Resurrection Read online

  Resurrection

  Ken Mcclure

  Ken McClure

  Resurrection

  PROLOGUE

  Edinburgh, Scotland.

  August 1997.

  The children went very quiet. Their mother, who had been sitting on the grass happily reading her new Virginia Andrews in the sunshine, looked over her glasses at the ground in front of her and listened intently for a moment. No longer reassured by the background noise of laughter and argument, she called out.

  ‘Jemma? Graham? Where are you? What are you up to?’

  There was no reply so she turned round to face the trees and called out again. This time there was a response.

  ‘Mummy,’ said Jemma’s voice, sounding very small. ‘There’s … a man.’

  The woman dropped her book and scrambled to her feet in ungainly fashion to dash into the trees, still in stockinged feet, fearing some hideous assault on her children. She stopped as she came to the clearing where Jemma’s voice had come from and saw the pair of them standing side by side, looking up into a tree.

  Relief was quickly replaced by horror as she raised her line of sight and saw a pair of light tan-coloured shoes revolving slowly at eye level. She had the ridiculous thought that a man had levitated up into the branches before reality insisted she face facts.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she exclaimed. ‘Come here you two!’

  The children rushed towards her and she gathered them in her arms, letting them bury their faces in her skirt as they sought reassurance and safety. She was left looking up into the tree.

  At first she thought she couldn’t see much from where she was because of the leaves but a movement of the corpse in response to the wind alerted her to the fact that she could see more than she’d imagined. Brown cord trousers and a greenish brown jacket were providing unwitting camouflage. She looked up to where the face must be and waited until the corpse had revolved to face her. She drew in breath sharply as she saw the lop-sided purple face with bulging eyes and lolling tongue peer at her through the leaves.

  ‘Is he dead, Mummy?’ asked Jemma.

  ‘I’m afraid so, Jemma. We’d better tell the police.’

  The police arrived within five minutes of the call, a Panda car followed some ten minutes later by three other vehicles, all using sirens and flashing lights to speed their passage. Chequered tape boundaries were set up and almost before she knew it, the woman had told the police everything that she could, not that it amounted to much. She was obliged to give her name and address just in case they needed to get in touch again but they doubted that would be necessary.

  She walked away from the scene with her children on either side of her, feeling a distinct sense of anticlimax and maybe even resentment. She was responsible for raising the alarm; she had started the whole thing off and now, quite suddenly, she was being treated as irrelevant. She wanted to know more, who the man was, why he’d done it but they weren’t going to tell her. She was an outsider again after a brief starring role in a nightmare. The door had been closed. She and the children were surplus to requirements.

  The children sneaked fearful backward glances at the trees as they walked away, holding their mother’s hand. They would remember this picnic for the rest of their lives. The man in the tree would return periodically to decorate the trees of their dreams for all time.

  ‘Well?’ asked the Inspector in charge of his subordinate after the corpse had been lowered to the ground and a preliminary examination carried out. ‘What d’you make of it?’

  ‘Straightforward suicide, I should think sir. He’s foreign. A post graduate student at the university. He’s carrying a matriculation card, name of Hammadi, Ali Hammadi.’

  ‘Photograph on the card?’

  ‘Yes, it’s him all right.’

  The sergeant handed over the card and sifted through the contents of the dead man’s wallet. ‘Thirty five quid in cash, two credit cards, a few names and telephone numbers, a phone card, an invitation to a party and an electronic key to a university building, the Institute of Molecular Science.’

  The forensic pathologist arrived, a short bald man, overweight and out of puff by the time he’d reached the clearing with his bag.

  ‘Well, this is a nice change,’ he said.

  ‘Nice change?’

  ‘It’s usually pissing down and the middle of the bloody night when Lothian’s finest call me out.’

  ‘Oh, very droll.’

  The pathologist knelt down beside the body and started to carry out his scene of crime examination. As he worked, he asked, ‘Do we know anything about him?’

  ‘A student. Molecular science we think.’

  ‘Obviously not physics,’ said the pathologist, examining the dead man’s neck. ‘He got the jump wrong. Neck’s not broken. He strangled himself.’

  The inspector adopted an expression of distaste. ‘Students,’ he snorted. ‘Why do they have to make failing their bloody exams everybody else’s’ problem.’

  ‘We don’t know that he failed any exams, sir,’ said the sergeant through gritted but still respectful teeth. He was a lot closer to the dead man in terms of age than his superior.

  The inspector gave him a black look. ‘It’s the usual bloody reason, isn’t it? Papers will probably describe him as brilliant. Always do.’

  ONE

  Saudi Arabia

  September 1997

  The wheels of the long-base Land-Rover ceased their constant struggle for grip on the sand as the engine died and the vehicle came to a halt in a deep hollow between two flanking dunes. The four men aboard unwound the keffiyeh from their faces and stepped out to shake the sand free from their clothes and savour the velvet silence of the night. Above them the stars shone down from a cloudless sky dwarfing them in an almost lunar landscape, making them feel like the sole inhabitants of a strange and distant planet.

