Rattlesnake

by Andy Maslen

  He was looking down at Christie when the mud seemed to shudder, making him stagger for a second. It was as if the paddy had slipped sideways momentarily. The sound reached him a second later: a dull thump from somewhere beneath the tank. He couldn’t work it out. Then he could. A landmine. Planted by the Americans, or the Khmer Rouge or the North Vietnamese. As Visna had explained, each successive invading army had laid its own minefields, sometimes right on top of the previous one.

  A movement in the corner of his eye made him turn back towards the tank. At first he thought it was an optical illusion. An afterimage from the lightning strike. He swiped his eyes free of rain and looked again. No! The tank was moving. The gun barrel was dipping towards the ground. The whole tank was dipping. Not under engine power, which had been his first, crazy imagining. With a squelching, sucking, sighing motion, the tank was rising at the rear dragging its tracks clear of the mud. The main gun, freed of the forces keeping it pointed upwards, suddenly swung down. The muzzle dug into the mud and then stopped.

  The glistening surface of the mud beneath the tank started bulging out in a vast bubble that seemed to push the tank up before it. It finally burst with a tearing sound and a gust of putrescent air that made Gabriel retch and turn away. Then, as if released from the pressure, the rear of the tank started subsiding, back towards the mud.

  Reacting instantly to the flash of an idea, Gabriel staggered towards Christie’s body and reached down and grabbed under the armpits. He started dragging it towards the rear of the tank. Alive, and on dry land, Christie would have been hard to drag anywhere. Dead and in the clammy grip of the red Cambodian mud, he was almost impossible. Calling on every last ounce of his strength, determination and skill, Gabriel began rocking Christie along, swinging the weight from left to right in a desperate rhythm. The tank was continuing to settle, and more gusts of foul air were bursting free of the sucking ground in grotesque belches.

  Finally, Gabriel was able to manoeuvre the body between the tracks. With one last heave, he pulled Christie under the descending steel before rolling away. He caught his right sleeve on the corner of one track plate, panicked, then yanked his arm free, leaving the black tube of cotton behind.

  The T-54 continued to sink back into the warm embrace of the mud. Gabriel looked into the dark space between the tracks. Christie was disappearing into the ground, but his boots were still visible. Then, even they were gone.

  Gabriel turned away. He trudged back to the bike, careful to avoid stepping on the smooth white skulls that dotted the ground. He’d heard that monks would come and collect them and place them in special above-ground tombs called stupas. He would need to find a monastery before he left.

  The bike had toppled sideways. Its kickstand had simply pushed down into the mud. Gabriel pulled it upright by the handlebars then winced at the pain in his right bicep. He twisted his arm inwards to look.

  Christie’s knife-thrust hadn’t been deep. No major blood vessels or nerves severed. But the claret was flowing freely. Using his own knife, he cut the other sleeve from his jacket, and bound the cut with a few tight turns, tucking the free end under the final layer of the improvised bandage.

  Something Christie had said about Vinnie was niggling. But the pain from the knife-thrust was hurting his concentration as well as his flesh. He let it go.

  Next, the calls. He began with Lina. He asked her for directions to the Flowers of Hope orphanage, repeated them back to her then checked a map on his phone. Figuring that if they were to stand any chance of averting catastrophe, he’d need help with the children, he called Visna and explained in terse sentences what they were up against.

  “There’s going to be some kind of biological attack on the orphanage. Get there as soon as you can and try to keep the kids inside.”

  Finally he called both Davey Flynn and the ex-soldier styling himself Jack Hunter and gave the same instructions.

  He stashed his phone and kicked the bike’s starter lever. The little engine turned over with a cough, but refused to start.

  He tried again. Pushing down harder, this time and opening the throttle grip a quarter turn. This time, the engine turned over twice before dying.

  “Come on, Dorothy,” he crooned. “One more time. What was it you said? ‘Time doth flit. Oh shit!’”

  He slammed his foot down on the kick-starter and twisted the throttle again.

  The little bike finally woke up, cleared the damp from its carburettor and spark-plug and caught.

