Authors: Graham Lancaster
A
piercing scream tore into the night and froze them both. It sounded exactly like the scream of a baby, but louder. Much louder. Then it rang out again, and Thrower darted back behind the wall. The guard shone his lamp ahead to a second grouping of bins twenty yards further on. As he did a fox and vixen shot across the grass, both looking accusingly at him, before running off. They often came there to raid the bags and bins, in which they sometimes found the remains of lab animals. And sometimes, having fought over scraps, they would mate. Noisily and painfully.
The
guard followed the animals with his torchlight as long as he could before losing them in the misty night. He had seen them there before, and often heard the terrible screams of the vixen as the fox withdrew, tearing her raw. Stabbing a finger at his radio, Thrower heard the man’s message back to the control centre. ‘Panic over,’ he said, relief in his voice. ‘Just foxes rutting.’ There followed some ribald and predictable response from the duty officer, to which the guard laughed and replied, ‘Not at my age!’
Thrower
padded back into the building, locking the door behind him. It had been a wonderful stroke of luck; he hoped a good omen, too. Three minutes later and Chrissie reported that the guard had disappeared back towards his office, and they were coming in. They had no need for the moment to worry about setting off the lights, for they were still blazing.
Lydia
had come back to the reception by the time they were inside. She hugged the two women emotionally, having lived their ordeal with them over her headset. ‘That was too close for comfort,’ she gushed. ‘You must have been petrified.’
‘
All in a day’s work,
girls
,’ Thrower sneered. ‘We’re not here to knit squares, you know. We’ve got serious work to do.’
Breaking
away, Chrissie’s temper flared, her nerves still jangling from their ordeal outside. Despite her slender frame she pushed him hard against the wall, her snarling face an inch from his. ‘Listen to me, you misogynous, homophobic little creep, we’ve all had it with your insults. I’ve warned you before. Because me?
I’m
mysophobic. I can’t stand dirt, or filth like you...So, I’m telling you—keep right out of my way when this thing’s over. You got that?’
Thrower
let her free him before standing away from the wall. Still holding the cosh, he fought the urge to sink it into her skull. Barely able to speak with rage, he shoved past her and glowered back at the three of them. ‘Let’s get this thing done. After tonight I work alone. And you three cute little Charlie’s Angels can do what the hell you like,’ he spat, deliberately provoking Chrissie further.
Lydia
put herself bodily between the two of them and tried to impose some leadership on the group. ‘We’re going the right way to get caught here,’ she warned. ‘All this can wait for another time. And Sam’s right at least in saying that we’re here to do a job. I’ve recced the place and there’s a lot to do. Joan, you stay and keep watch in case the guard returns. Sam, Chrissie—follow me.’
They
meekly did what they were told, relieved that someone had re-established order. Then she led them along the central corridor to a set of double doors. ‘Sam, you need to get the monkeys out. There are only two. Young macaques. Chrissie, you box up the rats and mice. They’re in the lab on the left side. I’ll set the incendiary first, and then see to the pigs. OK? When we’ve got our animals ready to move, Sam, I’ll let you know. Then get Tony over here with the Land-Rover. OK? Let’s do it.’
The
three electronic incendiary devices were as sophisticated as any used by the IRA. In the early days, the Warriors were very much at the Heath Robinson end of the terrorist market, cobbling crude fire-bombs together at safe houses in Leeds and Birmingham, avoiding London and the far greater resources of Scotland Yard and Special Branch there. At first they went on bomb-and-run missions, but by the nineties they were having patchy success using tomato-shaped kitchen timers, following instructions put out on the Internet by American anarchists. The new units, however, were bought via a middle man from the prolific bomb-makers in Bulgaria.
