by Frank Tayell
“I’ve set a few in my time,” Sholto said. “Take the others, take the bikes, go up to the roundabout. Get a safe distance and wait.”
The specialist didn’t argue. “You heard him, move!”
Sholto again looked into the bag. The plastic case had been taped to the claymore. He assumed the plastic case concealed a timer, but maybe it didn’t, and maybe it wasn’t a travel-clock. That flattened plastic circle with the rectangular base had been a staple of his travels in the age before smart phones, but that was a decade ago. What were the odds of finding something like that lying around a city like Belfast these days? Perhaps it wasn’t a timer, but it certainly was the trigger, with wires leading from it to the claymore where they disappeared under a mass of masking tape. The wires were all the same length, all coated in identical green plastic. There were six wires in total, but only two were needed. Were the others simply dummies? Were they a crude anti-tamper device, or redundancies? He drew his knife, reached in, and saw a seventh wire hanging from the black plastic case. No, not a seventh, but a pair of wires running in parallel. Teeth gritted, he reached a hand in, and followed the pair of wires until they disappeared into the bag’s lining.
Sweat dripped down his forehead, running onto his nose, as he traced the wires up the bag’s lining until he found where they’d come loose near the seam that joined the flap to the bag. Three seconds later, he’d found the odd-shaped piece of metal in the bag’s flap itself, where the circuit should have been completed.
He pulled his hand from the bag, and stepped back.
“The timer is the backup,” he said, shivering now as the wintry breeze evaporated the slick sweat coating his face and hands. “The real trigger is the wire running to the flap. The device should have detonated when the bag was opened.”
He took out a battered smart phone he’d brought to take pictures of the tankers and helicopters.
“A photograph’s a photograph,” he muttered, but this time he got a reply. Branches snapped as a zombie pushed its way through the treeline, twenty metres down the road. The creature slipped as it reached the asphalt, falling flat on its face, but immediately squirmed and rolled, thrashing its way back to its feet. Reaching into the bag, Sholto pressed the phone’s screen, taking a hundred quick photographs. As the zombie reached its knees, Sholto took a step away from the bag and towards his bike, unslinging his rifle as he moved. The zombie reached its knees. He fired. It thumped to the ground, dead, and he grabbed the bike’s handlebars, kicked the stand up, and quickly mounted. Thirty seconds later, he’d reached the others.
“Did you disarm it?” Gloria asked.
“No,” Sholto said. “I’m not sure I can. There’s too much tape covering the wires, except for a pair of wires that lead into the bag’s seam and up to the flap. The device should have detonated when the bag was opened, but that wire came loose. You were lucky, Private. We all were.”
“Lucky Luca,” Dean said. “I think you’ve got yourself a new nickname.”
“Seriously, it was meant to explode when I opened it?” Petrelli said. “Wish we’d known that before we checked the other bags.”
“You checked the other bags?” Sholto asked.
“They’re all clear, sir,” Toussaint said. “There are no more devices.”
“Didn’t you check the bag when you were issued it?” Gloria asked.
“Of course,” Petrelli said. “The quartermaster opened it in front of me, and she checked the contents against her list. Six standard-issue rations, twice. I tried to get her to add a bit extra.”
“Clearly the device wasn’t in the bag then,” Sholto said. “When was it out of your sight?”
“It wasn’t,” Petrelli said automatically. “Well, I went to the latrine, but I was only gone for a few minutes. I left the bag hanging on the bike.”
“A few minutes? Like two or three, or more like ten?” Sholto asked.
“Maybe five,” Petrelli said. “It’s all this oatmeal and gruel. There’s nothing solid to eat.”
“But a bomber couldn’t have known Luca would have gone to the loo,” Dean said.
Petrelli reached for his water bottle. Sholto’s eyes narrowed. He snatched the bottle from the private’s hand.
“Hey!” Petrelli said.
“Nature’s called you quite a bit today,” Sholto said, unclipping his own water bottle and handing it to the man. “Maybe there is a way someone could guarantee you’d leave that bag unattended.”