  “Yes!” Gabriel yelled in triumph and relief. He toed the gear selector into first, opened the throttle wide and spun the bike in a splashing doughnut before racing away from the killing field.

  Three hundred miles to the north, Perec, the French pilot, was fuelling the Yak-18.

  45

  Play Time

  MARIE-Louise Hubert’s criminal activities had made her a lot of money. By western standards, or those obtaining in certain parts of Russia or China, she was only modestly affluent. In Cambodia, she was fabulously wealthy. Her house had originally been built by a French industrialist who had grown rich stripping Cambodia of its natural resources of timber, minerals and natural gas. Deauville was a twenty-bedroom palace set on the side of a mountain covered in thick vegetation and forest. The industrialist had installed a swimming pool, which had fallen into disrepair before Hubert bought the house and had it refurbished.

  It was here, at 8.30 on the morning of the first human trial of EboMalX, that she received the call she had been waiting for. Her butler brought her iPhone to the edge of the pool and stood, eyes averted, as she climbed out to take the call. She worked hard to maintain her body, which she knew to be in good shape. At forty-one she had the figure of a woman ten years her junior. She liked to accentuate her long legs with high-cut swimsuits. And she had caught the butler peeking more than once. She didn’t dismiss him, however. He had his uses.

  “Oui,” she said, her voice still retaining its clipped Parisian accent, even after ten years in Cambodia.

  “He’s in the air. ETA is noon, as planned.”

  “Bon. We’ll have an extra-long playtime today. A treat for the children.”

  She ended the call. Dismissing the butler, she reached for a thick white towel draped over a rattan sun lounger, wrapped it round her slender frame and went inside to change.

  After her shower, she blow-dried her ash-blonde hair, which she had cut at a hotel salon in Siem Reap every four weeks. She used heated tongs to straighten it until it hung down in arrow-straight curtains, which she tucked behind her ears.

  Her underwear she had flown over from Paris from an exclusive boutique – Loulou Briconelle – tucked away on a side street running southwest off Boulevard Saint-Germain. She selected bra and briefs, stockings and suspenders, all handmade in a sea-green silk. She lifted out a dress from the walk-in wardrobe, an emerald-and-white silk Givenchy, also from Paris, although this she had flown home to select in person.

  Sitting at her dressing table, she draped a black silk cape around her shoulders. She began her maquillage. She spent the following fifteen minutes applying primer, foundation, eye shadow, eyeliner, eyebrow pencil, mascara, blusher, lipstick and powder to create the flawless mask of a Parisienne grand dame. She would have looked perfectly at home entering the restaurant of the Hotel Georges Cinq on the Champs Elysée. Out here, in the, what did the CIA man call it, the “boondocks” – such an ugly Anglo-Saxon word, she much preferred the French bled – surrounded by peasants with no education, she would appear as a goddess. That suited her just fine.

  Before slipping into a pair of low-heeled Amélie Pichard pumps in dark-green patent that matched the nails she’d had done the previous day, she picked out a pair of diamond-and-emerald earrings and matching necklace. She turned this way and that in the full-length cheval glass in the corner of her bedroom, admiring the way the dress accentuated her curves. Not like one of those silicone-plumped nouveau riches, but a classically beautiful Frenchwoman. Parfait!
<
br />   Next, she called the headmistress of the orphanage, a willing and unsuspecting Cambodian called Beth Sun.

  “I am coming to see the children today,” she said as soon as Beth answered.

  “Yes, Madame. They will be so happy to see you.”

  “I will be with you in time for lunch break. Shall we say just before noon?”

  The two women exchanged a few pleasantries then Hubert ended the call. She stalked down the wide staircase to the ground floor, enjoying the crisp click of her heels on the marble.

  She picked up a black phone from a walnut side table in the flower-bedecked hall and called for her driver. She checked her watch: 11:00. The drive was forty-five minutes. Timing was everything. She needed to arrive in time for the trial’s beginning so she could report faithfully to the media who would gather later. But, obviously, she wanted to be inside until the drifting pathogen had dispersed.

