Whatever the Cost

1

From his position at the laboratory window, Jake Navarone watched the chaos unfold before him.

At his command, his snipers had taken out the soldiers manning the four corner guard towers; all head shots which had killed the men instantly.

His half-dozen SEALs hidden throughout the prison camp swung into immediate action, gunning down the camp guards from their strategic positions. Some of the soldiers managed to respond, but they were unused to the chaotic melee of real combat and failed to do any real damage before the American commandos finished them.

At the same time, Navarone’s men operating over on the east side of the camp were moving back around the perimeter to liaise with the main group back at the laboratory compound. The majority of the camp’s guard force was still chasing shadows in the eastern forest; and when they were alerted about the attack on the camp and tried to return, they would face the booby traps of Claymore mines that had been strategically placed across their route home. Navarone hoped it would be enough to keep them pinned down on the far side of the camp.

While the gunfight was erupting within the main camp, Navarone watched as Captain Liu and Major Ho started to channel the thousands of scared, confused prisoners towards the western gate, which had been opened by Captain Xie.

Navarone breathed out slowly as he watched the operation unfold before his eyes. It might work, he thought; it just might work.

He checked his watch; only thirty-two minutes to the arrival of the B2 bombers. Would it be enough time?

It would have to be, he told himself; there was nothing else they could do about it anyway.

He smiled as the vast numbers of prisoners funneled out of the side gate, the first surprised and disbelieving members passing by the secondary compound; led towards the safety of the forest beyond, Navarone’s snipers and machine-gunners providing protection from their elevated vantage points.

He kept on checking towards the east with his high-powered binoculars, and could see — and hear — the first explosions of the Claymore mines as the soldiers attempted to return to their camp to stop the unexpected escape of their prisoners. He knew the presence of the mines would keep them at bay; the soldiers wouldn’t know how many mines there were, or where they’d been placed. And the reports coming back from Frank Jaffett confirmed that the soldiers were reluctant to take their chances, despite the orders of their officers to get back and help.

Navarone ordered Jaffett to get back to the western side of the camp and liaise with the rest of his men; the majority of the prisoners were out now, headed into the dense forest beyond the laboratory compound, and the six SEALs in the camp were moving out behind them.

All guards were down in the camp, and Navarone gave the order for his snipers and machine gunners to leave their positions and fall in behind the group funneling into the forest.

He checked his watch again; twenty-four minutes until the bunker busters were dropped. It was time for him to go too.

He took one last look at the camp with his binoculars, sweeping them across the dusty parade ground, past buildings, huts and barracks. There were dead soldiers everywhere, dead and injured prisoners too; but there was nothing he could do about them now. Time was about to run out, and they had rescued as many people as they could.

Yes; it was time to go.

But then he saw something; movement at the windows of a small building towards the north of the camp.

He zoomed in the binoculars, trying to see what it was.

When he realized what he was looking at, his stomach turned.

Children.

It was children that he could see at the barred window, straining to get out; they must have been locked in there by the guards.

Navarone turned, saw his men disappearing into the forest with the huge mass of stumbling prisoners; saw Captain Xie about to close the gate behind them.

‘Hold the gate!’ Navarone shouted to Xie through his radio. ‘I need to get in there!’

He looked at his watch as he dropped the binoculars and sprinted for the stairs.

He had just twenty minutes left before the valley — and the children — were blown off the face of the earth.

Major Stan Harris checked the readouts on his instruments as he piloted the huge flying wing that was the B2 Spirit stealth bomber over enemy territory, all too aware that he was invading a country with an unknown anti-aircraft capability.

The technology of the B2 was incredible — from its shape, specially designed to reflect radar signals, to the cooling vents which processed the exhaust fumes before releasing them from its top-mounted vents, every element of the airplane was aimed at avoiding enemy detection.

But nobody knew just how advanced North Korea’s detection systems were. Its military spending was vast, a colossal percentage of its GDP, and Harris worried that a small fortune would have been spent on protecting the secretive nation from attacks just like this one.

But he still had a job to do, and Harris was going to do it no matter what; he would get the stealth bomber over its intended target, and the man sat right next to him in the cockpit — Lieutenant Colonel Matt Gleason, the mission commander — would initiate the release of the 30,000 pound Massive Ordinance Penetrator which sat in the huge weapon bay below them. The other B2 plane in the raiding party, which fitted in right behind them, would then drop the second MOP and reduce the target to rubble — whatever it was.

They were close now, and Harris felt his pulse rising ever so slightly — fifty-five beats per minute rather than its customary fifty.

It was enough to tell him that the target was just around the corner.

‘Flamethrowers?’ Abrams asked with a mixture of disbelief and outright horror.

Ken Jung shrugged. ‘If we have to,’ he said defensively. ‘Remember, if the suicide bombers have left, if they’re already on their way here, then — if we manage to find them — we’ll need to contain them quickly if we’re gonna have any chance of stopping them. We won’t have any idea of when they were injected, or how long we have until the spores erupt. Of course we’ll try and quarantine them if possible, but if not’ — he shrugged his shoulders again — ‘well, we know that intense heat will destroy the virus.’

‘I can only imagine how that’s going to play on the evening news,’ Abrams said, shaking her head sadly. But what choice did she have? Mobile HAZMAT units were already on their way to the nation’s busiest airports — low-key, to avoid bringing any attention on themselves — and USAMRIID were preparing to tackle the virus if it ever got out into the open.

Security was being scaled up at all ingress points to the United States, and medical personnel were being recalled from leave across the country. Abrams knew they wouldn’t be able to keep such a mobilization away from the press for long; she just hoped it would be long enough.

Still shaking her head, she picked up the phone and placed a call to Olsen. ‘Pete,’ she said, ‘I need you to initiate something immediately.’ She paused, gathering herself before she continued. ‘I need you to get teams to every airport. Armed with flamethrowers.’ There was a beat pause as Olsen responded. ‘Yes, you heard me right,’ Abrams said. ‘Heat kills the virus and — Heaven help us — those awful weapons might be our last chance, if it gets to that stage.’

After Olsen confirmed the order, Abrams replaced the receiver and looked at the experts gathered round her. ‘Now,’ she sighed, ‘does anybody have any good news?’

The men and women sat around the table in the Oval Office looked at one another, but nobody said a word.

2

As the Eurofighter Typhoon continued its supersonic cruise across the barren deserts of the Saudi interior, Cole tried to think about what he was going to do when the aircraft was in position, tried to concentrate on his future actions.

And yet all he could think about was the past.

The journey reminded him far too much of his last supersonic flight, aboard the secret US airplane known as the Aurora — a craft which had delivered him from Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington DC to the cold skies above Kreith in Austria. A hypersonic journey of over four thousand miles in little more than an hour, which had ended when he’d been jettisoned from the bomb bay doors at 120,000 feet. A suicidal jump, but one he’d survived; he’d had to, he’d thought at the time — the lives of his family depended upon it.

And yet he’d failed to save them, could see even now how their heads erupted from the gunshots, how the blood had flown across the pine-walled games room of his old friend’s house. A house he had thought was safe; a friend he had thought he could trust.

