Occult Assassin 4: Soul Jacker

by Massa, William

  The train ride to Vichy-Sous offered a good preview of what was waiting for him in the suburbs. This wasn’t some postcard vision of France where people wore berets and carried baguettes. Minorities dominated these banlieues, a world apart from the tourist fantasy of Paris. France struggled to integrate their diverse population of immigrants and instead had isolated them in subsidized neighborhoods where crime and unemployment defined their lives. It was an ethnic powder keg waiting to go off.

  Yet there was opportunity here. Many of these people were second and third generation French and could act as formidable allies in the war against terror if France finally embraced them as citizens. Unfortunately this was a city where someone called Mohammed, Ali, or Kamel was four times a likely to be unemployed than someone named Philippe or Renee, a city where drug dealers competed with career advertisers to recruit teenagers from the banlieues. It was fertile ground for extreme ideologies to take root. And now someone appeared to be weaponizing the anger of the banlieues with the power of the occult.

  The power of the Jinn.

  Talon eyed the blank faces of the fellow commuters, their thousand-yard stares mirroring the dreary, rain-soaked cement landscape zipping past them outside. Three teens shot him cursory glances, but he met their probing gazes with a hard look and they turned away. The train passed the Périphérique, the highway that encircled Paris. Talon recalled that entering or leaving the suburbs was often called “crossing the périphérique,” as if what lay beyond was an unknown frontier.

  Forty minutes later, they reached the end of the line, and Talon stepped into the Vichy-Sous train station. Even the weather seemed different out here, damp and murky. A cold wind blew through the wet landscape, and a skyline of ugly, oppressive cement behemoths greeted him. Endless rail tracks cut through a wasteland of graffiti-covered walls, abandoned industrial lots, soccer fields and trash fires. The beauty of the Swiss Alps seemed a world away.

  The air was ripe with rain that wouldn’t fall as Talon braved the forlorn neighborhood of colossal tenements. The population of the suburb was a snapshot of French colonial history. Vichy-Sous was far more diverse than the ghettos back in the States. Bearded men wearing chechias and flowing white habayas emerged from a mosque. Down the road, French hip-hop drifted from a coffee shop, interspersed with a salvo of Arabic. The graffiti showcased the rage and rebellion simmering under the suburb’s surface. Arabic slogans bled across crumbling walls and told their own story. Na'al abouk la France! and Nik les schmitts: “Fuck France” and “Fuck the cops.” The French street names felt out of place in the Arabic neighborhood and heightened Talon’s feeling of cultural disorientation.

  Three veiled women passed Talon and the muscles in his neck bunched up. Talon was surprised by his response. The neighborhood triggered something normally buried deep inside of him, transporting him back to his days in Iraq and Afghanistan, when each robed stranger could turn out to be a suicide bomber. The old paranoia suddenly held him in its grip. Heightening the sensation was the fact that he was flying solo this time around. There was no unit watching his back—hell, he didn’t even have body armor. Was he was entering a battlefield armed only with a knife and the Glock?

  The thought rattled him and he had to remind himself that this was a French suburb and not a Middle Eastern warzone. But was that true? The recent attacks felt like a declaration of war, and who knew what future horrors were being conceived in this neighborhood. The constant presence of weed, gangsters, girls, and Islam made for a heady cocktail of crime and extremism. The new generations were trapped in a cultural limbo with little knowledge of where they came from and no chance of ever being fully accepted into the homeland their parents or grandparents had chosen for them.

  Talon dedicated the next three days for reconnaissance. He hit up the most run-down bars he could find and observed the locals while pretending to sip on his beer. The scene was a mirror funhouse version of an American ghetto. Black and brown faces sporting baggy hip-hop gangster styles with a European touch abounded—Latinos replaced with Arabs. Talon wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for but had a feeling he’d know when he came across it.

