Patriot

by A S Bond

  “I think it’s an adit, directly up to the surface,” Dex said, lighting another match. “There may be dozens in here.”

  Brooke looked at the two tunnels, then upwards into the adit.”Tunnel or shaft?”

  Dex took a few steps into the larger tunnel on their left.

  “Shall we try this?”

  “Okay” she said cautiously. Short of tossing a coin, what else could they do?

  After a few dozen feet, there was a light from low level LEDs set at ankle height to illuminate a metal gangway beneath their feet. Dex put his matches away. The walls here were still rough-hewn rock, but a guide rope passed through metal hoops along the wall at waist height. In front of them, steps ascended and turned to the right. It seemed far more modern inside than it had before; the metal gangway and the lights were new, and bunches of electrical cables had been tacked along the center of the roof, which was high enough for them to stand comfortably.

  After another few hundred yards they came to a small metal door, which Dex pushed at. Brooke held her breath. Without a single creak, it opened outwards, dazzling them with the last of the afternoon’s sunlight. Brooke followed Dex out, moving fast and throwing herself into some bushes. They were, she realized, in one corner of the mine complex, and there was no sign of anyone around.

  Moving as quickly as they could, they took a path behind the old buildings, down towards the river. The light was almost gone when they reached the water, but they dropped down into the shallows from the overhanging bank, grateful for the cover it offered. Working their way upstream, it was no more than ten minutes before they were in sight of the canoes.

  Except there was now only one canoe. Claude had disappeared.

  Chapter 19

  “Sir, we have some telemetry from Operation Hamlet.”

  David looked up from his computer screen as a junior officer put his head around the office door. Behind him lay the vast Operations Room. Designed to facilitate maximum interchange between intelligence personnel, it housed a number of pods, clusters of computer workstations and large monitors, which emerged upwards from the pods if a terror line was issued on an imminent threat. Other small teams watched monitors showing live feeds from half a dozen different surveillance cameras.

  Presiding over it all hung a huge plasma screen. Suspended from the ceiling on metal struts, it showed the position of every plane approaching the United Kingdom, and flagged up any suspicious activity.

  This morning, things were fairly quiet, and the room ran with nothing more than a subdued hum.

  “It’s coming in now.” Moments later, an icon popped up on David’s main screen. An audio file. He reached for the earphones.

  “Where did it come from?” he asked the young man, who hovered in the doorway.

  “Five Eyes in Cyprus, Sir. They’ve just sent it over. It’s a comms intercept, but they’ve tried to clean it up a bit.”

  “Origin?”

  “Phone. Cell to sat, we think.”

  David nodded. “Thank you.”

  He slipped on the phones and clicked the icon. Their covert listening station in the Mediterranean was most useful at picking up communications traffic out of the Middle East, but the increase in the use of less accessible fiber optics over satellite transmissions meant that too much intel was being missed. They had got lucky with this one, though. He smiled to himself.

  As a voice file, there was no encryption, although the two men speaking were careful never to mention the subject of their conversation. David listened, painstakingly pausing and replaying sections as he made notes. Both voices spoke in English, and one of the men was clearly an Arab, but David knew his identity. It was the other man that interested him. The accent was undoubtedly American. English was his first language, too.

  “It went better than I thought possible. Our brothers must be congratulated.”

  “Your money was well spent.”

  “There were no problems obtaining our transport?”

  “No. It paid for all expenses - as agreed. And no doubt will be put to good use in the future.”

  The quality of the sound file at this point was poor, and David frowned in irritation as he played with the levels. Then, the cold, flat tones of the American voice came back suddenly, ringing clearly through the headphones and sending an inexplicable chill down David’s spine.

  “Then everything will shortly be in place for phase two, subject to final testing. Have you alerted the personnel?”

  “They have received their instructions and will meet at the location, as arranged.”

  “Good. Then I shall send my final contribution to our friends in Zurich.”

  “Allah be praised.”

  “Yes. Ma’a salama.”

  “Ma’a salama.”

  David frowned as he sat back in his chair. Eventually, he waved the junior officer back into his office.

  “Get me the visuals from the surveillance on this operation, then go take a break.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The door closed softly and David picked up his phone.

  Chapter 20

  It may have been Saturday morning, but Scott’s computer blinked 128 new messages and paper files covered the desk. He looked out the window of his small private office, across the green spaces surrounding the DOD, to the trees already wearing their fall colors. The first frost of D.C.’s brutal winter couldn’t be far away.

  He thought about Brooke, out in Labrador. Had she received his message? The satphone seemed to be constantly switched off. He paced to his desk, then back to the window and thought about calling Hudson, her editor. He reached for his cell, when the desk phone rang, making him jump.

  “Hi.”

  “Scott? It’s David. I’ve got something.” There was no banter today.

  “David. Can I give you a call back in about five minutes?”

  “That’s fine, Scott.” David’s low, well modulated voice sounded very distant. “I’ll be here.”

