by Tim Curran
There were great, jagged shelves of volcanic rock jutting from the dry earth. Clusters of boulders and scraggly desert bushes. Plenty of cover. As they got closer they began to hear sporadic gunfire. The staccato bursts of heavy machine guns and the hollow popping of automatic rifles. It sounded like the Fourth of July.
3:03 A.M.
El Badji was surrounded by flat barley fields cut by irrigation ditches. The village itself was a collection of drab, crumbling cinderblock buildings, mud huts, and raunchy trailers. A series of canvas tents had sprouted up along the perimeter like mushrooms after a heavy rain.
There were trucks, earth movers, armored personnel carriers, and reconnaissance vehicles everywhere. The entire place was lit up with lanterns and search lights that swept the depressing little village. Men were shouting and engines were revving, women screaming and guns firing.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Childress said, studying the spectacle with a spotting scope.
Loomis couldn’t say. He knew no more than the others. He studied the vehicles—a lot of old Soviet war surplus—and the men—a ragtag collection at best: desert-unformed Syrian soldiers intermixed with peasants that carried AK-47s, probably Muslim extremists, a few groups of men in American-style camouflage, most likely members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard from Iran.
He got on the encrypted net and reported what he saw.
Dunn formed up the men in a defensive perimeter along a rocky hillside overlooking the village.
Creech and Loomis gave them a thumbs up and slipped off with their video cameras. They were small hand-held models that worked on the same principle as the Night Vision goggles, gathering all available light and magnifying it.
They left their submachine guns with the team. All they took were Russian Makarov 9mm pistols equipped with silencers, a few stun grenades, and a combat knife each. If the shit got deep, they could do some killing. But they couldn’t hold out for long. If that happened, they were to take their own lives. Dunn would pull the team out and escape and evade to the LZ.
They didn’t move straight into El Badji, they edged around it.
In ever-decreasing concentric circles, they got in closer. In this way they could see what sort of defenses—if any—or perimeter security the Syrians had set up. Loomis didn’t expect much and he wasn’t disappointed. From what he’d gotten at the operational briefing, it seemed unlikely the Syrians would be expecting intervention of any sort.
Within... that was a different matter.
As they got closer to the outlying trucks, they could see soldiers armed with old Soviet carbines and AK-47 assault rifles. They were keeping well away from the town. They just stood in little clusters every few hundred feet, muttering amongst themselves, their weapons held ready and high. But they were facing the town.
Loomis figured they were an outer security force. Their job, it seemed, was probably to make sure no one got out of that town that wasn’t supposed to.
Most of the trucks he saw were troop carriers. But mixed in amongst them at irregular intervals were some Russian BRDM-2 reconnaissance vehicles. These were armed, he knew very well, with 14.5 and 7.62mm belt fed machine guns. But the most impressive firepower he saw were two old Soviet ZSU 23-4 mechanized antiaircraft guns. The ZSUs were pretty much tanks with the cannons replaced by four 23mm miniguns. They could be used against aircraft or ground targets. The miniguns could pump out 6,000 rounds per minute with enough force to chew through a concrete wall.
The ZSUs kept circling the town, splashing search lights around in their paths.
Creech nodded.
It was time to separate.
He was taking the western side of town; Loomis the east.
As Loomis moved in, slowly, stealthily, the wind changed direction. Before it had been from the south at his back. Now it was coming from the north, carrying a nauseating stink of burning garbage and roasting human flesh. He had smelled it plenty of times; there was no mistaking it.
Licking his lips, he crawled to the edge of a little rutted mud road that looped the village. He crouched behind a mound of dirt and waited for the ZSU to pass. When it had, he scrambled across the road and slid into a ditch on the other side. Although it was dry, it smelled of piss, shit, and roadkill. The villagers must have used it to dispose of their waste, both bodily and animal. Directly ahead was a group of soldiers. The only way past them was to crawl under a pair of trucks parked side by side. On the other side, he would be safe. If he was very lucky.
