The Storm Protocol (27 page)

He heard a soft crump
, as he drew in his breath, waiting for all hell to break loose. Miraculously, nothing happened. He made the sign of the cross, and then spent the next ten minutes painstakingly removing the individual shards of glass, until he had a space large enough to fit his head and shoulders through.

Stretching his arm to the limit, he managed to undo all three deadbolts, and slide off the chain. It was then just a matter of turning the keys in the two Yale locks.

He was careful to open the door gingerly. He moved inside and closed it slowly behind him; there was still a chance that some shards could fall.

When he was safely inside, he checked out the kitchen. As he had seen before, there was a d
oor directly in front of him, and one directly behind. At the far end, to his rear, there was a small rudimentary bathroom, just as he had suspected. He peered inside briefly. It was immaculately presented and very sparsely furnished. No feminine touches of any kind.

He moved to the door
at the other end of the kitchen. He pressed his ear to the panelling; he could hear nothing. He opened the door soundlessly and stepped through. He flicked the Mag light quickly around the room and took a further step.

He didn't see the obstruction on the ground
, until it was too late; his knees buckled, and he fell on top of the object with a dull thud. It was soft and warm and he recoiled in horror. His torch was rolling in a circular motion, weirdly illuminating the two prone bodies on the floor.

He grabbed the light and examined both quickly. One was groaning and semiconscious, but breathing steadily
and with a strong pulse. The other man regarded him with wary eyes, but did not seem overly scared, which surprised him. Both men were hogtied; it was the only way they would have described it, back home in Louisiana.

There was a muffled sound from the conscious man. Roussel flicked his light back to the man’s eyes; he was motioning them to the right and then up. Roussel turned milliseconds before the
onrushing kick would have connected. He managed to parry it with a wildly flailing arm, but his assailant spun through three hundred and sixty degrees, and caught him square in the stomach with another kick. Roussel doubled up, as the air was forced out of his lungs. He never saw the
coup de gras
coming.

His assailant sighed for a third time
, as Roussel slumped to the floor. Luckily, it had been a very long washing line. After seeing to Roussel, he dragged the three men to the couch and sat them upright, making them as comfortable as their bindings would allow. He waited till they were all conscious, seemingly mesmerised as he rhythmically waved his weapon backwards and forwards. The gags were all still securely in place, so he could tell he had their full and complete attention; their expressions were all he needed to see.

‘So gentleman,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Who wants to go first?’

10
th
January 2011 – Four months before the Storm.

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty. – James Madison.

He sat outside the office on a cheap plastic chair. The admin complex was located in a prefab in the middle of a combat zone, so he couldn’t really complain. At least he had something to sit on.

He tried to concentrate on not looking conspicuous and only managed to look more so. He wondered for the hundredth time what the general had in mind for him, as he received ever more suspicious looks from comrades walking past. Discipline was the normal reason for being static on a chair, waiting for the commanding officer.

He prayed for the door to open and end his misery, and yet in another way, he wanted to stay outside; he was a little apprehensive of what awaited him.

‘Kelly!’

He jerked to attention instinctively and then realised he was still sitting down.

He jumped up, marched in and stopped. He had expected an ante room, but had also forgotten how hands-on the general was purported to be, especially i
n combat situations.

The general looked up as Kelly entered.

‘At ease, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Take a seat.’

‘Yes sir, thank you sir,’ he said, saluting and babbling in equal measure.

‘Relax, Sergeant Kelly,’ he said, indicating the chair. ‘I won’t bite.’

Kelly sat down and waited expectantly. The general continued to write expansively on the notepad in front of him and Kelly was not stupid enough to interrupt.

General Marty
Bubba
Bradford was a heavily decorated three star general. He had started his combat career in Vietnam, and both his reputation and his rank had risen through the various campaigns in between. He had been involved in everything from dirty little skirmishes in war-torn third world countries, to large scale conflicts between UN sovereign nations, so he knew what he was about.

He was a surprisingly small man for one in such a powerful position, but he more than made up for it in presence and charisma. His was not the typical small man syndrome. He was a genuine leader of men, and
both his officers and enlisted soldiers treated him accordingly. They loved him.

Even in the Rifles, Sergeant Kelly’s UK regiment, they had heard of Bubba Bradford, so when Kelly had been approached by his company commander
, to act as a special liaison with the US 101
st
Airborne Division, he had jumped at the chance. The Screaming Eagles had an illustrious history.

