Dark Winter

by Anthony J. Tata

  Reaching the end of the alley, she slipped around the corner to her right. Looking over her shoulder to her left, she bumped into a man, who immediately cupped his hand over her mouth, knocked the weapons out of her hands with keen precision, took her down to one knee, and slipped a pair of flex-cuffs over her wrists. Another man tied a blindfold over her eyes and a gag through her mouth.

  She sensed the presence of more men beyond her.

  A harsh voice whispered, “Alan!”

  Cassie knew it meant, “Now!” in Arabic.

  But her captors were Persian. Iranians. Why would they be speaking Arabic?

  A deafening explosion rang her eardrums and she felt the men scamper away from her, save one man, who kept his knee in her back and she presumed the metal pressed against her head was a pistol. Gunfire erupted behind her, automatic weapons fire echoing along the alley through which she had just run. Others must have stayed behind. It seemed she had stumbled upon a team conducting a mission.

  Sounds of gunfire erupted deep inside the building adjacent to the medical facility. After a minute, she heard the men scrambling back in her direction.

  “Adhhab! Adhhab!” Go! Go!

  “Alsajin?”

  “Ahdur! Alan!”

  She guessed that the men had briefly discussed her fate as two arms lifted her and practically dragged her for a minute or two. Amidst the confusion, she lost her bearings. The men’s hands were strong, their voices forceful. The light chop of helicopter blades sang in the distance. The pace quickened until they were beneath the hot downward draft of the rotors. They tossed her into a helicopter and then strapped her to the floor. She felt the men board the aircraft, which was lifting away before anyone was settled but her.

  The helicopter flew quickly, darting and banking as if evading enemy fire. She had been on dozens of training flights such as these, and only a few times in combat. Twice it felt like the helicopter was going to fall out of the sky. After about thirty minutes they slowed and landed, rolling to a stop. The men were quick, reversing the process, unloading the aircraft. They had something, or someone else, that they were carrying.

  She heard soft commands of “Lift,” and “Careful,” and “Heavy,” in Arabic.

  The helicopter flew away.

  The whispers became shouts. The silence rang in her ears.

  For the second time in one night, Cassie was dragged into a room and left alone, the haunting clank of a bolt sealing her fate.

  CHAPTER 16

  “DAMN DRONES ARE EVERYWHERE,” SOLHAMI BARKED AS HIS ANTI-AIRCRAFT gunners spat 30mm lead at the bat winged planes. As far as Gorham could tell, the drones were not armed. Perhaps they were information collectors and not weaponized? Through the haze of the nighttime battlefield, a drone no larger than a coffee table tumbled from the sky, breaking into pieces less than fifty meters away.

  Rotor blades chopped the air behind them as a helicopter landed to their rear. A young man in an olive drab uniform dashed off the Russian Hip helicopter, famous for spraying hydraulic fluid everywhere while in flight.

  Approaching the general, the young man stopped and saluted. Everything Gorham had read was to never salute in combat. Apparently Solhami agreed with this maxim, because he retrieved his pistol and aimed it at the courier, who was holding an envelope.

  “Drop the salute,” Solhami directed.

  The soldier did and began to hand Solhami the envelope.

  “No. Open it and read it to me.”

  The courier gave Solhami a puzzled look, but complied. He carefully opened the envelope and retrieved a white piece of paper. “The American woman has escaped. Location unknown.”

  At that point, Solhami pulled the trigger and literally shot the messenger in the forehead.

  “He should have never read me that message,” Solhami said. “Besides, he was useless. Saluting me in a combat zone?”

  The young man lay motionless on the street where they were huddled behind a blockade of concrete rubble, burned car hulks, and flaming tires. The apocalyptic scene was everything Gorham imagined combat to be, but he was unprepared for the thunderous boom of Solhami’s pistol. Gorham turned and vomited in the street.

  “Grow a pair, mister,” Solhami spat at him when he turned around, wiping his mouth. “Now you’ve seen combat. My troops are about to break through the Jordan Valley and into Israel. This will be the toughest fighting of all.”

