of the freight container.

  ‘I’ll talk to Ignatiev. Do what I can.’

  ‘If you really wanted to help, you would pass me a gun.’

  ‘They will never let you escape.’

  ‘I don’t plan to escape.’

  ‘Just hold on. Let me argue your case.’

  ‘Listen to yourself. You are a major in the Mukhabarat. You should be the authority here. Not these foreigners.’

  ‘Our world has changed.’

  ‘You think it will be any different for you? Sooner or later, you will find yourself behind these bars.’

  Jabril held up his hook.

  ‘They want young men, in good health.’

  ‘Then you will simply be executed.’

  ‘You think I don’t know what Ignatiev has in store? None of us will leave this place alive.’

  Later that night Jabril visited the lime pit. A trench dug in the valley floor near the citadel. Stacked lime sacks. A mass grave.

  The pit held a mound of eviscerated bodies caked in white powder. Strong stench of acid decay.

  He shielded his mouth and nose with his sleeve.

  Arms. Legs. Exposed ribcages. The eviscerated bodies twitched and stirred as they slowly dissolved into caustic lime slurry.

  Lucy hit the pressel switch on her chest plate.

  ‘Mandy. I need you back here.’

  Amanda jogged down the tunnel.

  ‘Babe?’

  ‘Over here,’ shouted Lucy.

  Amanda climbed onto the rear plate of the freight locomotive.

  ‘Give me a hand with this thing,’ said Lucy.

  They unscrewed terminals and struggled to lift the massive battery from its box compartment. They lowered it down to the track. They pulled on gloves, each grabbed a handle and carried the power cell down the tunnel, muscles straining.

  ‘Voss says there are infected guys running round the mine,’ said Amanda.

  ‘No wonder the fucks from the citadel didn’t follow us,’ said Lucy, panting with effort. ‘There’s something else in here. Something worse.’

  ‘We better find Jabril and warn him. He might get jumped.’

  Jabril crept down a passageway lit by bulbs screwed to roof beams.

  He stalked the figure in a red boiler suit. The suit had a big fifteen sprayed on the back. The revenant’s bald head was punctured by a crust of metallic tumours, like a rippled steel skull-cap.

  The creature stopped. It sniffed the air.

  It turned. It saw Jabril and snarled.

  Jabril put a bullet between the creature’s eyes. Gun-roar echoed down the passageway.

  The prisoner fell against the tunnel wall and slid to the ground.

  Another creature watched from shadows at the end of the passageway. Jabril raised his pistol and took aim, hook-arm steadying the gun. A bald, emaciated mutant thing. Number nine sprayed on the breast of the boiler suit.

  Haq.

  Jabril hesitated, and lowered his pistol. The figure ducked out of sight.

  The moment Jabril discovered the full extent of the Spektr project, he decided to destroy every piece of equipment in the valley. Obliterate it all.

  Ignatiev often talked about Phase Three. He mentioned it to technician colleagues while Jabril was in earshot, disregarded his presence like he was a pet or a piece of equipment.

  Jabril put it together:

  Phase One. Locate Spektr and acquire virus.

  Phase Two. Weaponise pathogen.

  Phase Three?

  Weeks ago, Jabril had seen a heavy impact-proof case locked in the ammunition store. He had a key to the store. He visited the storeroom late one night and opened the trunk.

  A Hellfire II missile on a foam bed.

  The missile was dove grey. About three feet long, aluminium shell thick as drainpipe. Lockheed Martin batch stamp. Fins at the rear and neck. The nose cone, with its glass laser-optic lens, had been detached. The payload compartment, the copper fragmentation sleeve, was empty.

  Koell intended to test his bio-weapon. As soon as Ignatiev delivered the weaponised virus, he would pick a significant population centre and fire the missile from a drone. The missile would arm itself in flight. When it reached a specific GPS coordinate, a preset grid ref and altitude, the ground targeting crew would send the destruct signal and the missile would detonate mid-air, releasing its lethal payload.

  ‘Imagine a battalion of these infected creatures,’ he once heard Ignatiev say. ‘Imagine the destructive potential. A formid-able fighting force. Men devoid of pity, impervious to pain and fatigue.’