The images poured through his mind, and he was unable to stop them; he’d done so well up until now, managed to avoid the dreams, avoid the thoughts, the nightmares, the fears. But now all of the adrenalin and stress of recent events was erupting within him, threatening once more to push him over the edge, drag him back to where he was when he’d been slowly killing himself in the bars and nightclubs of Thailand.

His head throbbed, and he could feel his pulse quickening, straining in his chest, hammering so hard he thought he would pass out; the oxygen mask he wore suddenly seemed constricting, threatening, and he knew he was going to be sick right inside it.

His hands went to the mask to rip it off his face, but his fingers failed, grasping at thin air as his mind collapsed and his vision faded, the thought of innocent blood flying through the air the last thing he saw before he passed out completely, body inert in the jump seat of the jet airplane as it carried him towards Mecca.

Jeb Richards felt the sweat pouring down his face, despite the chill of the air conditioning.

Did anyone suspect anything? Quraishi was gone, vanished into thin air; the Saudi authorities had failed to arrest him, or even to locate him.

He thought he’d managed to deflect the initial enquiries nicely, offering up his own suspicions on Quraishi before he was asked about his meeting. But if the attack went ahead, any subsequent investigation would surely reveal Richards’ prior knowledge.

Or would it? Richards exhaled slowly and picked up his glass of wine, gulping it down as he waited for Clark Mason to arrive. Things were frantic at the White House, but Richards had managed to get a table at the nearby Café du Parc, a little French bistro on Pennsylvania Avenue. After all, he had to eat, didn’t he?

Richards let his mind examine the possibilities. If the attack went ahead, then millions of people would be killed — maybe himself included. What remained of the federal government would be a shambles, and it would take years to rebuild the country; and it would probably never be the same again. In such a situation — if he managed to survive — it was unlikely that anyone would still care about investigating who knew what. They’d all be too busy just trying to survive.

But such a scenario wasn’t exactly reassuring. So maybe he should just make a run for it? Avoid the plague that was coming, take the money he’d been given and escape?

But what if the attack was prevented? Would it be possible for him to create a new life somewhere else, without the authorities catching up with him? Because if he made a run for it, they would definitely do everything within their power to find him.

He poured himself more wine and took a large sip. It was difficult; the best he could hope to do was damage limitation. He would have to hope that the attack didn’t work; and then he would have to hope that his own role would remain undetected. The death of Quraishi would help with that, he realized. His brow knotted in concentration, he understood that he would have to do all he could to help find Quraishi — and make sure that he was not arrested and interrogated, but was just killed on the spot like bin Laden before him.

It would be useful to get Mason’s take on the situation, he thought as he sat back in his chair, scanning the small restaurant. Where the hell was the man, anyway?

It was then that he saw the maître d’ approaching his table.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but I am afraid your guest has just telephoned with his apologies. He won’t be able to make it, I’m afraid.’

Richards said nothing, just waved the man away.

So, Clark Mason had abandoned him already. Was it because of his meeting with Quraishi? Did he suspect a connection, and was severing ties with Richards just in case?

His shoulders slumped and he pulled his tie away from his neck, slurping at his wine to combat the encroaching heat.

He wasn’t an introspective man by nature, nor one to second-guess his own actions.

But, he finally admitted to himself, he might well have made an error of judgment when he decided to play Russian roulette with America’s security.

He just hoped he would live to regret it.

Captain Xie Wei had come back into the sprawling camp with Navarone, even as the rest of Red Squadron’s Bravo Troop led the four thousand prisoners to the relative safety of the western forest.

Both men raced through the camp with desperate speed, jumping over dead bodies like hurdles on an athletics track, their focus on one thing, and one thing only — the small building which housed the children.

Navarone knew they had to rescue them — if they couldn’t, then they were as good as dead. When the B2’s MOPs dropped on the camp, the survival rate would be zero.

Navarone knew it was crazy — he had already risked everything to lead the prison break, and had ensured the hopeful survival of thousands of previously doomed prisoners. But it wasn’t enough; a building full of children couldn’t just be abandoned; it just couldn’t. How would he look his sisters in the eye again, knowing that he’d failed to do everything in his power to help those kids?

Images of his two sisters flashed through his mind, and he felt his legs pumping even harder, speed increasing until at last he was there, Xie just behind him.

In the distance, he could hear the blasts of Claymores and the screams of injured soldiers. And above them all, the sky grew dark as rainclouds moved in, the ominous sounds of thunder rumbling through the valley.

He could see eyes opening wide behind the windows, small hands pushed through the shattered glass, pulling uselessly at the steel bars which held them captive. The pain, the terror, the hopelessness on their faces almost broke Navarone’s heart; but he ignored their cries for help, and raced to the locked door.

The door was steel, and conventional — nothing armor-plated. Navarone pulled down the shotgun he’d brought with him, aiming at the hinges.

Without being told, Xie started shouting at the kids through the window in Korean; Navarone knew he was telling them to stay back from the door.

‘Jake!’ Xie called suddenly, just as Navarone was going to pull the trigger. ‘We’ve got company!’

Navarone looked past the building, saw the first soldiers staggering out of the eastern forest, heading for the prison camp, rifles at the ready.

Shit.

‘Hold them off!’ Navarone ordered Xie, just as the heavens opened above them and the rain began to fall in a torrential downpour.

Navarone pulled the trigger an instant later, already soaked to the skin. He fired four solid slugs, two to each hinge; then kicked the door down with one powerful thrust.

The building before him consisted of only one room, a rough brick dormitory containing about fifty children; at a glance, from about six to twelve years old. Why, Navarone didn’t know, and at that moment, didn’t care; all he wanted was for them to get out as fast as possible.

‘Go!’ he shouted, dropping the shotgun and pointing outside. ‘Go, now!’

It took a few moments for the spell to break, for the children to accept what they were seeing; and then they were pouring towards him, past him, racing out into the camp grounds, heading for the open gate on the far side of the camp.

It was then that Navarone heard the first shots, 7.62mm rounds from the soldiers’ Kalashnikovs; followed an instant later by the return 5.56mm fire of Xie’s Colt M4.

Navarone watched the children flee across the camp parade ground, saw two of the youngest drop as bullets hit them, and quickly pulled his own Colt M4 off his shoulder, stepping around the small brick building to unleash hell on the Korean soldiers who’d shot them.

3

The sounds that filtered through Cole’s earpiece were like pieces of an intricate puzzle he didn’t have a hope of completing; they led only to confusion and helplessness.

But slowly, the mist began to clear and he could at last recognize the sounds as words, although the meaning remained indistinct and far away.

‘Sir?’ the voice seemed to say, although Cole still could not understand what the word meant, or where it came from. ‘Sir?’ the voice asked again urgently. ‘Are you okay sir?’

Okay? Cole wondered. Am I okay?

He shook his head; he could still see the blood, and shook it harder to dislodge the image.

‘I’m returning to base, sir,’ the voice said in an authoritative tone, and in a fraction of a second everything was clear to Cole, the threat of returning to Riyadh crystalizing everything in exquisite detail. He had passed out, he remembered now, the thoughts of his family too much to bear; and it was the pilot’s voice speaking to him in those frantic tones, informing him of their return.

