by Jim Geraghty
“They were,” Katrina read, emphasizing the past tense. “Moscow decided these people were going to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the Soviet Empire. The locals didn’t like that idea, and they launched a huge, violent uprising, all across this region.” She paused. “Family stories got me researching this in high school. The Soviets were brutal. The city of Kokand was burned to the ground with twenty-five thousand dead; destroying the fields allegedly killed another hundred thousand from famine.”
Alec stepped back.
“You’re telling me ninety years ago, a hundred and twenty-five thousand people were massacred and I’ve never heard about this? Did this get left out of the history books?”
She looked at him skeptically. “How many of your history books even mentioned Turkmenistan?”
“So … a hundred and twenty-five thousand people get killed, unacknowledged, unremembered, and instead the Soviets put up a monument to elev—oh, shi—” However Alec was going to finish that sentence, it was interrupted as his foot pressed down through some soft ground and he found himself falling into well-hidden pit, covered with soft sticks and dried mud.
“Alec!” Katrina rushed to the edge of the pit. It was a six-and-a-half foot drop into a man-made cave. “Are you all right?”
“That’s okay, I didn’t need two working ankles,” Alec groaned. A steady stream of profanity and the Lord’s name emanated from the hole.
“It’s still Lent, and I thought you gave up cursing,” she said dryly. “I can pull you up!” Katrina extended her arm into the hole.
“Wait,” Alec said from below, opening up a flashlight app on his phone.
Before Alec was a small excavated cavern, leading directly below the stone obelisk. It was the size of a small room.
There was another statue below the one erected by the Soviets. It was about five feet tall, carved of marble, and featured a seated, six-armed figure, with a grotesque head that seemed like a cross between an insect and man. The eyes were jet-black cavities shaped like elongated teardrops. The mouth was a hole surrounded by four jagged, dagger-like mandibles. Two of the arms held curved swords above its head, two reached out in a strangely inviting, almost embrace-like pose, and the final two arms rested on the inner thighs, palms up. The figure sat with two long, spindly bent legs sticking out, each appendage ending in a trio of claws.
Without warning, Katrina landed next to Alec and she raised her eyes, let out a short scream upon seeing the statue, and instinctively raised her gun to the statue.
“What in God’s name …”
“I know, it’s like, Satan’s cockroach or something,” Alec said.
Katrina’s mind reeled, as she contemplated just what abomination the statue was supposed to represent. She remembered Apep from Egyptian mythology, Amatsumikaboshi in Shinto, Mara in Buddhism, but this didn’t quite fit the depictions she remembered of any of them. Whatever this was, it would fit with that crowd of angry, chaotic, demonic figures.
Around the statue were remains of burnt candles, offering urns, and some bones that Alec was … pretty sure weren’t human. Goat, probably. Maybe dog.
Katrina raised her phone-light. In the corners she found two smaller statues, each about four feet high, each with similar remains of offerings. One was a human torso with a goat’s head and a snake’s body below the waist and the other was feminine but scaled, like a lizard or snake.
There were large red symbols written on the floor in a semicircle around the statues.
“Atarsa,” Katrina whispered.
“This isn’t a terrorist group,” Alec muttered gravely. “This is a cult.”
***
After taking a thorough number of photographs and videos on their phones, Alec hoisted Katrina out of the pit and she helped him climb out. The sun was peeking over the horizon and a few more villagers were moving on the periphery of the square.
“Whaddya figure?” Alec asked, dusting himself off. “Satan’s cockroach is down there, that’s their God, and either they think they’re the … hell-things on the sides, or they’re seeking to be reincarnated as them or host beings to them or some such nonsense?”
Katrina didn’t have time to respond, as a local man ran up to them and interrupted. He wore a white hood, like a pillowcase with two small eyeholes, and black, circular goggles atop it. The short, skinny man appeared grub-like in his white mask and black eye protection—Katrina wondered if it was the man they had seen at the Darvaza crater the night before. Shouting something incoherent in a deep, guttural, angry rasp, he reached behind his back and drew a foot-long, slightly rusty, curved-blade knife used for skinning animals, and took a swing at Alec’s midsection.
