Outbreak

CHAPTER ONE

Dan Lucas walked back and forth, wearing a groove into the hotel-room carpet. The wall-mounted clock read 9.50 a.m. Where the hell were they? He hated waiting. Why on earth couldn’t he jump in his X-Trail, drive up to Bodsworth Hill, and get on with the job so he could be back in time for tea? He threw his hands up in the air: a silent answer to his own question. It was beyond him. For God’s sake, the round trip to the phone exchange and back would take less than fifty minutes.

Dan caught a glimpse of himself in the dresser mirror and self-consciously sucked in his gut, the result of too many restaurant meals. He made a note to eat fewer carbs. At forty-five, he supposed he was still trim enough. And certainly he could cut a dash with the ladies, if he only had the time – and a bottle of Grecian 2000 to cover the flecks of peppered grey hair.

Maybe next year.

He scanned the wall-mounted clock reflected in the mirror. It read 9.51 Hell! Only a minute had elapsed since the last time he’d looked. It felt more like twenty.

Why did he need a military escort anyway? He’d been working for the Ministry of Defence as a private contractor for the past six months and had never been given one before. What was so important about this job that he needed a babysitter? He was a big boy now, wasn’t he? Had been ever since he left the Navy eight years ago. He was a Lieutenant Commander – one of Her Majesty’s fine and upstanding naval officers – and an expert in electronic communications systems. He put his knowledge to good use back out on Civvy Street contracting for BT, MITEL, the MOD: in effect, anyone who had a problem and could afford his services.

At this moment in time, he was working for the MOD. Bodsworth Hill was the last in a series of small automated BT exchanges he’d been upgrading undercover. He had signed the Official Secrets Act for the second time in his life, vowing to take the rap if he was caught; the MOD couldn’t be implicated. If he completed the task, he’d be given a handsome reward. Failure meant a custodial sentence.

He’d upgraded fifty-nine exchanges so far. This would be his sixtieth. The most important. To the outside world, Bodsworth Hill was a minor exchange on the edge of a backwater village, miles from anywhere. To the MOD, it was the keystone. It would hide the master chip that tapped into a Digital Y-AXE10 System Network. In layman’s terms, he’d wired the other exchanges to this one, proverbially giving the fox access to the chicken coop.

Why this was important to the MOD was beyond him; they could eavesdrop into every electronic communications system across the UK anyway.

Dan slammed his fist into his open palm. Come on!

The clock ticked on to 9.52 just as a heavy knock reverberated through the room.

Police? Had to be. Only they commanded such a characteristic rap, the thought of which made his knuckles hurt.

Instinctively, he put the security bolt on the door and looked through the pinhole viewer. Plunged into a bubble world of telescopics, the Military Police officer’s rounded face, oversized for his scrawny body, peered back at him.

Dan opened the door, letting the security bar do its job. The MP was dressed in khaki slacks and a military jacket, its polished brass buttons reflecting light from the overhead fluorescent. Around his left arm was the distinctive MP band, and atop his head the red cap that earned them their nickname.

‘Yeah?’

‘Dan Lucas?’ the officer asked.

‘Who’s askin'?’ Dan smirked as the Red Cap struggled to hold in an insult.

‘Sergeant Grimmer.’

The name seemed to suit his demeanour. ‘ID, soldier.’

Grimmer reached into his top pocket and slipped his ID through the gap.

Dan looked at it nonchalantly. He wasn’t really interested in who the Red Cap was; he’d been expecting him all morning. He was enjoying toying with the officer. At times, Dan’s personality could be sarcastic to the point of being sadistic, and having to wait hadn’t improved it any. He flicked the card back through the gap, purposely missing the MP’s outstretched hand. It spiralled to the floor.

Dan shut the door and removed the security latch. The MP was kneeling before him when he reopened it, causing him to smile.

Grimmer stood, entered the room and closed the door behind him. Smiling through clenched teeth, he handed Dan a sealed brown-paper envelope. ‘For you.’

Dan raised an eyebrow, accepting the unexpected gift. He tore it open like a child unwrapping a Christmas present, allowing the contents – a plastic ID card - to fall into the palm of his hand. It was the size of a credit card, one side blank, the other containing his photograph and a plethora of information: name, home address, National Insurance number, profession.… Fine, he thought, but he wondered why it also contained details about his national origin, and who knew that about him anyway? As far as the authorities should know, he was UK White British. However, his ID read, ‘UK White Polish.’

True, his grandfather, Marek Lukasiewicz, had been Polish. With a name like that, how could he have been anything else? On 15 June 1940, Marek fled to England with the Free Polish Forces after Hitler invaded France. He never went back to his homeland. Instead, his grandfather changed his surname from Lukasiewicz to Lucas and attempted to integrate into British society. But who else knew about this, and why was it important enough to put on the face of his ID card?

