Ultimate Weapon (42 page)

Nothing.

Just silence. ‘Where the hell are you?’ shouted Nick behind him. Nothing.

You could hear the quiet electronic hum of the computer terminals that were glowing on the desk, and down below you could hear the gushing of water from the burst pipes.
But you couldn’t hear anything that sounded like a person.

‘I thought you said she’d be here,’ Nick shouted, turning towards Wilmington.

‘I thought … I thought …’ he stuttered.

‘Where the bloody hell is she?’ Nick roared.

‘This was the most obvious place to bring her.’ Wilmington’s words were suddenly garbled and rushed.

Nick was jabbing the barrel of his AK-47 into Wilmington’s stomach. ‘I should just finish you off now,’ he shouted.

Jed put his hand on his shoulder. ‘Not yet,’ he said quietly.

‘He’s fucking lied to us from the beginning. He’s the reason Sarah ever came to this hellhole. I haven’t met many men who deserved to die, but this arsehole is right at the top of the list.’

Wilmington was backing away. ‘No … no …’ he mumbled.

‘Quick,’ Jed said suddenly. ‘I can hear something.’

All three stood stock-still. Jed looked towards the far end of the room. A cough, he was certain of it. He started walking. It was silent again now, but that meant nothing: just that the bastard was trying to keep his throat clear. He glanced along the last row of workbenches. Nothing. The next row. Nothing. Then on the third, he saw what he was looking for. A shoe.

‘Gotcha,’ he said.

The man was cowering in a tight ball beneath the desk. He was wearing a white overall, and thick glasses, and even though he didn’t look any more than thirty-five, most of his hair was already gone. ‘Come out, you bastard,’ said Jed, tapping the man’s ankle with the tip of his AK-47.

The man didn’t move.

‘I said, come out, you bastard. Unless you want your foot shot off.’

Slowly, the man emerged. He looked nervously at Jed, then Nick, then across at Wilmington. His eyes were tired and wary. ‘We’re looking for a woman,’ said Jed. ‘A white woman.’ The man looked blank.

Wilmington stepped forward, repeating the question in Arabic. Slowly, the man understood. He nodded, the way an animal does when it has earned itself a reward. ‘Sarah,’ he said. He started speaking quickly to Wilmington in Arabic. ‘Well?’ said Nick, looking towards Wilmington.

‘She was here,’ he replied. ‘Until yesterday –’

‘Where the fuck is she now, then?’ snapped Jed.

‘Gone,’ said the man, the terror written on to his face. ‘She’s gone.’

‘Why the hell should we believe him?’ said Nick roughly. ‘I say we put a bullet into his thigh, then ask him again.’

‘There should be pictures,’ said Wilmington. ‘Everything in this lab is filmed.’

‘Where?’ said Nick.

‘This way,’ said Wilmington.

Jed kept his gun trained on both men as they led the way forward. They walked to the end of the laboratory, through a set of fire doors, then up one flight of stairs. The room they were led into was dominated by a set of television screens, with two swivel chairs in front of them, both empty. The security guards had long since abandoned their positions. The Iraqi was saying something in Arabic, and leaning into the controls. On the screen in front of him, Jed could see the minutes and the hours ticking backwards, as the tapes in the machine were rewound. Suddenly, he could see her quite clearly. The film was black-and-white and grainy, and the back lighting in the laboratory was so intense, it gave anyone in the room a robotic quality. But there could be no question who he was looking at in the centre of the picture.

‘Christ, that’s her,’ he muttered, his voice no more than a whisper.

Sarah was not a conventionally beautiful woman. Her figure was nothing special, and her face was pretty rather than stunning. Her nose was long and thin, her eyes large and her face shaped like an almond, yet she had a kind of beauty that Jed felt was all her own. It shone
out of her, even when she looked at her worst, as she did in the pictures in front of him. Her brown hair fell over the side of her face, and looked as if it had been neither washed nor combed for a week. She was dressed in a blue sweatshirt, with some Arabic writing on it, and a pair of jeans that looked too big for her. But she had a look of concentration on her face that Jed recognised instantly. That was what Sarah was all about, he thought: the ability to put all of herself into every moment she lived.
Even here …

Nick was at his side, staring at the image. In the video, Sarah was standing at one of the workbenches, using the measuring equipment. It was impossible to tell from this angle what she was doing. You could only just see her face. But at least she was alive, Jed told himself.
When this was filmed, anyway?