  ‘Time to take a look’, said their leader. Despite his Arab dress, he spoke English; they all did. One man stayed with the vehicle while the other three climbed to a point just below the crest of the dune on the north side to throw themselves flat and wriggle up the last few metres to start scanning the desert. They used top quality night vision equipment as befitted members of an elite British military unit. Officially they were attached to the Saudi forces as ‘advisers’. Unofficially they wore Arab clothing, carried no formal identification and did their own thing. At present they were one of a number of units patrolling the border area where Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iraq met. If Saddam was up to anything in the area, they wanted to be the first to know about it.

  ‘Quiet as the grave,’ murmured one of the men.

  ‘Sand, sand and more bloody sand,’ whispered another.

  Their leader checked his hand-held GPS navigational system and mentally thanked the American satellites above that had just given him his map position on the surface of the Earth to within three square metres. He noted it down in his log book and checked his watch before adding the time.

  ‘Skip, there’s something happening over there,’ said one of the soldiers. He said it quietly and without excitement. Understatement was a matter of professional pride among these soldiers. The others took their cue from his line of sight and picked up on two vehicles travelling on the Iraqi side of the border.

  ‘Convoy of two, they’re heading straight for the border.’

  ‘Don’t think it’s a convoy … more like a chase.’

  ‘You’re right. We’ll take an interest in this.

  Two of the soldiers kept their glasses on the approaching vehicles while the leader of the unit, took a studied look around at their surroundings, mentally planning the best way for them to stage an interception, should the approaching vehicles actually cross the border into Saudi territory.
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br />   ‘Military vehicles,’ updated one of the soldiers monitoring the action.

  ‘One man in the first, three in the second,’ added his colleague.

  ‘So they’re chasing a man who wants to cross the border. ‘Guess that automatically qualifies him as a friend of ours. Let’s go.’

  The three men packed up their gear quickly and half rolled, half slid back down the dune to the Land-Rover. The soldier who had stayed with it saw their hurry and started the engine.

  ‘Move over!’ The leader took the wheel and coaxed the vehicle into a sliding, wheel-spinning acceleration down the steep gully leading out from the dunes. The other three checked their weapons and re-wound their keffiyeh across their faces.

  ‘On their present course, they’ll cross the border just north of a flat stretch that runs between two rocky outcrops about eight hundred metres west of here. The natural line will bring them between the two. We’ll take up station on either side.’

  The instructions had been yelled above the engine noise but all three men nodded to signify they’d understood.

  The Land-Rover came to a halt and the four men split up, two on either side of a narrow strip leading inland but with rock formations on either side. There was a steep entry to the pass ensuring that any vehicle entering would have to slow right down. As the four cradled their weapons and burrowed into a comfortable position in the sand they could already hear the engines of the approaching vehicles.

  The first came into view and alarmed the watching soldiers with its seemingly erratic progress. It was weaving from side to side for no apparent reason connected with terrain. This was allowing the pursuing truck to gain ground on it.

  ‘The bugger’s pissed,’ offered one of the soldiers.

  ‘Thought they didn’t drink.’

  ‘Come on, come on,’ urged their leader, ignoring the background comments; he was very much aware of just how much ground the pursuing vehicle was making up ‘C’mon! You can make it, whoever you are.’

  ‘Jesus!’ they all exclaimed as the leading truck hit a large boulder and one side was forced high off the ground. For one long moment it looked as if it would capsize but it righted itself with a huge bounce that made the watching soldiers wince, and continued to lurch towards them. The pursuing truck was now only a hundred metres behind.

  As the lead truck hit the rise, it slowed dramatically and its wheels sank into the build up of soft sand at the foot of the climb. Its engine screamed as the wheels lost purchase. It was still moving forward but in painfully slow motion. The other truck had almost caught up with it when it finally cleared the top of the rise and started to pull away again but the slewing motion induced by the acceleration was not being corrected properly by the driver. Suddenly the truck lurched violently to one side, as if the driver had completely lost control. It crashed into the rocks immediately below the waiting soldiers.

  The soldiers looked to their leader. He held up his hand to signify that they do nothing. For the moment, they would remain as spectators. He was waiting for the pursuers to clear the rise. This they did a few moments later and their truck came to a halt in the middle of the narrow pass. Three Iraqi soldiers got out and levelled their weapons as they moved cautiously towards the crashed vehicle. They seemed reluctant; it was almost as if they didn’t want to get too close for fear of the unknown. This puzzled the soldiers above. They could clearly see that the driver of the first truck was unconscious and slumped over the wheel. What were his pursuers afraid of? Did they imagine he was playing possum?

  The Iraqi soldiers approached cautiously, holding their weapons in readiness, then, when they were about five metres away from the vehicle they stopped and raised them. It suddenly became apparent to the men above that they intended to execute their quarry without further ado. The soldier’s leader sprang to his feet and shouted out in Arabic, ’Stop! Lay down your weapons!’

