Enemy Within: A heart-wrenching medical mystery (British Military Thriller Series Book 3)

by Nathan Burrows

  “Wiped.”

  “By whom?”

  “The security guard.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Precisely,” George had replied. “Fuck.”

  George had gone on to tell her that the security guard had been located hiding in a Premier Inn off the M4 and that a team was on their way to pick him up. He might have been smart enough to wipe their security systems, but wasn’t smart enough to not use his own credit card when he’d checked in.

  They had discussed extracting then and there. Charlotte had been in favour of it, but George wanted to wait for a couple of days. She had tried the argument that they had what they needed, and could set up somewhere else to complete the programme, but George had reassured her he had enough friends in the right places to know if there was going to be any attention paid to the institute in plenty of time for them to get away if they had to.

  “I can complete the programme,” Charlotte had argued. “Any adjustments to the genomic sequence that are required, I can do. We should at least send Katayama back to Japan. Her work here is done.” At least George had agreed to that.

  “Go back to Sierra Leone,” George had told her, “and complete the last trials. I’ll sweep up here.”

  Charlotte held her nose and tried to blow through her ears to neutralise the pressure as the small plane descended. It was buffeted by wind and lurched from side to side. That was the only disadvantage of flying in a small plane, but as Charlotte looked at the surrounding opulence, she realised it was a small price to pay.

  She knew George didn’t need her back at the Ascalon Institute. The cover story for the staff was that the institute had been unexpectedly closed following a health and safety inspection. None of the staff seemed to be bothered by the fact that no health and safety inspectors had been seen in the place, probably because they had all been furloughed on full pay and the weather in the United Kingdom was unexpectedly pleasant.

  When she had first heard that both the receptionist and the security guard had disappeared, her first thought was that they had simply decided to vanish. They had seemed quite close, and Charlotte had seen them kissing in the crew room on Wednesday. She could have dismissed them both there and then, but then they would be in the situation they were in now, with both posts empty and the institute unable to function. Both she and George hoped that the girl was in the same hotel as the security guard. If she wasn’t, that could be a different story, especially considering the previous receptionist.

  The wheels of the Gulfstream touched gently onto the tarmac, and Charlotte heard the hissing of the air brakes. A few moments later, she could see the familiar sight of Jojo standing by his large black SUV, which was gleaming in the sunshine. He waved at her through the window, but she didn’t wave back.

  “Just the one container in the hold, Doctor Lobjoie?” Simon asked her as the plane slowed to a halt close to Jojo’s SUV.

  “Yes, it’s only a small one, so just load it up, please,” she replied, picking up her bag from underneath one of the other seats. “I’ll be in touch about my departure, but like I said, it’ll probably be Monday at first light.”

  Charlotte descended the steps and walked over to the SUV.

  “Good flight, Doctor Lobjoie?” Jojo said as she approached.

  “Very good, thank you, Jojo,” Charlotte replied. “How are things at the White House?”

  “Very good, Doctor Lobjoie.” He had, as always, a smile on his face. “Everyone is looking forward to seeing you.” Jojo’s eyes twinkled as he continued. “Some of them especially, I think.”

  “Good,” Charlotte replied, smirking as she climbed into the back of the SUV. She was very much looking forward to the next few days.

  73

  “Happy birthday to you,” Lizzie sang, loud enough to be heard, but not at the top of her voice. Singing wasn’t a strong point of hers. “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Isobel, happy birthday to you.”

  Lizzie watched as Isobel leaned forward and blew out the single candle on the cake. It was a white, stubby candle that they’d found in a cupboard and was only supposed to be used in the event of a power cut, but it was the best they could do. The others applauded, and in the corner of the lounge, Jojo cheered.

  “Congratulations, Miss Isobel,” he called out.

