Lethal Sky

by Greg Barron

  ‘Why don’t you kill her?’ Cassie asks.

  For a moment Badi’s anger flares, but he controls it. ‘Because I want her to see me win. Then I’ll kill her.’

  FIFTY-NINE

  LONDON

  LOCAL TIME: 0230

  Eddie Wilder’s district was the first to mobilise. Even so, it took time to form up and issue instructions down the ranks.

  Eddie shouting orders from the front, they tramp like soldiers into the streets. At their head marches the flag bearer, the butt of the pole carried on a white webbing sash that spreads the weight to his wide British soldiers. High above his head, the unfurled St George’s Cross, a potent symbol of this last crusade.

  The Crusaders wear gas masks of a dozen different vintages and origins, many the green or red industrial varieties. Masks give their wearers an air of inhumanity, of being divorced from the feelings of their victims.

  The marching Crusaders are patriots, and Eddie is proud of them. Beside him walks Aedd Mawr, the druid priest, shouting, ‘Today is the day on which the sacred soil of our forefathers becomes ours once more. Today we reclaim the streets.’

  Eddie’s right hand holds a long-neck beer bottle, three-quarters filled with a mixture of petrol, lighter fluid and sugar, the wick soaked in kerosene rather than petrol to make it less dangerous to the handler. A group of the men and their wives have been making them in their kitchens. He flicks his cigarette lighter.

  The wick flares, ignites. He cocks his arm and throws. The men around him pause to watch the flame arc through the air like a rocket trail before the bottle smashes, spreading its contents across a shopfront, igniting instantly, turning into a sheet of flame that consumes the wooden window frames and door.

  As a method of torching buildings, the Molotov cocktail has no low-technology peer. The device was first used in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, but the name Molotov was not applied until the Finns used it against Russian tanks in the Winter War, and coined the name to taunt the Russian Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov. The weapon has been a standby of ill-equipped forces against the well-resourced ever since.

  Someone passes another bottle, the wick flaring. Eddie throws round-arm this time, like a spin bowler at Lord’s. He watches the bottle smash against the front door and window of a halal butcher’s shop, the air over a ten-square-metre area explodes with heat. His face glows and flickers orange as he turns to see buildings catching fire all down the street.

  A man runs from one of the houses, and Eddie recognises the skull cap and robe of a Muslim cleric. Eddie grabs him by the loose cloth on his chest and draws back his fist. ‘You black bastard. You want to kill us all.’

  ‘Whatever it is, this is not my people. I beg you to understand. This is not us.’

  ‘Bullshit. You are going to poison England so you can have your Islamic state.’

  ‘Why would we do that? This is our home now. These streets are our streets, why would we want to destroy that?’

  Eddie hears a sound of shouting and renewed fighting. He looks up to see a phalanx of young Middle Eastern men forcing their way down the road. Some carry firearms, and they are led by two cars, moving at crawling speed like tanks.

  Eddie points at them. ‘Who are they then? More peace-loving Muslims, yeah?’

  ‘They are young people coming out to defend their homes, against you, who have marched in here like an army. You expect them not to fight?’

  Eddie reverses the shotgun and slams the butt into the man’s head, sees him fall, then turns away. He notices that Aedd Mawr, the druid priest, is turning from the sight of battle and moving away.

  Real war at last. Eddie feels an exultant rush, and starts barking orders. Turning the men from their work of destruction and preparing them for battle, half-watching as the bastards stop about two hundred metres down, and in what must be a pre-planned move, two cars manoeuvre sideways, end to end, effectively blocking off the street, and the fighters begin to form up behind them.

  Eddie turns and shouts. ‘Spread out, lads, don’t bunch up.’ Then he calls for one of the more reliable of his troops — a stocky former farm boy from near Rotherham. ‘Steve, here mate, quick.’

  The usual easy grin has gone. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Take your sniper crew and get on the rooftop.’

  ‘With the rifles?’

  ‘No, with fucking water pistols. We’re fighting for our lives here. Let me know on your two-way when you’re in position. We’ll hang back a little until then.’