‘What does CLASS II mean?’ Dan asked.

Sergeant Grimmer smiled, exposing a dark gap that had once been occupied by two white incisors. ‘Military contractor,’ he replied, his smile a radiant crescent from ear to ear. ‘Don’t let that thing out of your sight!’

Dan grimaced.

‘Your choice. Failure to produce it on request, and you’ll get a bullet through your frontal cortex – or, in civilian parlance, you’ll get your fuckin’ brains blown out.’

‘What?’

The MP was clearly enjoying turning the tables. ‘Mr Lucas, for your information Martial Law was declared twenty-two minutes ago, at 9.30. Lose that card and I’ll shoot you myself.’

Dan stashed the card in the top pocket of his shirt and tapped it through the denim fabric. ‘Not yet, sunshine. Not just yet!’

‘I might just make an exception for you and shoot you anyways.’

‘Not till the job’s done,’ Dan replied. ‘Come on, let’s get a move on, I’ve got work to do.’

Bypassing Grimmer, he headed for the door.

CHAPTER TWO

Bloody hell!

A stone – rock, whatever it was – smashed into the bulletproof windscreen of the Mastiff, taking Dan by surprise. The seven soldiers and two crew never even flinched. He guessed Neanderthal projectiles being thrown by a group of young men were nothing when you were in a beast of a vehicle like this and more used to projectiles like rocket-propelled grenades.

The young men had blocked the road ahead of them. The lead vehicle stopped, as did the other six that followed. The convoy carried twelve crew, forty-six fully armed combat soldiers from the 1st Battalion Mercian Regiment based at Catterick, Dan, and Sergeant Grimmer, who was there to escort Dan to the British Telecom exchange at Bodsworth Hill, on the outskirts of Reeth, North Yorkshire. Dan had no idea what the other fifty-eight troops were doing. Surely they weren’t all there as his protection force?

The commanding officer scanned the scene before them. Dan noted the road was barricaded with upturned cars. They were surrounded by maybe forty men, mostly in their late teens. Some carried cricket bats or iron bars, but the majority held rocks, which they hurled at the military convoy. Dan noticed a bed sheet tied between two posts at the side of the road. A message had been scrawled across its taut surface in foot-high letters: ‘SAY NO to military rule!’

The crowd parted, and two scrawny youths stepped forward waving flaming bottles. They were Molotov cocktails. The scene reminded Dan of a street battle he had seen between Irish youths and the Royal Ulster Constabulary back in the riots of ’69.

The sound of shattering glass rang through the Mastiff as the petrol bomb exploded, engulfing the vehicle in hot yellow flame. The second impact followed shortly after.

Dan winced. He needn’t have bothered. The attack was as successful as a man trying to cut through reinforced concrete with a butter knife.

‘Give ’em a short burst of Bessie,’ the commanding officer barked at one of the soldiers.

A stocky man, the type that looked like a bruiser from a bare-knuckle fight, stood up and opened the heavy metal hatch to the gun turret. His helmeted head and shoulders occupied the firing port. Dan recognised the L11A1 heavy machine gun from his navy days, when it was more commonly known as a ‘Browning’. The soldier cocked the mechanism and fired several warning shots above the youths.

He waited a moment. They failed to disperse.

Taking aim, he let off a short controlled burst of 12.7mm munitions into the crowd. Five of the teenagers were instantly ripped into pieces.

Dan tried to hold back the vomit rising in his throat. Three of the teenagers had been cut in half by the velocity of the shells impacting their bodies at such close quarters. The tarmac was instantaneously washed deep crimson in a sea of blood. Elongated eels of intestines throbbed where they lay, emitting the last vestiges of half-digested food onto the ground. The other two teenagers no longer had heads. The surrounding crowd were splattered with wet, icky gunk – the remnants of brains – marking those who had escaped a similar fate.

‘Don’t tell me this is legal,’ he snapped. It had to be criminal.

Grimmer’s tone was sour. ‘Sit down, Mr Lucas. Under Quarantine Law, article four states, it is perfectly legal to dispatch any individual to stop the incitement of riot or gathering of people where either anarchy or further likelihood of viral spread may occur.’

‘Dispatch? DISPATCH?’ Dan slammed the heel of his hand against the Mastiff’s cold metal side. ‘You make it sound like you just got rid of an unwanted parcel, not killed off five innocent kids. Why don’t you call it what it is – murder!’

‘Murder is against the law, Mr Lucas. Now sit down and shut up!’

‘Since when is this lawful?’

