“No one is saying that,” explained LaSalle. “We think it’s more likely a rogue employee smuggled out virus samples for use in a coordinated terror plot.”
Gill rolled her eyes at the repeated suggestion of bioterrorism.
“Just hear us out, Gill. Around the time of the pandemic, GCHQ intercepted encrypted communication between a group of Islamic extremists discussing the practicalities of staging an attack of this nature. Counter-terrorism officers from SO15 raided a disused office building being used as a field laboratory. The threat was deemed highly credible. There were other suspected cells in Paris and Brussels. I’m sure Monsieur LaSalle can tell us more about Interpol’s investigation.”
“Colonel, please. We’ve already wasted too much time entertaining implausible theories about bioterrorism. My team has already confirmed that MV-27 is a natural mutation of an avian flu strain that’s been tracked for nearly a decade now.”
“Then how do you explain the presence of genetic code from an Iraqi-Russian prototype weapon from the Nineties?” challenged LaSalle.
“Viruses exchange genetic material all the time.”
“With a man-made bioweapon stored underground within a secure facility?”
“Yes, it’s statistically more likely than your terrorist scenario. Nature sometimes finds a way.” Gill shrugged.
“Look, I get it. No scientist wants to admit that one of their colleagues is responsible for genocide. But the only thing stopping some disaffected employee from unleashing biological Armageddon was access to a suitable pathogen and the means of transmission. Porton’s security has been questioned before.”
“Those are hardly trivial considerations, Colonel.”
“Perhaps you are unaware, Gill, that every request the UN made for transparency was personally denied by Major Donnelly? Porton Down ignored protests from the international community by continuing to research and store highly infectious pathogens. You said it yourself, sometimes nature finds a way, despite our best efforts at safety.”
Zed leaned forward. He had remained neutral up to this point, listening to the back and forth, defending Gill where necessary, until now. “Gill, the Colonel’s right. This country’s biosafety record was consistently poor. Accidental release happened more often than we cared to admit. No one’s forgotten the faulty drainage system at the foot and mouth research facility in Surrey.”
“I’m not pretending accidents don’t happen. They do, just like any laboratory. For obvious reasons, incidents at Porton get routinely suppressed from the national press. I’d admit, it’s not uncommon for lab workers to infect themselves, take their work home at weekends. But, I say again, Porton Down was hardly the only facility undertaking research into flu viruses. My team consulted on several private sector projects. I must have personally visited more than a dozen facilities in Asia, South America and the Middle East.”
“All of which were tiny compared with Porton’s,” countered the colonel. “I don’t believe any of us should discount the ‘inside man’ theory.”
“Meaning?” asked LaSalle.
“The reason I put Mister Fox forward for the role of Porton’s Head of Security was his proactive approach to employee profiling, rooting out cases of staff criminality or pre-empting mental health issues and substance abuse, before they could embarrass the MoD.”
“I thought he drew a blank,” claimed Gill. “We were led to believe no evidence of wrongdoing was discovered.”
“We don’t yet know the full picture.”
“Colonel, Mister Fox spent weeks trawling through personnel records, interviewing each member of the team. He drew a blank.”
“Because anything incriminating was destroyed months ago,” insisted Zed. “Porton’s records are no longer reliable.”
“Look, Fox’s system was foolproof. Virtually impossible to cheat. We were all routinely screened for drugs and alcoholism, psychologically profiled every quarter. None of us liked it, but we understood it was necessary, for national security.”
“The trial was so successful, we rolled Fox’s system out across the entire Ministry of Defence. After what happened with Bruce Ivins, we had to be certain that all personnel working with dangerous pathogens were stable and trustworthy.” LaSalle angled his head, unfamiliar with the name. “You remember the anthrax attacks. 2001. Ivins worked in the labs at Fort Detrick, Maryland. When the FBI searched his laboratory they found dozens of items were missing. It’s why GCHQ insisted on Fox and the security upgrades at Porton.”
“My point exactly,” claimed Gill. “All pathogen samples were locked down, meticulously inventoried, access became tightly controlled. They installed about a hundred CCTV cameras, motion tracking, thermal imaging, RFID tags, the works. If anyone moved one of those vials from storage, an alarm activated. There’s no way some rogue employee could just help themselves from the pathogen shelf, slip a container into their sock, like they do in the movies.”
“In my experience, safeguards deter the curious but not those intent on villainy,” suggested Zed. “You said yourself, in any secure system, people are always the weak link.”
“Donnelly’s solution was technology. He pushed for full automation throughout the production process. He planned to eliminate human involvement altogether, but artificial intelligence only gets you so far. There’s no substitute for skilled technicians.”
“It only takes one disaffected scientist with a grudge to upset the apple cart,” admitted the colonel.
“True, but let’s be clear, a sachet of anthrax powder is one thing, but a single scientist could never start a pandemic,” claimed Gill. “An attack on a global scale would require an entire army of volunteers willing to infect themselves and spread disease.”
“Regardless of how the sample was obtained, we still have the problem of distribution,” said Zed.
“Perhaps it’s time the Secretary General shared his team’s latest hypothesis.”
