Lethal Sky

by Greg Barron

  Jan Sloven’s eyes move over her. There is nothing creepy about his appraisal, instead, with his crystalline blue eyes, she finds it strangely childlike.

  ‘Can’t wait to get into the lab and find out what’s in that tank,’ he says. ‘You’re one of the people who cracked the al-Hajjuf centre open last year, aren’t you?’

  A wave of gooseflesh passes across Marika’s skin at the memories.

  ‘You must,’ Jan goes on, ‘be proud to have done what you did today — to stop the spore dispersal over your home city?’

  Marika nods. ‘I was only a small cog in a very professional machine, but God knows what will happen if they manage to deploy this thing somewhere else in the world. No one knows the nature of what it can do yet.’

  Jan Sloven’s face is dead serious now. ‘In four or five hours’ time I’ll be able to tell you a lot more. I read a paper on this strain by one of the SIBCRA technicians who worked on the bunker. Every time they extracted microbes from a cadaver the strain had increased in potency. Istikaan and his team did it deliberately, hundreds, maybe thousands of times. Horrifying stuff.’

  Two TRG operatives in black saunter past, M4 rifles slung on the front of their webbing. Marika nods acknowledgement as they walk by, then turns back to Jan. ‘This is just one of God-knows how many attempts to deploy the anthrax.’

  ‘Will they all be carried out by aircraft?’

  ‘Who knows? Even the top of a tall building on a windy day. Air conditioning systems. Tunnel ventilation …’

  Jan nods. ‘Like the Tokyo subway attacks with Sarin gas. Ventilation systems are easy targets.’

  ‘I’d almost forgotten about that.’ Marika muses. ‘It’s a close precedent in a lot of ways — on a much smaller scale.’

  ‘Aum Shinrikyo were a well-funded terrorist group … did you know they had a training base in outback Western Australia?’

  ‘No, really?’

  ‘They owned a cattle station called Banjawarn. I heard a story how they brought chemicals into Australia as hand luggage, and had to fork out fifteen grand in excess baggage charges. Then AQIS confiscated most of it, but still didn’t twig that they were up to something. Apparently some of the local Indigenous people remember seeing men walking around the property in Hazmat suits. Must have freaked them out.’ He pauses. ‘I assume that Sydney is not the only target. What city are these people going to hit next?’

  ‘We’re not sure. London almost certainly, possibly the continental United States. If you can find out for us exactly what the strain is — how it works: vaccine effectiveness, infection data, most useful antibiotics, it will help preparations enormously.’ There is a shout from behind her. A little Robinson R44 Raven II chopper has just settled down on the grass, and a man in dark blue RAAF overalls calls her name.

  ‘I have to go …’

  In a strange gesture from a man she has only just met, Jan reaches out and takes her hand, as if to delay her departure. ‘Where are you off to then? Chasing the sun?’

  ‘Kind of. More like running towards it. London.’

  ‘Well, good luck.’

  ‘You too.’

  Marika hurries across to the chopper crewman, still calling her name. A pair of mirror sunglasses fixes on her as she approaches. ‘Agent Hartmann?’

  ‘Yes, that’s me.’

  ‘We have transport for you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Marika drops her head and walks under the spinning rotors of the chopper that sits out on the grass beside a couple of decapitated bushes. The turbines hum quietly, a prelude to the roar that she knows will come.

  TWENTY-THREE

  LONDON

  LOCAL TIME: MIDNIGHT

  The man they call the Magician waits in the flat. This is his home, but the title is in the name of a small holding company owned, if anyone had the time to unravel the connections, by EMK Corporation. Stacked near the door are three bags and two crates. They contain powerful computer equipment, designed to break some of the world’s most powerful encryption software.

  In his hands he holds a stolen document titled Chevalier Aerospace. UMMUSCPD. Schedule of Tests. The timing has worked out perfectly, and just a few minutes earlier he sent a message to Badi confirming the time and location for tonight’s operation.