  “Thank you, Jojo,” Isobel replied. She looked around the room, and Lizzie could see that her eyes were moist. “Thank you all.” One by one, the cohort approached Isobel to congratulate her, and one by one, she hugged them in return. Lizzie, who still didn’t know Isobel that well even though they’d been living in the same house for over a week, held back until last, but was still rewarded with a hug that instantly transported Lizzie back to her childhood. Isobel was everyone’s mother, albeit temporarily.

  “Speech!” Obi called out.

  “Yes, speech!” Jack did the same. Lizzie grinned at the pair of them. Whether he realised it or not, Obi had become a mentor of sorts to Jack, and whatever Obi did, Jack did soon afterward.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Isobel replied, looking embarrassed.

  “Come on, Isobel,” Claire said softly. “Just a few words.”

  “Okay,” Isobel said, looking around the room. “Well, thank you everyone, especially you, Divya, for this amazing looking cake.”

  “You might want to taste it first,” Divya said with a self-deprecating smile. Lizzie smiled as well, knowing that the cake would be amazing even if Divya had, as she said, “just knocked it up with a few bits lying around in the cupboards”.

  “I’m sure it’ll be lovely, Divya,” Isobel replied with a smile. “So, we’ve now been here for just over a week. But it feels as if I’ve known you all for years. I came here first and foremost to help people. We all have. That’s why we are here. But I also came here to escape something, as I suspect most of us did.” There were one or two hesitant nods around the room. Isobel paused before continuing. “In my case, it was an abusive partner.”

  There was a stunned silence in the room. Lizzie’s eyebrows went up. She’d not been expecting that. Isobel was so lovely that she couldn’t imagine anyone raising a voice against her, let alone a fist.

  “I was trapped in a cycle of violence, apology, regret, and forgiveness. Then it would start all over again. I knew I had to break that cycle.” Isobel’s eyes settled on Lizzie. “We are all broken, in one way or another, aren’t we?” A difficult silence descended on the room.

  “Isobel,” Obi said a moment later, a mischievous smile on his face. “Would it not have been easier to just go to a shelter than come here?”

  Isobel, still looking at Lizzie, started laughing and a few seconds later, the others all joined in. Obi’s comment had dissipated the tension.

  A while later, as she was clearing the plates from the impromptu birthday party, Lizzie was approached by Claire.

  “Here, let me help you,” Claire said.

  “Don’t be daft, there’re only a few plates,” Lizzie replied. Claire ignored her and helped anyway. Lowering her voice, Claire asked her a question.

  “Did you know that about Isobel? About the partner?”

  “No,” Lizzie said. “Did you?”

  “No, not really. I suspected something. People her age don’t tend to do things like this, or if they do, they’ve always done stuff like it. Does that make sense?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” Lizzie swept some crumbs from the table into her hand as she replied.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “When Isobel was saying we’re all broken in one way or another, she was looking right at you when she said it.”

  “Was she?” Lizzie continued brushing at the table, even though there were no crumbs left. “I didn’t notice.”

  “So, are you broken, Lizzie?”

  “No,” Lizzie replied, looking up at Claire. “Not at all.”

  “Are you running from something? Someone?”

  “No.”

  “Yo
u have a partner, yes? Adams, you said his name was the other night. Are you running from him?”

  “No!” Lizzie shot back, irritated. “No, I’m not.”

  “So what is it, then? What are your reasons for being here?”

  Lizzie thought for a few moments before replying. To buy some time, she walked into the kitchen before returning with a couple of bottles of water, one of which she handed to Claire.

  “I’ve done two tours of Afghanistan, Claire. Almost back-to-back.” Lizzie took a swig of her water. “Things happened over there. Bad things.”

  “People died?” Claire asked, her face neutral.

  “I’m a medic and it was a combat zone.” Lizzie took a deep breath. “Yes, people died.” Lizzie stopped short of telling Claire any more than that. “I just needed some time out. My, er, my doctor said that it would be good to press the reset button. To help people without bullets flying over my head while I was doing it.”

