The Ghost Pattern

by Leslie Wolfe

  Two armed men guarded the structure leisurely, leaning against a tree trunk, smoking and chatting. Their Kalashnikovs hung on their shoulders by their straps. Fuck, Alex thought, this could get ugly. Who knows how many more Russians could be inside that hangar.

  Lou signaled Sam, and they engaged in a quick exchange in military sign language. Still hidden by the thick forest brush, and watching every step they made, they approached the two guards silently, unseen and unheard.

  They fell behind them and swiftly Sam stabbed one guard in the neck, while Lou grabbed the other one in a tight chokehold, then broke his neck with a quick side twist. They grabbed their weapons and checked the surroundings quickly, then gave Blake and Alex the signal to approach.

  Close together, keeping a low profile, they approached the small entrance in the hangar, a side door almost completely covered in rust. Sam opened it slowly, and then followed Lou inside. A few seconds later, they cleared Alex and Blake to come in.

  They entered the hangar and Alex gasped. A wave of excitement resonated through her entire body. They’d found it! Above her head, the tail of a huge 747 extended all the way to the doors, almost touching them. In the dim light coming from the open door, the plane looked surreal.

  They continued to walk quietly, carefully listening and watching. Not a sound coming from anywhere. Except for the huge plane, the hangar was completely deserted.

  “Oh, no…” Blake exclaimed.

  “What’s wrong?” Alex whispered.

  “It’s not her plane,” Blake said with desperation in his voice. “This one has no markings. All Universal Air flights have the XA logo on their tails.”

  She looked at the tail, rising eight stories high in the air, and wondered why she’d missed that. She wanted it to be the XA233 so badly, that she didn’t see the evidence in front of her.

  She stared intently at the disappointingly white tail, scrutinizing it inch by inch, looking for some detail, some hint. Then she grabbed her LED flashlight and scanned the white tail again, squinting.

  “Wait a second…there!” she exclaimed, pointing the flashlight at a certain spot on the plane’s tail. “Blake, what do you see?”

  Sam and Lou lit their flashlights and pointed them at the same area.

  “See?” Alex said. “They peeled off the logo and markings, but there’s a trace left, where the paint was dulled by the adhesive material of the logo. The curvy X? You see?”

  Blake nodded, unable to speak for a few seconds, choked, while tears pooled in his eyes.

  “I knew it,” he whispered. “I know she’s alive!”

  Alex grinned widely and side-hugged him, not taking her eyes from the markings on the plane’s white tail. They were right; they had a chance.

  “Now let’s find her,” she said, walking briskly toward the aircraft door, still fitted with mobile stairs. Let’s see what we can find inside, maybe there’s something we can use.

  “Right,” Lou said, and joined her.

  As she walked past the huge landing gear, she looked up, intrigued to see it up close. She’d never been so close to a commercial airliner before. She slowed her pace a little, observing the double sets of wheels, the shock absorbers, the gear mechanism. Deep inside the gear compartment, a red glint caught the corner of her eye as she turned to leave.

  She froze. Feeling her blood instantly turn to ice, she looked up, searching for the source of the elusive red glint, the eerily familiar flicker. Then she found it. A timer, counting down, with only nine seconds left to go.

  “Oh, shit,” she said, then screamed from the bottom of her lungs, “run! Run!”

  She ran as fast as she could, her tactical vest and all her gear rattling on her and slowing her down. Everyone ran without looking back, following her lead. They exited the hangar running, but she didn’t stop there. She continued toward the forest line, running as fast as she could.

  The sound of the explosion reached them first, and then, within milliseconds, the shockwave hit them hard, smashing them to the ground and covering them with smoldering debris.