You make your own luck, he reminded himself.
With all the commotion from the village—the screams and gunfire and shouting voices—it was easy to slip through the darkness to the trucks. The soldiers weren’t looking behind them. They were probably under order to keep their eyes on business.
Loomis slipped under the first truck. The engine made ticking sounds as it cooled. A leaky manifold dripped hot oil on his face. It smelled like manure under there and he realized he was snaking his way through cow shit. No matter. Like a viper, he slithered under the next truck and peered around from behind a front tire.
The action was just ahead.
He moved on all fours before two buildings. Bathed in darkness, he had a good view of what was going on. Soldiers dressed in white NBC suits were dragging squirming, kicking bodies from huts and rickety camping trailers. The containment suits—which were designed to give limited protection from nuclear radiation, chemical agents like nerve gas and mustard gas, and biological weapons of the viral, bacterial, and fungal type—weren’t even the good ones. They were old things, strictly surplus. No oxygen supply, just filtered masks. Typical Middle Eastern operation.
Loomis got it all on video.
What he assumed were officers were standing about shouting orders. Soldiers kept dragging bodies out and occasionally stopping to shoot them. What was incredible was that the bodies coming out—men, women, and children—although bleeding profusely from bullet wounds, fought and writhed like sacks of cobras.
There must have been twenty or thirty of them dumped into what looked like a village square. The officers were yelling at the soldiers. Loomis’ Arabic was quite good and he knew they were being told to withdraw. And they did. As soon as they got away from the piled, tangled heaps of bodies, men with flamethrowers moved in.
Loomis stared, mouth open, videoing it.
What in the hell is this about? What sort of goddamn infectious disease is so bad that you shoot down your own people and burn them while they’re still moving?
There was a hissing and the flames engulfed the civilians. But before they did, Loomis saw something... remarkable. A young boy, maybe seven or eight, rose up from the litter pile, his black eyes shining. His face had been blown to muscle and bone. He opened his mouth and—
Loomis wasn’t sure.
A trick of light and shadow.
Jesus, that kid should have been dead, and you know it. His face was blown off. But he stood up and you saw it. You saw that thing coming out of his mouth—
Loomis backed out of his hidey hole and moved along the shadowy cinderblock buildings. He crept along, looking for another good vantage point.
There was nothing in that kid’s mouth, you asshole. Stop thinking crazy shit like that already. Concentrate on what you’re doing. Do the job and get out. Leave the particulars to the spooks in D.C.
That made him feel a bit better.
He spent another twenty minutes looking for somewhere to film from. But there was nowhere else safe. Too much activity. Too many lights. He pulled back the way he’d come. He hoped Creech was getting something.
As he dashed back across the road away from the soldiers, he saw Creech coming, running at a low crouch through the shadows.
“Everything okay?” Dunn’s voice said in his ear.
He jumped, almost forgetting about the team in the rocks.
“So far,” he said through his throat mic.
Creech fell along side of him. He was breathing hard. H
e slid his NVGs over his head. His eyes were wide and shining in the night.
“All right?” Loomis asked.
Creech nodded. “Yes, sir. It’s…I’ve never seen anything like it. They’re bloody shooting everyone... torching ‘em. Then this big pissing front-end loader comes and dumps the bodies in a lorry, a truck.”
“Where’d the truck go?”
“West. Not far, I think. I see some lights out there.”
Loomis could see the lights, too.
He checked his watch. They were making good time. “Did you get it all on video?”
“Aye,” Creech said. “Should be quite a show.”
“I’m going out to see where those trucks are going,” Loomis whispered in his ear. “You can pull back in the rocks, if you want.”
“No, sir. I’m coming.”
“You sure?”
Creech nodded. “Have I ever left your side before?”
Loomis smiled, patted him on the back. There was no point in answering that. Creech had once pulled his bleeding body from a burning helicopter in South Armagh, Northern Ireland. He’d carried Loomis three miles through the rain with half the Provisional IRA on his ass.
