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.