Sergeant Kelly was not a career soldier; it was not something he had been dreaming about since he was a boy. Soldiery was not in his family, but he had found it a surprisi
ng release from the endless quarrels and arguments with his mother. He hadn’t seen it at the time, but the lack of meaningful work had been eating away at him; poisoning his soul. Men were meant to toil and he hadn’t realised that. He had become lazy and complacent. He had been furious when his mother had come home from work, after a particularly vicious morning disagreement, and told him she had enrolled him in the army.

He could
have refused to join-up, but he hadn’t, and he distinctly recalled the millisecond that enlightenment had come to him. They’d been on the killing fields, the bleak bayonet training grounds, and had been told to put on their war faces. As he’d looked around, the youthful clean-shaven visages had morphed into unrecognisable masks of hate.

He
’d looked ahead at the sandbag hanging from the gallows. It had been filled with bags of pig’s blood, and as he’d chanted the same words as his comrades,
kill, kill, kill,
he’d felt a red mist descend on him. He’d charged for the object of his hate, and as the bayonet had slammed into the target, he’d realised that a man had to work for a living, and this was the work that he, Sean Kelly, wanted to do. And as the blood had spurted onto his face, he’d truly become a man for the very first time.

‘Do you know what he wants me for
, sir?’ he’d asked Major Sherry, his commanding officer.

‘No idea Kelly, but it is a big honour. The only problem for most of the men when these postings come up is that they tend to be non-combative; that could be the case here, so just bear that in mind.’

‘I’ll take my chances, sir,’ said Kelly, not realising how prophetic those words would be.

Up close, Bubba was surprisingly anonymous for a career army man. He wore plain unadorned fatigues just like his men, but his voice, when he started speaking, was loud and commanding.

‘Sergeant Kelly, you and your guys in the Rifles have a problem in Helmand province. It is echoed across all of the battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq, and unites us as soldiers. Your comrades are dying and so are ours. Your comrades are being maimed and losing limbs on a daily basis, and so are ours.’

‘Yes sir,’ said Kelly.

He was not sure there was any other response he could offer. It was the truth after all.

‘Well, here in the US army
, we are getting sick of it. As a general, I have a bit of clout, so I started asking questions of the secretary of defence, who started asking questions of other agencies.’

Sean did not offer a comment. He could only imagine what Bubba meant by other agencies. He read thrillers and went to the movies. His active imagination told him they had letters in their names
, rather than words.

‘So what has all this got to do with me, sir?’ he asked.

‘The military campaign to drive Saddam Hussein and his Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, if a young man like you can remember back that far, was called operation Desert Storm. You, and others like you, will be leading the vanguard of a new offensive that we're calling simply
Operation Storm
.’

‘So
, this is not a desk-based position?’ queried Sean.

Bubba chuckled.

‘About as far removed from a desk as it is possible to get,’ he said. ‘Is that a problem for you? I need a hundred percent commitment on this, Sergeant. If that’s going to be an issue, you need to tell me now.’

‘No issue
, sir,’ said Sean.

He re
ally meant it.

The g
eneral narrowed his eyes and looked at him for a few seconds. Sean didn't flinch under the ocular assault. Eventually the general seemed satisfied and grunted to himself. He picked up the handset on his desk and hit the top redial button; the most used of the buttons on the phone, judging by how faded and dirty it was.

‘Major Thompson,’ barked the g
eneral. ‘Could you join us in here for a few minutes please?’

As Sean waited, the general busied himself with other tasks. For those few moments, he was oblivious to Sean even being there. He was a man used to working around distractions; it was the only way you could survive and thrive in combat situations, and he had done that for a very long time.

Eventually, there was a discreet knock on the door.

‘Enter,’ shouted the g
eneral.

The visitor stepped smartly into the room and saluted with precision. The general returned the salute.

‘At ease, Major,’ he said.

As the newcomer pulled over a chair, Sean studied him surreptitiously. He was a tall man
, but not particularly wide at the shoulder. He reminded Sean of a skyscraper in the midst of construction. You could see how tall it was, and how large it could be, but the framework hadn't yet been filled in.