“They… they poisoned me?” Petrelli asked.
“Drugged you with a diuretic of some kind,” Sholto said. “We don’t find many medicines left, these days, but how many people would want to loot a drug that makes you do that?” Sholto raised the private’s water bottle, turning it back and forth, but it looked no different to any other. “It’s dangerous to infer too much, but one bag is much like another, and we’ve got a couple of hundred of them back in the harbour. Everyone who goes out gets issued with the same type of bag, the same type of rations. Maybe we were deliberately targeted, or maybe we were just the first and easiest target they saw. Pass me the sat-phone. We have to call this in.”
Gloria fished the phone out of her bag. Sholto dialled. Kallie answered.
“Is the admiral there?” Sholto asked.
“She’s gone to meet Siobhan and the helicopter. Why?”
“What about Whitley?”
“Sure, he’s around.”
“Is he there?”
“Not here here,” Kallie said. “He’s up on the roof.”
“Okay, listen carefully,” Sholto said. “Someone swapped the bag of food that we got from the quartermaster. There was a bomb in the bag we were brought with us. It’s an improvised device made using a claymore with a primary trigger attached to the bag’s flap. There’s a secondary trigger I think is a timer. I think… I think it’s possible they’ve dosed Petrelli with a diuretic so he’d relieve himself often enough the bags could be switched. I might be wrong about that. You need to tell Whitley, tell the admiral, Siobhan, and Colm, but no one else. Tell them we don’t know if there are other bombs, given to the other people who’ve left the harbour today. You’ve got that?” There was silence at the other end of the phone. “Kallie, did you hear what I said?”
“I… yes. Yes, I understand.”
“Good. Go. I’ll call back in a bit.” He ended the call.
“You think there might be more bombs?” Dean asked.
“I hope not,” Sholto said.
“But are we the target?” Gloria asked. “And when I say we, I don’t really mean me.”
“You mean me,” Sholto said. “If someone wanted me dead, they could have shot me from a distance, or murdered me while I slept. No, this isn’t an assassination.”
“So what is it?” Petrelli asked.
“Call it sabotage,” Sholto said. “Call it terrorism, but it amounts to the same thing.”
“Are we waiting here, sir?” Toussaint asked.
“Just until the admiral calls back,” Sholto said. “Luca, did you see anyone hanging around the stores or near the bikes?”
“No one who shouldn’t have been,” Petrelli said. “There were Marines, sailors, the usual people. Civilians don’t come to our part of the harbour; they’re too afraid they’ll be volunteered for work.”
“Then the bag was ready to be swapped the moment they saw an opportunity,” Sholto said.
The decision to go to the airport had only been made in the late evening, after the call came from Dundalk reporting the discovery of the coal depot. The plans for the expedition hadn’t been widely shared, though nor had they been kept a secret.
“It’s the saboteurs, isn’t it?” Dean asked.
“I’d say so,” Sholto said. “We don’t know if we were the target or the only target. We’ll have to—”
And then the claymore detonated. Everyone ducked, but the explosion, muffled by distance, shook the trees more than the ground. As the roar of the detonation faded, it wa
s replaced with the sound of ball bearings tinkling to the roadway, branches falling into the overflowing ditch, and partially frozen dirt landing in the field.
Sholto straightened. “Everyone okay?” He checked his arms, his legs, his chest, and then he checked the time. “We’re two hours behind schedule. If we were running to time, we’d be at... hmm, maybe at the tanker park, maybe standing next to the helicopters. Possibly on our way back.”
“They wanted to destroy the fuel?” Dean asked.
“Maybe,” Sholto said. “Maybe not. Let’s get moving. The zombies will head towards that sound.” He took out the sat-phone and called Belfast. Kallie answered.
“The bomb went off,” Sholto said. “Tell the admiral.”
“She’s still not back,” Kallie said. “Lieutenant Whitley’s gone to check the armoury.”
“Well, if there were more IEDs, they’ve probably detonated, too. Did you hear anything?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Then maybe ours was the only bomb,” Sholto said. “We’re going to complete the mission. We’ll call next time we stop.”
