Hellfire (20 page)

Up close, he could see that the Porton Down guy had a ginger beard and glasses beneath his mask. ‘Dr Mike Phillips,’ he said, his voice slightly muffled by the suit. ‘Is the patient a friend of yours?’

Danny nodded.

‘I’m afraid it isn’t good news. Come take a look.’

Danny followed him into the tent. It was rectangular, about ten metres by eight. Collapsible steel shelves containing medical equipment were lined up along the far end, with three unopened flight cases next to them. The remaining four lab guys stood round a stretcher bed in the middle of the tent. Lying on the stretcher bed was Ripley.

Or what was left of him.

The lab guys had cut open his clothes so now he was lying naked. A saline drip hung from a drip stand, the cannula inserted into his right arm. Ripley himself was unconscious. Mercifully. His hands and feet had turned black. The remainder of his body was covered in angry red lumps. Some of them were whole, others weeping a milky effluent. His lips were stained with blood, his face deathly pale. He was breathing, but with each breath there was a ghastly rasping sound, as if his lungs were protesting at having to work.

‘Can you fix him?’ Danny asked.

Dr Phillips shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. We’ve pumped him full of antibiotics, but he’s too far gone. I need to ask you some questions. They’re very important.’

Danny nodded.

‘Can you tell me when the patient first came in contact with the infected bodies?’

Danny could, precisely. Ripley had radioed in his status just as Danny and Tony had made contact with Jihadi Jim. That would put it at 13.00 hrs yesterday. He relayed this information.

The lab guys exchanged a worried look. ‘That means he’s been infected for approximately seventeen hours, agreed?’

‘Agreed,’ Danny said.

Dr Phillips glanced down at his patient. ‘Let’s take a walk,’ he said.

They left the tent. ‘I don’t need to tell you this is serious?’ Phillips said. And when Danny didn’t reply, he asked: ‘How much do you know about plague?’

Danny looked towards the tent, as if to say: just what I’ve seen.

‘Okay,’ Phillips said. ‘In a nutshell, what we call plague is in fact an infection called
Y. pestis
. There are three types: pneumonic, septicemic and bubonic. Bubonic plague is what people think of as Black Death – killed millions in the seventeenth century. But pneumonic is a lot more deadly.’

‘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 head 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.