LaSalle’s eye twitched involuntarily as he considered the colonel’s request.
“My people spent several months chasing their tails, exploring theories that seemed barely credible, testing and retesting assumptions.” LaSalle seemed almost embarrassed by what he was about to say. “You’ll remember those awful plastic toys given out by fast-food restaurants with kids’ meals.”
“Of course. Dino Meal Deals. My children were obsessed with collecting them all,” admitted Zed.
“Well, they were manufactured in a plant in Guangzhou, China. All from a single source, shipped in tiny air-tight packets. Hundreds of thousands of them. Some of the toys tested positive for MV-27.”
“Someone has a sick sense of humour,” laughed Zed sardonically, shaking his head.
“I’m sorry. My English…,” apologised LaSalle.
“No, I was just imagining the names those ad men came up with. Terror-dactyl, Die-no-sore, Plata-virus.”
“I wish this was a joke, Mister Samuels,” explained LaSalle, to Zed’s embarrassment.
“I see,” said Zed, taking stock, “then, if it’s true, it may fit with the American’s suspicions about the Phoenix group.”
“Phoenix?” interrupted Gill. “The environmental campaigners?”
“With a radical inner circle who committed themselves to a new world order, fresh start for humanity, that sort of thing. Borderline cult. They understood, maybe better than anyone, they could never win a conventional war, so they operated in the shadows. A-geographic, online, offline. Endless, repeating cycles of disorder.”
“God, I think I attended one of their rallies in Salisbury,” admitted Gill, remembering.
“They learned from the Russians how easy it is to project power without detection, to interfere with foreign elections, then slip away before anyone noticed.”
“Zed’s right. Phoenix showed utter contempt for international law. They laughed at our threats of sanctions.”
Zed took over. “Phoenix realised that if you play with your opponent’s sense of reality, then
you can manipulate them in myriad ways: what’s true or false? They began a war of competing narratives. Pitting one side against another, stoking far-right nationalism, splintering the very organisations we created to preserve peace. The UN, NATO, the EU. They made an entire business out of mass-producing alternative facts.”
“And we were all taken in,” added the colonel. “In the end, GCHQ and the NSA simply had no answer. The Russians even had a name for this type of deception: maskirovka or masquerade. The few times Putin got caught red-handed, like in Ukraine or the attack on Malaysia Airlines flight 17, he denied everything, blamed it on rogue units. It’s classic Sun Tzu. Activities designed to confuse or deceive one’s opponent. To outsmart your enemy without fighting.”
“Donnelly’s been manipulating all of you since the beginning,” suggested LaSalle. Disrupting your communication since day one.”
“What makes you say that?” asked Gill.
“In the first few months after the outbreak, we were negotiating with UK authorities in southern England about the quarantine. Then one day everything stopped. Phones, email, and internet connections. Interference on that scale had to be military.””
“Misinformation creates chaos and uncertainty,” acknowledged the colonel. “Up until now Donnelly’s success depended on information supremacy. Misdirection kept us guessing, forcing us to spread our resources thin. We’ve been wrong-footed and ill-prepared from the start. But not any more. Now the UN is here, we have him on the run.”
An explosion physically lifted the four of them off their feet. Zed found himself face down on the icy steel floor, his legs taken out from under him. Outside, a flash of heat and flame burst through the crack in the door and was gone as quickly as it arrived, long enough to sear Zed’s face and singe the hair on the back of his head.
Half-stunned from the blast and noise, Zed helped the others to their feet before staggering into the corridor. A secondary explosion threw Zed off balance, crashing against the wall. He felt a squeeze in his ears. A pressure differential one might experience at the deep end of a swimming pool. Momentary discomfort followed by a wall of fire surging towards them from the far end of the corridor. Zed threw open the door nearest them and bundled Gill inside, kicking the door closed as heat enveloped their exposed legs. It was gone again by the time he opened his eyes. Then the lights flickered and died.
Chapter 48
In the dim glow from the emergency lighting, Zed and the others dusted themselves down, getting slowly to their feet. From the far end of the passageway, the fire alarm sounded every few seconds, followed by a muffled announcement, repeating on a loop.
A slow trickle of blood pulsed from a minor cut to LaSalle’s forehead. Zed grabbed a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and applied pressure to the wound. The colonel was on his knees, doubled over, winded by the force of the explosion. Gill appeared the worst affected, staring at the wall with unseeing eyes.
Zed’s thoughts turned quickly to the others: Riley, Anders, Terra, Lieutenant Peterson, the professor. He steadied himself against the door frame, fighting a wave of nausea before staggering along the passageway. He met LaSalle’s bodyguard coming the other way, searching for his boss. Zed pointed out the Belgian’s whereabouts.
The cathedral-like chamber was barely recognisable. Several containers had toppled, their doors buckled, scattering a thousand plastic jerry cans across the floor, like some giant art installation. Debris blocked the bulkhead door. On his hands and knees, Zed managed to squeeze through the small gap. A body lay half-buried by the fall, their face smashed to a pulp, barely human, just a mass of tissue, blood and bone.