They set out together.
Away from the town, it was easier moving. They followed the road that wound west. It was pretty simple. Now and then they had to duck behind rocks as trucks sped past them. The closer they got the more they could see that it wasn’t artificial lighting causing the glow ahead. It was fire. Flickering, huge fires like bonfires. But from the acrid, steaming smell in the air, they knew they were not bonfires.
They got up close and started videoing with zoom lenses.
There were more soldiers, of course. And more trucks and men in NBC suits overseeing it all. There were also bulldozers, and excavators with hydraulic booms and gigantic shovels big enough to drive a car into. The smell was overpowering. Even the regular troops were wearing gas masks.
As Loomis and Creech watched, they saw something right out of Nazi Germany.
Dump trucks unloaded great heaps of bodies. Although burned black, many of them still moved. Cried. Moaned. Screamed. The tumbled mass seemed to move in serpentine waves, as if something was in there with them—slow, crawling, undulant. Bulldozers pushed the smoldering cargo into a craterlike mass burial pit. Then men with flamethrowers hosed the living carpet of bodies down.
“They can’t be alive,” Creech said breathlessly. “They can’t be... they can’t move like that... creep like that... like they ain’t got bones, like something—”
“Let’s get the fuck outta here,” Loomis said.
He looked back once. Great, oily plumes of smoke rose into the night from the pit. The smell was sickening. He pretended he could not hear children screaming.
They moved off into the night, both silent now. Not wanting to speak and not because they were afraid of being heard, but because they were afraid of what they might say.
The team returned their weapons and gave them canteens to suck on when they got back.
Loomis didn’t want to waste time. He wanted his team at the exfil point ASAP.
“Horse,” he said, “take the point.”
They moved west to the LZ selected by Loomis. When they were a good two miles from El Badji and the horrors contained within, they stopped. Loomis checked the GPS and set up the SATCOM radio. It had a built-in encryption device. He spoke the words and waited for the MH-53 Pave Low helicopter that was even now coming to pluck them out.
They began moving again, heading for the LZ.
Dunn came up behind him. Put a hand on his shoulder. “What did you see there, skipper? What’s got you guys so bugged?”
Loomis stared out into the blackness.
“I don’t know,” he said with some effort. “But I don’t want to see it again.
AUGUST 16
BETHESDA, MARYLAND:
BETHESDA NAVAL HOSPITAL,
9:15 A.M.
When the Old Man arrived, they were waiting for him: Dr. Rosin and Dr. MacClure. Both were captains in the Navy. Both had spent time with the NIS and ONI. And both men had ties with S5. Hands were shaken, small talk was made. Quickly, they ushered the Old Man to the morgue.
In the office of the chief pathologist, they began.
“Lay it out for me,” the Old Man said.
MacClure opened a file. “Lister, John Terry. Sergeant, First Marines. Fall, 2016, Lister and his recon platoon were involved in operations in the western desert south of Ar Rutbah.” MacClure paused, adjusting the spectacles on his hawkish nose. “Within the past few months, he’s been in and out of the VA hospital complaining of abdominal pains. Four days ago, he was referred here. He died of sudden internal hemorrhaging two days ago. The morning before his death, an MRI found this.”
He put the scans up on the illuminator.
The Old Man calmly put on his glasses and studied them intently. They showed the abdominal cavity. There was a dark, snaking mass visible from the descending colon all the way to the stomach. He nodded gravely. “No doubt about that.” He turned to Rosin. “What happened between the time of the scan and his death?”
Rosin cleared his throat. “He was scheduled for an exploratory. His symptomology was confusing to say the least. Then that mass...”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
Rosin avoided his gaze, preferring to study his Naval Academy ring. “Doctor Lattiker performed the autopsy... and that’s when—”
“You had Lister cremated then?”
“Yes. It was a real mess at the post, as you can imagine.” Rosin shook his head, a bead of sweat appearing at his temple. “Once things were under control, the body was destroyed immediately.”
