Ultimate Weapon (11 page)

Jed had returned to see him just after lunch. His morning had been taken up with final briefings for the mission. The squad was due to fly out to Kuwait at dawn tomorrow, and their time was taken up with last-minute preparations. He could only spare a few minutes to see what was happening to Nick.

‘What the hell happened last night, then?’ he said.

Nick was lying on the army bed. The Regiment only had doctors. There were no nurses running around to get you some fruit juice. But the medical care was first-rate. The one thing they did for you was patch up your wounds, Jed reflected.
So you could get out there and get some more.

‘I fell over,’ said Nick.

‘And ended up with knife wounds in your arm?’

Nick shrugged. ‘I got into a dust-up with the farmer about his sheep crossing into my garden.’ He tried to smile, but the pain in his jaw was making it hard for him to move his lips. ‘Country life is pretty rough, you know.’

‘Why don’t you tell me what
really
happened?’

‘What were
you
doing there, anyway?’

‘Christ, you’re even more of an ungrateful old bastard than I realised,’ said Jed angrily. ‘I know you and I have
never got along, but I’m bloody worried about Sarah, just the way you are. I tried to call you last night to see if you’d heard anything from her, since I know you wouldn’t have the sodding decency to call me if you did hear from her. I couldn’t get hold of you, so I borrowed a mate’s car to come and see you. When you weren’t answering the door, but your car was there, I figured something up. I found you in the field, knocked out. And it’s lucky for you I did, otherwise you’d have bled to death.’

‘I’m strong enough,’ snapped Nick. ‘I’d have been OK.’

‘Right,’said Jed. ‘But you’d be in the A&E in Hereford, with the local coppers asking you questions about what fight you’d been in.’

‘I’d have sorted them out,’ said Nick. ‘Now, piss off and let me get on with my life.’

Jed gripped on to the side of the bed. Whoever it was who’d stuck that knife into him last night, he was starting to know how they felt. ‘I love her as well,’ he said, a hint of steel in his tone. ‘And I want to find out what’s happened to her.’

‘You don’t love her, you’re just a bloody soldier,’ said Nick. ‘I know your kind, and you’re not good enough for her.’

‘You’re a soldier as well,’ said Jed angrily.

‘That’s different,’ growled Nick. ‘I’m good enough for her.’

‘And I’m good enough to save your sodding life,’ snapped Jed. ‘I’m beginning to wish I’d left you in that fucking field to die … it’s what you deserve.’

Nick paused for a moment. Jed could see the flash of anger in his eyes start to fade away, replaced by a look of sorrow.
If the old bastard wasn’t so annoying, I might even feel sorry for him
.

‘Yeah, well,’ he said, his voice turning down to just a whisper. ‘Maybe I wasn’t good enough for her.’ He sat himself up in the bed, and took a sip of water. ‘I was a soldier, you see, and soldiering and parenting don’t mix. Different trades. I was away fighting all the time, for this bloody Regiment. Her mum was worried sick. It was rough, you know, over the water, then out in the Gulf. Guys’ cards were getting punched all the time. One or two wives would be getting the knock on the door around here every month. It used to do Mary’s head in. She was on the point of a nervous breakdown a lot of the time, and that was no good for Sarah either. Then when I came back from Iraq I was a wreck. I was nervous, exhausted, I was drinking, I didn’t know how to cope any more. Then after Mary died, we fell apart, and Sarah was taken into care.’

He looked at Jed. ‘So, you see, I was a crap dad, and a crap husband,’ he said. ‘And so will you be. All us soldier boys are. I don’t want that for Sarah. She’s had enough of that to last her a couple of lifetimes already.’

Jed nodded. ‘Just let me help find her, OK,’ he said. ‘We can sort the rest of it out later. I’m off to Iraq myself. Tomorrow morning. And I want to help as much as I can before then.’

For a moment, the two men remained silent. The
clock on the wall was ticking closer to two o’clock. Nick took another sip of the water, wishing it was something stronger, then looked back at Jed. ‘There was money in our joint account.’

‘How much?’

