by Chris Ryan
‘Which one has Ripley got?’
Danny could see that Phillips looked uncertain through his mask. ‘Both,’ he said. ‘And more. Look, we need to test this infection in a proper lab, but the symptoms are consistent with Y. pestis, with one exception. The usual incubation rate is two to three days. Ordinarily within eighteen to twenty hours, we’d be able to give the guy an antibiotic jab and he’d have a forty to sixty per cent chance of survival.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘It’s not hard to alter the genetic structure of a bacterium,’ Philips said. ‘To force it to mutate, if you will, into something more virulent. I can’t be certain, but I think that’s what we’re dealing with here. This isn’t ordinary plague. It’s modified. More aggressive. More deadly.’
‘And weaponised?’ Danny said.
‘Any bio-agent can potentially be used as a weapon. If you’re asking me if it’s been specifically adapted for that purpose, I don’t know. But I will tell you this: Y. Pestis is just about the oldest bioweapon known to man. During the Second World War, the Japs dropped plague-infected fleas over China. The Americans used it against the Native Americans, the Russians weaponised it in ICBMs during the Cold War. We’re fully aware that rogue states have weaponised the bacterium. Personally I’ve been trying to persuade the government that the threat of an attack is very real, and it’s far easier for a terrorist to release a biological agent than plant an explosive device – and potentially far deadlier. But it’s amazing how they don’t listen to what they don’t want to hear.’
Danny felt a mass of anxiety in his gut.
‘Maybe it’s something else,’ he said.
‘Maybe. We’ve taken samples and we can examine them back in the UK.’ He looked over at Ripley. ‘But in my professional opinion, it isn’t something else. It’s modified Y. pestis. I’d stake my reputation on it, and between you and me, that’s saying something.’
‘If that virus gets released, what happens?’
‘Yes, well technically it’s not a virus, of course, but a b . . .’
‘What happens?’
The lab guy gave him a piercing look. ‘Have you heard of Dark Winter?’ he asked.
Danny shook his head.
‘It was a simulation of a bio-terrorism attack, conducted about three months before 9/11. In the simulated scenario, twenty people in Oklahoma city are infected with smallpox. The study concluded that after two weeks, six thousand new infections were occurring daily, and after six weeks almost a million are dead.’
‘We’re talking bigger than 9/11?’
‘Forget 9/11. Explosions are yesterday’s news. Bombs are expensive and difficult, bioweapons are cheap and easy . . .’
‘I get the message. How would someone spread this particular strain of plague?’
‘Any one of a number of ways. Aerosol dispersal would be effective. You could include the agent in an explosive device. A suicide cell could turn themselves into human vectors. It’s a versatile weapon in the right–’ He corrected himself. ‘I mean the wrong hands.’
Danny remembered the Chinese guy, and the cool way he had shot his accomplice. He cursed himself for not having gone after the bastard, no matter what his orders had been from the head shed. He could be anywhere by now.
Now was the time to take action. The head shed wouldn’t agree with what he had in mind, but they weren’t here on the ground, making the calls.
Danny looked over at the tent again. ‘What do we do with Ripley?’ he asked.
‘I estimate that he’ll die within the hour. When he does, we need to burn his body and those of the other victims. It’s the best way of destroying the infection. Then I understand we’re to wait with you until nightfall, when the helicopter will return to pick us up. We’re to bring your prisoner with us and do what we can to keep him alive until he can be questioned properly in the UK.’
Danny felt bile rising in his throat. He heard Ripley’s desperate voice from the previous night. Find the fucker who did this to me, Danny.
Danny didn’t care how good these Porton Down guys were. The chances of Jihadi Jim surviving a journey back to the UK were non-existent. What the hell were London playing at? The clock was ticking. Somewhere out there was a Chinese guy who knew about a weaponised strain of plague that could be deployed at any moment. There was no time to fuck around.
A second thought hit him. The ops officer’s warning as they were leaving Brize Norton. I’m not going to lie to you. You’ve got a habit of going against the head shed’s wishes, and they don’t like it. They’re watching you. Think of this as a chance to make things good. Don’t fuck it up.