“And?”
“Oh yes,” Rosin said, dabbing his brow with a tissue. “Yes, the parasite was incinerated also. Along with all Lister’s dressings, blood, urine samples, everything. Anything he came into contact with is gone.”
The Old Man thought about it. He thought long and hard while an almost metallic silence rained in the air. “What about Lattiker? Was he assisted?”
MacClure nodded. “Yes. Lattiker died of his wounds almost immediately. His body was destroyed. His assistant was a lab tech named Cortz. He survived... but he’s in shock. We have him quarantined as you asked.”
“Good. Keep him there. Remember, I want scans twice a day, blood work, urine, feces—the works.”
“How long should we keep him?” Rosin asked.
“Indefinitely.”
“But his family. They want to know what’s going on.”
“That’s your problem. Invent something.” The Old Man withered them both with his iron stare. “How about the other one?”
“Jameson. We still have him.”
The Old Man followed them through a maze of autopsy rooms. Through a heavy door that was cold to the touch. The walls were set with stainless steel compartments running from floor to ceiling. They passed through several rooms like this and stopped in the last one.
The air was brisk. MacClure rubbed his hands together. “We’ve moved all the other bodies from this section as you asked.”
Rosin unlatched the door to a single compartment. “We’ve turned the temp down to twenty-five for this one.”
“I hope it’s enough,” the Old Man said. “Gets cold in the desert, you know. And that didn’t kill its spawn.”
MacClure looked ill. He stepped back as the tray was pulled out.
“Christ in Heaven,” Rosin said.
They all saw it.
The sheet covering the body was stained with blood and tangled around the legs of the cadaver. There was a deep, ragged chasm that ran from throat to crotch. The body had been ripped open.
The Old Man lost his composure, but only for a moment. But in that moment, he wheeled around, looking up, looking down frantically. Searching for something. “I thought this body was being watched?”
“It was,” MacClure mumbled. “I was checking it myself.”
&n
bsp; “Did you check it this morning?”
“No,” he admitted. “I was waiting for—”
The Old Man nodded. “Get the names of everyone who came in here last night. I need them ASAP.”
Rosin hustled away, glad to be out of there.
The Old Man stared down at the cadaver. At the mutilated gorge that had once been its chest and belly. He was thinking about what could do something like that. He examined the edges of the opening. They were ragged and frayed. The abdominal and thoracic cavities were burst from the inside. Musculature and tissues were sheared, the rib cage was split. The sternum looked... chewed.
MacClure looked like he was going to be sick.
The Old Man jabbed a finger to his chest. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done here?” he said, his eyes wide and accusing. “Do you have any idea of what you’ve set loose?”
From the look in MacClure’s wide, frightened eyes, he knew all right.
EN ROUTE, WASHINGTON D.C.
11:51 A.M.
The black Lincoln fought its way through morning traffic on Wisconsin Avenue and in the back sat the Old Man.
He had never been a man of great emotion.
He had learned years ago that there was no place for it in his line of work. The more human you were, the more vulnerable you became. In all his years of service, he had never broken down. He’d buried his parents, his brother, his wife, his mistress. He had never cried. Never allowed himself to. In his position, composure was everything.
So it’s happened, he thought, trying to steel himself. The worst case scenario has finally happened. Despite all the preparations and precautions, the worse has come to pass. Now what? Now what are you going to do?
But he knew.
Preparations for something like this had been drafted weeks ago following what was now called the “Syrian Incident” in El Badji. Yes, one phone call would set the wheels in motion. The teams were ready to move, ready to protect the country from its own demons.
And sometimes the Old Man wondered if it was worth the bother.
If the problem couldn’t be contained and eradicated, then soon enough the media would get their hooks into it and everyone would know. The flap would be unimaginable. The taxpayers would see the horrible end result of an illegal, black budget operation. And the fallout would be enough to tear the very seams of the country apart. At the very least, the current administration and all agencies concerned would be gutted. It would be a purge.
