“Assuming there are any still,” his brother chimed in.
“Assuming that the aircraft our men have seen are operating independently?” Oliver asked in quiet challenge to the pessimism his brother displayed. “It can only be the Americans, so we need to make contact with them and come to some form of arrangement regarding our evacuation.”
“They didn’t respond to our radio calls before, so why should they now?” Julian asked. His brother’s face darkened further, lines appearing on his otherwise blemish-free face.
“Perhaps you could work on that part,” he asked, “while we continue to clear the island and stockpile enough supplies to keep us going?”
The imagery of the docks was seared on Johnson’s mind in such fine detail that he could study the recollection as clearly as if it were a photograph.
Recognising the uniforms of some men forced him to recall the hideous details of their faces, sallow and pale, to try and marry up those images to other memories of his men from the past. He couldn’t, even after an hour spent in quiet solitude which he covered by taking a turn to operate the gun fixed to their rear rail, despite the fact that not even an Echo could work the controls of a boat to give chase over open water.
“That fuel you got won't take us far, I’m afraid,” Bufford said from behind him, making him jump in fright and issue a string of quiet curses.
“Jesus bleedin’ Christ, Buffs! You frightened the bloody life out of me,” Johnson gasped.
“Sorry,” Bufford answered with an involuntary smirk on his face. “Didn’t realise you were miles away.” Johnson deflated, feeling his heart rate begin to lower from the startled tempo it had adopted.
“We’ll have to pull over then,” Johnson said, looking behind the SBS man to see Kimberley approaching.
“Next services?” she asked with a smile, tottering over the wet deck stand beside Johnson.
“Is it the one with the Happy Eater?” Bufford asked her, deadly serious.
“That’s the one. With the slide shaped like an elephant.”
Johnson smiled. Small moments of levity, or normality, seemed to make the world turn. Somehow, the final realisation that their country was lost, that their people and everything there was to be abandoned for good, hadn’t quite sunk in until seeing the twisted mutations of his men on Skye.
So bleak was his outlook that the very thought of attempting to cross what he estimated was well over five hundred miles of inhospitable North Atlantic Ocean in a fishing boat was so much of a stretch that he could feel his will being sapped from him.
He couldn’t fathom how stupid he’d been. How naïve he was to believe things would get better, that the whole mess would just blow over while he sat and enjoyed a nice, cold pint. He felt anger at himself for keeping so many people together like an enormous buffet spread, when he should have been doing everything within his power to get them off the island.
To hell with orders, he should’ve said at the very beginning. They should all have evacuated west at the first opportunity instead of waiting for hell to freeze over.
Well, hell had frozen over, then it had thawed and if they weren’t careful, they’d be staring down the barrel of that unfortunate cycle all over again.
He thought back on his quiet discussion with the American operators, feeling the guilt and shame from the man that he could do nothing to assist other than to give the glimmer of hope for their escape, along with all of the spare ammunition he and his men could afford.
Beside him, Kimberley said nothing, she simply looped her arm through his and leaned her body against him, which somehow slowed the feeling of his resolve and warmth leaking from him.
“Land,” Enfield called out from the front of the boat, making all of them turn around as if they could see something happening quickly, when in fact it was simply a darkened strip ahead of them through the low cloud.
Johnson looked up at the sky, trying to decipher the conditions from beneath the thick blanket of stored moisture in the air, just as Hampton was doing the same a few paces away.
"Anchor up away from land but out of the deeper water," he said, not making it clear in his tone of he was asking or suggesting that course of action. Johnson sighed, not only from his low mood and gathering depression but for the thought of spending another uncomfortable night asleep on the cramped boat, only to face the world in all its shit-covered glory the following morning.
“Boat,” Dezzy said quietly the following morning. His voice bore no excitement, just the same calmness it usually had when reporting on anything.
“Where?” Mac asked in a rush, in stark contrast to how dour he usually came across.
“South,” was all the answer he got, which had Mac thought before he spoke would have been the obvious answer, given that the only stretch of water they could easily see lay in that direction and boats weren’t often known for their passage over land.
Dezzy lifted the rifle to use the scope, pointing it toward the water for a few moments until he acquired the boat in his sights and let Mac know.
“Fishing boat,” he reported. “Smaller than ours.”
The alarm was raised, not in any sense of panic that they were at risk of an attack but more to prepare for whoever it was to be greeted properly and to ensure the infection they so vitally avoided wasn’t being brought to them unsuspectingly.
“Send word for the Lieutenants,” Mac told a royal marine who jogged up to where they standing on the road in search of answers to the cause of the excitement. “Tell them we have visitors,” he added, pointing at the speck approaching from the south.
TWENTY-FOUR
“I can tell you this for free,” the captain of the destroyer said angrily to the two CIA men as he led the way through the bowels of his ship. “I don’t much like the thought of you doing whatever it is you’re doing here, but I have my orders.”
His tone betrayed the fact that, whilst he would follow those orders, he would do so without the slightest investment in whether their task was successful or not. His uniform was crisp and pressed in contrast to their creased and sweat-stained shirts, and their bedraggled appearance made the captain’s dislike of them deepen.