“We’re continuing?” Dean asked.
“Yes,” Sholto said, “because someone doesn’t want us to.”
Chapter 14 - Evidence, Examined
Cliftonville Road, Belfast
After leaving Nutts Corner, they headed north. Despite the noise of the explosion, they only saw eight zombies before they reached the tankers. There, they came across many more, but they were all dead, killed during Higson’s expedition to collect the plane. Gloria recorded the fuel-levels in the remaining tankers. Sholto took photographs of the access road. Lena killed the one creature that staggered across the field towards them. Within five minutes of arriving, they left.
At any other time, the helicopters would have been quite a sight. Police vehicles, news choppers, a rescue vehicle, an Apache; those were obvious despite the rust, but there were others that must once have been privately owned. There were too many for them to have come from nearby. Some must have been flown in from the Republic, or the Isle of Man, perhaps even from Wales. Brought there following some now forever unknowable order, for an equally unknowable purpose, abandoned in fields into which they had sunk. There were seven Chinooks in the wide car park of a meat-processing plant. It was those that they hoped to repair. Again, they took a few hasty photographs. The specialist examined the engines, and though he wasn’t certain any would ever fly, he was able to determine what tools they would need to find out.
As they cycled swiftly through County Antrim’s narrow lanes, Sholto mentally counted the number of zombies they’d seen that day. Ignoring those trapped behind the fence of the looted fuel depot, it was under twenty. He wasn’t sure whether he should also discount those summoned by the explosion. Either way, it wasn’t many. Reading between the lines it was a similar situation in Dundalk. Yes, Kim and the others had faced over a thousand in the battle at the hotel. Yes, according to the call last night, yesterday they’d found a similar number just beyond an old barricade. But if those zombies were ignored, and if he just thought about the undead wandering the roads or motionless in fields, it did seem far less than they’d faced in England or Wales. It was far, far less than during those nightmare weeks when he was escaping the United States. Of course, that was to be expected on the island of Ireland with its far smaller original population. On the other hand, they were finding an increasing number that appeared to be dying. If they’d had time to make more of those crossbows Rahinder had designed, to find a better redoubt than Belfast Harbour, to train civilians to become fighters if not soldiers, then maybe Ireland could have become their safe haven. The sabotage had prevented it.
Another piece of the puzzle slotted into place. That was the purpose of the sabotage. Anglesey would have worked for years, perhaps as many as five. Belfast should have worked at least until spring, but only if they’d arrived together, all three ships, and with the plane. The plane could have been sent across the Atlantic, and though it only had the range to reach Canada, that would have forestalled any mutiny.
The mutiny. He didn’t know the details, but it clearly wasn’t an outright rebellion, simply an overwhelming desire to cross the Atlantic. A sailor longing to return home was commonplace to the point of being a trope. Strengthening that desire until it became an exigent need wouldn’t be difficult. Or was he now letting paranoia overtake reason? That someone had just tried to kill them suggested not.
They didn’t travel directly to the harbour, but to a primary school on Cliftonville Road, to a rendezvous they’d arranged with the admiral over the sat-phone.
The admiral and her small party were already there. Siobhan was the only civilian among a group consisting entirely of U.S. service personnel. As Sholto dismounted by the metal gates, he caught movement on the rooftop. Another two Marines were on the flat roof above the entrance.
“This location is secure, but we don’t have long,” the admiral said. “This way, Mr Sholto. The rest of you, wait here.”
“Huh,” Dean muttered, but offered no more protest than that.
Sholto followed the admiral and Siobhan up the path towards a low-roofed, open-sided shelter next to the playground.
“You didn’t tell anyone about the bomb?” Sholto guessed.
“No,” the admiral said. “Ten claymores are missing from the armoury.”
“Ten?” Sholto asked. “You didn’t say on the phone.”
“I didn’t want anyone to overhear that the mines are missing,” she said. “Or that we know they are missing.”