‘No!’ Cole screamed back through the mask. ‘No!’ he ordered again. ‘Don’t go back. Please, I’m fine,’ he continued in as reasonable a tone as he could muster.

‘Are you sure, sir?’ the pilot asked over the intercom. ‘I have a responsibility for you, and sometimes people are badly affected by these flights if they’re not used to it. Perhaps you need medical attention?’

‘I sure as hell do not,’ Cole said gruffly, remembering his assumed identity as a US congressman, ‘and I demand that you fly on towards Mecca.’

‘But sir,’ the voice came back, ‘it’s like I’ve been trying to tell you — we’re over Mecca now.’

In wild-eyed panic, Cole looked out of the cockpit windows, straining his neck to peer down at the sprawling city below. It was true, he saw immediately; they had already reached Mecca. How long had he been out of it?

But it didn’t matter now; all that mattered was action. And with a colossal force of will, Cole drove out the thoughts of his family, of how he had failed them, of the blood; in the moment he realized he was above his target, had almost missed it, he achieved a feeling of clarity, of unified purpose.

The past was the past; there was nothing he could do to change it.

But millions of lives depended upon the actions he would perform now.

And with that pure clarity, his hand went to the lever next to his chair and pulled hard.

The canopy instantaneously flew off into the skies above Mecca, followed just fractions of a second later by Cole’s chair, which was launched explosively upwards from the airplane cockpit.

Cole struggled against the G-force of the ejection, and saw the pilot struggling to control the aircraft beneath him.

Then he felt a jerk and looked upwards, pleased to see that the parachute had opened correctly and he was decelerating rapidly, descending slowly now to the streets of Mecca below.

As the ejected chair swayed in the slight breeze, Cole took a deep breath, composing himself; as the dusty streets rose to greet him, he knew he would need all of his abilities for the battle to come.

‘Target acquired,’ Lt. Colonel Gleason advised Major Harris. ‘Keep this course and we’ll drop the payload.’

Harris looked at his own instruments for confirmation. ‘Affirmative,’ he replied, ‘we will be over target in six minutes.’

‘Roger that,’ Gleason agreed. ‘Time to weapons drop six minutes.’

As Harris confirmed positions and times with the second aircraft, Gleason checked and rechecked the target coordinates and their GPS location, and readied the controls.

A part of Gleason wondered what the target was; if it was populated, and if so, by how many people, what sort of people. But — as always — he censored his own thoughts, cutting them off before they began to trouble him. He had received his orders, and that was sufficient.

He knew the target was in North Korea, and that would have to be enough; it wasn’t likely he’d be dropping a thirty thousand pound bomb on a holiday camp. The target was far more likely to be a weapons factory of some kind, probably dealing in nuclear material; and Gleason had no problem at all with obliterating such a place.

It was close now, and getting closer by the second; Gleason placed his hands on the release controls, telling himself that — whatever the place was — it would soon be wiped off the face of the earth.

Navarone knelt in the mud of the parade ground, rain beating hard around him as he aimed his assault rifle at the approaching soldiers.

He squeezed the trigger in bursts, watched as the men dropped in front of him, blood spraying from their falling bodies and mixing with the dark rain as it hit the floor.

Xie was next to him, firing his own weapon at the approaching soldiers; Navarone couldn’t see him, but he knew he was there anyway. He heard the pop of the 5.56mm rounds, saw the soldiers falling from the man’s shots.

‘Go!’ Navarone shouted above the roar of gunfire and thunder; and he didn’t have to look to know that Xie would be racing back towards the far gates, which the children had already reopened and fled through.

Navarone kept on firing as Xie ran; then he heard the man shouting back to him — ‘Go!’ — and then Navarone was up and running as Xie provided the covering fire, ejecting his used magazine and slotting in a new one as he went.

Navarone passed Xie’s kneeling form as he racked back the slide of the M4, raced further towards the gates, then stopped, turned, knelt and shouted, starting to fire as Xie got up and started running.

Their retreat continued in this fashion for what seemed like hours — although it was merely minutes — and their effective tactics kept the soldiers in front of them pinned down.

But there were so many, racing into the camp from the forest beyond, the dead always replaced by more, that Navarone and Xie’s escape seemed impossible. But Navarone had seen the last of the children pass through the gates, continuing on towards the safety of the western forest beyond; and he knew that it had been worth it.

The cold rain increased in its intensity, falling hard on Navarone as he heard Xie’s call and he turned and ran again towards the gates — so close now, so agonizingly close.

He sped past Xie, knelt and firing from the shoulder, but then he heard a guttural cry, a muffled scream.

He turned, saw that Xie was hit, rolling on his back in a deep puddle of rainwater and blood, and stopped in his tracks.

The decision was made in an instant by his subconscious, no time to think things through logically; he merely reacted the way he had been trained, the way he had been brought up.

You never left a man behind.

Navarone pulled a fragmentation grenade from his combat vest and hurled it through the air, dodging the bullets which seemed to come at him in slow motion, time distorted now by the adrenalin which surged through him.

The grenade hit and exploded, and Navarone could see body parts flying through the wet air even as he threw another, and another.

The explosions rocked him as he raced forward, but he no longer noticed; all he could see was Xie, bleeding on the wet ground.

And then he was there beside him, hauling the injured man up and across his shoulders, his rifle too. With an M4 in each hand, he fired back at the soldiers through the flames; his aim useless now with two guns, hoping only to pin them down, keep them busy while he escaped.

He turned and ran, legs pumping harder than they ever had before, zigzagging through the camp to avoid the enemy fire which followed him. He felt the passage of hot air all around him as bullets whizzed past, missing him by inches, perhaps even less.

He could see the gate right in front of him, still open after the children had passed through; he heard bullets ricocheting off the metal, splashing into the puddles around him.

And then he was through, dropping a rifle to swing the gate shut behind him, even more rounds hitting it as it closed.

It was only then — above the noise of the storm, the gunfire, his own labored breathing — that he sensed it.

It was something falling from the sky.

‘MOP One has been released,’ Lt. Colonel Gleason reported matter-of-factly.

‘Roger that,’ Major Harris confirmed, ‘and we’re away.’

The speed of the giant flying wing increased immediately as the first B2 pulled away from the target area, leaving it open for the second bomber to follow.

Gleason tracked the progress of the Massive Ordinance Penetrator on his readouts as it dropped through the sky from 40,000 feet.

Thirty thousand, twenty-five, twenty, fifteen, ten, five…

The B2 Spirit stealth bomber and its crew were already over ten miles away when the weapon finally reached the earth and hit its target.

And Gleason didn’t need his readout to tell him that whatever the 2.4 ton high-explosive warhead had hit would have ceased to exist — completely.

The second MOP launched just behind the first would merely be the icing on the cake.

4

Cole could see the compound from a thousand feet as his chair sailed slowly down to earth.

The view below him was exactly like the satellite photographs he’d been shown back at the CIA safe house, and the more up-to-date aerial surveillance footage from the reconnaissance drones which had been flown over the city.

