He reached out and twisted the handle.
Unlocked.
The door swung open to reveal a massive interior space with a dirty concrete floor, packed with all sorts of machinery. This equipment, however, had a different feel to the rest of the plant. They were out of place, seemingly brand new. As if they had been produced recently, specifically for a certain project. Not the regular gear that usually fills a concrete plant. These machines had a different purpose.
King cocked his head as he looked around. There wasn’t a soul in sight. The shiny new contraptions lay in the open, unmanned, untouched. The place gave off a similar feeling to Rafael Constructions’ head office. Like the entire area had been deserted in a hurry.
He stepped inside and crossed to the nearest machine. His footsteps echoed off the walls, the only noise inside the cavernous space. The contraption was a large metal box, bolted shut, with two exhaust pipes trailing out of the top. A small glass window had been installed on one side. He squatted and peered in, squinting in the dim gloom of the unlit warehouse.
The box was filled with a white powdery substance, still coarse. King took one look at it and recognised it instantly. His throat dried and his stomach fell and his hands grew cold and clammy even before he stood up and read the label plastered to the side of the container.
Bacillus anthracis.
‘Kate,’ he whispered, his voice hoarse.
She sensed the panic immediately, and quickly came to his side. ‘What is it?’
He rested a shaking hand on top of the box and took a deep gulp of air. ‘This is the anthrax. From Kuwait.’
‘That’s impossible.’
What the fuck is it doing here? he asked himself. Why Jameson?
‘I know what they’re doing now,’ he said, now speaking quietly. Demoralised. In over his head. ‘I know what this whole thing is about. If these spores get weaponised into an aerosol, it’s enough anthrax to wipe out an entire city.’
‘They’re weaponising it?’ she said. ‘Here?’
‘That’s what all these machines are for,’ King said. ‘I read hundreds of files before heading into Kuwait.’
‘I didn’t think anthrax could do that.’
‘Enough of it can. It took 9/11 for people began to realise the power of a biological attack.’
‘9/11?’ she said.
‘A week after the planes, letters containing concentrated anthrax spores were mailed to news offices and government officials. They killed five people, and the shitstorm that followed was unprecedented. It opened up a whole new side of terrorism.’
‘That’s what this is? Terrorism?’
‘I’m certain. But why here? Why me?’
‘Maybe it’s a huge coincidence.’
He turned to her, and registered the shock on her face as she saw how pale he had turned. ‘It’s not. My last mission in Black Force fails, and somehow the result of that failure ends up in the exact place I decide to travel, halfway across the globe?’
‘You still think it has something to do with you?’
‘Of course it does.’
‘Who’s doing this?’
‘I don’t know. Not the terrorists from Kuwait. Someone else…’
Noises, outside. The sound of heavy footsteps.
‘Let’s go,’ he said.
‘What?
‘This is far worse than I thought, Kate. It’s a national security crisis. I need to make some calls. We have to go, right now.’
They hurried for the door they’d come through. King hoped it wasn’t too late. He drew the M&P and stepped outside, barrel up, ready for confrontation.
He need not have bothered.
The warehouse was surrounded on all sides. More than ten men had emerged from the forest, forming a rough semi-circle around their position. They all possessed similar qualities. Tall, well-built. Hard expressionless features. Seasoned combatants. Each man held an M4 carbine, identical to the weapons brandished by the bikers back at the metal work factory. But these men knew how to use them. If King took a single step further he and Kate would die in a storm of gunfire. He knew that much.
Without command from any of them, he threw his pistol onto the wet grass. Kate let out a noise, a resigned sigh, accepting that they had been defeated. King felt a cold tingle creep up his spine. Perhaps this was it. He would die without answers, never knowing how everything fell into place.
Then a voice, from behind.
The same voice he’d heard in his ear just a few hours earlier.
‘Smart move, buddy.’
He turned and saw a man standing just inside the warehouse. He had short, close-cropped hair and small beady eyes that hung over a tight-lipped mouth. His features were soft from lack of exposure to the elements. He’d obviously spent much of his life indoors, probably behind a desk.
King knew which desk.
He knew which building the desk sat in.
He knew the man standing across from him like he was part of his family.
Since its inception, Black Force had been run by a single man. This man held more power than the Joint Chiefs of Staff, yet officially he did not exist. Lars Crawford held no government title, but for over ten years he had organised and commandeered some of the most dangerous missions in United States military history. For ten years, he’d told King what to do, and where to go, and who to kill, and who to save.
Now he stood across from him. In the middle of a forest. In the last place King had ever expected to find him. When he’d walked out of the same man’s office two months ago, he thought he would never see Lars again.
How wrong he was.
CHAPTER 31
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ King said.
He couldn’t think of anything else to say. His senses were reeling, half from the injuries he’d sustained and half from the massive revelation that a man he’d trusted with his life for almost a decade had engineered this entire situation.
‘Officially, I’m on leave,’ Lars said, sneering. ‘Visiting family.’
‘Your aunt…’
‘What?’
‘I met some of your family. In Jameson. I told your aunt that I’d never heard of you. I couldn’t say a word.’
Lars scowled. ‘Bunch of abusive fucks, the lot of them. I’m never laying eyes on them again. Convenient excuse, though. The higher-ups lapped it up.’
‘So what are you really doing here?’
He motioned to the warehouse in a broad, sweeping gesture. ‘Preparing for a show. Have been for months. Your presence is a bonus. Thought I’d show you the price of walking away.’
The ten soldiers behind King didn’t make a sound, but he knew they were still there. Kate stood by his side, dead silent, not moving a muscle. He knew she was scared out of her mind. He was too.
‘That’s the anthrax from Kuwait,’ he said. ‘What those corrupt bastards escaped with.’
‘Bingo,’ Lars said. ‘Want to know why I have it?’
King said nothing.
‘You see, sitting around in the bowels of the Pentagon just wasn’t cutting it for me anymore. You and Slater and a handful of other operatives made a fortune. The four-stars revered you. And me? Well, I was given a slightly larger office. No-one gave a fuck about me. No-one cares about the brains behind the operation. I’d had enough.’
King still did not respond. He looked at the man across from him with utter contempt. Shocked as to how a seemingly good person had stooped so low.
‘You know, King,’ Lars said. ‘I never knew how you did it.’