The Will Slater Series Books 1-3
Page 14
He checked through the dust-coated windscreen to see if there was any oncoming traffic, but he might as well have been searching for aliens.
Seiyun lay a few miles away still.
Outside of that, there was no sign of civilisation.
Bouncing and jolting along the uneven sandy track, Slater braced himself against the rattling cabin as he flicked the GPS on by slamming its cord into the lighter socket, powering it up. The screen flared to life, stained with dirty fingerprints, displaying a pop-up message in Arabic, accompanied with an arrow looping back on itself.
Slater cocked his head.
Return to last available destination, he thought.
He hit enter.
A topographic map of the surrounding area materialised on the screen, complete with a small green circle to symbolise Slater’s position in Hadhramaut. Directions ran across the top of the screen, instructing him to continue along the same track for just over two miles.
They led into Seiyun.
Slater raised an eyebrow.
‘What the hell were you doing in Seiyun?’ he muttered softly.
His voice fell on deaf ears. The only man who could answer that question had his throat obliterated by a bullet from Slater’s handgun earlier that day.
Unashamedly curious, with no place to be and nothing to do until the attention on the compound died down and he could try and communicate with Abu, Slater decided to follow the trail.
Al-Qaeda never spelled anything but trouble, and he had no place to be.
He was in operational mode.
Always hunting for an objective.
Dissatisfied with anything other than forward momentum.
He dropped the GPS onto the passenger seat, applied more pressure to the accelerator, and went searching for the last place the al-Qaeda mercenary had felt the need to visit.
It’s not a coincidence you took this car, a voice told him.
Somehow, someway, all the shady dealings taking place in the Yemeni desert were linked.
He was sure of it.
Corruption and mercenary work and illegal activities were secretly bonded more often than not. Experience had taught him that.
He quickened the vehicle’s pace and pressed into Seiyun.
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It turned out to be the largest city Slater had come across in quite some time. He had grown accustomed to desolate mountain towns and long winding tracks twisting through the wadis, all devoid of human commotion.
He had considered Qasam a busy town.
That was nothing compared to Seiyun.
It unnerved him crossing from the isolation of the desert to the bustle of ordinary civilian life. The city sprawled across a sizeable portion of the desert, surrounded by a gleaming sea of green palm trees. A pair of towering mountain ranges much similar to the ridges he’d ascended earlier that day acted as a backdrop to the city. As he grew closer to the streets themselves, distancing himself from the desert, he passed swathes of oncoming traffic heading out into the Hadhramaut Valley, either on delivery runs or simply tending to business elsewhere.
It set him on edge to witness people going about their daily lives after the barbaric confrontation that had just unfolded several miles behind him.
The GPS guided him through streets and roads and avenues similar in design to Qasam’s, albeit without the steepness of a mountain town. Seiyun had been erected on uneven ground, but in comparison to the vertigo-inducing rises of Qasam’s laneways, Slater felt like he was floating on a cloud.
He caught the occasional odd look from a passerby, but fewer than he had the day before. Newcomers were more common here, he concluded. It was a little less secluded, as open and welcoming as a city in war-torn Yemen could be.
He pressed deeper into the city, acutely aware that the Land Cruiser was dotted with bullet holes. Strangely enough, that didn’t seem to bother any of the locals. They barely glanced at him as the pick-up truck trundled past, concerned with their own business.
Slater guessed they had learned to ignore anything that didn’t involve them.
Safest way to stay alive, after all.
The GPS instructions grew more complicated, devolving into a constant string of twists and turns down narrow backstreets. Foot traffic disappeared as residential buildings were replaced by low mud-brick business premises. Slater kept his eyes peeled for anything unusual, but he didn’t know what to look for.
Out here, everything was unusual.
He sensed the entire city had become wrapped up in a constant state of wariness and distress. The effects of the civil war weren’t clearly apparent, but he could almost taste the unrest in the air. It seemed like everyone was ready for a firefight at any moment.
He wondered if there was anything on the Toyota to signify it as an al-Qaeda vehicle. Maybe that was why no-one dared to look at it for longer than a few seconds.
He had only been pondering that for a moment when the GPS reached its last-entered destination — a long, low building set in the middle of a dusty stretch of land. The entire complex was fenced off with a chain-link perimeter, topped with grisly barbed wire and sporting multiple signs warning trespassers to keep out.
At least, he guessed that’s what they were saying.
Before he could study the complex in any further detail — in fact, before his vehicle had even rolled to a stop in the middle of the quiet side street — a stern-looking mercenary came storming out of the front gate, fully automatic Kalashnikov assault rifle in hand.
Slater’s heart skipped a beat.
The man looked young — early twenties, even — but there was iron-clad determination in his features. He obviously recognised the car Slater was driving, and had already seen that the man behind the wheel was not the original owner.
Slater wondered if this man had been friends with the al-Qaeda mercenary he’d killed.
