by Baker, Adam
He found himself in a glass airlock cubicle.
A large Chemturion bio-suit and hood hung on a wall hook.
He peeled off his gasmask and stripped out of his clothes. He pulled on surgical scrubs. He stepped into the heavy white hazmat suit and sealed the zipper seam. The suit had an integral hood and Lexan visor. Boots and gloves secured with lock-rings.
He hit open. The glass partition slid back.
He lumbered like an astronaut. Heavy footfalls.
He entered a steel enclosure. Mirror-metal walls like a bank vault. No chairs, no counters. An empty space. A constant contamination alert lit the room red.
Gaunt put his backpack on the floor, his movements made slow and deliberate by the cumbersome suit. He plugged the yellow coiled air hose into a wall socket. He fumbled. Thick gloves like mittens.
An abrupt hiss. His ears popped as pressure within the suit increased. Rubber crackled as it inflated and ballooned around him. Stale air replaced by fresh.
A metal coffin in the middle of the vault floor. Konstantin, the dead cosmonaut, sealed in a triple-lined casket.
Gaunt knelt beside the coffin. The sarcophagus lid was secured by latches, wing nuts and a rubber seal. He looked through the porthole. An eyeless, mummified face stared back at him. Skin stretched like leather. Lips pulled back in a snarl. Blond stubble. A web of strange metal knots and tendrils woven into dried flesh. Metallic fibres bristling from the man’s mouth, nose and eye sockets. Brain colonised and eaten away.
‘What about the virus vault?’ asked Koell.
‘A large freezer. Bomb-proof. Independent power source.’
‘Who had access to the vault?’
‘I did,’ said Ignatiev.
‘Jabril?’
‘No. Certainly not. I wouldn’t let him near the fourth containment. The more I spoke with the man, the more I became convinced he was unhinged. His universe had come to an end. He had been part of Saddam’s security apparatus his entire adult life. His role had provided money and status. Now, with the fall of the regime, he had no identity. He was desperate for direction and meaning. And he found himself confronted by something alien, something stranger than he could possibly imagine. He was enthralled. His fascination had a religious intensity. I felt he had become dangerous.
‘Technicians, including myself, already had reservations about the Spektr project. The more we studied the pathogen, the more we became convinced it could not be safely contained. My colleagues were dedicated biochemists. Men of science, not prone to fancy. Yet we began to speculate that the parasite possessed some glimmer of sentience, a strange insect cunning. Some nights, as I lay in my bunk, I convinced myself the infected body parts racked in jars in our freezers contained some kind of hive mind, possessed by a single harmonious purpose: to reach out beyond this valley and infect a major population centre. I began to fear and hate the thing I saw writhing and blossoming each day; the sinister cellscape beneath the lens of my microscope. Metallic fibres as they branched and spread, slowly infiltrating human nerve cells. I began to suspect, during long hours I spent alone in the lab, that we under-estimated this organism. Maybe it was studying us.
‘It seemed Jabril experienced a similar epiphany. He understood the destructive potential of EmPath. He was intoxicated by the holocaust the parasite could unleash. I ordered that Jabril be watched. I told Karl, one of our Russian goons, to observe him and report erratic behaviour. When the time came, when Jabril was of no further use, he was to be shot in the back of the head and thrown into the lime pit. Until then, he was vital to the operation of the camp. Troops followed his commands without question. But he continued to drink heavily. I judged he was becoming a liability. He was simply too curious. He was fascinated by the virus.’
‘Tell me about the Hellfire. Is it intact?’
Ignatiev’s voice, tired, defeated: ‘It’s still sealed in the case, ready to fly.’
‘Good.’
‘What was the target site?’ asked Ignatiev. ‘If we delivered the virus, what would you have done with it?’
Long pause.
‘The target was a UN refugee centre outside Mosul,’ said Koell. ‘Inmates call it “New Medina”. Fifteen thousand displaced families in a tent city. No good to anyone. No good to themselves. Blast dispersal. We would wait for optimum wind conditions. Late evening, as the air settles and cools. The missile would be launched from a drone and tracked via GPS. We would detonate at five hundred feet, directly over the Red Cross inoculation clinic at the centre of the camp. Thirty acres of tents arranged in a rigid street-grid. A perfect environment to test the efficacy of the weapon.’