Danny hesitated for only a moment. ‘If I need to get our prisoner conscious, can you sort it?’ he asked the lab guy.
Phillips shrugged uncertainly. ‘I guess,’ he said. ‘An adrenaline shot should do it.’
‘Give me two,’ Danny said.
The lab guy didn’t look keen.
‘You see Ripley?’ Danny said. ‘Two young kids. You want to explain to them that you didn’t do everything you could to find out how this happened?’ As he spoke, he pictured Clara, heavily pregnant. The thought occurred to him that his view of the world had changed in the past few days. For him, this wasn’t about the ops officer or the head shed any more.
Phillips still looked reluctant, but he couldn’t withstand the hard stare Danny gave him. He walked over to the medicine shelves and retrieved two sealed, sterilised syringes, which he handed over to Danny. ‘Only one shot to start with,’ he said.Danny nodded. He stormed towards the exit of the compound.
‘Wait,’ Phillips said. Danny turned. The Porton Down guy was holding something up. A loop of green paracord with a metal disc hanging from it: Ripley’s dog-tag with his army number, name and blood group etched on to it. ‘It’s been disinfected,’ Phillips said. ‘I thought you might want to keep it. Give it to his family, maybe.’
Danny accepted the dog-tag. On closer inspection, he saw there was something else hanging from the paracord. Ripley’s wedding ring. They were always told to leave items like that back at base, and for good reason: if you were captured, and your enemy found your wedding ring, they could use it to torment you and get inside your head. But for a family man like Ripley, some rules were meant to be broken.
Danny clutched it firmly and turned again towards the exit.
‘Leave your hazmat suit there!’ Phillips shouted after him. ‘We need to burn that too!’
At the exit, he stripped out of the gear, leaving it in a pile on the ground. Then he strode out towards the road, engaging his radio as he did so. ‘Tony,’ he spat, ‘where are you? Where’s the prisoner?’
He didn’t have to wait for an answer. He could see the headlights of the Range Rover heading towards him from the south. He watched them approach with grim satisfaction.
To hell with Hereford and London, he told himself. It was time to get this bastard to talk.
THIRTEEN
Danny ran to the Range Rover. Tony had his back up against it, clutching his personal weapon as it was slung across his chest, carefully scanning the surrounding countryside. He looked very tired – none of them had slept for forty-eight hours – but alert nonetheless. ‘What’s our status?’ he asked as Danny approached.
‘Ripley’s going to the dark side,’ Danny said. ‘He’s got an hour, maybe less.’
There’d been no love lost between Tony and Ripley, but that didn’t matter. Tony’s face darkened at the news that they were about to lose one of their team.
Danny looked through the car window at Jihadi Jim. He was lying on the reclined passenger seat. His face was waxy and pale. His breathing seemed shallow. The tourniquets Danny had applied to his wounded arm and leg were saturated with congealed blood.
‘The head shed wants him airlifted back to the UK for questioning,’ Danny said.
‘That’s insane,’ Tony said. ‘He’ll never make it.’
‘Agreed. If you want my opinion, the hea
d shed want to keep this as an African problem, like the ebola thing. But I want to know who that Chinese guy was, what he’s up to and where he’s going. He could be anywhere in the world by the time we get this cunt back to the UK. I say we question him now.’ He held up the two shots. ‘Adrenaline. These will give us a few minutes. Let’s get to work on him.’
Tony shook his head. ‘We can’t hurt him,’ he said.
‘Fuck’s sake, Tony, tell me you’re not going soft, now of all times.’
‘Just listen to me for once, Black. Look at the state he’s in. If we hurt him badly, he’ll fucking snuff it. Then we’re left with nothing.’
Danny glanced at the wounded prisoner again. Tony was obviously right. But Danny couldn’t get the image of Ripley’s body, rotting while he was still alive, out of his head. ‘We haven’t got a choice!’ he spat. ‘We question him now. He’s not going back alive.’
‘I said, listen to me. We do have a choice.’ Tony was looking shifty. ‘We know who this fucker is. We know who his family are and where to find them – it’s in all the papers . . .’
