Tate and Kaiden were tasked with acquiring Jaco, and approached his building from the rear. The back of the building held a large courtyard enclosed by a high wall. They made their way along the outside of the courtyard wall and stopped before going around the front corner of the house.
They listened for any sounds, but could only hear the sigh of the wind. From previous night’s observations, they knew there’d be a guard sleeping in a chair outside the front door.
Tate cautiously glanced around the corner to the front of the building. In the grey-green light of his night vision, all he saw was the front of the house and an empty chair. He turned back to Kaiden.
“The guard’s not there,” he said. She only nodded in response.
“This is Razorback,” whispered Tate into his mic. “My guard is missing.”
In reply, he heard the radio click twice for each two-man team moving through the village. Everyone was now alerted of a possible hostile roaming around.
“We’re proceeding as planned. Razorback out,” said Tate.
He moved smoothly around the corner with his silenced rifle at his shoulder. Just before the door was a window with thick wood limbs set into the window frame as a simple, but effective, security measure.
A dull, red curtain hung in the window, blocking their view inside. The door was made up of rough, wooden beams held together with strips of iron. There’s no telling how many times those iron strips had been reused for making doors. It sat securely on simple iron hinges.
Tate reached into his breast pocket and took out a small plastic tube.
Kaiden grinned and tapped the side of her helmet. Good thinking.
Tate smiled back and squeezed out a few drops of oil onto each of the metal hinges. While keeping his rifle pointed at the door, he put the oil away and took out his combat knife.
Very carefully, he slid the blade into the gap between the door and the frame, then guided it up until he felt resistance. As expected, the door was locked by a simple latch.
Little by little, he pushed up on the blade until he felt the latch move. As soon as it was clear of the catch, Tate nodded to Kaiden who came around him and aimed her rifle at the door as he pushed it open. The freshly oiled hinges were quiet with the only sound of the door scuffing over the rough dirt floor.
Tate put away his knife while they paused, waiting for any sounds of alarm. All was quiet.
They slipped inside and closed the door. They stood alone in a large, carpet-covered room. It was a simple room reflecting a humble village existence. Pillows and cushions of different shapes and patterns rested against the rough, mud walls. Built into the walls were alcoves draped with small, intricate, handwoven mats, which held an oil lamp, ceramic water pitchers with flora designs and a hammered, copper bowl.
To their left was an empty doorway leading deeper into the house. The hallway was lined with a thick but worn carpet that muffled the sound of their boots as they moved forward, heel-toe.
They came to a door on the right and listened for sounds. There was no light seeping under the door and they didn’t hear any movement. Tate carefully pressed against the door until it began to move. Curtains covered the only window in the room, but allowed enough light from outside for his night vision goggles to easily see inside.
Sleeping on a mattress of cushions was a lone figure. Along the walls were stacks of large, sturdy looking cases. Each one was stenciled with, what Tate could only guess was, an alphanumeric identification.
They moved into the room and Tate approached the sleeping figure while Kaiden swiveled her gun to cover the door. Tate slung his rifle out of the way, behind his back and drew his knife. He knelt down next to the figure until he could see their features more clearly. It was their target.
Swiftly, Tate clamped his gloved hand over Jaco's mouth, who jerked awake with a yelp, barely audible though Tate's hand.
"Shhhh," hissed Tate into Jaco's ear.
Jaco instantly stopped moving as he felt the cool steel of Tate's knife rest under his jaw.
"If you understand me, blink twice."
Jaco willed his wide, terrified eyes to scrunch closed two times, then stared at Tate's combat visage as though he'd stepped out of a portal from Hell.
Tate keyed the mic on his radio once, then spoke into it.
"This is Razorback,” he said. “I’ve got the target. Time to find out what he's been up to. How copy?"
"Razorback, this is Red Man," came a reply through his earpiece. "This village is royally messed up. We are pulling out and regrouping to our original position. Suggest you do the same."
