by Greig Beck
She whispered something to the sand, sucked in a deep breath and then stood up between the two Takavaran squads, one Barak held out at twelve o’clock and the other at six. The two guns barked loudly in the dark.
Alex lowered Zach to the ground and motioned for Sam to do a 360-degree scan as he knelt to decode and read the unexpected signal. As he listened to the brief message and absorbed its meaning, a pain started to bloom in his head. He listened again to the three words, hoping that he’d misheard them… he hadn’t.
‘Shit. Red Team’s been engaged – three injured already.’
Three down out of four was an unacceptable loss when they hadn’t even reached their primary objective. He should have been with them; he shouldn’t have split the team up again. The knot of pain in his head unfurled and started to grow. They’re lost in the dark again, he thought as a red mist rolled across his consciousness.
Zach came closer. ‘Is Adira okay?’
Alex didn’t hear him. His hand curled into a fist on his knee as another wave of blinding pain washed across the inside of his head. He grunted, crushed his eyes shut and banged his thigh.
‘Are you okay, Captain Hunter?’
Zach reached out to touch Alex’s shoulder. Alex’s hand came up quickly, grasping Zach by the wrist and lifting him off the ground. He shouted into Zach’s face, ‘I wasn’t there! I wasn’t there again!’
He dropped Zach and pressed a fist into his temple. Zach stepped back, visibly terrified, and Sam pulled the young Israeli behind him.
‘Boss? Alex?’ he said evenly, keeping a few paces back from his friend and senior officer. He tried again. ‘Alex?’
This time Alex heard Sam’s voice. He turned to look at the large HAWC, and saw him shielding a white-faced Zachariah. He blinked and handed Sam the communication device so he could see and hear the information for himself. ‘Three dents, Sam. I should have been with them.’
Sam ignored the self-recrimination and pain in Alex’s voice. He looked at the coordinates delivered with the message. ‘They’re not far from here… not for you.’
Alex looked at Sam, and then shook his head. ‘I’d be leaving you and Zach exposed.’
Sam handed back the device, ‘We’re clear, they’re not. From a strategic perspective, if they’re all wiped out, our chances of success on this mission decrease by sixty per cent. If any of them are captured… well.’
‘Yes. You’re right – you’re always right. I’ll call it when I know what I’m dealing with.’ Alex took the device back from Sam, trying hard to ignore the temptation to listen to the urgency in Adira’s voice once again.
‘Rescue or retribution.’ Sam gave Alex a grim smile.
Alex nodded and looked to the distance. He hated to leave Sam alone with just the young scientist for backup, but Sam was right – they needed the other HAWCs’ firepower. They couldn’t afford for them to absorb any more losses or, worse, be taken. Of all the team, Sam was the one HAWC Alex could trust to complete a mission, with or without him.
Alex checked the Red team’s positions. They were about six miles away as the crow flies – a lot of distance in dark, unfamiliar terrain; an impossible distance for any normal man.
He turned back to Zach and Sam. ‘Double-time to Red position, and I expect you to keep up, Dr Shomron.’
‘Good luck,’ Sam said, and held out his fist. Alex punched it with his own.
Alex turned to the desert and drew in a long breath. He knew what he was capable of, but it would still probably take him too long. Ever since Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile in 1954, humans had managed to whittle the time down by a few seconds every decade; the world record stood at around three minutes, forty seconds now. Human physiology and evolution would not allow humans to go much faster – not without the assistance of chemistry, surgery or both. Alex had six miles to cover, and knew he had to get there in less than fifteen minutes with enough energy to enter battle. Any longer and whatever was happening to his team would be long over. He nodded a farewell to Sam and Zach and sprinted off into the darkness.
TWENTY-NINE
Adira had heard the joyous note in the Takavaran’s voice as he relayed their success to their mission coordinator. She had no illusions about what would happen to them now they were in the hands of the Takavaran Special Forces. They would be tortured, interrogated and then disposed of. A quick and glorious death was not going to be an option.
O’Riordan and Lagudi were some distance from her, their hands tied behind them and their legs tied out in front. She had been forced to watch as her teammates were savagely beaten. She knew the Takavaran hoped she would be unsettled or angered, and so she sat there and watched, as unflinching as stone. To do otherwise would have simply prolonged the beating. Now the HAWCs’ faces were puffed and bloody, and Lagudi’s lip had a deep split that would need stitches. She was sure that the only reason they hadn’t fought to the death was because she was with them, and that made her angry. In Mossad, men and women were equal – no excuses or handicaps: fight or die.
She had taken several bullets into the midsection, none of them penetrating the ceramic shielding of her suit. When one of the Takavaran had turned her over, she had delivered a flat-handed strike to his nose that had shattered the bridge with a sound like breaking twigs. But she had mistimed the blow – it should have driven his septum up into his brain and killed him instantly; instead all she had managed was a very bad break. She was annoyed with herself for that. She could see the man now, his nose and lower face still smeared with dried blood. He had to let his mouth hang open to breathe and must be in a lot of pain. Good, she thought.
