Hellfire (55 page)

But Danny wasn’t stupid. He knew Tony’s game: if he nailed the Caliph, Danny would have to rely on Tony’s good word that he’d had no other option. ‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ he said. ‘I want him alive. A round in the head’s too good for him. Let the bastard suffer.’ It wasn’t true, but it would get Tony off his back.

Tony stared at him, then glanced towards Caitlin. The lure of the female member of their group was too great. He shrugged, walked around Ahmed and headed off across the landing pad to join her.

Danny stood over his enemy and aimed the rifle at his head. The sun was hot on the back of his neck, and he cast a distinct shadow over Ahmed’s prostrate body. Ahmed’s breathing was very heavy, and for a full thirty seconds they remained like that: Ahmed’s eyes rolling and his body shaking.

‘I’m almost looking forward to it,’ Danny breathed. ‘The famous Caliph, cuffed and locked up. The picture might even go viral, like those videos your mate Jihadi Jim made.’

Through his pain, Ahmed grinned at him. ‘You’re just like the dog I executed,’ Ahmed whispered. ‘Weak.’

Danny didn’t reply. He didn’t move.

‘You want to kill me,’ Ahmed repeated, ‘but you’re too weak to do it.’

Danny felt his blood rising again. Deep down, he knew Ahmed was right. Despite what he’d told Tony, he
did
want to kill him. He wanted nothing more . . .

Ensure the safety of your source, repeat, ensure the safety of your source.

He lowered his gun, and met the Caliph’s gaze, full on.

‘Your attack on London has failed, you piece of shit.
You’ve
failed.’

Ahmed grinned again. A sinister grin, that told Danny maybe he was missing something.

It happened so quickly.

Ahmed suddenly raised his left arm. For a fraction of a second, Danny didn’t understand why. Then he saw it. Clutched in his hand was the small glass vial of clear liquid that he had waved in front of Danny’s face back in the drillers’ cabin.

It would take nothing for Ahmed to smash that vial on the floor of the helipad. Danny knew, instinctively, that this was what he intended to do.

‘
NO!
’ he roared.

And before Ahmed could release the vial, he raised his weapon again and fired three rounds. They thudded hard into the Caliph’s chest. His whole body juddered with each impact. His raised arm slammed back down on the helipad floor, and the glass vial rolled harmlessly out of Ahmed’s hand.

‘
What the fuck?
’ Tony’s voice exploded from across the LZ. He came running towards Danny who, having lowered his weapon, was stepping back from his target, his eyes fixed on the catastrophic, fatal wound he had just inflicted to the man’s chest.

The vial had come to rest two metres from Ahmed’s body. Tony stopped just next to it, then bent down to pick it up.

‘He was going to smash it,’ Danny said. There was a stressed edge to his voice. ‘He was going to infect us.’

Tony held the vial between two fingers, then lifted it up to the sunlight. His lip curled at Danny, then he jogged over to the edge of the LZ. He hesitated for a moment, then hurled the vial over the side of the platform, far out to sea.

He walked slowly back to Danny, a superior look on his face.

‘Our little secret,’ he said. He looked down at the Caliph’s dead body, then kicked it nonchalantly. ‘Course, I’ll
definitely
tell them you couldn’t have done anything else. And I’m sure you’ll repay the favour, one of these days.’

The surge of anger rose in Danny’s chest again. He raised his rifle, and this time pointed it straight at Tony. His companion simply jutted out his chin. ‘Even you’re not that stupid,’ he said.

Neither man moved. Danny was aware of blood seeping from the Caliph’s body, but he kept his eyes firmly on Tony.

Then, slowly, he lowered his weapon.

‘Attaboy, Danny Black,’ Tony said.

With a bleak smile, he turned his back on Danny, and walked back towards Caitlin. She was waiting and watching at the edge of the LZ, her face bruised and beaten. When Tony put an arm round her waist she didn’t object. They stared back towards him, a team of two from which Danny was obviously excluded.

Danny’s hands were shaking, his body aching, his mind spinning. He looked out across the Persian Gulf, squinting in the sunlight, waiting for their pick-up to come.

Three thousand miles to the west, an aircraft lay in the rough sand of the African desert.

Its seats were full of corpses. Cabin crew lay dead in the aisle. Their skin was covered in welts and patches of black. Insects swarmed around the cabin, crawling and feeding off the dead human flesh. The interior of the aircraft stank: a revolting mixture of flesh rotting in the oven-like heat of the desert, and petrol. The bodies – the whole interior of the aircraft – were soused in fuel.

