The Hurst Chronicles (Book 2): Sentinel

by Robin Crumby

  “Thanks for joining us,” said Peterson, interrupting the others.

  “Quick introductions. Zed and Riley, I think you know these gentlemen,” pointing round the table at Anders and Armstrong. “The other two you may not know. This here is Colonel Abrahams and at the end you will recognise local MP, or should I say, former Member of Parliament, David Woods.”

  The two strangers stared at Riley and Zed without acknowledgement. Riley was wracking her brains, trying to remember what she knew of David Woods. Right wing, strong views on immigration, always railing against Europe. It struck her as ironic really. She wondered whether his stance had softened in the face of the migration crisis on their doorstep. The boot was on the other foot now the surviving British population were in transit, trying to reach the island.

  “Colonel Abrahams is working closely with Professor Nichols here to make sure he gets the resources and manpower his research team needs. Colonel, perhaps you can elaborate and explain why we’re all here.”

  “Happy to,” he said tersely. “Either of you ever heard of Porton Down?”

  He watched both of them shake their heads. For Riley, it rang a bell, somewhere she had been on holiday years ago as a child was her best guess. Zed’s expression was blank. If he did recall anything, he was giving nothing away.

  “Nope? Okay, well Porton Down was an old Ministry of Defence facility up near Salisbury. They specialised in research into biological and chemical warfare. Highly classified, top secret stuff. It was one of the sites that the government stockpiled vaccines and stores in case of an attack or outbreak. Stands to reason that they should still have equipment and resources that we could use. We’ve been unable to establish contact with the team there, but we’re hoping the facility is still operational.”

  “The reason the Colonel knows so much about the place,” said Armstrong, taking over, “is that he was stationed there for a number of years. Knows the place like the back of his hand. Still has some contacts and clout there.”

  “Our plan,” continued the Colonel, “is to lead a reconnaissance mission up there. Make contact with the Porton Down team and report back on their status. With any luck, they’ll be able to help us out. If we really get lucky, they’ll have resources and research which could accelerate things tremendously.”

  “That’s great to hear, but what does it have to do with the two of us?” asked Riley puzzled.

  Peterson looked straight at Zed. “Care to take that one?”

  Zed remained poker-faced, a picture of innocence.

  “So there’s nothing you would like to add here?” Armstrong cocked his head, waiting for Zed to answer, but he was either not following or playing dumb, Riley wasn’t sure which.

  “Very well.” He unfolded a printed sheet with redacted information on it.

  “Zedekiah Joseph Samuels, intelligence analyst at the Ministry of Defence, ’94 to 2007. Three years with counter-terrorism division, four with DSTL, specialist in chemical and biological weapons programmes. This ringing any bells for you yet, Zed?”

  “That’s me, but I seriously think you’re clutching at straws. I was an analyst, very low level,” claimed Zed, without blinking.

  Armstrong lent forward, squinting at the scanned document. “Says here you left the MoD rather suddenly and joined a US biotech start-up, PharmaT Ventures. There was an investigation into the nature of your departure. Rumours that PharmaT was bankrolled by the Israelis. Nano-technologies, cutting edge research. All seemed to be hushed-up. Couldn’t find any further details in our records. Seemed to have been scrubbed. Someone might say whitewashed.”

  “PharmaT had contracts with the US Army. One hundred per cent legitimate. There was no hint of impropriety.”

  “So why the threat of action by the MoD?”

  “Oh, just a grudge playing out from a superior officer. He questioned my motives for leaving. Left a hole in his organisation or something.”

  “Still, all seems a bit fishy if you ask me, leaving like that. In a bit of a hurry, were you?”

  “I’d done my time. Was ready for something different.”

  “Sorry, you’re saying this man was a spy?” chuckled Riley, turning her head towards him. “You certainly kept that quiet. I thought you were a teacher for God’s sake.”

