Hellfire

by Chris Ryan

  Tony was shouting into the ship’s radio. ‘We’ve got a Mayday, repeat, we’ve got a Mayday. The Golden Coral is scuttled, requesting immediate pick-up.’

  There was a crackly pause, then a mild Australian voice came over the radio. ‘What the hell have you boys been doing?’

  ‘Just get us a fucking chopper!’ Tony shouted down the phone.

  ‘Winds are high. ETA, ten minutes.’

  ‘GET IT HERE NOW!’

  Even though his clothes were still damp, Danny was sweating badly. It had been approximately three minutes since the blast, and the ship was already hovering around a five-degree angle. The more water entered the hull, the quicker the ship would sink. Two of the corpses rolled down the sloping floor of the bridge. It was hard for the living to remain upright. He doubted they had more than fifteen minutes.

  ‘We need to get on to the aft deck!’ he shouted at his team mates. ‘That’ll be the last to go down. Let’s move out there now.’

  Tony led the way, and the rest of the team filed out behind him. Danny prepared to take up the rear, holding on to the edge of the instrument panel to stop himself falling. A high-pitched grinding sound was coming from the ship’s engines. It didn’t sound good.

  Something caught his eye. It looked like a shoulder bag, and it had slid across the floor and come to rest alongside the two bodies, no more than four metres from Danny’s position. He staggered across the incline of the floor to grab it. It was made of soft leather, sticky with blood and very light. As Caitlin left the bridge, Danny opened it up. There was a piece of A4 paper inside, folded together three ways and slightly crumpled.

  Danny peered at the piece of paper in the darkness, and frowned. It seemed to be an airline e-ticket confirmation: British Airways, Lagos to Paris Charles de Gaulle, departing 23.55 hrs.

  Danny was alone on the bridge now. Alone and staring at the e-ticket in his hand. He checked the time. 23.49 hrs.

  A suicide cell could turn themselves into human vectors.

  The cargo ship juddered alarmingly. Its incline in the water steepened. Danny’s earpiece exploded into life. ‘Where the hell are you, Danny?’ Tony demanded.

  He hurled himself across the room towards the radio. ‘This is Golden Coral, do you copy?’

  Silence.

  ‘THIS IS GOLDEN CORAL, DO YOU COPY?’

  No reply. The radio was dead. But he had to try and get his message through. ‘There’s an aircraft leaving Lagos in the next fifteen minutes, BA to Paris. Ground that flight and isolate all passengers. Repeat, ground the flight and isolate the passengers. DO YOU COPY?’

  Nothing.

  Shit.

  He changed the frequency to channel 16, the international calling and distress channel, and repeated his message.

  Nothing.

  Another loud groan from the bowels of the ship.

  ‘Black, where the fuck are you?’

  He had to get out of there. He hurled himself across the bridge once again, towards the door this time. Out on the landing, he could see the staircase descending below him at an alarming angle. He grabbed hold of the railings and half-ran, half-fell down the two flights of stairs, then pushed the heavy deck door open.

  Outside, it felt like the whole deck was vibrating. Looking to his right, he saw piles of cargo containers toppling against each other as they slipped down the incline of the ship towards the sinking forward deck. He stumbled breathlessly to the side of the ship, where he could grab the deck railings fiercely, then started pulling himself up towards the aft deck. In his peripheral vision he could see the bright searchlights of an approaching chopper cutting through the darkness. Distance, half a klick. Their pick-up was arriving.

  The others were clinging to the deck railings at the very rear of the ship. Waves were swelling over the side. Danny pulled his way along the railings, muscles burning under his saturated clothes. It took thirty seconds to join the others. By that time, the chopper was hovering fifty feet above the sinking ship. Looking up, Danny could see the side door open, and a rope lowering, a mess of harnesses swinging from its tail and buffeting in the wind. The chopper itself wobbled precariously – Danny could tell the flight crew were struggling to keep it steady. He looked over the side of the railings. Half the ship’s hull was submerged. They had minutes before they were underwater . . .

