92
Charlotte took another sip of the cold glass of champagne that Simon had brought her a few minutes after the Gulfstream had reached its cruising altitude of almost 40,000 feet. She was still furious with both Claire and Lizzie for the stupid stunt they had pulled up on the roof. What was it supposed to prove, other than making the two women feel better about their pathetic and meaningless lives?
She closed her eyes and savoured the sharpness of the champagne as she daydreamed about what would have happened if she had delivered the original virus that she had left behind in the laboratory to the White House. The version that affected everyone the same way instead of moderating itself according to their genetic background. She imagined Lizzie and Claire holding onto each other as the life blood oozed out of their bodies. That, Charlotte thought, would have been a poetic end to their miserable lives. It wouldn’t, technically speaking, have been the third study, but it still would have been a human trial. But as Caucasians, the chances were both women would probably survive.
Charlotte opened her laptop and waited for a moment while it connected to the satellite internet connection built into the plane. The cost would be prohibitive, but she was sure George wouldn’t mind after what they had achieved so far and were about to achieve. She brought up the World Health Organisation’s website and checked the Latest News section, but there was nothing on there about the White House. Charlotte would have been surprised if there had been something there so quickly, but when she checked the twitter feed of the WHO’s Freetown office, there was a latest tweet.
BREAKING NEWS: WHO Medical Teams are responding to a potential outbreak in Kissy Town. More to follow.
Charlotte grinned as she sipped her champagne. The tweet told her a couple of things. First was that the WHO had taken her phone call seriously and responded. The second was that they hadn’t identified the virus yet. She knew part of the team was a mobile virology laboratory that could identify thousands of pathogens within a few moments, but it took a while to set up. She set the browser to automatically refresh every five minutes and sat back in the plush chair to relax.
Her thoughts drifted to the next steps in the operation. Once the samples in the hold had been delivered to their recipients via their network, then all hell would break loose. Charlotte and George’s plan was to deliver the samples to the network with strict instructions for a synchronised release at the end of May. Had they been able to complete the genetic sequencing in time, then they would have released the virus on the first of May to coincide with the International Worker’s Day, but that hadn’t been possible because of the complexity of the task.
There were to be two waves of releases. The first was going to be on the bank holiday itself. The shopping centres, and as well as Bluewater there were seven others in their sights across the United Kingdom, would be full of shoppers eager to make the most of the sales. Charlotte closed her eyes again and imagined the deadly mist seeping from the air-conditioning ducts. The second wave was to be almost exactly twenty-four hours later, and would target the financial and business hubs of the country. Charlotte’s only concern was the rapidity with which the virus had spread through the White House. By her reckoning, it had taken around twelve hours for Obi to die. The samples in the hold had a longer incubation period than the one she had used earlier, but they’d not been able to test how long the period was in humans, only in humice. The worst-case scenario was that the virus would be discovered before the second wave was released, but that was unlikely, in Charlotte’s opinion.
On the table in front of her, Charlotte’s laptop chimed. With a grin, she leaned forward and rubbed her finger on the track pad to wake the screen.
BREAKING NEWS: The WHO has confirmed 2 dead in a house in Kissy Town. More to follow.
“So long, Jack, Obi,” Charlotte said as she raised her glass in the air. “And here’s looking at you, Divya.” Divya would be the next to die, almost certainly.
Charlotte drained her glass and placed it next to the laptop. Within seconds, Simon appeared.
“Would you like some more, Doctor Lobjoie?” he asked her politely.
“No, thank you,” she replied. “I’m going to close my eyes for a bit. It was a long night.”
“Can I wake you at any particular time?”
“Perhaps you could wake me when we can see the white cliffs of Dover?” Charlotte asked him. Simon frowned, but only for a few seconds.
“Sure,” he said. “No problem at all. Would you like a blanket?”
It only seemed like a few moments when Charlotte woke up, Simon gently shaking her shoulder.