  “I was a teacher, Riley. The MoD job was years ago,” he glanced at her for support before looking back at the others defiantly. “Listen, this was all a long time ago. What possible use could all that be now?”

  “Let’s stop kidding around,” cautioned Peterson. “I think you know where we’re going with all this.”

  “Trust me, I really don’t,” said Zed, raising his eyebrows in disbelief. Riley was watching him very carefully, certain now that he was not telling the whole truth.

  Armstrong grabbed the sheet of redacted copy from Peterson. “We know you also spent time at Porton Down. You were part of a special team based there for two years. Colonel Abrahams remembers you by name, for heaven’s sake. I had one of my men pull your file from the archive at Portsmouth. They still have paper copies of MoD service records you know, right up to the outbreak. There’s no point denying it. Why would you lie about this?”

  Zed said nothing, staring at each of them in turn. His shoulders seemed to slump, relaxing a little, before letting out a big sigh.

  “Okay. Listen, it’s true that I spent a short spell at Porton back in the Nineties. So what? If I thought anything from back then could help, don’t you think I would have mentioned it?”

  “What about Project Wildfire?” asked Colonel Abrahams, dumping a brown folder on the table top with a reassuring thud. “You don’t think that has any relevance?”

  Zed was speechless. It had been a long time since he’d heard that name.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Riley and Zed had been asked to wait outside the canteen while the others discussed next steps in private.

  “So when were you thinking of telling us you were James Bond?” sneered Riley, shaking her head.

  Zed laughed awkwardly. “You’ve got it all wrong Riley. I was an analyst, not a field operative. I worked behind a desk, okay?”

  “So you say.”

  “Riley, I’m telling you, I wasn’t jetting around the world hunting down terrorists. Mostly I just worked from home, did what I was told, went wherever I was sent.”

  “Doing what then? Or can’t you tell me?”

  “I wrote reports. It was intelligence gathering for the Ministry of Defence. I had a security clearance that meant I could review sensitive documents.”

  “But on what?”

  “All sorts of stuff I could never talk about. Well, I don’t suppose it really matters any more, but still. I was on the MoD’s books as a special investigator. I was one of their go-to people for biological and chemical weapons research programmes.”

  “Do you mean like WMDs? Iraq war? That sort of stuff?”

  “Exactly. Pretty much every rogue nation had an illegal weapons programme that contravened various international conventions. Our job was to figure out what they were working on, how advanced they were in their research and, if necessary, to call in a strike to shut it down.”

  “I thought that was all fiction. Are you seriously telling me that in this day and age countries were still working on weapons of mass destruction? Unbelievable.”

  “Sure, of course. You’d be surprised how many nations had clandestine programmes, including the UK, although no one would ever admit to it officially.”

  “So those conspiracy theorists were right all along?”

  “Not exactly. But a lot of stuff went on that never made the papers. Most of what I worked on was classified. We investigated all kinds of weapons programmes, anything from biological agents, small pox, anthrax, designer viruses, you name it. Once we had identified the locations of their research and production facilities, boom, a drone would be despatched to take them out. Or, if they couldn’t risk a direct strike, say in China or Russia, then a cyber
-attack would be launched. Remember Stuxnet? There were plenty of malicious worms and computer viruses designed to target specific machinery and systems used in the supply chain. We were pretty good at it.”

  Riley was staring at him open-mouthed.

  “I’m seeing you in a totally new light. So just to be clear, your role in all this was desk-based? You’re telling me you were never sent into the field to hunt down enemy operatives?”

  Zed laughed, enjoying her renewed interest in him.

  “Listen, I had some standard MoD training for people in my line of work. Just routine stuff like counter espionage and self-defence. I think they were worried we were going to be recruited by the Russians or Chinese, blackmailed into betraying state secrets or something. But no, I never got anything that would have been really useful like weapons or combat training. I keep telling you, I wasn’t a soldier. I didn’t do field work.”