Cole directed the parachute, trimming it slightly to come around and approach the compound from the rear. He could see that it was a fairly large compound, one main residential building and two smaller subsidiary blocks all surrounded by a high cement wall, all sandwiched away amidst hundreds of other buildings in a quiet area of the city.

It reminded Cole of the Waziristan Haveli, the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden had been found ten years after the massacre of 9/11. It had been SEAL Team Six which had taken the compound and killed bin Laden; but this was of no comfort to Cole, and he knew he was crazy for taking on such a place alone.

As he looked down at the compound, he realized that if he could see it, then whoever was there would also be able to see him.

But what other choice did he have?

If there was any chance at all that the suicide bombers were still there, then any risk was acceptable.

He realized that his ejection from the aircraft would have been reported, that the authorities would be tracking his descent, that armed teams would be dispersed immediately to his landing point, and welcomed the fact.

Once he had landed, the element of surprise would already be gone and it didn’t matter who told who else; by then it would be too late to make any difference, and Cole would take any help he could get.

He saw the compound draw closer and could see nobody moving around. The courtyard was empty.

Did that mean the bombers had already left?

He prayed that he was wrong, that they were still there, that he still had a chance.

And then he was there, right above the rooftops, and he flared the chute, which filled with air and served to brake his progress even further, and then he felt the rough impact as the chair hit the dusty concrete floor of the compound’s central courtyard.

Cole was up, unbuckled and out of the chair in an instant, ripping off his helmet and flight mask and drawing his concealed Heckler and Koch UPS pistol; scanning the courtyard, the windows, the rooftops for any sign of activity.

But there was none; none whatsoever.

And all of a sudden, Cole realized with a tightness in his stomach that he might already be too late.

Once Cole had cleared the courtyard, he began moving quickly from building to building. There was nobody in the first one, just an empty dormitory block, and Cole found nothing at the larger residential building either. If anybody had ever lived here, then they were long gone, the place wiped clean.

There was just one building left, and as Cole peered through the windows he realized it was a laboratory complex and his pulse quickened.

Could they still be here, could they be in there, being prepared with the bioweapon, injected before their suicidal attack on America?

Pistol held out in front of him, he pried open the door and crept inside.

The control of his heart rate was automatic, his subconscious keeping it low so that he could perform at the high level he knew might be necessary at any second.

He edged through the bare concrete corridors, seeing room after empty room. There was still the paraphernalia of a scientific presence here, but it was clear that this building too had been abandoned.

Cole sighed wearily; he was too late.

He would have to contact Washington and let them know. Airports would have to be closed and HAZMAT teams would have to be brought in all across America. Panic would ensue even before the bombers reached their targets.

A noise caught Cole’s attention then and his head snapped round.

It was the sound of coughing, coming from somewhere nearby, somewhere… below?

Cole looked around frantically, checking doors for a basement staircase, the floors for trapdoors, even the walls for hidden panels.

And then he found it — a secret staircase hidden behind a laboratory counter in one of the side rooms. Opening the door carefully — so very, very carefully — Cole slipped through it onto the descending stairs, his pistol leading the way as if it was an extension of his arm.

Before long he was at the bottom of the stairs, at another door. The cough came again, from the other side. He wished that he had an infrared scanner, or else a fiber optic camera that he could slip under the door to check what lay beyond, but he had nothing. He would just have to rely on his instincts and his training.

And yes, he decided as he kicked at the door, blasting it open and racing through to confront whatever was on the other side, he was also going to have to rely on a little bit of luck.

5

Amir al-Hazmi — for one of the few times in his life — was taken completely by surprise.

The blessed martyrs had all received their injections and now they were all gone; he had escorted them to the various airports himself, making sure they boarded their flights before returning to the compound to monitor their progress.

With the doctors, scientists and laboratory assistants all dead — killed by al-Hazmi’s priceless janbiya, as he couldn’t take the risk that any of them might talk — he was now alone here for the first time in weeks.

He had been monitoring the various airlines as they unwittingly carried the martyrs to their destinations — New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Boston, Miami, San Francisco, Dallas, New Orleans, these and a dozen more — as well as checking the current weather conditions in those cities, making sure that the maximum amount of damage would be inflicted.

The doctors had dosed the martyrs in exactly the same way; the spores would be released twelve hours from now, giving them enough time to land, get through customs and make their way to the designated release points — the locations chosen to have the greatest affect and infect the largest possible number of people.

What al-Hazmi’s concentration meant, however, was that he hadn’t been checking the security monitors as often as he should have been. He had become complacent — the martyrs had been injected and were on their way, what was there to worry about anymore?

The Lion had warned him to be careful; al-Hazmi knew that Quraishi, his beloved leader, was now a wanted man. It was not unexpected, but it was certainly sooner than planned. However, al-Hazmi hadn’t let the issue bother him unduly; he was confident that the compound was still undiscovered. After all, how would anyone know about it? Only he and The Lion knew where it was — everyone else had been killed, or else were on their way to destroy the Great Satan with the plague that coursed through their blood.

And so al-Hazmi had been unforgivably complacent, which meant that he had missed the entry to the compound of this man — this man who was here, now, bursting through the door and aiming a gun –

Al-Hazmi reacted before he even fully realized what was happening, snapping round in his chair at the noise and releasing the janbiya he had been playing with as he sat monitoring the computers.

He watched it fly through the air with a savage grin.

Cole had never seen a man move so fast in his entire life.

He had burst through the door and seen the man sitting at a bank of computers, his back to Cole; and in the next moment, no more than the blink of an eye, the man had turned and thrown something.

Cole felt a piercing pain shoot through his wrist before he even realized what had happened; but then he turned to look at his arm and saw that his hand no longer held the gun, and the sharp blade of an Arabic dagger was sticking through his forearm, buried up to the hilt, its bloody blade coming right out the other side.

Cole realized it must be Amir al-Hazmi, the Hammer of the Infidel and the feared knife-master of the terrorist underworld. He was sorry to find out that the rumors about the man’s skill with a blade seemed to be true.

Eyes wide, Cole watched — half in shock — as the man leapt from the chair, withdrawing a second janbiya from his robes as he charged forward.

Cole barely managed to avoid the attack, his skewered right arm hanging uselessly by his side as he dodged first one way and then — as al-Hazmi swiped at him again — the other, the razor sharp blade missing him by quarters of an inch both times.

Instinctively Cole lashed out with his booted foot, connecting with al-Hazmi’s thigh, forcing him back while he tried to regain his own composure. But al-Hazmi gave him no time at all, recovering from the kick and advancing forward once more, swinging his dagger in controlled arcs towards Cole’s face and body.

Al-Hazmi rushed in, eager to finish him off, but Cole intercepted the knife arm with his left forearm, grasping hold of the wrist with his hand and snapping his head forward into al-Hazmi’s surprised face.

The man’s nose broke with the impact and — forgetting it was injured, the knife still impaled through it — Cole rammed the heel of his right palm up underneath al-Hazmi’s chin.

The blow might have broken the neck of a lesser man, but the thickly-muscled al-Hazmi shook it off and — in one incredibly smooth, powerful action — pulled another dagger from his robe with his free hand and swiped it across Cole’s midriff.