  Forty-five miles to the north, Gabriel was racing towards the Flowers of Hope orphanage. Flat out, at sixty miles per hour, the lightweight motorcycle was barely stable, slewing across the road as it hit lakes of semi-liquid mud. Luckily, its narrow tyres were able to cut through to reasonably solid ground below. The rain had stopped. As the clouds dispersed, hot sun dried Gabriel’s back. Without removing his left hand from the handlebars, he twisted his wrist to check the time: 11:05.

  At its operational peak, which had been in the early 1950s, the Yak-18 was capable of flying at a maximum airspeed of 187 miles per hour. The plane now heading due south towards the Flowers of Hope orphanage was a virtual antique. The pilot knew its capabilities and was maintaining a steady 100 miles per hour. Even so, the airframe was shuddering, and the radial-design engine was emitting an out-of-phase drone that the Soviet designers had never intended. His normal routine was to fix up, then fly pure heroin across the border and into Laos or Thailand depending on which police force was easier to bribe that month. He’d collect duct-tape-wrapped packages of cash at the drop-off point and bring that back to his Thai paymasters at his base in Oddar Meanchey province in northern Cambodia.

  Cosseted in the air-conditioned leather cabin of her Lexus SUV, Hubert stared at her phone. She was consulting a Manhattan property website. Specifically, she was researching condos in the Turtle Bay area, home to the United Nations. If her plan bore fruit, she’d need a base in New York. Every now and then her driver leaned on the horn to shoo livestock, locals, or both, off the road. According to her rose gold Panthère de Cartier she had about forty minutes to go before arriving at Flowers of Hope. She looked up at the sky, clearing after the recent storms and now mostly blue again. Good flying weather, she thought, then returned to scrutinising her phone’s screen.

  Madame Hubert always insisted that nobody make a fuss when she made one of her frequent visits to the orphanage. Beth Sun always ignored the instruction. After all, if Madame were coming, tidying up and preparing a delicious meal was the least Beth, her staff and the children could do. At 11:30, she summoned her deputy and told her to select a dozen children to go foraging at the place where the orphanage’s grounds gave way to jungle. The trees dripped with all manner of fruit – mangosteen, longan, papaya, lychee and jackfruit – and she planned to prepared a huge fruit salad dressed with sugar syrup. Then she went to ring the bell for play time, intending to give the children an extra-long time outside after the rains had confined them inside. She had a vision of ringing her treasured brass handbell at just after midday to summon the children to meet Madame.

  Flying high on heroin, though only a couple of hundred feet above the upper canopy, the pilot adjusted the trim on the Yak. Beneath the belly of the plane, mounted on improvised hardpoints he’d welded into place specifically for this one-off job, hung the two bombs. Thin wire wound on spools connected the bombs to eye bolts screwed to the plane’s airframe. When the pilot hit the toggle switch to release the bombs, they’d fall for thirty metres, unspooling the wires behind them. At that point, the wires would be at full stretch. They would set off fuses connected to shaped charges inside the nose cones. The shaped charges would shear the metal casings along the pre-scored seams. The bomb casings would open. The primary charges would detonate. And the EboMalX would disperse to ground in a lethal cloud.

  Gabriel’s right hand was locked onto the bike’s throttle grip, holding it fully open. Over the increasingly ragged note of its overstressed engine, he could hear the sound of children screaming. But these weren’t the children at Flowers of Hope. These were a different group. Older, too. And if orphaned, then orphaned by their own volition, leaving families, friends and jobs behind them to join a cult deep in the Amazon rainforest in a rural province of Brazil. Their leader, a psychopath with a taste for fine wines and even finer art, had poisoned 600 of them with cyanide. Gabriel had been too late that day, managing only to save a single woman from the horrific mass slaughter “Père Christophe” had stage-managed to cover his cowardly escape. He looked down. He had fifteen minutes left. He swerved left onto a broader road. On the tarmac surface, the bike picked up speed and he began to feel a sliver of hope.