  “Pull the other one, Zed. I was always suspicious why you seemed to know so much about how things worked: the military, agriculture, medicine, infrastructure.”

  “I was a science teacher. I paid attention, okay? My training gave me good instincts, taught me how to think, how to reverse-engineer how stuff works. If you have that curiosity then you figure things out. Most people you meet just didn’t care how an engine worked or how crops were grown in the field, why diseases spread in some countries but not others. I suppose I became a student of human nature and what makes people behave in the ways they do.”

  “I get it, you’re smarter than the rest of us,” she said, shaking her head dismissively. “So tell me, what is this Porton Down place? And why have I never heard of it?”

  “It was one of the MoD’s military research facilities. They did all kinds of testing to prepare the country against likely threats. You name it. E coli, anthrax, nerve agents. Top secret stuff mostly. They were the ones who always got a bad rap for testing stuff on animals, primates, guinea pigs. Remember the protests? Activists picketing scientists? They only knew half of what was really going on down there.”

  The door opened and Jack came out, looking Zed up and down. “Well, you certainly kept that quiet, eh Zed? Still waters run deep. Intelligence analyst? Who would have thought it?” he said, slapping him on the back.

  “It hardly seemed relevant, Jack. We all had lives before coming here. It doesn’t change who we are.”

  “Come on, they want you both to come back in.”

  Riley and Zed followed Jack and stood by the wall waiting for their turn for questions. Peterson finished a private conversation, tapping the folder in front of him. He leaned in closer and whispered something inaudible in the Colonel’s ear before looking up and smiling at Riley and Zed.

  “The Colonel was just filling me in on Project Wildfire. Perhaps you would care to add some colour?”

  “My memory is a little rusty but from what I can recall, Wildfire was a DSTL research programme born out of the second Iraq War. Officially, they never found any Weapons of Mass Destruction and politicians and analysts like me took all the blame for overestimating Iraq’s capabilities. But I can assure you that the intelligence reports ahead of the invasion were confirmed. The grounds for war were undeniable, they just couldn’t release that kind of operational intelligence, especially as it related to ongoing programmes. It simply became more convenient to publicly claim that no weapons were found. It was less dramatic that way.”

  He looked out of the window, as if retelling this story was in some way distasteful, painful even.

  “Saddam was already at an advanced stage. He had stockpiled warheads and delivery mechanisms, the infrastructure of a fully-functional chemical and biological weapons programme. Tens of thousands of litres of anthrax were found, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. We had evidence they were working on something more deadly. A clear and present danger to the West if left unchecked. We concluded that within three to five years, he would have been ready to launch an attack on Israel or one of his other enemies in the region. If those weapons were to be smuggled to the West or fall into the wrong hands, then the death toll would have been unimaginable. Or at least that was the fear. When the Allies located Saddam’s research and production facility in Baghdad, all of the data and samples were removed for safe disposal and incineration. Off the record, the live samples they found were never destroyed. Instead they set up Project Wildfire to continue the research.”

  “Why Wildfire? What was so special about this Iraqi programme that the Allies wanted to maintain it. Surely the technology and research in the West were much more advanced?”

  “Yes, and no. The Iraqis were not acting alone. They almost certainly had help from the Russians or Chinese. Amongst all the different programmes we uncovered, there were some that were less conventional, shall we say.”

  “Less conventional than anthrax?” sneered the Colonel.

  “Theoretically, they were attempting to weaponise the flu virus, but for so many reasons it was flawed. They were obsessed with the idea of designing a virus to specifically target the West. It was entirely impractical. In reviewing their research, our own teams at Porton and other DSTL facilities dismissed their ideas as unworkable, their scientists as crackpots.”

  “What happened to the Iraqi team who were working on this?”

  “It was rumoured that they were the subject of extraordinary rendition to the US. They were unquestionably debriefed in the UK but what happened next is still a mystery. Perhaps they were flown on to a secret facility in the States where they would continue their research. But I never believed that. Last I heard, Project Wildfire was mothballed, shut down.”