“Knife!” Katrina cried, and her hand went to her pistol—but for once, Alec moved faster; Alec already had two hands on Grub—the first hand grabbed the wrist and of the arm holding the knife and the second locked onto his arm at the elbow, seizing control of the man’s appendage. Alec brought the grub’s arm down onto his knee, digging his thumbs into Grub’s inner wrist and the inside of his elbow, and the assailant’s wrist reflexively twitched, and the knife tumbled from his grasp.
Grub only swore more furiously, spitting curses in some incomprehensible tongue. His shouting grew louder, angrier, rhythmic—and about one more octave lower. James Earl Jones would have been impressed with his baritone.
“Don’t start none, son,” Alec growled back, as Grub tried to wiggle his pained arm free. “You know what he’s saying?”
“It’s not Turkmeni,” Katrina said, warily. “It’s not Russian, either.”
“Not Russian?” Alec said. “How about ‘not human’?”
“Khak too saret madar jendeh—” The voice turned from a snarl, and the words became less and less coherent until Grub spat the last word, “Atarsa!”
“I understood that!” Alec said.
Grub’s arm and shoulder jerked suddenly and uncomfortably, and Alec lost his grasp as the man’s arm slipped through his inexplicably torn sleeve. The skin was brown, smooth, and shiny in the morning light, and he held his fingers in three groups—what Alec would have called a “Vulcan Salute.” Grub hissed at them—seemingly unbothered by the fact that his arm was now dangling helplessly at his side, and his shoulder, to Alec’s layman’s eye, appeared to be suddenly dislocated.
It took less than two seconds for Katrina to kick Grub hard, square in the chest, and send him stumbling down into the hole to the hidden pit.
Alec dropped the empty sleeve, exhaled, and looked at Katrina in disbelief. Then they heard Grub screaming below.
“Keep him down there!” Alec shouted. Before she could object, he sprinted off. She looked down and saw Grub’s fingers appearing over the edge of the hole, scrambling for a handhold to climb out. Katrina stepped closer and lowered her gun.
“Back. Off.” she said in a tone that would be understood in any language. But the man below just shrieked an unnerving, raging scream beneath his mask. Katrina instinctively stepped back and looked around, fearing their altercation was attracting witnesses.
Only a few locals, mostly old women, were looking at her and frowning at the shrieks from the hole. There was no sign of Alec. Katrina didn’t like the odds; time wasn’t on their side. Whatever represented the local cops or authority in this village, someone would inform them in a matter of moments, and she didn’t trust the Turkmenis to honor their previous agreement.
“Come on, Alec, come on,” she whispered to herself. Grub’s screams were getting lower, reverberating in his chest cavity, echoing in the hole below her.
Alec appeared around a corner, holding a small but seemingly heavy white canister with both hands—a propane tank. Katrina decided she didn’t want to know where Alec had stolen it from.
In the pit, Grub had managed to turn over two offering urns and used them as a stepstool to get his head above ground level, flailing at Katrina’s feet, seemingly unbothered by her firearm pointed at his head. She stepped back as Alec arrived, carrying
the propane tank, and holding it above Grub.
“Catch,” Alec said. Then he let go, dropping the canister directly onto Grub. There was a loud thud, followed by groaning.
“It’s like he’s possessed,” Katrina said.
“Maybe he is,” Alec said, filtering through his satchel. “What do you think happens when you destroy Atarsa’s little sacrificial altar down there?”
“I don’t know, what?”
Alec removed the flare gun from his satchel. “Let’s find out.”
Katrina realized Alec had opened the valve on the propane canister before he dropped it into the hole. She turned away as Alec fired in, and within a moment or two, the cavern exploded and flames erupted from the hole, roaring into the sky as high as the obelisk.
