The schedule called for a final test. Rahim was still unsure of the optimum ratio of the two components. Everything had been prepared the previous day, including a third mixing drum containing the two parts of the VX combined. Rahim’s failing strength meant that his role had become largely supervisory, the way an old surgeon who’d lost the required sensitivity in his fingers might direct a young apprentice.
The assistant took the special tool Rahim had the machinists make and loosened the unusual bolts that fastened the lid on the heavy concrete drum. The bolts were well lubricated and easily released. The lid was heavy, and she grunted as she lifted it off and placed it on the floor. A second drum was revealed inside, as with a Russian doll, this one made of stainless steel itself encased in thick rubber. Rahim watched patiently, aware of his own short, hot breaths. Neither container carried any dire warnings, no indication of what lay within.
The lid on the second drum within the drum was simply unscrewed. Rahim took a torch and shone it into the darkness. It was less than a quarter full. Satisfied, he gestured at Etti to continue. She reached into the depths of the rubber flask with a small plastic cup attached to a long, thin extension — a ladle — and pushed it into the liquid. She paused to get her breath and then lifted the cup out, intensely aware that the contents were capable of killing more than a hundred thousand people. Her hand shook with its proximity to the fluid. The power of this mighty weapon made her feel faint. Slowly, slowly she raised the cup until she had it over the brim of the rubber canister and then swung it carefully across to the beaker on the benchtop. She began to pour it carefully, so very carefully, into the glass container. The liquid was a light honey colour and looked — strangely — good enough to drink.
And then suddenly, ka-boom! The shock wave of an explosion rattled the walls of their demountable, shattering two windows. Etti flinched with shock as the glass blew in. She froze for a moment and then looked up, sweat trickling down her brow. ‘Ignore it, concentrate,’ said Rahim tersely, his lack of health a keen example to her of the dangers of being distracted at critical moments.
The rat froze when the vibrations from the explosion hummed through the floor. And then a large splash of liquid had fallen from a height and plastered it along the centre of its back, almost rolling it over. A human’s foot shifted towards it, and the movement broke through its fear. The rat scampered off to the safety of a darkened corner, where Etti’s cat pounced on it.
Just on thirty minutes later, Rahim and Etti were done and the drum resealed. This trial would kill the last of the pigs and no more of these animals would be used to test the agent — they were too big and disposal of them was proving difficult. Etti steeled herself to check the floor under the table to see if any VX had been accidentally spilled. She believed a small amount had sloshed out of the ladle when the explosion had made her jump. Etti had not mentioned this to Rahim for fear of upsetting him. She looked on the floor under the workbench but the floorboards appeared to be clear of any telltale spatters. She told herself that she must have imagined the spillage and was enormously relieved — as much for the sake of her own health as for Rahim’s. She looked across the room and saw him slumped on a stool, exhausted.
Duat supervised the removal of the remains of the dead caused by the accident with the claymore mine while he inwardly cursed their stupidity. But accidents like this had happened before and they would happen again. Praise be to Allah that the death toll was not higher.
One of the carpenters ran up to Duat as he left the grisly scene at the weapons range and presented him with a yellow epoxy brick, a compressed tile of heroin buried deep within. At least here was some good news. Duat turned it over in his hand and smiled. That Rahim was indeed a genius.
The cat ran a considerable distance with the rat in its mouth. When it finally paused to inspect its catch in the rafters of its favourite hiding place, the cat found that the rodent had died. There was no opportunity to tease it, play with it. The hunter began to feast on its catch. Within a minute of licking its dinner’s fur, the cat began to convulse. Seconds later, it fell into a drainpipe, dead. The afternoon monsoon washed the animals, both contaminated with massive amounts of VX, into the encampment’s main water tank. There, they became stuck in a feeder pipe to the encampment’s mess.
Townsville, Queensland, Australia
Wilkes had to admit to himself that he was afraid. The ridiculousness of that fear made him angry with himself. The fact was, he would rather storm a machine gun emplacement than face Annabelle’s displeasure. She had real power over his state of mind, he realised. That, and the fact that he was fearful of the way things seemed to have changed between them.
A homecoming was once a relatively simple moment when they were overwhelmed with the emotion of being together again and went straight off to the sack. But now, since the simplicity of their relationship had been changed by their engagement, a homecoming seemed to be more about something he was denying her. He shrugged. Perhaps he was mistaken and was just feeling uncertain because they’d parted on such a bum note. Maybe he was getting worked up over nothing and they would embrace, kiss and one thing would lead to another and…Well, he warmed at the remembrance of Annabelle’s touch.
The C-130’s ramp cracked open, the struts wheezing. Wilkes’s ears rang from the assault of the Hercules’s propeller noise, despite the earplugs he’d been given. The heat of Townsville hit his face as he hopped down onto the tarmac, the heavy kitbag swung over his shoulder. The C-5 Galaxy had earlier delivered him and Atticus to Fairbairn AFB in Canberra, where they’d gone straight to a debrief with Air Marshal Ted Niven, Graeme Griffin, Gia Ferallo and Felix Mortimer, the DIO man. Wilkes and Monroe had already forwarded home a report detailing Kadar Al-Jahani’s capture. Canberra just wanted an initial verbal debrief on the terrorist’s delivery to Guantanamo Bay. That was all pretty straightforward, but both he and Atticus were surprised when they’d heard that Kadar Al-Jahani had been reported killed in a capture gone horribly wrong. Wilkes was sure ASIS, or more likely the CIA, had its reasons for the lie, and that more than likely those reasons wouldn’t be happy ones for Kadar Al-Jahani.
Wilkes breathed in the hot, clean air of home. It smelled of concrete and grass and imminent rain. Towering white and grey cumulonimbus clouds portended a storm and they reared up in the sky like knights in a joust. Wilkes walked across the tarmac to the terminal and felt a genuine relief to be back in Australia. He knew he wasn’t alone in that. What Aussie didn’t feel the same way when returning from a long stint overseas, relieved to be back in a country that made sense, where people didn’t shoot at each other for having a contrary point of view or a different skin colour. Wilkes thought about Kadar Al-Jahani and the land he’d come from, eternally torn with anger and blood.
Wilkes had seen enough misery to last several lifetimes and three things he knew to be true: that human beings bled the same, that they all had feelings, and that a sense of shared humanity was the most important belief system there was. Wilkes realised it was a strange philosophy for a bloke who was trained to kill, but it made a lot more sense than two people prepared to slaughter one another because each believed the other worshipped the same god in the wrong way. He knew the Israel — Palestine mess was more complicated than that, but surely, if people realised how much they were the same rather than how much they differed, the situation there would improve, wouldn’t it?