  Koell and Ignatiev. A shared insanity.

  Jabril played it cool. Business as usual. He ran the camp. He supervised prisoners caged in their pens.

  Phase Three of Koell’s programme would take very little manpower. He would have no further use for Iraqi troops. He would wait for word Ignatiev had concluded his research and was ready to break camp. Then he would radio the order to eliminate non-essential personnel.

  Friday night. The Iraqi battalion has been promised downtime. Ignatiev’s team secured a stereo, a bunch of CDs and a case of vodka. The deep galleries of the mine were soon filled with of raucous music and laughter.

  The Russians stayed sober.

  This is it, thought Jabril. Extermination day. At the height of the revelry, when the troops are drunk and euphoric, the Russians will break out heavy machine guns and mow them down.

  He hurried to his cell. He stripped out of his white suit, pulled on combat gear and tucked a pistol into his belt.

  He emptied clothes from his Louis Vuitton suitcase onto the floor, carried the case to the munitions store and filled it with patties of explosive and detonators.

  He stashed the suitcase beneath his bunk and headed for the lab units.

  The cavern was still and silent.

  Faint music echoed from distant tunnels.

  Jabril had memorised the door code. He let himself into Lab One. He filled a garbage bag with paperwork. He smashed open a couple of computers and levered hard drives from their bed.

  He moved on to Lab Two. He swept documentation into a bag.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  One of Ignatiev’s techs, wearing a lab coat.

  Jabril snatched a flask from a shelf and smashed it over the man’s head. The technician fell to the floor, face peppered with blood and glass. Jabril stamped on the man’s throat and left him to choke. He collected the garbage bags as the technician writhed and turned blue.

  Jabril dumped the garbage bags in the munitions store. Hid them in empty document boxes. He planned to wire explosives to the wall timbers and incinerate all trace of the Spektr project.

  A klaxon. A rising air-raid wail. Someone had found the dead technician.

  Jabril stepped into the corridor. A guard shouted something in Russian. Jabril shot him through the heart and ran.

  No time to rig the demolition charges. He headed for the main tunnel.

  A quick detour. The prisoner pens. A chance to create additional chaos to aid his escape.

  Eight infected men awaiting dissection. Flesh blotched with strange mutations. Red boiler suits matted with blood and pus. Ignatiev preparing to harvest samples on an industrial scale.

  Jabril shot padlocks, released chains and threw open the cage doors of the freight containers. He ran down the tunnel. He looked back. He saw infected men emerge from their steel dungeons and sniff the air.

  He kept running.

  The main tunnel. Milling soldiers, confused and bewildered, half dressed and half drunk. The klaxon echoed round the walls.

  Jabril pushed through the crowd. He had minutes to escape the mine and flee the ravine before Ignatiev’s Russian henchmen organised themselves and began their eradication dr
ill.

  Screams. A glimpse of red boiler suits. Blood and tearing flesh. Panic swept through the crowd. The soldiers ran for the tunnel entrance.

  Jabril ran down the ravine, swept along by fleeing Republican Guards.

  Heavy machine gun fire. The man next to Jabril was lifted into the air by the impact of heavy .50 cal rounds, and hit the ground dead.

  Jabril kept running. Men cut down around him. He was pelted with rock splinters and stone dust. He was splashed with blood.

  The fleeing men reached the open valley. They ran for vehicles parked in front of the citadel. The convoy of trucks and cars a mile distant, shrouded in camouflage nets.

  Jabril reached the convoy. More gunfire. Door panels shrieked and sparked as a .50 cal tracer punched holes. Jabril hit the ground and played dead. Wounded men screamed and died in the dust around him.

  Fuel fires. Cars flipped and burned. Nylon camouflage nets smoked and shrivelled.

  Jabril belly-crawled to the convoy. He rolled beneath a bus. The chassis above his head shook as heavy rounds rocked the vehicle. Smashed window glass hit the dirt.

  He looked out from beneath the bus. Burning sedans. Burning men.