‘A hundred grand.’

Jed whistled. ‘Jesus, where did that come from?’

Nick shrugged. ‘I have no idea.’ He hesitated before continuing. ‘Then these two blokes were watching my house. I saw them. That’s what I was doing. I went out to confront them, and see what the hell they were doing.’

‘And took a beating.’

‘I gave a good account of myself, thanks,’ growled Nick sourly. ‘They went home with a few bruises.’

‘How long were they there?’

Nick shook his head. ‘Not long,’ he said. ‘They tapped my phone as well. I don’t think they are interested in me. Christ, there’s nothing about my life you’d want to watch, so it must be something to do with Sarah.’

‘Someone’s kidnapped her?’

‘Maybe,’ said Nick.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Jed. ‘Sarah’s just a postgrad, why the hell would anyone give her that kind of money? Why would they be looking for her?’

Nick eased himself out of the bed. There was a thick layer of bandages around his head and arm. He walked unsteadily, and lifted his jeans from the hook, and dug into the pocket. Handing a few strands of hair across to Jed, he sat back down on the bed. ‘This is from one of the blokes that was watching me,’ he said. ‘You’re
Regiment. You’ve got access to the police labs to run a DNA test on it. Find out who it belongs to. Then we’ll know who’s looking for Sarah and why.’

Laura switched her laptop to screensaver as soon as Jed stepped into the room. She was sitting in one of the small offices the Firm had taken over at the Hereford base six months earlier: a series of rooms, each one painted regulation grey, where the spies had been directing operations. First sending guys into Afghanistan, now into Iraq, the Firm and the politicians were treating the Regiment like their own private army. Even the Ruperts were starting to get pissed off.

‘I need something,’ said Jed, looking across at her.

She stood up from behind the wooden desk. She was wearing black trousers and a cream blouse, with a single string of pearls slung around her neck. He could smell a dab of perfume on her skin.

‘I thought I took care of that last night,’ she said.

Jed grinned. If I have to flirt with her, that’s OK with me, he told himself.
Just so long as it helps me find out what’s happened to Sarah
.

‘A DNA test,’ he said.

‘We’re not planning to have children, Jed,’ answered Laura with a light giggle.

‘It’s for a friend. A bloke attacked him. I’ve got a
piece of his hair. I want to run it through the labs, and see if we can get a fix on who the guy is.’

Laura shook her head. ‘Jed, we’ve got an important mission into Iraq to organise. We can’t run around doing errands for our friends.’

‘Listen,’ said Jed, his tone turning harder. ‘This is bloody important. I want it done.’

Laura seemed taken aback by the harshness of his expression. She could see the anger in his eyes and hear the strength in his voice. ‘We’ve got a few hours down-time before we have to assemble the guys,’ said Jed, trying to soften his tone. ‘That’s all it will take.’

‘Just some hairs?’ said Laura.

‘About three or four strands.’

‘There’s no time,’ said Laura sharply.

‘The plane doesn’t leave until dawn,’ snapped Jed.

Laura was already walking back to her desk. The mobile sitting next to the computer was ringing but she ignored it. ‘The Firm’s DNA labs are all in London,’ she said stiffly. ‘We can’t make it there and back by tonight.’

‘There’s a police lab in Cardiff that you can get access to. We can be there and back in three hours.’

‘I’ve said there isn’t time.’

Jed took a pace forward. ‘Then make time.’

Laura was glancing towards the small window. It was a cold, cloudy day, and some drizzle was spitting against the glass. ‘I’ve told you already,’ she said, a hint of exasperation in her voice. ‘I can’t become involved in anyone’s personal issues.’

‘Then I’m not going on the mission to Iraq,’ said
Jed. He was looking straight at her, his eyes filled with determination.

‘It’s an order,’ said Laura. ‘Remember.’

‘No it bloody isn’t,’ snapped Jed. ‘This one’s off the books, so you can deny I was ever born if I get into trouble. I can go or not go. It’s my choice.’

‘If you change your mind now, it’s career suicide, Jed.’