  The twelve children selected by Phuong Ros, the deputy headmistress, were chattering and laughing at the fringe of the jungle as they gathered baskets of fragrant fruits for lunch. She herself was equally excited. She restricted outward expressions of her feelings to a constant smile and nods of encouragement as children showed her particularly large or ripe mangosteens or jackfruit. Behind her, she could hear the universal sound of happy children at play, squeals, laughter, shouts from football players and the background buzz of dozens of separate conversations. Truly, we are blessed to have Madame, she thought, dropping another lychee into her basket.

  The pilot checked his instruments. He was almost above the drop zone. But the wind had swerved round by one hundred and eighty degrees and he needed to come in from the far side of the orphanage’s land to ensure he could gain altitude easily after releasing the bombs. He estimated he had ten minutes.

  Hurtling down an off-ramp from the tarmac road, Gabriel saw the sign for Flowers of Hope, written in Khmer and English. One kilometre, the sign said. He raced on.

  Marie-Louise Hubert bookmarked a page on TurtleBayProperty.com. She smiled as she imagined how she would furnish the two-bedroomed condo. She’d choose a simple yet elegant style. Something befitting the UN’s new advisor on children’s rights. That was the title she intended to create for herself, having first parlayed her media persona as the spokeswoman for Cambodia’s forgotten children into a job within the UN’s vast bureaucracy.

  Beth Sun looked up from the paperwork on her desk. A loud mechanical noise had shattered the peace as if one of the gardeners had taken leave of his senses and was racing round the grounds on his petrol mower. The next sound she heard was a man’s voice. A man’s voice shouting. In very bad Khmer.

  “Where grandmother? Where grandmother?”

  She sighed and rose from her chair. I suppose he must mean me, she thought.

  She was halfway to the door of her office when it shot open, swinging all the way round until it banged against the thin wall.

  “Who are you?” she exclaimed. “What do you mean by crashing into my office? You’ll frighten the children.”

  He was wild-eyed. Both sleeves of his black jacket were missing. She took in the blood-soaked bandage on one arm and the scar down his cheek. A flicker of fear raced through her like an electrical charge. Many members of her family spoke of men who came to their villages in clothes just like these. Men soaked in blood. Men who raped, tortured, mutilated, killed.

  “I’m Wolfe. But there’s no time. It’s about the children. You have to get them inside now!”

  She tried to placate this mad Englishman, for she had placed his accent now. She held her hands up.

  “They are happily at play. We have a very important guest coming in just,” she looked at her watch, “five minutes.”

  He batted her hands away and grabbed her by the shoulders.

  �
�There’s an attack coming. Terrorists. You have to get them inside. And all your staff, too. Now!” he shouted.

  Something about him struck home with Beth Sun. She didn’t even pause.

  “I will ring the bell. Help me get them into our dining hall. Oh!” her hand shot to her mouth.

  “What is it?”

  “My deputy, Phuong. She took twelve children to the jungle to pick fruits.”

  “Show me.”

  She stepped out into the play area and pointed at a row of grass-roofed huts.

  “That way. It’s about five hundred yards.”

  “Close all the windows and doors tight. Block any gaps with wet fabric or towels,” he said. Then he sprinted away from her.

  She raced back into her office, grabbed the bell by the wide loop of its leather handle and began swinging it above her head as hard as she could. The effect was instantaneous. Bless these well-behaved children, she thought, as all eyes settled on her.

  “Inside now, children. Inside!” she shouted, striving for a light tone and a smile but panicking inside and fighting the urge to scream at them to hurry up.

  46

  Airburst

  AS Beth Sun herded the children into the dining room, Gabriel dashed off between the huts in the direction he’d been pointed. He could see the green fringe of the orphanage’s grounds where the neat lawns and pathways simply melted into thick jungle. And there, like brightly coloured dots against a solid wall of green, were the children, accompanied by a taller figure that had to be Phuong.

  Arriving among them, he held his hands out as Beth Sun had done to him.

  “You have to come with me right now,” he said to Phuong. “An attack is coming.”