  The harnesses hovered a metre above their heads. Goldie caught them. ‘Team One, go!’ Danny shouted. It took no more than thirty seconds for the team to strap themselves in. Goldie raised his Surefire torch and flashed it three times in the direction of the chopper. Instantly, the three Aussie SAS guys rose from the deck, spinning in the air as the rope pulled them up towards the aircraft. The ship lurched downwards again. Danny gripped the railings more fiercely than ever. It took a full minute to get the first three guys into the chopper, which still looked very shaky as the rope descended again.

  ‘Team Two, go!’ Danny shouted. The guys strapped themselves in, and moments later were rising into the air.

  ‘What the fuck were you doing in there?’ Tony shouted at Danny. Even here, on a sinking ship, he clearly didn’t like not being in the know.

  ‘They’re going to hit a plane!’ Danny shouted. ‘I was trying to make contact with the ops room.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Tony demanded.

  Danny didn’t answer. The vessel had just given its loudest groan yet. It sounded like it was breaking up. Half the bridge tower was submerged. Water lashed over the railings. He looked up. Team Two were scrambling into the chopper. Seconds later, the harnesses were descending for a third time. Tony grabbed hold of them the moment they came within his grasp. He started fitting his own harness while Danny handed one to Caitlin, before fitting his own. ‘Everyone good?’ he shouted.

  Tony and Caitlin nodded, so Danny withdrew his own Surefire and made the sign to the loadie up above. They were immediately airborne. As they winched up to the chopper, buffeted by winds, Danny looked down at the Golden Coral. It was more than three-quarters submerged, and the sea all around it bubbled and foamed. He felt a grim satisfaction that if any instances of the plague infection were aboard, they were being consigned to the deep. But then he remembered the flight number, and the knot of panicked urgency that had been with him since they landed in Nigeria returned to his gut.

  Halfway to the chopper, he turned his attention to his unit mates. Caitlin was tightly gripping Tony’s arm. For some reason, that made the knot in Danny’s stomach tighten even further. Tony clearly saw him noticing and despite everything – the roar of the ocean, the wind, the spray and the thundering beat of the chopper’s struggling rotors – a smug, self-satisfied look crossed his face.

  Danny forced himself to look up. Just five metres to the chopper’s entrance. He could see the loadie reaching out one hand to help them in. A moment later, they were scrambling into the body of the chopper. The door slid shut. The chopper banked sharply. Danny unclipped himself at the harness.

  ‘Get me on to the ops room!’ he shouted. ‘Now!’

  Danny felt the eyes of the unit on him as the confused loadie handed him a headset. He ripped off his helmet, NV gear, radio earpiece and boom mike, then fitted the headset over his ears. ‘Do you copy!’ he shouted.

  ‘Roger that, this is Alpha, go ahead.’

  Danny plunged his hand into the leather shoulder bag to get his hands on the crumpled e-ticket. ‘Listen carefully!’ he shouted. ‘There was a makeshift lab on that ship. I think they were filling aerosol canisters with the bioweapon, and I also think one of those canisters is on flight Brave Alpha Three Three Four Eight Nine, Lagos to Paris Charles de Gaulle. You have to stop that flight taking off and isolate all the passengers. Do you copy?’

  A crackly pause. Then: ‘Roger that.’

  The line went quiet. Everyone in the chopper – they had all heard every word Danny had said – stared at him in horror.

  The chopper roared through the air back towards the frigate. Danny found he was holding his breat
h as he waited for the radio operator to make contact again.

  Thirty seconds passed.

  ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ Tony demanded.

  At that very moment, the radio burst into life again. ‘This is Alpha.’

  ‘Have you grounded the flight?’ Danny shouted.

  A pause.

  ‘That’s a negative. The flight is already airborne. Repeat, the flight is already airborne.’

