Juggernaut

He took another Turkish cigarette from his gold case and lit it with the click of his lighter. He checked the magazine of his compact Makarov pistol and tucked it in his waistband.

He pulled a second Louis Vuitton suitcase from beneath his cot and flipped latches.

Blocks wrapped in wax paper. PE4-A, Portuguese high-grade plastic explosive.

A box of detonators.

Hundred-metre rolls of twin-flex phone cable.

He unwrapped a slab of explosive. He slapped it against the washstand mirror, kneaded it against the glass. He mashed a detonator into the clay and spliced cable.

He backed out of the room and down the corridor, spooling cable as he walked.

A storeroom.

He kicked open the rough wooden door. Document boxes.

Jabril kicked over the boxes. Forms and files. Digital video tape and CDs. Hard disks and flash drives.

Paper spilled across the floor. Records of terminal trials: observation notes, temperature graphs, X-rays.

Black and white photographs showed a series of anguished, naked men tied to the necropsy table, and the frame-by-frame progress of infection.

Jabril slapped a patty of explosive against a ceiling beam and ran cable.

There were jerry cans in the corner of the room. He uncapped a can and pushed it over. Gasoline gulped from the nozzle and soaked paper.

He backed out the room, running command wire.

The holding pens. Two freight containers sitting at the end of a tunnel. The container doors had been removed and replaced by welded bars. Crude jail cells.

Jabril instinctively covered his mouth and nose with the hooked stump of his arm. The tunnel used to smell of faeces. Most soldiers wouldn’t approach the place unless they were ordered to pull sentry duty. If they were forced to stand guard, they would plug their noses with toilet tissue sprayed with deodorant. Some of the prisoners lost bowel control each time a removal team arrived to extract a fresh victim. The men would huddle in shadows at the back of the container. They would piss and soil themselves.

Jabril would make the selection. The team would drag the semi-conscious man clear while his companions were kept at bay with Taser batons.

The inmate would be marched to the cavern labs, thrashing as he saw the zinc table and nylon restraints waiting to receive him.

‘Cameras running.’

A lab tech would tightened wrist, ankle and chest straps, tug buckles and checked for slack.

‘He’s secure. Go ahead.’

That long, despairing shriek as the prisoner lifted his head, watched a needle prick the skin of his forearm and deliver its lethal load.

Jabril had spent his working life in Baghdad instigating torture and executions. He would work his way through a prisoner list as he sipped his mid-morning coffee. Part of the daily routine, like glancing through the sheaf of anonymous denunciations that arrived by mail each morning.

He leafed through intelligence reports and circled names. His subordinates understood the code. A cross meant arrest and detainment. A circle meant interrogation. A red tick meant death. He didn’t have to give a direct order. The words never passed his lips. He didn’t have to hear the screams. He didn’t have to smell the sweat, piss and blood of the torture cells.

But the Spektr project gave him the direct power of life and death. He stood in front of the prisoner pens every couple of days, surveyed the snivelling men and made his choice. He would point out his chosen victim, watch them cower from his pointed finger like he was aiming a gun. It was intoxicating. God-like potency. A heart-galloping thrill, like illicit sex.

Jabril stood by the bars and stared into the dark cave-mouth of the empty freight containers. He could still hear the ghost-screams, feel the old flutter of excitement.

He set the suitcase down. He popped latches. He slapped explosive against timber wall props and pushed detonators into the putty. He twisted together frayed copper strands and ran cable.

Voss climbed a ladder to the locomotive walkway. He entered the cab.

‘How’s it going?’

‘Wish we could get hold of Gaunt. Break fingers until he showed us how to crank up this fucking thing.’

‘Think he knows how to run it?’ asked Voss.

‘How did he know about the mine? The lab? Someone gave him a detailed brief. They might have told him about the train.’

Voss didn’t reply.

Lucy crouched and pulled a battered ring binder from a shelf beneath the engineer’s console. She flipped pages.

‘This baby is some kind of diesel/electric hybrid. I’ve got juice to the driver’s desk, but I’m getting some kind of power warning.’

‘I checked the track,’ said Voss. ‘The switch-rails are set to put her in a parallel siding.’

‘So fix it.’

Voss jumped from the cab. He walked the track in front of the locomotive. He examined the rail switch. Mechanical operation. No hydraulic actuators, no electrics. A tall lever next to a rail junction. He threw his bodyweight against the lever. It wouldn’t shift.

He headed down the tunnel. He searched for something he could use as a sledgehammer.