Joe Ledger

by Jonathan Maberry

  He believed me, and he froze.

  The other Marines froze.

  The man in the chair froze.

  Amirah, however, did not.

  With a snarl of hunger, the mad witch twisted so suddenly and violently that she tore the ropes from the hands of the startled Marines. She tore her hands free from the plastic cuffs. She screamed like some desert demon from legend, leapt into the air and slammed into the sergeant, driving him against the torture victim. They crashed to the ground amid shrieks and blood and biting teeth.

  The two Marines began to move toward the sergeant, but Bunny shifted to cover them with his M4. That left me.

  I stepped in and kicked Amirah in the side of the head. The blow knocked her off of the sergeant, but she had his hand clamped between her jaws. And the bound man was screaming and beating his forehead against the side of the sergeant’s head, mashing his ear.

  “Holy shit, Boss—on your six!”

  It was Bunny. I pivoted in place in time to catch the rush as something came out of the shadows and tackled me. It was one of the other Afghanis. One of the dead Afghanis.

  His teeth were bared and spit flew from cracked lips as he lunged for my throat.

  I braced my forearm under his chin as I fell backward and clenched my abs so that my flat back fall turned into a curled back roll. The Afghani went into the tumble with me and instead of him pinning me down we ended the roll with me straddling his chest. I jammed the barrel of the .22 into his left eye socket and fired. The bullet tore all his wiring loose, and he transformed from murderously vicious to sagging dead weight in a microsecond.

  There were shouts all around, and I had to shove at the body to get free. As I came up, I saw that the second Afghani had clamped his teeth around the windpipe of one of the Marines. Bunny put six rounds into the Afghani: the first one knocked him loose from his victim, the second punched him in the chest to stall him, and the last four grouped like knuckles in a lead fist to strike him above the eyebrows. The man’s head exploded and his body spun backward in a sloppy pirouette. The Marine dropped to his knees, trying to staunch an arterial spray with fingers that shook with the palsy of sudden understanding. His companion crouched over him, pressing the wound with his hands, but the Marine drowned in his own blood in seconds.

  Slim was in the cave mouth, his weapon sweeping quickly back and forth from target to target, not knowing whether to take a shot or not.

  I dove at Amirah, who had crawled back atop the sergeant. For his part, the Marine was putting up a good fight, but it was clear that terror of the woman he had been using as a tool of interrogation was off the scale, too much for him to handle. He shot me a single, despairing glance, and I saw the moment when he gave up. It must have been one of those instantaneous moments of clarity that can either save you or kill you. His interrogation had failed. His method of interrogation was indefensible, a fact that would never have mattered if we hadn’t shown up. But we were here, and he was caught. His world had just crashed, and he knew it.

  I locked my arm around Amirah’s throat and squeezed, bulging my bicep on one side to cut off her left carotid and my forearm to cut off her right. In jujutsu that puts someone out.

  It didn’t do a fucking thing to her.

  She bucked and writhed with more force than I would have thought possible for a woman of her size, alive or dead.

  I shoved the hot barrel of the .22 against the back of her head, bent close, and whispered in her ear, speaking in Farsi.

  “There is no shame to die in the service of Allah.”

  Her muscles locked into sudden rigidity. The cave was instantly still. Even the Afghani and the sergeant had stopped screaming. I held her tight against my chest, and my back was to the cold stone wall. She smelled of rotting meat and death, but in her dark hair there was the faintest scent of perfume. Jasmine.

  “Amirah,” I said. “Listen to me.”

  I whispered six more words.

  “Your choice, Princess,” I said. “This…or paradise?”

  I leaned on the word this. From the absolute stillness, I knew that she understood what I meant. The cave, these men, all this destruction. She knew. And even though she had meant to sweep the world with her pathogen, the end goal—the transformation via Generation 12 of a select portion of Islam and the total annihilation of the enemies of her people—that was impossible. All that was left to her now was to be a monster. Alone and reviled.

