Outbreak, p.3
Outbreak, page 3
Stian, the lead tracker, who held a captain’s rank in the FSK, was motioning for Luke to follow him into a snow-blasted pre-fab cabin on the edge of the airstrip. The moment they went through the door, Luke felt the full blast of the fan heaters inside and he spotted a Thermos of coffee and a stack of white styrofoam cups on a table. A long cardboard box stood open beside it, revealing its blue contents.
‘Medical facemasks,’ announced a woman, who introduced herself as a police officer from the tiny local contingent in Longyearbyen. ‘Please help yourselves. We have plenty to go around.’ There was a medic from the hospital too, a young man with a wispy blond moustache on his upper lip. He confessed straight away that, other than Coronavirus, he knew very little about infectious diseases. Someone – the police officer, Luke assumed – had already pinned up a large-scale map of Svalbard on the wall. It was overlaid with a sheet of transparent acetate, marked up with a blue chinagraph pen to indicate distances and timings.
‘We start with what we know,’ said Stian, when they had all dumped their kit in a corner, peeled off a layer of clothing and filled up on caffeine. He was tapping the map and speaking in English for Luke’s benefit. He looked, to Luke, typically Scandinavian. Blond hair, blond eyebrows, pale, piercing ice-blue eyes. Not massively built, like some US Delta Force operator, but still exuding a quiet confidence, giving Luke the impression that he probably knew exactly what he was doing in this sub-polar environment. Almost the only thing that he and Luke had managed to establish in their brief acquaintance so far was that they had both seen operational service in Afghanistan. Stian had done some interesting work in the precipitous, pine-clad gorges of Kunar province, trying to find, fix and eliminate the elusive Al-Qaida cells. With limited success.
‘And what we know is this,’ continued Stian, in his stilted but near-perfect English. ‘At some time close to sixteen forty-five hours local yesterday afternoon, the target departed the hut where the initial infection took place.’ Interesting turn of phrase, Luke thought, calling Victor Skeet ‘the target’. ‘Suspect’, ‘patient’ or even ‘victim’ might have been more politically correct, but, hey, if that was the direction they were heading, he was fine with it.
‘We know he has not returned to the hut. So only two things can have happened. Either our Mr Skeet has tried to survive out in the open or he has found the nearest shelter.’ He grimaced. ‘Last night I am told the temperature here on Svalbard fell to minus thirty-four.’ Now he was looking at Luke. ‘Let me ask you, Mr Carlton, does this countryman of yours have the skills to survive in those conditions?’ Minus 34°C. Luke knew from bitter personal experience that even if you dug yourself a snow hole and stayed out of the wind you still needed the right kit, the right skills and the right frame of mind to stay alive in those temperatures. He had asked Vauxhall for everything they had on Skeet before he took off from Northolt, so now his answer was unequivocal.
‘Can Skeet survive in the open? No. Not a chance. He has no military training, no combat survival skills. He’s an ice-core engineer so, yes, he’ll be used to low temperatures, but not without back-up and a team behind him. So if he’s on his own I’d say he has only one option: to head for the nearest shelter.’
‘Exactly.’ Stian spoke as if he had already reached that conclusion some time ago. ‘And that would be Barentsburg, right here.’ He tapped the map again. ‘The distance from here to that settlement is just thirty-six kilometres. We have a helo at our disposal. A Super Puma is fuelled up outside and we can be there inside twenty minutes.’
Luke was shaking his head. ‘Sorry, Stian, I just don’t think that’s wise,’ he said, putting his coffee down. ‘We’ve got to keep this low-key, remember? Find Skeet, isolate him, get him quarantined and off the island. Those were my orders – unless you guys were told something different?’ He looked from one to the other, but nobody said anything. ‘So, landing a bloody great chopper on the edge of town is only going to spook him, right?’
There followed a brief exchange in Norwegian before Stian turned back to Luke. ‘It’s agreed. You are correct. We go by snowmobile. This will take us longer, of course. I estimate one hour. We leave in twenty minutes.’
