Lethal Sky Read online

ARABIAN SEA

  JUNE 24, LOCAL TIME: 0100

  On the third day after leaving Karachi, now off the coast of Yemen, Badi stands beside his Captain, the Egyptian Issac Walid, watching from the Isra’s wheelhouse as a fast launch vectors towards them.

  ‘It is them? You are certain.’

  Walid nods. ‘We are picking up their transponder.’

  ‘Good work. Your seamanship is excellent.’

  Badi has reason to feel pleased with the voyage so far. The live human test was an affirmation of the veracity of his lethal cargo. Originally intended to have been carried out on an East African refugee camp, that test had been foiled by the suicidal bravery of a Royal Air Force pilot. Badi feels a sense of justice, particularly since just two men survived the test, and then only barely. Both were despatched with a spike to the head.

  The launch ties up alongside and the occupants scramble aboard the Isra. One is a swarthy Yemeni, along with two slight men from the Far East, with Asian features and compact hips. One of the latter men is known to Badi. His name is Djamil. They first met in Jakarta two years earlier.

  Badi leads the newcomers down into the hold, where stainless steel tanks sit in wooden crates. Each has the name of a city written in permanent marker on the side along with violent slogans and boasts written by the crewmen. Badi leads Djamil to the one with ‘SYDNEY’ scrawled in black.

  ‘This is for you. There can be no mistakes. The plan is sound.’

  ‘You have tested the contents? Were they effective?’

  ‘Beyond expectations. Beyond my dreams.’

  Djamil cracks a smile. ‘Good news. Should we load up now?’

  ‘First,’ Badi says, ‘load the cargo, then the ship’s galley will provide you and your crew with food before you go.’

  He smiles with satisfaction. From the Yemeni city of Aden an EMK corporate jet will carry Djamil and the spore tank across the Indian Ocean, to where a loyal cell waits, ready to carry the fight to a country that has long thought itself safe.

  At a steady twelve knots, Isra reaches then passes through the Suez Canal, a slow affair that leaves Badi impatient and irritable.

  On the Mediterranean Sea between Cyprus and Sardinia the time passes interminably. Badi paces the deck and exhorts Walid to coax more speed from the Caterpillar diesels. Cassie’s indolence annoys him. They bicker constantly.

  ‘You would never understand my life,’ he tells her, sitting at the table in the owner’s suite. ‘The kind of people we are.’ He points down at the gold cigarette case. ‘That was given to my father by Uday Hussein before the American invaders murdered him. Uday owned more than one thousand luxury cars — Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Maseratis. He had his own private torture chambers. Once, when his father Saddam’s personal valet displeased him, Uday slaughtered him with one of those electric carving knives, in front of guests that included the President of Egypt … cut him up … dismembered him in front of heads of state and their wives … I swear that is a true story.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘How could I invent such a thing?’ Badi looks at her face, so close to his. The story has turned her on, her painted lips are parted, eyes half closed and moist. For an American she is an amazing woman, and it is unsurprising that he is drawn to her.

  Badi lets her kiss him, feeling the heat and wetness of her mouth, the softness of her tongue. For a moment he allows himself to enjoy the pleasure of the sensation. With firm pressure on his wrist Cassie drags his hand to her breast. He feels the hardness of her nipple against his palm and he seeks to hold it between his thumb and forefinger.

  Cassie groans, and he feels her hand creep along the surface of his inner thigh.

  ‘Stop,’ he commands, but the hand continues to move upwards.

  He half stands and knocks her away, slapping her face with the palm of his hand so hard it leaves a red imprint on her cheek. ‘I told you to stop it. Learn your place.’

  ‘Why do you have to hurt me? Is that how you prove your manhood?’

  ‘Silence, woman.’

  ‘Because we both know you aren’t quite up there in that department.’

  Badi carries her to the giant bed and beats her with a bamboo cane until her back and buttocks are striped with red. Even then she is not cowed, and she bares her teeth at him. ‘If you were a real man you would fuck me properly. You use a stick as your penis, my pain is your orgasm.’