‘You sick motherfuckers.’
‘We would have men on site. Have them pose as volunteer doctors from Saudi Red Crescent. They would wear bio-suits and film the outbreak. Take blood samples, track the speed of infection. When they judged the test had run its course, when the pandemic began to threaten their personal safety, they would drive from the camp and steps would be taken to contain the situation.’
‘You couldn’t halt the spread of infection,’ said Ignatiev. ‘The virus would quickly pass beyond the camp and out into the world.’
‘We would drop a massive fuel bomb. It would erase the entire camp in a moment of cleansing fire.’
‘You’re a fool. An absolute fool. I’m happy to die. I mean it. I consider myself blessed. You can’t comprehend the horror you will unleash. You’ll turn the surface of this planet into hell. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to be alive when it happens.’
‘Is that it? Nothing left to tell?’
‘Kill me. Please. I’ve talked long enough. I’ve told you everything I know. Just kill me. Let me sleep.’
‘But what about the freezer? How do we release the lock?’
‘It is a simple biometric mechanism.’
‘All right.’
‘If you truly want to serve your country, you will destroy every trace of this virus.’
‘Fuck America. A single litre is enough to switch off the human race. No one has ever had that kind of power, held it in their hand.’
‘You’re out of your fucking mind.’
Koell walked into camera shot. He held a hypodermic gun. He fired the gun into Ignatiev’s bicep.
‘Damn you,’ murmured Ignatiev. His eyelids drooped, his head sank to his chest and his breathing slowed to a halt.
The recording came to an end.
Koell leant forward and closed the laptop. He refilled Gaunt’s whisky tumbler for the fourth time.
‘Are you clear?’ asked Koell. ‘You know what you have to do?’
‘Yeah. I got it.’
Gaunt stood before the virus vault. A steel freezer.
CAUTION
LIVE BIOLOGICAL AGENTS
He typed the entry key. He swiped the card.
Ocular scan required
He reached into his backpack. An eyeball floating in a small jar. Pale iris and a tuft of optic nerve.
He held the eyeball to the L-1 Ident iris scan. A brief wash of red laser-light.
Thank you, Doctor Ignatiev.
You are clear to enter.
Hum and clack. Bolts retracted. Gaunt unlatched the door and hauled it open. Icy exhalation. A torrent of nitrogen fog cascaded from the freezer, washed across the floor and engulfed his boots. Skin-prickle chill.
The fog slowly cleared.
An empty shelf. No case. No missile. The warhead was gone.
The Catacombs
‘Let’s find the generator,’ said Voss. ‘Let’s get the lights on.’
Jabril led him deep into the tunnel. Voss pulled a flare from his pocket. He struck the cap. Splutter and fizz. Crimson fire. Limestone walls lit blood red.
‘How does it feel to be back?’ asked Voss.
‘I dream about this place every night,’ said Jabril. ‘Awful nightmares. It almost feels like coming home.’
‘Yeah?’
‘It’s difficult to explain. Some events,
some places, are so terrible they become an indelible part of you.’
The cavern.
Voss checked the lab units.
A scorched hatch hung open and crooked.
‘Someone blew their way inside,’ said Jabril. ‘Some kind of breaching charge. Very recent. I can still smell the cordite.’
‘Gaunt. Better watch our backs.’
Voss stepped inside the lab.
He kicked at the Chemturion suit crumpled on the floor.
He examined the polished zinc of the necropsy slab. Cuff restraints. IV stand. Examination lights. A camera tripod.
Surgical instruments laid out on a metal table. He picked up stainless steel pliers.
‘Bone rongeurs,’ explained Jabril. ‘For splitting skulls.’
Voss snorted in disgust. He threw the rongeurs onto the necropsy slab. Harsh clatter.
‘We should leave,’ said Jabril. ‘We shouldn’t be in here. It’s too dangerous. We have no protective clothing.’