  ...48

  ...Tuesday, May 10, 9:58AM Local Time (UTC+3:00 hours)

  ...Vitaliy Myatlev’s Residence

  ...Moscow, Russia

  ...Thirteen Days Missing

  Ivan hated to be the one who had to wake Myatlev up in the morning. Eternally hung over, sullen, and grumpy as can be, Myatlev was not easy to deal with in the early hours of the day. Entering his bedroom usually turned Ivan’s stomach. He clenched his teeth and winced just thinking about it. The stink of metabolized alcohol and sweat, combined with stale cigar smoke and, sometimes, just to make it worse, the smell of bodily fluids exchanged freely during his boss’s sexual encounters, made it almost unbreathable, even for the hardcore ex-Spetsnaz that he was.

  Regardless, he had no choice but to wake him, and with bad news on top of it. Ivan stopped in front of Myatlev’s bedroom door, rapping his fingers against it and waiting no more than two seconds before entering.

  There he was, butt-naked, lying flat on his back, his morning wood still impressive for his age and state of physical decay, his snores roaring louder than a tank engine climbing a steep hill. At the far end of the bed, a young girl, not much older than sixteen, crouched shivering. Wrapped tightly in sweaty sheets and trying to take as little space as possible, she stared at him with big, round, pleading eyes.

  Ivan waved the girl away, and she was quick to disappear, grabbing her things on her way out. Then, taking a deep breath, he approached Myatlev and cleared his throat to wake him up. Nothing. No throat clearing was going to cover that snoring. He touched Myatlev’s shoulder, and said, speaking louder and louder with each word.

  “Boss? Boss? Good morning. Boss?”

  Myatlev finally opened his eyes, groaned, and licked his dry lips.

  “What the fuck is it?”

  Ivan handed him a glass of sparkling water and a couple of rehydrating pills, to help with his obvious hangover.

  “We blew up the plane, as you said,” Ivan replied, unperturbed. “We recorded the explosion via satellite.”

  “Good.”

  “But there’s a problem,” Ivan continued. “You’ll have to see.”

  He pulled open the laptop he had brought along, and pulled the recorded satellite view of the hangar. The recording started a few minutes before the explosion, showing four people approaching the hangar, taking out the two sentries, commando-style, then sneaking inside the hangar, only to come out of there running for their lives just seconds before everything blew up in a huge blaze of fire.

  “What the fuck?” Myatlev said, suddenly awake. “Who are they?”

  “Unknown,” Ivan replied. “But my man is still in the area. He’ll find out.”

  ...49

  ...Tuesday, May 10, 5:04PM Local Time (UTC+10:00 hours)

  ...Near Abandoned Airbase

  ...Mayak, Russia

  ...Thirteen Days Missing

  Alex landed hard face down, the shock knocking the air out of her lungs. All the hardware she carried in her vest pockets crushed her flesh when she’d smashed into the ground. She breathed shallow, feeling a sharp pain at the left of her sternum with each breath, but managed to put her hands on top of her head, trying to protect herself from the flying, smoldering debris. She looked to her left and saw Sam squinting and cussing under his breath. She couldn’t make out what he was saying; the sound of the explosion still rang in her ears. It didn’t matter though. It mattered he was still alive.

  To her right, Lou and Blake were starting to move tentatively, as to figure out if there was anything broken. Good, we’re four for four, excellent score, she thought, trying to encourage herself to get up.

  The falling debris let up, only smaller pieces of lighter materials, ash, and embers still coming down on them. She stood slowly, checking every limb carefully, mindful of all aches and pains, ruling them out one by one as non-critical. A cut on her forehead dripped blood in her right eye, and she wi
ped it off with the back of her hand. It wasn’t deep; she was OK. She turned toward Blake, who also stood, a little dazed, but in one piece. Sam got back on his feet with a little more difficulty, continuing to mutter oaths at every step, pallor appearing on his stained face. He wiped his shaved head with his sleeve, and walked a little crooked, dragging his left leg.

  “What happened?” Alex asked.

  “Nothing,” he replied, barely audible over the persistent ringing in her ears. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry. Let’s take care of that,” he said, pulling out his first-aid kit and extracting a butterfly bandage. “There,” he said, applying it gently to her forehead.