Cole arched his back just in time, the blade slicing through his flight suit and the skin of his abdomen but failing to penetrate further. But the pain laced right through him and his vision went momentarily blank; when it cleared, he saw the second blade coming back towards him, aimed for his neck.

Unable to block the arm, Cole released his grip on al-Hazmi and leapt backwards, the blade swiping through the air where his neck had been just moments before.

Distance between them now, the two men circled each other warily; but Cole was all too aware that he was badly injured and unarmed whereas the man he faced had two daggers, and the skill to use them.

The savage grin played again across al-Hazmi’s face. Whoever this enemy was, he was good; and it had been a long time since al-Hazmi had faced anyone who could pose any sort of threat.

He was disappointed to have lost his favorite janbiya, which was still lodged in the man’s arm, but knew the two he still had would do the job just as well.

As they circled each other, al-Hazmi kept the blades moving, cutting through the air in a pattern of intricate moves which served to hypnotize his prey. He knew — try as they might — that his victims couldn’t help but look at the blades as they described their figure-eights, confusing them, distracting them, so that when the killer blow came — as it always did — they didn’t stand a chance.

Cole knew what al-Hazmi was doing, and refused to be drawn in.

The movement of the blades was designed to confuse him, to mask the real attack; and so Cole stared right through them, to a point at the top of al-Hazmi’s chest, below the neck.

He knew that any movement would originate in that region, and watched it like a hawk. Cole also avoided looking at the eyes, as they too could deceive; but the body couldn’t lie, and Cole watched through the blur of the spinning blades as al-Hazmi’s body told him everything.

The attack came at the exact moment Cole predicted — seemingly out of the blue, but preceded by a tiny tell-tale preparatory movement — and as the blades arced through towards his face and neck, one after the other, Cole dropped to one knee, hands down for support and launched a kick at al-Hazmi’s groin.

The man cried out in pain but Cole didn’t stop to assess his handiwork; instead, he transferred his weight onto the leg which had just kicked, pivoted, and swept the hardened shin of his other leg into al-Hazmi’s knee, destroying the soft tissue around the joint and causing the man to drop like a stone.

Cole was on top of him in an instant, kneeling with one leg on al-Hazmi’s right arm while his own right hand pinned the killer’s left wrist to the floor.

Cole unleashed blow after blow onto al-Hazmi’s face with his free left fist; with his own heart rate elevated so high, and the man underneath him bucking for all he was worth, Cole was unable to target the vital points which would have ended the confrontation immediately, but his strikes were having an effect all the same — Al-Hazmi’s face was turning black and blue from Cole’s punches.

But still the man clung to consciousness, and spat a wad of blood right into Cole’s eyes. Momentarily blinded, Cole’s position was weakened and al-Hazmi used the opportunity, raising a knee up viciously into Cole’s groin and rolling him over in a reversal of position.

Cole grimaced as al-Hazmi mounted on top of him, his janbiya daggers shooting down towards him. Cole managed to grip the wrists with his hands but gravity was on al-Hazmi’s side and Cole watched with growing fear as the blades edged closer and closer towards his throat.

Yes, al-Hazmi thought as his blades pushed closer, the feeling inside him near orgasmic in its intensity as he visualized cutting the man’s head off his shoulders completely. Yes!

The man beneath him was strong, but al-Hazmi knew that he was stronger. How many men had he killed over the years with these weapons? It was too many to count, and this intruder would be just one more.

The blades came closer, closer; so close now to the man’s white skin, skin that would soon leak blood everywhere.

Yes!

Cole could feel his strength waning, knew that al-Hazmi was close to ending things forever.

But then all hope of finding the bombers would be gone forever too, and America would fall.

No, Cole told himself as the first blade touched his throat, I can’t let that happen.

And then Cole pushed up with his right hand and let go, head slipping to the side; in the next moment, al-Hazmi’s janbiya came scything down, uncontrolled.

Too high, it sliced the top of Cole’s ear clean off; but so engaged in the moment was he that he didn’t even notice.

Instead, in the very same breath, Cole took his now free right arm — al-Hazmi’s own dagger still embedded in it — and brought it crashing down on top of the man’s head.

Al-Hazmi felt the blade of his own knife pierce the roof of his skull, could not believe that his own weapon had been used against him, and — just before the long blade plunged through his brain and finished everything — he marveled at the sacrifice his opponent had made, understanding that the pain the man must have experienced as he used his own damaged arm as a weapon must have been enormous.

And then al-Hazmi was dead, the irony of his own priceless, beloved janbiya having been used against him the last thought he ever had.

Cole rolled the dead body off the top of him, breathing hard with relief, pain making his vision swim.

The act of forcing the embedded dagger into hard bone had been excruciating, the impact pushing the janbiya back out of his forearm the other way for two painful inches.

Lying on his back, Cole regarded the knife in his arm with a mixture of hatred and gratitude, then rolled over onto his side and was sick.

He shook his head, realizing he had no time for self-pity, no time to look after himself; the suicide bombers were gone, and he needed to find a way of tracking them.

He pulled himself slowly to his feet and dragged himself to the bank of computer monitors to see what al-Hazmi had been watching.

And when he saw what it was, at last he smiled; the pain might just have been worth it after all.

Shaking off the pain, he pulled up the telephone handset that lay on the desk and placed a call to the White House.

He could only hope that there was still enough time.

6

Navarone woke up, eyes blinking rapidly.

He could feel the rain as it fell on him, felt that he was lying in a puddle, covered in water, freezing cold.

He looked around and saw flame everywhere, licking at the trees of the forest.

The forest.

He had made it to the forest before the bombs hit. He knew the camp would have been reduced to nothing, the soldiers along with it.

He rolled onto his side, looking for Xie, hands scrambling desperately in the puddle for purchase as he raised himself to a painful standing position, ears ringing and head pounding.

The flames from the camp illuminated the forest against the dark of the storm, and he saw bodies nearby. Some of them were children who hadn’t made it, their tiny bodies pummeled by the bombs’ shockwaves; others were North Korean soldiers who must have been racing after Navarone and Xie and not quite made it.

But where was Xie? It didn’t help that he was wearing a North Korean uniform.

Navarone’s memory of the blast, and of how he’d come to end up in the puddle, was incoherent; he had no real idea of what had happened between the time he’d sensed the approach of the bomb, and when he’d woken up.

He staggered from body to body, trying desperately to find Xie, careful to avoid looking for too long at the poor children who dotted the area, limbs askew and torsos broken.

He wasn’t concerned anymore about being found by the North Koreans from Camp 14 — they were all dead, he was sure of it. But he knew that the blast would bring reinforcements to the area, and he wanted to be long gone by then.

He wondered how long he’d been out of it, how far away his men were, if they’d made it to the emergency RV and the Black Hawks which would take them back to China.

‘Jake!’

Navarone heard the shout coming from the trees behind him and his head shot round, his muddled brain taking far longer than normal to identify Tony Devine, his old swim buddy Duke Kleiner stood right beside him. Kleiner was one of the men who had been setting explosives on the far side of the valley, and Navarone was relieved to see that he’d made it.