  “General, pace yourself. You do not want to endanger Mr. Gorham,” Kal said.

  “Kal, you’ve been on a lot of missions. This is bigger than anything you’ve done though. And why do I give a shit about this guy?”

  As if to emphasize his point, a deluge of rockets peppered the ground on either side of them, explosions sending shrapnel in the air, whistling overhead and clattering into the barrier.

  “Because he will help all of us maintain the momentum. Iran and North Korea are allies. We need this victory. Destruction of America is within our grasp.”

  A rocket soared overhead, leaving a smoky vapor trail in its wake. While Gorham was ill, he was also resolute. His plan was still intact. He was on the front lines of a war he had helped initiate without warning to the rest of the world. The Russians were making progress against Western Europe. The Iranians were about to break through Jordan into Israel. The North Koreans were racing toward the Pusan port. All this action had taken place in twenty-four hours. The element of surprise was the key to everything happening and now there was no way to unring that bell, as the saying went.

  They had achieved surprise. The progress was unbelievable. The American military had been caught completely unprepared. By hiding in the Deep Web, they had been able to do almost all the preparations necessary to conduct this blitzkrieg across two continents.

  “Listen to Kal, General. You need me. Kal and I will fly back and get out of your way. I’ve seen what I need to see. Continue with your great work here and kill the American sponsored Zionists in Israel. In forty-eight hours I hope to see you in Tel Aviv.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty-four hours, Mister. Have a safe trip.” To Kal, Solhami said, “You should really stay here with me.”

  Gorham noticed that the Korean operative held his gaze. Perhaps they were former lovers. Maybe a one-night stand in a lonely city on a random operation. He got the sense that combat might bring together those who enjoyed the thrill. Like Comic-Con for comic book lovers or SHOT Show for gun lovers. All the same to him.

  Gorham and Kal walked with the Iranian guards nearly a mile to the rear of the combat before boarding the helicopter. Dusty shale crunched under their boots. The whistles and explosions of combat surrounded them in a surreal 3-D display.

  The flight to the airfield medical facility was brief and without incident. As they landed, he saw the Manaslu jet sitting idle on the runway. The stairway was down, though, and the pilots were walking around the aircraft as if doing preflight inspection. He waved over Chaz Wakefield, his longtime corporate pilot.

  “Ready to go in an hour,” Gorham said.

  “Roger. Things getting hairy here, boss. Where to?” Wakefield asked.

  “Will let you know after I see what happened to this woman.”

  “The American? We’re walking a tightrope here, boss. I never question your ethics, but we are Americans. Iran, Jordan, everything’s on fire. Chatter over the pilot networks is that Russia is in Poland. North Korea in South Korea. We’re looking at World War Three. Don’t want us getting shot down.”

  “We won’t be shot down. I just need you to fly, Chaz. Let’s be ready,” Gorham said and walked away. When he turned Kal was standing next to him. She had been listening.

  “I have an idea once you can focus. Let’s do what you need to do here and then we can talk.” She took long strides, keeping pace with him. Their feet crunched on the shale and gravel leading up to the medical facility. Walking past the doctors and the confused staff, he found Doctor Sadiqi dead on the floor of the room in which Captain Bagwell had been h
eld. He saw the open doorway that led to a tunnel. Kal came up behind him.

  “She’s definitely gone,” he said.

  “She was here?” Kal asked.

  Gorham nodded. He walked out and found the commander in charge of the hospital. “Where is the Iranian Olympian?”

  Kal stopped. “You mean the Iranian biometric key?”

  “Yes. Remember. We left him here.”

  The hospital administrator looked confused, disheveled. Gorham saw Stasovich approach through the front doors of the hospital.

  “They’re both gone. Jordanian special forces, maybe Mossad, too, picked up the Iranian biometric key and the Captain,” Stasovich said. He was bleeding profusely from three or four different places on his body. A knife cut across his face had perhaps blinded him in his left eye. His hands were a mangled bloody mess. And his left arm was in a sling that had blossoming stains.

