Hunter Killer - Alex King Series 12 (2021)

will rise to the challenge. Damned fool doesn’t know when he’s beat, or when he shouldn’t even step into the ring.” He looked at King and said, “Stay away from this one, mate. Spend some time with the missus. How is she, by the way?”
“Recovering. Still needs the crutches for prolonged periods on her feet, but slowly getting there.” King paused. He wouldn’t mention the tragedy of the miscarriage. That was their business only. “There’s the mental scars as well,” he added, thinking of her ordeal.
Big Dave nodded. “Understandable. That mental shit is the worst. Glad she’s getting there. Send her my love…”
“Do you mind?” Mereweather stared at him, perplexed. “Perhaps you should wait outside?”
King looked at the window, the rain lashing against the pane. Beyond, the sea was angry and taking its mood out on the shingle beach. Sea spray showered the cars parked outside. “That won’t be necessary. He’s got my back, that’s all.” He paused, took a mouthful of tea and said, “I don’t think I’m reading this right. Give it to me. And don’t hold back.” He looked up as Neil Ramsay returned to the table with four more cups of tea and another bacon roll for Big Dave.
“Don’t hold back on what?” the MI5 liaison officer said as he put the tray down on the table.
“The mission. The parameters and the objectives,” Mereweather replied tersely. “For goodness’ sake, I knew that we should have done this at Thames House.”
“But we couldn’t,” Ramsay protested somewhat pointedly. “It’s a deniable operation. No records, no trail.”
“A black-ops mission, then,” Big Dave added looking at Ramsay.
“Shut up,” Ramsay replied.
“Something we should know about?” Mereweather asked.
“Private joke,” said Big Dave. A black Fijian, he was always poking fun at Ramsay’s middle-class sensibilities, or general ignorance thereof, on people of colour. When Ramsay used something innocent that could have connotations, Big Dave loved to twist his words or bait him into an awkward situation.
“The point is…” said Ramsay, ignoring his colleague. “… this is deniable and worse than that, it’s practically suicidal. MI6 wouldn’t come up with something like this, and we all know the egos on that lot. The SAS or SBS wouldn’t condone a mission like it if they had the full facts, and something like this is not even within MI5’s remit.”
“There’s a great deal we do that’s nothing near our remit,” said King.
Ramsay shook his head despairingly. “True. And this is a vitally important operation, but I can’t in good conscience recommend you take it on, Alex.”
Mereweather sighed. “Oh, for God’s sake!” he exclaimed in exasperation. “Okay. It’s an unfortunate situation, and a difficult mission. But let’s not forget that it was King who put the asset on the submarine, and it was King who did not check whether she was infected in the first place when he met her. In effect, losing a Royal Navy submarine and its entire crew…”
“Don’t pull your punches, Simon,” said King coldly.
“You asked me to give it to you straight and not to hold back. Well, here it is…” Mereweather replied testily. “You got a Russian asset out of a Russian biological weapons research facility through Lapland, Finland and Norway. In doing so, we retrieved the information that we required on a stolen USB. Not to manufacture, but to keep Russia from doing so. The formula was incomplete. No harm, no foul. A team from the SAS later destroyed the laboratory, making it look like its hydroelectric turbines had overheated during the spring thaws and rising water levels and the regenerator had failed and caught fire. The laboratory was vaporised. So, we didn’t have the genetic building blocks for the virus to procure a vaccine, and the Russians didn’t have them either, so couldn’t finish making its weapon. That wasn’t the perfect outcome, but it was about as near to bloody perfect as anyone could wish for.”
“But Natalia Grekov became infected getting the evidence out. How was I meant to know?”
“You should have anticipated it.”
“What, strip her naked and use my non-existent training in medicine and biological pathogen research to perform a relevant examination?” King scoffed. “It’s worth noting that I would have travelled with her on that submarine, but when I got her to her ride at the exfil under fire, I bailed on the escape plan and remained so that I could ensure the sub got away safely out of the fjord. It was coming under fire from an RPG.”
“Luckily for you,” Big Dave commented flatly, then shrugged. “The submarine ride home, that is. Not the RPG, obviously.”
Mereweather nodded. “Indeed. That submarine subsequently went missing. I’ve seen the footage, the pictures of the animals in the laboratory. I’ve been briefed by the scientists and can’t truly bring myself to imagine the full horrors of what the poor crew must have endured before they died. Or of what happened onboard for it to disappear. But it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination. The virus was cultivated and designed as a unique weapon. To be released upon unsuspecting nations and render the population inhuman. To lose all inhibitions and morality, to have them attack each other in rage…”
“Like zombies?” Big Dave asked. He hadn’t been with the team during the time of this operation, having later come in as a military contractor before being officially signed up to MI5.
“No,” Mereweather said sharply. “The scientists were both abundantly and adamantly clear on that. And we can’t trivialise this bioweapon by throwing the Z word out there. It’s too fantastical. There are similar drugs that affect people in such a way. PCP, for instance. That stops people feeling pain or fatigue. And spice makes people function comatose, zombie-like. The world moves around them, and they are unaware. Anabolic steroids can create anger issues.” He paused. “These attributes are all found within this virus.”
“Dialled up to eleven by