“Ridiculous,” Sykes snapped.
“Maybe what we’re talking about is something as mundane as a special-forces team that’s trained to operate at an uncanny level of efficacy and stealth,” Wylings continued. “Maybe something more. Whatever it is, SAS or Sinanju, it’s decimated our men when it could, and we need to defend against it. Which is why we must be prepared for it.”
Sykes rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Sinanju, indeed.”
“Believe what you will, Sykes.
“And what do you believe, Wylie?” Dolan asked curiously.
Wylings nodded to himself, as if considering it anew, but he explained he had thought the matter over extensively in the past few hours.
“When the British Empire was pieced together out of the uncivilized world, there were always new dangers that the English hadn’t counted on or had never heard of. Think of the other stories we know from our own families, like the wild yarns your old uncle brought back from India.” Sykes made to speak, but Wylings held up his hand and cut him off. “Most of them just flights of fancy made up by savages to dazzle the other savages, naturally, but there must be some truth to some of those yarns. It’s hard not to believe in some of them, and it’s hard for me to disbelieve in the Masters of Sinanju. They’re just human beings, after all, but they happen to be the world’s most skilled assassins. What the witnesses saw in Ayounde and what Dolan’s father told him about the Master taking an American trainee tells me that this is what we are up against.”
Sykes was wavering, but he still made a face about it.
“And what we believe in is actually beside the point,” Wylings continued. “I’m not going to take chances against whatever it is, lads. It’s good at what it does and it might be stalking us this very minute.”
“So what do we do about it?” Sykes asked, showing a little genuine concern for the first time.
“You do nothing about it, except what you’re already doing,” Wylings said. “I’ve got extra defensive measures ready to deploy, so to speak. I need you to keep the debate going in parliament. The world thinks England supports the recolonization and nobody wants to pick a fight with Great Britain. The one thing we cannot afford at this point is to get a declaration from parliament that says we’re not sanctioned.”
Sykes and Dolan looked at each other.
“Bad news on that front, Wylie,” Sykes said.
Chapter 21
Sir James Wylings sat alone in his private study after his old school chums had scampered off to parliament.
He was disappointed in Sykes and Dolan. They had performed their roles without ambition—and that failure dated back to their years at university, where they had failed to throw themselves into their careers as completely as they should have. They did well, but they were never driven in the way Wylings was driven.
If they had been truly ambitious they would have formed more solid relationships among the political elite of Great Britain, and they would have been better prepared to exploit those relationships when the time came. Oh, they had done well enough, sowing seeds of uncertainty among members of parliament about the legal basis of the recolonization movement Parliament had been arguing the point for days, but Dolan and Sykes should have had the influence to stall a vote indefinitely.
Wylings didn’t need to consider his next, drastic move. His plans for this eventuality had been set in stone a long time ago. Once the British officially came out against the recolonization efforts and declared that the colonizers were not acting with the authority of British law, then the reprisals would come. The Ayoundis would try to take back their country, even with the head of the nation and all his ministers held hostage. The Canadians would march their Mounties into Newfoundland and take back their precious province.
The American bastards wouldn’t waste a moment before they flew choppers into New Jersey and decimated the capitol building, taking back New Jersey in a shocking, awe-inspiring onslaught of destruction.
Wylings was ready. He would make sure that there would be another reason for the world to keep its distance. He still had enough hours to make it happen in just the proper way. The news would break just after the news of the parliamentary vote.
Sir James Wylings was off to Ayounde.
He was met at the airport by his pilots. Wylings owned them. They knew how to keep their mouths shut.
The big jet lumbered down the runway and settled onto its route to Africa. The jet made this run each month. Air traffic treated it as a routine flight and never noticed that the jet was making unusually rapid progress en route to Sierra Leone.
Air traffic control in Africa landed the Wylings jet without delay and James Wylings debarked unseen, boarded a smaller, private jet and zipped away again. It took him twenty minutes to reach Ayounde, where he was granted landing permission without delay.
A taxi took him to the international bazaar. Wylings was relieved to see the street almost entirely deserted.
“Most of the stores not even bothering to open up again,” his Ayounde driver told him. “Nobody coming to visit Ayounde yet. Ayounde people can’t afford all this expensive things.”
“Too bad,” Wylings said, but he was delighted. He didn’t want to have the blood of a lot of outsiders, especially Europeans, on his hands.
He used his pass code to enter a private door to a private flat above a shuttered shop selling one of the most expensive French designers. The rented flat was small, unfurnished and dusty, but it did have a loo, with a bathtub.
James Wylings drew himself a bath, then pulled a weapon of mass destruction out of his bulging trousers. The small metal cylinder rested inside three sealed, flexible plastic capsules, the largest an inch in diameter and eight inches long. Inside each transparent capsule was a metal tube, as narrow as a drinking straw.
Wylings pulled on his rubber gloves and bent the capsule in his hands. The plastic should twist without breaking, but the cylinder would open up—eventually. He bent the plastic the other way, then back and forth. The crimp in the metal was getting easier. It had to give way sooner or later—
The metal broke, and a clear, viscous fluid leaked from the tube and seemed to fill the inside of the inner-most plastic capsule. Sir James Wylings stood there looking at it, flooded with terror and fascination. He felt as if he had just summoned the Grim Reaper to the surface of the mortal world, which was more or less true.
The innermost capsule opened at one end and the viscous fluid began to seep into the second capsule.
“Christ!” Wylings released the capsule and it plopped into the bath water. He depressed the lever to open the drain, but he left the water running.
The bathtub in this flat had intentionally been plumbed incorrectly. The water didn’t drain into the sewer; it was pumped directly into the water main from which it had come. The flat had been chosen for its proximity to the big pipe that channeled water to most of the residents of the capital city.
The plastic would be eaten away by what was inside, and then what was inside would drain into the water main and begin to spread. Soon enough…
A box of gasoline additive was resting on the loo, filmy with dust. A rolled-up piece of paper was sticking out of the top—actually a slow-burning fuse. A box of matches sat on the sink. Wylings had placed all the items here months ago.
There were some aspects of this operation that he had to handle personally. Some aspects that Sykes and Dolan didn’t even know about.
Wylings lit the paper and got out of the flat in a hurry. The taxi driver was waiting for him and they started back to the airport.
“Forget something, sir?” the driver asked. “You weren’t there long.”
Wylings could see smoke coming over the tops of the buildings. The flat would be in flames already. Even if the contamination was traced back to the rented apartment, there would be no evidence left in the ashes.