  Badi hits her until she begs for mercy, and he is on his knees beside the bed, breathless and blind with rage, wracked with conflicting emotions.

  The next day, off the coast of Sicily, he arranges for an EMK Corporation chopper to fly out and take him and Cassie shopping. The best jewellers of Syracuse display their finest, desperate to tempt her. In the end she chooses a silver and diamond choker so ostentatious that only a movie star could wear it. That night they drink champagne. She takes off her top, piles her red mane on her head and dances for him while he plays the oud. Later she sits on his lap and cradles his head against her white breasts.

  ‘I’m worried that we will die,’ she says. ‘Both of us.’

  ‘No. You are wrong.’

  ‘I’ve always … seen things. Things that are going to happen.’

  ‘You see lies,’ Badi sneers. ‘I am just days from a historic victory.’

  Cassie takes his left hand. The fingers are long and elegant. His fingernails, neatly trimmed, are almost translucent, clearly showing the moon-rise shape of the new nail growing up from inside. The tips are calloused, from long hours of practice on the oud.

  Cassie reaches out with her forefinger, the painted nail no longer than the pad of skin, and presses against the rubbery vein that stands out on the side of his wrist, then traces it into the light hairs of his forearm.

  ‘You’re stressed,’ she breathes. ‘You need to relax.’ His face, she thinks, is truly beautiful. His hair and eyebrows are a glossy black, his eyes dark also, frighteningly so when he is angry.

  The game — the drug called Badi — is dangerous. Yet Cassie has become hopelessly addicted.

  Ten days after testing the spores in the Arabian Sea, the Isra drops anchor in the black mud of the Thames Estuary, off Sheerness, joining dozens of ships waiting for their turn at the docks of London Gateway or Thamesport.

  Cassie stands on the balcony, a cool breeze rippling her dress, staring out at the distant city skyline, wondering what it will be like when the people are all dead.

  SEVEN

  LONDON, ENGLAND

  JULY 3, LOCAL TIME: 1600

  PJ Johnson is on his way into work when he turns the BMW into the car park at a Cash and Carry convenience store just off Chertsey Road, opposite the decorator centre. Working night shift it is much more convenient to shop on the way in rather than dog-tired at nine or ten in the morning.

  He returns to the car with a cardboard carton of nonperishable supplies for the larder at home, opens the boot and places them inside. As he walks around to the driver’s door a silver Audi A3, with heavily tinted windows, comes into view from down towards the motorway and slides into the parking spot beside PJ.

  He holds the plastic keyless starter in his hand and waits. The window slides down, revealing that craggy face. Samuel.

  ‘Have you decided?’

  PJ knows that he is on the cusp of something life changing. A couple of days earlier he had used some of his precious off-duty time to drive to the town of Colchester, in Essex, to the semi-detached house in which his mother lives with his sister. He kissed his mother’s cheek, insisting she remain in her soft chair. Unfinished crossword puzzles sat on the table beside her and a crocheted rug covered her legs.

  PJ kneeled down next to her. ‘I’m considering a job that will mean I have to go away for a long time. I won’t even be able to call you.’

  ‘For how long?’

  He shrugged. ‘They didn’t tell me. Years maybe.’

  ‘Will you do it?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Y
our father was never very good at life. You don’t have to overcompensate, you know, just because your dad was a jailbird.’

  ‘It’s not that. I just want to make a difference.’

  He had finally made his decision at two in the morning, sitting in a surveillance van outside an EMK service station near Woking. There would be regrets — lots of them. But he had long believed that he was born to serve. His personal considerations were secondary.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, looking Samuel in the eye. ‘I’ve made up my mind.’

  ‘And …?’

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘Are you certain?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’

  The window starts to rise.

  ‘Samuel?’

  The window stops. ‘Yes?’

  ‘What happens now?’

  ‘Preparations will be made. Go about your duties as normal. Tell no one. When we’re ready we’ll collect you. Make sure you are ready.’