‘The Firm will never go for it.’ Because the Firm, Danny thought, have got some other agenda we don’t know about.
‘Who said anything about the Firm?’ Tony replied. ‘We’ve got a sat phone. I know people in London who can help.’
‘Who?’
‘Best you don’t know, sunshine,’ Tony said. ‘But put it this way, they owe me some favours.’ He gave Danny a piercing look. ‘It could be our little secret.’
Danny didn’t get a chance to reply. His earpiece crackled. Caitlin. ‘We’ve got a shooter.’
Both men hit the ground immediately. Not a second too late. A round slammed against the chassis of the Range Rover and ricocheted on to the ground just a couple of feet from where Danny was crouched. ‘Where is he?’ he said into the radio, silently cursing himself for taking his eye off the ball.
‘Fifty metres on the other side of the road. I think he’s got a mate. There’s two of them.’
Danny squinted in that direction. His sharp eyes picked out movement in the burned-out vegetation on the western side of the road.
‘If I’m going to make the call,’ Tony said, ‘I need to do it now. This fucker could die on us any minute.’
‘No,’ Danny said, his eyes still scanning the opposite side of the road. The ops officer’s words rang in his mind. Again he thought of Clara and the baby. With them back on the scene, he definitely didn’t want to get involved with the underbelly of Tony’s world. He caught more movement, approximately ten metres to the right of the original shooter.
Tony shrugged. ‘Your call,’ he said. Then, in a persistent, needling voice, he said: ‘Fucker in the car’s beginning to smell. I reckon those wounds are turning rotten. Shame about Ripley, hey? Seemed like an okay geezer. Nasty way to go.’
Danny looked back towards the compound. He heard Ripley’s voice again. Find the fucker who did this . . .
‘Caitlin,’ he spoke into the radio. ‘You’ve got eyes on both shooters?’
‘Roger that.’
‘You take the one on the right. Wait till we both have a clear shot.’
Danny set his weapon to semi-automatic. Lying flat on the ground, he focused in on the area of burned vegetation where he’d seen the movement. Half his thoughts were on the shooter. The other half were on the prisoner in the car. Tony was right. He’d never survive the questioning they needed to put him through. They needed some other kind of leverage.
An uncomfortable feeling washed over him. Who were these ‘people’ Tony was talking about? What side of the law did they walk, and how far did Danny want to become implicated with his activities?
The less he knew, the better.
‘If you call your people,’ he said, ‘you do it for Ripley.’
‘I’m not doing it for anyone, Black,’ Tony said. ‘You’re the boss, remember. It’s your call.’
A silence. Danny felt the anger growing in him again. He mastered it.
Find the fucker who did this . . .
Without taking his eye from his sights, he said: ‘Do it.’
South London. 06.00 hrs GMT.
It was a smart detached house. A swimming pool out back. Marble columns framing the porch. And no lights on, because the household had not yet woken. In the large master bedroom, a couple were asleep beneath silk sheets. The woman had bleached blond hair and botoxed lips. The man was shorter than her, and a lot fatter. He looked and sounded pissed off that the mobile phone on his bedside table was vibrating. He swore under his breath, grabbed the phone and answered it with a distinct lack of grace.
‘Who the . . .’
He was cut short, but the voice at the other end of the line made him sit up.
‘Tony, mate, what’s the fucking time? Where are you anyway? The line’s awful.’ He belched noisily, as if to confirm just how awful it was.
As he listened to the voice he padded naked to the door, where his kimono dressing gown was hanging on a brass hook. He perched the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he put it on.
‘What?’ he said as he wandered into the en suite, lifted up the toilet seat and started to piss thunderously against the porcelain. ‘Yeah, I’ve got a couple of guys. For you, mate, anything. I’ll send them round sometime this week. What is it, they owe you money or something?’
He flushed the chain and padded back out into the bedroom. His wife was still fast asleep.
‘What?’ he continued. ‘Now?’ He whistled, to demonstrate what a tall order that was. ‘I dunno, mate, maybe in a couple of hours . . .’
