Lydia hung up. “They are going to find their route changing due to traffic congestion and we should find all our lights are green.”
We all focused on the most important thing in our world – reaching the bugs.
23
Eerie, that’s only way to describe driving through Vladivostok with all the traffic lights going our way in the dark evening. When it happens by accident on a road you know well, it is a little victory against the bastard who bought all the traffic lights in the first place. This didn’t feel like a victory, we were racing against insect Armageddon.
Many people might think that with a little bug spray the world would be saved from a mosquito carrying pneumonic plague, but I lived in the Congo. People died from insect borne diseases every day. Many of the people I knew lived with the long-term effects of micro-organisms racing through their blood and I knew many in Africa still thought the AIDs virus was an escaped genetic test from the seventies and allowed to sweep through the continent as a continued experiment. Even with modern pesticides the efforts to contain mosquitoes failed while animals and birds further up the food chain suffered side-effects from the use of chemicals.
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel as we neared our destination.
“Shit,” Lydia muttered.
“What?” asked Jacob, twisting to watch her peering at the laptop screen.
“They’re splitting up.” She looked at Brant who cursed. “They’ve stopped moving, two of the men have left the vehicle with two more who arrived on the street. They have a silver case and they are carrying it away to the west.”
“The train,” Brant said. “They are going for the train. They know we’ve interfered with the traffic, so they are splitting their resources knowing we’ll have to do the same. Unfortunately, they have more resources.”
“There’s enough virus and breeding pairs in either of those containers to be a problem,” Dilras said in a subdued way which made me glance at her.
“Hey, this isn’t your fault,” I said.
The large brown eyes filled with tears, but she did battle with them and won. “Yes, it is. I’ve been so wrapped up in my work I didn’t stop to consider the consequences of my actions. I know how Oppenheimer felt now.”
I didn’t have an argument for that one so let it lie, festering. Just considering the implications of Begum’s work being as destructive as Oppenheimer’s made me feel sick. She was right though; mosquitoes killed many more people than any nuclear weapon had or would.
“We need to split up as well,” Brant stated. “Dilras, I’m going to need you to go to our hotel and wait I’m afraid. Jacob, Mac, you two go to the helipad and stop that hel from leaving. Lydia and I will stop the others before they reach the train.”
“Boss, I don’t think –”
“No, Jacob. You don’t. I do. Your job is to follow my orders. Stop that hel at any cost. Do you understand, Lance Corporal?” She held his gaze and Jacob visibly relaxed as her orders soaked into his brain and the training took over.
There is a strange calm to it, when you have an order that you know is right, that you have to carry out, even if it might mean your death, but you know it’s necessary.
Brant looked at me as well and I nodded, pulling over to the kerb. “At any cost, ma’am.”
“Keep your comms channels open. Good luck, gentlemen and God’s speed.” Brant, Lydia and Dilras debussed.
Jacob and I were alone again. He guided me through the remaining tangle of streets, we rounded the last corner and he cursed.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ve just seen a very Korean looking pair in black on foot with a silver case being carried between them, enter the car park,” he said, pointing. The sodium lighting of the city streets made it easy to track the targets.
“Do we get out and give chase or keep driving?” I asked.
“They’ll be in the elevators by now. Keep driving.”
I bumped the car over the kerb and down the pavement so I could reach the entrance to the car park. With a vast array of horns and shouts being hurled at us the car bounced back onto the road and into the black maw of the layered car park, cutting off a silver Jaguar in the process. I floored the accelerator and burst through the white and red striped barrier before slewing the car around the first corner, tyres squealing on the strange green surface of the path we were supposed to follow.
“Fuck, Mac. You know we’re going the wrong way?” Jacob asked, hanging onto the ‘Oh Shit’ handle near his head.
“Yeah. Well. We need to stop the hel. Any idea how we’re going to manage that?” I asked, trying to concentrate on the drive and the mission. “You got an RPG in the back there I don’t know about?”
“I’ve half a dozen frags, but I don’t think grenades are going to help unless you’ve suddenly developed a throwing arm to match an Aussie fast spin bowler.” He spoke through gritted teeth as I took corner after corner at terrifying speeds. Well, I was scared anyway. Scared but exhilarated as I bore down on a small Japanese Yogo whose female owner yanked the vehicle out of my way with maybe 5mm to spare.
I released a small laugh.
“Not now, Mac.”
“Sorry. I love driving.”
“No, you love getting into trouble,” Jacob said, trying to be cross with me and failing as he chuckled at the fifth layer of parked vehicles as they whizzed by. We hit the sixth floor and I lost traction for a moment, the back end sliding out of control on oil or something. It crashed into the nearest car, metal screaming in agony and the engine roaring as I pushed it forwards, the impact knocking my head against the side window. I blinked back the stars buzzing before my eyes and hit the seventh level.
“How fucking high is this thing?” I asked.
“We’ve another two to go,” Jacob said. “The elevator must have made it by now.”
