by Matt Rogers
Slater had to jump.
It was the only option.
Not quite convinced that the fall wouldn’t kill him, he sucked up every ounce of nerve in his body and stuffed it down, suppressing his natural instincts to remain in the tray.
You have to go.
Now.
He blanched, paling as his limbs failed him. The ground on either side of the Land Cruiser raced by at an unbelievable rate, blurring as the driver’s body leant further on the accelerator.
GO!
He threw himself off the tray, into open space.
For a second he fell, blissfully suspended in the air, letting the wind buffet against his clothes, stinging the wound in his calf where a chunk of flesh had been torn clean off.
Then he smashed into the hard rock with enough concussive force to blast him into temporary unconsciousness, an impact that shook him all the way through to the core. His brain turned to a stutter-like effect, flashing in and out of experience. He felt his legs slapping the ground, then his back, then his arms, and finally his head, bouncing off the promontory floor like a watermelon cracking open.
He had rolled with the impact, taking most of the trauma out of the landing.
But it shut him down all the same.
He came to rest in a seated position, hunched over in sheer crippling agony as the Land Cruiser sped away behind him. A few seconds later, he heard the screeching of metal and the thunderous boom as the truck crunched into a jagged outcrop of rocks, crumpling in on itself.
He simply sat, and squeezed his eyes shut, and panted like a dying dog.
The Jericho was nowhere to be found. He had lost it at some point during the brutal barrel roll. He rested both hands in his lap and blinked back a strange, nauseating sensation.
Something had broken within him.
It was an odd dynamic. He had never experienced such determination coursing through him, desperate beyond measure to secure that fucking satellite phone, but his body refused to respond. It had taken the beating of a lifetime, a series of succeeding injuries, each more grim than the last. Now he floated in a strange semi-conscious state, his mind screaming at his limbs to function but finding no response.
Barely able to string a cohesive thought together, he lifted his gaze.
He was powerless to stop it.
The tribesman who he’d seen hauling ass across the flat expanse screeched to a halt fifty feet away. The man stared around in a wide semi-circle, searching for the soft subtle glow of the satellite phone’s screen. He didn’t know where it had fallen, and neither did Slater.
Move, Slater told himself. Get up.
Nothing worked.
A pulsing, searing heat worked its way up his right leg, beginning in his damaged calf and snaking its way into his hip. He winced as the pain threatened to put him to sleep, but all that melted away when he saw what came next.
The tribesman reached down, plucked the satellite phone out of a narrow crack in the baked plateau, and stared at the screen. He pressed the same button that Sayyid had utilised in the Land Cruiser and lifted the device to his ear as the call re-connected.
‘Dhi’b,’ the man said, loud and clear.
His voice echoed across the promontory, and even though Slater’s hearing was operating at a fifth of its normal capacity, he picked up on every inflection in the man’s tone.
The single syllable was laced with finality.
Wolf.
Slater went pale and bowed his head. Above the horrific pain, above all else, depression washed over him.
He had failed.
Dismally.
He sunk down into unconsciousness, suddenly powerless to resist its seductive lure.
The world faded away.
49
Inside the Brigadier-General’s mansion, Abu hunched his back as he leant toward the screen, bathed in its glow. With his nose inches away from the pixels, he studied the lines of code appearing and disappearing across the screen.
They meant nothing to him.
Squinting, trying to filter out the mind-crushing pain emanating from his broken ankle, he noticed each line of code ended with a set of coordinates.
Longitude and latitude.
Abu highlighted one of the newest arrivals on the screen. With nothing else to do, he set to work attempting to figure out what it meant. He drew the keyboard closer to his face and tapped out a couple of basic commands, tweaking the cryptic message in question.
Suddenly, the speakers on either side of the monitors barked into life, jolting Abu in his seat.
‘Be there in twenty minutes,’ a voice said in Arabic.
‘Okay,’ another man said. ‘I’ll wait.’
‘When’s your shift end?’
‘An hour.’
‘Okay.’
An audible click echoed through the empty office.
The code disappeared.
Abu widened his eyes. The program monitored calls…?
Another line of code materialised out of thin air. Abu executed the same commands, and once again audio tore through the otherwise-silent office.
This time, he sat up straight in his seat.
His pulse shot through the roof.
He heard muffled sounds, none of them pleasant. The revving of an engine, the jolting of suspension. Then a distorted gunshot. A clatter, like the device itself had been dropped.
Silence.
Abu sat in the darkened office, rocking back and forth in his seat, plucking at loose strands of hair atop his head. He had never experienced a silence so uncomfortable.
What the hell was going on?
Then a new voice appeared. On the other end of the line.
‘Hello?’ the voice said, speaking Arabic. It was deep. ‘Hello?’
No-one answered.
The other end of the line hung up also.
Abu froze.
Could it be?
