Shadows Rising

by Ernest Dempsey

  He took another puff of the smoke. While he professed a righteous disposition to the men under his command, deep down he secretly coveted the two women for himself. They would make a fine addition to his harem, though he knew that would never be possible.

  They were too dangerous to keep alive. He had no idea who they were, but there was no denying their lethal capabilities. He’d set the trap with the knowledge that Qufar Abdi had given up as much as he probably could. While Qufar had proved himself useful over and over again, and loyal to the cause, Tosu also knew the man was weak, easily broken if the right pressure was applied.

  Tosu had hoped—for a fairly long time—that Qufar would come around and embrace the true spirit of their movement. That’s what it was, after all: a revolution against the greed of the West, a desperate cry by a holy few to right the planet and turn it into a sanctuary Allah would be proud of.

  But that conversion had never truly happened for Qufar. It was better to kill him and let him get his reward a little early rather than have him suffer at the hands of the nonbelievers.

  The phone rang in Tosu’s pocket, and he pulled it out. He didn’t have to look at the screen to know who it was. He’d requested the Teacher to call him at this exact time, and the older man was never late. Punctuality, he said, was honorable.

  “It is done,” Tosu said two seconds after hitting the green button on his device. “The heathen women are in the mine now with no way to escape.”

  “Good,” the gravelly voice said. “You have done well, my Son. I knew you would not fail me.”

  “Of course not.”

  There was a long pause, and for a second Tosu wondered if the call had dropped. He looked at the screen and noted two bars in the display’s top corner. Nope. The call was still live.

  “I wonder, though,” the old man said, “why you didn’t execute the nonbelievers on sight.”

  Tosu had anticipated this question before putting the entire plan together. His trap had worked to perfection. Knowing the women and their allies would try to find him, Tosu set about sending fake signals on the dark web. He knew if he put out too many breadcrumbs, they would sense trouble and immediately become suspicious. So he only put two offers out there, and in two different parts of the world.

  He assumed whoever the women worked for would have a dossier on him, some kind of file that gave away his personal information, including his country of origin. It was how surveillance operated. And while he wasn’t sure which group had come after him, he knew they all thought the same way, with many similar protocols in place.

  It was only natural, then, that when they found the offer to buy weapons on the dark web from a buyer in Albania, the women would follow the trail all the way to his front door.

  He’d decided before they ever entered his city that he wasn’t going to kill them right away. They would suffer by watching the wretched masses burn.

  “I felt it prudent,” Tosu said, answering the older man’s question. “I like to have bargaining chips just in case. And besides, they should be made to suffer for their sins. They will watch the attacks unfold with no chance of being able to help.”

  There was another moment of silence. “Very well, Khalil. I trust your judgment on this matter. You have not failed me before.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Now, how are things progressing? Are we on schedule?”

  Tosu knew that would be the man’s next question. “No, sir.” He let his answer hang for a second before he added, “We’re ahead of schedule. Our preparations will be finished within the next forty-eight hours. Then you may proceed as planned.”

  The old man couldn’t hide the surprise in his voice. “Excellent.”

  “I’ll let the others know that their shipments should arrive by the first of next week. Then the nonbelievers will see the true glory of our cause.”

  “Indeed.”

  Tosu knew who the others were, though he’d only met them once. They were all leaders of the Red Ring, strategically placed in eight locales throughout the world. Each location was a major population center—and a target—but each was more than that. One cell was in Chicago, another in New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, Sydney, and Mumbai.

  The strikes would come simultaneously and without warning. First, the rockets would hit the city centers. Thousands would die immediately from the explosions. Then the bioweapons would kick in. Tens of thousands would be infected with the illness. The afflicted nations would rally their doctors and hospitals, but with such an outbreak there would be no way to mass produce the cure fast enough.

  Some could be saved, but in the end the disease would be overwhelming.

  And then there was the matter of the eighth cell.

  They were positioned in Atlanta, ready to take out the Centers for Disease Control. The facility was one of the most heavily fortified in the world. It was the Fort Knox of biological research. But it had weaknesses just like any other government operation.

  So the most powerful bombs would be delivered there. But they wouldn’t be sent via rocket. The Teacher had selected a group of brave men who were ready to die for the cause. They would enter the building one at a time. The first would go in with guns blazing. The second would detonate a device strapped to his chest. With the walls broken and the entrance wide open, the third and fourth men would charge ahead and finish the job, detonating two powerful explosives within the compound.

  With the CDC out of the way, America’s and its allies’ fight against the biowar would be severely hindered. Millions would die within the first month. Governments would fall. People would stay in their homes. The world would sink to its knees.

  Tosu believed in what they were doing. He knew that nothing like this had ever been attempted before. He likened it to the Spartans fighting the Persians in the Battle of Thermopylae where only three hundred soldiers were able to fight off enemies numbering in the tens of thousands.

  This, however, wasn’t a defensive play. It was an attack. The Red Ring was only two thousand in number, but put in the right places they could wreak havoc.