There were two Chinook helicopters on the ground two hundred metres to the west. A white field-hospital tent had been erected between them, and thirty men in hazmat suits had congregated outside it. They were looking towards the plane.

Empty fuel canisters were stacked close to the fuselage of the aircraft. Snaking out from them was a length of wire. It trailed a hundred metres from the plane, and ended with a small, remote-control detonator. One of the white-suited men held a black box in his hand. He flicked a switch.

There was a loud crack. It was instantly followed by an enormous surging sound as the fuel ignited. In the bright desert daylight the flames were barely visible, but the heat certainly reached the guys in hazmat suits, and they edged backwards from it as they watched the fuselage turning from silver to black.

Inside the cabin, a furnace raged. Hair and clothes blazed. Blackened skin peeled and blistered from the bodies. Tissue smouldered and revealed the bone beneath, which soon withered and crumbled as the corpses burned into nothingness.

Several small explosions blasted from different parts of the plane. It collapsed noisily, dropping down on to one wing.

The guys in hazmat suits turned away. They’d seen enough. They wanted to disinfect themselves and get the hell out of there. They knew that when they got back home, everybody would be talking about the missing flight, and they knew that they were obliged never to mention to anyone what they had seen in this desolate patch of desert.

But that was okay. There are some things you never want to talk about. The grisly fate of these unfortunate passengers was one.

In a private room at the maternity ward of Salisbury District Hospital, a woman was in the early stages of labour. On the wall was a TV. It was on, but the sound was down. The rolling news channel showed images of helicopters against the London skyline, and of panicked crowds dressed in running gear. But the pregnant woman wasn’t watching. She was leaning over the edge of her bed, holding a mask for gas and air to her face.

A midwife entered. She checked the notes at the end the hospital bed. ‘Everything all right, Clara my love?’ she asked, once she’d checked the woman’s name. ‘No birthing partner?’

The woman shook her head, and the midwife’s lips thinned slightly in disapproval. It was quite clear what she thought about absent fathers. ‘Well, never mind,’ she said. ‘Let’s turn this television off, shall we? I don’t know – first that missing plane, then helicopters falling out of the sky in London. You’d think they’d be able to stop these things from happening, wouldn’t you? Anyway, I don’t think we really want to be reminded of all these terrible things at a time like this . . .’

The woman didn’t reply as the midwife switched off the TV. She just breathed in another lungful of gas and air, and winced at the pain of another contraction.

In the heart of Heilongjang Province in the People’s Republic of China, close to the Russian border, the sun was setting over a high-security facility. Like the burning plane in the African desert, its very existence was an official secret.

It was surrounded by a ten-metre-high perimeter fence, and no unauthorised vehicles would get within five miles of the bleak, utilitarian concrete buildings at its centre. It comprised three laboratories, one storage warehouse and a security unit where closed camera TV screens kept 24/7 surveillance on every part of the facility.

In Laboratory 1 was a lone Chinese scientist. He was clad head to foot in white protective gear, and his breathing was heavy through his mask. He leaned down over a worktop and picked up a test tube holder containing five tubes, carefully sealed.

He walked, rather gingerly, to the other side of the sterile lab. Here there was a refrigerator, slightly taller than him, with a glass door. Inside were rack upon rack of test tube holders, just like the one he was carrying. They were divided into four shelves. On the top shelf was some Chinese lettering. Its translation was a single word: ‘Smallpox’.

Each shelf below that had a different label. ‘Anthrax’. ‘Cholera’. ‘Ebola’. ‘Viral Equine Encephalitis’. ‘Pneumonic Tularemia’.

And on the bottom shelf: ‘Plague’.

He opened the fridge, knelt down, and carefully slid the test tube holder on to the bottom shelf. Then he closed the fridge and stepped back to look at it.

He wasn’t a rich man, but he knew wealth when he saw it. The contents of that fridge – and of the nearby storage facility – were valuable products. There would always be a buyer for them, somewhere in the world.

He turned his back on the fridge and left the laboratory. He was tired. He wanted to disinfect himself, change back into his normal clothes, then go home and spend the evening with his family.

Author’s Note

The following biological toxins are known by the security services to have been weaponised:

Smallpox

Anthrax

Plague

Pneumonic Tularemia

Viral Equine Encephalitis

Botulinum

Ricin

T-2 Mycatoxin

It is not known how many terrorist organisations are in possession of these weapons.