‘I’ve already told you once: since nine-thirty this morning. Weren’t you listening to me, Mr Lucas?’

Dan fell silent. The consequences of what military law meant hadn’t hit home until now. Civil authority, civil law, civil rights – all gone: civil had been replaced with the word military, which meant guns, military justice and the suspension of all those little niceties a free country could offer.

‘Well, I don’t fuckin’ like it!’ Dan shouted.

‘You don’t have to,’ the MP shot back.

The bruiser fired several more warning bursts above the crowd until they scurried away, and then he climbed down from his gun turret. A painful clang reverberated around the armoured vehicle as the metal hatch slammed shut behind him. The soldier turned towards Dan and, nose-to-nose, glared deep into his eyes. ‘If you think I enjoyed that,’ he said in a Cheshire accent, possibly marking him from Stockport, ‘then you’re sick. Now, take your babysitter’s advice and zip it for the rest of the journey.’

The commanding officer looked over at the two of them before picking up the mike of his Bowman radio. He clicked the device on. ‘Bravo Two, Bravo Two from Bravo One, remove the barricade.’

Bravo Two acknowledged. Dan heard the Caterpillar C-7 engine roar into life as it pulled the twenty-six-ton Mastiff to the head of the convoy. Thirty seconds later, the barricade had been blown to pieces by Bravo Two’s 40mm automatic grenade launcher.

They were on their way again to Bodsworth Hill.

* * *

Now that Martial Law had been declared, he no longer needed to pose as a telecoms engineer to gain access to the communications exchange. His fake access keys, BT ID and standard-issue uniform had been replaced by several dozen SA80 assault rifles carried by mean-looking soldiers who had already proved they were willing to use them.

When they arrived fifteen minutes later, the reason for the military convoy became apparent as the commanding officer barked orders at his men: Grimmer had been his sole escort. The forty-six troops from the Mercian Regiment were there to throw a protective ring around the exchange, with extra firepower provided by the six Mastiffs and twelve armed crew. Whatever last job Dan was to undertake at the exchange was obviously worth guarding.

The commanding officer, black-resin briefcase in hand, strode purposefully over to Dan. ‘Mr Lucas, allow me to introduce myself. I’m Lieutenant Manners.’ He held out the briefcase. ‘This is for you. Inside you’ll find your orders and all the equipment necessary to complete the task.’

Dan took the container. It felt heavier than he had expected. Interesting, he thought.

Leaving the officer where he stood, Dan walked off towards the entrance of the exchange. Grimmer followed closely behind. Dan stopped and turned. ‘And where do you think you’re going?’

‘With you, Mr Lucas,’ Grimmer said. ‘I ain’t letting you out of my sight.’

‘Oh, that makes me feel so much better,’ he replied with a sarcasm that could have curdled milk at fifty paces. ‘My, my, what a thoughtful babysitter you turned out to be!’

CHAPTER THREE

Corporal Andy Pickersgill would have fought the Taliban all day long given a chance. He enjoyed shooting them with his trusty SA80. He liked it even better close up and personal, bayonet fixed, thrusting it deep into their guts, watching the dirty bastards squeal at the point of his blade. He would never share these thoughts with his family, not unless he wanted to be called a sicko, but then again, what did they know? Had they ever completed a tour of Afghanistan?

No.

The closest threat they’d ever experience would be from a domestic suicide bomber like those involved in the 7/7 atrocities in London. But thankfully, that was hardly likely to happen, which was a good thing. He didn’t want his family to see what he had seen or feel what he now felt. He never wanted them to experience the pain that only another soldier could understand.

He’d lost two mates in Helmand: Stan had been shot in the gut by an AK-47 and bled to death on an evac chopper whilst trying to hold his intestines in place as they spilled out from between his fingers. His other mate, Ed, had stepped on an IED. His body parts had been spread over two hundred yards around an opium field. Andy hoped the coward who had planted the device met a similar end.

He’d killed five of the fuckers before Stan and Ed had met their end on this tour. His tally now stood at twenty-seven: sixteen shot with his SA80, five dispatched with a single grenade and six more skewered like kebabs.

And now his company, the Second Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment – although he still liked to think of them as the Green Howards – were back home. They had been flown back to Weeton Barracks in Lancashire two months before his tour of duty was due to end.

Most soldiers would have welcomed the turn of events that tore them from that hellhole, but not Andy. Being back meant not killing Taliban. Under different circumstances, shelving the nightmare in exchange for being at home with his family wouldn’t have been a bad thing. He longed to walk through the woods with Sally on a balmy summer afternoon before making passionate love to her on the living-room floor whilst listening to U2.

But his return to the