It didn’t matter.
What mattered was the speed with which he was approaching the vehicle.
Slater knew that if he snatched for the Jericho by his side, or his own rifle on the passenger seat, he would lose a battle of reflexes. The man had taken no chances, pointing the barrel of the Kalashnikov through the open window frame in the blink of an eye.
He would have to try something else.
Slater forced himself to hyperventilate, spreading panic across his features as the man strode up to him.
The guy jabbed the barrel of the Kalashnikov through the window frame, pressing it into the ball of Slater’s throat. A wave of heat infiltrated the cabin, heightening the discomfort.
Slater squirmed. ‘Guessing you don’t speak English.’
The man barked something.
Hostile.
‘Thought not,’ Slater said.
He began a complicated series of hand signals, attempting to portray a tale without making any sudden movements. It would only take a single knee-jerk reaction to blow the inside of his throat across the Toyota’s interior.
First he placed both hands on the wheel and moved them from side to side.
The driver.
The al-Qaeda mercenary watched him like a hawk, enraptured by what was unfolding. Next Slater tapped the screen of the GPS and jerked a thumb back in the direction from which he’d came.
Which could mean anything.
The mercenary squinted in confusion and leant forward a little, trying to understand.
Slater smashed the barrel of the gun away with an open palm, moving like his life depended on it.
Which it did.
The sheer force behind the blow sent the rifle clattering onto the dashboard, pinning it awkwardly out of reach of both men. With his spare hand, Slater yanked the door handle downward, releasing the closing mechanism. He crashed a boot into the centre of the door, thrusting it outward hard enough to cause serious damage to anyone within range.
Namely, the driver.
The man took the majority of the blow to his torso, knocking the breath out of his lungs. Before
he had any time to react to the chaos, Slater sprung out of the driver’s seat and bundled the guy into the side of the vehicle. He left absolutely no room to spare, making the conflict awkward and ungainly.
Just what he wanted.
He threw an elbow with reckless abandon, putting his own weight into the strike. If he missed, it would put him at a horrendous disadvantage, thrown off-balance by his own momentum.
He connected.
The sharp point of his elbow shattered the guy’s jaw, crumpling him into the side of the Toyota. His limbs went limp and he slumped into a strange state of semi-consciousness in the dust, overwhelmed by pain and confusion.
Slater spun in a tight arc, snatching the Jericho out of the empty cabin — the driver’s door still hung wide open. If he had simply been searching for a fight with jihadists, he would have recognised the pointlessness of the exercise and high-tailed it out of this district of Seiyun before attention grew.
But there was no chance of that anymore.
In fact, a heavy sense of foreboding hung over him.
He’d seen something before the guard had approached his vehicle.
Amongst the Arabic-clad warning signs instructing civilians to keep out of private property, his attention had been momentarily seized by something that sent a bolt of unease through him like a raging fireball.
He had only studied it for half a second before the al-Qaeda thug had approached.
Now, he had time to confirm his worst suspicions.
A small, rust-coated circular sign hung low on the fence, adorned with a sole symbol that translated across all languages.
A cartoonish gas mask inside a triangle, faded by the scorching Yemeni sun over the years.
Unmistakeable.
This was a chemical weapons site.
It explained nothing concrete, but it told Slater that everything was intrinsically connected.
The deserted camp on the mountainside.
The red desert wolf, bleeding from every orifice.
An isolated compound belonging to an established political figure with CCTV feeds of inner-city London.
And now, a mysterious complex in the middle of a desert city, guarded by al-Qaeda mercenaries looking for an honest payday.
Somehow, it all added up.
He resolved that he wouldn’t leave Yemen until he had answers.
Deep down, he knew he didn’t have a choice.
Under the watchful eye of perimeter security cameras, he stepped through the front gate and into the compound.
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He had never felt tension like this before.
Slater recalled all the black operations he’d carried out over his time in the military, ranging from the stifling jungles of Ecuador to the congested streets of Chicago. He’d foiled dozens of terror plots over his life — each as grave and horrifying as the last.
But none of them had carried quite the weight of this situation.
He wasn’t sure what it was. Ever since he’d ventured into the mountains above Qasam, every waking moment had been spent pondering what might occur. He felt sick to his stomach as he jogged steadily across the overgrown front lawn of the complex, making for the giant steel building in the centre of the lot. Weeds choked everything, as if the entire place had been left uncared for to disguise its true purpose.
It could be nothing, he thought.
What were the chances that the al-Qaeda thug who had been sent to kill him in Qasam would also be involved in the bioweapon plot he’d stumbled across in the highlands?
Don’t overlook anything.
The one thing he’d learnt over a violent and unbelievable career as a Special Forces operative was that thugs and mercenaries had one thing in common, one thing they were drawn to time and time again — whether that meant guarding a compound from curious trespassers or eliminating a tourist who’d troubled a dirty law enforcement officer.
