by Mike Leon
“What’s interesting is that from the location and the way it was connected, we think it displays visual and auditory communication.”
“Like video chat,” Walter says. He gets it. No. He doesn’t get it. They mean something way more far out. “Like a hologram?”
Walter picks up the peculiar device, round and crystalline, with a yellowish tint to its translucent curves and folds. It fits just barely in his hand, the size of a large baseball, like the big balls at the batting cages he hit as a kid. The thing reminds him of a conch.
“No,” Tom responds. “More of a hypnagogic hallucinatory broadcast.”
“It would actually feel like you’re there talking to someone,” Zap says. “Or that they’re in the room with you.”
“It’s how the monster in the catacombs knew our guys were burning big daddy.”
“Right.”
And then something eerie occurs to Walter.
“Do you think they could be listening to us with it right now?”
Zap furrows his brow and glances to the device in Walter’s hand with uncertainty.
“We can’t be sure.”
“Doubtful,” Tom injects. “We connected it to several types of power sources and were unable to detect any sort of propagation activity, electromagnetic or auditory. We may, however, lack proper demodulation.”
“It probably has to be wired to one of the creatures to work,” Zap says. “Or at least to place outgoing calls.”
Walter’s Blackberry chimes for an incoming text message. He struggles to retrieve the thing from the holster on his hip. After returning from the catacomb, he had the entire building fitted with repeaters for cell service and most upper level staff assigned phones. The Blackberry phones were selected for the advanced encryption features, even though some of the staff complained they were clumsy to operate – a complaint Walter is coming to agree with more and more as he attempts to get used to the tiny little keys and abundance of menu screens. Walter never used anything but a flip phone before this. Maybe he should just go back to that.
“Tom,” Walter asks, getting the geek’s attention. “You ever get laid?”
“Often,” Tom answers without a second to hesitate. “I wrote a paper for MIT titled Neuro-linguistic Programming and Middle-level Evolutionary Practices in Human Females in Contemporary Social Venues.”
“Catchy title.”
“Thank-you. It does have a sort of rhythm.”
The message on his phone, when he finally navigates his way to the inbox, is from Frank Overton, informing Walter that Bill Dillinger from Special Operations Group is inside waiting to talk to him. This is unusual, but not a total shock. Bill Dillinger is a stooge – a lazy man with a cushy government salary. Most of the time he does nothing at all, but when he sees something that might jeopardize his cushy position, he explodes into action – waving his hands and generally dramatizing the issue until someone with some actual initiative takes pity on him and corrects whatever he’s crying about.
“Keep working on this thing,” Walter tells them. “See if you can get it to do anything.”
The communications department on floor seven of the building is a dimly lit open space filled with rows of tables and computers. Analysts sit parked at the machines, combing through intel sent to the company daily by intelligence gathering organizations. Major news broadcasts play on a bank of televisions in the corner. Most of what they do here is putting together briefings for operators before assignments. The rest is hacking and data recovery.
Walter spots Frank Overton in the far corner of the room, hovering over the shoulder of one of the analysts. The operator has a grim look on his grey bearded face, as Bill Dillinger barks at him, shaking his head vigorously and angrily. Walter can’t hear what they’re talking about, but he doesn’t expect it to be all that serious. Frank sees him approaching and uses the opportunity to interrupt Dillinger.
“Mr. Stedman…” Frank begins.
“What’s the problem?” he says, cutting off Frank’s pleasantries. He has barely set foot off the elevator.
Bill Dillinger is an obese man, although not by a morbid standard. He shaves his salt and pepper facial hair into something Deadeye once called a ‘power W’ and wears a cheap grey and brown suit that’s either mismatched or just ugly from the start.
“The problem is I just got a fax from Helen Anderson at NSA,” Dillinger starts. “She’s investigating a possible American connection to the Saudi airliner crash. Did you know that the Saudi National Guard were conducting citywide sweeps for days after the crash?”