The men raced to him, embracing him, helping him to stand. ‘Holy fuck!’ Kleiner exclaimed. ‘We thought you’d be dead for sure! The size of that explosion, must have been a fucking nuke!’

Navarone shook his head, weary. ‘Bunker buster,’ he whispered, even his own voice hurting his ears. ‘The children. ?’ he asked.

Devine nodded. ‘We figured you must have gone back in there, you crazy son of a bitch,’ he said with half a smile. ‘Yeah, we got a whole load of kids now on the back end of the prisoners, they’ve hooked up with the others and they’re hightailing it into the mountains. Let’s just hope the reinforcements don’t get ‘em, although I guess there’s nothing we can do about that now.’

Navarone nodded his head in thought, then grabbed his friends by their combat vests, his eyes wild. ‘Xie!’ he said. ‘He was with me, we need to find him.’

Devine and Kleiner nodded and moved off immediately, searching through the rain-soaked forest for their Chinese colleague.

Not more than a minute had passed when Navarone heard Kleiner’s booming voice. ‘Over here!’ he shouted. ‘I got him!’

Navarone raced over, his face expectant. ‘Is he. ?’

But he saw Kleiner’s grim expression and knew the answer, even before his friend shook his big head. ‘I’m sorry Jake,’ he said sadly. ‘He’s gone.’

Navarone knelt by the body — bloody from the gunshot wounds, the bones broken from the shock of the blast — and wiped away the tears that started to form.

‘We’ve got to move, Jake,’ Devine told him. ‘Choppers are en route, and we’ve got no fucking idea when the Koreans are going to get here.’

Navarone nodded in understanding, then hefted the weight of the dead man back onto his shoulders.

‘Hey, let me get him,’ Kleiner said, ‘you need to rest, you look like shit.’

Navarone knew his friend was right, but shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I asked Xie to stay with me, and I’m gonna take him out of here. Understood?’

Navarone watched as both men nodded — he knew that they really did understand — and then marched past them with Xie on his back, leading them into the forest and to safety.

7

Jeb Richards had decided in the end to go to the NSC crisis meeting; he couldn’t face running away.

He just had to hope that his role would never be discovered. He would give everyone the full low-down on Abd al-Aziz Quraishi if that was what they wanted, but he would stop short of admitting to any involvement in the current situation. That would simply be suicidal, and Richards had no wish to die.

He had gambled, and it had backfired — simple.

But now there was the very serious threat that millions of Americans might wind up dead. These crisis talks were designed to provide a framework for emergency response if it came to that, and he was sorry to see that containing the situation was going to be far more problematic than even the worst-case scenarios from the NSC’s war games files.

A quarantine area had already been set up inside the White House, the president’s bunker transformed into an emergency laboratory in case anything happened nearby. If the government was affected, then the country was even more likely to descend into chaos and panic, with the horrific results that would follow.

He knew that the nation’s best scientific minds were working on the information which had been transmitted from North Korea regarding the weapon, people working around the clock on some way of defeating it, or providing an antidote; but so far, there had been no breakthrough.

Discussions raged on around the table about the best methods of handling the upcoming pandemic, but silence crept across the room as the secure telephone in front of General Olsen rang.

He grabbed it immediately. ‘Yes?’ A pause, then he looked at President Abrams. ‘It’s Commander Treyborne ma’am,’ he said. ‘He needs to speak with you urgently.’

Abrams nodded her head and picked up her own handset, Olsen connecting her to Ike Treyborne. ‘Commander,’ she said in as calm a voice as she could manage, ‘what do you have for me?’

Richards watched with rising interest as Abrams’ eyes twitched slightly; he could tell that something had excited her. Good news?

A part of him hoped that Quraishi hadn’t been found and brought in alive; if that was the case, and the man started talking, then his own escape plan might have to be back on the cards.

‘Put him on,’ Abrams said, nodding at Olsen as she spoke, a message passed between the two of them that Richards could only guess at.

‘Mark,’ Abrams said with relief, ‘what’s going on?’

So, Richards, thought, it was Mark Cole. The Asset was still alive.

He was a resilient son of a bitch, Richards would give him that. Richards had warned Quraishi about the man back in Riyadh, but obviously it had been to no avail.

He watched as Abrams listened, fear writ plain across her face. She listened in silence for a long time before speaking again. ‘Stay on the line,’ she said to Cole, before turning to the men and women gathered around the table.

‘The suicide bombers have been injected and are already on their way here,’ she said stonily, and the message was received by gasps from around the huge table.

‘Do we know where?’ Catalina dos Santos asked.

Abrams nodded her head, fear replaced by what Richards could only describe as hope. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Our asset has details on every one of them — which flights they’re on, their identities, when they’re due to land and where.’

There were cheers from around the table, silenced as Abrams held up her hands. ‘But we’re not out of the woods yet,’ she said. ‘We know who they are and where they are, but we still need to stop them.’ She turned to General Olsen. ‘Get in touch with your people at those airports,’ she ordered. ‘Liaise with the FBI and airport security services. Initiate containment plan Alpha.’

‘Yes ma’am,’ Olsen responded with a smile as he reached for his telephone, and Richards started to breathe just a little bit more easily.

Now all he needed was the very quick death of his old friend Abd al-Aziz Quraishi, and he was home free.

He was already starting to feel better; and he was sure another opportunity would be right around the corner.

8

Cole stayed on the line as President Abrams and the NSC went to work on their plans to intercept the terrorists.

From what he could make out from the information on the computers and the paperwork strewn around the laboratory, they might have a chance; although the weapon developed by the North Koreans was truly horrific, the timing for this attack seemed to indicate that the spores wouldn’t be released until sometime after the terrorists had landed, which provided the US authorities with a window of opportunity. If they could take the men and women at the airports when they landed, then Quraishi’s incredible plan would fail entirely.

But Cole didn’t know if there was a way for the terrorists to release the spores manually, in the same way that an explosive might have a timer, but could still be blown manually if necessary.

If confronted upon landing, would the terrorists initiate the biological reaction in a last ditch attempt to infect everyone in the airport?

He spoke again on the phone to Abrams.

‘Ma’am,’ he said cautiously, ‘it might be an idea to evacuate the airports in question, just in case this biological weapon has some sort of failsafe that we don’t know about.’

‘Understood,’ the president’s voice came back to him. ‘We’ll assess the situation, thanks for the input.’

Cole relaxed back into the chair, only now noticing the pain in his ear. He had already bandaged his arm, but as he ran his finger up the side of his face and found the top of his ear missing completely, he grimaced.

But then his mind switched tacks, and the ear was forgotten once again.

It had been a stroke of good fortune that al-Hazmi had been directing the operation from this safe house — there were details of everything he needed on the computers and files around him, including copies of the terrorists’ passports. Real ones too, it seemed — they had presumably never been in trouble before, and Cole wondered what had possessed them to become involved in something so extreme.

There had also been the scientists’ notes — who was injected when, where, and with what. A lot of it was indecipherable to Cole, but he was able to match up the list of injections to the names on the passports.