Every head in the village turned to the geyser of flame; Alec and Katrina stumbled and scrambled away, glancing back to see the obelisk suddenly plummet down into the earth and tilt diagonally among the pillar of smoke and basket of flames. Somehow, both thought they heard Grub screeching inhumanly through the inferno.
CHAPTER 57
CHICKAHOMINY WILDLIFE AREA, VIRGINIA
FRIDAY, APRIL 2
“My eyes, man, my eyes!” Norman Fein cried when Ward removed the gag and black pillowcase hood an hour later. “I think I’m going to go blind!”
“I don’t need your eyes, Norman, I just need your mouth and your mind,” Ward said bluntly. “For now.”
Once Norman had been thoroughly maced into submission, Ward handcuffed, gagged, and hooded him and stuffed him into the backseat of his truck. He drove to the end of the access road in the dark middle of the Chickahominy Wildlife Area. Ward had used bolt cutters to remove the padlock on a gate that blocked off an access road, and he drove the last few miles with his headlights off. He had dragged the gagged, bound, blindfolded Fein to the spot, a few miles from the charred remains of the school bus. Norman sat on the ground, each arm tied back behind the trunk of a tree and handcuffed. Ward stood above him, lit only by the truck headlights.
“Your grandmother’s dead, isn’t she?” Ward asked.
Fein just cursed him, but it was confirmation enough for Ward.
“No sign of her at the house. Car still sitting there.” He turned and looked hard at Fein. “Let me guess, altercation one day? Did she find you had joined a terror cell, and you just snapped? You and that knife. Couldn’t make it look like an accident, didn’t report her death. Kept those Social Security checks coming.”
Fein just swore back at him. Ward picked up the kitchen knife that Norman had tried to use in his blinded state; he had actually nicked Ward a bit.
“What’s with the knives?” Ward asked, contempt dripping with every word. “All of you are using knives.”
Norman offered a smug smile.
“Simple, easy to use, easy to hide, found in every house and restaurant in America,” he said quietly. “Hold a bomb, hold a gun, people freak out. But you can hold a sharp knife in your hand around complete strangers and no one reacts until the moment you put it into the person next to you.” He chuckled. “They taught us, don’t worry about getting your weapon, just order the steak.”
“Yeah, well, you brought a knife to a gunfight,” Ward smirked.
“The Voices need it this way,” Norman said. “As Cain slew Abel, that first murder was committed looking into the victim’s eyes, smelling the blood, and they drained their goblets, savoring the sweet terror in those final breaths. They need the fear. A bomb works too quick. People walking to the street, gone in a flash? You might as well offer them a buffet of air.”
Ward froze for a moment, thrown off and unnerved by the nonsense Norman was spouting. But the moment passed, and he reasserted authority.
“Look, bub, I dragged you out here for a real simple task,” Ward said, taking a drag on a cigarette. “Either you tell me who trained you, who you reported to, and anybody else in Atarsa, or I just leave you out here.”
Crickets.
“To die of exposure. This is the middle of nowhere, pal, nobody’s going to find you out here for weeks.”
Still, no words came.
Ward waited about a half minute. “All right, have it your way,” he shrugged, then he returned to the back of the truck.
“Wait, wait,” Norman said.
“Nah, I gave you your chance. My job’s to make sure there’s no William and Mary attack, my job’s done.” He turned the key in the ignition.
“We wait for our signal!” Norman shouted, as the smell of the truck’s exhaust hit his nose. “I recorded my video on a burner phone, and—”
“Sounds expensive.”
“They gave us money. Cash.”
“Who?”
“We record it!” Fein said. “We send the video to an account, then toss it, they take the footage …”
“The only thing that gets you out of this is giving me somebody else to chase,” Ward said.
Fein hesitated.
“Who gave you the money? Who told you to record the video?”
“It was a woman,” Norman confessed. “Her name was Reese! Reese Scovi or something like that.”
“Spell it!” Ward ordered. Norman obeyed.
