Life Goes On by Tayell, Frank (large ebook reader txt) 📗

the device was supposed to be another diversion, because they didn’t rig the bomb to the VX.”

“You found more nerve agent?” Tess asked.

“Two canisters so far. First was in the hangar. In a transportation-container. It’s military grade, and custom-built, but unmarked.”

“It’s a WMD,” Tess said. “Which nation would want to sign their name on that crime?”

“It’s a deeper tragedy than that,” Clyde said. “I found the second canister beneath the plane.”

“Do you mean the crashed plane?”

“It doesn’t appear to have leaked. The scientists aren’t taking any chances. They’re geared up, and dismantling it. The canisters slot into a dispersal device built beneath the plane’s wing. That’s a commercial jet, and it’s a military-grade dispersal device. The design would have been trialled. Tested. It’s a wing-mounted delivery system that looks remarkably similar to a spare, external fuel tank.”

“Trialled it? But not with VX or surely we’d have known about it,” Tess said.

“You’d like to think so,” Clyde said. “But the evening news had a limited number of spots for faraway tragedies.”

“Can you guess who designed it?”

“Not yet, but there aren’t many suspects. This is the work of a national government, and a military-grade factory.”

“Then every possible suspect is dead,” Tess said. She took a deep breath, and stalled halfway through, wincing as she rubbed her ribs. “D’you know, I’ll be glad when we’re out of this sea. So the explosive at the fuel tanks would have been a diversion. But so were the boats, leaving from different piers. How many got away?”

“Four were sunk. Two fast-boats, two yachts. There’s no way to know how many people were aboard.”

“Could a ship have evaded detection?”

“Possibly,” he said. “It’s possible there are some cartel-terrorists still hiding on the island. Give me a team of ten, and thermal imaging, and a week, and I’ll find them.”

“What could they tell us that the man in the cabin couldn’t?” Tess asked. “You get him out, I’ll speak to the former captives, and then to the captain.”

With a weary sigh, followed by a clenching wince, she climbed over the side of the ship.

She reached the shore-side bar at the same time as a white pick-up, marked harbour-master, and driven by Captain Adams. Two sailors with a stretcher jumped out of the back, and hurried to the bar.

“We’re collecting Mr Mackay,” Adams said. “We’re docked in the north.”

“Were there many fatalities?” Tess asked.

“None yet, but there were casualties,” Adams said. “The enemy was trying to flee rather than fight.”

The two sailors came out of the bar with Glenn Mackay strapped to a stretcher, and with Zach a step behind.

“The cartel were keeping prisoners on the island,” Tess said. “Five were reported to require medical assistance.”

“We’ve found eight,” Adams said. “Three from the U.S. who seem to know you, and five South Americans. Two are in a bad way. Three are worse. They’ve been transferred to the ship. Your friends are still in the crossroads house.”

“An enemy combatant’s locked himself into the captain’s cabin on the icebreaker,” Tess said. “Clyde’s fishing him out.”

“Was that ship our diesel trader?” Adams asked.

“Couldn’t say,” Tess said. “Not yet. But a battle was fought on that icebreaker long before we arrived. There are bloodstains and bullet holes in the corridors. I’ll need more time to inspect it.”

“Perhaps your old friends will be able to tell us,” Adams said.

“Are you coming, Zach?” Tess asked.

“Well, I’m not staying here,” he said.

They drove slowly until they reached the crashed plane, where a pair of yellow-clad figures were huddled near the wing.

When they stopped at the house, Tess jumped down. Adams got out, too.

“Zach, stay with Glenn,” Tess said, and looked back towards the crashed plane while the truck sped away. “If you’d not stopped the escaping boats, how far could they have reached?”

“The mainland, easily,” Adams said. “It’s only seventy kilometres away. The island of Little Corn is much closer.”

“They must have had a destination in mind,” Tess said. “Clyde said an explosive had been rigged at the runway-fuel tanks, so that plane wasn’t going to land here again.”

“It was a lucky shot that took out the plane,” Adams said. “A life at sea breeds superstition. It’s a habit I tried to avoid, but it’s a notion that seeps into one’s thinking. The shell hit the runway in front of the plane, and from sufficient distance the pilot, instinctively, turned. The plane careened off the runway, and so broke its landing gear. A second earlier, the plane might have made it into the air. A second later, and we’d have scattered the plane’s contents across the island. There’s VX aboard.”

“Clyde told me. In a military-grade dispersal system.”

“They might have constructed it to survive a crash, but not a direct impact,” Adams said.

“During the confrontation on the pier, the bloke I think was their leader wanted us to get back in the boat and return to the ship,” Tess said. “That plane is why. They were going to strafe the warship.”

“I imagine so,” Adams said. “Would we have shot down a civilian plane flying low overhead? Probably not. These sisters knew the politicians they’d been bedding down with would want to obliterate all witnesses. An attack sub, or even a destroyer, would be too noticeable an acquisition for two drug-dealing gangsters, so they purchased a nerve agent, and a system with which to deploy it against enemy ships. After the end of the world, to them, every ship became an enemy.”

“So they’re not likely to be the fuel-traders,” Tess said. “Though I’m not ruling it out. But it does make me wonder, among other questions, why they came to this particular island.”

“Let’s see if your friends know the answer,” Adams said.

When the truck had pulled in, the three Americans had been sitting on the stoop of