Having
selected three combustible areas, Lydia set about the simple job of arming the bombs and setting the delays. At her first site, she took out the flat device—12.7 x 8 x 2.5 centimetres—and then the first three ampoules of high-octane fuel. These always reminded her of the green Sparklet capsules used in soda syphons. They had to be laid diagonally across the back of the unit. Then she pressed in place the double studs of the battery connector on the top right side before wrapping the tape around to hold everything firmly in place. Turning it over, she set the delay period they had pre-agreed—an hour and twenty minutes—and slid the start button to ‘on’. Moving rapidly, and with increased confidence, she armed the remaining two units and then ran over to the room where she had found the pigs.
Steeling
herself—her first sight earlier of the two animals had reduced her to tears—she went into the sterile sty, with its noisy air-filtration system. Once more they looked up, their intelligent eyes twinkling, happy to see her. If they were not actually smiling, she had no other way of explaining the entirely human expressions she was encountering. They were less than a year old and, if her father was not stopped, she knew they would soon be killed for a whole variety of their organs for spare-part xenotransplantation research. They had started life when her father’s team had injected DNA into a host pig embryo, thrusting him into the front line of medical ethics. ‘Bio-ethics’ had now joined abortion and euthanasia as a popular topic for the chattering classes. Sickeningly though, most of that debate had nothing remotely to do with animal welfare, centring instead on the risk of transmitting animal viruses into the human chain, as some feared had happened through BSE in cattle and Creutzfeldt-jakob disease.
But
to Lydia, bio-ethics was a side issue for now as she looked at the excited animals, their big ears up and twitching, noses waving to and fro in friendly excitement at human contact. Taking out two harnesses and leads, she went across to the first pen. Over it was a code number. At least Dolly, the genetic sheep, had been given a name. ‘Come on, my beauty,’ she said encouragingly. ‘Let’s have you out of here. And
quietly
, if you please.’
For
all their great intelligence, ‘quiet’ is not a concept readily understood by an excited pig; first one and then the other began squealing happily, the noise deafening in the small room. Thrower came running in. ‘Keep them quiet! They’ll be heard outside.’
‘
I can’t. Help me get the harnesses on. All we can do is get them out and away as quickly as possible.’
It
took them less time than she feared, however, and the pigs did quieten down once out of their sties. Thrower had already instructed Tony to drive over the fields, lights extinguished, to the perimeter fence, and when he got the message that Tony was in place, he checked they were all ready: Chrissie with the holdall of her little, squeaking charges; the two macaques lying still in hessian sacks. He had not wanted to use the tranquilliser gun, but the brutalised little platyrrhines had been fiercely aggressive, and even noisier than the pigs.
Joan
recced outside, and confirmed that the guard was still safely in the gate office. The exterior security lights had now extinguished, and as they made several journeys to the Land Rover each had to make sure they stuck close to the wall before crouching very low by the streetlamp to avoid triggering the sensors again. Mercifully for Lydia, the pigs just snorted, pulling madly at their leashes—just like Oliver dragging her to Green Park on a Sunday morning. Then, at long last, it was all done, and Tony was bouncing them violently across the fields, back to the car park and their own vehicles.
Sam
Thrower and Tony now had a long night drive up to Carlisle, where a fellow Warriors member would tend the various creatures, the ‘saves’ as they called them, on his isolated smallholding, until permanent places could be found for them amongst their network of supporters. The mood as they made to go their separate ways was subdued, Chrissie and Thrower still prickly with each other.
‘
I’ll make the call then, from a pay phone. As agreed,’ Lydia confirmed. She at least felt good and excited about freeing the animals and putting the horrible place out of action. A few minutes before the incendiaries went up, she was to call the guard at the gatehouse and find some reason to keep him talking until detonation. They did not want a death on their hands. And with any luck, the place would be burned to a shell before fire officers even arrived. Compassionate commandos was how she saw them. And it had, despite the falling out, been a successful raid. If, that was, she had correctly armed the incendiaries. That nagging doubt would be with her until she had confirmed the place really had gone up.