Tate and Kaiden shared looks of confusion. "Red Man,” he hissed, “what the hell do you mean you're pulling out?"
"We found the villagers tied up in their homes," said Red Man. "That twisted son of a bitch has been using them as lab rats. Some are dead. Others look like they got the plague or something. We could all be infected, for all I know.”
“Copy,” said Tate, feeling a swell of anger flowing through him. “Bug out and wait for us.”
He didn’t wait for Red Man to acknowledge him as he tore off his night vision goggles and yanked Jaco up by his shirt.
“My men found the villagers,” he growled, giving up any concern for stealth. “Tell me they’re not contagious. Tell me my men are safe.”
“Quiet,” hissed Kaiden.
Outside the door, they heard the creak of a door fly open and the muffled footsteps of someone running. The door flew open, revealing a heavily-bearded man holding an AK-47 at his hip.
Kaiden’s assault rifle spit twice and the man staggered back and fell against the wall of the hallway.
Jaco’s eyes were as big as saucers as he watched Kaiden step to the fallen guard. She fired twice more into his chest and the guard’s head bucked with a final shot into his head. She kicked the gun away from his lifeless hand and continued scanning for additional intruders.
“Look at me,” snarled Tate as he shook Jaco. “Anyone else in the house?”
Jaco shook his head.
“Are my men safe?”
Jaco nodded his head almost comically. “Yes, as long as they didn’t touch anyone.”
“This is Razorback,” said Tate into his radio. “Did anyone touch the villagers?”
The seconds passed with mounting anxiety, until broken by the static click of his radio. “Negative, Razorback,” said Red Man. “Nobody made physical contact with a villager.”
Relief flooded through Tate and he realized he’d been holding his breath. He sucked in a lungful of air, feeling his chest expand.
“The target says no infection unless physical contact. How copy?”
“Good copy,” said Red Man. “Good to hear. There was some serious puckering action going on here.”
“Sit tight,” said Tate. “We’re making our way back to you in a few. Razorback out.”
Tate stood up, lifting Jaco by his shirt. “Where’s the lab?”
Jaco fumbled to get his feet under him and pointed out the door. “In the other room. No problem. I’ll take you. No problem.”
Tate spun Jaco around and deftly bound his wrists behind his back with sturdy zip-cuffs. Tate put the knife back in its sheath, and drew his Colt .45. He held Jaco’s cuffs as he led them out of the bedroom and into the hall. Jaco lead them to a door only a few steps away, on the left.
“Anyone in there?” asked Tate, close enough for Jaco to feel his breath on his ear.
“No one,” said Jaco. “It’s the lab. Only I go in there.”
Jaco grunted as Tate shoved him hard against the door, opening it into the darkened lab. They walked in and Kaiden put her hand on the light switch.
“Eyes off,” she said, as she took off her night vision goggles. The lights came on with a click, bathing the room in white light.
Several high-intensity work lights stood around the large room. In the middle was a clear, plastic tent; a clean room designed to keep contaminates out and, in this case, a deadly
virus inside. This was Jaco’s lab. Computers, and assorted equipment occupied several tables along with racks of glassware and vials.
The thought of Jaco serenely experimenting for ways to create the agony and death of hundreds, maybe millions of people, mingled with Tate’s anger and horror, because just on the other side of that flimsy sheet of plastic was a biological monster waiting to get at them.
“Sit down,” said Tate, shoving Jaco hard enough for his teeth clacked when he landed on the floor. “Is this everything? Are there other samples, any other material somewhere else?”
“No,” said Jaco. “It’s all there inside the cooler.”
Tate was turning to look when Jaco began to wail and struggle to his feet. Tate grabbed him roughly by the hair to hold him in place, then looked at the clean room again and felt his heart freeze in his chest.
In the wall were two bullet holes from Kaiden’s gun. At the close range, the bullets had gone through the guard, the wall and the clean room. They couldn’t see the holes in the plastic, but they could see the shattered glass door of the cooler that held the viruses. A handful of smashed, glass vials were on the floor.