“Great,” Sholto muttered. “So there’s nine still unaccounted for? No others have exploded?”
“No, and there’ve been no threats or demands as of yet,” Siobhan said. “But if that bomb was supposed to explode while you were away from Belfast, then we shouldn’t know about it until you failed to call in. We’d have sent a team out, but it’s possible they wouldn’t have found your remains before nightfall. We might have assumed you’d lost the phone and were simply trapped, surrounded, and not known the truth until tomorrow.”
“Possibly,” Sholto said. “But the device was designed to detonate when the bag was opened. They couldn’t guarantee when that would happen. They couldn’t even guarantee we wouldn’t open the bag before we left the harbour.”
“But they could have surmised it,” the admiral said.
“I think they dosed Petrelli’s water bottle with something,” Sholto said. “He had to relieve himself every half hour or so on our way east. Then he’d take a drink to avoid dehydration, giving himself another dose.”
“That’s diabolical,” the admiral said. “Though no more so than an IED.”
“Can you describe the device?” Siobhan asked.
“I can do better than that,” Sholto said, fishing in his pocket. “I took some photographs.” He handed the phone to Siobhan. “So, right now, no one knows we’re still alive?”
“Not yet,” the admiral said. “I can’t see any advantage in pretending you’re dead. We wouldn’t be able to maintain the ruse for long, and it would involve allocating people we can trust to bring you supplies. Right now, we’ll need them to locate the missing devices. Can I see the pictures? Thank you.” She took the phone from Siobhan, glanced at the image then returned the phone. “It’s a claymore. Safe to assume it’s one that’s missing.”
“Is there anything you can tell us from the photographs?” Sholto asked.
“Give me a minute more,” Siobhan said.
Sholto turned back to the admiral. “Has any ammunition been taken? Any food?”
“It’s too early to say,” the admiral said. “Records were not as… thorough as they should have been. Our food stores are being double-checked. A few hundred rounds of ammunition might be missing, and the remaining rounds are currently being counted. However, the explosives were not stored in the same building as the ammunition. They were kept in a smaller facility behind the main building along with records fr
om the court cases here and from those investigations held on Anglesey. A regular inspection is required, but… but the quartermaster was negligent in her duties. The only time that the facility was entered was when documents from the daily court proceedings were deposited. Even then, the quartermaster didn’t give the shelves more than a cursory glance. The claymores could have been stolen last night, or at any time since we arrived. What I can tell you is that the grenades are all accounted for, as are the other explosives. We have a small amount of C-4, a box of detonators, and three remote-triggers, yet the bomber chose to steal the claymores from the box on the next shelf.”
“Perhaps our bomber doesn’t know how to use plastic,” Siobhan said.
“Yet they know how to wire a claymore?” Sholto said. “What does that tell us?”
“Nothing good,” Siobhan said. “These photographs aren’t great. There are too many shadows. Ideally, I’d have a few more hours, a few techs, and a decent IT suite before I’d pass judgement. I certainly want to speak to some of your more experienced Marines and find out if they recognise this style of wiring from training or a battlefield. For now, I can’t tell you more than the obvious.”
“Which is?” the admiral asked.
“I’m approaching this from a policing point of view, and I’d like a second opinion from someone more familiar with explosives as soon as you can decide who to trust. The primary trigger is attached to the flap. This bomb should have detonated when the bag was opened. Plastic would certainly be a better choice for such a device. The six wires you can see, they’re not wired to anything. They’re just a decoy. The real wires completing the circuit are concealed beneath the tape, and that tape conceals a secondary circuit. Here, in this photograph. Do you see? The decoys are to slow you down. The secondary circuit will cause a detonation if you tried to cut the tape or pull the wires free. The small black box probably is a clock, but really, it’s an insurance policy. It’s a timer in that, if no one had opened the bag, it would have detonated anyway, destroying the evidence. Perhaps the person who stole the mines isn’t the same person who wired the bomb, and they didn’t know what C-4 looks like. Perhaps they were rushed during the theft. More likely, they’ve created a device like this before.”