‘This was filmed at four. What time was she taken away again?’ said Nick.

Wilmington spoke to the Iraqi, then looked back at Nick. ‘Around five yesterday afternoon,’ he said. ‘Sarah was here for less than a day. They were going to keep her for longer to try and produce the laboratory evidence that would show the world cold fusion worked. But they decided it was too dangerous here. The Americans know this place, and it’s a prime target for a missile strike.’

Jed kept watching the film. You could see Sarah working patiently, methodically, but it was impossible on the grainy film to read any of the motives for what she was doing. Was she really going to hand over her
discovery to the Iraqis? To let Saddam use it for his own ends. If it was a choice between that and her own life, she might.

He could see a man coming into view. He was standing next to Sarah, with his back to the camera. Then the man turned round. ‘That’s the fucker who was in your office,’ said Nick, jabbing his thumb against the screen.

Salek.

Jed and Wilmington stared at the screen as well. They could see Salek leading her away, holding on to her arm. Suddenly Sarah glanced up at the camera. It was unlikely she knew it was there – the camera was discreetly tucked into the corner of the laboratory – but she seemed to be looking straight up at them. You could see the fear in her eyes. Her expression was hollow, like a child separated from its parents. Her shoulders were sagging, and there was a look of defeat about her, as if she no longer knew how much more she could take. Sarah never looked like that, thought Jed bitterly.
There was always fight in her.

Sarah and Salek had gone from the screen. You could still see the tape, and you could see the other scientists sitting at their benches. But Sarah had already disappeared from view.

‘He’s taken her,’ said Wilmington.

‘I can bloody see that,’ snapped Nick. ‘Where?’

Wilmington backed away. ‘Where?’ repeated Nick.

‘I don’t know,’ said Wilmington.

The stutter was back in his voice, Jed noted. He’s afraid.
And so he should be …

Nick was advancing on the man, his face red with anger. ‘I’m tired of your bloody games,’ he growled.

‘I told you she was here,’ said Wilmington, struggling to get the words out. ‘She
was
here. You’ve seen it with your own eyes …’

He gestured towards the bank of screens on the wall. Several of them showed what was happening on the perimeter of the laboratory right now.

Jed was already studying them. Something had caught his eye in the far right-hand corner. A grainy, slow-moving shape. ‘Look,’ he said, pointing at the image.

Nick stared at the screen. He could see the vehicle moving slowly down the main road that led up to the building. One vehicle, with a second following straight behind.

A tank.

‘Bugger it,’ he muttered. ‘It’s coming straight at us.’

Nick and Jed rushed out of the security room, taking Wilmington with them, but leaving the other scientist behind: it made no difference who he spoke to, since the Iraqis already knew they were there. As they ran through the broken hallway, they could already hear the rumble of the tanks as they advanced on the building. Only one thought was on Jed’s mind: move as fast as you can.

‘You stay right there,’ he muttered to Wilmington, then climbed up on to the tank, following Nick down into the cockpit. A rapid burst of gunfire raked through the night sky. Jed realised they’d been spotted, and the gunners in the tanks were trying to take them down before they even got into the vehicle. ‘This is fucking madness,’ he said. ‘They’ve seen us already.’

Nick turned round. ‘You go home to your mum if you want to, I’m staying right here.’

He already had his hands on the controls of the main gun. The T-55 was nothing like a modern British or American tank. There were no sophisticated, electronic controls. You couldn’t use laser-targeting, and there wasn’t a computer to take care of the tank while you concentrated on the fighting. None of that video-game
warfare, thought Jed grimly. You had to take down your enemy the old-fashioned way.
By pointing your gun straight at him, and hoping you were a better shot than he was
.