“No.”
“CIA has a report that says they were looking for unknown insurgents. Do you know that the plane originated from KBL the same day someone ran a bulldozer through the perimeter fence?”
“No, Bill. I’ve been a little preoccupied. If camel jockeys want to crash planes into each other’s cities, I’m okay with that.”
“Dodson,” Bill says to the communications staffer behind him. “Play the tape for Mr. Stedman.”
“This is the last transmission sent from Ariana 415,” Dodson says. “It was recorded by air traffic control at Jeddah, and the Saudis pulled a copy from the plane’s black box too.”
The recording is fuzzy, but it isn’t difficult to make out what is said.
“Sand niggers of the holy city. Muhammad sucks my cock and I’m here to kill your god.” There is no Arab accent at all. The voice on that tape speaks perfect American English.
“Does that sound like a camel jockey to you, Mr. Stedman?” Bill asks.
“Who is it?” Walter asks.
“I should be asking you that question,” Bill replies, holding up a black and white photograph. It shows two men, one a husky man wearing a torn leather jacket that could not possibly be more inundated with safety pins.
“This is the photograph NSA sent to my office this morning,” Bill says. “It was taken by a SANG unit inside Mecca the day after the crash. Shortly after, the entire unit was lost. We identified the man on the left. His name is Elmore Travis. Goes by the name Niggerfucker. He does freelance wetwork for whoever can afford to pay him. He did that human rights advocate in Sudan last year.”
“The one that got road hauled from a Harley?” Walter remembers that nasty mess. He had some intel to suggest Bilderberg had a part in that hit, but it wasn’t their business to step in.
“Yeah. Real pleasant guy.”
Bill points to the other man in the picture. Walter recognizes Victor Hansen immediately, but he says nothing. He met the super soldier face to face only once, when he met with Ashley Marjorie in Afghanistan almost two years ago. Victor had just quietly and single handedly obliterated a unit of ISOF commandos that learned a little bit too much about what Kill Team Three was doing out there.
“This man on the right remains unidentified,” he says. “But as you can see from his left shoulder…”
Frank circles Victor Hansen’s left shoulder with his finger. The son-of-a bitch is wearing a Graveyard logo on it. There it is, on the shoulder of his green duster like a silent indictment of everything Walter has tried so hard to keep secret.
“He’s one of your people,” Bill says.
“This came from the NSA?” Walter asks. He doesn’t like the idea that someone at the NSA is this far up in his business.
“Yeah. A Helen Anderson.”
“She an agent or a dweeb?” The NSA is mostly dweebs that sit hunched over computers. The organization is known for being the single largest employer of mathematicians in the country.
“I don’t know. What does it matter?”
“Frank,” Walter turns to the operator. “Send some guys out there to give her the black van treatment.”
Frank Overton nods quietly. He’ll get it taken care of within the week.
“Stedman,” Bill asks. “Is this one of your people?”
“That’s need to know, Bill. And you don’t need to know.” Walter smiles, and in that moment he thinks maybe he isn
’t being quite serious enough.
The operations conducted by Graveyard’s kill teams are not disclosed to anyone but Walter and the people who pay him. Frank and the other lower level operators have no idea what the kill teams do, or even the names of all the members. Dillinger isn’t privy to all that information either. He’s a fucking government coffee bitch to them and nothing more.
“Walter, if this is what I think it is…” Bill starts.
“What exactly do you think it is?” Walter responds, making a point to take a much darker tone than before. He doesn’t care to hear the rest of what Dillinger was going to say, and he’s probably doing the fucking donut boy a favor by preventing him from saying it.
Bill shuts his mouth right then and there. He gets the point.
Walter has no idea what the fuck Victor Hansen was doing in Mecca. He had no orders to go there. They certainly didn’t give him the idea to crash a plane into the place. And why the fuck is he with this Travis character? Whatever he’s doing, he risks exposing Graveyard on an international level. Or does he?
