Dawn Over Doomsday ac-4

by Jaspre Bark

  "Quite."

  Wherever they drove he'd come out with these gems, straight out of some 'Big Boy's Book of Facts'. Greaves was a walking almanac. Still, that did prove useful at times. He could scavenge them just about anything with what he knew.

  As soon as they hit Indiana, Greaves took them to the waterfront on Lake Michigan. He blew a lot of hot air about how it used to be one of the industrial centres of the world. Then he lead them to an underground fuel depot with enough gas to fuel an army of Berthas. They drove away with enough gas to get them all the way to Montana.

  God knows how Greaves knew where all these things were. It was like he never forgot anything he read or heard. He was obviously one of these freakishly intelligent mutant types you hear about. The kind of guy that can only form relationships with cyber-porn. Greaves probably hadn't had his pipe cleaned since the Internet disappeared. No wonder he had to keep swallowing so many pills.

  After fuelling up, he had taken them south in search of some cave complex, even though it was miles out of their way. They followed the River Wabash south for a while then headed out on the highway to Kentucky. Greaves directed Linda west as they hit Crawford County. Only then did he tell her they were looking for the Wyandotte Caves.

  That was his way of keeping control of everyone. He told them just enough to keep them going where he wanted them to, then found them just what they needed, hidden somewhere no-one knew about.

  All except for Anna. Greaves treated her differently, like some bashful kid in the company of royalty. He really tried hard to be gentle with her, this wasn't something he was used to. Not from the way he acted with everyone else. Watching him around Anna was like watching someone who'd read a book on kindness without ever having been shown it.

  All Anna did was snivel mostly. Occasionally she'd start praying in that strange 'olde worlde' language she used, sounding like she was a refugee from the Little House on the Prairie.

  In the two weeks or more that Linda had been travelling with the three of them she hadn't seen Anna do anything to justify Greaves' strange belief that she was going to save humanity. Maybe it was just a little quirk he had. Like those otherwise normal people who believe their dog controls the weather.

  Still, it was an easy job and the rewards seemed to be good. She'd drop Greaves and his little band in Montana, let them save the world or whatever, and make off with her payload.

  First Greaves wanted to go exploring caves though.

  Cortez was sleeping when the motor-home pulled up. He could drop into a deep sleep for five minutes and wake alert and refreshed, it was a technique he had learned in the jungles of El Salvador during his time in the Mano Blanco.

  Cortez had learned many things in the Mano Blanco, like what made a real man. The men he had run with knew what real men were and wasted no time in showing him. Many of them had been part of the paramilitary Organizacion Democratica Nacionalista, or Orden for short, before the government shut it down in '79. This hadn't stopped General Medrano, its founder. He knew how to keep his country in line. He simply streamlined the organisation and turned it into an even more lethal machine: the death squads of the Mano Blanco.

  Cortez was just a young hooligan from a coffee plantation when he joined. He was good at hurting people and it didn't worry him. The Mano Blanco hardened him, focused him and taught him everything he'd ever needed to know.

  Such as not questioning your employer when he wants to go exploring caves. This was something that the whore did not realise. She knew how to fight he'd give her that, but she didn't know her place or when to keep her mouth shut.

  "So," she said as they stood outside a fissure in the rock face that Greaves said was a secret entrance. "You mind telling me why I've got to crawl down this hole in the ground?"

  "There are twenty-three miles of passages down there," Greaves told her. "More than half of them were used covertly by the CIA. There is a weapons cache, a Black Ops archive and nearly a quarter of the entire Colombian annual cocaine export hidden down there."

  "Well why in hell are we wasting our time chatting?" said Linda and crawled into the hole.

  "What about the girl?" Cortez asked Greaves. "It is not safe to leave her alone in the vehicle."

  "Go get her. She'll have to come with us."

  "The passage splits here. We need to take the left fork. It goes down for a little way then comes out onto a proper walkway."