He hastily brought up a satellite map of the Earth by flicking to an empty tab on the computer’s internet browser. He copied the co-ordinates from the line of code before it disappeared, and inputted them into the program as fast as possible.
They brought up a location.
Abu froze in panic.
A red arrow dropped into the mountainside above Qasam, revealing the source of the call. He leapt out of his seat, sweating hard, scrambling to work out what to do.
No-one had said anything…
Maybe Slater had got to the phone in time…
He stood awkwardly on one leg for what felt like an eternity, hunched over the bank of screens, chewing at a fingernail.
‘What do I do?’ he muttered. ‘What do I—?’
Suddenly, it made sense why a program like this would exist on al-Mansur’s computer. It monitored all satellite calls in the region, able to anonymously tap into anything within proximity. Al-Mansur must have been using it to keep tabs on the tribes — to make sure his daughter was still alive…
If he had the capability to infiltrate London’s CCTV systems, he surely had the capability to monitor a primitive collection of highlanders…
A new line of code appeared, this one identical to the previous one that Abu had intercepted.
The same device.
Sweating over the keyboard, he executed the same commands as fast as his fingers would allow, his hands shaking as he did so. Paling, wondering what he might find, the audio burst into life.
Vacant ringing.
The call hadn’t been answered yet.
Then the ringing cut off, replaced by a voice.
‘Hello?’
The same deep voice that Abu had heard before.
The bomber.
Awaiting instruction.
They’re going to give the go ahead, a voice in Abu’s head screamed.
Cut it off!
He keyed over to the line of code, executing a kill command with a rapid outburst of typing. He smashed the ENTER button, wondering if it would work.
The other end of the lin
e went dead.
Abu felt like passing out from sheer relief. He slumped back into the chair, wiping sweat from his forehead.
Then a voice boomed out of the speakers.
The bomber’s voice.
Abu had only muted the satellite phone on the mountainside.
He hadn’t killed the call itself.
‘Hello?’ the voice repeated. Then the tone changed. ‘Look, I’m going to assume this is the all-clear. I haven’t heard you both times. There must be connection problems. I’m going ahead with it. Insha’Allah.’
‘Oh, fuck,’ Abu whispered in English.
The bomber hung up the phone.
50
London
England
Ten minutes until discharge
Hussein lifted the backpack over both shoulders, even going so far as to connect the two chest straps, forming a barricade across his upper torso.
Men far smarter than himself had concluded that Kingston would serve as the most virulent suburb to unleash the Marburg virus. With the discharge of the viral spores concealed under the panic of a general suicide bombing, nosy civilians leaving their offices would flock to the scene of the incident, desperate for a look at the small-scale terror attack.
Little did they know that the real thing would begin days or weeks later — and by then, it would have spread through most of London.
The headaches would begin, all at once, crippling most of the population.
Then the nausea.
Then all hell would break loose.
Hussein wouldn’t be around to see it. He had visualised it for months, though. Suddenly calm, he triple checked that the backpack was secure before making for the door for the final time. He knew the direction he was to head. There was a tube station at the end of this street, a central node for all residents of Kingston to funnel through, either to make their way further into London or return home from work.
At six in the evening, the streets would be full with activity.
Hussein could barely wait.
Soon, the three months of tension would be in the past.
Replaced with bliss.
He had managed to get the sweating under control — or perhaps he had nothing left to perspire. In any case, he threw open the door and stepped out into the hallway, silently bidding farewell to the tiny flat that had acted as his home for the past three months.
Soon, his home would rest in the heavens.
The little girl hadn’t moved for the past hour. Unnerved by her presence, he didn’t make eye contact with her this time. There was no need for pleasantries — he had no further need to blend into the millions of other residents of London.
Now, emotionless, expressionless, he locked the door to his flat — he wasn’t sure why exactly — and strode purposefully down the corridor toward the stairwell.
He could feel the child’s eyes boring into him.
He ignored her gaze. As he passed her by, he thought he heard a muffled sob. An anguished outcry. He didn’t respond.
When he made it past her, he breathed a sigh of relief. Again, he wasn’t sure why. Maybe she was a bad omen. When he made it to the stairs and descended rapidly, he forgot all about her. Instead he listened to his shoes ringing off the walls of the stairwell, feeling the weight of the device on his back.
Inside was enough plastic explosive to take out a couple of civilians — those closest to him when he set the thing off.
But — unbeknownst to London when chaos erupted — the steel bomblets had been primed, ready to release the weaponised strain of the Marburg virus into the atmosphere as soon as the traditional explosives detonated. Everything had been crammed into the backpack in such a way that the spores were guaranteed to leak into the street, protected from incineration by the blast itself.
Once again — men far smarter than himself.
He was simply the trigger man.
Reaching the bottom of the stairwell, he took a deep breath and prepared himself for the last act of his short life.
In ten minutes, he would unleash something not even he could fathom.