  For months, every spare moment, Eddie has been reading not only the Bible, but the best and most venerable of military strategists down through the ages: the Art of War by the Chinese strategist Sun-Tzu, General Patton of America, General Bernard Montgomery, ‘Monty’, who chased Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps across North Africa in the Second World War. In Eddie’s mind he too is now a general, his troops the working men of Britain.

  Eddie has learned the basics: mobility, speed, firepower, the importance of high ground. He knows that soldiers tire quickly, and are at their best early in the day. As Sun-Tzu put it:

  The soldier’s spirit

  Is keenest

  In the morning;

  By noon

  It has dulled;

  By evening

  He has begun

  To think of home.

  This, of course, is one of the reasons why so many battles are fought soon after dawn.

  Steve’s team all carry CZ .22 calibre rifles with burnished Turkish walnut stocks and Bushnell telescopic sights clamped to the receiver. Home-made silencers are taped to the barrels. These small-calibre rifles are deadly weapons in the right hands. The marksmen have rehearsed their use as thoroughly as is possible for men who have scarcely fired a shot in anger. They will take out the leaders, kill or wound them so the others are disorganised. Then the main body of Crusaders will charge.

  As the two opposing sides near each other, Eddie senses that they are all aware something unprecedented is about to happen. London is no stranger to riots and unrest. Many times through a two-thousand-year history her streets have run with blood. But this will be the first time in centuries that massed men with deadly weapons will face each other in open battle on a London street.

  Eddie knows that there needs to be a signal to begin the battle, that men on his side are waiting for leadership. From a canvas scabbard at his side, he draws that most venerable English long arm: the side-by-side twelve-gauge shotgun, with twin fancy hammers, sawn off in the stock behind the grip, and then the barrel shortened by a good ten inches. In the breech he has rammed home a pair of number six shot cartridges, a size designed to spray a huge number of lead projectiles, not necessarily to kill at long range, but to wound multiple combatants.

  Wounds, according to the strategists he has been reading, cause more trouble to the enemy than fatalities. Wounded men need to be carried and cared for; take more men away from the front line.

  The maker, Purdey, means little to him, but it is a beautiful weapon, with silver scrollwork on the receiver, and walnut timberwork polished by generations of hands.

  Now, he grips the stock tight, and begins to walk deliberately towards the enemy lines, the gun held across his chest in the classic bandit’s stance. Thousands of eyes are on him, he knows, as he moves out in front of the others. He looks the part, dressed in a knee-length duffel coat, a black balaclava. David facing Goliath, an endless coloured horde of heathens from across the sea.

  Strangely, no one on the other side fires. This is Eddie’s moment and his head swells with pleasure, seeing himself on a vast stage.

  He walks on past the front ranks of his men, slows his pace theatrically until he comes to a standstill, legs parted in a highwayman’s pose. He hefts the shotgun so the barrel faces out, then rests the fore and middle fingers of his left hand each on a hammer, pushing them back so there is a dull double click as the sear engages.

  Adrenalin flooding through his system like the swee
test drug, he takes a lungful of air, then waits until his vocal chords feel full and ready.

  He shouts, ‘Go back to where you fucking came from.’

  The Purdey shotgun has two triggers, one about two-thirds of the way forward in the guard, one a little further back. Eddie has been practising having a finger in both so that it is, in theory, possible to fire both barrels at one time. Now, however, as he deliberately jerks back both fingers, the left side hammer flies down just an instant before the other, and the two detonations are separated by a fraction of a second.

  The cut-down stock rears violently in his hand. The double muzzle flash is bright. Shots rake across the two parked cars that make up the barrier, and more than one man cries out from behind them, one clutching a bleeding face.

  Nothing happens at first. Then a storm of gunfire and shouting erupts.

  Eddie shivers with the moment, then wheels an arm, shouting, ‘Forward! The city is ours.’ The army of men behind him begins to run, with a roar that, it seems to him, is not just the sound of voices, but of history.