  “How did they find Persi, the Iranian biometric key?”

  “As you can see, I went after the girl. I had the guards lock Persi in the building next door. Somebody is digging through our stuff. That’s all I can think. Most likely Mossad hackers tracking us. We’re in a global war. The cyber domain is just as competitive as reality, just less bloody.”

  It was not good for Iran that their biometric key had been captured. If the Jordanians could get him to the Iranian facility they could shut off the Iranian nuclear capabilities. Of course, Gorham could override everyone now that he had stolen their biometric data from the Iranian facility, but he would have to be at one of the four Biometric Recognition Terminals in Russia, Iran, North Korea, or Idaho to take control of one of the RINK arsenals.

  He sighed. He missed Shayne, despite wishing his employee had died in the attack attempted at the refuel site. Stasovich was all brawn, very little brain. But he was there and alive, so that counted for something. He required some element of savvy and intelligence to remain alive. No one was that lucky all the time. The man needed medical attention, though. Gorham wanted one ally that he could rely upon. Was Kal an ally? He needed to unpack that box. Needed to separate his desire from his execution. Or was it all okay? He’d read dozens of biographies of military generals and they all seemed to get laid routinely while in battle. Maybe that was part of the deal.

  There was a package in his brain, an entire floor of packages, that Dr. Draganova had shown him. They were on the phone, as usual, and she’d walked him through his desires.

  “Do you want just women, Ian?”

  “I know I want you, Doctor.”

  “But you always want what you can’t have.”

  “I can always have what I want, so far.”

  “Have you had me?”

  “I hope to.”

  “Hope is not a method. Where’s the confident entrepreneur?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Do you like men, also, Ian?”

  “I prefer women, honestly.”

  “Why? So you can conquer?”

  He paused. “Perhaps.”

  “Women are weaker?”

  “Perhaps”

  “You want nothing left untouched by Ian Gorham?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You desire immortality?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Now it all made sense to him. Here was Kal, for whom he felt the stirrings of desire. Just another conquest? Wise move? He would find out soon enough, he presumed. Was he just a narcissist needing a fix from a beautiful woman?

  Perhaps.

  Focusing, he found another doctor in the Iranian military emergency room and said, “Will you do what you can to patch up my friend here?”

  “There are so many. He must wait in line.”

  Stasovich may have been severely injured, but that didn’t prevent him from clutching the doctor’s throat with his vice grip.

  “I think you’ll find sufficient incentive to move Mr. Stasovich to the front of the line. We hold some sway here,” Gorham said.

  The doctor nodded, his eyes bugging out from Stasovich’s grip, which stayed in place until the doctor began backing up and prying at the hulk’s arms. “O-okay,” he muttered, and led Stasovich to an operating room.

  Gorham turned and walked outside, stared across the courtyard where Persi said Captain Bagwell had been snatched. The woman had some pluck. Who were these people that believed they could get in front of his plan? No one was better than he. Not even some Delta Force wannabe and her pals. He stared into the night sky, retrieved his iPad, and listened to the sounds of warfare pop in the distance. A rocket here, machine-gun chatter there. Whistling artillery shells exploded closer than he would have anticipated. He smiled. He was an on-the-front-lines hardened combat veteran.

  As his iPad connected with the ManaSats overhead, he felt Kal’s presence beside him. She was stealthy, like a ninja. Maybe she was one.

  He scrolled through several login protocols. Finally, the iPad geo-located him and then began searching for Captain Bagwell. While in captivity, he had placed a mini-ManaBlade tracking device in the middle of her back using a hypodermic air gun. The device was no bigger than a wood splinter or a grain of rice and it was unlikely she would feel it as he had anesthetized the entire region with an ointment. Even if she did figure it out, Bagwell would not be able to reach it herself. She would need help removing the device, which was located very close to her spine. Good luck.

  The iPad chirped. A series of concentric rings spread outward, circling a solid blue dot that bore the label BAGWELL. He zoomed in and saw that she was in a mountainous area near the Dead Sea. He plugged in his earbuds and used his iPad to call General Solhami via the ManaSat array above them.