  Scott checked his watch. It was almost 8 am - 1pm in London- and the front of the Department would be very busy as this hour. Picking up his personal cell, Scott walked out of the office to the lobby. He was right; the entrance was full of support staff lining up to go through security in the opposite direction. With a flash of his pass to the distracted guard, Scott was soon out of the building and onto the sidewalk.

  Three and a half blocks brought him to a small line of stores. Two cafes, a bagel takeout, and a slightly upscale restaurant served the local office workers. Scott turned the corner into an alleyway that ran down the side of the end store. A few rats crawled over garbage spilling from the dumpsters, but he ignored them and took out the Blackberry. Just another suit starting the day before he even got to the office.

  David picked up after one ring.

  “That’s a lot of precautions. Is there anything I should know?”

  “Someone is very interested in what I’m doing. I’m not sure if it’s inside or outside interference, though. They got my cell; fortunately it was the wrong one.”

  “I see. Well, I don’t know how much help this is, but I have something for you on Maynard.”

  “I thought he wasn’t on your radar.

  “He’s not, but we have some surveillance on a different job, where he just happened to turn up.”

  “Middle East?

  “Yes.

  “ We lost him at Dubai.”

  David laughed. “Yes, we know you did. Fortunately, we have a reliable asset who tells us that an American of Arabic descent has been making some visits to one of the people we are keeping an eye on.”

  “How do you know it’s Maynard?”

  “The timings fit, plus we have an image - just a side shot, but it’s enough.”

  “Who is he visiting, David?”

  “You know that if asked, I will deny giving you a name or even that we are watching this person.”

  “I know how the game’s played, David.” Scott had forgotten how David’s measured appro
ach to everything could drive him nuts. “Just tell me.”

  “Hassan.”

  There was a pause.

  “You don’t seem surprised.” said David.

  “No.”

  “But there is something else.” The tone of his voice changed. “I can’t get any confirmation on this you understand, it’s just a hunch, but taken with the visuals...”

  “What is it?”

  “We’ve got a comms intercept here. We’ve been listening in on Hassan’s calls for a while and this is something different; he’s talking to an American. Nothing specific, of course - but they do mention ‘phase two’“

  “You think he’s talking to Maynard about another Apache attack?”

  “Let’s hope not; but I will have to flag that up with the Ministry of Defence, even though they’re expecting more of the same of course, and something this unsubstantiated and non-specific tells us nothing useful from that perspective. There is something else...”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s a call on a mobile phone in Tehran to a satellite phone. So far we’ve traced that to North America.”

  “Do the dates work? Was Maynard in the US at the time of the call?”

  “We don’t know if he was in the US - that’s your side of things - but he definitely wasn’t in the Middle East or Europe. He took a private flight out of Dubai two days before the call was made.”

  “Can you send me the file and anything else you have on this?”

  “I can if you have a secure line.”

  “I’ve got end to end encryption on voice as well as data at this number.”

  “Personal, or family?”

  “Personal.”

  “Got it.”

  “ David - You know this is all below the radar for me at the moment. Well, there’s someone else involved.”

  “Go on. “

  “Someone outside the agency, a...friend of mine, a reporter. Brooke Kinley.”

  “I’ve heard of her. Not a smart move though, getting a journalist involved.”

  “I know I can trust her. I needed someone outside of all this to ask awkward questions, if need be. It’s just that she’s followed her nose, and, well, it’s taken her out to northern Canada.”

  There was a pause.

  “David?”

  “You share any information from this side with her and this is over.”

  “Got it.”

  “Can she be trusted?”

  “Of course.”

  “What took her to Canada?”

  “Maynard’s businesses. Specifically, uses for that microchip made famous for its starring role in the Incident.”

  “That’s interesting. Let me know what she finds.”

  “I will. Can you get more from your asset on the ground in Iran? “

  “Maybe. But he’s playing a bigger game right now and we can’t risk losing him. If this were official, we could give you full cooperation. In fact, we’d be very interested in playing it that way; the tabloid press are going for the story of our missing BBC journalist in a big way, and the Government is getting flak over it.”

  “It’s a killer story.”

  “And as long as Daisy Donnelly is not found, it’ll run and run. It’s fuelling something of an about-turn in public opinion over here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The fact our people have been dragged into this debacle has put Afghanistan back at the top of the agenda. The British public don’t like to feel like they’re losing a war, even one they didn’t support in the first place. Leaving quietly with some good PR is not an option over here. And it looks like you guys have lost your main cheerleader for that strategy, too.”

  “You mean Senator McLean? Yes, he was the President’s most influential advisor on the drawdown strategy. There are people in Washington who definitely aren’t too sad at his passing.”

  “And what an unusual passing it was.”

  “Are you suggesting something?”

  “Nothing you guys haven’t already considered, I’m sure. Anyway, if the hawks re-gain the upper hand and your president is looking to save face over this Apache mess, there is some real support gathering on this side of the Atlantic for cancelling the drawdown and fighting to win.”

  “Is that official?”