  After three fruitless days, he was almost ready to give up when his luck finally changed. A group of hooded men entered the bar, their eyes blank and pitiless as they studied the patrons. The big Algerian bartender, Jammaal, faced them with a wary expression, his body coiled and tense. Talon stealthily studied the newcomers as they navigated the smoke-filled bar. They sported glossy black hooded coats, sweatpants, and sneakers, their faces stoic, their demeanor business-like. They zeroed in on two younger men who were playing a game of pool in the back.

  Talon couldn’t quite make out the words, but he didn’t need to. The glass vial in the gangbanger’s hand told him everything he needed to know. He was witnessing a drug deal, but no money was exchanged. It appeared the group was merely handing out samples.

  The bartender clenched his jaw and balled his fists, but experience must have taught him to hold his tongue. As the gangbangers shuffled out of the bar, the leader of the group took note of Talon. His expression barely wavered as he approached. A beat later, the man loomed before him. Talon held the drug dealer’s gaze but tried to project curiosity as opposed to hostility. The leader appraised him for a second before he pulled out a glass vial containing a clear liquid.

  “A hit of this will lift the veil. Show you the truth. It will take a small life and turn it into a powerful one.”

  With these words, the drug dealer turned away from Talon and left the bar. They didn’t even wait to see if Talon would take the bait and try their wares.

  Jamaal reached out for the vial, but Talon fingers closed around it first.

  “You take that shit, you’ll be their slave for life,” the bartender stated matter-of-factly.

  “Thanks, but I can take care of myself.”

  The bartender shrugged, figuring Talon for another lost cause.

  He touched the vial, and his pentacle amulet immediately ignited with magical energy. This substance was setting off occult alarm bells. Inspecting it further, he notice the inverted double-V engraved in the vial. The same sign the attacker had left behind during the train murders and had been engraved in the palm of his hand. The symbol of the Jinn.

  What could it mean? Maybe Casca might have a theory.

  Talon pocketed the vial. He then pulled out a few Euros, making sure his tip was on the generous side, and exited the bar.

  The wind was wet and chilly and neutralized the light buzz of the beer. The drug dealers were about a hundred feet ahead, and Talon stealthily began to follow them. He would’ve expected a pack of gangbangers to be raising hell as they made their way through this lawless territory, where most French cops didn’t dare venture, but the opposite held true. The crew made no noise, and in their hoodies they seemed like monks who’d taken a vow of silence. Once again, his pentagram grew hot to the touch, and Talon’s worst suspicions were confirmed. Dark forces were active here. Could the dealers be under the influence of the strange drug they were giving away? Were they possessed by Jinn?

  They marched down the street, stopping whenever they encountered someone new. Each time the same scene repeated itself as vials of the mysterious drug were passed out freely.

  They’re not selling product but infecting the neighborhood, Talon realized.

  Talon followed the group to a large tenement and saw them vanish through the main entrance. He was about to go after them when sirens cut through the night. He stepped back into the shadows as a van and a Peugeot pulled up to the towering tenement with screeching tires. Sirens bled into the foggy darkness. Apparently he wasn’t the only one taking an interest in these drug dealers.

  The French police had decided to join the party.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ABOUT A DOZEN members of the French RAID team crowded the briefing room, pumped for action and oozing testosterone. Officers checked guns and secured their tactical bullet-proof vests. De
tective Samia and her partner stood in the back, observing in silence, their plainclothes attire making them stand out among the sea of black-clad armored warriors. The team wasn’t even fully suited up, yet their eagerness to get the mission under way was palpable. Soon enough those boots would be kicking in doors, their rifles spitting bullets. These men were highly trained professionals, the best of the best. Arresting a few low-level drug dealers wouldn’t pose much of a challenge for these men under normal circumstances. Street attitude was a poor substitute for tactical armor and years of military-style training. Nevertheless, Samia couldn’t shake a growing sense of anxiety. Something was off about this case. The extreme violence of the attacks, the mysterious nature of this new drug—not to mention the horrific murder-suicide she witnessed back in the banlieues earlier in the day. Something terrible was unfolding in the housing projects.