51
Diana couldn’t take it anymore.
She had slipped back inside half an hour earlier. Briefly.
It had culminated in another verbal assault from Steve, lambasting her for fleeing and worrying her mother. Diana told Steve where to stick his criticism, and returned hastily to the hallway to stew over what had transpired.
This time, the tears didn’t stop.
She sniffled and wiped her eyes and choked back sadness, but nothing seemed to stem the pain. Her home had been torn from her, and she had been forced out here to try and deal with it. She was too young to handle any of this — she wanted to simply get away, as far away from Steve and her mother as she possibly could.
She wanted new parents.
She wanted a new home.
She wanted a new life.
When the quiet man from the end of the hallway materialised again, Diana tried to make eye contact with him. She pleaded for attention — anything to take her mind off her home life. She pined for a conversation with an ordinary human being. The man seemed entirely different though — it puzzled Diana. He had affixed her with a kind look every time they’d seen each other for as long as she could remember.
It had been months since the man had moved in.
Even though they had never spoken, Diana had always felt that the man silently cared about her. Now his actions seemed robotic. His stare had turned vacant. All the colour had drained from his face and his eyes flicked off the walls incessantly, never hovering in one place for too long.
Never coming to rest on Diana herself.
It seemed like he was both nervous and excited for something. He was still wearing the same enormous backpack — she had never seen him with it before today.
He moved straight past her, almost deliberately ignoring her. Diana watched the backpack shift up and down as he continued to stride down the corridor, laser-focused.
The bitter voices flared up again, emanating from underneath the gap at the bottom of her front door. She listened to the venomous tone of her mother’s voice, then the overwhelming rage of a deeper male voice — Steve at his most furious.
No more.
Diana got tentatively to her feet and shuffled from foot to foot, still hesitant.
The stranger from down the hall disappeared into the stairwell. He was moving fast. With purpose.
She wondered why.
The past six months of her life rose to a boiling point inside her. She felt every scrap of sadness and anguish. The tears refused to stop flowing. She couldn’t take another day — even another minute — hanging around this hole. It didn’t feel like home.
It hadn’t for quite some time.
Without realising the ramifications of what she was doing, Diana trotted after the stranger.
She had never actually spoken to him before.
She wanted to change that.
52
Slater came screaming back to reality in a cacophony of noise and light.
For a moment he thought the world was ending, but he quickly realised it was all in his head. Needles of strobe-like lighting seared across his vision, as if deliberately waking him from the dead. His heartbeat roared in his ears, drowning out all other sounds — of which there were plenty. As the thrumming of his pulse became muted, he heard rabid screaming echoing across the promontory.
He looked up and blanched at what he saw.
Confusion still reigned across the plateau — multiple silhouettes ghosted across the flat ground, their features plunged into darkness by the night. They were tribesmen, and there were plenty of them. Slater had enough common sense to recognise that he didn’t stand a chance against them. In optimal health, he would have torn through the remaining forces without breaking a sweat.
Now, though…
He didn’t want to assess his injuries. He knew he would pass out if he did. He could barely fee
l his right leg — the bullet wound was no doubt horrific, having ripped a chunk of his calf clean off. Briefly he wondered why he hadn’t passed out from blood loss yet. If the wound had cut his fibular artery, he wouldn’t have lasted a minute.
He was lucky in that regard.
Then he saw the distant pale glow of the satellite phone, still clutched in the grip of the tribesman who had single-handedly cast a major city into something out of the apocalypse, and his memories came screaming back.
Nausea twisted his gut.
He had failed.
The reminder hammered home, just as he locked eyes with the tribesman. The man noticed him, sitting there helplessly near the mouth of the mountain trail, unable to mount any kind of decent resistance.
The man’s face twisted into a sinister grin.
Not only had he succeeded at carrying out his leader’s plan — now the man had the opportunity to avenge Sayyid’s death.
Slater watched him duck into the pick-up truck he had used to cross the promontory and fire up the engine.
The headlights flared, blinding Slater to what came next. He squinted in the glare, his head pounding, his brain pleading for rest.
The pick-up truck shot towards him.
He willed himself to move, to do anything to stop the resulting impact, but his legs refused to work. They had turned to jelly, just as the majority of his body had, shutting itself down to combat the pain rolling over him like an invisible ghoul tweaking all his nerve endings at once.
The pick-up truck surged forward, its hood aimed straight at Slater’s motionless form.
Slater bowed his head to shield his eyes from the approaching lights. He didn’t have the willpower to move — what was the point?
As he sat there, London would be reeling from one of the most devastating attacks in human history.
He didn’t deserve to live to see the aftermath.
It was his fault.
As he drooped his head to face the dusty rock beneath his feet, he noticed a man-made object resting at the very edge of his blurred vision. He rolled his head to study it, using what little energy he had left.