Walter thinks about it some more. What would connect Victor to Graveyard? A jolly roger on his jacket? Military units all over the world use a skull logo. It’s one of the most common designs out there. The SS used that logo. Pirates use logos like that for God’s sake. What does that prove? Nothing. Dillinger only recognized it because he works with them.
“The guy in the picture, where is he now?” Walter asks.
“No idea.” Bill says. “Disappeared after the firefight with the SANG guys. The Saudis spent days looking for him and turned up nothing.”
“Then it’s not really a problem anymore, is it?”
“I guess not.”
“Good. Then let’s get back to dealing with actual threats.”
Walter doesn’t have time for this kid shit right now. He’s fighting a war against monsters from another dimension. If Victor Hansen wants to go on a killing spree in a part of the world where killing sprees are common as shit on a pig farm, Walter isn’t going to stop him. What’s the worst that could happen?
MERTVAYA RUKA
Victor Hansen is out in the cold – quite literally.
The frozen wastes of Siberia are a hell for some, but a welcome respite for Victor. He was tired of the fucking deserts and boiling heat – nothing but a nuisance. The cold is far more deadly. It takes days to die from dehydration, but men can freeze to death in only hours. Victor is at home with death, and that makes him perfectly comfortable here.
His father came from Siberia. The old man talked about it like the ultimate test of endurance the entire time Victor lived with him. It all seems laughable now. Survival here is not that complicated. Step one: put a coat on. Step two: keep the coat on. It could not be easier.
“I’m freezing my balls off here!” Niggerfucker whines. The fucking worm has been complaining about the temperature ever since they left the trucks.
Victor pulls his pale green duster open over the layers of coats and pants wrapped around him. He raises a pair of heavy plastic binoculars painted with green camouflage from around his neck.
“It’s just a cool breeze,” he says. “I’m enjoying it.”
A big black bird falls dead from the sky and slaps into the ground at Victor’s feet. It is a type of crow. Victor doesn’t know what kind. It isn’t his business to identify animals beyond those he could eat and those he cannot. Any greater detail is useless to him.
“What do you see?” asks the Philistine. She wears a thick, white, furry parka over her clothes. The hood covers her head and a black ski mask hides her face.
Looking across the whole mile ahead, even the gently falling snow around them acts as a barrier to vision. Victor sees the feint blur of a steel and concrete structure through the grey distance. It could be mistaken for a simple shed, or maybe a bomb shelter, by anyone who did not already know what secret the Russians buried here.
“I think I see it,” he says.
“Are you sure?” she replies. “It would be easy to miss out here. I think we’re too far north.”
“No. I’m sure.” Victor can make out where the line of the structure’s roof meets with the inclining slope of the mountain behind it. The building is no simple shed.
“Alright,” the Philistine nods. “Let’s move in. Werewolf, take the grunts on point.”
She means the small army of mercenaries she hired in Bosnia. Behind them, are all forty-two soldiers in ragged mismatched coats carrying backpacks and rifles of many different makes. Only a few of them speak understandable English so Victor doesn’t talk to them much. He initially objected to such an unskilled and unreliable collection of thugs to assist them, but the Philistine insisted they would need fodder for the mission ahead. Still, Victor would have preferred men with more discipline and ability. The Chechens he killed with his brother were almost certainly more competent. These men were prone to petty verbal arguments and small talk, qualities which are hardly the hallmarks of a great warrior. Victor would have murdered at least three of them for giving away their position in the last day alone, if they weren’t in such a desolate place. There is no one to hear them for miles, and that alone keeps these men alive.
The werewolf steps forward from amongst the group of mercenaries. The fur covered beast is three feet taller than the tallest of them and sticks out boldly no matter how many are surrounding him. The creature’s decision to go in his enormous man-beast form, rather than wear a coat, was some sort of pissing contest meant for Victor. The werewolf seemed disappointed when Victor didn’t even notice his challenge or care about the biting cold. The Bosnians, however, were fucking aghast and had to be reassembled into a working unit from the pants-shitting, sobbing, running, broken mess of screaming bitches they became as soon as they saw the monster.