“Fucking hell,” I muttered and yanked on the handbrake to take a corner at even more speed. The noise we were creating in the solid concrete block was horrendous and I watched a mother grab two small children out of our path. Layer eight had access to the outside world and natural light filled the almost empty space. Due to the lack of other cars I managed to take the next ramp at 80kph. The moment we hit the straight, Jacob undid his seat belt, climbed into the rear of the vehicle and retrieved our assault rifles. I took the final ramp at a more sensible 50kph and we were at the top.
A Mil Mi-8, known as the HIP, originally of Soviet design but still made by the Russian Federation, sat on the helipad, rotors already turning too fast to see but the car pushed against the turbulence. In civilian colours it looked harmless enough, but we could see two men in black, with a silver case between them on the open door to the hel. The door slid closed as we watched, and the helicopter lifted from the tarmacked roof of the car park.
“Fuck,” Jacob said.
“Get ready to jump,” I told him.
“What?” he almost squeaked.
“We are overlooking the bay. We get this right we’re going for a swim. Get ready with the rifle, Jacob. We’re taking out the helicopter with the car,” I stated like we were setting up a billiards rack. “By the time we line up a shot, they’ll be out of range, we can’t risk it.”
“What the ever-loving fuck?” He stared at me as I gunned the engine, waiting for the moment I thought this would work.
Everything slowed down, as if I had all the time in the world to make the decision which might possibly kill one or both of us. The hel would take off and move over the sea. The car, with the accelerator jammed down would crash through the wall surrounding the edge of the car park and launch upwards, not downwards. That would work – right? It would go up and not down with enough speed?
“Fuck it,” I muttered. “No choice.”
“Mac?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re fucking nuts. Whatever happens I love you, always have, always will,” he said as if this was our last moment on earth together.
“We ar
e going to get through this,” I ground out. “Ready to jam that gun against the throttle?”
“Yep.”
“Let’s do this,” I said.
The helicopter now sat in the air, drifting upwards and away but not at a sharp angle. It behaved as if the pilot didn’t quite know which direction he wanted to go in and I wondered if a Russian flew the beast rather than a Korean. Maybe Brant had managed to contact them, or someone else like the FSB and we were about to be saved…
I floored the engine, kept the revs high in third gear and watched the hel move 20 metres, 30 metres, 50 metres away from the LZ. I popped the clutch and the car lurched forwards, a greyhound racing towards its death with unknowing obedience. The landing zone’s surface made a different sound to the concrete we’d been racing over previously, and Jacob thumbed the gun into position, jamming down the throttle with the butt. With our seat belts undone we watched the wall of the car park get closer and the hel slide away. Seventy metres now.
“The car’s not going to make it,” Jacob said.
“It’ll make it. Brace, then jump,” I ordered. “The water is a long way down. It’s going to hurt.”
“Thanks, I feel so much better for your understated explanation,” Jacob’s voice rose as we covered the ground between us and the wall in milliseconds.
The impact of the wall buckled the nose of the car but we both had our doors open a little to prevent being trapped by the battering. The car rocketed upwards, turning over in a flip as it gained height. I watched Jacob jump free. The hel lurched in the air as if struggling against some unseen force. I threw myself outwards, the air cold, and the sight far below me terrifying in the darkness of the night.
I’d done a lot of jumps into water over the years, even from helicopters, but we had support boats and controlled conditions, especially at night. I’d never done it under fire or from a moving car. I tried to form a locked structure with my booted feet aimed at the water, but the moment turned into a maelstrom of noise and chaos.
The car hit the hel, the tail section. The impact set off the grenades. Even though I plummeted towards the water I looked up. Mistake. The heat of the explosion. The sound wave. The concussion wave.
It pushed me back, destroyed my form and I slammed into the water close to the sea wall.
Darkness and cold stole all thought and instinct. My body tumbled and bits of me screamed in protest. I gasped against the pain. Water rushed in to fill the void. Panic squeezed what was left in my lungs and I struggled to comprehend the confusion surrounding me. Then the training kicked in as items dropped into the water around me and swirled past, dropping into the bottomless darkness which is where I was heading if I didn’t do something.
Mouth closed, legs kicked, right ankle in my boot bellowing its unhappiness. Arms moving, both working. Natural buoyancy righting me, and I struggled upwards heading to the pale lights that flickered overhead. Was Jacob okay? What he still alive? I had to find out. I had to know. I pushed with more confidence, the darkness of threatened unconsciousness washing back even as my lungs informed me we were on a failing mission. I pushed harder and broke the surface, only to kick back from a wall of flame only 2 metres from my position. Aviation fluid and burning metal filled the air, covered the water and drifted around.
I coughed up water and turned in place looking for Jacob. Nothing.
“Fuck.” Yelling for him over the noise of fire didn’t seem a wise use of my resources. The choppy surface, the darkness, and blinding fire didn’t help but…
A soft shape floated 8 metres to my left. I didn’t think it likely the body would be anyone else. The Koreans and the pilot would be toast. I started to swim. The closer I got the worse things became. Fire raced towards the inert body from the other side and I realised it sat in a puddle of fuel. The hel would have carried a full load. I pushed harder, my entire body screaming in anguish at the movement. I reached the inert form. Jacob lay on his back, unconscious. The fire licked closer heading for his boots. I grabbed his collar, took a deep breath and yanked us both down, under the water. The flames raced overhead and I swam, dragging him next to me, away.