His face, as he pulled the chair up to the desk, was drawn and reserved. He had angular and
pointed features, rather than soft and fleshy ones. The light blue eyes sparkled with a keen intelligence, and Sean could see the muscles and sinews honed and taut on the major’s forearms. He was obviously exceptionally fit, even for an army man.

‘Major Thompson is in charge of the team that have been tasked
with operationalising our new weapon,’ said the general carefully. ‘He’ll give you a full briefing of what is required in combat situations, from both you and your men.’

The g
eneral nodded at Major Thompson, who resumed the conversation. Sean was struck by how deep his voice was too; it wasn't what he’d been expecting.

‘Your team will be the first we have operationali
sed from the British army,’ said Major Thompson, ‘so it's important that we get this right for future deployment.’

‘Yes sir,’ replied
Sean, nodding in acknowledgement.

‘The primary use of this weapon,’ stated Major
Thompson, ‘is in siege and stand-off situations; where a direct assault would mean serious loss of life due to terrain, solider numbers or other considerations. The weapon can be deployed in one of two ways; either in a standard tear-gas canister or in a diversionary smoke canister. We have adapted both these means of deployment, so they can be fired from launchers, but I’ll come to that later.’

‘So
, would it be safe to say the weapon is biological, sir?’ asked Sean.

‘It’s a gas,’ acknowledged the m
ajor carefully.

‘Okay, so deployment method is smoke or tear-gas canister of some kind,’ said Sean. ‘But you said there were two parts to the weapon.’

‘I did,’ said the major. ‘The other part relates directly to the troop safety aspect of the weapon and is the key to the deployment. You'll all have your standard issue equipment, but in the Operation Storm deployment team, we have developed a specific canister for the gas masks. When out in the field in a combat situation, this canister must be worn at all times.’

The m
ajor held up a bright orange object about the same size as a half tin of beans, with holes in the top and bottom, like a pepper shaker.

‘We have made it easy to see if an individual soldier does not have the canister deployed,’ said the Major indicating the garish colour. ‘I cannot state enough that in any deployment situation, the canister must be worn by every sing
le member of the unit. Failure to do so puts not only the individual at risk, but the entire team.’

‘So
, is this gas contagious?’ asked Sean.

The general and the m
ajor exchanged a glance, the meaning of which was lost on Sean. There was definitely a meaning though, he was sure of that.

‘Let’s just say exposure
is highly dangerous,’ said the major bluntly, ‘and leave it at that.’

‘So
, those are the component parts,’ stated Sean. ‘What's the deployment strategy?’

‘Good question,’ said Major Thompson.

He exchanged another look with the general. Sean was not good at reading people, but he thought he might have detected a look of relief passing between the two men.

‘Hypothetically, the deployment scenario would look like this,’ said Major Thompson.

He cleared his throat and took a swig from his water bottle, before continuing.

‘You and your team are on patrol
somewhere in Helmand province. You're on the lookout for snipers, IED’s and fortified positions. When you encounter a fortified position; one where the enemy has dug in and you can keep him pinned down, this would be the ideal deployment situation, and you would execute the following steps.’

The m
ajor took another long swig of water, to lubricate his vocal chords.

‘First off, you would instruct al
l of your team to deploy their gas masks. You would personally check their masks and their utility belts to make sure they were using the right canister, before going on to any further step.’

Sean nodded.

‘As I said at the start, the gas and smoke canisters were specifically developed to be deployed from rocket launchers. As part of the launcher package, each team will get two launchers and a small GPS rangefinder device. These are standard parts of the equipment inventory you will be given.’

Sean nodded again.

‘You will plot the estimated coordinates for the enemy position. The device will have the four points of the compass embossed into the plastic cover. You will need to make sure it is oriented with the built-in compass. The device will beep continually if it is not aligned correctly. On one side, there is an airflow meter. The rangefinder device will measure the prevailing wind, and will then accurately calculate the best spot within the enemy position to deploy the weapon. Once these coordinates are locked into the rangefinder, they are uploaded automatically to the guidance system on the primary launcher. Are you with me so far?’

‘Seems straight forward at the moment, sir,’ said Sean.

‘Once the guidance system is primed, you will load one of the specially adapted canisters into the launcher; they look like mini rockets. Pull the trigger to the first position on the launcher, and it will download the coordinates to the rocket. It only takes a second or two and once the download is complete, it will release the trigger. You then aim the launcher at the specific target, and pull the trigger all the way back.’