“Just barely,” Morris said. “Just barely.”
“But you didn’t ask Quincey to fly up here from Texas just to tell us about the zombies, did you?” Libby asked.
“No,” Colleen said. “We’re authorized to offer you guys some more ‘consulting’ work, if you want it.”
Morris looked at Libby for a moment before asking, “What kind of consulting did you all have in mind?”
“Well, it’s kind of complicated,” Fenton said, toying with his coffee cup. “For starters - do either of you know what an afreet is?”
The End
MIDNIGHT AT THE OASIS
This is for
Kingston Ignatius Bleau
Welcome to the world, little man.
“No beast is more savage than man,
when possessed with power
answerable to his rage.”
– Plutarch
“The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize.”
– V.I. Lenin
“You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”
– Larry Webster
One
May 1, 2011
0138 hours
THE TWO HELICOPTERS knifed through the still, warm air like vengeful ghosts, flying as close to the ground of Eastern Afghanistan as was safely possible. They were Sikorsky Black Hawks that had been extensively modified for missions exactly like this one. The alterations (all classified Top Secret) made the ships relatively quiet, hard to see from the ground, and virtually invisible to radar.
In addition to the helicopter crews, the mission personnel included twenty-four SEALs assigned to the Navy’s Special Development Group (known to the media as SEAL Team Six), a dog named Cairo (for sniffing out explosives and tracking, if necessary), a Navy midshipman who was the dog’s handler, a civilian translator fluent in both English and Arabic, and one other.
Thomas Powell was also a SEAL, his MOS listed as “Demolitions Expert.” This was a lie, but a necessary one. Powell’s real military occupational specialty did not appear anywhere in the Navy’s official nomenclature.
Powell was a combat magician, and the object he held across his lap was not an assault rifle. It was a carefully-designed, titanium magic wand.
Once intelligence reports had named a certain house in Abbottabad as Geronimo’s likely hiding place, a Pakistani doctor on the CIA payroll had been sent in, on the pretext of vaccinating the house’s residents. The visit had two purposes. One was to get miniscule tissue samples from each person vaccinated. Even though nobody thought the doctor would be allowed anywhere near Geronimo, the other people in the house were believed to be family members. If so, some of them would carry Geronimo’s DNA, which the CIA had on file for comparison.
The other reason for getting the doctor on the property was to see if he brought back traces of black magic. There were whispers that Geronimo was protected by more than human power – which would explain why the old bastard had survived so long – and there were a very few people high up in the U.S. government who knew enough to treat such rumors seriously. To that end, the doctor wore under his clothing a very special amulet that had been programmed (the military’s term for “ensorcelled”) to be sensitive to the presence of black magic.
The “vaccinations” completed, the doctor had made his way to a nearby CIA safe house. There he had dropped off the tissue samples and taken off the amulet, worn on a silver chain around his neck. These materials were smuggled out of Pakistan in a diplomatic pouch, and were at Langley within forty-eight hours. There, a doctor with a Top Secret security clearance compared the harvested DNA with the known sample from Geronimo. Conclusion: suspicion confirmed.
In another part of the CIA’s sprawling complex, an expert with a very different set of credentials examined the amulet, employing tools and procedures not to be found in any the Agency’s manuals. Her conclusion was the same as the DNA expert’s: suspicion confirmed.
As a result, Thomas Powell, the U.S. Navy’s only SEAL-qualified combat magician, was quietly added to the mission’s Table of Organization and Equipment.
Following completion of BUD/S, the immensely difficult SEAL training program (Powell’s class had started with a hundred and thirty men and graduated fourteen), he had volunteered to spent six months in the United Kingdom, under the tutelage of a former SAS sergeant major who was said to be the greatest combat magician living. Powell never found reason to doubt that assessment. Once his magical training was completed, he had been assigned to one of the SEAL teams, with the understanding that he would be available for “special missions,” as needed.
Lieutenant Brad Marcellus, the team leader in Powell’s chopper, was checking the magazine of his H&K MP7A1 submachine gun for the fourth time when a voice spoke into his left ear. “We’ve just crossed into Pakistani airspace, sir,” the pilot said calmly. “Estimated time to the LZ, sixteen minutes.”
“Roger that,” Marcellus said into his throat mike.
The risk factor of the mission had just ratcheted up tenfold. Since everybody from the Commander in Chief on down knew that notifying the Pakis about this mission in advance would have been tantamount to taking out a full-page ad in the Islamabad Tribune, America’s nominal ally had been kept in the dark about the planned operation. That meant, technically, that the U.S. Navy had just invaded Pakistan.
In the unlikely event that the choppers were noticed by the Pakistan Air Force, the mission team had both fighter jets and helicopter gunships on call. Two heavily-armed Chinook helicopters containing twenty-four more SEALs were waiting in a deserted stretch of desert three miles away. They would be called in if Pakistani ground forces tried to intervene.
With this mission, the U.S. government was risking, at worst, war with Pakistan. But no one who knew about the mission had the slightest doubt that the objective was worth taking the chance.