With
one last look back at the two pigs, now huddling together for warmth in the back of the Defender, she briefly hugged each member of the team in turn and got into her car. Thrower’s softly whispered ‘well done’ gave her more job satisfaction and pride than she had ever felt at the agency. She drove away elated, ready to tackle anything. Even Maddie and her damned file.
David Elkins was hard work. Tedious hours with him at airports and on board the flight to Miami had stretched Tom’s professional charm to its limits. It was not that he was obnoxious. Or unintelligent. Or even that boring. It was just that they had little in common outside their mutual professional interest in Barton and his Temple Bio-Laboratories business. And Tom had decided to avoid saying too much about even that until they got to Belize. Things seemed to be moving so quickly out there that he was worried about putting his foot in it, giving out wrong or old information.
They
were in the stretched limo Barton had arranged to collect them from Miami International, sedately cruising down the North-South Expressway towards their Miami Beach hotel. ‘You know Miami well, David?’ Tom asked, sipping a glass of Diet Coke from the bar.
Elkins
was in his early forties, but his thinning sandy hair and worry-lined face made him seem much older. He replied, ‘I know Key West better. I have friends down there.’
As
they finally pulled over outside the hotel Barton had also arranged for them, Tom’s sexual antennae immediately began to twitch. The art deco confection was on Ocean Drive, and the limo door was opened by a bottle-blond black guy wearing skin-tight leather pants and a mauve blouson top.
‘
Welcome y’all to the beautiful Miami Bonaparte Happy Hotel,’ he lisped in an inept attempt at a Southern drawl—
Gone
With
The
Wind
meets Harlem—and proffering his hand. Elkins took it and got out of the air-conditioned car, the humidity immediately steaming up his spectacles. Tom declined the offer and got out unaided with unconscious manliness, creating exactly the opposite effect to that he had intended. The doorman winked at him. ‘You ladies have a real good time with us, you hear? My name’s Peter. It says so right here.’ He pointed a long, manicured finger theatrically to his badge. ‘And you can call on me for whatever you need. Your bags will follow you right in. Have a nice stay.’
The
interior of the place was mercifully more understated, but the orientation of its clientele was clear from the Greek statues and gigantic Murillo-influenced mural on the far wall. All the staff wore the same leathers and blouson uniforms as the doorman, and by the time Tom had checked in and got to his room—the Dorian Gray Suite—he was fuming at Barton for putting him through this. A short nap followed by a shower and large gin, however, helped relax him and he was ready for dinner when they met, as arranged, in the bar at seven.
Elkins
had changed into a white tropical suit and seemed like a different man—happy and confident. Breaking off talking to a couple of men, he got up to greet Tom, the look of a naughty schoolboy on his face. After a cocktail, the limo took them to the hottest restaurant in town. Aston Martin Volantes, Porsches, Jaguars, Ferraris and Bentleys littered the entrance. It was the only place for Miami’s beautiful people to be seen on Wednesdays. Tom involuntarily ogled the stunning women parading around the restaurant, struggling to keep his mind on his job. On Barton’s instructions, they had an excellent and expensive meal and even better wine—a 1982 Margaux, washed down with a half-bottle of Chateau d’Yquem—before leaving for a club off Washington Avenue which Elkins especially said he wanted to check out. Tom stayed less than the ten minutes it took to down a gin and reassure himself that Elkins was OK in the packed, pulsating gay hotspot. As he left, he looked back and saw two men immediately join Elkins. The same two who had been talking to him in the bar at the hotel. With a shrug, he hailed a cab. Their flight to Belize was not until late morning. He’d had no idea what Elkins’ night would hold...but wished good luck to the man. It was his life.
There
was a message for him when he got back to the hotel. Tearing it open, it simply asked him to ring a local number as soon as he got in. Whatever the time. No name was left. Back in his room, Tom made the call. ‘Bates. Who is this?’ he said.
‘
Goodness, it’s humid out here, isn’t it? Not really my cup of tea...But, there we are. I know it’s lateish, but I did say one of us would be in touch with you out here. Well, I decided to come over myself. Just got in. Mind if I pop over for an hour? Now?’