  Linda was glad to hear that last part. She'd crawled nearly half a mile on her hands and knees so far. As she took the left fork Greaves put his hand on her butt. "You might wanna find another hand hold. Or you won't have any hand left to hold it with."

  Greaves snatched his hand back and dropped his torch. It was the only one they had. Everything went black for a minute and Linda heard Anna whimper behind them. Then Greaves fumbled the torch back on.

  Sure enough they did come out onto a walkway. "Down this way," said Greaves. They followed him through a series of tunnels for about ten minutes until he came to a stop. He bent down and started to mess with what looked like a fuse box. There was a loud clunk and lights came on. "Auxiliary generators still have some juice in them."

  They were standing inside a stone corridor lit by strip lights. There were two metal doors in the wall up ahead of them. "This area was specially built," Greaves said. "It's where all the admin was done. We need to get into these offices."

  "Is this where the coke is?" Linda said.

  Greaves shook his head. "We'll get to that later. This is more important."

  Greaves had Cortez shoot off the lock on the first door. Linda could tell he still missed his skeleton key. Behind the door was an office with a few desks and some filing cabinets. Greaves began to turn the room upside down.

  "What you looking for?" asked Linda. "Maybe I can help."

  "I need to find a certain memory stick. It has a specific serial number on the side."

  When they'd checked and re-checked every inch of the room and turned up nothing Cortez shot the lock off the other door. The office behind that was pretty much the same as the last, with the exception of the corpse at the desk.

  The first thing that hit Linda was the smell. The body had rotted down to the skeleton in most places. It was still wearing a sharp black suit and most the back of its skull was gone. A rusted pistol sat in its lap. This guy must have known what was going to happen to him when The Cull hit, even down here. So he chose the quick way out.

  Greaves didn't even seem to notice the corpse. He just went about his frantic searching. Cortez on the other hand picked up a Zippo lighter from the desk and stared fiercely at it. It was the first time Linda had seen him register anything like an emotion, other than when he was bowing towards Mecca five times a day.

  Cortez put the lighter down and began frisking the corpse, going through its pockets until he found a wallet. "You won't find anything there," said Greaves. Cortez ignored him. He stood still, looking at the wallet. Linda couldn't imagine why.

  "Thank God," said Greaves bending over a drawer. "It's here."

  He stuck the memory stick in his pocket. Linda stepped out into the corridor with Anna to get away from the smell of rotting flesh. Away in the distance she heard footsteps echoing through a stone chamber, and voices calling to each other. Linda looked over at Anna. "Did you hear that?" Anna nodded.

  Linda stuck her head back into the office. "Guys, I think we've got company."

  "Impossible," said Greaves. "This place was above top secret. I'm the only living person who knows about it."

  "Well I just heard voices and footsteps nearby."

  "Stay here and look after the girl," Greaves said to Cortez. Then he turned to Linda. "We better go and investigate."

  It was John Tannenbaum. In the name of the Prophet, thought Cortez. This is what happened to the son of a bitch.

  He paid little attention to Greaves and Linda as they tooled up and went out into the corridor to search for the intruders. He paid even less to Anna as she crept i
nto the office and hid behind the filing cabinet. Cortez was thinking only of Tannenbaum.

  So this is how he ended up. Holed up like a rat in a cave, hiding from the plague. And when he found that he wasn't safe from it miles under the ground, he bit down on his gun barrel like a coward.

  When Cortez had realised who the corpse was, he couldn't believe it. A man he never thought he'd see again. A man who had such an impact on his life.

  It was the lighter that gave the bastard away. It had been the first thing that caught Cortez's attention when they met all those years ago. '92 had not been the best time for Cortez. The civil war had ended and El Salvador was preparing for its first election in decades. The military chief of staff Colonel Rene Ponce had made sure no-one in the death squads would be brought to trial for what they did. That didn't change the fact that Cortez was out of a job. For years he'd been part of something, had purpose. People had been scared of him. He was powerful.

  Then it was all over. He was faced with being a simple shit-kicking peasant again. A know nothing nobody who had to stand in line like everyone else.