They left the lab.
They approached the high, opaque plastic dome of the bio-containment structure.
‘Is this Spektr?’ asked Voss.
‘It’s safe. The craft itself is not contaminated.’
Voss slung his shotgun. He unsheathed his knife and slit plastic. He ducked through the polythene curtain, and held the flare above his head.
The orbital craft rested on a flatbed rail car.
Voss walked a slow circuit of the vehicle. He ducked beneath the ragged Delta wing. He reached up and stroked thermal tiles discoloured by the unimaginable heat of hypersonic re-entry.
‘This thing actually flew through space,’ he murmured. ‘Left the Earth and came back again.’
Jabril contemplated the shadows of the open airlock.
‘Pandora’s box. We should have left this craft in the desert. It would have been buried forever.’
Lucy climbed the ladder to the locomotive walkway. She entered the cab.
She rolled the dead engineer with her foot. No signs of infection.
She checked the pockets of the engineer’s boiler suit. Cigarettes. Prayer beads. A key.
She dragged the body out onto the walkway. She lifted the desiccated corpse over the guard rails and threw it onto the track.
She returned to the cab. The engineer’s console. Red brake handle. Big throttle. Key slot.
She inserted the key and turned the ignition.
Nothing. No instrumentation lights, no engine noise. She looked around the cab for breakers, any kind of power switch.
A brief flutter of panic and despair, crushed before it began.
RSM Miller, her platoon sergeant, laid it out for her, the day she applied for the Fourteen Intelligence Company.
‘The difference between regular army and special forces is simply the ability to maintain composure. To think straight in situations of extreme peril. Special recon training is a constant live-fire exercise. Endless boot camp endurance tasks while bullets whizz past your head. I’ve been out to that dummy village they built on Salisbury Plain. So many cartridge cases lying around, they crunch underfoot like gravel. The instructors will teach you to think through a haze of adrenalin and exhaustion. They’ll teach you to survive.’
Lucy swigged from her canteen. She rubbed her eyes.
The locomotive wouldn’t fire up. Maybe the ignition battery was dead. Must be some way to check available current.
She began a methodical survey of the cab.
Jabril left Voss in the cavern.
‘I want to find my old room, collect some of my things.’
He wandered down a low passageway. His blue cyalume lit chiselled walls, timber props and roof beams.
A faded door sign.
Dynamite Store.
Jabril pushed open the rough wooden door. A small cell. A windowless cave.
A canvas cot, a table, a trunk. A wash table and mirror.
His old room.
Jabril sat on the bunk. He lay the cyalume on the blanket. The chemical stick lit the room cold blue.
He dragged the trunk towards the cot. Leather. Louis Vuitton. A relic of his previous life.
He unbuckled straps and popped latches.
Books and neatly folded clothes. He searched among his possessions. He found a gold cigarette case and a Ronson lighter.
He lay on the cot and smoked a Turkish cigarette. He cried a little, then sat up and wiped tears.
He flicked away the cigarette.
He took a folded shirt from the trunk. Crisp white. He unrolled a black silk tie. Socks. Silk underwear. Polished brogues.
He unzipped a suit carrier, and laid a white linen suit on the cot. He smoothed creases. He brushed away lint.
Voss explored the cavern. He found a 24 KvA trailer generator parked in a wall niche. Power for the cavern floodlights.
He filled the tank from a jerry can, turned the ignition and set the generator running. Cough and splutter. A puff of diesel smoke. Output needles twitched.
A ring of light towers flickered and glowed steady. The cavern was lit brilliant white. Spektr floodlit beneath its polythene dome.
A voice echoed round the cavern.
‘How’s it going?’
Gaunt. Quiet, mocking.
Voss crouched. He fumbled at a chest pocket. He put on his glasses. He scanned the cavern. No movement. No sign of Gaunt.
‘Reckon you can get that locomotive working?’
Voss pressed himself against the rough sandstone of the cavern wall.
‘So, after all this blood and anguish, Lucy wants to send you home empty handed? How do you feel about it? You’ve seen your friends die. All for nothing.’