It had needed three of them to take her down, and they’d only realised she wasn’t a man after they tore the helmet from her head. The look on the face of ‘bloody-nose’ was worth the coming pain. First his nose smashed, then his honour – to be knocked down by a woman! Ha! His comrades would mock him for years.
Hex had been bound to a chair and stripped so the Takavaran could examine his suit. His pale grey eyes seemed to shine from his bloody face. The bullet wound in his shoulder had been sealed shut with a burning stick – not out of concern over his wellbeing, but to stop the blood loss so they had plenty of interrogation time with a conscious prisoner.
Hex was refusing to respond to the questioning, addressing the Iranians first in German, then French, then Danish. Anything but English – there would be no easy clues to their origin from him. Adira remembered an ancient Hebraic saying: Giborim noflim kodem. Loosely translated, it meant Brave men die first. She bowed her head forward onto her knees and closed her eyes – things were about to turn ugly. She touched her rear wisdom tooth with her tongue and felt its plasticised cap. Field cyanide capsules were only used by a few agencies in the world – Metsada was one of them.
The man guarding Lagudi and O’Riordan was examining a small steel box drawn from Hex’s suit. Adira knew the spider explosive would only key on one of the HAWCs’ DNA signatures; it would remain inert in the Iranian’s hands.
‘What is this thing?’ the Takavaran soldier asked in thickly accented English. The HAWCs were like two blood-spattered stones. He smashed Lagudi in the face with the box and kicked him in the side of the head. He repeated his question and got the same stoical response. He backhanded Lagudi, his fist making a moist sound against the stocky HAWC’s blood-wet face. Rocky’s head bounced left and right with each savage blow, always coming back to centre; always remaining emotionless and silent.
‘You will give us much enjoyment, tough little man,’ the Takavaran said. He went to kick Lagudi again, but noticed that the others were about to notch up their interrogation of Hex.
Adira followed the Takavaran’s gaze, to see one of the Iranians approaching Hex with one of his own blades. Hex stared straight ahead. She looked away when she saw the man moving the blade towards Hex’s face. When she had the courage to look again, the Takavaran soldiers were laughing and a ragged hole had appeared in the meat of Hex’s
cheek. They did the same to the other cheek, pushing the laser-sharpened blade in and turning it. Hex’s eyes stared grimly ahead but Adira could see the chair vibrating as he squeezed its arms tightly.
She looked at the other two HAWCs: O’Riordan and Lagudi were staring straight ahead. Adira knew their minds would be working out how to inflict terminal damage on their captors before they too found themselves bound in that chair.
The HAWCs and Adira now wore nothing but their underwear. All their equipment, outer clothing and shoes were in a pile before them. They had been searched roughly – in Adira’s case, less as a security process and more as an opportunity to run rough hands over her breasts and between her legs. She had expected this, and had been pleased – the more they focused on her body the less they did a proper search. As long as they thought she might be an American, they didn’t regard her as the same level of threat as the men. Pirated satellite television programs had fed the Takavaran a glamorised and pampered image of Western women – whether they were combat-trained or not.
She stared straight ahead as her hands worked behind her. The plastic binding joining her wrists dug into her skin, but the pain was insignificant and a simple investment in her escape. From between the fibres of the waistband of her underwear she pulled free a thread of wire roughly six inches long, one side smooth, the other serrated with razor-sharp teeth.
She heard footfalls in the dark sand and froze. There was a command in Farsi for her to look up – she ignored it. It came again in English and she ignored it again. A boot caught her on the cheek and knocked her backwards. The soldier grabbed her and returned her to a sitting position. Adira didn’t have to see his face to know it was the man whose nose she had smashed. She could tell by his thickened voice and the way he had to stop talking now and then to breathe heavily through his mouth. He forced her head towards Hex in the chair – she was to witness his torture. She knew this game well. They assumed that an American woman would break while watching the physical mutilation of her male companions.
The Takavaran loved fire – it could deliver the threat of pain just as equally as it could inflict disfiguring torture. Both were useful. One of the Iranian Special Forces men approached Hex with a large canister and uncapped the lid. Even from where Adira sat under guard, she could smell the fumes of the gasoline in the still night air. The Takavaran said something to the bound HAWC and leered viciously, but obviously didn’t expect a response. Hex had endured the torture without a single cry, and Adira marvelled at his bravery and training. These HAWCs are worthy warriors, she thought. Then Adira noticed Hex making one small movement – he slowly closed his eyes.
The man holding Adira yanked her head back roughly and whispered in her ear in Farsi, ‘Each time it will be worse, until it is your turn. I promise I will make your pain last a long time, and before you finally die, you will be our whore many times.’
He looked again at the figure in the chair and laughed. While his attention was drawn to the torture, he didn’t notice Adira’s hands sawing back and forth behind her back, using the looped wire to cut through her bonds.