In no time at all, the pilot’s voice came through Marcellus’s headset again. “Estimate one minute to the objective, sir.”
“Roger.” Marcellus turned to face the rest of the team. Raising his voice a little, he said, “Sixty seconds out and counting, people. If anybody wants to change his mind and go home, better speak up now.”
That raised several grins, and a little nervous laughter. Every man in that chopper had volunteered for the mission. Even the dog would probably have signed up willingly, if you’d asked him. They had trained hard, assaulting specially-built replica buildings over and over again.
Operation Neptune Spear had been in the works for five weeks. Now it was showtime.
“We have visual ID of the objective,” the pilot’s voice said. “Beginning descent now.”
“Doors open!” Marcellus yelled.
The SEALs seated closest to the large sliding doors on either side of the aircraft pulled them back, giving those inside a clear view of the rapidly approaching ground, and allowing them to lay down fire if a threat emerged from the compound while they were still in the air.
The plan was for the Black Hawk to land briefly in the compound’s northeast corner and disgorge Powell and four other SEALs, along with the dog and his handler. The chopper would then rise again and hover over the house while the remaining SEALs inside fast-roped down onto the roof.
When Helmuth von Moltke said, “No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy,” he knew what he was talking about – even if nobody ever told him about magic.
Powell was staring out the portside door, scanning the compound for the kind of threat he had been brought to deal with, but it was one of the other SEALs, stationed at the starboard door, who spotted the first sign of trouble.
“Dude just came out of the house,” said the SEAL, a Boatswain’s Mate named McDonald. “Waste him, Lieutenant?”
“Is he armed?”
“Negative, far as I can tell.”
“Then leave him until we’re on the ground,” Marcellus said.
“Roger that.”
Something in the air made Powell uneasy. He tu
rned in his seat and said to McDonald, “The guy you spotted – where is he?”
McDonald pointed. “There – about fifty feet from the front door.” The chopper was about three hundred feet over the ground now.
“Got him.” The man on the ground stood with his hands spread wide, as if in supplication or surrender. Powell recognized the posture; it represented neither.
“I think we better take this guy out, Lieutenant,” he said urgently.
Before Marcellus could reply, there came the sound of a human voice, but amplified a hundred times, saying the same phrase, over and over: “Harif men sama! Harif men sama!”
All at once, the Black Hawk lost all power. Blades, rotors, electrical systems – all dead as a doornail. In the sudden silence, Powell could hear the pilot’s voice clearly, even though the closed cabin door. “Brace for impact!”
Powell had an all-purpose counter-spell ready, and he said the words of power quickly, hoping to reverse the bad mojo that the wizard below had just laid on the helicopter. It worked – the blades began turning again – but the helicopter had already been in freefall for six seconds, which, that close to the ground, was four seconds too long. Their rate of descent slowed, but Powell could feel the tail dragging along the compound’s concrete wall, and that meant they were screwed. A few seconds later, the ground came up and slammed the chopper to a halt, the noise bouncing off the high walls of the compound. Something snapped in the superstructure, and they abruptly listed to the left.
Marcellus was the first to find his voice. “Anybody hurt?” In SEAL terms, “hurt” meant broken bones or uncontrolled bleeding. No one on the team responded affirmatively.
Powell figured that things could have been worse. His counter-spell had turned a potentially fatal crash into something you might charitably call a hard landing – although it was clear that, if and when they extracted out of the compound, it wasn’t going to be in this particular bird.
Marcellus started giving orders. “Out the starboard door, fast! Alpha Team first, then supplemental personnel, with Bravo Team last. Move out!”
“Supplemental personnel” meant the translator, the dog, his handler – and Powell.
A few seconds later, they were all on the packed dirt of the compound, the helicopter’s tilted body between them and the house. The other chopper was hovering a couple of hundred feet above them, and the members of the other SEAL contingent were fast-roping to the ground.
Marcellus turned to Powell. “Was that what I think it was that brought the bird down? Some kind of magic?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s what it was, sir.”
“So they’ve got a fucking – whadoyacallit – wizard in here?”
“Yes, sir, I’m pretty sure that was the guy we spotted coming out of the house.”
“Can you take him?”
The standard SEAL response to a question like that was supposed to be “Of course I can take him, sir! Hooyah!” But Powell figured that Marcellus would be better served by honesty than machismo. “There’s no way to tell, sir.”
Marcellus looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Guess we’ll find out.” He turned to the rest of the group. “Chopper crew stays here. Braddock, Marshal, you stay with the bird, too. Prepare thermite charges to blow it, at my command. We can’t fly it out, and we’re sure not leaving it behind for the Pakis to sell to China.”
He pointed to a smaller building within the compound. “Alpha Team, secure the guest house. Kill anyone who resists or shows a weapon.” He indicated the translator and the dog’s handler. “You two stay with Bravo – but be ready to come quick if I call. Powell, you’re going in the big house with us. Let’s move out.”
Keeping to the shadows, they jogged in single file toward the three-story house and whatever awaited them inside.
