The Armageddon Protocol (A Harry Bane Thriller) Read online

  THE ARMAGEDDON PROTOCOL

  (A Harry Bane Thriller)

  Rob Jones

  Copyright © 2017 by Rob Jones

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author or publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  THE ARMAGEDDON PROTOCOL is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and occurrences are entirely fictional products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  This ebook is for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you would like to share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, please go to an ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Other books by Rob Jones

  The Joe Hawke Series

  The Vault of Poseidon (Joe Hawke #1)

  Thunder God (Joe Hawke #2)

  The Tomb of Eternity (Joe Hawke #3)

  The Curse of Medusa (Joe Hawke #4)

  Valhalla Gold (Joe Hawke #5)

  The Aztec Prophecy (Joe Hawke #6)

  The Secret of Atlantis (Joe Hawke #7)

  The Lost City (Joe Hawke #8)

  The Armageddon Protocol

  I welcome constructive comments and I’m always happy to get your feedback.

  Website: www.robjonesnovels.com

  Facebook: http://bit.ly/RobJonesNovels

  Email: [email protected]

  Blog: http://robjonesbooks.blogspot.com

  Twitter: @AuthorRobJones

  DEDICATION

  For T, and his new chapter

  CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  Kolmården Forest, Södermanland, Southern Sweden

  An autumn rain had been falling for days now, running through the canopies of the spruce trees and lashing the conifer cone-littered forest floor below. Henrik Andersson’s normal pathway through the trees had become no more than a bog, and even Karo, his faithful black labrador was struggling to make headway.

  Most days, Henrik and Karo walked for at least an hour in these woods, but today both had been worn down by the conditions and decided to go back to the cabin early. There, they both knew a crackling fire and a warm bowl split-pea soup awaited them. It was late in the season now and already the days were drawing in.

  “Karo!” Henrik whispered a curse as his old dog slipped out of sight and disappeared into the trees. “Get back here!”

  He moved forward to chase the dog but the slippery mud slowed him down. “Karo!”

  Henrik turned the corner to see Karo giving chase to a rabbit. “Get back here!”

  He took off after the dog, whose progress had mercifully been slowed down when the rabbit darted into a thicket of brambles, but then it slipped out of sight again. Henrik continued his pursuit, his almost immediate breathlessness an unpleasant reminder that he really had to start his diet again.

  He ran for several minutes, calling out after the dog once again, and then relief flooded over him when he turned a shallow corner in the path and saw his beloved dog padding back toward him with his tail between his legs and his ears pulled back.

  “Where have you been, you crazy animal?” Henrik laughed as he clipped the lead to the animal’s collar and patted him gently on his back. “Now we’re lost! You must come when I call or...”

  A terrible scream filled the woods and stopped Henrik in mid-sentence.

  Karo jumped back and looked at Henrik, but his owner knew no more than the dog. “Vad fan var det?” he mumbled. “What the hell was that?”

  He climbed a low rise to his right to get closer to where he thought he had heard the scream, and then he saw it – the low, long roofline of a strange-looking building made of glass and stainless steel.

  “What is that place?” he asked himself. “I think the scream came from inside.”

  Henrik was certain he had never seen the building before. As far as he was concerned, this forest was nothing but pines, firs and spruces for miles in every direction, and yet here was what looked like some kind of research facility. Harmless enough, he thought, but then again – that scream sounded anything but harmless.

  Karo whined and took a step back.

  Henrik tried to comfort him, but wondered if really he was trying to calm himself. “It’s nothing to worry about, old friend – it’s probably just some kind of government building. When we get home I’ll have a closer look at the map, but in the meantime, maybe we’ll just see if we can get a bit nearer without drawing any attention to ourselves – you can be quiet for me can’t you, boy?”

  Henrik crouched a little and left the muddy path. They walked a few hundred yards through knee-high brambles, with Henrik crushing the plants down so Karo could follow in his steps.

  Stopping well back from the small complex, Henrik held on tightly to Karo’s collar and gently stroked the animal, not only to calm the dog but to lower his own adrenalin levels. That scream had not sounded human to him, and the simple memory of it set his heart racing once again.

  Slowly, he moved forward, making sure to keep himself concealed behind the trunks of the pine trees. Feeling safer behind a raised bank of tangled rose hips and lingonberries, he peered around the edge of a broad trunk and watched with nervous interest as people moved around inside the strange, squat building. Now he could see that most of it must be underground because only a couple of meters of it was visible above the earth – a white painted wall lined with windows, and capped by a small open hatch in the roof.