  “I lost the spare ammo,” Lou said bitterly. “It’s gone. It was near the hangar door.”

  “It’s all right,” Alex said. “We’re all carrying spare clips, we should be OK.” She turned toward Blake, who continued to look dazed, standing, yet appearing as if he was about to collapse. “Blake, you OK?”

  “We got nothing,” he replied, sounding sad and defeated. “We have no proof, nothing. It’s all gone.”

  “No,” Alex replied enthusiastically, “that’s not the case. Now we know you were right. We’ve all seen that plane with our own eyes. We don’t need to prove that to anyone to know what to do next. We know it, and that’s enough. Now we know she’s alive.”

  Blake looked at her with renewed hope.

  “Yeah, but where?” Lou asked. “They could be anywhere.”

  “Ah…don’t worry,” Sam replied, “we’ll find out.”

  Blake looked at Sam with hopeful, intrigued eyes. “How?” he asked.

  “The old way, the spy way,” he replied with a faint smile on his pale lips.

  They looked at him intently, waiting for him to explain what he meant. This time, he wasn’t going to get away with his coined phrase that implied he was just going to work some miracle and make it all happen.

  “When nearly 500 people are moved through a place so small, without major population density, someone is bound to have noticed something. Anything. And we'll start from there,” he said, his cryptic smile continuing to flutter on his lips. “Trust me,” he added and winked, creasing his soot and mud-stained face.

  “What next?” Alex asked.

  “I’d recommend we get the hell out of here,” Lou said. “There might be a cleanup crew coming, and we should take cover. Let’s head back into the woods, and find us a place where we can wait for Sam to work his magic and get us some field intel.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Alex said. Then she approached Lou and grabbed his forearm. “Don’t let him go alone, Lou,” she whispered in his ear, “he’s badly hurt.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll be fine. I have Blake, and we have guns. We’ll hide somewhere and hang tight until you get back.”

  Lou nodded his agreement, and then spoke louder, for everyone to hear. “It’s time to call in the support team. We have a confirmed scenario, and we’ll need help the moment we have the final location.”

  “Agreed,” Alex replied. “How long before they get here?”

  “They’re coming from Sapporo, on Hokkaido Island, that’s about 200 miles out,” Lou replied. “Shouldn’t take them more than sixty, at most ninety, minutes by chopper. They’ll have to fly low and slow to avoid radar.”

  Alex took in a gulp of hot, humid air and bit her lip. This is it…it’s about to get real, as real as it gets, she thought, bracing herself. Unsanctioned paramilitary action on another country’s sovereign territory, behind an unofficial enemy’s lines. We better be fucking right about everything we’re doing.

  “Let’s not waste time, then,” she said, sounding confident. “Send them the coordinates.”

  ...50

  ...Tuesday, May 10, 6:36PM Local Time (UTC+10:00 hours)

  ...Undisclosed Location

  ...Russia

  ...Thirteen Days Missing

  Gary Davis struggled to breathe, to stay calm. Anger took the best of him, controlling his every thought and every move. By now, he could be sure his blood pressure was through the roof, and no way to measure it. The silent killer…damn!

  He’d never been too good controlling his frustration. Quick and impatient in nature, a determined, ambitious, motivated go-getter and an ex-Marine, Gary’s time in captivity ate him from within like a disease. It infuriated him, scorned him on a level that he’d never thought possible. There had to be something they could do…they couldn’t just obey their captors and let themselves be used like that, then be killed. They had to find a way out.

  He’d been weaving daydreams of vengeance and escape ever since they’d been taken to that god-forsaken place. He’d been running escape scenarios in his mind, thinking that maybe he could, through some unspecified yet absolutely necessary miracle, grab the Kalashnikov away from Death, or One-Eye, or whomever. Then what? Then he’d figure something out.