He’d received his orders, questioned them for clarification in a private conversation, then accepted the incoming personnel and followed the rest of his orders to distance himself from the fleet in deeper water. Out of curiosity, he met the incoming personnel himself, recognising two of the group by their own individual appearance as men of the navy’s elite fighting force as easily as he could all but smell Langley on the other two men seeming far from home, leaving the remainder of the group a mystery to him,
The vast majority of them were civilian, that much was obvious, but one was in fatigues and wearing the insignia of a US army department he didn’t recognise, comprising a star and what looked like a DNA helix.
“I assure you, Captain,” the shorter of the crumpled suits said, “we’ll be out of your hair just as soon as we can.” He turned to give the small team a nod, standing back as they carried equipment and a large, coffin-shaped box through a doorway and into a section emptied of all other personnel. The shorter of the bearded men hung back as the others went inside, loitering far enough back that the captain could speak to him without being overheard.
“Sir?” the man asked in a low voice. “You got orders to put a security detail on this?”
The captain eyed him suspiciously before he spoke, glancing at the man’s rank for a second, then meeting his intense gaze with a matching one. “I do not, Master Chief… should I?”
“Sir, anything happens in there, and I mean anything, you promise me you’ll make sure nothing comes out?” The captain nodded bleakly, the colour drained a little from his cheeks, as the bearded man stepped inside and dogged the hatch behind him.
The captain stepped back, giving orders for a detachment of sailors to guard the door before drawing a gun from a holster and hanging back in the shadows.
“Be quick
,” Jacobs said, not enjoying being away from the massive aircraft carrier that hardly moved in the choppy North Atlantic, unlike this smaller ship that rose and fell perceptibly with each large wave. He was also distinctly uneasy given what he knew about their position, being far enough away from the fleet that there was no risk of infection spreading; given also that the fleet’s escorting submarine was out there lurking beneath the surface ready to sink the ship, should the need arise.
“Everyone, gloves and masks,” the army doctor said to the small team of scientists assembled to conduct the autopsy of the newly acquired viral sample in the form of the body of an enhanced infected.
“Rolling,” a woman said, bearing a video camera on her right shoulder as she screwed up one side of her face to see through the eyepiece.
“Alrighty then,” the doctor said, lifting a face mask up and adjusting the goggles over his nose. “Autopsy of subject one: enhanced infected.” He whipped back the sheet, stirring up an acrid, chemical smell that reached all the way back to Miller and Hernandez lurking by the walls. Fisher recoiled visibly, one hand clapping up to his mouth as he fought to block the stench out, but the bigger man, Jacobs, just took a calm step backwards.
“Subject deceased – again – roughly eighteen hours ago. Cause of death… well, that’s pretty obvious.” He gestured at the skull which was missing most of the left side and a good portion of the back, leaving the right side oddly untouched. The doctor used heavy medical shears to remove the remainder of the tattered clothing, exposing a juvenile female body.
“Initial observations: skin is smooth without any sign of hair. Subject most likely pre-pubescent but the appearance is more like alopecia. Note the lack of hair on arms, eyebrows…” he leaned closer, using a shiny medical probe to poke at the undamaged part of the face, “…and no eyelashes either.” He moved the probe, peeling back the lips to expose the teeth.
“No abnormal dental mutations, no obvious loss of teeth or pronounced canines…” He stepped back, dropping the probe and selecting a scalpel to open up the abdomen without even a pause. Gruesome slopping and squelching sounds filled the room amid the coughs from others to cover their nausea. He took out one part and weighed it in his hands as if judging a prepared chicken for a Sunday dinner, then put it into a wide dish and cut it open to fish around inside.
“No obvious indication that the subject has fed recently…” He paused again as another wet noise filled the room. They all turned, including the woman with the camera, to see Fisher bent double in a corner, retching the contents of his own stomach into a similar metal dish. Coughing, he vomited again and voided himself as the smell and sights had overwhelmed him, while the others turned back to their task.
The doctor reached a gloved hand and half of his right forearm into the exposed chest cavity and felt around.
“Heart, lungs, all still in place… saw please,” he added to an assistant who passed over the required tool.
The room was silent except the sawing, crunching noises of the sternum and ribs being flayed outwards like some hideous result of a small explosion. Hernandez sidestepped towards Miller, leaning over to mutter to him.
“Looks like the movie,” he said quietly. “I hate to say it, but only one of us is getting out and we gotta find the cat on the way.”
“Shut it,” Miller hissed, not in the mood for jokes or the reminder that they might not make it out if something went wrong. The risk of one of the people messing with an infected body was unknown, and a careless mistake could mean spreading the infection outside of the ship. That was primarily why they were there, and why the strict procedures for getting out existed.
“Muscle tone, fat reserves, bone density, all appear normal,” the doctor went on. “Commencing sample recovery.” He cut away pieces of organ, muscle and skin, recovering each one with a fresh pair of tweezers before depositing them in pre-marked sample dishes which were immediately sealed, taped shut and dropped into another sealed bag before being packaged into a cooler.
The doctor used pliers to pull two teeth, selecting the easily accessible side through the missing part of the face to tease them free before dropping them in turn into the offered dishes.