  The moment stretched. No one moved. Then Amirah leaned her head toward me. An oddly intimate movement.

  She said, “Not…this.”

  I whispered, “Yarhamukallâh.”

  May God have mercy on you.

  And pulled the trigger.

  Chap. 4

  Battalion Aide Station

  Now

  I sat back and studied Harper for a long time.

  He said, “What? You going to sit there and tell me that you wouldn’t have done the same thing?”

  I said nothing.

  “Look,” he said, “I know that was you in the cave. What are you? Delta? SEALs?”

  I said nothing.

  “You know what we’re up against out there. They want us to stop the Taliban, stop the flow of opium, but our own government supports the brother of the Afghan president, and he runs half the opium in the frigging country! How the hell are we supposed to win that kind of war? This is Vietnam all over again. We’re losing a war we shouldn’t be fighting.”

  I said nothing.

  Harper leaned forward, anger darkening his face. He pointed at me with the index finger of his uninjured hand. “You think Abu Ghraib’s the only place where we had to do whatever it took to get some answers? It goes on all over, and it’s always gone on.”

  “And look where it’s gotten us,” I said.

  “Fuck you and fuck that zero tolerance bullshit. We were trying to save lives. We would have gotten something out of that man.”

  “You didn’t get shit from the first two.”

  Now it was his turn to say nothing. After a minute he narrowed his eyes. “When you spoke to that…that…thing. That woman. At the end, you gave her a blessing. You a Muslim?”

  “No.”

  “Then why?”

  “Honestly, Sergeant, I don’t think I could explain it to you. I mean…I could explain it, but I don’t think you’d understand.”

  “You think I’m a monster, don’t you?”

  “Are you?”

  “No, man,” he said. “I’m just trying to….” And his voice broke. At first it was just a hitch, but when he tried to catch it and hide it, his resolve broke and he put his face in his unbandaged hand and sobbed. I sat back in my chair and watched.

  I looked at him. The bandages on his other hand were stained with blood that was almost black. Red lines ran in a crooked tracery from beneath the bandage and up his arms. I could see the same dark lines beginning to creep up from his collar. It was forty-eight hours since he’d been brought to the aide station. Fifty-nine since Amirah had bitten him. Strong son of a bitch. Most people would have turned by now.

  “What’s going to happen to me?” he asked, raising a tear-streaked face.

  “Nothing. It’s already happened.”

  He licked his dry lips. “We…we didn’t know.”

  “Yes you did. Your squad was briefed. Maybe it was all a little unreal to you, Sergeant. Horror movie stuff. But you knew. Just as you know how this ends.”

  I stood and drew my sidearm and racked the slide. The sound was enormous in that little room.

  “They’re going to want to study you,” I said. “They can do that with you on a slab, or in a cage.”

  “They can’t!” he said, anger flaring inside his pain. “I’m an American god damn it!”

  “No,” I said. “Sergeant Andy Harper died while on a mission in Afghanistan. The report will reflect that he died while serving his country and maintaining the best traditions of the U.S. Marine Corps.”

  Harper look
ed at me, the truth registering in his eyes.

  “So I ask you,” I said, raising the pistol. “This…or paradise?”

  “I…I’m sorry,” he said. Maybe at that moment he really was. Deathbed epiphanies aren’t worth the breath that carries them. Not to me. Not anymore.

  “I know,” I lied.

  “I did it for us, man. I did it to help!”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

  And raised the gun

  ~The End~

  Deep Dark

  NOTE: This story takes place after the events of Patient Zero. It is an independent adventure.

  Chap. 1

  The Vault

  Ultra High Security Biological Research Facility

  The Poconos, Pennsylvania

  Twenty Minutes Ago

  It was the dirty end of a dirty job.