  SIXTY

  LONDON

  LOCAL TIME: 0300

  The Prime Minister stands, bringing the room to silence. ‘We have just been told that all five cluster drones have been deployed in the sky, ready to spread their load across England and Western Europe.’

  Tom Mossel watches him warily. The PM has never been a buck stops here kind of man. More of a let someone expendable deal with this while I take the credit if it works type.

  ‘HUMINT sources suggest that the drones will have been programmed to release their load at about eight-thirty am, when the city is off to work and the streets are crowded. We will try to stop them, but we have to make a decision as to whether to evacuate the city. Word is out, rumours are running through the country like wildfire.

  ‘We are also facing social unrest on a scale not seen for a generation. Right-wing gangs have poured onto the streets of at least twenty suburbs, equipped with firearms and machetes. The targeted groups are fighting back. I regret to say that there have already been fatalities.’

  The PM sighs deeply, ‘There are just too many angles to this emergency we face here today. On top of everything else we have a blasted king tide to deal with … the Thames is expected to overflow her banks in at least fourteen areas. We have teams of volunteers sandbagging …’

  The COBRA room is dead silent as the screen down the end of the table shows images of armed men on the warring sides, then the river Thames lapping at the concrete Albert Embankment.

  The Home Secretary stands and coughs into a cupped right hand. Most usually a wearer of grey power suits, slacks and woollen cardigans, today Mossel sees she has chosen more traditionally feminine garb — a pale cream chiffon blouse and suede skirt. Strangely, the outfit makes her seem more formidable rather than less. Tom has immense respect for her as a politician with integrity, and a worthy tennis opponent.

  ‘After an urgent amendment to the Terrorism Act of 2006,’ she begins, ‘I have just declared the Crusaders an illegal organisation. Since our assets are spread very thin dealing with the drone threat, I recommend that we call up the Territorial Army to restore order. Most keep their uniforms at home. All they have to do is dress and walk to their local barracks where they can be issued with weapons and CBRN protective equipment.’

  The Commander in Chief of His Majesty’s Forces, Admiral Linn, raises squirrel-like eyebrows. ‘You want Dad’s Army to protect London from two hundred thousand racists bent on wiping out ten times that number of immigrants prepared to protect their homes to the death?’

  The Home Secretary doesn’t miss a beat, throwing a question straight back at him. ‘How many personnel in the Territorial Army are there in London?’

  Tom is aware that after years of cutbacks there has recently been a big boost to the reserve force, mainly to compensate for massive reductions to the regular army; weekend warriors are much cheaper to maintain than their full-time counterparts.

  ‘Around twenty thousand.’

  The Home Secretary’s rather thin lips turn down in a perfect double arch. ‘Twenty thousand trained British soldiers, sir? Wouldn’t you consider that equal to a rabble of racist bastards?’

  The Admiral’s head dips slightly. ‘Touché!’

  The Home Secretary lifts her chin. ‘We’re going to show these people that a man or woman who chooses to make their home here is as British as us, and that we will not tolerate violence and prejudice … from anyone … but also that Londoners of all stripes must live under our rule of law.’ She pauses. ‘Now back to the anthrax threat. Do we issue public warnings advising evacuation?’ Her eyes scan the room.

  ‘No, not yet.’ Mossel’s voice is clear. ‘The man who designed much of the software we talked about earlier is back in the country. We have a plan in place to destroy all the drones before they can deploy their cargo. I have high hopes that it will work.’

  There is scattered applause. Tom Mossel meets the Home Secretary’s eyes. ‘If that will be all, I have work to do.’

  The ‘Bear Pit,’ as the DRFS IT section is known, is so familiar to Julian, that after a few minutes he is left to his own devices, gathering the equipment he needs, packing it into a crate, picking various leads from a storage cupboard.

  Julian sets up his Dell on a shelf, plugging in a LAN cable from the high-speed fibre optic network. He needs to download copies of the Chevalier software from the server, and the junior tech assigned to help logs him in to a guest account.