  Of Indian heritage, the Magician attended London University, initially studying quantum physics. After three years, however, he had moved into satellite telemetry, with a particular interest in the modelling of geostationary relationships. This is a complex science dealing with the interplay of satellites and positioning systems — a field at which he excelled. After completing his PhD thesis, he embarked on a work study placement at Chevalier Aerospace, during which time he was able to copy all the operating software.

  It had seemed prudent to take what he could from the experience, but that software proved to be more than useful when he was approached to do some freelancing for what was, in loose terms, the ‘other’ side — seduced by a combination of money and an attractive blonde who had no qualms about taking him into her mouth and transporting him to heaven.

  The Magician is a practising Christian, a small but significant minority in the family’s city of origin, Delhi, but he has no scruples about betraying both the country that educated him and his former employer. He is a young man enamoured of the glitz and lean brown bodies of Bollywood musicals. Money and sex are of enormous interest to him.

  He waits on the lounge near the door, checking his phone over and over, wanting only to do what he is being paid for as soon as possible, then he can board the flight to the Bahamas for which he has already purchased a ticket.

  In the next twelve hours, he thinks, his skills will be put to use, and he will have no need ever to work again. He rereads the schedule, plotting locations on a map, while he waits for the vehicles to pull up outside, and a knock on the door.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  SYDNEY

  LOCAL TIME: 1000

  Men run backwards and forwards in fluorescent yellow overalls around the Gulfstream jet. The car taking Marika from helipad to apron rushes across the smooth concrete at a speed that has her hanging onto the hand grip above the door. As it eases to a halt she is already reaching for the door handle, tearing it open.

  Everything is double-time, personnel hurrying into the aircraft up the checkerplate steps. A member of the ground crew carries her bags to the main luggage hold, and Marika is grateful to the Aussies for collecting her luggage from her parent’s place at Bondi. Her belongings aren’t much, but she hates heading out across the world with nothing.

  As she moves up the stairs and into the aircraft, she glances back at the skyscrapers of the Sydney CBD, as sharp as razors in the distance. She reminds herself that this city is just the beginning. They have won a little respite, but that is all.

  A steward greets her on the way into the cabin. He has a pleasant face; close-shaved, with laughter lines.

  Marika fixes a grin on him. ‘How fast can you get this thing off the ground?’

  ‘Five minutes. Getting clearance for take-off is usually the hold-up here, but not today.’

  There is no lack of urgency on the part of the ground crew. The sound of squeaky wheels as the trolley stairs are withdrawn, then the increasing roar of the jets.

  ‘Not long. You’d best get yourself seated.’

  The seats, Marika sees, are arranged in clusters of forward and backward facing units, presumably so bigwigs can hold discussions while in the air. She is the sole passenger, so chooses a window seat with scope for sleeping with her feet up on the opposite seat.

  The doors close, and the engines surge until they are a deafening roar. There are no announcements, just the click of buckling seatbelts. Marika takes the opportunity to remove her Glock and holster, stowing them in her luggage.

  Take-off has none of the usual delays. All runways are clear, with general traffic still grounded. The jet taxis out, then screams down the runway, followed by a sharp ascent tha
t has Marika swallowing to unblock her sinuses. The Gulfstream levels off at thirty thousand feet, Marika leaves her seatbelt on, and slips the GU back over her head, checking the feeds coming in from all over the world; progress in security operations in Paris and London.

  The steward comes down the aisle, the pale skin of his face topped with red hair. ‘Do you need anything? A drink? Food? Cold chicken, or I can heat up a meat pie?’ He ticks off the options by tapping the fingers of his left hand.

  Marika remembers that she hasn’t eaten today. ‘OK, thanks. I’d love a coffee and something to eat — a sandwich or two if that’s possible.’

  The steward heads off down the aisle, holding onto seat backs to compensate for a bout of turbulence.

  While she waits, hungry now, Marika thinks of London. Of how Badi, the Syrian, will attempt to do what he just failed to achieve in Sydney. Her hatred is hard to contain.