  Three of us—Bunny, Top and I—were hunting horrors in the dark, seven thousand feet below Camelback Mountain. Even with night vision goggles, body armor, and weapons, we were lost in an infinity of shadows. If we blew this, if we couldn’t wrap this before the clock ticked down, then the whole place would go into hard lockdown. Steel doors would drop, and explosive bolts would fire, triggering thermite charges that would seal the doors permanently in place. Federal and international biohazard protocols forbade anyone from digging us out if the failsafes went active.

  The Vault would become our tomb.

  The government would disown us; our own people would have to write us off.

  But the things we hunted wouldn’t care. When our lights and weapons and food ran out, they’d hunt us.

  And, very likely, they would get us…and then get out.

  Chap. 2

  Camelback Mountain

  Pocono Plateau, Elevation 2,133 Feet

  Two Hours Ago

  We touched down on a State Forestry helipad at the top of Camelback. Morning mist still clung to the off-season ski slopes. The sun was a weak promise behind a ceiling of white clouds that stretched into the dim forever. A bookish-looking man in a white anorak and thick glasses met us as we ducked out through the rotor wash. He was flanked by a State Cop, who looked confused, and a security officer from the Vault, who looked bug-eyed scared. Nobody shook hands.

  We piled into an Expedition. The State Cop looked at the equipment bags we carried, and it was clear he wanted to ask, but he’d been told that questions were off-limits. All he knew was that we were ‘specialists’ on the Federal dime who came here to help solve a security problem. Which is another way of telling him to shut the hell up and just drive the car.

  The geek with the glasses turned to me and started to speak, but I shook my head.

  We drove in silence down the zigzag road that should have been packed with tourists here for the water park and other summer sports. We passed three police roadblocks and turned onto an access road before a fourth. A phalanx of Troopers were bellowing at the families and tour busses, waving them into U-turns and turning deaf ears to the abuse heaped on them by people who had driven since before dawn to get here. Top caught my eye and shook his head. I nodded. Inconvenience was a hell of a lot better than dying out here in the cold.

  A smaller road split off from the access road and led into a big equipment barn, but the barn was just a cover for the entrance to The Vault. Four nervous-looking guards manned the entrance; their supervisor came over to us in an electric golf cart. He cut a look at the bookworm.

  “These the pros from Dover?” He tried for the joke, but his voice cracked, spoiling it. I gave him a hard grin anyway. It was a nice try.

  I turned to our driver as we climbed out. “Thanks, Troop…we’re good from here.”

  He gave me a gruff nod, backed up, turned, and left, throwing suspicious looks at us through the side view mirror. The three of us unzipped the light windbreakers we’d worn on the flight and checked our weapons. We all wore Heckler & Koch Mark 23 .45 ACP pistols in nylon shoulder rigs. We each carried six magazines, and we had other toys in the equipment bags. Bookworm stared at the guns and flicked his tongue over his lips like a nervous gecko.

  “Okay, run it down for us,” I said to him.

  “We’ll talk on the way down,” he said, and we piled into the golf cart. The security guy drove it into an elevator that began a descent of over a mile.

  “I’m Dr. Goldman,” said the guy with glasses. “I’m the deputy director of this facility. This is Lars Halverson, our head of security.”

  I shook hands with Halverson. His hand was firm but clammy, and his face and throat glistened with nervous sweat.

  “You’re Captain Ledger?” Goldman asked.

  I nodded and jerked a thumb over my shoulder. “The old man behind me is Top Sims and the kid in diapers is Bunny.” In my peripheral vision, I saw Top scratch his cheek with a middle finger.

  First Sergeant Bradley Sims was hardly old—but at forty-one he was the oldest field operative in the DMS. He was nearly as tall as me, a little heavier in the shoulders, and though he was a calm man by nature, he could turn mean as a snake when it mattered.

  The big kid next to him was Staff Sergeant Harvey Rabbit. Real name, so no surprise that everyone called him Bunny. He was just a smidge smaller than the Colossus of Rhodes, and somehow, despite everything we’ve been through together while running black ops for the Department of Military Sciences, Bunny still managed to keep his idealism bolted in place. My own was wearing pretty damn thin, and my optimism for rational behavior in people who should know better was taking one hell of a beating.