“Doctor Lobjoie,” he said softly. “Doctor Lobjoie?” Charlotte opened her eyes to see Simon standing next to her, a fresh cup of coffee in his hand. “I brought you some coffee. Captain Brown has descended a bit while you were sleeping. If you look to starboard, you’ll be able to see the cliffs.”
Charlotte stretched, thanked Simon for the coffee, and leaned to look out of the window on her right-hand side. A couple of miles away, she could see the distinctive chalk cliffs that marked the southeast of England. Charlotte smiled at the sight. There was something iconic about the jagged coastline that was reassuring and forbidding at the same time.
She glanced at her watch, realising that she had slept for almost three hours. Leaning forward, she nudged the track pad again and scrolled to the latest tweets from the WHO Freetown office.
BREAKING NEWS: Kissy Town outbreak confirmed by WHO as Marburg Viral Disease. More to follow.
Charlotte smiled as she copied the link to the tweet and switched to her e-mail programme. George would want to see this. She was just in the middle of composing an e-mail to him when Captain Brown’s voice came over the public address system.
“Doctor Lobjoie, this is Captain Brown. Uh, we have a problem.” Her first instinct was to look out of the window to see if there was a problem with the engine, but the Gulfstream G650 didn’t have engines on the wings. Charlotte saw what the problem was, though.
It was a few hundred feet behind the aircraft when she first saw it, but within a few seconds it was alongside them. Charlotte looked at the red, white and blue roundel beneath the cockpit of the F-35 Lightning and then at the pilot. She couldn’t see his face, but she could see the dark visor of his flying helmet staring straight at them.
“There’s another one to the port side, a few hundred yards behind us,” Simon said, a noticeable tremor in his voice.
As Charlotte watched, the F-35 waggled its wings a couple of times before banking to the left. A few seconds later, the Gulfstream did the same. Charlotte knew what the military jet’s gesture meant.
Follow me.
93
Waterfield watched as the mobile screen that Doctor Baker had been talking on was wheeled to one side so that the occupants of the COBRA meeting room could see the bank of screens behind it.
“Which channel do you want, Prime Minister?” Arthurton asked. The Prime Minister had arrived a few seconds earlier, just as Doctor Baker had finished his briefing. His arrival had been accompanied by a lot of movement in the cheap seats behind Waterfield as people had arrived and left. It appeared that wherever the Prime Minister went, a lot of people went with him.
“BBC, of course,” the Prime Minister replied. Arthurton’s staffer pressed a remote control and the central screen changed to the BBC news channel where a serious looking black man was reading from paper notes, the autocue obviously not quite catching up with the news.
“And in some breaking news, reports are coming in from the World Health Organisation from Freetown in Sierra Leone of an outbreak of Marburg viral haemorrhagic fever in a British non-governmental organisation.” He glanced at the camera. “We’re going to go to our Africa correspondent in Nairobi. Ben, what can you tell us?” The camera switched to a sombre-looking man in a blue shirt standing in front of a white office building with a black and white BBC logo on the side.
“Not a great deal at the moment, Cli
fford. This is breaking news, but there are at least two people dead and several others who are sick. They’re from a non-governmental organisation called Allied Forth which runs several programmes…” The Prime Minister put his hand up, and the staffer killed the volume on the television.
“It won’t take them long to link it to the Ascalon Institute,” the Prime Minister said. “Arthurton, what other developments have there been?”
“Several, Prime Minister. GCHQ have unpicked most of the network we think is behind this. They’re working with the police but we’re confident there’ll be arrests soon.”
Waterfield’s ears pricked up at this news, but if there had been any news on the missing airman from Honington, he would have known about it by now.
“And the evacuation of North Ronaldsay?” the Prime Minister asked.
“It’s ongoing, Prime Minister,” Arthurton replied. “There’s a Type 45 off the coast coordinating the efforts but with only sixty civilians on the entire island, it won’t take long.”