“The clean room’s been breached,” screamed Jaco. “We have to get out.”
Without another word, Kaiden was out the door and down the hallway, with Tate dragging Jaco behind him.
Kaiden stopped Tate and bent over Jaco. “Where’s your notes?”
Jaco was squirming in a mad rush to get as far away as humanly possible.
She gripped his face in her hand and asked him again. “Where are your notes?”
“By my bed,” he said.
Without a word, Kaiden disappeared down the hall, leaving Tate and Jaco looking stunned. A moment later she reappeared, passing them and heading out the door.
Tate quickly followed, with Jaco in tow.
“This is Razorback,” said Tate into his radio. “We’re heading back.”
“Best news I’ve heard all day,” said Red Man. “That warped psycho tested his virus on the kids. I’m going to have nightmares for years.”
“Uh… copy,” said Tate. He couldn’t find the words to tell his friend that he and Kaiden might have been exposed to the virus. Questions crowded his mind, not knowing which one to ask, or if it even mattered now.
Kaiden held up a pillow case she had shoved Jaco’s notes in. She took out a small plastic box and showed it to Jaco.
“Is this what I think it is?” she asked.
Jaco’s eyes lit up like it was Christmas day. “Yes,” he said, with a mixture of happiness and lust. “Praise be to Allah… Jesus.”
“Save it, Ali Baba,” she said.
“What’s that?” asked Tate.
Kaiden opened the box and lifted out a stubby syringe. “If you were an egotistical Frankenstein with a history of having butter fingers, where would you keep the only antidote?”
“As close as possible,” he said, with a smile spreading over his face.
“What’s the dosage?” Kaiden asked Jaco.
“One capsule per dose,” he said. “You can inject it anywhere on the body.”
“And it works?” asked Tate.
“Oh, yes,” said Jaco. “As you say, like a charm.”
“What about the villagers?” asked Tate.
“It only works within an hour of being exposed to the virus,” said Jaco. “After that, nothing can stop it.”
Without warning, Kaiden pushed the syringe against Tate’s naked forearm and hit the plunger. He winced, but said nothing.
Taking out another capsule, Kaiden reloaded the syringe and injected herself.
Jaco’s face turned from happy anticipation to confusion as Kaiden closed the plastic box and put it back in the pillowcase.
“I could be infected,” he said. “You have another dose in the box. I could be infected.”
“You know all those wonderful speeches about doing Allah’s work, and the glory of killing infidels? That was fantasy, propaganda bullshit. This,” said Kaiden, as she held a body bag in front of him, “is reality.”
The first hint of dawn backlit the craggy mountain range as the UH-60 Blackhawk rose into the air. Inside, the members of the Night Devils did what they could to make themselves comfortable for the long flight home, while others were already asleep.
Between the two rows of seats lay a squirming body bag. The muted pleas for mercy coming from the bag were drowned out by the loud chop of the helicopter’s rotor-blades.
Tate sat across from Kaiden, who seemed lost in her own thoughts as she looked out the open cabin door. Between her feet was the pillowcase with Jaco’s notes and antidote. He hadn’t asked her what she was going to do with them.
A year ago, Kaiden had been attached to the Night Devils as an intelligence analyst. The men of the unit had become a tightly bonded team and she was initially treated as any unknown, and unproven, outsider would be. Her athletic five-foot, eight-inch frame and pretty face belied her steel will and laid-back don’t-give-a-damn attitude.
As expected, the unit didn’t make her life easy, as any tribe would do to a newcomer. The outsider would either cave under the alienation and hardships and leave, or patiently wade though it until the tribe finally decided to accept them.
Kaiden understood what the unit was doing and never flinched at the challenges dropped at her feet.
To Tate’s surprise, the unit took her in as one of their own long before he’d expected. Every member of the team knew the others better than they knew their family; every quirk, habit, and way of thinking. But with Kaiden there was always a part of her that felt hidden; a casual secretiveness, like a soft fog that tickled the curiosity. Tate had a growing theory there was more to her connection to the intelligence community than she said.