But there was something about those notes that troubled him, something he couldn’t put his finger on, and he began scouring through them once more, mind working furiously.

And then it hit him, and he was amazed that he had missed it previously.

According to all the information he could find, there were twenty suicide bombers en route to America; and yet the medical personnel had noted twenty-one injections.

Why hadn’t he seen it before?

It meant that there might still be one suicide bomber out there, unidentified and free to do whatever they wanted, go wherever they wanted.

And with a virus this dangerous, even one biological suicide bomber was enough to kill thousands, perhaps even more.

There was no name next to the notations of the injection, no way of finding out who it was.

Had Quraishi himself wished to become a martyr? Had The Lion been injected, was he now the twenty-first bomber?

‘There’s another one,’ Cole said urgently over the open line to the White House.

‘What do you mean?’ Abrams replied instantly.

‘We have details of twenty terrorists on their way to America, but it looks like there were twenty-one injections made.’

Abrams breathed out slowly. ‘Damn. Maybe one went wrong, the person’s already dead?’ Cole imagined her shaking her head at the thought. ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘that’s just wishful thinking. Okay Mark, thank you. We’ll discuss the matter. If anything turns up, let us know immediately.’

‘I will,’ Cole said, his mind already racing at a thousand miles an hour.

Who the hell could it be?

9

Abd al-Aziz Quraishi sipped at his hot tea as he watched the various television monitors which filled the small room.

He had finally managed to escape from Saudi Arabia, and was now ensconced in a place he deemed to be far safer; he knew nobody would ever find him.

The televisions were all tuned to different news channels, so he could watch the unfolding drama in real time.

He could feel the excitement deep in the pit of his stomach; he was so close to achieving his dream, it seemed incredible.

But here he was, a free man, waiting for the final extermination of the Great Satan, her expulsion — along with the House of Saud — from the holy land, and the ascent of the Arabian people to govern themselves in a new, perfect Islamic caliphate which would soon spread from the Arabian peninsula throughout the rest of the Middle East, and then — well, who truly knew where it would end?

He’d been watching the news for several hours already, but there had been nothing of interest so far. This wasn’t surprising, as the first of his martyrs was yet to even land, but it still grated on him nevertheless; normally an incredibly patient man, he now felt a deep desire for time to be sped up, to carry him to the moment when the world would be changed forever.

It was the footage on CNN from outside Dulles International which first alerted him; amateur film of what looked to be an emergency evacuation of the airport.

The CNN anchor confirmed it, and then it was picked up by the other networks too; and then more footage came through, more reports, from more and more airports. The same thing was happening everywhere; or, Quraishi perceived very quickly, everywhere that he had sent one of his beloved martyrs.

What was going on?

But as the hours passed, and the TV news reports got their own camera crews to the airports, Quraishi saw with his own eyes as they were emptied of civilians; FBI, HAZMAT and military personnel taking their places. And if Quraishi wasn’t mistaken, it looked like some of the military personnel were carrying flamethrowers.

The authorities were remaining silent on the subject, but everyone in the world would know what was going on; everyone except the bombers themselves, cut off as they were from the outside world. Even if they’d had their cell phones switched on, Quraishi was sure that US intelligence would be jamming the signals anyway.

How had it happened? What had gone wrong?

Knowing he shouldn’t, knowing that by now they would be tracking the airwaves for any sign of his voice, aware that by making the call he could be leading the authorities to his door, he could contain himself no longer.

His plan was falling apart at the seams, and he grabbed his telephone and put the call through to Mecca.

Cole was pleased that the counter-offensive was going exactly as planned.

The airports had all been evacuated with no prior press knowledge, and specialist teams had been moved in to greet the flights as they landed.

FBI hostage rescue teams had rapidly separated the terrorists from the rest of the passengers, and then the military flamethrower personnel had gone into action.

It wasn’t pretty but Cole knew it was the safest way, the only way they could be sure. They just didn’t know when the spores would erupt, how much time they had; all they knew was that extreme heat killed the virus.

And so time after time, each terrorist had been isolated from their fellow travelers and immolated — fried to a crisp right there on the runway tarmac, the virus eradicated along with their bodies.

Cole was just glad that there had been no press coverage of that — despite the risk that millions might die, nobody wanted to see men and women being burned to death.

Cole had been informed that the dead bodies were then immediately secured and put into quarantine for further examination.

The suicide bombers spanned both sexes, all ages, and many ethnicities — from eighteen year old Abdullah Hussein of Medina, to fifty-eight year old Maria Guttenberg of Berlin — and Cole again wondered what terrible turn of fate had led them to the point where they had wished to throw their lives away and attempt to commit such an atrocious act of genocide.

But still Cole didn’t know what had happened to that twenty-first injection, and it pained him even as the good news about the rest of the terrorists was reported.

It was then that he heard the cell phone ringing from the trouser leg of Amir al-Hazmi, and left the desk to fish it out of the dead man’s pocket.

He answered the call but didn’t speak.

And for several long, drawn out seconds, the person on the other end of the line didn’t speak either.

But then, as if the frustration was too much to bear, Cole heard the familiar lilting tones of Abd al-Aziz Quraishi break over the line. ‘Amir?’ the man said in desperation. ‘Amir, is that you?’

‘I’m afraid the Hammer can’t come to the phone right now,’ Cole said. ‘He’s dead.’

No. It couldn’t be.

The voice on the other end of the line was the man he had met in Riyadh, the covert agent Jeb Richards had warned him about.

Mark Cole.

The Asset.

But how had he found the safe house?

In the next instant, Quraishi realized that this was how the US authorities had destroyed his plan — Cole had discovered the safe house and fed them the information held there. And the safe house had everything. Identification, flight plans, medical information. Everything.

Quraishi’s heart sank. Had Cole really managed to kill al-Hazmi? It seemed impossible; but he had seen the man in action, and Quraishi was forced to admit that perhaps impossible was the wrong word.

But then he remembered the one piece of information that was not recorded back at the safe house; the identity of the twenty-first recipient of the injected virus.

It had been a last-minute change of plan, but Quraishi had seen the opportunity and seized it.

He was now very glad that he had done so; it gave him one last chance, one last hope in his crusade.

He prayed to Allah that the last suicide bomber would remain undiscovered; the damage he could create would be the worst of all.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Quraishi said with as much bravado as he could muster. ‘This is not the end, my friend, it is not the end at all. I have more options than you think.’

‘If you’re talking about the last suicide bomber,’ the voice fired back at him, ‘then we’re one step ahead of you on that, I’m afraid.’

Could the man be telling the truth? Did they know who it was?

But Quraishi reasoned that it was just bluster — if he really knew, he would have said who it was.

Quraishi laughed mockingly. ‘Do not give me that,’ he said. ‘The truth is that you have no idea, no idea whatsoever, who that person is.’ He laughed again, confidence rising in him once again. ‘And you won’t know right up until the moment that the spores erupt and he sends your accursed nation back into the dark ages.’

Quraishi suddenly remembered about the intelligence services which might be tracking him, and hung up immediately, pleased to have got the last word in.

He looked around the apartment one final time.