  “Officially, that’s correct,” said the Colonel tapping the cover of the report. “Project Wildfire was cancelled, its funding withdrawn. But I’m not so sure.”

  “What makes you suspicious Colonel?” asked Peterson.

  “When I was at Porton Down, there were all kinds of active programmes that even I didn’t have access to. They were compartmentalised for security reasons. Most teams worked in isolation, unaware of what others were working on in the labs next door. We were sworn to secrecy, warned never to discuss our work. It is entirely possible that Project Wildfire just went underground. The only people who would know for sure are still at Porton. If they’re even still alive.”

  Peterson leaned forward, staring directly at Zed.

  “Zed, we’re putting together a special recon mission and we want you to be part of it. We need a team to go to Porton Down. You’ll accompany Colonel Abrahams and Professor Nicholas, make contact with whoever is in charge there, assess the situation and the status of their own research and report in. Either we bring back the equipment and samples we need to continue their research back on the island, or we share what we know with Porton Down, pool our resources and evacuate their team. They’ll be safer at Newport. I’m sending Sergeant Jones and his Seal team with you to provide security and guidance if things get hairy. They’re trained for these types of missions. You’ll be in good hands.”

  “But Lieutenant, Porton Down is miles away. The roads through the forest are dangerous, impassable even. How do you propose we get a team of this size there and back? Let alone transport all their equipment back to the island.”

  “We’ll fly you up there. But depending on what you find when you get there, we’ll need you to requisition vehicles to bring back the equipment and any personnel with you. Our plan is to meet you near Totton, just outside Southampton, where we’ll have boats ready to transport the men and equipment to the island and on to the hospital.”

  “Why me?” asked Riley. “What do you need me for?”

  “Because Jack tells me you’re one of the best he’s got.”

  Riley looked back wide-eyed, enjoying the compliment. Peterson pulled out a handwritten sheet with her name at the top. “With all that testosterone on board, we need someone who can keep those men in check. It says here you have medical training in first aid, specialist counselling and physiotherapy fo
r veterans with post-traumatic stress and other mental health issues. You are also weapons-trained. We’re not sure what we’re going to find at Porton Down. You would be an asset to the team.”

  He smiled as she raised her eyebrows, a grin spreading across her face.

  “Well, God help us then.”

  “That’s the spirit. Listen up,” said Peterson leaning forward with some animation. “This could be our Hail Mary shot. Porton Down may well be the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for.”

  They all nodded wearily. They had all heard optimistic claims like this before. They had grown cynical over the years.

  Jack relented. “It’s a risk, but one we need to take.”

  “Hail Mary indeed,” whispered Riley, as they turned to leave, nudging Zed in the ribs.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  After a couple of miles of tarmac, the open-top army truck carrying Heather and the other new arrivals turned off the main road to Newport on to a muddy farm track. They were headed towards a cluster of farm buildings in the distance, following a convoy of three other identical trucks. It was standing room only. Forty or fifty of them were tightly packed together, holding onto anything within reach. The truck lurched violently to one side, bouncing over a mound of earth. Heather was thrown against the elbow of a gangly adolescent who pushed her away. She clutched at her midriff, temporarily winded.

  Since her separation from her brother Connor, she had been crying softly into the damp hood of her jacket. What were they going to do to him? What did they do with the infected, if that’s what he was? Would they care for them, feed them? Or just leave them to die, like animals? She was sure he wasn’t properly sick. If he had it, then she would have it too, and she had none of the symptoms. She had to believe it was just a cold, or, at worst, a fever. Why wouldn’t they listen to her?

  When their mum had got sick two years ago, they had both been exposed to the virus. If they were going to catch it, they would have caught it back then. Rowan had said she might be one of the lucky ones who were immune. She had to believe that Connor would survive. She clung to that hope and it gave her strength.