The Genesis Plague - Michael Byrnes [135]
Meat’s face gnarled with disgust.
Jason eased back to a standing position, listened intently for any activity. He turned to Meat. ‘Hear that?’
Meat nodded. ‘Sounds like rusty wheels.’
Jason proceeded forward and Meat followed close at his heels. As he stepped over the body, he caught a glimpse of the dime-sized red hole drilled through Ramirez’s temple.
Crawford, you bastard. You’re going to pay for this. All of this.
The tunnel curved yet again. After cautiously rounding the bend, Jason saw the slightest trace of light softening the darkness. He also heard screaming over the growing din of tinny squeals. One of the voices belonged to Crawford; the other, tinged with an accent, unmistakably Hazo. The exchange wasn’t pleasant. It sounded as if the two were arguing about something.
Jason looked back at Meat and said in an urgent tone, ‘Let’s do this.’
80
Hazo was amazed how quickly Crawford had made it up to the platform. It seemed like mere seconds had elapsed since the colonel threw the knife into his chest. Not enough time for Hazo to muster the strength to make a play for the gun. But even the slightest movement tweaked the blade against nerves and zapped him like a taser.
Sneering and wild-eyed, Crawford gave the handgun a swift kick and it sailed off into the darkness to disappear below the rats. ‘Nice try, Haji. But your aim was lousy.’
Hazo’s gaze burned with contempt. ‘You are an evil man,’ he said. Wincing, he tried to prop himself up against the reactor.
‘Don’t be such a bad sport. You’re no match for me. None of you Arabs is a match for me.’
‘I am a Kurd,’ Hazo couldn’t help point out.
Crawford shrugged. ‘You all look the same to me - Kurds, Saudis, Egyptians, Palestinians, Kuwaitis, Jordanians, Iranians, Afghanis … Call yourselves whatever you want. But you all popped out of the same fucked-up mould.’ He reached out and gave the knife a good twist and Hazo screamed out. ‘Don’t take my word for it, though. That virus inside you knows the difference … only likes A-rab DNA. And it looks to me like you’re one dead A-rab.’
Just when Hazo looked ready to pass out, Crawford relinquished his grip on the knife’s hilt. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a foot-long plastic zip-tie. Tugging at the Kurd’s limp arm, he strapped the wrist snugly to the rail.
Hazo screamed in agony, coughed up a wad of mucus and blood.
‘Sounds like you’ve got a hairball in there. Oh, sorry … that’s just the plague. Same plague these rats are going to spread to every one of your Arab brothers.’ Crawford stood and eyed the huge generator. ‘You aren’t as stupid as most Arabs, I’ll give you that. You see, this sure is a nuclear reactor. World’s most efficient battery. But a couple of puny bullets won’t do it much harm.’ Then he squatted beside a luggage-sized olive drab box bolted to the base of the reactor, saying, ‘But this baby, here, can pack enough punch to vaporize everything inside this mountain.’ Crawford patted the boxy shell that protected the W54 Special Atomic Demolition Munition, feeling both affection and respect for what was inside it: the plutonium equivalent of twenty-two tons of TNT. ‘Before that happens, I’m going to push these rats out of here, using my little whistle here.’ Crawford tapped his walkie-talkie. ‘That way they can swarm over this godforsaken sandbox you call a country to set things straight once and for all.’
Horrified, Hazo watched the colonel unhinge the bomb’s lid to access a control console. When Crawford inserted a keycard into a slot on the panel, a digital display illuminated.
‘Please, think about what you are doing,’ Hazo pleaded. ‘Destroy the cave … me … That is fine. You can leave this place and no one will ever know. But you can’t spread this disease. Please. Think of all the innocent people. Even you can’t do such thing.’
‘I can do anything I damn well please,’ Crawford replied coyly, entering an eight-digit code on the console’s number pad to override the remote arming system linked to Stokes’s computer halfway around the world. ‘And don’t