  Unsuspecting civilians would be helpless. The police and military would be too slow to react, and by the time they did the Red Ring’s men would disappear, ready to attack another target when the command was given.

  The targets had been chosen with great care, in places where guns weren’t permitted. Tosu and his master would have loved nothing more than to strike places like Dallas or Houston, but the Southern United States was a crapshoot. In that region, more citizens were armed than not. While many infidels would die, so would many of the Red Ring’s soldiers.

  Not that that mattered. They were going to likely die anyway, either from combat or from the disease that would spread. Either way, they’d intentionally left out that part of the United States. Those people would be taken care of by the biological weapons.

  “Carry on,” the Teacher said, interrupting Tosu’s thoughts. “I will prepare a speech to share with our legions. Let me know when all the preparations have been made.”

  “I will.”

  Tosu ended the call and took another drag on his cigar. Everything was falling into place.

  That thought was the last thing to run through his mind a second before the alarms started sounding.

  He sat up in his chair. “What? What is going on?”

  He grabbed a phone on the desk and picked it up, punching several buttons before putting the receiver to his ear. The line was dead.

  Tosu slammed the phone down and hurried out of the room, leaving the cigar smoldering in an ashtray.

  He ran back into the main building, down a corridor to the security room where he knew two of his men were monitoring the facility with a series of displays. Tosu burst through the door and found chaos inside. The two men were shouting orders into their headsets. On one of the screens, Tosu saw the carnage in the room outside the cell where he’d put the women. His men were lying all over the place, a few of them heaped onto one another
.

  “What is going on?” he demanded anew. Then he saw movement on another screen. The blonde woman was firing her weapon as the brunette moved up through the tunnel. Two more of his men fell.

  “The prisoners, sir,” one of the men said, “they—”

  His comment was cut off by gunshots coming from just outside the building.

  The women were almost there.

  A million questions ran through Tosu’s mind. The biggest of all was how had the women managed to escape. It should have been impossible. They were locked up, surrounded, with no hope to get away. Yet here they were, knocking on his door.

  “Sir, we have another problem,” one of the security guys said in his thick Serbian accent.

  “What?”

  The security guy pointed at the image of the main room. A stack of crates had been opened, revealing explosives within. Rockets were close by as well as piles of other munitions. One of Tosu’s men was tied to one of the wooden boxes, wrapped tight with wiring.

  Tosu could see the fear in his eyes. The guy was looking straight into the camera and then motioning to the bombs directly behind him.

  “No,” Tosu said.

  The word had barely escaped his lips when the entire mountain shuddered. Most of the cameras on the wall flashed static and then went blank. The old metal facility rocked and trembled.

  He took a deep breath through his nose and exhaled with disbelief. In a matter of minutes, he’d gone from the cause’s hero to losing everything. Their guns, explosives, bioweapons…everything was gone, destroyed in the explosion and the resulting collapse of the mine tunnels.

  The shock blurred his vision. He felt his body waver. How could this have happened? The question kept coming back along with another thought: I have to get out of here.

  “Get to the trucks,” he ordered.

  Tosu spun around and rushed out the door.

  16

  Tirana

  Adriana saw Tosu first as he busted out of the building, running down the gravel road toward the SUVs parked at the bottom.

  “Sweep the building,” Adriana said. “I got Tosu.”

  June looked at her friend. She didn’t argue. She could see Adriana’s mind was made up and there would be no changing it. She gave a nod and ran off toward the doors the man had just come through.

  Adriana bolted ahead, racing after the terrorist. Her feet pounded the gravel, kicking up loose rocks behind her.

  Tosu caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye and raised his pistol. He fired the Desert Eagle four times, wildly missing but doing enough to cause Adriana to duck and weave, slowing her down as he made his way down the hill.

  The second he turned his attention away from her, she steadied the submachine gun and pushed forward. Her finger squeezed the trigger. The muzzle popped over and over again. She tried to keep Tosu in her sights, but the weapon wasn’t made for ranges like this.

  The gun clicked, and she tossed it aside. She reached back and grabbed a pistol out of her belt. She’d taken the weapon on her way out of the building. Now it was all she had.

  Adriana pumped her legs harder now. Her heels kicked up high as she descended the hill. Tosu was nearly to the first SUV. He skidded to a stop and fumbled with the keys.

  She wasn’t close enough to be accurate but definitely close enough to scare the guy. She raised the pistol as the gap closed five feet at a time. Adriana fired. The bullet smashed into the back-left window and shattered it.

  The sudden explosion of glass and the sound of gunfire behind him spooked Tosu. He fiddled with the keys one more time, but another shot plunking into the SUV’s driver-side door startled him and he dropped them onto the gravel.

  He spun around with his weapon raised and fired five wild shots at the onrushing woman.

  Adriana dove behind some big rocks to her left and waited, took several breaths, and then poked her head around the stone, pistol in front of her face.

  She had the SUV in her sights but no sign of Tosu.

  She swallowed and crept out of her hiding spot, still ready for a sudden attack.

  Her eyes panned the area. The hill to the right swept up the mountainside. A few outcroppings of large rocks dotted the slope, but Tosu wouldn’t have had time to get there.