With clear water over my head, I resurfaced, and Jacob spluttered to life, fighting me.
“Stop, you’ll drown us,” I yelled, coughing from the black smoke and fouled water splashing against my face.
“Fuck… Fuck…” he muttered, stilling, controlling his panic and I released his collar.
“Mac, you’re bleeding,” he stated.
“We have to get out of this water,” I told him.
He swam in a tight circle and pointed, treading water with more confidence than I did in that moment. A ladder rose from the lapping waves about 60 metres from our current location. It might as well have been a 1000 miles for all I could manage.
Jacob made to swim off then stopped. “My shoulder is fucked.”
“Leg,” I managed.
“Mac?” He moved closer to me in the thick water. “Shit, you’re a mess.”
“Jac…”
“Okay, fella. I got this. Just relax and we’ll take our time.” He padded to my rear and took hold of my chin. I fought the desire to push him away and he lay me in his chest, tipping us both up. “Just hold on, Mac. We’ll get to a hospital real soon.”
24
I woke to warmth and moderated lighting. My brain still in a blurry haze I tried to fit pieces back together. Russia. We were in Russia. My team… No, not mine, Brant’s team. We were Brant’s team. Jacob was here, should be here.
“Where is he?” I asked, struggling upright, pain bouncing through my head and body like a vengeful gremlin determined to batter me back into oblivion, I could hear it chuckling somewhere in my head. I had to concentrate to maintain focus.
“Whoa there, soldier,” murmured a woman’s voice. Small hands touched my shoulders and pushed me down as if I were made of feathers. “He’ll be back in a minute. He’s gone to check on your colleague.”
I peered at the woman. “Who?”
She frowned. “I’m Dilras, you don’t remember me?”
Deep brown eyes, young, short hair, sensible clothing. “Bug Lady.”
Her eyes went from worried, to surprised, to laughter. “Yes, the Bug Lady will do.”
“Jacob’s okay?” I asked, settling back into the soft comfort of the pillows. I fought to keep my eyes open.
“He’s fine except for a few minor problems and ripping some stitches.” She looked away and tension filled her small body. “Your friend, the young woman…”
“Lydia?”
“Yes.”
“What?” Fear filled the cavity where my heart and lungs should be, throat tightening in response.
“There was a firefight with the other vehicle. Lydia was hit. She’s in a bad way. They have her in surgery. Jacob is with Colonel Brant trying to stop you from being arrested. It’s all a bit confusing really. I have no papers and apparently all yours are fake.”
I had to reach Brant and Jacob. They shouldn’t be made to wait for news of Lydia alone. I could see Brant’s deep maternal love for Lydia, her protégée, so this couldn’t be easy. I knew Brant had two sons, one lost his life in Afghanistan, the other went into business, but losing someone under your command is a different kind of grief. Not that I knew personally about grief, no one but Jacob gave a rat’s arse about me, but I’d lost men under my command in the field. A terrible burden.
Levering upright hurt like hell and pain bloomed down my right side, leaving me a gasping, sweaty mess. “Fucking hell,” I muttered.
“Apparently your ribs aren’t broken but hairline factures in old breaks have led to complications. You’ll be in considerable pain for some weeks,” Dilras said. In contrast to her panic and care over the killer mosquitoes she sounded bored by my frail human body and its problems.
“Oh good,” I said. “I take it the second set of bugs are dead?”
Dilras’s face dropped. “All gone.” She sniffed. “Months of work gone.
Years…”
I looked at her, trying to catch my breath before I pulled the cannula out of my hand. “You really don’t see the problem with what you’re doing do you?”
She shrugged. “I said I knew what physicists felt like after the testing of the atom bomb.” This came in a tone reminiscent of every teenager the world over, further fanning my irritation with the woman.
“Listen, I appreciate the fact that our government thinks we need to stay ahead of weaponised viruses or bacteria but what you people do at Porton Down gives me the fucking creeps. You can stop a man with a gun, you can talk one down who is holding the nuclear football, but you can’t stop a plague of weaponised mosquitoes.” The anger in me came as something of a surprise. Jacob and I would spend hours debating the rights and wrongs of Western governments interfering in the conflict zones of the world, rarely reaching a conclusion, but this kind of warfare scared me.
“The point is,” Dilras said, already sounding bored because she’d had to justify her job to cleverer people than me, “we have a cure.”
“Which we sell to developing countries who might be targeted at a massive profit?” I asked, not hiding my sarcasm.
“The British aren’t known for being so cruel,” she stated.
I laughed at that one. “What’s your heritage?”
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“I’m guessing you aren’t Anglo-Saxon?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Racism is not –”
“I’m not racist, just tell me.”
“My grandparents were immigrants from Kashmir.”
I stood and the room swayed. Putting my arse back on the bed and closing my eyes I said, “I bet they fled during Partition because of the fucking mess the Brits left behind, right? Or what about the concentration camps we used in South Africa? You really think American interests won’t be served by your research? But of course, they never do anything wrong in the world. Even if they have a fucking psychopath at the helm.”
Ultimate Sanction Page 19