  “This gets curiouser and curiouser, my old friend,” Henrik said, beginning to grow nervous. He checked his cell phone but there was no signal. Damn it all. He had seen no signs warning him of a secret facility – neither back on the road nor anywhere along the walk, and yet here was some kind of research base that looked to him like it had been deliberately hidden from the public. If he hadn’t had to chase Karo he would never have found it.

  “What’s this, old friend? Someone’s running to that strange little hatch.”

  Henri
k looked closer as a man emerged from the hatch. He was wearing a white lab coat and disposable nitrile gloves. He staggered away from the low building, clutching at his throat, and began gasping for air like a drowning man.

  Henrik watched as the man struggled to heave air into his lungs, and at first he thought the man had accidentally breathed in some kind of toxin. After a few moments the man’s breathing came back under control and he knew that couldn’t be it. As a chemist, Henrik had considered cyanide – a terrible chemical that creates the compound cyano-hemoglobin on contact with blood. This stops the blood from carrying oxygen around the body, so no matter how hard you breathe in, you still feel like you are suffocating.

  But whatever was going on here, it was not this. Now, the man was breathing slowly and he was calming down, but on his face he wore a terrible expression of fear – his eyes haunted by profound guilt.

  Before Henrik had any more time to think, another man crawled out of the hatch – another white lab coat and the same gloves. Then a woman climbed out. The new arrivals were followed by another dozen men and women in white lab coats. They stared at each other for a matter of seconds before conversely rapidly and then fleeing into the trees.

  Henrik held tightly to Karo as he moved him silently away from the compound – he felt his anxiety levels rise now – what was going on? He tracked the desperate path of the people in the lab coats as they sprinted into the trees, slipping around on the boggy path and tumbling over here and there. Something about them didn’t look right to him.

  Then, scattered all over the woodland, they all stopped running and stood perfectly still at exactly the same time. He noticed how calm they all appeared as they looked at each other. They looked up at the sky, the rain falling in their eyes. Strange contortions appeared on their terrified faces as they stared upwards into the rain.

  And then they all dropped dead down into the mud.

  For a few seconds, Henrik forgot to breath. Startled, he spun around to see Karo was gone again. Then he saw a movement in the corner of his eyes. A ghost in his peripheral vision. Two men in white lab coats were emerging from the hatch, but these men wore gas masks and were each clutching something in their arms – something very precious by the way they were clinging to them.

  “You there!” Henrik called out to them as they weaved through the corpses on the muddy grass. “What’s going on? What have you done to these people?”

  The men never heard him, or if they did they ignored him and then they were gone – vanished into the pine forest like rabbits fleeing for their lives.

  Then he felt his body shudder and shake.

  Oh God... not me...

  Some strange compulsion made him stare up into the sky. It felt like he was no longer alone in his own mind. He felt like he was possessed, and then he collapsed forward into the freezing mud and it was all over.

  ONE

  Madrid, Three Months Later

  Pablo Reyes stepped off the bus and looked over his shoulder as he emerged into the Spanish winter sunshine. The man in the leather jacket and aviator shades was still following him, he was certain of it.

  Pablo wasn’t usually a nervous man, but this was the third morning in a row he had been trailed by this man and he was starting to grow unsettled. He knew he had enemies – serious enemies... but no one knew he was here in Madrid. No one here even knew his real name – not even Andrej... not even Lucia. When he took the job at the museum he’d given them a fake name – his real name was Gabriel Ramirez. There were lots of people who wanted Professor Gabriel Ramirez dead, but he couldn’t think of a single one who wanted to harm the simple night watchman Pablo Reyes.

  And yet he was still being followed.

  And there was only one reason why anyone would be following him home from his new job at the museum every day. His new identity must have been compromised and somehow they had found him. His heart raced at the thought, because he knew better than anyone what that meant – he would have to go on the run again. Another change of name, more weeks on the road – but at least the code was safe.

  His heartbeat quickened as he stepped across the street and greeted his new friend Manuel. The old man ran the small corner café at the base of his apartment block and was setting out tables on the terrace ready for another day’s business.

  As he approached Manuel, his friend lit a cigarillo and warmed his hands.

  “Pablo, how are you today?”

  Pablo shrugged, momentarily relaxed by the friendly face. “I’m tired,” he said briskly.

  Manuel dragged on the cigarillo. “Night work is not good work, my friend.”