“Thank you, Home Sec—”
“Sorry, excuse me?” Waterfield said. Every pair of eyes in the room turned to him, and there was an audible gasp around the room. No-one interrupted the Prime Minister except members of the press, and for him to be cut off in the middle of a COBRA meeting was a significant breach of protocol.
“General Waterfield, did you want to say something?” the prime minister said with a steely gaze in his direction.
“Thank you. Home Secretary, did you say there was a Type 45 destroyer off the coast of North Ronaldsay in the Orkney Islands?”
“I did, Waterfield, yes,” his friend replied. Waterfield felt his fury building. Not only did he know nothing about the destroyer, but he had just been insulted by the use of only his last name in front of the whole room.
“I don’t know anything about that deployment,” Waterfield said, his teeth gritted to inject as much authority into his voice as he could. He put his hands on the table and half rose to his feet. “Do you not think that as Chief of the Defence Staff, it would have been advisable to involve me in that decision?”
“Sit down, General Waterfield,” the Prime Minister said. “I made the decision. You might be in charge of the military, but I’m in charge of the country. And that includes the military.” The two men glared at each other for a few seconds before Waterfield, accepting defeat, slowly sat back down. He turned to the vice-chief, who was sitting beside him.
“Did you know about this, Knox?” Waterfield whispered. Knox didn’t even look at him, much less reply to his question. “Knox? I asked you a fucking question?”
“Home Secretary,” the Prime Minister said. “Please, continue.”
“Thank you, Prime Minister,” Arthurton said with a guarded look at Waterfield. “There is a C-17 on standby at RAF Brize Norton with a full medical team ready to repatriate the group from Sierra Leone—“
“What?” Waterfield barked.
“—and two F-35s have intercepted a civilian jet just inside UK airspace over the channel and are escorting it to North Ronaldsay for containment.”
“Prime Minister,” Waterfield put his hand on the table and half rose to his feet again. “I really must object to the undermining of my authority. These are military assets. They’re not your toys to play with.”
Firm hands pressed down on both of Waterfield’s shoulders, and he was pushed unceremoniously back into his seat. He looked to his side to see an armed police officer on either side of him. The next thing Waterfield knew, a metal handcuff was pressed onto his right wrist before his arm was wrenched behind him. Seconds later, he was handcuffed, with both hands behind his back, and had been hauled to his feet.
Waterfield turned to see a man in civilian clothes standing behind him. It took him a second to recognise the man as the police officer who had so gleefully told him about his ruined Bentley.
“Luke Waterfield,” the police officer said. “I am arresting you on suspicion of offences under the Terrorism Act. You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say may be written down and used against you in a court of law.”
“What’s the meaning of this?” Waterfield shouted as the armed police officers started to pull him toward the door. “You can’t arrest me! I’m the Chief of the Defence Staff.”
“Would you prefer me to arrest you under your alias?” the suited police officer said as the armed police officers paused for a moment.
A hush descended over the room, and Waterfield looked at the Prime Minister as the policeman continued.
“Luke Waterfield, also known as George Rimpler, you are under arrest.”
94
Lizzie closed her eyes and let the breeze waft over her face. She was lying in what could best be described as a huge incubator, similar to the ones premature babies were put into but built for adults. The air-transportable isolator had a frame around it covered in thick transparent plastic which Lizzie knew could survive pretty much anything, even a rapid decompression in the back of an aircraft. It was designed solely for one purpose. Transporting patients with highly contagious diseases by air.
Set into the windows on the sides were what looked like washing up gloves with long cuffs. They meant that medical personnel could reach into her bubble and perform any procedures that they needed to, illuminated by the LED strips along the top of the isolator. In Lizzie’s case, the gloves only seemed to be used when someone wanted to stick needles in her. She had cannulas in both arms attached to intravenous infusions and, to her mortification, a urinary catheter. It was four days since they had all fallen sick, but Lizzie still felt absolutely awful.