He fell silent and listened to the response.
‘Right,’ he said quietly. There was a sudden hint of steel in his eyes. ‘Immediately. But let’s be clear, Tony, after this, we’re quits. Understood?’ He walked across the bedroom to the dressing table, where his wife’s eye-lining pencil was lying at an angle. ‘Where the fuck are you anyway?’ he asked as he started to scrawl an unfamiliar number across the glass of her mirror. ‘Bring us back a souvenir, won’t you? Box of, I dunno, 7.62s always goes down nicely. Least you can do, after a favour like this . . .’
‘Done,’ Tony said.
Danny didn’t move. His shooter had just stood up. Approximate distance, 70 metres. He wore the standard Boko Haram garb: camouflage gear, rifle, black woollen hat. The cross hairs of Danny’s scope were in line with his chest.
Radio communication to Caitlin: ‘Eyes-on.’
No reply.
Silence.
Thirty seconds passed. The militant was moving forward. Distance: 60 metres.
Caitlin: ‘Eyes on.’
Danny didn’t hesitate for a second. ‘Take the shot,’ he said. Immediately he squeezed the trigger of his HK. The suppressed round made a dull knocking sound as it exited the barrel of his rifle. A fraction of a second later he heard a second round from Caitlin’s direction. And a fraction of a second after that, the militant in his sights collapsed.
‘Target down,’ he said.
‘Target down,’ came Caitlin’s reply.
Danny stayed where he was. ‘What now?’ he asked Tony.
‘Now,’ Tony said, ‘we wait.’
07.28 hrs
The inhabitants of Eastwick Drive, Peckham had grown used to seeing strangers in their road. First it had been the police, knocking on the door of number thirteen where that nice Pakistani couple lived who were always giving sweets to the local children, and helping out at community events. After the police had gone, some of the neighbours had knocked on their door to see if everything was okay. There had been no reply.
The following day the police had turned up again, and stayed longer this time. A couple of hours later there were reporters outside the door. Even a news crew. Nobody in the street knew why, until they read about it in the papers, and after that they could talk about nothing else: how the nice couple’s son, who they’d always thought was a bit of a strange one – not like their eleven-year-
old daughter, who was very sweet – had travelled to Syria to fight with those terrorists. Who would want to do such a thing, they wondered. They felt so sorry for the parents, who must be worried sick.
Their concern had soon turned to annoyance when the unwanted visitors kept coming. Their address was all over the internet. Anyone who wanted to come and ogle at the house of the kid who’d gone off to fight and had ended up as Jihadi Jim, the brutal executioner, could rock up at any time of the day or night and throw stones at the parents’ windows, or spray graffiti on the low wall of their front garden.
And so, the sight of two unfamiliar, broad-shouldered guys walking silently up the road was entirely unremarkable. A couple of kids, up early and playing on their bikes, gave them the eye, but nobody challenged them as they walked up to number thirteen carrying a large bouquet of flowers, and rang the doorbell.
At first there was no reply, so they rang again. A minute later there was the sound of footsteps approaching the door. A thin, slightly frail man’s voice came from the other side. ‘Who is it?’
‘Flower delivery,’ said the guy holding the bouquet.
A pause.
‘Who from?’ said the voice suspiciously.
‘There’s a card here, mate.’
Another pause. Then the sound of three separate locks being unfastened.
The door opened a couple of inches. The visitors didn’t wait for more. The guy who was not holding the flowers barged inwards. The owner of the house gave an alarmed shout as he fell backwards, but by that time the two heavies were inside, the door closed behind them. They dropped the flowers carelessly on the floor and both pulled out handguns. Not that they needed them. The man of the house, who was wearing nothing but a pair of striped pyjama bottoms, had thin arms and balding hair and was skinny enough for his ribs to be showing. He staggered backwards as the men barged in. As he challenged them with a feeble ‘Who are you? What do you want?’, one of the intruders answered him with a sturdy boot in his ribs, then dragged him into the front room to the left of the hallway, while his companion climbed the stairs.