  The Iraqis were taken by surprise. They looked up but only to see that they were in a hopeless position. Two soldiers on either side of the pass were pointing their weapons down at them. Common sense dictated that they should comply with the instruction but panic won the right to decide. One of the Iraqis dropped to his knees and began firing. The other two obeyed the herd instinct. All three perished in the hail of crossfire that was returned. The world returned to an eerie black silence

  ‘Fuck. I hope to Christ they really were on our side of the border,’ said one of the soldiers.

  ‘They were,’ said the leader. ‘But the brass still ain’t gonna like it.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘Border incident threatens Middle East peace,’ intoned one of the others.

  ‘Shit, what do we do now?’

  Let’s check the guy they were chasing, ‘If we find out why he was running; we might still come out of this smelling of roses. ’

  ‘They tried to open the driver’s door of the crashed truck but it had jammed; the impact had deformed it.

  ‘Bring him out through the window.’

  One of the soldiers reached in through the window and managed to get his arms round the slumped figure. He pulled the man back from the wheel and manoeuvred him across to the window. The others helped pull him through while the first soldier guided them. The injured man was laid down on his back in the sand and his keffiyeh removed.

  Sweet Jesus Christ!’ exclaimed the first soldier who saw the man. He recoiled and fell back on to the ground, looking shocked. The others looked to see what was wrong.

  ‘Christ almighty,’ said one. ‘Look at him.’

  ‘This is all we need,’ said the leader as he looked down at the man lying in the sand, his features lit by moonlight. Every centimetre of his face was covered in small weeping pustules, his eyes were just tiny slits in the suppurating mess of his face. This accounted for his erratic driving. He was practically blind.

  ‘What the hell’s wrong with him?’

  The leader shook his head slowly. ‘God knows, but he obviously thought he’d get more help this side of the border.’

  ‘Saddam’s been playing with his chemistry set?’

  ‘Could be biological.’

  ‘Poor bugger.’

  ‘Christ, where does this leave us?’

  ‘Now there’s tonight’s prize winning question,’ said the leader. If it’s something biological like a virus, we’ve already been exposed to it. All of us.’

  ‘Christ, is this why Saddam stopped the UN inspections?’ exclaimed one of the soldiers. ‘They were getting too close?’

  ‘Something tells me you’re not going to be alone in thinking that before the night’s over,’ said the leader.

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘I vote we put this poor bugger out his misery and get the fuck out of here,’ said the third soldier who was now squatting beside the unconscious man as if mesmerised by the sight of his disfigurement.

  ‘We’re not going anywhere,’ retorted the leader sharply We’ve all been exposed to this … whatever it is. There’s a chance we’ll spread it. We’ll have to call in the brains.’

  ‘If you do that … ‘

  ‘What?’

  The soldier paused for a moment before saying, ‘You don’t think some bugger might figure the safest course of action would be to wipe us all out in one tidy hit?’

  ‘It might cross somebody’s mind but they won’t,’ said the leader.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘’Cos we’re the good guys, remember?’

  The silence of the unconvinced was eloquent enough. It forced the group leader to add, ‘Apart from that they’ll want to know what this is all about.’

  ‘I like that reason better.’

  ‘Stow it. Get these three back in their truck and dowse it with fuel.’

  ‘What about him?’ asked the soldier who still squatted beside the sick man.

  ‘Make him as comfortable as you can.’

  The leader returned to the Land-Rover to radio back to base. It was somethi
ng he hadn’t planned on doing; radio contact was discouraged but circumstances dictated differently tonight. As expected, he was told to stand by. He’d thrown the shit at the fan and now it was spreading.

  ‘Do we light the fire?’ asked one of the soldiers who’d been dowsing the Iraqi truck in petrol.

  ‘Not yet. Get up top and keep your eyes peeled. They may send more when this lot fails to report back. Any sign of trouble and we’ll light the fire immediately. We want to dissuade any more of them from crossing the border while the brass contemplate their navels.’

  Ten minutes passed without anything at all happening. The four soldiers sat huddled against the cold of the desert night while they waited instructions. The sick Iraqi lay by his truck. He had been wrapped in blankets and a makeshift pillow fashioned for him.

  ‘What if the brass know all about this already?’ asked one of the soldiers. ‘What if they don’t need to get hold of this guy to find out what it is? The more I think about it, the more I think they’re going to waste us, It makes sense.’

  ‘Shut it!’

  There was a crackle from the radio and the group’s call sign of Sierra Mike Zulu carried to them on the night air. The leader went over to the Land-Rover and sat down in the front passenger seat to take instructions.

  ‘I think he’s moving,’ said one of the others, looking towards the Arab. ‘Maybe we should give him a shot of something.’

  ‘I doubt you’d find a place to give him a shot of anything. I think his entire body’s like his face.’

  ‘Poor bastard.’

  ‘If that’s a virus, it’s gonna be poor us very shortly.’

  ‘We’ve had our shots.’

  ‘Let’s just hope they were the right ones.’

  ‘I’m going to give his some water.’

  ‘You’re a good man, Charlie Brown. I’m not going near him.’

  The leader returned from the Land-Rover. ‘They’re sending a chopper.’