8
Barentsburg, Svalbard
Tuesday, 8 March, 0704hrs GMT, 0804hrs local
VICTOR SKEET THOUGHT he might be losing his mind. Next to no sleep at all, a thumping headache, sweat pouring off him all night in this overheated Russian-style hotel room. A Coronavirus? Was this SARS-Covid-22? Surely not possible all the way up here in the Arctic. So should he turn himself in? Get himself to a hospital for treatment? That would certainly seem to be the sensible thing to do. But then they’d slap him in isolation for God knows how long and now he had already committed himself. He had gone and texted Agnetha in Oslo and she’d sent him an immediate and enthusiastic response. The coast was clear, she’d told him. Her husband wasn’t due back from the North Sea rigs for another nine days, Skeet could come and stay until at least the weekend. And her bed was warm and ready for him … Fine. He’d recuperate at her place.
When dawn broke over the snowbound Russian mining colony of Barentsburg, Skeet made up his mind. He would hole up here in the Hostel Pogol for another day until he felt well enough to travel. He reached up and touched his temples with his fingertips. They felt warm, but, no, he definitely wasn’t burning up. So this was probably nothing more than a brief bout of winter flu. He’d keep up his fluid intake and sleep it off. Just one more day, then he’d be as right as rain.
Skeet sat in the hostel’s near-deserted canteen and toyed distractedly with his breakfast. An undercooked sausage, a plate of cold blinis, a dish of lumpen syrniki cottage-cheese pancakes. When the Russian waitress came over to pour him his tea she looked him up and down and tut-tutted. ‘You not good,’ she pronounced.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Not well,’ she corrected herself. ‘You are not well.’
‘You’re right about that,’ Skeet conceded. ‘I feel like shit. Do you have any painkillers?’
She looked at him blankly.
‘Painkillers,’ he repeated impatiently, pointing at his head. ‘You know, paracetamol? Nurofen?’
‘Ah!’ Her face brightened as she understood the question. ‘No. We don’t have.’ Then she held up her finger. ‘But I give you poroshok.’ She came back a few minutes later with a glass of warm brown liquid. ‘Drink,’ she commanded, and Skeet gulped it down. It tasted foul. But when a human being is under duress the mind will often clutch at straws. Skeet’s mind now did exactly that. He was starting to get better, he told himself, no doubt about it. You can’t beat a local remedy. He thanked the waitress, put some krones on the table as a tip and pulled himself to his feet. Maybe if he got a few minutes of fresh air it would do him good, just as long as he stayed inconspicuous.
He fetched his jacket from his room and turned the collar up. He put on his black woollen beanie and pulled it down tight over his forehead. He would keep his eyes on the ground and avoid eye contact with anyone. As the first rays of the Arctic sun were lancing across the sparkling, frozen street, Victor Skeet stepped out of the Hostel Pogol into the sub-zero morning. He was unaware that at that exact moment three men with very specialized skill-sets were closing in on him.
9
Near Cambridge Science Park, England
Tuesday, 8 March, 0730hrs GMT
THE MOBILE BESIDE her rang twice before she answered it. ‘You’re up early!’ she said cheerfully, as she reached for her first cigarette of the day.
‘Shut up and listen. Something’s happened. Up in Norway.’
‘Go on.’
‘I can’t say much. We need to meet.’
‘You know that can’t happen. Come on, tell me.’
‘There’s been a … there’s been an accidental release.’
‘What?’ she exclaimed, sitting bolt upright and stubbing out the cigarette before she had even taken a drag. ‘How many infected?’
‘We don’t know yet. But Vasiliev’s gone, we know that.’
‘Gone? What d’you mean, “gone”? Be specific.’
‘He’s dead! All right? … He went down very fast. They had to leave him in the hut.’
‘Fuck. Let me think for a moment. Can we shut it down?’
‘Nope. It’s too late for that.’
‘How the hell did it happen? No, wait, don’t tell me now. You need to inform Vilnius. And the others. You know what this means, don’t you?’
‘What?’
‘We’re going to have to bring everything forward. There’s no more time now. And, listen, don’t call this number again.’