  EIGHT

  BONDI BEACH, SYDNEY

  LOCAL TIME: 0530

  Marika Hartmann is watching the sun rise over Bondi Beach, shining orange through a band of cloud that always seems to line the horizon at dawn. She is tired. She slept for five hours, then rose to swim in the cold predawn. It is winter, and her skin is raised in tiny goosebumps.

  From Marika’s position, sitting on the grass at the verge of Ray O’Keefe Reserve on Ben Buckler Headland, she looks down on the sandstone rocks and the southerly swell crashing onto them. Spray persists with the breeze, exciting her senses with a salt tingle.

  Further around, past Mermaid Rock, Australia’s most famous beach is already stirring with activity. Personal trainers arrive with their clients — jogging, doing sprints and stretches on that well-used and much-loved strip of sand, all the way to the Icebergs club at the far southern extremity.

  Returning to stay in her family home has been strange. Her parents have developed routines that go on in spite of her. Much as they try, they can’t understand what her job entails, and in a way, neither does she want them to — they are a symbol of the naivety she wants to protect.

  Despite the beauty of the morning, Marika feels tense. Her home is under threat. The city of her birth has never been more beautiful. If, in summer, Sydney is wrought of gold, in winter she is silver. Her colours are steely in the cold westerly winds, her waters sprinkled with bright metallic dust. The sea stretches grey and clear to the horizon, the sun sending finger-shaped rays from behind the cloud.

  Something vibrates in her beach bag — the new generation computer interface. Officially designated the Glassid, but known as the GU, the device evolved from the civilian Google Glass — a personal computer, the frame of which sits on the ears and bridge of the nose like spectacles, yet without lenses. The system is powered by the Lockheed-Martin-built MOUS-2 satellite system. This is a relatively new narrowband network designed explicitly for reliable global C2 data links.

  The scarcely noticeable contrivance has a high-definition display in the periphery of the wearer’s right eye, equivalent to a smartphone screen held a short distance away. The unit has voice control functions, connectivity equal or superior to the old Sid comms unit, but there have been teething issues with the mapping and GPS apps.

  Marika slips the unit on, just as a series of operational updates from the UK scroll across the screen. She already knows that Sydney will be targeted. A tip-off had come days earlier, routed through to ASIS, Australia’s secret intelligence service, now working with Marika’s employer, London’s DRFS. According to a ‘deep’ source, a group of, in modern intelligence parlance, ‘actors’ was apparently entering the country, one of whom had boasted of training at the Ka Tirsan complex in Somalia, under the supervision of the infamous Istikaan, the now-dead microbiologist who ran a secret lab in Iraq’s western desert.

  Australia’s borders are porous. Thoroughly vetting all visitors, even from high-risk countries, is almost impossible, especially with services pinched by funding cuts from successive governments.

  Sydney has always seemed far away and safe from terror. Even when Jemaah Islamiyah destroyed two nightclubs and two hundred lives at Kuta Beach, Bali, the carnage took place overseas, close enough to scratch the Australian psyche, but not enough to wound it deeply. Now, however, the black wings of terror are spreading over home skies. The form is not yet known. A feeling of dread manifests itself in acid bile in the back of her throat.

  She shivers to think of what might happen if their fears are realised. They know that around one thousand kilograms of dry Bacillus anthracis spores were spirited out of a Ba’athist lab in Iraq, and prepared for delivery at Ka Tirsan, Somalia, nine months earlier. They know that Badi al-Zaman al-Hamadhani al-Assadi now controls those spores. For Marika, the disappearance of the tanks laden with that biological weapon is the most devastating professional failure of her life. It was her job to stop it happening. And she failed.

  Anthrax, the ancient scourge. So named for the black scabs that break out from infection with the skin variant. Anthracis — coal dark. Yet this version is breathed with air, drawn into the lungs where the infection begins. An aerosol release from an aircraft will become a cloud of spores that will drift down from above.

  Upon inhalation, the first symptoms include coughing, aching joints, fever and haemorrhaging. Blood pools in the lungs, leading to laboured breathing similar to emphysema, followed by shock. Death results in up to ninety per cent of cases. Known strains are fatal within two to five days; the LSS-253 strain from Iraq has unknown virulence, but reports suggest mortality will usually result some forty to seventy hours after inhalation.