A groan to his right drew Zed’s attention to a pair of legs, feet twitching, torso shielded by twisted metalwork. The colonel was at Zed’s side in an instant, straining to relieve the pressure on the victim’s thighs. Between them, they levered the rusting joist to one side. The shock in the crewman’s eyes was almost palpable. He felt no pain, staring blankly at the night sky. They tried to get him upright but his cries deterred any further attempts. They were causing more harm than good.
“Stay here, we’ll get help,” the colonel reassured the man, propping his head against a seat cushion. They searched around for other survivors, listening carefully for any sound or movement, met only by an eerie silence.
“We need to move,” encouraged the colonel, noticing Zed’s disorientation and slurred movements.
“What about Gill?”
“I’ll get her, you finish here.”
By the time the colonel reappeared with the others, Zed had made the grisly discovery of two further bodies. He had also found a way through. Putting an arm around Gill’s waist, he supported her towards the stairwell, stepping gingerly around a body lying face down on the steel deck. She was a little unsteady on her feet, ducking through a narrow opening. LaSalle clutched a blood-soaked handkerchief to his forehead, cursing the rapid departure of his UN entourage.
The party of five hurried beyond an automatic bulkhead door, worried it might close without warning. Zed checked the mechanism, puzzled why it hadn’t engaged. The colonel tugged at his sleeve.
“Come on, we have to keep moving.”
They passed the loud speaker broadcasting the message for crew to proceed to muster stations. A map on the wall showed the location of the nearest exit, down the corridor to the left.
The stairwell gave access to the next level up, heading astern towards the crew quarters and bridge several decks above them. At the junction, they found another badly injured person collapsed against the bulkhead, still breathing, his face blackened, almost unrecognisable, flesh torn open by the heat, blistered and burned, barely responsive to Zed’s comforting touch. “We’ll find help.”
They all became aware of the steady trickle of water streaming from the light fitting high on the wall, that fizzed and sparked intermittently. From the bunk rooms further down the corridor came coughing and groaning. Thick smoke caught in their throats. Cries of agony drove them onwards. Anyone caught in the superheated flash fire would have died instantly. A white powder covered the floor here. The colonel said it was evidence the fire detection system had activated, extinguishing the flames that had scorched everything they came into contact with. Zed recoiled at the sight of bones protruding from one man’s charred calf and thigh. The sickly sweet stench of roasted meat. In the canteen, a haze hung from the ceiling, flames in the far room licking the kitchen counter, fanned by a breeze from a smashed porthole.
One of Anders’s men emerged from his cabin wearing only his trousers, disoriented, hair smouldering, chest blackened. Zed tried speaking to him but the vacant stare confirmed the man was in shock.
The entire ship seemed to lurch to starboard. Perhaps a bulkhead somewhere succumbing to the flood of seawater coursing through the ship, slowly filling every air pocket. Gill paused, attending to a man whose outstretched hand twitched violently from the agony.
“We can’t stop,” warned the colonel, “we have to keep moving.”
Zed rounded the next corner and narrowly avoided colliding with Anders, too preoccupied to acknowledge them, clutching the ship’s schematics. A younger man with a shock of blonde hair kept pace just behind.
“Anders,” Zed shouted to the pair’s surprise. “What’s going on?”
“We need to sound the ship. Maybe the engine room, or the fuel store exploded,” he shouted. “I need to know whether the hull’s damaged.”
“Let us help you?”
Anders glanced at their frightened faces. LaSalle and the colonel had only one thought, getting themselves off the ship as quickly as possible, but Zed lingered. He had never run from danger in his life. He wasn’t going to start now.
“The rest of you follow the signs, get top side. Zed, you come with me.”
Gill grabbed Zed’s arm, pleading with him, but he pushed her hand away, with a thin smile and a nod.
“Captain,” shouted a man with a blackened face from the top of the stairwel
l. “We’ve found it. Port side. Behind the diesel generators.”
“How bad?”
“Engine room is flooded. Two metres deep and rising.”
Anders cursed in what Zed assumed was Danish. “Are the pumps holding?”
“Barely. We’re trying to restore power on decks four and seven. Some of the automatic bulkhead doors didn’t activate.” The colonel and Zed must have shared the same thought. Sabotage?
“There were two on the deck below this one wide open,” confirmed Zed. “This side of the hold.”
“Gregor, go check,” ordered Anders.
“How long do we have, Captain?”
“If we can’t stop the flooding, twenty, maybe thirty minutes, depending how bad the damage is.” Anders issued further commands to the remaining crew, who raced off in opposite directions. They were to find as many life jackets and warm clothes as possible. “You two, go get the lifeboats ready.”
“What about you, Captain?”
“Don’t wait for us.”
Zed watched them leave, exchanging a nod with Anders as if to check he was up for this. They paused at the muster station, grabbing two floating rubber torches and a heavy-looking axe.
Zed could barely keep up, his legs felt leaden, as Anders hurried along passageways he knew like the back of his hand, down steep stairwells, deeper and deeper into the very bowels of the ship, painted walls blistered and buckled by the intense heat, steelwork misshapen by the blast. One of the bulkhead doors had been torn from its hinges, like a child’s toy.
The Hurst Chronicles | Book 4 | Harbinger Page 36