  He is the man who helped kill twenty-four Somali children just to get to her, massacred them on the banks of Somalia’s great river, the Webi Jubba, children’s bodies strewn across the landscape. Marika, along with the garrison from Chakula and two companies of AMISOM troops, had chased the perpetrators deep into the village of Kafee.

  They killed the children for me. They set it up just to get to me.

  There, down an alleyway, Badi had surrendered, and lured them into a game in which he held all the cards. From a black site in Djibouti he fed them enough information to force their hand — a ticket to London, then a country house by the sea at which time he eventually revealed the traitor within the DRFS. All part of a plan to eliminate the leadership of extremist group al-Muwahhidun so he could take control.

  He tricked his way out of the safe house they had prepared for him, used blankets, pillows and his own hair to fake his sleeping body, and left. Not one of the thousands of facial recognition cameras at travel hubs and public areas across the world has recorded his image. Of course, it is possible to fool these devices — shaped silicone under the cheeks, large sunglasses.

  Badi is the man with a photographic memory. He knows everything about Marika. Romantic attachments. Her family. Everything. He is the man who ordered her flat broken into, the precious artefacts of a lifetime destroyed.

  He was also a leader of the coalition that had destroyed PJ’s feet in the process of getting the anthrax stocks out of Somalia.

  PJ is one of her own — a comrade.

  The steward brings her sandwiches, and as Marika eats she tries to analyse her feelings for PJ.

  Admit it, she says to herself. He is much more than that.

  Eight months ago she had driven him home after his five-week trip to Saint Bartholomew’s. She had insisted on staying for a night or two to help. That first night they ended up at the nearby Barton Stacey village pub, drinking house ale in pint glasses, PJ playing darts from a bar stool to the general hilarity of the locals.

  They kissed briefly after she helped him into bed. It was she who had withdrawn, retiring to her own bed to stare at the ceiling, wishing she could just go to him. The next morning they were both guilty and quiet. Marika remembers how she felt, as if she had betrayed something special.

  Yet. Wasn’t there something else? A light-as-air feeling of elation.

  PJ’s farm, An Tèarmunn, is a centuries-old gamekeeper’s cottage, lovingly remodelled. She wasn’t sure if the farm’s isolation added to her reluctance to pursue any further physical intimacy — the suspicion that as soon as she went back to London, her normal self would disapprove.

  Yet, as PJ returned to his former role, they had slipped back into comradeship easily enough. The foundation of their relationship is mutual respect and friendship. But something much stronger is still there. Marika knows that she could easily have died today in a fiery crash if the Evektor had hit the Taipan’s rotors. Maybe they don’t have time to hold back any longer.

  As the steward takes her plate and brings the coffee, Marika keeps the smile inside her. She is starting to think that perhaps, when she reaches London, PJ might get more of a reunion than he expects.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  SYDNEY

  LOCAL TIME: 1000

  Jan feels like he’s part of a military operation, racing through the streets of Sydney in the armoured Fuchs CBRN recon vehicle. A swarm of cops on motorbikes clear traffic from its path, forcing other vehicles over to the side lanes on the approaches to the dark grey arches of the Harbour Bridge.

  Jan can’t help but grin to himself. This is like a presidential motorcade. He has become used to a modicum of attention. He is, these days, what his mother would call ‘important’. His opinions are valued. When he once warned, for example, that meningococcal disease had taken a new and more ominous evolutionary turn, his thoughts were quoted in national newspapers.

  Never, however, has he been at the centre of this kind of display. His mouth still dry and foul from his hangover, he is on his way to the lab with a pathogen as lethal as anything that exists in the world at this time.

  The sandstone pillars slip by as they pass Milsons Point. Jan calls ahead to arrange the lab staff he will use, getting them started on initial preparations. This forces him to think of his first steps, the techniques he will use. The new Chatswood REDPATH facility is one of a very few laboratories in the country designed for Biosafety Level 4 work, involving pathogens with a high level of safety risk to humans.