Tom
sighed wearily. ‘Very well, Mr Mitchell. Come on over. And I’ll see if this place can brew you up something that
is
your cup of tea.’ The man was wearing down his resistance. It was something they both recognised. Slowly he knew—despite all his instincts—he was moving inexorably towards becoming a part-time, unpaid spy for Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Mitchell as ever, would get his man.
*
They had found something that was almost certainly Banto. Using the river as the base around which to conduct the search pattern, it had proved far easier than they had expected, helped by the native’s unerring ability somehow to take the most direct route towards the nearest deep forest. On the twelve-inch TI screen in the control panel in front of Bolitho, the black and white image clearly showed a human figure. On these units, white areas identified surfaces giving off heat. So a police patrol in a city would see cars as black shapes overall, but with white tyres and bonnets. Below them now, however, in the light forest, along riverbanks and in clearings, Banto’s head was white as his dark body moved ahead much more quickly than any archaeologist or tourist trekker would.
‘
That has to be him!’ the pilot concluded triumphantly. ‘I see very few solo images down there. It’s highly unusual. That’s your man. No question.’
‘
Get me down!’ Bolitho shouted—unnecessary over the headphones. ‘Close.’
The
pilot frowned. ‘I saw one possible clearing that would give me enough space, but that would leave you five miles behind him.’
‘
Then drop me in front. Let him come to me.’
‘
Hopeless. He’s almost into the deep canopied rain forest. It’s a carpet over there. Nowhere to put down.’
‘
OK. Let’s get it done. Drop me as close as you can. And quickly. The longer we’re up here, the further away he gets.’
They
descended minutes later in a forest clearing barely twenty yards square, the pilot having readied himself for the slight bounce sometimes caused by a thermal above the trees. Unbuckling his harness, Bolitho reassured himself that he could trust the pilot to come and find him when he had captured Banto. ‘So. I have altitude flares. Three hundred footers. I have a Day-glo landing marker. And a firefly strobe, on top of my geo-sat tracker. OK? And
you
keep open radio contact with me. OK?’
Following
a thumbs up from the pilot, he got out. The man passed his rucksack and shotgun down to him. Then, after another thumbs up, Bolitho, crouching to avoid the deadly rotor blades, cleared the landing area and turned his head away to protect his eyes from the fifty m.p.h. downwash winds. Then the cacophony was over, and the helicopter became a fading drone as Bolitho was left alone in the clearing. One part of him was looking forward to the challenge that lay ahead, but he desperately wished that he still had the fit young body from his Vietnam days of jungle training. He had been on very recent jungle missions, as a field trainer for the crack Kopassus special forces, but training was training. Now he was pitted against a young warrior, who despite being weakened by all the blood extraction, still seemed capable of fifty miles a day through this stuff. He was going to need all his experience to pull this off. The bullying threat from Barton had meant nothing to him. He was dying anyway. But the challenge certainly did. No young native could be seen to get the better of him: the best jungle fighter of his day, with the highest man-hour kill ratio of his unit.
The
forest here was nothing like as dense as he knew it would become a few miles ahead. It was important to make good time, to close that distance down between them, while the going was relatively light, and while he felt at his fittest. Consulting his compass, he struck off immediately south-south-west, clearing his mind to focus single-mindedly on the job in hand, hacking out a route through with his long, curved kukri, the tool-cum-weapon he favoured over the machete.
Tracking
in jungle and rain forest was difficult, and Bolitho had always preferred to use native visual trackers or dogs. But in the short time he had, having asked around San Ignacio that morning, the helicopter had been the only S&R show in town. Besides, he still prided himself on his own skills as a tracker, which he had learned in the field, and later codified to train others in Asia and South America. Since ’Nam, this had always remained his local patch. He had never even set foot in Africa, and had no desire to go there, where, with its different wildlife and plants, he would be less special.