  “I’m sorry, Lizzie,” Claire said, and from the look on her face it was a genuine apology. “I shouldn’t have pried.”

  “That’s fine, Claire,” Lizzie replied. “It’s not a drama.”

  Later that night, as she was tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep, Claire’s words came back to her. Was she running away from Adams? At the time, Lizzie’s response had been a vehement no, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the question. It had been after she and Adams had got together that the whole idea of a sabbatical had come up. Perhaps she was running, not specifically from Adams himself, but from the thought of being in a relationship with someone she cared about deeply? It certainly felt different when she was with Adams. Lizzie was hardly a virgin when she’d gone to bed with him for the first time, but she’d not felt like she did about him with any of her other partners, few though they were.

  Lizzie rolled over in bed again, desperate to get to sleep, but it continued to elude her. Thoughts—some wanted—some unwanted, continued to invade her mind’s eye, no matter how much she practiced the breathing exercises she’d been taught.

  It must have been around one in the morning when she heard a familiar squeaking sequence, followed by footsteps, followed by more familiar creaking noise. Claire’s door had just opened and closed, followed by another bedroom door. That could mean only one thing.

  Charlotte was back.

  74

  The shrill ringing of the red phone on the wall next to Adams caused a hush to descend over the Emergency Department, as it always did.

  “Emergency Department?” Adams said as he answered it, balancing the phone between his jaw and shoulder so that he could reach for the clipboard attached to the wall next to the phone. There was a pen attached with Sellotape to the right-hand side of the clipboard that he ripped off so that he could write on the clipboard. Unlike Adams, whoever had affixed it was obviously right-handed.

  “This is Ambulance Control,” a woman’s voice came down the line. She sounded bored, as if nothing interesting was happening in her day. “Can we put you on alert for a trauma call?”

  “Sure,” Adams replied, conscious of the personnel slowly gathering around him. “What’ve you got?”

  “Female, late-twenties, fall from height,” the woman replied. “Approximately forty feet onto grass. Multiple fractures, femur, possibly pelvis. GCS is six, ETA ten minutes.”

  Partly to make sure he had written the information down correctly, but more for the benefit of the gathering personnel, Adams repeated what she had said to him.

  “Thanks very much,” he said as he ended the call. Some of the personnel dispersed to begin the preparations for the incoming casualty. Adams picked up an internal phone and dialled 222.

  “Emergency?” This time it was a male voice on the end of the line.

  “Hi, this is the ED. Can we have a trauma call put out, please? Orthos and neuro,” Adams said. He didn’t need to request the anaesthetists, as they would turn up anyway like sharks around a shipwreck, usually about twenty minutes after the casualty had arrived and all the fun was over.

  The information Ambulance Control had given Adams was succinct, but it told him a lot. A fall from that height was always likely to be serious no matter what you landed on, but a fractured femur and pelvis could hold a lot of blood. Up to a litre and a half in a thigh, and twice that in a pelvic cavity. If the pelvic ring was disrupted, then it could be much more. Hypovolaemia, or a loss of circulating blood volume, was likely to be a big issue with most people only having around five litres of circulating blood volume, but they had ten minutes to prepare for the casualty’s arrival.

  But that wasn’t what concerned Adams. The orthopaedic surgeons could get on top of bony injuries like fractures quickly. A Glasgow Coma Score of six meant that the casualty likely had a serious head injury, and the Norfolk and Norwich hospital didn’t have a neurosurgical team. The neurologists in the hospital were more used to dealing with long-term conditions than acute neurological emergencies, and the nearest specialist neurosurgical team was an hour down the road in Cambridge.

  As the hospital’s public address system burst into life to announce the trauma call, Adams made his way to the crew room to see if Raj was about. The doctor wasn’t in there, but Hannah was. When Adams walked in, she was listening to the announcement.

  Emergency Department, Trauma Call, orthopaedics and neurology required. ETA ten minutes.