No matter what happened to his last hope, the man he believed could take the fight right to the enemy’s doorstep, Quraishi himself knew he had already outstayed his welcome here.

It was time to move.

Cole heard the dial tone and replaced the handset.

The trouble was, Quraishi was right — he had no idea who the last bomber was.

But Quraishi had said he, so at least Cole knew that it was a man. Unless Quraishi had purposefully been trying to mislead him?

He sighed. Quraishi seemed so confident. Why? What made this last person so special? What were they going to do? Where were they going to attack?

When Cole realized which target would have the most impact on America, he suddenly understood who the bomber could be.

And the unbelievable part of it was that he might not even realize it himself.

10

There had been a great deal of mutual backslapping throughout Conference Room One as the confirmed kills of each and every identified terrorist had been fed back to the security council throughout the afternoon.

But the specter of the unknown bomber hovered over all of them, souring the mood considerably.

Richards watched everyone closely, pleased that nobody was eying him with any sort of suspicion. Not yet anyway; but he was sure that in the weeks and months to come, congressional hearings would thoroughly investigate his relationship with Quraishi.

He would have to move some money around, make the trail so hard to follow that the authorities would simply give up before they got to him; but he still intended to stay in Washington. If he left now, his guilt would be obvious to everyone.

He watched President Abrams talking again on the telephone, then turning to whisper something to General Olsen. What the hell were they talking about now?

He saw Olsen speak into his own telephone, issuing what looked like urgent orders, then looked back to Ellen Abrams and nodded his head.

While Richards was still trying to figure out what was going on, the doors to the conference room were opened and a squad of Marines entered at a run.

What the hell?

They were wearing masks and what looked like NBC suits; half were armed with assault rifles, the other half held restraints.

What the fuck were they doing?

Richards watched in open-mouthed wonder as they stormed across the room, weapons up and aimed… at him?

And then the Marines were right there in front of him, and the men without weapons were grabbing him, pulling him out of his chair, tying up his body even as they hauled him away, speechless, from the conference room.

President Abrams observed Jeb Richards through the portal glass in the door of the basement bunker.

He was screaming at her, hands pulling at his hair as he stormed from one end of the bunker to the other.

She had no idea what he was saying; she only hoped that Cole was wrong about him.

But the date of the last injection matched the date that Richards had been in Riyadh; and he had been there to visit Quraishi. Who else could Quraishi have injected, that would be able to wreak so much havoc on the United States?

If Jeb had been injected, and the spores erupted while he was in the White House, then most of the country’s senior government figures would be infected.

It certainly made sense, but Abrams didn’t want Jeb Richards to be immolated by flame throwers on a whim; she wanted to make absolutely sure, which was why she had ordered him to be quarantined in the specially converted bunker.

And once the on-site experts were properly suited up, they would enter the bunker and try and examine the man.

Abrams was of two different opinions on what she wanted the outcome to be. On the one hand, she had known Jeb for years and — despite his theatrics — she liked him; it would be devastating if he had been injected, knowingly or unknowingly. But on the other hand, if it was him then the mystery would be cleared up, and their search could stop.

As she watched him pacing up and down, pausing every once in a while to scream at the window, she decided that she felt sorry for him either way.

Richards didn’t know what the hell these people were thinking. He knew he hadn’t been injected with anything.

When he’d first seen the Marines coming for him, he’d thought that they must have found out about him taking payments from Quraishi to assist in suppressing information about the upcoming attacks. What had surprised him beyond credulity was the accusation that he was the mystery twenty-first bomber.

What the fuck were they thinking? Who the fuck did they think they were?

‘Yeah, you!’ he screamed at the porthole, only partially aware that the people outside couldn’t hear him. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are, huh? When I get out of here I’m gonna tear all of you a new asshole, you hear me?’

Tears started to well in his eyes and he collapsed onto the floor, head on his knees.

It was crazy, wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it?

But a voice in the back of his head kept reminding him of something, of the man he’d met at the hotel the night before his meeting, the one who had taken him out to the illicit drinking rooms, the high-class brothel afterwards, and then… then… what?

Richards had to admit that he had no idea what had happened the rest of that evening. When he had woken in his hotel bed the morning after, he’d had one hell of a hangover, and had put down his patchy memory of the previous night to having a few drinks too many.

But could it have been for some other reason? Had he been drugged? Had he been taken to the laboratory and injected with the bioweapon?

Could it be true?

For the first time, Richards felt the cold fear in the pit of his stomach.

He had sat in during all those briefings about the North Korean bioweapon — what it did, how it worked.

Was it going to happen to him?

He leapt up off the floor, banging on the porthole glass; only this time, he wasn’t shouting insults.

He was shouting for help; and he was shouting for mercy.

The NBC personnel had arrived and were preparing to enter the chamber, and Abrams was about to return to the conference room when she saw it.

At first Richards stopped shouting, stopped moving; and then his face went bright red, as if he was holding his breath.

His eyes bulged in their puffy sockets, and Abrams saw the NBC leader bar the way for the rest of his team. ‘No,’ she heard him say through his mask, ‘not now. It’s too late. We stay outside.’

And then Abrams watched the most horrific thing she had seen in her entire life, as the rest of Richards’ skin reddened and he started to scream, eyes threatening to pop straight out of his head, teeth crumbling and falling from his mouth.

And then the skin split, the flesh itself sloughing away from the man’s bones as the virus ate away at him from the inside.

And as the flesh dropped to the floor in pieces and clumps, Abrams saw the spores released from inside his body; like pollen floating in the air, there seemed to be millions of particles spreading through the bunker like a plague of insects, until she could barely see him.

But then his skeletal fingers appeared at the porthole, scraping down the glass and leaving a trail of blood and loose skin, and Abrams could swear she could hear his screams now, even through the armor plating.

And then the plague lifted slightly and she saw his ruined face; skinless, fleshless, unrecognizable.

The spores covered him again, and he was gone.

‘You were right,’ Cole heard the voice of President Abrams announce, thousands of miles away.

‘What happened?’ he asked.

‘We got him into the bunker just in time,’ she breathed, obviously still shaken. ‘He… He’s gone.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Cole said, and meant it. Traitor or not, it was no way to go.

But, he reasoned, better him than the whole of the National Security Council.

‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ Abrams said next. ‘This is the third time you’ve saved my life.’

‘It’s becoming something of a habit,’ Cole agreed.

‘But thank you. I mean it.’ She breathed out slowly once more. ‘If that virus had hit when he was with us, I can’t imagine what would have happened. The Lion might still have won.’

‘But he didn’t,’ Cole said. ‘Not this time.’

‘No,’ Abrams replied in a more positive tone. ‘Now, is there anything I can do for you?’

Cole paused as he heard noise coming from above; shouted orders, booted feet. The Saudi authorities had found him.

Seconds later, the door was kicked open and a squad of armed men rushed in, a captain at the front, his pistol up and aimed squarely at Cole’s head.

‘Yes,’ Cole said into the telephone, ‘I think you might be able to do something for me.’

He held out the receiver to the captain.

‘It’s the President of the United States of America,’ Cole said to the man. ‘For you.’