  Jan knew from an early age that he was special. He had a mix of so-called ‘problems’: mild Autism Spectrum Disorder, and another called Developmental Coordination Disorder that affected his ability to play sports. He could not hit a ball, but hooked his standardised test scores out of the park.

  No one paid much attention to his academic brilliance until his last year at Harbord Public School when his teacher, a keen mathematician, became fascinated with Jan’s ability to solve complex problems. In a class where most of the students were struggling with the concepts behind fractions and decimals, Jan’s understanding was effortless, but he did not ask for more, never complained of boredom.

  Then one day, when the other children had elbowed their way out the door to lunch, Jan remained behind, standing behind his desk, legs planted apart, his natural shyness fighting with the burning desire to tell his teacher something, away from where the other kids might hear and laugh at him.

  ‘Are you OK, Jan?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Haven’t you got any lunch?’

  Jan’s eyes dropped to the half-open backpack on a hook near the door. Inside there would be peanut butter sandwiches, a plastic bottle of half-frozen cordial and a Milo muesli bar. His dad made his lunch every day, his mum too busy in a government job half a city away. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, off you go then.’

  Jan still did not move. The playground held little attraction for him. The other children were not mean to him, nor did they seek him out. He sensed that he amused them, but they did not warm to him. ‘I want to tell you something,’ he said at last.

  The teacher’s smile was indulgent. ‘What’s that, Jan?’

  ‘I worked out why the hypotenuse of a triangle is the square of the two sides added together.’

  Eyebrows lifting. ‘OK. Tell me why?’

  Jan started to speak, and by the time he was finished the teacher’s eyes shone with a combination of surprise and delight. ‘Who told you that, Jannie?’

  Jan’s chin lifted. Finally, in his quiet world, something to be proud of. ‘No one. I thought about it, and I worked it out.’

  ‘That’s quite wonderful. Come over here.’

  Jan did as he was told, standing beside the lavender-coloured melamine of the teacher’s desk while the older man used his blue ballpoint on the top page of a soft, ruled pad to create a page of instructions, followed by eight problems, one after the other.

  ‘This is high school trigonometry. Some extra work for you. Take it home and see how you go.’

  Jan was so excited he thought his chest would burst. ‘When
do you want me to have them done by?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, when you have time. Next term maybe.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The teacher stood. ‘Put it in your bag and go eat your lunch.’

  ‘Can I eat it here, and work on these?’

  The teacher smiled. ‘Of course you can.’

  Chewing on his sandwiches, blunt pencil in the other hand, Jan read the explanation several times over, before approaching the problems one at a time. The first five were easy. The next two a little harder. The last one saw him almost burst into tears. Finally, however, crumbs all over the desk, he realised what he had been missing, and when his teacher returned just before the bell he ran to meet him, pencil dropping to the floor in his rush.

  ‘Finished,’ he cried, holding up the book.

  The answers were right, every one.

  Mathematics was one thing, science the other. In Year Nine at Cromer High School he was studying Higher School Certificate maths, physics and chemistry, getting better results than most students three or four years older than him.

  At the tender age of sixteen he commenced a Bachelor of Science at Sydney University, with a full scholarship and a place at the prestigious St John’s College. In his first year he found that the people around him had changed. This crowd was no longer the familiar schoolyard mix, but the science elite of an entire state. He found himself looked up to, and sought after. He found that he liked girls, and that many of his peers were both attractive and intelligent.

  Jan’s study routines, however, were inviolate, and many a young woman found a romantic date cut short at nine pm so he could complete two hours of study before bed, or that he’d decided to listen to a research team deliver their results rather than spend an afternoon strolling the Botanic Gardens. He had a maddening habit of cancelling plans at the last minute, and did not understand the courtesy of letting people know.

  In both first and second years he was named in the Dean’s Honours List. As a postgrad he won the School of Biological Science’s research prize for outstanding academic achievement. This was followed by three years in New York working at the prestigious Redmond Foundation research facility. However, Jan grew increasingly homesick, and applied for jobs back home.