Jed shrugged. ‘And if you don’t get me into Iraq to find out what’s in that compound, then I reckon your career’s toast as well.’

‘What does that mean?’ she said.

‘Just help take these hairs to the lab,’ said Jed, ‘and you won’t have to find out.’

The lab was spotlessly clean. A series of wooden benches filled one side of the room, and some sunlight was drifting in from the sides of the tall windows. From one of them, Jed could see the pillars of Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium rising into the sky. ‘Here,’ he said to the technician who had introduced himself simply as Dr Jones. ‘Two strands of hair. Fresh. Just came off the guy’s head yesterday.’

Dr Jones nodded. He was a thin man, no more than thirty, with curly brown hair, and a pair of thick glasses. ‘It doesn’t make any difference whether it’s fresh or not,’ he said. ‘We can accurately test the DNA of a dinosaur.’

‘Just make it quick,’ said Laura. ‘We haven’t got much time.’

They had driven at breakneck speed. Jed took his mate’s Ford Probe. Stupid name for a car, he thought
every time he got into it. They might as well have called it the Ford Shag. Still, like most Fords, it was a nicely built car, and if you knew how to work the gears, it could cruise comfortably at over a hundred. Jed drove it hard, steering wildly into the corners on the road that twisted down along the Wye Valley towards Chepstow, then on to the motorway to Cardiff, but he was a good driver. Laura sat in silence for most of the journey: she didn’t want to come, and she didn’t mind if he knew it.

Like most women I’ve met, thought Jed, she doesn’t need any lessons in sulking.
They must teach it to them when they play with their Barbie dolls.

Jed followed Jones towards the bench. He was working with nimble, practised fingers, but the expression on his face suggested that having done a thousand DNA tests, they no longer carried much interest for him. He gave a brief explanation of how the DNA was first extracted from the root of the hair, then analysed. The original strand of hair is dissolved into a chemical dish, to break it down into its component parts. The fragments are then transferred to a nylon membrane soaked with a radioactive solution. The radioactive chemicals bind with the DNA to produce an image which can then be captured on a computer, he explained. ‘What you end up with,’ said Jones, ‘is an image that looks pretty much like the bar codes that they put on stuff in the supermarket. That’s what we use to identify people.’

Jed looked at the computer screen. A series of black lines, some thin, some fat. ‘That’s him?’ said Jed.

Jones nodded. ‘The DNA has come out well,’ he replied. ‘You’ll be able to identify him from this easily enough.’

‘How?’

‘We just input it into the computer, then it compares the codes,’ said Jones. ‘Like I said, it’s just like a bar code in the supermarket. The computer can read it, and compare it to the millions of other people on its database. Then it tells you who it is.’

Behind him, he could smell Laura’s perfume. She was leaning into his back, looking at the image on the screen. ‘Run it,’ she said coldly.

‘You have authorisation?’

Laura took a card from her wallet, and put it down on the desk. She had already used her ID pass from the Firm to get them access to the South Wales Police Headquarters, and to demand that they be shown straight to the DNA lab. The pass she had just produced told Jones she was senior enough to have access to the entire police and intelligence services network. Jones looked at it and nodded. ‘OK,’ he said, visibly impressed by her level of seniority. ‘I’ll run it on the big one.’

He started to tap a series of commands into the computer, looking at the screen pensively as it responded to the request.

‘What’s the big one?’ said Jed.

Laura smiled, but there was little warmth in her expression. ‘Officially, the police are only supposed to collect and record the DNA data on people who’ve been arrested. That’s not much use to us most of the
time. We’re not interested in the drunks and the burglars who get nicked by the local coppers. The people we want to find are too clever to get picked up for shoplifting. So the NHS have been helping us out. Every person who goes to the doctor for any kind of test, even when they give a urine sample to register with a GP, gets a DNA sample taken from them, and it gets stored on this network. The ordinary police don’t have access to it. But Special Branch do, so do the murder squad boys. And, of course, us. We’ve got about 70 per cent of the population on it, and it’s going up all the time. Pretty soon we’ll have the whole country.’