This Green Hell

FORTY-FIVE

Hammerson switched off the engine of the drab armoured truck and waited as its thirty-kilowatt powerplant whined down to silence. With the window down, he listened for a few seconds, then shouldered open the door and stepped out, placing his hands on his hips as he surveyed his surroundings. Cicadas thrummed in the late morning’s warmth, and the secluded road was like a green tunnel with towering ponderosa pines lining each side of the bitumen. Colonel Jack Hammerson was alone, dressed in plain black combat coveralls, fully armoured and alert.

Contact, he thought, and dropped his hands to his sides, his fingers loose and open.

The transport pulled up a hundred feet down the road. It was a full minute before a figure stepped out, dressed almost exactly like Hammerson. The figure looked slowly left and right, taking in the surrounding woods and the deserted forest road for a few moments, then walked towards him and stopped.

‘Do you have my furniture?’

Hammerson hadn’t expected any warmth or camaraderie from the Mossad agent, even though she had worked with him for over six months, but he was surprised by the look of barely contained fury on her face. He kept his movements to a minimum. In his day, he’d been the most outstanding HAWC in the field; he was a survivor, smart and aggressive. But the woman before him was something else again. She was one of Mossad’s elite Kidon agents, and he had personally enhanced those skills even further with HAWC techniques. A hostile Adira Senesh was pure lethality, something even he knew to be wary of.

‘Yes, I have him,’ he replied, keeping his voice level and his gaze direct. ‘Along with all the information you need about him — his genesis, treatment, the unusual side effects. We’ve also included samples of the treatment compounds. Be advised: if he wakes, he may not be the same person. He may not know you or any of us.’

He looked briefly towards the truck. Alex Hunter had been kept in suspended animation in a special cryo-cylinder. The bacteria had been halted, but not stopped; it was still in his system — and possibly now in his brain. He knew the Israelis would try to eradicate it. They wanted the Arcadian alive; none more so than Adira Senesh.

Hammerson knew Senesh had been placed with them to uncover details of the Arcadian Project, but he’d always suspected that, for her, the mission was a vehicle to keep her near Alex Hunter. He had thwarted that desire throughout her time with the HAWCs. She had requested to work with Alex; he had denied it. She had demanded to go with the team on the Paraguayan mission; also denied. But he hadn’t anticipated that her fury would reach an incendiary level when her sources informed her that Alex had been near fatally injured on the mission. When Hammerson had shared with her the information that the US military wanted to cut their elite soldier up for analysis instead of curing him, her rage had exploded.

Adira’s eyes slid away from him and she turned to her own truck and nodded. From its rear came an electronic whine as a ramp lowered. Two large men jumped from the cabin and walked towards Hammerson’s truck. Without looking at the HAWC commander, they opened the rear door and pulled free the coffin-shaped metal cylinder. A gurney unfolded underneath it to take the weight, and the men pushed it to the rear of their truck. Moments later, Hammerson heard the whine of the ramp closing.

Throughout it all, he’d kept his eyes on Adira. Her hands rested on twin guns strapped in a ‘V’ shape down across her groin. She had well and truly returned to the Mossad fold.

‘Take care of him,’ he said. ‘No one knows he’s still alive.’

The ferocity of her glare stopped him saying any more. Probably shouldn’t try and give advice right now, he thought. He held his breath as he saw her fingers flex, and calculated the odds of winning if she decided to engage. He was armoured, so was she … but she was quicker.

He waited.

Her eyes burned into his. ‘If Alex Hunter dies, it is on your head,’ she said slowly. ‘And I will not forget.’

She turned away without another word.

Jack Hammerson only exhaled once the transport was reversing down the road.

Adira sat silently in the back of the truck with the steel cylinder. Slowly, she reached out to place a hand on its casing. She could feel the cold emanating through the solid metal.

She had achieved her primary mission of securing the Arcadian data and now she was going home — she should have been elated. But she had failed in her personal objective to keep Alex Hunter safe and that dispirited her. Adira rarely had time for friendships; never really liked or respected anyone enough to allow them to get close to her in any shape or form. Now the one person she had respected, the one person she had ever … what?

She withdrew her hand from the steel and sat staring at the coffin-like container. Her palm still felt cold.

Hammerson watched a satellite feed of Adira’s truck speeding across the country. He was relieved: the ‘furniture’ had been successfully removed and there had been no firefight. He was out of practice, and going up against Senesh wouldn’t have been a great way to see if he still had his edge. He felt no remorse for what was essentially his act of treason, or for manipulating Captain Senesh or lying to Aimee Weir. He couldn’t have protected Alex from Medical Division. Arcadian’s only chance of survival was to get out of the country and under General Shavit’s secure umbrella in Israel.

He opened his email and selected a small group as recipients of the message he was about to send. They were some of USSTRATCOM’s most senior military people, including the US Vice-President and the head of the Medical Division. He began to type:

He looked at the message for a moment, then typed another line underneath:

Might as well throw them a bone, he thought.

He sent the message, then sat back, closing his eyes and clasping his hands behind his head. The Arcadian had been off the grid for years. There would be no letter of condolence from the President, or notification to the next of kin, his mother, Kathleen Hunter. She had been told years ago that Alex had died in action. There would be no further communication with Aimee Weir either; now she thought him gone too. The man was a ghost.

Hammerson spoke to the ceiling, his voice tinged with grief. ‘You’re free now, Arcadian. Maybe I’ll see you again some day.’

He leaned forward and tapped a few keys on his computer. A satellite feed of the coast showed a blue dot moving out over the water. The micro-tracker he had planted in Alex’s heel was non-metallic and undetectable without surgery. He was the only person who knew it was there. He smiled.

‘Nope, I know I’ll see you again some day.’