He stepped back, instructing the others to replace the body into the container and seal it up again. The cooler containing the samples was similarly sealed with thick tape wielded by those not directly involved in the autopsy, before all of them began to strip their protective clothing down and stuff them into plastic bags held out ready. Those bags were sealed, then sealed inside other bags and sealed again, until all but one of them were restored to normal clothing and joined the two SEALs at the back of the room. That last man opened a series of bottles, pouring a strong bleach solution over the surfaces they’d used before packaging the instruments into another sealed box. He stepped onto a plastic sheet laid out, poured the contents of the last bottle of bleach over his protective suit, then stripped off the layers covering his body until stepping off, leaving only his gloved hands, eye protection and face mask to bundle the gear together and add the final pieces before the second bag was sealed.
“Leave it all in here,” Jacobs said, revealing a part of the plan they didn’t know, “and this entire room will have to be sealed until it can be properly decontaminated back in the States.”
“And the subject?” the doctor asked.
“Especially that,” Jacobs answered. “Just the samples come with us.”
Miller undogged the hatch and pulled open the door, seeing a collection of anxious faces staring at him over weapons as the captain had clearly taken his words seriously. Holding up his open hands, he smiled briefly.
“All good,” he said calmly, stepping aside so the others could file out carrying significantly less than they’d gone in with. Jacobs paused by the captain and handed over a sealed envelope, then not being able to wait for the man to read it, he loudly announced their orders.
“You’re to sail straight back to Virginia,” he said, “where a team will quarantine you and your crew. That room,” he pointed behind him, “is to be sealed and not disturbed under any circumstances. Is that understood?”
“It is,” the captain answered tersely. He turned on his heel, barking brief orders for his security personnel to guard the door, and swept from the walkway before he could damage his career by speaking his mind.
An hour of quarantine later, spent mostly in stifling silence, the scientists, CIA agents and SEALs made their way back to the aircraft carrier.
Jacobs, his hand gripped tightly around the handle of the sealed cooler, walked straight out onto the flight deck where a small jet plane was waiting to take the box of infected flesh over the Atlantic. Fisher waited for him away from the windy, exposed flat top ready to duck inside when he walked back.
He followed, neither of them speaking a word, until they returned to the windowless space guarded by one of their own. Sitting down in the gloom, Jacobs reached into the top pocket of his shirt to retrieve the pack of cigarettes, tapping them against his left hand but failing to be rewarded with the appearance of one. Peering into it he screwed his hand tight around the empty container and tossed it into the corner where it bounced off both walls before falling to the deck behind the overflowing bin. To worsen Jacobs’ mood, he picked up a cup of cold coffee to wet his mouth, succeeding only in spilling it down the front of his shirt.
“God. Dammit!” he roared, standing up so fast that Fisher thought he might try to flip the small desk that was bolted in place. Yanking off his tie and pulling roughly at the buttons, he stripped off the shirt to ball it up and toss it onto a pile of bags and boxes, revealing a torso that was effortlessly muscled if sporting a softer outer layer as he aged.
Fisher stood, bending down behind him to retrieve a neatly folded grey T-shirt bearing the four-letter brand of ownership and cleared his throat, tossing the navy shirt to Jacobs.
He caught it, pulling it over his head to find it a tight fit but not too ridiculous, looking bac
k up from his body to see Fisher offering him a cigarette from his pack. He took it gratefully, calming as the smoke hit his lungs and took his seat again to open the tough case and set up the satellite phone ready to make the call.
“It’s Jacobs,” he said after a long pause, nodding to himself and the words that only he could hear. Seeing this, he hit a button to fill the room with the electronic hiss of the open line and replaced the handset.
“Hold, please,” a voice said, followed by a series of clicks as the call was rerouted somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic.
“Agent Jacobs?” a voice asked eventually. “Bob Hellard here.”
“Good morning, Sir. Agent Fisher is with me.”
“And you’re on with the President and his advisors. Also General Farley. We’ve been waiting for your call.” Jacobs’ mouth dropped open and his eyes went momentarily wide, staring at Fisher until he recovered himself enough to speak.
“Oh, err, yes Sir. Good morning Mister President, Sir. I, err—”
“Get to the point, Agent Jacobs,” a recognisable voice said without a trace of humour. “We’re all on the clock here.”
“What’s the report, Jacobs? Is there any hope of salvaging this project?” Hellard asked, wanting the direct answer quickly. Jacobs swallowed before speaking.
“In our opinion, Sir, no. It seems that whatever the scientists were doing at the facility caused a mutation in the kind of infected we’ve encountered, in that, specifically, we have confirmation of a… a higher form of infected. The samples for the CDC are in the air now as discussed. We’re calling them Enhanc—”
“That’s all remarkably interesting,” Hellard interrupted acidly. “What’s the tactical assessment?” Jacobs faltered, looking at Fisher for inspiration.
“Sir, Fisher here, our assessment is that the UK is lost. Our only hope of containment is to prevent the spread of this mutation if we can, and that means likely securing the island in total quarantine for the long-haul…”
Toy Soldiers (Book 6): Annihilation Page 16