He looked up from the pillowcase seeing Kaiden looking at him with a slightly amused smile. He felt an awkwardness as if she’d read his thoughts.
The moment was broken as a flash of light appeared in the distance. Somewhere behind the retreating mountain, a thermobaric had just found the village.
Unlike a shrapnel bomb, the thermobaric bomb used the very air around it to deliver its devastating effects. The bomb had two detonations. When the bomb reached a determined height, a fuel cell exploded, creating a large cloud of flammable vapor. A millisecond later, the second charge detonated the vapor cloud, creating a massive blast area incinerating everything inside the cloud.
Jaco had brought a viral curse upon the people of that village, and the Pentagon wasn’t going to risk it spreading further.
Tate and Kaiden watched as a distant wave of fire soundlessly billowed. Three more bombs erupted, devouring every building, human, animal and insect, scorching the earth clean.
If Kaiden had any fears about being infected, or the antidote not working, she hid them well, but those fears gnawed unceasingly at Tate. Even after they left quarantine, every odd ache sparked a mental image of something silently eating away at his body.
It was almost a year before he was satisfied he wouldn’t wake up one day a mutated horror.
CHAPTER SEVEN
HALF TRUTHS
Now Tate was facing another make-shift clean room, constructed by a black-market animal doctor. Tate fought the urge to run for the door.
“Tell me that’s safe,” he said, sounding more alarmed than he was comfortable with.
“There’s three things I fool around with,” said Jer, counting on his fingers. “One, women…” He looked up to the ceiling for a moment. “I, uh, I forget the other two, but I don’t fool around with chemicals. They’re much less forgiving than women. You know what I mean?”
Tate had no reason to believe Jer, but he also didn’t have a reason not to. The fact the doctor was alive and moving was enough to persuade Tate to ignore his worries.
They moved through the first set of plastic curtains, where the doctor waited until they’d closed behind them, then stepped through the next set of curtains and into the lab.
Jer walked over to a table with a microscope and a tray of small Petri dishes. “This is very interesting, my friends,” he said, tapping the microscope with his finger.
Rosse bent over and looked through the eyepiece.
“What are you doing?” asked Jer.
Rosse stood up looking confused. “I was looking at what’s interesting.”
“It’s an electronic microscope, and it’s turned off,” said Jer tersely. “And unless you’re a biologist, how would you know what you’re looking at?”
“All right, keep your shirt on, doc,” said Rosse.
“People watch a TV show and suddenly everyone’s a doctor,” said Jer.
“What did you find?” asked Tate, hoping to get the doctor back on track.
“The sample you gave me had all the typical chemicals and by-products of mainstream cocaine.”
“Mainstream?” asked Tate.
“Cocaine varies in quality, depending on the budget of the operation,” said Jer. “A peon making the stuff up in his bathtub will have lots of impurities and fillers. The more professional the cocaine producers, the less impurities and by-products. But the quality of by-products still leaves a footprint. This sample tells me whoever is making this stuff has a big budget, and they’re very, very smart.”
Rosse and Tate watched as the doctor began sorting through the Petri dishes, clearly looking for something.
“How smart, you ask?” said Jer. “You didn’t, but I’ll tell you anyway. Mixed in with all these other things was an amino acid with aliphatic side-chains, similar to a branched chain amino acid, or that’s what it wants the body to think. Normal BCAA does lots of things, including affect immune system and brain functions. I thought it was nothing and I moved on with my analysis, which by the way, one of you two is leaving here with a bill.”
He paused to see if anyone would challenge his claim. Satisfied they wouldn’t, he continued. “When I got to the end of my analysis, I was left with no suspects. No red flags pointing to what killed your man.”
Tate looked at Rosse, who preemptively shrugged his shoulders.
The Suicide King (The Grave Diggers Book 2) Page 7