  “Yes, Mister?” the general barked.

  “I’ve located the woman. She is on your path of attack through the Jordan Valley into Israel.”

  After a pause, Solhami said, “Good work, soldier. While of little value to us, I’m sure we can find a good public use of capturing her.”

  “I actually need her back,” Gorham said. “All the success you are achieving is because we have created defects in the weapons and missiles of the enemy. I can just as easily make them more accurate. So, I need the woman back quickly. I intend to trade her for someone much more valuable that can help your cause even more.”

  Static filled the airwaves for several moments. The general certainly didn’t enjoy being questioned or challenged. “I don’t believe you,” Solhami said. A chuckle resonated through the speaker on the phone.

  “Stand by a second,” Gorham said, confident.

  “Believe him,” Kal said. The microphone on the earbuds picked up her voice.

  Solhami frowned. “Kal? But why?”

  “Because she knows what I can do,” Gorham interrupted.

  Like a consigliere, she mediated between the two men. Gorham studied her a moment then returned his attention to his iPad. Her black hair and black jumpsuit contrasted with her translucent white face. Somewhere she had changed from the professional outfit she had worn at the Iranian Biometric Center. She was combat ready, it appeared.

  “I still don’t believe him. As much as I trust you, Kal. I have no time for this Internet coward,” Solhami scoffed.

  Gorham pinched and pulled at his iPad until he found a Jordanian artillery unit that was in reserve to the west of Amman. He punched on the icon and typed in Disable RAT. He then sent Solhami’s location to the commander of the field artillery battery via the Jordanian secure chat command and control system, which Shayne had previously hacked. He typed Confirmed location of General Solhami, Iranian Special Forces Commander. Fire immediately.

  “What am I standing by for?” Solhami asked.

  “A demonstration,” Gorham said.

  “Just do what he says, General,” Kal reiterated.

  It took longer than he wanted, probably because of confusion and human intervention, but the icon flashed Rounds Fired!

  Calculating a thirty second parabolic arc, Gorham said, “General, you have about twenty second
s to find cover. A 155 mm artillery battery just fired a converging sheath of high explosive rounds on your ten digit grid coordinate.”

  “What?”

  “Now about fifteen seconds.”

  The icon flashed with Repeating!

  “Oh, and you better stay down. They’re repeating.”

  Scrambling and heavy breathing filled the microphone. Gorham could hear the whistling of the shells through Solhami’s phone. He had no idea where the general was finding cover, but the explosions thundered over the phone, which then went dead.

  He removed the earbuds and lifted his head. The artillery volleys rumbled to the west, echoing along the desert floor.

  After about ten minutes, Solhami called, “You idiot. Turn them off!”

  “Problem is, General, I can’t. We can get in there, but once I’m out, I can’t get back in without considerable effort. I can send a command to cease fire. Would you like for me to do that?”

  “Yes!”

  “Okay. But first, will you get Captain Bagwell for me in the next few hours?”

  “Blackmail me with my own life?” Solhami growled, then paused. “Kind of respect that.”

  “Twelve hours. This is very urgent.” Gorham typed the command, which was sent from the Jordanian Artillery Command Center. Cease Fire. Target Neutralized.

  “That”—Kal paused—“was interesting.” She cozied up to him, slid an arm around his waist, and put her cheek against his. Whispering, she said, “We should go. I know just the place.”

  He had been prepped by Dr. Draganova for this reaction. He had inquired about combat and the impact of it on men and women. After an initial flurry of questioning as to why he was interested, she’d relented and described that many people found the death and destruction of warfare to be a major aphrodisiac.

  The North Korean woman’s mouth against his cheek stirred something deep inside him. He knew he had more boxes to unpack in his mind. So much to know and learn. He was mission-focused right now and could he really stand to have a romantic distraction? The doctor had tried to get him to realize that his life was happening all at the same time and that he needed to embrace everything simultaneously, not sequentially.