The squat, shaven-headed SAS trooper looked at Winterman and the three fully armed and still camoed-up operators he had with him.
‘Is this a beating?’ the SAS sergeant asked, wondering if he’d pushed the yank major too hard. ‘Because the boys are right behind me in the tent and I’m not afraid to scream like a little girl if things turn nasty.’
‘Who the fuck’s this?’ Cortez asked.
‘No sergeant, it’s not a beating,’ Winterman told him.
‘In which case, either call me Sykes or Psycho, guv. You go shouting words like sergeant around and people are likely to think I’m some kind of soldier or something.’
‘I’m sure nobody would make that mistake,’ Dunn told the Brit, smiling.
‘What can I do you septics for?’ Sykes asked.
‘Septics?’ Hawker asked.
‘Septic tanks, yanks, it’s rhyming… never mind. This to do with the spot of bother you had this morning?’ he asked Winterman. The Major nodded. ‘What do you need?’
‘I’m forced to go outside my chain of command. How much pull do you have with 7 Squadron?’ the Major asked.
‘I can ’ave a word if you like.’
Barnes watched the NBC-suited figure approach him. The man carried himself like he was used to command. He had seen most of the other personnel, except the fat one, defer to him. The NBC-suited figures were packing up the two choppers on the ground and getting ready to leave whilst the other chopper circled them. Barnes had been using his med kit to see to his own wounds as best he could whilst four of the gunmen guarded him.
The commander reached him and stopped, standing over the lieutenant.
‘You’re not going to take me with you, are you?’ Barnes said, with a degree of resignation.
‘I’m sorry, son.’
Barnes looked up at the man but all he saw was the mask of the protective suit.
‘At least take my people’s bodies with you.’ The commander shook his head. ‘Who are you people?’
‘Do you want some advice, son?’ The commander asked. Barnes didn’t answer. ‘Run, as far and as fast as you can. Head south, but start now.’
‘Have I got it? The virus or whatever the fuck that nasty shit was.’
The commander shook his head.
‘Am I a carrier? Will I be contagious?’
‘No.’
Barnes looked up at the commander’s mask.
‘I’m going to find out what happened here, you understand me?’
‘You need to get going, son, now.’
Tiredly Barnes stood up, got his bearings and, with every muscle in his battered and wounded body protesting, he started to run.
Lockhart watched him go and then turned and climbed onto the last chopper as it took off.
A Spirit B2 belonging to the 509th Bomb Wing out of Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, dropped the smart bomb from over ten miles away at a height of forty thousand feet. The bomb tracked the transponder left by Commander Lockhart at the base of the spire in the village unerringly. As it approached the spire a conventional explosive within the bomb was detonated, scattering the nanofuel over the surrounding area. That fuel then auto-ignited.
Barnes heard the explosion first. Then he was aware of a rushing noise as a powerful wind seemed to suck the oxygen out of the air. He had taken as many of the painkillers as he had dared from the med kit, but sprinting through a frozen jungle was still agony and he spent a lot of time slipping over and sliding into trees. Then the blast wave hit. The frozen trees exploded. Ice fragments filled the air. Barnes was torn off his feet and flung across a narrow gulley. He had just about enough time to realise that he was in real trouble.
The RAF 7 Squadron pilot had brought the HC3 Chinook to a hover. Major Winterman, Dunn and Psycho were all crowded into the helicopter’s cockpit hatchway. They, along with the pilot and co-pilot, were staring at what looked like a solid wall of fire hundreds of feet high. It bathed the inside of the chopper in a hellish red light.
Lockhart leant out of the lead helicopter, looking behind him. They had just got clear of the fuel-air bomb’s extended blast wave. It looked like the air itself had caught fire.
Below them was devastation. More than two square miles of rainforest had just ceased to exist. It was steaming, blackened ground now. Beyond that, many of the trees had been knocked over by the pressure wave and parts of the forest were burning.
‘Psycho, what have you got us into?’ the Chinook pilot demanded as he circled the area.
‘Jimmy… I’d no idea,’ Psycho said apologetically. ‘Cool though, aye?’ Dunn and Winterman turned to stare at the SAS trooper, appalled. ‘I’m just saying,’ Psycho said defensively.
‘I’ve got smoke on our five,’ Cortez said from the helicopter’s main cargo area. Winterman and Dunn headed back to look.
‘No shit, the jungle’s on fire,’ Psycho said as the pilot swung the Chinook around.
‘I see it,’ the co-pilot said, pointing at a thin plume of yellow smoke.
Barnes dropped the smoke canister he’d set off when he’d heard the chopper and collapsed to the ground and mercifully passed out.
He came to moments later to see the twin rotors of a Chinook overhead. Time skipped a beat. He came to again to see a squat, powerfully built, shaven-headed soldier holding a General Purpose Machine Gun standing over him.
‘You’re all fucked up, mate,’ the soldier said in a broad London accent.
‘Yes sir, one of the Delta Force operators survived and another is missing.’ Lockhart said into the secure sat phone. ‘Yes, sir, I am aware of Dr Asher’s recommendation but it is my belief that a sanction will just draw more attention to the situation and frankly Asher is a horse’s ass. That soldier fought hard and deserved to live.’ Lockhart listened intently to what was being said on the other end of the line. ‘I still have reservations about the whole program, but frankly I think Lieutenant Barnes would be an excellent choice if you’re still intent on going ahead with it.’ Lockhart listened again. ‘Thank you, Mr Hargreave.’
Lockhart folded the sat phone away and took another sip of his Bourbon as he glanced out the window of the corporate jet heading north. On the table in front of him was a folder labelled Raptor Team.
Schism
‘They call me Prophet. Remember me.’
The barrel of the M12 automatic felt cool against his head. He hadn’t had cause to fire it at CELL or Ceph recently. Pressure on the trigger. Heat. Almost too hot for there to be pain. There was the weirdest sensation of something moving behind his eyes, inside his head, but just for a moment. He remembered sinking to his knees. He was dead then, but his brain was still receiving information. Nobody ever talked about this because nobody ever came back. The ground tipped towards him but everything went black before he face-planted.
He remembered speaking to Hargreave. He remembered being interrogated some time later. No, that wasn’t him. He was dead. He remembered putting the bullet through his head. It was either that or he would have slowly turned into a Ceph, his body eaten by tumours and alien DNA, becoming an alien killing machine.
If he was dead then why was he running across the wasteland, a darkened New York behind him, the damaged skyline reaching up like so many broken fingers? His hands had been bloody before. He’d been little more than a boy, a junior officer, the first time he’d killed. It’d happened in Iraq. It’d happened very quickly and he’d done it over a distance of seventy feet. The first time up close and personal, the first time he’d felt warm blood on his hands, had been in Columbia. Now he had blood on his hands again, and this time he couldn’t feel the warmth through the nanosuit. The blood steamed a bit in the cold air. Information on its chemical makeup scrolled down his vision from the suit’s Heads-Up Display. He knew everything there was to know about this blood except whose it was and how they’d died. Though Prophet knew they must have died at his hands.