At the Philistine’s command, the werewolf jogs ahead, taking the Bosnians with him. It was Victor’s idea to send them in first, as the Philistine believed there could be a mine field surrounding the little structure. They don’t have minesweepers, but they have the next best thing – men from a part of the world where life is cheap.
Victor stays fifty paces behind the Bosnians, and only the Philistine remains behind him with Jenkins and Chuck. The one they call Killa chose to stay behind in Cairo rather than join them, so Victor killed him in his sleep by stabbing him repeatedly in the throat with a relish fork from the Philistine’s kitchen. He then threw the body down the stairwell for everyone in the building to see as a warning. The others quickly decided to come to Siberia.
Niggerfucker carelessly traipses ahead, understandably so, as he has little to fear from land mines. Though Victor thinks he has not entirely thought his actions through. If Niggerfucker does step on a mine, he will surely regenerate and be no worse for wear, but his heavy winter coat will not, and Victor doesn’t want to hear any more of the stupid oaf complaining about the cold.
His worries are likely unfounded. If there are mines buried in the snows ahead, Victor would have smelled them by now. Of course, the cold does make it more difficult to make out any sort of scent. It is possible he could be missing something. Oh well. That is what the mercenaries are for, he thinks, and he continues along, careful to tread in their footprints, but discreetly enough that they won’t look back and notice that is what he is doing.
They reach the shed without incident. The Bosnians gather along the walls of the concrete building, as Victor and the Philistine examine the front door. The rusted steel door is partly rotted away at the edges and the hinges look like they might not open at all. It is affixed with a heavy padlock above the bar handle and a steel chain held with another padlock and wrapped through the handle and another bar bolted to the door frame.
“Next generation Soviet technology,” Niggerfucker remarks, pointing laughingly at the padlock as he draws the forty-two inch bolt cutters he brought with him from his backpack.
“I thought there would be more guards,” Victor says, carefully scanning the hor
izon for signs of approaching enemies. He sees nothing but the cold grey skies and the blur of white flurries.
“This installation is the best kept secret of the entire cold war,” the Philistine says. “Only a few top officials in the KGB ever knew the exact location. When the block fell, the hard records were destroyed and those officials agreed the location would remain unwritten forever. In the nineties, Hugo Venkoff, the general responsible for security here, assassinated everyone else who knew and tried to sell the coordinates back to the Russians for a fortune in diamonds. It would have worked, but he had an embolism and died right before they gave him the cash. Not even the Russians know where this place is.”
“That don’t add up,” Niggerfucker says. He chops through the padlock. “How did you know where it is?”
“Venkoff missed one person – an old lover of mine. Pillow talk goes a long way in the spy game.”
Niggerfucker chuckles as he cuts the chain on the door handle and it slithers to the snowy ground at his feet.
“Too bad they didn’t have the sense to lock this place down a little better,” he laughs. “Har-har har.”
As he rips the door open, flakes of rust and ice break away from the ancient hinges and spill to the ground below. The door creaks loudly as it swings outward into the frigid cold.
In front of them is another, far cleaner door, pristine metal, unaffected by the elements and sealed steadfast just inside the door frame. It has no visible hinges, and Victor concludes it may slide open by some unseen mechanism. A panel beside the door flashes red digital marquee text that reads Готовность для сканирования сетчатки глаза. Beneath that is a small bump out with a thumb print scanner and microphone. Next to that is a nine number keypad.
“You were saying?” the Philistine coldly retorts.
Victor rolls his eyes. He is undaunted. He knocks on the door and is greeted, not by a hollow clamor, but by a light tapping sound. It feels like rock. This door must be three inches of solid steel at least.