  He was in a bar getting drunk when he caught sight of the lighter and someone watching him. It was Tannenbaum. The lighter was Marine special issue. Even without it Cortez knew Tannenbaum was American. The American military worked real close with the death squads. They trained them and provided intelligence. Tipping the squads off to which teachers, labour leaders or even priests had leftist sympathies and ought to disappear. Cortez had met a hundred Yankees at that point. He even liked a few.

  Tannenbaum approached him with a bottle and a job offer. Seemed he'd been checking out Cortez's credentials and liked what he'd heard. Tannenbaum worked for the CIA, he referred to it as 'The Company.'

  Things might have gone quiet in El Salvador but there were a lot of other places in Central America where a man of Cortez's talents might prove useful. His trial run was abducting an American journalist who was getting too close to things she wasn't supposed to know about. He passed with flying colours. No-one ever found the body.

  For nearly a decade Cortez ran Black Ops for the Company. He became an expert in torture. They trained him up, but he got so good that soon he was training others.

  Then in the new millennium Tannenbaum told him that no one was interested in commies anymore. Marx had had his day. Now it was Mohammed they were worried about. They had a bunch of prisoners being held on non-American soil. That meant they could practise 'enhanced interrogation techniques' on them without worrying too much about the Geneva Convention.

  It sounded like another routine assignment. What Cortez didn't know was that his whole life was about to change.

  Linda had never seen Greaves so agitated. He was such a control freak. Everything had to be planned out meticulously in advance. Everyone had to be told what to do, but only when the time was right. If anything or anyone deviated from this, then he got mighty antsy.

  They were lying down on a ledge that overlooked a central chamber. They'd gotten there by a round-about route that Greaves took to keep them out of sight. They'd passed a stash of high explosives on the way and Linda had even helped herself to a little something when Greaves wasn't looking. After all, a girl never knew when she might have to kick things off with a bang.

  There were stacks and stack of crates in the main chamber. A party of about seven men with torches were tearing off the lids and drooling over the weapons they found inside.

  "See Frankie, I told ya," said a scrawny looking guy with a limp. He looked like a scav and most of the fingers on his left hand were missing. "There's caves and caves of this stuff. You've no idea the things I could direct you to."

  "Ya done good this time Vinny," said Frankie. He was taller and broader than any of the others. He looked Italian and acted like he was some kind of Klan boss. "I might even let you live when we're through with you."

  "Aw come on Frankie. Look at the size of this haul. This has got to make us quits. Way I figure it, you probably owe me now."

  Frankie grabbed him by the front of his jacket. "Don't push your luck dickwad." He threw Vinny to the floor and wrinkled his nose? "Jesus you stink. When's the last time you took a bath."

  Vinny giggled nervously and waited until Frankie's back was turned before he got up and brushed himself down.

  Linda was just about to get up herself when she heard a voice say: "Don't either of you fuckers move!" A shotgun barrel was pointed right at her head and another at Greaves.

  Five minutes later they were kneeling in the middle of the chamber in front of Frankie and his boy with their hands on their heads.

  "Good thing I sent two men out to case the joint ain't it?" Frankie said. Then he turned to Vinny. "I thought you said no-one else knew about this place."

  "They don't," said Vinny, starting to shake. "I swear to God I'm the only one."

  "They was armed too boss," said one of the men who'd got the drop on them.

  Frankie didn't look happy. "I swear to God Vinny, if you were trying to double cross me."

  "No Frankie no. I could never… how could you even think… "

  "Cut it out Vinny," said Linda. "The games up. He's on to us. I told you Frankie was too smart.

  "Oh, so it all comes out now," said Frankie, smacking Vinny across the face with the back of his hand.

  "Frankie, on my mother's grave. I don't know who these people are. I have never seen them before."

  Frankie raised his fist. "Still you lie to me, right to my face you lie!"

  While Frankie and the rest of them were distracted, Linda stood up and took her hands off her head. "That's enough," she said in a commanding voice. "Now I want all of you to drop your weapons and lie face down on the floor."