  “What were you told?” asked Goldman.

  “Not enough,” I said. “You believe there’s one or more infiltrators operating in your facility. You have one casualty, is that right?”

  I caught the quick look that passed between Goldman and Halverson. It was furtive as all get-out, and at that moment I wouldn’t have bought water from either of them if my ass was on fire.

  “Actually,” Goldman said slowly, “we have four casualties.”

  The engine of the elevator car was the only sound for a while. I heard Top clear his throat ever so slightly behind me.

  “Who’s dead?” I said sharply.

  “Two of my people,” said Halverson. “And another of the research staff.”

  “How and when?”

  “We found the second guard half an hour ago,” Goldman said. “The others were killed sometime last night. They didn’t report for the breakfast meeting, and when the security teams did a search they found them dead in their rooms.”

  “How were they killed?”

  Goldman chewed his lip. “The same as the first one.”

  “That’s not an answer. I asked ‘how?’”

  He turned to Halverson, but I snapped my fingers. Loud as a firecracker in the confines of the elevator car. “Hey! Don’t look at him. I asked you a question. Look at me and give me a straight answer.”

  He blinked in surprise, obviously unused to being ordered about. Probably thought his rank here at the facility put him above such things. Life’s full of disappointments.

  “They were…bitten.”

  “Bitten? By what? An animal? An insect?”

  Halverson snorted and then hid it with a cough.

  Goldman shook his head. “No…they were bitten to death by the…um…terrorists.”

  I stared at him, mouth open, unable to know how to respond. The elevator reached the bottom with a clang, and Halverson drove us out into the complex. We passed through a massive airlock that would have put a dent in NASA’s budget. None of us said anything, because all around us klaxons screamed and red emergency lights pulsed.

  Halverson stamped on the brakes.

  “Christ!” Goldman yelled.

  “OUT!” I growled, but Top and Bunny were already out of the cart, their guns appearing in their hands as if by magic. I was right with them.

  The floor, the walls, even the ceiling of the steel tunnel were splashed with bright red blood. Five bodies lay sprawled in ragdoll
heaps. Arms and legs twisted into grotesque shapes, eyes wide with profound shock and everlasting terror.

  The corridor ran a hundred yards straight forward, angling deeper into the bowels of the mountain. Behind us, the hall ran twenty yards and jagged left into a side hall. Bunny put his laser sight on the far wall near the turn. Top had his pointed ahead. I swept in a full circle.

  “Clear!” Bunny said.

  “Clear,” said Top.

  “Jesus Christ!” said Goldman.

  Halverson was saying something to himself. Maybe a prayer, but we couldn’t hear it beneath the noise of the klaxons.

  Then the alarms died. Just like that.

  So did the lights.

  The silence was immediate and dreadful.

  The darkness was absolute.

  But it was not an empty darkness. There were sounds in it, and I knew that we were far from alone down there.

  “Night vision,” I barked.

  “On it,” Bunny said. He was the closest to the golf cart, and I heard him rummaging in the bags. A moment later he said, “Green and go. Coming to you on your six.”

  He moved through the darkness behind me and touched my shoulder, then pressed a helmet into my hands. I put on the tin pot, flipped down the night vision, and flicked it on. The world went from absolute darkness to a surreal landscape of green, white, and black.

  “Top,” Bunny said, “coming to you.”

  I held my ground and studied the hall. Nothing moved. Goldman cowered beside me. He folded himself into the smallest possible package, tucked against the right front fender of the cart. Halverson was still behind the wheel. He had a Glock in his hand and the barrel was pointed at Top.

  “Halverson,” I said evenly, not wanting to startle him. “Raise your barrel. Do it now.”

  He did it, but there was a long moment of nervous indecision before he complied, so I swarmed up and took the gun away from him.

  “Hey!” he complained. “Don’t—I need that!”

  “You can’t see to shoot. Do you have night vision?”