Voss gripped the shotgun. Multiple tunnel mouths. Gaunt’s voice reverberated round the cavern.
‘That bomb. That warhead. Do you have any idea how much it is worth? Forget the gold. Boxes of watches and rings, pawned for a fraction of their value. You didn’t want a few dollars in your hand. You weren’t looking for another paycheque. You flew out here with bigger dreams in your head. Lucy promised you a fortune. You were going to lie on a beach for the rest of your life, umbrella drink in your hand. Help me get the warhead back to Baghdad. I swear, you will never work another day in your life.’
‘Come on out,’ said Voss. ‘Let’s talk it over.’
‘Think about it. What’s waiting for you back home? Do you even have a home? Half your life in jail. Zonderwater. Krugersdorp. You’re old. This is your last roll of the dice.’
‘Gaan fok jouself.’
‘I killed your friend. So what? I won’t apologise for pursuing my self-interest. Neither should you. I want to be rich. I want to matter. I want to prove the world wrong. I’m sure you know what that is like. To always be bottom of the pile, the back of the queue. Well, this is it. Your one and only chance to change your life.’
Voss circled the cavern. He checked the entrance of each passageway, shotgun at his shoulder. No sign of Gaunt.
‘The virus cylinder. It’s small enough to slip in your pocket. Small enough to carry home. And it will buy anything you ever wanted.’
‘What would you want in return?’
‘Fifty-fifty split.’
‘I’d be waiting for a double-cross.’
‘That’s why I would play straight.’
Voss thought it over. He rubbed tired eyes.
‘So what do you say?’ prompted Gaunt. ‘Tell me you are interested. That’s all I need to hear. Tell me we have something to talk over.’
‘Yeah,’ Voss heard himself say. ‘Yeah, I’m interested.’
Lucy walked to the mine tunnel entrance. Amanda crouched behind the plank barricade, rifle at her shoulder. Weak dawn light.
‘We had our first customer,’ said Amanda.
Lucy squinted into the gloom. A body on the track.
‘When did he show up?’ asked Lucy.
‘He came round the corner ten minutes ago.’
Voss joined them.
‘They’ll eat through our ammo, pretty quick if they attack en masse,’ he said. ‘How many did Jabril say were out there?’
‘His battalion was under-strength. He reckons about two hundred men.’
‘I’ve got a few boxes of .308,’ said Amanda. ‘A good stack of mags for the rifles, a few for the Glocks. But sooner or later we would shoot dry and get overrun.’
‘What about the locomotive?’ asked Voss. ‘What’s the deal? Can it roll or what?’
‘Yeah,’ said Lucy. ‘Given time, I reckon she’ll move.’
‘We need to set a deadline. If you can’t get it running in the next couple of hours, we walk out of here.’
‘All right.’
‘That guy has a pistol,’ said Amanda.
She refocused her night scope. The reticules of her optics zeroed on the dead guy two hundred yards distant. An officer sprawled across the track, right quadrant of his head blown open. Amanda focused on the leather holster strapped to his hip. An automatic pistol.
‘He’s got mag pouches clipped to his belt.’
‘Want to go get them?’ asked Lucy. ‘We could seriously use the ammo.’
‘Let’s do it quick.’
The night scope flashed a battery warning. Amanda unclipped it from her rifle and threw it in the quad trailer.
She handed the rifle to Voss.
‘Get going,’ he told her. ‘Get out there, before any more of those fucks show up. I’ll keep you covered.’
They climbed over the beams and drums that blocked the track.
Lucy looked up. Stars fading into a pale blue sky.
‘Come on. Let’s get this done.’
They ran along the railroad track. They crouched and checked the body.
The corpse bristled with strange malignancies. Face gone, frontal lobes blasted away. Misfiring synapses deep within his shattered cerebral cortex set his foot twitching like he was grooving to a tune only he could hear. Whatever residual spark of life remained with his shattered head would quickly be extinguished when the sun reached its zenith and exposed brain tissue shrivelled dry.