  The police chief entered and took his place behind a podium. The men quieted down. His demeanor deadly serious, he addressed the eager team. “As you probably heard, a new drug is making the rounds.” To emphasize his words, he held up an empty vial they’d confiscated from one of the dead attackers. From where she was standing, Samia couldn’t quite make out the strange markings. No one on the force had been able to identify the symbol, and it added another level of mystery to the case. “We don’t know how many people are using the drug and our science guys are still trying to figure out what the hell we’re dealing with here. What we do know is this shit makes people go crazy. Think of it as meth and bath salts on steroids. You guys have all seen the stories on the news. Six attacks in the last eight days alone, resulting in twenty dead and another fifteen in the hospital. This drug turns users into homicidal monsters, and the sooner it’s off the street, the sooner I’ll be able to catch up with some much needed beauty sleep.”

  What had Hakim called the drug? Soul Jacker. Remembering the name sent shivers down her back.

  “What’s our move?” a second RAID guy wanted to know.

  “Detectives Ahmed and Baudin have found credible evidence that the drug is being manufactured in a Vichy-Sous housing project.” The tenement building in question appeared onscreen. “If their source is to be believed, the whole operation is run by a man named Assad Rakan.”

  The building was replaced with a mugshot of an Algerian male. The hardened features projected attitude, the eyes dead and cold. “Rakan, age 34, has had multiple run-ins with the law and served a three-year prison sentence in 2008. We believe he was radicalized while in prison and in 2014 traveled to Syria in an attempt to join ISIS. Five months later, he returned to Paris. The government tried to keep close tabs on him, but he somehow managed to disappear from the face of the earth.”

  Samia stared at the man onscreen. The face was all too familiar to her, a detail she hadn’t shared with anyone, not even her partner. The captain might pull her off the case if he found about her past with Rakan and she wanted—needed—to be on the scene when these men stormed the building. Hopefully having an officer of Algerian descent among their ranks would prevent any abuses of power. Samia wanted this drug off the streets as much as everyone else, but she had no desire to see innocent bystanders getting caught in the crossfire. That fate should reunite her with Rakan like this seemed both ironic and weirdly inevitable. She’d always known where the dark path he was headed down would take him.

  “I want your men to get the bad guys and shut down this operation with minimal losses. Fire only if fired upon. Lets avoid a media shitstorm. Headlines, not obituaries. Be safe and be professional. Let’s do this!”

  The chief stepped away from the podium, and the briefing was officially over. Once again the room buzzed with activity as the men geared up for the impending raid. Samia and her partner fell in step with the team members as they filed out of the briefing room and headed for the waiting RAID van.

  Samia and Pierre followed the team in their unmarked Peugeot. The team would go in first and take the lead in the operation, but Samia didn’t intend to sit this one out on the sidelines. She was itching for action. As someone who’d grown up in the banlieues, she knew all too well the poverty and hopelessness fueling extremist ideology. Any crime committed by someone in the banlieues would be inevitably magnified through a lens of race and religion, reaffirming stereotypes and increasing harassment of the locals by law enforcement. These attacks by fanatics were putting her people in a terrible light once again. Rakan had to be stopped, and she wanted to be there when it happened.

  Fat raindrops pelted their windshield, and sharp gusts of wind stirred the awnings of the stores they passed. Beyond the shops, the projects loomed, jagged and towering. As she tailed the RAID van, she noticed Pierre looking at her.

  “Something on your mind?” she asked.

  “I was about to ask you the same.”

  She held his gaze and he said, “What do you think we’re walking into here?’

  “I don’t know. I don’t even understand what happened the other day.”

  For a second, the image of Mrs. Henni slashed through her mind, the woman’s mad face distorted, inhuman. Radicalism bubbled and simmered in these neighborhoods, but what could trigger such lethal ferocity, especially from a mother and directed toward her son? The memory made her shudder and she fought back the terrible vision of Mrs. Henni dragging her own flesh and blood to his doom.