  Then, Julian sees an opportunity too good to miss. While the software loads he opens an internet browser.

  ‘Time to go,’ someone calls, ‘chopper’s on the way.’

  ‘Coming. Two minutes.’ Julian’s fingers dance over the keys, and he loads ‘The Redemption’ clip onto his own YouTube channel. It’s just a start — two thousand subscribers last time he checked, but he will push it harder when the mission is complete.

  The clip uploads at lightning speed. Julian watches to see that it is live on the site, then closes the laptop, adds it to the crate, and follows his escort towards the elevators.

  SIXTY-ONE

  SYDNEY

  LOCAL TIME: 1300

  Jan and the two Marys have taken it in turns to sleep on the stretcher bed in one corner. Jan has also been dozing on and off at the computer desk through the night. He has always had the ability to work without rest, but there are limits.

  Air hisses audibly from the incubator as the remote lock opens, and old Mary brings out the first tray using the robot arm. Jan pushes his face close to the glass of the BSC, and cannot hide his shock when he observes the cultures of LSS-253 spores in the petri dishes lined up side by side. He is amazed at how fast they have grown on the agar. The growth is grey and flat with irregular edges. Much faster than any other strain he has cultured in the past.

  Jan swears softly under his breath. He understands intimately the process that has been occurring in that sealed unit. First the spores have to become viable, reawakening the single-celled organism inside. Then, given suitable temperatures, food and growth substrate, the individual, rod-shaped cells will divide for the first time.

  The LSS-253, Jan realises with a sick slide in his stomach, is dividing faster than any bacteria he has studied in the past.

  Inside the sterile compartment is a forty-megapixel camera on a remote-controlled arm. Jan manipulates the touchpad with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. He takes photos of each dish, then sends them remotely to the computer, cross-referenced to the dish numbers already recorded.

  Old Mary uses another arm to collect a tiny smear from one of the dishes, transferring it to a fresh glass slide, adding water, stain, then a cover slip. Once this is done she transfers it to a digital microscope. The image appears on a high-resolution screen. Jan makes several adjustments, moving the cover slip with the automated tool.

  The hatched anthrax bacteria are rod-shaped, not motile, unremarkable in many ways. The sample
he has just grown contains tens of thousands of them. As he watches, an individual bacterium divides. The two copies of the genetic material become separated and enclosed by new cell walls, creating two new cells. The two resulting organisms quite quickly start feeding on the agar.

  You little bastards, Jan thinks to himself.

  He uses the robot arm to remove the antibiotic-testing container from the incubator. Opens the first one. He is shocked. All known anthrax strains are susceptible to two antibiotics, Cipro and penicillin. There are no clear circles on the culture media.

  ‘No response,’ old Mary says for all three of them.

  ‘What about the anthracimycin?’

  This is a newer antibiotic, a marine bacteria that has been hailed as a breakthrough against anthrax and other pathogens such as the antibiotic-resistant MRSA.

  Jan studies the culture. There is a mild response — the culture is not as thick near the circle of blotting paper, but nothing that could be expected to arrest the spread of the disease in the human body.

  He turns to the Marys. ‘Check the rest of them, please. Let me know if there’s any change.’ He walks to his workstation and the phone, deeply troubled.

  When Istikaan, the Hourglass, was plying his trade almost two decades earlier, there was only one treatment for a person already infected with anthrax. Antibiotics. In particular, humble penicillin, along with the far more expensive Ciprofloxacin.

  Istikaan successfully managed to manipulate the genome to defeat not only these antibiotics, but all known possibilities. In his day, that meant a death sentence for anyone infected with this strain.

  Since that time, however, there is a new treatment for inhalation anthrax, called a monoclonal antibody. It was developed by a company called Human Genome Sciences and approved for treatment of inhalation anthrax in 2012. It’s called raxibacumab, with the trade name ABthrax, an antibody that binds to the toxins produced by B. anthracis, thus preventing damage to the body. The problem is that it has not been stockpiled to any large extent. Jan picks up the phone and calls the number.