She cut the conversation short, took out the Sim card and walked into the bathroom. She tore off a sheet of toilet paper and wrapped it tightly around the Sim, dropped it carefully into the toilet bowl and pressed the flush, standing over it until it was gone.
10
Svalbard
Tuesday, 8 March, 0742hrs GMT, 0842hrs local
TO DR SHEILA Mackenzie it felt like the onset of flu. Headache, high temperature, aching joints, chills. But she was under no illusions. This was no winter flu and she didn’t think it was respiratory either. The incubation period was way too short for that. She knew that whatever was coursing through her body was of a whole different order. One look at the lifeless figure slumped by the sofa, his torso stained with blood and vomit, told her that. To her shame, she had not even noticed when the last breath had passed his chapped and bleeding lips. He had simply expired, and just after 4 a.m. they had called it in to the research station.
Sheila Mackenzie also knew that if help didn’t arrive soon, then whatever had killed the man on the floor was just a glimpse of what was coming down the tracks for her: the horror that would precede her own death. Her medical training made it hard not to think about what was going on inside her body right now. In unpleasantly graphic detail she could envisage the microscopic battles being waged in her bloodstream as the pathogen swarmed through her veins, attacking the healthy cells, then replicating with incredible speed, breaking down more cell walls, invading those neighbouring cells and taking them over. If she was feeling the first symptoms already then this pathogen was virulent; its onset was rapid and severe. She knew she didn’t have much time.
‘Chris?’ she called to her colleague, for the third time in an hour. ‘Any word from the base station?’
Chris Coppinger had positioned himself just outside the half-open door, a precaution he had taken on her advice. As an added measure, he had wrapped a scarf across his nose and mouth, which also gave him some protection from the sub-zero blasts that came barrelling down the valley. The Mauser rifle remained slung over his shoulder in case any marauding polar bears should come calling, but, right now, he considered them to be the least of their worries. She saw him glance down at his phone and shake his head.
‘Nothing since that last call,’ he replied, his voice muffled by the scarf. ‘But, Sheila, they’re on their way, I promise. The Oslo team will have everything they need to fix this. So just hang in there … Okay?’
Sheila Mackenzie didn’t answer. She turned away from him and shuffled closer to the stove in the corner, wrapping her arms around herself. Chris had ventured inside the hut just long enough to light it last night, but it had been a rush job and now there was precious little warmth emanating from it. For the second time she removed her gloves to feel beneath her ears, checking for swollen lymph glands, then searched involuntarily for the hideous pustules she had seen on the man on the couch. Nothing. Not yet anyway.
Had she slept at all? She couldn’t be sure. No, she definitely hadn’t. It is hard to close your eyes and drift off when the temperature is well below zero, there’s a man dying on the floor a few feet away, and you can’t get it out of your head that you’re going to be next. She kicked herself for landing in this situation. Less than three weeks to go before her contract on Svalbard was up and then she would have been back home in London. And now another thought was crowding into her head: Roberta, her niece, her baby niece. Would she ever see that precious child again? If she hadn’t been so paralysed with cold and fear she might have allowed herself a tear or two. But something else was distracting her, a noise, coming from outside and from somewhere up above.
It was the sound of approaching rotor blades.
11
Barentsburg, Svalbard
Tuesday, 8 March, 0752hrs GMT, 0852hrs local
LESS THAN FORTY kilometres away, Luke was in position. So, too, were Stian and the other tracker, flanking him on either side, their breath frosting in the still air, spaced thirty metres distant but close enough to see each other’s hand signals clearly. They had left the snowmobiles behind them, parked up next to a locked building on the edge of town, and covered the last 500 metres on foot, approaching on snowshoes in near-total silence.
