Chapter 57
Johnny called his pal at the MOD as Kelly drove them back to Rydal Water.
They caught up on their lives briefly. They talked about kids and life in and outside the army. They shared news about old pals, some who’d since passed away. Some at their own hand.
Then Johnny asked about procurement.
Twenty per cent of that could buy a lot of weapons.
And it was a sensitive topic.
Most of the deals were in the public domain, such as submarine building in Barrow-in-Furness, but some of it remained top secret. Johnny had no access to that kind of information anymore, but some veterans owed him favours.
He’d been to the MOD main building on the Embankment in London many times.
It was a standout construction, architecturally speaking, that dominated the gardens overlooking the Thames.
The neoclassical white stone of MOD Whitehall gave a nod to the once glory days of empire when Britain’s standing in the world meant something.
Johnny saw it now as a dying facade, which was one reason he was glad he’d left when he did.
It had been designed during the run-up to World War Two, but unlike the fate of that lengthy event that was responsible for killing off millions of citizens, the mecca of British warmongering had survived intact.
Johnny reckoned that the medals worn inside the place could sink one of the few remaining battleships the country had to her name if they were all loaded on at once. He smiled to himself cynically.
Those days were long gone but he still remembered how it all worked, and he knew for a fact that some shady figures inside the MOD weren’t above trading with less savoury dealers of lethal armoury around the globe, if their cut was attractive enough.
British Forces wages were abominable, and their pensions were under attack.
Loyalty was no longer about king and country; it was about paying bills.
‘The sort of information you’re looking for would be kept at Winterbourne Gunner near Salisbury Plain,’ his pal said.
‘I thought so.’
The science and defence campus in Wiltshire experimented in bioweapons, drug use and nasty things such as nerve agents that the mainstream media didn’t talk about.
The facility had been housed at Porton Down before that and it was the arm of the forces that was responsible for bio, chemical, nuclear and radiological training and experimentation.
It was where the drugs came from that had been injected into him in 1991, when Johnny had been just nineteen years old, in preparation for Gulf War One, courtesy of Stormin’ Norman and George Bush senior.
But Johnny wanted to know what they were up to nowadays. He didn’t like to dwell on how his own body had been abused.
‘Do they deal in viruses and additives?’
‘Of course. What’s all this about?’
‘I want to know if they’re interested in a chemical element called Neurohydroxy-14,’ Johnny said.
‘You selling?’
‘Very funny.’
‘I’ll do my best. I don’t have the same access I used to; they’re touchy about these things now more than ever. Everybody thinks the next war will be fought using AI and germs.’
‘What about mood-altering substances?’
‘They’ve been in play for decades.’
‘OK, pal, let me know.’
‘Will do. What is it?’
‘It makes people vicious and superhuman strong.’
‘Sounds perfect for the infantry, mate.’
‘This is where it gets weird, and I’m not sure I believe it, but there’s a rumour self-assembling nanotech can be implanted to intensify the results.’
‘You’re not going mad, mate. I’ve heard of that. The Americans and Chinese have had that kind of technology for decades. My wife thinks it’s in vaccines.’
‘At least you’re still married, pal.’
They laughed for old times’ sake and ended the call and Johnny stared out over the lake.
The concept of it was terrible and depressing at the same time.
Conventional warfare was a thing of the past. Drones, poison and cyber-attacks were the norm now.
To him, though, the idea of using a combination of chemicals and nanotechnology to turn soldiers into cold-blooded animals was terrifying.
He’d seen war first hand, and he knew that the men who started it were always the ones who survived it and somehow got richer.
‘Theirs is not to reason why, Theirs is but to do and die.’ Tennyson’s words haunted him.
He never thought he’d become a pacifist, a conscientious objector, a war denier…
not after what he’d done. But it was true.
He hated war. But what he hated even more were those who started it.
War was never unleashed on human populations innocently.
Whatever Neurohydroxy-14 was, somebody somewhere had created it on purpose, and something had gone terribly wrong.