  NINETEEN

  Flight BA33489 had not yet reached its cruising altitude. But the captain had switched off the ‘fasten seatbelt’ sign, the air stewards were busily pouring out Bloody Marys and there was already a queue for each of the toilets. It had been a bumpy take-off and there was still a little turbulence. Flight attendant Ailsa Pritchard hardly noticed it. Ten years a British Airways air stewardess, she sometimes thought she spent more time in the air than on the ground. She’d long since stopped being nervous about the occasional bump, but she’d also learned to keep a full smile on her face, because whenever there was turbulence, the more nervous passengers always watched the expressions of the cabin crew to double-check that they shouldn’t be panicking.

  And so she smiled her way sweetly down the starboard aisle of this airbus, politely pouring drinks and trying not to let it show that she was massively looking forward to touching down in Paris, where her boyfriend would be waiting to whisk her off to their favourite little hotel in Montmartre, where they would be spending her two days off.

  The passengers were a mixture of French and Nigerian, and a smattering of Brits. When the captain came over the loudspeaker to inform the cabin that they had a decent tail wind and were hoping to shave a few minutes off their flight time of six hours twenty-five minutes, he did so in French first, then English. Ailsa herself was not fully bilingual, but she certainly had enough French to deal with the drinks orders of the passengers, and to respond cheerfully to any minor requests or problems that they had.

  She had been serving drinks for fifteen minutes, and was more than halfway along the aisle, when she drew up alongside a Nigerian man who looked to be in a terrible state. He had very short cropped hair, almost bald, and Ailsa could see that his entire head was sweating. He was oddly dressed in mismatched, rather grubby clothes, and she could just see his shoes, which were falling apart. He kept licking his cracked lips, and his eyes – the whites of which were a creamy yellow – kept darting left and right. He wore a denim shirt and that too was soaked, with huge dark patches under the armpits. There was a rather unpleasant smell of stale sweat about his person – Ailsa was glad he had an empty seat either side of him, or there might have been some embarrassing complaints. He was nervously clutching a leather holdall in his lap.

  ‘Tout va bien, monsieur?’ Ailsa asked. ‘Je peux vous offrir quelque chose a boire?’

  The man looked up sharply, as if he was surprised that anyone should be talking to him. He shook his head. ‘Non.’

  ‘Is everything okay?’ she continued in French. ‘Nervous flyer?’

  Another sharp look.

  ‘No,’ the man said.

  ‘You might find it more comfortable to put your bag in one of the overhead lockers, sir?’

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  Ailsa gave him the thin-lipped smile she saved for all rude passengers. ‘Certainly, sir,’ she said, and she started to push the drinks trolley further down the aisle. The plane gave a sudden shudder of turbulence. Ailsa was forced to grab hold of the top of one of the seats. As she did so, she saw from the corner of her eye that the Nigerian man had opened up his holdall. He had removed a small canister of Lynx deodorant, and she thought she could see a second canister in the bag.

  She found herself softening towards him. Poor man, she thought. He must be rather embarrassed. He obviously has a bit of a sweat problem, after all.

  The Sea King containing Danny and the rest of the unit touched down precariously on the flight deck of the frigate. Danny alighted the moment the loadie had opened the door, and was the first of them to hit the deck. The rotors were powering down, but their downdraught was still strong. He crouched slightly as he ran across the flight deck.

  He heard them before he saw them: three aircraft, flying in an arrowhead formation from a south-westerly direction. He knew at a glance that they were Tornadoes. As they sped overhead, a deafening sonic boom hit his ears.

  Grimly, he watched them disappear towards land. He couldn’t tell for sure where they were going, but he had a pretty good idea.

  Randolph’s forehead was crushed into a semi-permanent frown. This was the first time he had ever been in a plane, but that wasn’t why he was nervous.

  It was warm in the cabin, but as he looked at the small canisters of deodorant in his hands, he felt himself shiver. His instructions made no sense. Why would anyone want him to do this?

  With very sweaty hands, he removed the lid from one of his bottles of Lynx. It popped off easily.

  The seat in front of him shook slightly. A head popped up above it: a Nigerian child, about the same age as his twin daughters. Her hair was tightly braided, and she had a smile that lit up her whole face. This flight was obviously an exciting adventure for her.