  Marika remembers reading observations from al-Hajjuf, the laboratory where the new strain was developed. Where Kurds and Marsh People were taken in chains, crammed into an underground prison and infected with one of the world’s most deadly pathogens. All under the direction of Istikaan, the Hourglass.

  We removed a family of three from the cells, lightly sedated them with Valium and led them to the inhalation chamber. The male subject began to cough thirty-one hours after exposure to the spores. His wife soon after, then the teenage daughter. Within five more hours all three were showing signs of respiratory distress and agitation. Death for all three was achieved within fifty-three hours, a significant improvement on previous …

  The GU comes to life again, a local voice communication this time. ‘Agent Hartmann, are you awake?’

  ‘Yep, what’s happening?’

  ‘We’ve had a breakthrough. Vehicle on the way for you. ETA ten minutes.’

  Marika picks up her bag and stands, takes a last, loving look at the ocean. ‘I’ll be ready, see you then.’

  NINE

  LONDON

  JULY 2, LOCAL TIME: 1700

  Communication is vital to Badi. He knows well that the enemy uses a process known as multilateration to seek out cell phone roaming signals, making a conventional phone too dangerous for a man in his position to operate. Satellite signals are even easier to track, using off-the-shelf Thuraya monitoring systems, manual triangulation or tracking via Doppler shift calculations.

  Using the internet is far safer, and the Toshiba tablet Badi holds in his hands, in the comfort of his cabin, has been modified with sophisticated new features, most significantly the use of MIMO technology to access multiple networks simultaneously. Like most hand-held computers, the tablet seeks out available wifi connections as it moves. Unlike conventional systems, however, it sorts through thousands of networks, looking for weakly encrypted or open access networks. On the open ocean, or in remote areas, it performs a similar process using 4G and satellite data links.

  It has the capability to break encryption through a rapid brute force process, then will connect the device to as many as five or six networks simultaneously, using other users’ PCs and usernames to transmit data. This method slows down the connection speed but makes the device almost impossible to track.

  The tablet, running
the latest generation Android OS, is loaded with dozens of useful applications. Badi finds it indispensable. Messages come in through one of several web-based messaging protocols. Now, however, he uses it to transmit a message to a man waiting in a London flat, to tell him that they are on the way.

  Once this is done, Badi assembles six members of the ‘crew’ on the main deck, all dressed in black sweaters and blue jeans. Each is at the peak of physical fitness. All have been members of elite military outfits in the Middle East. Two were Syrian, two trained by the Americans in Iraq. All carry a concealed machine pistol, made primarily of ABS plastic parts — one sideline of the EMK corporate machine is a fabrication plant in the northern suburbs of London. This new closed workshop has one of the world’s most sophisticated 3D printers — a half-million-dollar unit called a D-Shape. Rather than spraying thin layers of plastic it uses milling and routing techniques to sculpt both plastic and metal into complex shapes. The 5.56mm designs have a direct lineage to Cody Wilson’s original AR15 receiver blueprints.

  The only parts that cannot be made, apart from the ammunition, are rifled, carbon steel barrels, but these are imported from the US without controls, as gun parts are not subject to scrutiny there. The printer has so far manufactured four kinds of weapon — a handgun, an assault rifle, these machine pistols, and a smooth bore single-barrel shotgun.

  ‘The blood of the leader,’ Badi says, ‘runs in the veins of all of you. You will be my captains and lieutenants in this new world.’

  Badi’s eyes turn to the ship’s captain. Walid is a good seaman, but somewhat oafish, heavy in the gut and face. His personal hygiene also leaves something to be desired: strong body odour and an oily sheen on his face.

  ‘Expect us back in the early hours of tomorrow morning. Have you completed all the arrival formalities?’

  ‘Yes, sayyid.’ Walid rolls his eyes. ‘These English, they are in love with paperwork. But I have faxed the customs forms as required and we should have no trouble.’