Luke had been busy. In the few short minutes Stian had given them for personal admin before they set off, Luke had spoken to Vauxhall twice. Getting hold of Victor Skeet’s personal phone number had been easy: MI6 had had no trouble in procuring it from his employers at the Arctic Research Station. Tracing Skeet’s text messages had taken longer and had pulled in the resources of both GCHQ and their transatlantic cousins, the NSA. He had sent only one and they had immediately traced it to a residential apartment in Oslo. That address would soon be getting a visit. The far more urgent question was where Skeet had sent it from. The answer arrived on Luke’s phone in a simple set of coordinates:
78.0649 degrees N
14.2337 degrees E
Barentsburg. That was it; it was the confirmation they needed. Skeet was hiding in Barentsburg. His footprints from the day before might have vanished in the snowstorm but his digital footprint was still a dead giveaway. Pinpointing his GPS location from the phone in his pocket had led them to where they were now. Luke took in the scene from his vantage point, squatting at a half-crouch next to a drainpipe that ran down the corner of a building. In front of him: an empty, snowbound street where the Arctic wind came scything down from the mountains. Half a dozen cars of dubious vintage, all parked up and idle, their windscreens half obliterated with snow and ice, a wooden shop sign that swung back and forth in the wind. It was unspeakably bleak.
And there, emerging from the hotel that matched the coordinates he had been given, was Victor Skeet. Luke watched him through a pair of Steiner rubber-coated tactical binoculars after first checking he fitted the photo he’d been sent on his phone. To his right, one of the Norwegian trackers lay flat on his front, squinting down the telescopic sight mounted on a Barrett MRAD sniping rifle, his finger resting lightly on the trigger guard, the barrel supported by a folding bipod. It was a precaution, nothing more. Everyone wanted Skeet alive, in quarantine, and talking. But his behaviour had been nothing short of erratic and there was a serious risk he could be contagious. No one was taking any chances here: all three men were wearing their surgical masks.
And Skeet’s behaviour right now was troubling. Watching him through the 10x42mm viewfinder, Luke saw him stumbling around the empty street, missing his footing and clutching his head. It was time to act. Luke signalled to Stian, waited for him to acknowledge, then stood up and walked quickly towards Skeet. He heard a shout from behind him, a warning from Stian that this man was probably infected, but Luke was still several metres off when he called: ‘Victor Skeet! I’m unarmed. We’re here to help you.’
Skeet stopped abruptly in his tracks. Luke could see that his face was bare, unmasked.
‘Who the hell are you?’ Skeet yelled hoarsely.
Luke didn’t reply. He was now less than twenty metres from his target.
‘You need medical help!’ Luke called out again. ‘You need to stay exactly where you are and we’ll bring it to you.’
There are some moments, Luke thought, that can seem like a lifetime: the seconds before he went through the doorway of a mud-walled compound of a high-value target in Afghanistan, a weapons-drawn face-off in the Gulf of Aden with a skiff full of Somali pirates high on narcotic qat, the instant before his first kiss with Elise. This, right now, was one of those extended moments. He saw Skeet look him straight in the eyes, he saw him hesitate, and he saw him turn and break into a run, making for the nearest buildings.
‘Stoppe!’ The shout came from behind them, the command sounding identical in Norwegian and English. But Skeet was moving fast now, closing the distance between himself and a row of green-painted buildings. He wasn’t stopping for anyone.
The crack, when it came, was deafening, shattering the stillness of the Arctic morning, splitting the air as the bullet broke the sound barrier and slammed into its target. Skeet fell, clutching his right thigh, and groaned once. Luke could see him staring down in consternation at where his blood was spurting out, as if from a garden hose. A crimson pool was rapidly forming on the pristine snow. Everything in Luke’s training was telling him to race forward and slap a tourniquet on before the man bled out. He had spent enough time in Afghanistan and Iraq to know Skeet had been hit in his femoral artery by the high-velocity bullet. But Skeet, they all suspected, was carrying the pathogen, and Luke simply couldn’t take that risk. He knew that an average adult human has around five litres of blood in their body, but, left unstaunched, a severed major artery will usually be fatal within two minutes. And so it was, on that icy morning in Barentsburg.
Victor Skeet, ice-core engineer, Arctic researcher and resident of Cambridge, England, took 124 seconds to die on that empty, frozen street in Barentsburg. He had, at least, enjoyed a quicker death than the man who had infected him.