  “What do you think? The PM is keen to see this finished the right way. Chatter here suggests he’s going to urge your President to stay in and look strong at the summit next week. It may even break the cascade of bad economic figures. And you have a presidential election next year, don’t you?”

  “We’ve discussed this. My president is not killing our own troops for political gain. I refuse to believe it.”

  “I hope you’re right, but taking advantage of a ‘war bounce’ - should one come along - well that’s not quite the same as creating it in the first place, is it?”

  “Using what happened to that patrol to gain some sort of advantage in the polls as a leader in a time of war would just look cynical.”

  “It’ll play well in the heartlands, and you know it. He’s a politician. He won’t be able to resist.”

  “But..”

  “What?”

  “You need to figure out who’s pulling the strings on this. Is it officially sanctioned? Has the president already made up his mind? I don’t need to tell you that Britain doesn’t want to get caught up in your internal politicking, if that’s what this is.”

  Chapter 21

  Brooke and Dex sat side by side, screened from the mine by the trees. The adrenaline had subsided and Brooke was so tired she could do nothing but sit, eat some cold food—a fire or even the stove was too risky—and try to think clearly.

  “Now are you going to be honest with me about why you’re here? “ Dex’s frustration had gone, replaced by weariness. Brooke looked at him sideways under her lashes. She had feared that he would be furious, once he realized she hadn’t told him the full story, but he just seemed deflated.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t explain everything to you, but what I know - or rather what I suspect - isn’t just potentially highly dangerous, it’s also top secret.”

  “It’s okay.” Dex was playing with the sat phone, trying to get a spark of life. The unit remained resolutely dead, however, and he threw it in the canoe. “I understand why, but we’re both in this up to our necks now, and I think I have a right to know what I’m caught up in. Especially if it’s going to get me shot.”

  “No one is getting shot,” Brooke said. “I didn’t come out here to take on God knows what. I just wanted to know if a story I was investigating has any legs.”

  “I’m guessing you now think it does.”

  “Yeah.”

  Keeping her voice low, Brooke outline the events that had brought her to this remote place: the attack in Afghanistan, of which Dex was barely aware, since he had been flying halfway around the world at the time; Scott’s suspicions, her own questions in Cambridge, and, finally, the journalistic instinct to see for herself exactly what was happening at the mine that wasn’t mining.

  Dex listened in silence, clearly trying to make connections.

  “Do you think any of this has anything to do with those bodies in the woods?”

  “I really don’t know.” Brooke bit her lip. “I do know that whatever is going on here goes a lot deeper. There are more questions than answers. What about that ship? And I may be no scientist, but that was no microchip manufacturing plant we saw in that mine, it was a research lab, wasn’t it?”

  Dex nodded. “I don’t know how, or where, this fits into the picture, but at least now we have an explanation for why my plane fell out of the sky.” He snapped off several squares of chocolate and ate them absentmindedly.

  “We do?” Brooke attempted to open her eyes, which seemed to have closed themselves without her permission. Tiredness dragged at her like a great weight.

  “Oh, yes. And it’s pretty unlucky for your friend Maynard, but I’m probably the only person for several hu
ndred miles who could see that place and know exactly what it is for.”

  “At this point, I’ll believe anything.”

  Dex allowed himself a small smile and sipped at a mug of river water.

  “It’s a fully functioning research laboratory, on a mobile, micro-scale platform, capable of testing and processing multi-modal systems such as, say, electronic weapons control systems. “

  “Capable of designing and building the kind of surface-to-air missile that brought down that Apache?”

  “Yeeesss...”

  “But?”

  “But that’s not what I saw down there today. It looked to me - and this is far from my area of physics - but it looked to me like they were working on some kind of EMP weapon.”

  Brooke struggled upright. “Electromagnetic, right? Like the solar flares?”

  Dex nodded. “But there are several causes of EM pulses; solar flares are just one.”

  “What about man-made causes?”

  “Nuclear is the most obvious. During the Cold War, people feared a nuclear explosion in the upper atmosphere, because it would generate a high-amplitude pulse that would take out all power lines, right down to the circuits and chips over a wide area.”

  “Why would anyone bother? There’s nothing to attack out here. And anyway, last time I checked, Canada wasn’t involved in a full nuclear conflict.”

  “That’s what makes me think of the third option. I mean non-nuclear EMP, a radio frequency weapon that can have a range of a few meters to several kilometers from detonation. This is a serious area of military technological development now. Almost all the major powers are probably working on it. Where else would be better? Labrador is used by NATO for military training anyway, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but it’s mostly high-speed jets, bombing practice, that sort of thing,” Brooke said. “I saw a couple of fighter planes flying low a couple of days ago.”

  “Well,” Dex said, “that’s what I saw, and it explains the effects on all our electronic equipment.”

  “What if it is detonated? Somewhere populated, urban?”

  “Depending on its range, the implications are ...incalculable.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Well, it’s a weapon of mass destruction,” Dex said. “It would destroy everything electrical, sending the area affected back to the Dark Ages. It would be the end of civilization as we know it.”