  Everyone pointed their weapons at her. Frankie was non-plussed. He turned to Linda with a smile of bemusement. "And do ya mind telling me why we'd want to do that?"

  Linda lifted her top to reveal the belt of gelignite she was wearing. "'Cos I'll blow everyone of you to hell if you don't."

  Cortez heard a scuffle behind him. It was Anna behind the filing cabinet. She was praying. He went over to where she was hiding and bent down. "Are you alright?"

  "Are you going to sacrifice me to Satan now?" she said.

  Cortez was stunned by the question. "Why do you think I'd want to do that?"

  "Well that's who you worship isn't it? That's who you're talking to when you do all that praying on your mat."

  Cortez shook his head and laughed. There was something so child-like in the way she asked the question that he couldn't take offence. "No. I abjure Satan and all his works. I worship God, just as you do."

  "But don't you hate Jesus?"

  Cortez shook his head. "Muslims recognise Jesus as a great prophet. We revere his teachings. We also believe he will return in the last days, transported bodily down from heaven to slay the Anti-Christ at the gate of Ludd in the Holy Land."

  It was Anna's turn to look shocked. Cortez recognised that look. He knew what it was like to re-think all your prejudices about Islam. He'd been there himself.

  When he first worked for them, Cortez had a lot of respect for the CIA. Without them he'd have been nothing. They killed all that on his last assignment though.

  He was transported to a secure facility in the back of a van with no lights and no windows. Not even the guards there were allowed to know its location. The US government wanted full deniability on its existence.

  They kept the suspects who were brought to him in cages too small to stand up or sit down in. At first they were just glad to be out of them. Their relief didn't last long once Cortez's got his hands on them. What did seem to last was their inability to tell him anything. No matter how much pain he inflicted.

  To begin with Cortez wondered if his paymasters were testing him. Did they distrust his loyalty? Were they trying to see if he could tell a genuine terrorist from a loudmouthed idiot? The people he had worked with before always knew something, even the nuns and the priests. The
y could usually call up one tiny bit of information to make the pain stop. The name of a neighbour with sympathies, a deal they'd heard about in the street, anything. The suspects Cortez were sent weren't even aware of what they were supposed to be telling him.

  Neither were the officers Cortez reported to. At first they wanted to know about the network of secret underground caves that the suspects used. When Cortez failed to get even a shred of evidence out of his subjects, and when the troops on the ground in Afghanistan also failed to turn up anything, command changed their minds.

  Next they wanted to learn everything they could about the suspects' terror cells and how they were organised. Who the suspects reported to, how they were recruited, where they met and what they were planning. When, once again, Cortez was unable to uncover any information of note, the officer in charge starting asking for things on the strangest of whims.

  Finally they decided they wanted to create double-agents and to get some of the suspects to turn. They were going to do this by getting the suspects to foreswear their religion and convert to Christianity. Cortez was ordered to get them to turn their back on Islam and accept Jesus as their personal saviour. This was where he met his biggest failure yet.

  Given enough pain most people will say and do just about anything you want them to. Including spit on their religious icons and call their god a cock-sucking motherfucker. But not the Muslims Cortez worked on. They would sooner give up their lives than their faith. Cortez had never come across such conviction and strength of purpose. It actually earned the poor wretches his respect and grudging admiration.

  One of the men they were holding was an Imam. A much revered holy man, who was a great inspiration to the other prisoners. If Cortez could break him, the officers reasoned, then the other men would soon fall into line.

  Cortez had worked over some tough bastards in his time but no-one had ever held out on him like the Imam did. He was easily into his sixties but he took everything that Cortez did to him and never gave an inch.

  Cortez changed tactics. He decided to learn a little something about the Imam's faith, so he could have something to use against him. As he tore off the Imam's finger nails, worked heated knives into his nerve endings and broke the Imam's toe bones to grind together the jagged ends, he questioned the teachings of Islam. Slowly it dawned on Cortez where the Imam got his strength and endurance. It was his faith. Cortez had never seen anything so powerful.