  Adriana knew there were only two places he could go: down the hill or hiding out and lying in wait.

  She moved deftly along the driveway, keeping to the hard dirt off the path for extra stealth. Gravel was loose, and the weight of her boots would cause it to crunch and move. Maybe Tosu wouldn’t hear; maybe he would. It was a risk she didn’t want to take.

  Reaching the bend in the driveway where the little parking area curved in, she paused and looked around. No sign of Tosu. Adriana bent down and looked under the chassis of the SUVs, thinking he was probably hiding behind one. Still nothing. She frowned. Had the man taken off down the road?

  Her question was answered with several loud bangs. Tosu popped up from just behind a drop-off where the parking lot ended and the stony ground began.

  Adriana dove for cover, rolling to a stop a few dozen feet behind the nearest vehicle. She clambered up and scurried over to the back bumper and waited, keeping her feet as narrow of a target as possible as she hid behind the back-left tire.

  Knowing that to stay still would be a death sentence, she risked a step around to her left and peeked around the corner. Tosu was gone again.

  Adriana skipped over to the next SUV and waited for a few seconds, then repeated the move to the last one in the row. She kept close to the vehicle’s body, her back pressed against it as she shuffled around to the passenger side. Her pistol was held close to her chin, ready to turn and fire at a second’s notice.

  She was betting on Tosu still being in his place, waiting to pop up again to fire. By looping around, Adriana hoped to flank him and take him down safely from the side.

  She kept creeping forward until she reached the front of the SUV. There, she paused another moment and leaned around the bumper. She swept the gun barrel right and then left but found no trace of the man in her sights.

  She was about to step out and rush down the hill when she heard a noise behind her.

  Adriana swirled around, but it was too late. Tosu was standing over her with his gun pointed at her head.

  “Don’t…move,” he said in an even tone. But his face trembled. And his eyes overflowed with fear—not of her but of a greater fate, one he would now be running from for the rest of his life.

  Adriana was only halfway turned around when he gave the order. She froze in place and hesitated.

  “Do it,” he reiterated and flicked his pistol for extra menace.

  “You lost,” she said as she let the pistol drop to the ground. “You lost everything.”

  He flashed a yellow-toothed grin, cocking his head to the side. Tosu had the look of a crazy man now, a guy with nothing to lose because he’d just watched his life’s work destroyed right before his eyes.

  He gave a faint nod. “Yes. So it would seem. But I can still kill you. At least I have that satisfaction.”

  “The Red Ring won’t tolerate this failure,” she said, trying to keep him talking. “You’ll be hunted down like a dog, probably tortured before they finally give you the mercy of death.”

  “Perhaps. But there will be one less infidel around.”

  He squeezed the trigger. The weapon clicked.

  Tosu’s eyes widened.

  He pulled the trigger again. Same result.

  Adriana didn’t wait for a third time. She sprang at the man, driving her shoulder into his midsection as she pumped her legs.

  Tosu’s heel caught the ground and he fell backward. His head hit the loose rocks and sent his vision into a spin. His head throbbed all of a sudden. He swung his arms around and kicked his legs, desperately trying to get the woman off him.

  Adriana squeezed her knees together, crushing his ribs as she drove fist after fist into the man’s face. Her arms weakened w
ith every blow, so she turned to hammer blows to finish the fight, driving the bridge of one hand then the other into his nose and jaw.

  Finally, when her energy was gone and Tosu’s head looked like a swollen skin piñata, she pushed herself off him and stood. Her breaths came fast and hard.

  She staggered backward until she found the pistol she’d dropped a minute before, bent down and picked it up, then made her way back over to the beaten man.

  He looked up at her with swollen eyes. A gash oozed blood under his left. More crimson trickled from his broken nose.

  “Now you’re going to talk,” she said, pointing the gun at his right knee.

  He snorted a laugh, which shot more blood from his nostrils. Then his bleeding lips parted, showing off a missing tooth from the bottom row. His head twisted back and forth. “I’m not telling you anything,” he said. “You don’t understand. You and all the other nonbelievers will soon be gone. And there’s nothing you can do to stop it. My place in paradise is assured.”

  Adriana pinched her eyebrows together, wrinkling her forehead. What was he talking about? They’d just taken out an arsenal of weapons. While he may not have intended to, Tosu had just divulged a useful bit of information. That told her he knew more.

  “Maybe you won’t talk,” she said, “but we’ll certainly make the rest of your life extremely uncomfortable.”

  He shook his head. “No. I’m already dead.”

  His smile widened, and she could see the white foam through his yellow teeth. Tosu’s body started shaking violently as the poison entered his blood. His eyes were wide with fear and agony. The toxins did their work fast, burning into his organs with extraordinary speed.

  “No,” Adriana said with a sense of urgency in her voice. “No!”

  She bent down and grabbed the dying man by the shoulders. “Tell me what you’re talking about!”

  The only thing she got in return was a desperate look of pain on Tosu’s face before his eyes fixed on a place in the sky. He was gone.