A
visual tracker basically has to find and then interpret the ‘signs’ humans leave behind as they pass through an area. These are categorised first into ‘temporary sign’, which in a few hours or days might disappear—disturbed ground cover, human defecation, mud suspended in water that has been traversed—and ‘permanent sign’—macheted branches, camp fires, scored rocks and man-made, durable items dropped or discarded, such as plastic packaging or bullet casings. Then secondly into ‘top sign’ those made by the upper body of the prey—disturbed or broken vegetation, scuffed moss on trees from rucksacks and rifles—and ‘ground sign’—such as sand kicked up on ground cover, broken sticks and dry leaves, scuffed soil and worm casts, and of course footprints—known in tradecraft jargon as spoor.
How
he wished now he had with him a tracker dog’s sensitive ears and nose. Its sense of hearing is a hundred per cent more acute than man’s, and its power of smell almost a thousand times greater. This can create a dream team for an experienced hunting party, combining the human tracker’s reading of visual signs and the audile and olfactory skills of the dog. But that was a team game. He was alone.
The
subtle skills of tracking were some hours ahead, however. The first priority was still to close down the distance between the two of them. Looking at his battered old Rolex Explorer, he calculated just four more hours of daylight in the already gloomy forest. The darkness need not necessarily stop his progress, but it would inevitably slow him down, and expose him to far more deadly and efficient night hunters than he himself could ever be: snakes like boa constrictors and the killer
fer de lance
, poisonous spiders and big mammals—the jaguars and pumas that would also be out searching for fresh prey. In the jungle all hunters were also themselves the hunted: simply a fresh supply of meat, there to be taken.
*
‘This is unbelievable! I’ve warned you before. Don’t
ever
call me on an open line again!’ Barton was furious and worried that the stupidity of Ladislas Blacher, the chief of his Portuguese plant, in calling him direct in Belize, might already have compromised him. Belize may had become a military backwater, but there still remained a small UK military presence there post BATSUB – the British Army Training Support Unit Belize – a team of seconded advisors to the BDF, the Belize Defence Force. Despite Guatemala having recognised Belize’s independence, tension still remained and Barton suspected that international calls might be routinely monitored.
Barton
hung up on the man before he could say any more, and then called him back using his portable scrambler, one compatible with that permanently installed on Blacher’s direct line in his Oeiras office at the plant. All the fool had needed to do was throw the switch at the side of his desk.
‘
Sorry. It won’t happen again,’ the older man said. He did not sound remotely sorry, however. In many respects he realised that Barton was afraid of him—he knew so much, especially about their work on perfecting the biological weapons. ‘But I did think that this is important.’
Barton
felt nervous now. Until its closure, the old doctor had worked at the Ministry of Defence’s top-secret chemical and biological warfare centre at Portreath, and then at Porton Down. The man was not a panicker by nature and would not have made the call without good reason. Quite enough was going wrong in Barton’s life right now without even more bad news. ‘What is it? Couldn’t it wait?’ He planned to be in Portugal days later.
‘
I thought you would like to know immediately. That maybe you would be as excited as I am.’
‘
What is it?’
‘
To put it simply...we’ve done it. The system’s worked. I’ve successfully grown the base toxic agent. Those special double-jacketed fermenters I designed worked perfectly. And very soon now, we’ll have your 15,000 litres of botulinum toxin. It’s all gone exactly to plan. We’re there.’ The doctor could not keep the excitement and pride out of his voice. ‘I thought you’d want to share the good news with me as soon as possible.’
Barton
’s heart leapt. Having steeled himself for a nasty shock, this was indeed absolutely stunning news. ‘Well done! Absolutely marvellous,’ he gushed. ‘Bloody tremendous.’
‘
It was not really so difficult,’ Blacher responded modestly. ‘After all, I had prepared this particular weapon before. It was simply a case of following my private notes, and then improvising with the laboratory plant.’