  “Tell me about it,” Pablo said. As he spoke he saw the man in the reflection of the café. He was leaning on the wall of the bank opposite his apartment building. “But art restoration training isn’t cheap,” he added more nervously, one eye now firmly fixed on the stranger monitoring him from across the road.

  “Ah – of course. I had forgotten your studies – working all night and studying all day.” He nodded and rearranged one of the menus. “You are inspiration to us all.”

  “Perhaps...”

  “When do you sleep?” Manuel said with a laugh.

  “Whenever I can,” Pablo said, wishing he could feel the simple joy of relaxation once again. “You expect a good day, today?” he asked, still watching the man.

  “Maybe, maybe not. It’s hard to tell these days.” Now Manuel shrugged and gave Pablo a warm smile. “A quien dan, no escoge…”

  Pablo offered a polite laugh and nod of the head, but inside he felt only fear as the pursuing man pushed off from the bank’s wall and drew ever closer. He waved goodbye to his friend and shuffled inside the building. Climbing up the steps to his apartment, he paused and turned to check the man – but he registered with confusion that he had now gone.

  They were playing games with him.

  He felt happier when he inserted the key into his door and opened it up. Perhaps he had imagined the whole thing after all. He moved swiftly into the apartment, locking and bolting the door behind him. He was always relieved to be home these days, after what those bastards had done to him.

  Turned him into a ghost.

  Once he’d been at the vanguard of neuroscience, but now he was working as a security guard on the night shift. He had enrolled in an art restoration degree to make his life more bearable, but he understood he would have to move on if they ever tracked him down. Now, it was starting to look like that had happened. Could he start over again? Would Lucia come with him? He exhaled sharply as he kicked off his shoes and walked through to the kitchen. He sighed when he thought about the young Spanish physicist leaving everything behind to go on the run with him. She didn’t even know who he was.

  Or what terrible things he had done in the name of science.

  He made himself some coffee and watched the television news. This was his routine. He would work for an hour on his studies, and then sleep until after lunch when he would rise and work further on his art course – this is how he would seek redemption for his crimes against humanity. Then, he would ride the bus to the Prado Museum and sit in silence all night, thinking about his theories and where it had all gone wrong. He used to work on them on paper, until his supervisor told him it looked like he wasn’t concentrating on his security work and to stop it. After that he carried the equations in his head.

  It wasn’t easy for a man of his abilities, but working in a university or industry in his specialist field would be suicide. They had probably already searched all of those places for him, and would never give up until they hunted him down – but that didn’t mean he had to turn his back on his life’s passion. He had a responsibility to stop this madness.

  What he had seen would rock the world to its core, and it was up to him to make sure everyone knew the truth, however disturbing and terrible it was. They could hunt him all over the world but they couldn’t silence him forever. All he had to do was find someone – anyone – who was in a positio
n of power and who wasn’t one of them, and then the world would know.

  Thinking about it, he grew more nervous. For a while he’d forgotten about the man who had followed him back and forth to work for three consecutive days. He didn’t look Spanish, whoever he was. He got up from his desk and moved to the French doors of his apartment. He opened them and looked outside across the rooftops of Chamberí. It was an expensive and beautiful area of the city, made available to him by a friend, but for how long he would be able to enjoy it, he had no idea.

  If they attacked him they still wouldn’t get what they were looking for. That was hidden somewhere no one would ever find it. That thought alone brought him a little solace. They might kill him, but they couldn’t kill the truth. With this happy thought he drifted to sleep in the late morning – the fate of all night workers.

  He woke a little after midday when Lucia came around. Every day he saw her she looked more beautiful than the last, and he counted his blessings that at least something in his new life was better than before. They spent the afternoon talking and smoking, and then the young woman said she would make some food, but he said no and offered to make something instead . She was an angel – an angel who had no idea of his past, other than he used to be a scientist who wanted to change the world... like they all did.

  Tonight they were meeting one of Lucia’s old flames, but this was la hora del aperitivo, and for Tapas hour tonight he was preparing fideuà, a seafood tapas made with calamari, shrimp, squid ink and pasta noodles from his native Valencia. He sighed as he ran his hands over his stomach and cursed the dry cleaners for shrinking his trousers yet again. Worse, tonight the plan was to take Lucia’s friend to his favorite restaurant for their famous paella – monkfish, tiger prawns, paprika, baby squid, Calasparra rice – and he intended to drink more than advisable if he could get away with it.