Dollar signs.
They swayed everyone.
It wasn’t that unbelievable that in the Hadhramaut Valley, where the lines were blurred between honest work and earning a Yemeni rial by any means necessary, the business of the undesirables would overlap.
He kept that in the back of his mind as he hurried for one of the doors along the front of the compound.
The silence was overwhelming. As he moved, staying low, weapon raised, he found himself dumbfounded by the lack of resistance. There should have been a dozen men manning the front of the property if its contents were of the importance that Slater thought they were.
Another thought speared through him, but he ignored it.
He didn’t want to think of the ramifications if it was true.
He remembered what al-Mansur had said earlier.
You’re too late, anyway.
He sensed that the foundations had already been laid. The critical work had already been completed.
He realised he would more than likely be storming into a compound that had already served its purpose.
It had manufactured something sinister, and then been hastily abandoned as the project moved to its final stages.
Gulping back uncertainty, he finished covering the stretch of land in front of the main building and drew to a halt beside a single locked door. A keypad rested on the exterior of the building, near the handle.
An electronic locking system.
He paused apprehensively, trying to figure out how to proceed. Experience and common sense had taught him that firing a bullet into a lock never achieved anything worthwhile. Most of the time, it jammed in the steel and made matters worse.
Out of instinct, Slater reached for the handle and twisted it.
The door sprung open.
Despite the ease at which he’d penetrated the perimeter, the knot in Slater’s stomach grew tighter. He’d been uncertain as to whether the compound truly had been deserted during his trek to the building. It might have simply been chalked up to a matter of inexperience.
Maybe he’d caught them at a bad time.
The door opening without resistance had shattered what little hope he’d had left.
Something was seriously awry.
With the Jericho aimed squarely at the empty space in front of him, he stepped into the building, feeling the physical relief on his skin as the intense sunshine was replaced by cooler artificial light. The building seemed hollow, like its contents had been gutted at a rapid pace. Slater tried his best to quieten his footsteps, but against the metal floor of the corridor even the slightest scuff of heel against surface echoed painfully off the walls.
He decided to freeze in the middle of the hallway and wait for someone to come running to his position.
If there was anyone here at all.
The unlocked door spelled a tactical disaster for Slater. It had thrown him off completely. It was such a gross display of incompetence that even the most senile fool on the planet wouldn’t dare to make such a mistake.
They were baiting him into a trap.
He was sure of it.
Yet he placed enough faith in his skill set to know he would come out on top regardless.
His thirst for answers overwhelmed his natural instincts.
He pressed on.
The corridor banked sharply at the end, leading to a steel door set into the wall, also closed. Slater eyed a similar keypad resting at chest height, but this time he had a preconceived notion that he would get a similar result. He reached out, tugged the handle, and the door swung ominously open.
He led with the barrel of the Jericho raised high, now fully on edge. There was no mistaking what was happening. Someone had deliberately left the compound open, inviting trespassers inside.
But why?
They couldn’t have known Slater was coming. Unless al-Mansur had warned the compound in advance, but there was no reason for him to think that Slater would target the facility. As far as he was concerned, Slater didn’t know it existed.
In truth, he hadn’t — until five minutes ago.
Then Slater rounded the next corner and stepped into a ransacked viewing room, with one wall replaced by a one-way sheet of glass looking into an empty laboratory.
A testing facility.
Equipment had been gutted from both the viewing room and the lab itself, just as Slater had suspected. It had been done crudely, with a focus on speed over care. Wires dangled uselessly off steel countertops, some of them torn in half. The handful of screens that had been left in the facility displayed static, disconnected from whatever juicy electronics had needed to be removed.
More importantly though, there was a man sitting in one of the swivel chairs in front of Slater. He had scooted all the way up to the desk in front of the viewing window, staring vacantly into the lab. He had both hands resting on the steel surface in front of him, palms down.
Unarmed.
Slater realised he posed no threat, and stepped forward.
The man twisted in his chair, and Slater realised the source of his heavy, laboured motions.
The three-quarters-empty bottle of unlabelled whiskey resting on the floor next to the chair.
The man finished turning in a tight semi-circle and stared up at Slater with weeping, bloodshot eyes. He looked to be in his early fifties, with a tuft of wispy hair atop his head that stuck out at all kinds of angles. He hadn’t bothered to do anything with it. He was Middle-Eastern, but Slater couldn’t tell whether he was a Yemeni native or not.
He was still dressed in a white lab coat, but had rolled the sleeves up to prevent it from absorbing alcohol stains. His fingertips were grimy and his forehead was slick with sweat. His pupils were dilated, to the extent where Slater imagined hard drugs had contributed to his condition. Flecks of saliva riddled the sides of his mouth and he gave off the vibe that he hadn’t slept in days.
He looked like absolute shit, all things considered.
Then he opened his mouth and did something Slater didn’t anticipate.
He spoke English.
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