  He glimpsed lab techs through smoke and flickering flame. They were loading the missile case into the rear of the cash truck. They sealed the door. They headed for the cab, and were jumped by figures in red boiler suits. Inhuman strength. An armed ripped off. A face peeled away.

  A soldier squirmed beneath the bus and crawled hand over hand towards Jabril.

  ‘Help me.’

  Bite marks. Strips of skin torn from the man’s face.

  Jabril tugged the Makarov from his waistband and shot the soldier through the eye.

  He rolled from beneath the bus and scrambled to his feet. Burning cars. Streaking tracer rounds.

  He ran for the valley wall, screened from the Russian shooters by a curtain of smoke and flame.

  He scrambled up the rock slope, hand and hook raking scree.

  He hid among boulders. Faint screams and gunshots from the valley below.

  He watched Russian goons machine gun terrified Iraqi troops. Republican Guards drew sidearms and fired back. A slow, unfolding bloodbath. The valley quickly turned into a corpse field.

  He saw red boiler suits among the crowd. The infected prisoners shrugged off bullet strikes. They gouged and ripped. A flesh-frenzy. Russian gunmen over-powered and pulled apart.

  The infected berserkers ran among burning cars and trucks. They punched out windshields and dragged drivers from their vehicles. Throats torn from wounded soldiers as they lay helpless in the sand.

  Jabril turned away and climbed the ravine, the clatter of stones merging with faint screams from the valley below.

  Gaunt sat in the darkness of a remote side tunnel. He crouched on the floor, back to the wall, head resting against cool stone.

  A muffled beep from his pocket. The sat phone. Incoming call.

  Koell’s voice:

  ‘Carnival to Brimstone, over.’

  ‘Go ahead, Carnival.’

  Gaunt wondered, briefly, how a sat-phone signal was able to reach deep within the mine. They must be using the Predator to boost the signal. Dawn had broken. The drone was back in the air, circling the valley. The UAV operators were probably sitting in a van at the edge of the desert, tweaking a joystick, monitoring the data flow, relaying encrypted transmissions via the drone’s EISS telemetry package. A military surveillance crew leased by the hour as part of some inter-departmental exchange. And despite it all, the digitisation, cryptographic algorithm and satellite bounce, Gaunt could hear the intimate acoustic of Koell’s hotel room. The compressed hush. The faint hum of air-con.

  ‘Authenticate.’

  ‘Authentication is Oscar, Sierra, Yankee, Bravo.’

  ‘So what’s the situation?’

  ‘I have the package.’

  ‘You have the package? Confirm: you have the package in your possession.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You have the actual cylinder?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Read me the serial number.’

  ‘Say again?’

  ‘I need proof. There is a serial number stamped on the steel cap of the cylinder. Read it to me.’

  ‘I don’t have the cylinder actually in my hand. But I know where it is. It’s secure. I can get it.’

  ‘You can get it.’

  ‘Swear to God. I’ll have it within the hour.’

  The line went dead.

  ‘Hello? Carnival? Koell?’

  He checked the sat-phone display.

  TRANSMISSION TERMINATED

  ‘Shit.’

  Voss sat at the mine entrance. He leant Amanda’s rifle across planks and checked the narrow ravine ahead. He turned and checked the tunnel behind him. Spooked by shadows on every side.

  He folded a fresh wad of tobacco into his mouth.

  Gaunt’s voice:

  ‘Voss? Can you hear me?’

  Voss adjusted his earpiece. He’d retuned the selector so he and Gaunt could speak via a closed channel.

  ‘Voss? Are you there?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Ready to do this?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘We can’t wait around any longer. Soon as they fire up that locomotive, we make our move.’

  ‘No harm comes to Lucy and Amanda. I mean it. They don’t get hurt. If they won’t play ball, we leave them behind. Alive. Pull any rough stuff, I’ll blow your head clean off your fucking shoulders.’

  ‘We’ve got serious issues. If Jabril’s battalion attack en masse, you’ll get overrun.’

  Voss spat tobacco.

  ‘I can hold them off. And those fucks in the tunnels.’