Two
THEY USED SMALL charges of Semtex to blow the front door off its hinges, and went in fast, weapons at the ready. What they found inside was not what they expected.
The CIA had cut electrical power to the house a few minutes before the raid team had arrived. Each man had a powerful flashlight attached to the barrel of his weapon. A dozen bright beams crisscrossed the room, to reveal... nothing.
The ground floor appeared to be one huge room with plain white walls, a dirt floor, and a whole lot of emptiness. There was not even a staircase leading to the second floor, which was ridiculous, since there obviously was a second floor.
“What the fuck, Lieutenant?” one of the SEALS said.
“Wait one,” Powell said, and reached into one of the canvas pouches riding on his web belt. The other members of the team used these containers to carry extra ammunition, but Powell’s contained materials far more unusual – and just as dangerous.
From the pouch Powell brought out a glass vial whose contents seemed to glitter like flakes of silver. He poured most of the powder into his open palm and flung it into the air in a wide arc. While the powder was still airborne he said, loudly, “Vascate!”
At once the large empty room disappeared, replaced by a smaller one that looked like a living room. It contained traditional Arab furniture, cheap art on the walls – and a set of stairs leading up.
“An illusion,” Powell told the team.
Several of the SEALs stared at Powell, but Marcellus broke their bewilderment. “Check the other rooms first. This floor’s gotta be secure before we go upstairs. Come on, let’s go!”
They cleared each of the ground floor rooms the way they had been taught – overlapping fields of fire, watching each other’s back, being wary of booby traps.
“Floor’s clear, Lieutenant,” one of them told Marcellus ten minutes later. “Not a creature stirring.”
“The fuckers are upstairs, then,” Marcellus said. “Let’s go find ’em. Fire Team One goes first.” He pointed at Powell. “I want you with them, third in line. Just in case.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Powell said. He looked toward the stairway grimly. The magician defending this place was good – there had to be more tricks up his sleeve than a simple illusion spell. Well, I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve, too, motherfucker.
They made their cautious way up the stairs without drawing fire of any kind. The second floor presented them with three closed doors and a corner where the hall bent to the right. “Team Two checks the rooms. Team One, keep that corner covered,” Marcellus said softly. “Anybody comes around it who doesn’t have his hands up, zap him.”
Powell was getting a lot of bad vibes from around that corner. He didn’t believe in intuition, but his witch sense was well developed. Something bad was close by – he could feel it.
The three rooms were checked and found empty. Marcellus was about to give the order to continue when Powell said softly, “I’ve got a bad feeling about what’s around that corner, Lieutenant.”
Marcellus looked at him. “That’s it? Nothing more specific?”
“No, sir, but I’ve learned to trust my feelings when it comes to stuff like this.”
“Well, we can’t fucking stay here all night.” Marcellus thought for a few seconds, then motioned for one of the team members to join him.
“Martinez, you’re carrying the telescopic mirror?”
“That’s affirmative, sir.”
“Unlimber it. I want to know what’s around that corner.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Martinez slipped off his pack and removed from it several sections of aluminum tubing and a mirror about the size and shape of a dinner plate. The tubes were threaded so that they screwed together, like a custom-made pool cue. Within a minute Martinez had six feet of tube assembled, the mirror securely attached at the end. He walked to the corner, put his back flat against the wall, and slowly extended the mirror until it could reflect what was in the corridor, if anything was.
Martinez watched his mirror, and Powell watched him.
He saw Martinez squint, apparently unsure of what he was looking at – then his eyes grew wide, as if he
realized he was seeing something that had no business being in that house, or any house, ever. Powell was about to sidle over next to him and ask what was going on when a great tongue of flame shot down the corridor from the direction Martinez was looking.
The flare of light and heat lasted only a second or two. The carpet was smoldering a little, sparks winking in it here and there like fireflies, and Powell could see that the wall was scorched in places – but nothing was burning. Yet.
Martinez had quick reflexes, and he had yanked back the pole holding the mirror as soon as the flames had appeared. But all he held now was about four feet of aluminum tubing. The rest of the pole, along with the mirror it had carried, was a small pool of molten metal, gently steaming on the corridor’s carpet.
Martinez turned toward Powell, and the expression on his face was one that Powell never expected to see on a Navy SEAL. It combined shock, confusion, and – most improbably – fear.
All the other team members had their weapons trained on the bend in the hallway, ready to repel the assault that was sure to follow the gout of flame. But no attack came.
Marcellus looked at Martinez and made a summoning motion. Although not invited, Powell decided he’d best join the upcoming conversation.
Marcellus led them into one of the rooms that had already been cleared, but kept the door open; if anything happened in the hallway, he wanted to know it instantly.
“How many of them did you see?” Marcellus asked softly. “Besides the guy with the flame thrower, I mean.”
Martinez seemed to have his feelings of shock and awe under control now, but he still looked uneasy as he said, “Weren’t no flame thrower, Lieutenant – not the way you mean it. Weren’t no guys, either.”
Morris and Chastain Investigations: Play With Fire & Midnight at the Oasis Page 20