Here, with barely any light, Ward felt like finally saw him clearly, and recognized why he seemed so familiar. He realized who Fein reminded him of.
McVeigh.
He took one last drag on his cigarette, then felt the temptation to set Fein on fire.
But he resisted that temptation.
“Norman, here’s how this is gonna work,” Ward said. “I’m going to go looking for this Reese Scovi. After I find her, I’ll come back and uncuff you and turn you over to the cops. Until then … you’ve got some time to think about what you’ve done.”
Norman Fein howled as Ward put the gag back in his mouth.
“Better hope I find her fast.”
***
A short time later, Ward was driving back to his home.
“Reese Scovi,” Ward said quietly when Raquel answered the phone. “That’s the name Fein gave up as his contact.”
“Excellent, that name sounds pretty unique,” Raquel said, feeling a bunch of muscles in her back, neck, and shoulders finally release tension. “We’ll begin working that now. Where’s Fein?”
“Where nobody’s ever going to find him,” Ward said flatly.
There was a long silence on the other end of the line.
“Did you kill him?”
“Not yet,” Ward answered quietly.
CHAPTER 58
LIBERTY CAMPUS
TYSON’S CORNER, VIRGINIA
FRIDAY, APRIL 2
Raquel found herself sleeping on the small couch in her office again. She woke up with a crick in her neck and a newfound appreciation for Vaughn’s understanding that during any terrorism-related crisis, her schedule would be completely unpredictable.
All across the country, national security, intelligence, and law enforcement officers and their families found their lives disrupted as one spouse or the other found themselves working long shifts, sometimes all night, night after night, grabbling sleep where they could and eating take-out delivered to the office. The CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, local police, military base security personnel—everyone was putting in longer hours and not even asking about when it would end.
Raquel knew it wasn’t the best way to run any organization; people needed rest and sleep and time with their families. Those families were, after all, the heart of what they were working so hard to protect. But almost everyone in the ranks had a dedication that bordered on self-destructive. No one wanted to go home while the threat was still out there; everyone wanted to do something to feel useful.
Ward had signed off and returned to his family farm for the night—determined to sleep under the same roof as his wife and children, letting them know he was there with a reassuring snore—and Raquel had filed the appropriate updates and memos and then dozed off on the couch. She awoke six hours later wit
h her sore neck and a full e-mail box. Acting Director Mitchell was having another “all hands” meeting in the seventh-floor conference room. The president was furious that Atarsa’s attacks had continued after the air strikes in Turkmenistan.
No time to return home; she would have to wash up in the ladies’ room and change into the spare set of office clothes she kept on a hanger behind the door. She grabbed her toiletry bag and stepped out of her office, struck that cubicles and desks were mostly manned and busy, even at this painfully early hour.
She checked again. Still no word from Katrina in Turkmenistan.
CHAPTER 59
CIA HEADQUARTERS
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
FRIDAY, APRIL 2
The seventh-floor “all hands meeting” was interrupted when somebody declared that Atarsa was broadcasting a signal during a morning newscast of one of the Washington stations. Someone noted that it was the first time Atarsa had interrupted a broadcast in the morning. They were indeed coming much more frequently now. Two of the cable networks agreed to withhold broadcasting a tape of the signal intrusion until intelligence scoured it for messages, but the others insisted that the Atarsa messages were newsworthy and the public had a right to know. After all, tens of thousands of viewers at home were already watching the message, and recordings popped up on social media and YouTube within minutes.
This time, the Atarsa recording featured a camera shot even closer to Angra Druj’s face, with almost nothing behind her visible, and the picture quality was much poorer—grainier, with the audio slightly distorted and jumping around. It didn’t make her tone any less ominous.
“We have hundreds of devoted, ready to strike, upon our signal, spread across your country,” she began. “You have learned our name, Atarsa, and you have recognized that you are on a journey of fear. We are teaching you to fear in new ways, to understand that the threat to you and your families is all around you, and that you will never, ever be safe.”