  “What’s coming in?” Hannah asked him.

  “Fall from height. Sounds nasty,” he replied.

  “Do you want me?”

  Adams paused for a second before replying. There was a loaded question if he’d ever heard one, but now probably wasn’t the time for a joke about it.

  “Can you keep an eye on the rest of the department for me?”

  “Sure, no problem.” Hannah got to her feet and finished the rest of her cup of tea. “I’ll just nip to the ladies’ first.”

  “There might be a transfer to Addenbrooke’s later as well, if you’re up for it?”

  “You know me, Adams, I’m up for most things,” Hannah replied with a wry smile.

  Adams returned to the main department and made his way to the resuscitation room. Inside, there was a flurry of activity. He paused and took it all in. There was a nurse preparing an emergency blood transfusion, another checking the resuscitation equipment that had already been checked several times that day despite not being used, and another scribbling some details on a large chart at the foot of the bay they were going to use. He smiled at the way the team had just sprung into life, knowing what needed to be done and just cracking on with it. They hadn’t been as effective when he’d arrived a few months earlier, but he’d managed to instil a bit of military discipline into them.

  The doors to the resuscitation room opened and a flurry of men and women in green scrubs entered. There were five of them altogether, all orthopaedic doctors complete with stethoscopes draped around their necks. Adams walked across to the group, but he didn’t recognise any of them. They must have rotated placements since the last trauma call the bone doctors were needed for.

  “Who’s in charge?” Adams said, his voice firm and authoritative.

  “Me,” one of them, a gaunt man in his mid-thirties, replied. “I’m the senior registrar.”

  “Good. You’re on point. The rest of you?” Adams gestured to one of the empty bays in the resuscitation room. “You can watch from over there.” One of the doctors opened his mouth to disagree, but backed down when Adams raised his eyebrows at the man.

  “Adams,” a familiar voice said from behind him. “Good to see you’re herding the cats properly.”

  “Raj,” Adams replied, looking over his shoulder. “You get the details?”

  “I did,” Raj said as he put on an apron over his civilian clothes. “Sounds like a bad one. I’ll probably want—”

  “To tube her as soon as you can, I know. I’ve not seen a gas man yet.”

  “They’ll be playing Candy Crush in theatres, I expect,” Raj replie
d with a grin. He crossed to the emergency trolley and started checking the emergency intubation tray. One of the mantras taught on the advanced trauma life support course back when Adams last did it was a casualty with a Glasgow coma score of below eight was likely to need endotracheal intubation. It wasn’t a hard and fast rule, more of a guide, but it was followed more often than not in Adams’s experience.

  He glanced around the room again to make sure that everything was as it should be. In the distance, he could hear the wail of an ambulance siren that was getting louder. Adams glanced at his watch.

  “That was a quick ten minutes,” he muttered under his breath.

  75

  The first thing Eleanor did was to upload copies of the files and footage to a secure cloud storage service. That way, at least they were secure should anything happen to her. Despite what Liam had said about Fiona being unwell, Eleanor wasn’t convinced that there was anything wrong with the girl at all. She had seemed too convinced that there was something wrong with the institute for it to be paranoia and, although Eleanor accepted Liam’s comments about the laboratory and that it was what was kept in them that was important, she was sure there was something off about the place.

  Eleanor sipped at a bottle of water as she waited for the upload to complete. Once it had finished, she watched the footage from the camera again, looking for anything that she might have missed while she was in the complex. A couple of times, Eleanor stopped and rewound the footage to have a closer look at something, but there was nothing untoward that she could see.

  She opened up the folder on the USB drive with the files on and started to organise them. Many of them were spreadsheets, which she put into their own folder. Eleanor opened a couple, but they were full of row after row of numbers, some colour coded, some not. There were no headers to the rows to identify what they denoted, no formulae in the sheets that she could analyse to see what they did. It was just raw data. Lots and lots of raw data.