  ‘Hello, mister,’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’

  Randolph just stared at her, unable to make his mouth work. The pad of his forefinger nervously stroked the indentation on the white spray cap of the canister. As he stared at the child, he couldn’t help but remember the awful video of his daughters he had been shown in his shack.

  The child inclined her head. ‘Mister?’ she said.

  Randolph was not a stupid man. He knew that the canister in his hand contained something other than deodorant. Something dangerous. He just didn’t know what. An explosive of some kind? Would this whole plane be blasted out of the air the moment he squeezed the cap? He imagined himself hurtling through the air, and wondered if he was more likely to die up here, or when he hit the ground. He thought of his precious daughters, and wondered if they would cry when they heard their daddy was dead.

  More sweat. His seat was damp.

  ‘Sit down properly, child,’ he told the little girl, who was still watching him. Her face fell, and she disappeared back into her seat.

  Randolph closed his eyes and muttered a prayer.

  He sprayed the canister.

  His finger had only been pressed for a second when his eyes pinged open again. There had been no explosion. Just a hiss, and that had been so quiet that the noise of the aircraft’s engines and the general hubbub of the cabin had drowned it out.

  But what about the smell? He looked across the aisle to check that nobody could see him behaving oddly, then bent down with the aerosol to his nose. He squeezed the cap again and sniffed deeply. There was just a faint, odourless mist.

  Randolph released his finger and leaned back, relief crashing over him. He wasn’t going to plunge to his death. He was going to see his children again.

  He squeezed the cap again. This time he held it down for a full thirty seconds until the hissing became weaker and finally stopped. He put the dead canister back in his shoulder bag, then took out the second one. His face broke into an almost carefree smile as he removed the lid and started spraying its odourless contents into the gap between his seat and the seat in front. The little girl’s face appeared again, and she gave him a slightly amused look. A look that said: what are you doing?

  Randolph just winked and made a shushing sign as he emptied the canister. When it was done, he stuffed the empty can back in his shoulder bag, which he then dumped on the spare window seat next to him.

  He looked down. His shirt was wet with perspiration, but now he was sweating with relief. Perhaps I’ll have a drink now, he thought to himself. Something to steady my nerves. He looked up, and pressed the overhead button for calling the air hostess.

  She arrived a minute later. ‘Oui, monsieur?’

  ‘I think I would like a drink now,’ he said. He knew he had been very rude to her bef
ore, so he tried to smile.

  ‘Of course, sir, what can I get you?’

  He waited another minute for her to bring his beer: an almost cold bottle of Kronenbourg, along with a plastic cup, a paper mat and a small packet of salted pretzels. She leaned over to give him the bottle and he had just opened his mouth to thank her when he sneezed explosively. Right at her. It was the sort of sneeze that makes people turn and look.

  ‘What on earth . . .’ the air stewardess said.

  Randolph blinked. ‘I’m very sorry,’ he mumbled, massively embarrassed that his sneeze had sprayed a thin mist of saliva at the woman’s face.

  But the air stewardess didn’t seem to be worried about the sneeze. She was staring through Randolph’s tiny window. Randolph frowned again. He looked out of the window. He blinked.

  He found it hard to say how close the aircraft was that flew alongside them. Only tens of metres, because he could see, quite clearly, through the side windows of the aircraft’s cockpit, the pilot. He had a grey helmet and a boom mike to his mouth. As Randolph stared at him, the pilot turned his head to the left, and it was almost as if their eyes met.

  A bell-like sound from within the cabin. Randolph looked up to see that the ‘fasten seatbelt’ sign was turned on. The air stewardess had straightened up. Randolph looked at her face. There was no doubt about it: she was frightened.

  He glanced guiltily at the shoulder bag on the seat next to him, then back out of the window.

  The captain’s voice came over the loudspeaker. ‘Ladies and gentleman, the fasten seatbelt signs are now on, so I would ask you to return to your seats.’ A pause. ‘Some of you may have noticed military aircraft on either side of us. I would like to take this opportunity to assure you that there is absolutely no cause for alarm.’