  He finished mixing a new formulation, grunting with frustration at every step and hating himself, and loaded the test sample in the gas chromatograph. He was almost done with mixing one active compound and one antidote. Red capsules…green capsules…

  He wiped his sweaty forehead with his sleeve. There was something gnawing at the edges of his mind, like an idea he couldn’t yet grasp or formulate. The heat and the omnipresent stench didn’t help either. Days were getting hotter, and the absence of showers had become everyone’s curse. Little mosquitoes had made it through whatever filtration system still stopped the larger ones, but the small ones that had reached the lab were growing fast, stinging them constantly, and making their restless sleep even worse.

  The talented Dr. Fortuin had mixed up an antihistamine gel to control the itching, and had produced enough for all of them to use generously and gratefully. Just like table salt, oil, and vinegar, Fortuin’s little miracles of applied chemistry had made their lives a little more bearable.

  Yet they were in shambles. Two of them were bedridden. Declan Mallory was almost constantly sedated; his crushed ribs were not healing. Gary also suspected some slow oozing internal hemorrhage, where the sharp edges of his broken ribs might have lacerated his spleen, maybe his left lung.

  Dr. Jane Crawford, unable to stabilize her blood sugar in the absence of the right mix of rapid-acting and long-acting insulin shots, maintained good spirits, but hardly ever left her cot anymore.

  Dr. Adenauer hadn’t eaten anything since the lead motherfucker, Bogdanov, had shot that poor woman just to make his point. For some reason, Adenauer thought he was to blame for everything that was going on, including their presence in the hot, humid hell they were currently sharing.

  Gary wished there could be something he could say, something he could tell them to make them feel better. No words came to mind. He repressed a long sigh and returned his focus to the gas chromatograph screen and the capsules he was preparing.

  Red capsules…green capsules…What was he missing? Why were these two colors tugging at his mind?

  Red. In his own color code, red meant something bad. Red capsules contained the formulation they were trying to produce for their captors, the formulation that was going to increase aggression in the exposed subjects in a controlled manner.

  Green. Green stood for something good. Green capsules contained the antidote, the formulation that would reverse the effect of the red capsules, or, if used as a prophylactic, prevent the red capsules to have any effect.

  Red capsules…green capsules…

  Then he finally saw it, the elusive idea that had been driving him crazy.

  “My God,” he exclaimed, almost cheerfully. “We should have thought of this a long time ago,” he continued, slamming his palms together and rubbing them excitedly.

  Death lifted his eyes and stared at him inquisitively for a second, then lost interest.

  “What are you talking about?” Adenauer asked, startled from his thoughts.

  Gary signaled them to huddle up, and led them out of Death’s earshot, near Dr. Crawford’s cot.<
br />
  “What if we mixed a strong sedative instead, one that would have a very fast effect when aerosolized, and drop Death dead over there?” Gary explained in an excited whisper. “We’d be taking green pills ahead of time and we’d do fine.”

  “I already thought of that,” Adenauer replied sullenly. “I thought of that since the first day we got here. But what good is that going to do us, huh? You take one man’s gun, then what? Are you going to storm out the door, in a shooting match against God knows how many Russians? How many people are you willing to sacrifice in the crossfire?”

  Gary stood silent, disarmed by the cold logic presented by Adenauer. Yes, then what?

  “We—we haven’t seen too many Russians, right?” Gary insisted. “Here, guarding us, or coming with Bogdanov, we’ve only seen three. King Cobra, Death, and One-Eye,” he counted on his fingers.

  “Four,” Marie-Elise said. There was this other Russian on the first day, the one with a beard, remember him?

  “Yes,” Gary said. “I remember him. And there were definitely more at the trucks, when we got here.”

  “You have to assume that there are quite a few more, guarding the others,” Fortuin added calmly, as if the entire dialogue was academic in nature. “You’d have to assume at least twenty Russians or so, all trained sociopathic killers.”

  “So we have nothing,” Gary said, feeling blood boil in his veins. “That’s what you’re saying? That we have nothing, no fucking way out of here? That we’re gonna die in this rotting hell without even trying to put up a fight?”