‘He’s in range,’ Nick shouted.

The main artillery gun was swivelling fast into position. A shell was already loaded, but whether it was armour-piercing, and what kind of protection their opponent had, Jed had no idea. We’re flying sodding blind, he thought. Looking through the sights, he lined up the shot straight into the guts of the first tank. It was six hundred yards away now, well within range. ‘Take the turret,’ said Nick. ‘That’s the weakest point in the T-55.’

Nick had grabbed hold of the gears, kicked the engine into life, and the tank was starting to roll forwards. Every T-55 had a distinctive semicircular turret that covered the top of the tank, and housed its main gun. Jed started lowering the artillery cannon, trying to line it up close to the turret.

Furiously, he was trying to remember his anti-tank training. You had to bring the shell in at exactly the right angle, and at the right velocity, to stand any chance of piercing the tank’s armour. On a T-55, that meant bringing the shell right into the turret, at an angle of less than forty-five degrees, so the shell could slice open the top of the machine like a tin can, and blow up whatever was inside. Get it wrong, and your shell would bounce harmlessly off the tank’s thick metal skin. Christ, thought Jed as he swivelled the gun into place, trying to make the calculations in his head. Men train for years as tank gunners.
Neither of us have any sodding idea what we’re doing.

The pair of tanks were advancing down the road with menacing resilience. Jed could see the burnished, sandy-coloured metal of the armour emerging through the dark night air, the long artillery gun pointing straight at them. Any minute now, he thought grimly, they are going to start firing at us.

‘We can take them,’ Nick muttered.

‘You’re bloody crazy,’ Jed snapped. ‘We should get the hell out of here while we still can.’

‘Fire,’ Nick shouted. ‘Bloody fire, you tosser.’

Jed slammed his fist hard on the firing mechanism. You could feel the skin of the T-55 shudder as the shell’s explosives charged up, then exploded with terrifying power up through the main cannon. Jed steeled himself, watching as the shell started to arc in the air. Only a fraction of a second passed before it hit. Jed strained into the viewfinder, getting as close a look as possible. The shell winged the side of the first tank. It burst open, sending a cloud of fire and smoke up into the air. Flames were spilling out across the pavement, but the T-55 was still rolling forwards. Its side was battered, and the right side track was smouldering, but it was still operable. And it was about to retaliate.

‘You’re a fucking crap shot,’ muttered Nick. ‘Try again.’

The T-55 started to automatically load another shell, but even though Jed didn’t know much about Russian tanks, he knew that one of the key weaknesses of the T-55 was the forty-five seconds it took to reload its cannons. As the shell started to winch itself into position, Jed could see the cannon on the first tank swinging towards them.
It was levering gently upwards as the tank rolled forward. The machine was only five hundred yards from them. Shit, muttered Jed to himself, as he tried to get his own gun lined up with the moving target. That guy knows what he’s doing.
Which is more than can be said for us.

As he heard the explosion of the shell leaving the cannon, Jed winced. There was no time to follow the arc of the missile, or to plan your reaction. The shell had already travelled through the air, and impacted with the turret of their T-55. The top armour of the tank took the main force of the blow, knocking the cannon clean away, and the explosion ripped off a sheet of metal armour. The cramped, poky interior of the tank was filled with fire and smoke. Jed could feel an intense heat searing the surface of his skin, and the air was thick with black fumes. He could already smell diesel pouring from the machine’s fuel tank. We’ve only got seconds, he thought desperately.
Then this bugger is going to blow.

Through the black smoke, he could no longer see Nick. His right hand shot up, and he clamped it down on the twisted surface of the tank’s armour. It scalded the skin on the palm of his hand, but he had no choice. He had to lever himself out of the tank. His eyes were streaming with tears from the stinging smoke, but he ignored the pain, and with one effort pulled himself upwards. He rolled his body across the burning surface of the tank, knowing that if he moved fast enough, the flames wouldn’t have time to ignite his clothes. With a desperate thud he landed on the ground. ‘Nick, Nick,’ he shouted. ‘Where the hell are you, you old fucker?’