“We’re going to be putting you on the plane soon, Lizzie.” It was Doctor Northfield. She was standing next to Lizzie’s isolator, smiling at her through the plastic. “Claire’s right next to you.”
Lizzie turned her head to one side to see Claire, similarly encased in a plastic bubble. She raised a hand and waved at Lizzie, but wasn’t able to hold her hand up for long.
“How’re Divya and Isobel?” Lizzie asked, her throat dry as sandpaper.
“Divya’s hanging in there,” Doctor Northfield replied. “She’ll be on the same plane. I’m pretty sure she’ll be okay, although she is sicker than you and Claire. Isobel’s got off lightly. She’s hardly got any symptoms at all.” Lizzie tried to smile with relief, but even that was tiring. All she wanted to do was to sleep, but she didn’t want to close her eyes until she was on the plane.
A few moments later, Lizzie felt the trolley the isolator was mounted on moving. It was wheeled out of the airport building and into bright sunlight. She blinked a couple of times, wondering if they were going to load them into an ambulance, but when she saw the enormous tail fin of a C-17 not far away she realised they were just going to be wheeled across the pan. Lizzie stared up at the small white clouds scudding across the otherwise blue sky, knowing that they would shortly be above them, and breathed a sigh of relief. Being in a metal tube thousands of feet in the air shouldn’t feel safe, but it always had done to Lizzie. The bad things only seemed to happen on the ground.
The isolator jolted as it was lifted by unseen hands onto the rear ramp of the C-17, and Lizzie felt the trolley juddering as it was wheeled across the castors in the floor that were needed for cargo. Then the sunlight disappeared, and the world went pitch black as she was taken into the bowels of the huge aircraft. Once her eyes had adjusted, Lizzie glanced about but couldn’t see much else in the back of the aircraft other than a blanket covering something at the front. The lights in the bubble didn’t help as they meant everything outside the isolator was shadowed. A lump grew in her throat when she realised that underneath the blanket, hidden from view, would be the coffins of Obi and Jack.
People in combats, none of whom she recognised, fussed around the isolator and Lizzie heard the familiar sound of strops being tightened.
“I’ll leave you here, Lizzie,” Doctor Northfield said, wriggling her hand into one of the gloves on the
side of the isolator. A moment later, her gloved hand gripped Lizzie’s. “You take care of yourself, you hear?”
Lizzie tried to grip the doctor’s hand back, but she could only manage it for a few seconds.
“Thank you,” Lizzie replied. “Thank you so much. I’m sorry about all the trouble we’ve caused.”
“I’m just glad you’re okay, Lizzie. You and the others.” Doctor Northfield smiled, and the skin around her eyes creased. It was obvious that she smiled a lot. “Drop me a line when you’re feeling better. Let me know how you’re getting on?”
“I will,” Lizzie said, her voice fading. All she wanted to do was sleep, but she forced herself to keep her eyes open. Once we’re airborne, she told herself. That’s when I’ll sleep.
Lizzie listened to the familiar sounds around her. She could hear the power unit to the aircraft whining and the rear ramp being closed. It wouldn’t be long now, and the engine would start up and they would be on their way back home. Lizzie suddenly realised that she didn’t have any ear protection. Once the engines had started, no one would be able to hear her speaking, so she wouldn’t be able to ask for them then.
“Can I have some ear buds?” Lizzie said in as loud a voice as she could manage. There was no response. She licked her lips and tried again, but wasn’t sure if anyone had heard her.
A moment later, a shadow flickered across the plastic of Lizzie’s bubble. The LED lights prevented her from seeing who it was, but she saw hands sliding into the gloves on the side. One of the hands reached into a compartment that she couldn’t see and, a moment later, she saw a small yellow foam ear bud being rolled between gloved fingers to make it malleable. They wouldn’t be as good as proper ear defenders, but they would be a lot more comfortable and would keep the noise to a bearable level.
Enemy Within: A heart-wrenching medical mystery (British Military Thriller Series Book 3) Page 35