  ‘That’s the least of our problems. There’s a Predator drone. It’s been watching us. Eye-in-the-sky. Watching us the whole time.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying we’ve got three or four hours to get out of this valley before it lights up and we get cooked like brisket.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘Let’s get aboard that train and get out of here. Let’s go get rich.’

  Juggernaut

  The mess hall. A wide, low cave.

  Toppled tables. Broken chairs. Relics of that final night when drunken revelry turned to panic as sirens wailed, infected prisoners broke loose, and mine tunnels became bloody mayhem.

  Voss walked between the upturned tables, pistol drawn. Empty vodka bottles rolled and clinked.

  ‘Come on out.’

  Gaunt stepped from shadows.

  ‘Put your fucking hands where I can see them.’

  ‘We’re on the same team.’

  ‘Put down the bag and show me your fucking hands.’

  Gaunt set down his backpack and stood, hands raised.

  Voss jammed the Glock beneath Gaunt’s chin and patted him down. He checked jacket pockets. He confiscated the silenced Sig and a knife.

  He lashed Gaunt’s wrists with plastic tuff-ties. He pushed him towards a chair.

  ‘Sit.’

  ‘We have a common interest,’ said Gaunt. ‘I’m not your enemy. I’m here to help.’

  Voss didn’t bother to respond. He pulled a table upright. He dumped the backpack on the table and searched inside.

  Caulk explosive. A couple of flares. A sat phone.

  ‘Who’s on the other end of this phone? CIA?’

  ‘Give or take.’

  ‘How about you? Are you Agency?’

  ‘I’m a contractor.’

  ‘Lay it out for me. The whole thing.’

  ‘Covert ops,’ said Gaunt. ‘They spent a lot of time and money locating the Spektr crash site. Invested a shitload more cash to bring the virus to a weaponised form. Then all hell broke loose. Their team got wiped out.’

  ‘What about us?’

  ‘Guinea pigs. They sent you into the contamination zone to see if you would survive, to see if the virus could be retrie
ved.’

  ‘Don’t they have their own guys? Couldn’t they use Delta?’

  ‘Does this look like an officially sanctioned operation to you? Congressional oversight, all that shit? This is deep black. Strictly back-channel assets. A small bunch of ambitious guys. They’ve overreached themselves, and now they are trying to clean up.’

  ‘But they’ll pay?’ asked Voss. ‘If we deliver the virus, they’ll pay?’

  ‘Dollars or roubles. Langley, Russian intelligence, China. Who gives a shit? Someone will make us rich.’

  ‘So call him up. This guy.’

  ‘His name is Koell.’

  ‘Get him to send a chopper.’

  ‘He’s written us off. He’s pulled the plug. Right now, it’s sun-up, and aerial surveillance is showing him a fuck-ton of bodies and a couple of wrecked choppers.’

  ‘He’s going to call down some kind of airstrike? You’re sure?’

  ‘The plane is probably in the air right now. If we are going to ride that locomotive out of here, I suggest we get going.’

  The battery compartment. A steel box bolted to the underskirt of the locomotive.

  Lucy smashed the padlock with the butt of her rifle. She unclipped the dead battery. Amanda helped drag it from the compartment and dump it on the tunnel floor.

  They pushed the fresh Exide battery into the vacant space and attached bulldog terminals.

  They climbed in the cab. Lucy checked the driver’s console. Battery indicator lit green.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Lucy. ‘We’re in business. Let’s grab some water and ammo, and get the fuck out of here.’

  They ran to the tunnel entrance. No sign of Voss.

  Lucy hit the pressel switch on her radio.

  ‘Voss? Where the fuck are you?’

  No response.

  ‘Voss. Come on, man. Time to go.’

  No reply.

  They filled a backpack with ammunition, water and a couple of MRE pouches.

  Lucy slung the backpack. Amanda carried the SAW.

  They headed back to the train. They climbed aboard one of the umber and cream carriages hitched to the locomotive.

  Amanda checked out the interior of the coach.

  ‘Christ.’

  Cobwebbed grandeur. Elegant Queen Anne furniture. Panelled walls inlaid with marquetry foliage. Brass fixtures.