  Reality reeled her out of her thoughts as the RAID van screeched to a halt in front of the looming tenement. The back door burst open and a swarm of armed men emerged from the van into the misty night.

  Samia slowed her vehicle and pulled up to the curb. Clouds of fog swallowed up the beams of her car. As she got out of the Peugeot, the raw April wind pierced her jacket and she clenched her jaw, fingers tight around the steel grip of her service revolver. The building felt abandoned, further heightening her unease. Many of the residents didn’t hold down steady jobs, and the apartments normally teemed with life and activity. There should be gangs of teens lurking near the entrance, locals shuffling down the sidewalks, lights flickering in windows. But the structure appeared as deserted as a moonscape. An eerie, unnatural silence reigned, almost as if aliens had abducted everyone in the vicinity. Something was wrong. And judging from the nervous expressions on the team members’ faces, they sensed it too.

  “They knew we were coming,” Samia said to her partner. She wasn’t fatalistic, but the certainty had been building all day. Now that they were finally here, her worst fears seemed to be coming true. The tower loomed, oppressive and intimidating. Something waited within its thick walls, something that was all too aware of the twelve RAID team members and two homicide detectives making their way through its arched main entrance.

  Deep down, Samia sensed they were walking into a trap.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A SCREAM WOKE Yasmine in the middle of the night. For a disorientated moment she drifted, neither asleep nor awake, still wondering if the cry had been an echo of a dream. Then a second bloodcurdling cry cut through the night, and she jerked upright. Eyes wide open now, she rolled out of bed. This wasn’t the first time high-pitched shouts had awoken her in the last month. It was turning into a semi-regular occurrence. She eyed the time on her phone; it was three-thirty in the morning. The terrified screams as well as the freezing cold inside her subsidized housing unit made her shake all over. Yasmine felt like she was seventeen going on ninety. Life in the banlieues had forced her to grow up quickly.

  She wrapped a blanket around her body as she opened the bedroom window. Wind lashed her face with arctic force and her teeth chattered. Who needed coffee when one had a French spring? Many of the older Algerians complained incessantly about the damp weather in their adopted country and for once, she found herself on the same page.

  Clutching the blanket tighter, she stuck her head out of the window, just in time for the terrified scream to reverberate through the night one last time. The way it suddenly cut off told her the man’s suffering had come to an end. The Flanders Tower had
claimed its latest victim.

  She craned her neck toward the dim lights glittering on the top floor of the thirty-story tenement. The cries always came from the top floor and always in the middle of night. She shuddered at the thought of what might be happening up there.

  She waited another minute before she closed the window and jumped back into the bed. She pulled the covers tight, but her body wouldn’t stop shaking. Something evil had taken up residence in her building.

  An evil that was growing stronger.

  Despite the nightmarish visions her imagination conjured in the dark of her bedroom, Yasmine managed to nod off. By the time her eyes fluttered open again, it was seven-fifteen and time to get ready for work. She showered and got dressed. She’d dropped out of high school a year earlier so she could work at a flower shop fifteen minutes down the street. Her teachers had protested her decision, believing she was throwing away her whole future. They were right, but someone needed to make money to take care of her grandmother. Her parents had been out of the picture for years, and her grandmother had done the best she could to raise her under not so ideal conditions.

  Yasmine peeked into the adjoining bedroom where her ailing granny wasted away. She walked up to the bed and stifled her revulsion. The air was heavy with sickness and foul perspiration. Nevertheless, she kneeled beside her grandmother and planted a kiss on her cheek. The old woman smiled weakly at her. Yasmine gently stroked her grandmother’s worn face until she fell asleep. Granny spent much of the day in bed, and that was fine with Yasmine. The poor woman had worked like a dog for most of her life; it was time for her to rest. She deserved some peace.