The whoosh of the flames startled her. O’Riordan and Lagudi could have been statues, but in the glow of the flames she could see their muscles working in tiny movements, testing their bonds, seeking any give in the toughened synthetic material. She looked one last time at Hex and felt her anger swell as the young man sat unflinching while his body was consumed by fire. He was not yet dead – she could see his hands curling and uncurling from the pain. Just another second and you will not die alone, brave one, this I swear. She could feel the binding at her wrists begin to separate.
Alex stumbled as a sensory image washed across his mind: his men were dying. A trickle of blood ran from his nose and he wiped it away as he ran. He could sense the pain of the torture before he heard its sounds. He couldn’t determine who was in such agony, but he knew it was one of his own. In the past, Alex had felt anxious every time he had developed a new ability – he had no idea where it would stop. But not this time; this time he welcomed the change and didn’t fight or question it. The sensation of agony was like a beacon drawing him to his captured HAWCs.
He was still three miles out. He increased his speed, hoping he got there before the agony ended in death. He knew that the little time the Takavaran had had with the Red team meant they could only inflict physical torture. Though abhorrent, it wouldn’t leave the same inner scars as psychological or chemical torture – both of which caused wounds that sometimes never healed.
About half a mile away, he saw flames explode skywards and knew from their colour that something biological was part of the inferno. No! I’m too late. Another fire began to burn – this one inside him.
He increased his speed for the last few hundred feet, then flattened to the ground, crawling to the top of a small rise to survey the scene below. He gulped in air and allowed his heartbeat to slow while he took everything in: O’Riordan and Lagudi bound and guarded by one man; Adira being held by another. Standing around the flames were five large black-clad men, jeering at Alex’s youngest HAWC, Hex Winter, who was burning alive.
Alex gritted his teeth to stop himself screaming in rage at the brutal scene. His training as a HAWC demanded that in the face of insurmountable odds his primary objective was to disengage and complete the mission. There should be no rescue missions that might jeopardise the final success of the objective or endanger the primary group – better to sever the injured hand and save the entire body. But for Alex Hunter, the Arcadian, these were not insurmountable odds. He was writing new rules of battle as his skills increased.
One of his hands curled around a smooth, round stone the size of a golf ball. It had been smoothed and rounded by a millennium of tumbling at the bottom of a long-disappeared stream as it worked its way down from a mountain run-off. A lightning bolt of chemicals shot through Alex as he felt his body surge with anger and power. The hard stone in his hand exploded from the pressure he was exerting on it.
Alex had conditioned his mind to deal with the rages. He had been trained to use sensory triggers to help him chain the furies deep within him, or send them back after they had burst forth. The green apple scent of a lost love’s hair, or the sound of surf crashing on an empty beach, could stop him destroying everything around him. The rage was becoming easier to deal with now, easier to manage, but there were times when it was released unexpectedly; or when he released it on purpose… with deadly intent.
Alex saw Hex’s hands curl from pain; saw the men jeering and joking as they watched him burn. He had time to loose one pulse from the laser before he dropped it to the sand. It found its target and the young HAWC’s agony came to an end.
There was a voice screaming in Alex’s head as the world turned red around him: Obliterate them all!
Just as Adira was about to turn away from the agonised figure in the chair, a small hole appeared silently in Hex’s forehead and his head slumped forward.
Adira held her breath as something hit the camp like a runaway truck – three Iranian agents who had been standing together were flung twenty feet into the air and another was lifted and broken in midair like a doll.
The Arcadian had arrived.
Alex was becoming more familiar with what his body was capable of on a daily basis: what his physical frame could withstand, and what his speed and great strength could inflict upon another being. He aimed all that power, force and aggression at the huddled group laughing and jeering at Hex’s burning flesh.
If Alex had been thinking a little more clearly, he may have taken the men down with the KBELT laser – a single shot to the head or heart would have burned a hole clear through bone and flesh. Logical, fast and clean. But by then, he wanted more than just the quick take-down. There was the need to hurt, to feel their pain, to see them acknowledge his revenge. There was no finesse in his battle strategy, just a clenched-fist charge and impact.
The first three Takavaran he simply rammed with his head down
, like a six-foot bowling ball, throwing the human-shaped pins backwards into the rocks, crushing the spine of one and incapacitating the other two. He turned and lifted the fourth over his head, his strength and rage peaking. The man’s backbone, sinew and cartilage were compressed and then sheared in two by thousands of pounds of pressure being exerted on his frame as Alex’s hands came together. He flung the broken body at the fifth man as he attempted to escape into the darkness.
Alex’s rage had urged him to action before he could formulate a battle strategy, and he realised his intervention had put his other team members’ lives in danger. He needed to neutralise the agents guarding Adira and his men.
The soldier next to the two bound HAWCs had seen enough – an armour-plated giant had landed amongst his fellow Takavaran and brushed them aside like they were no more than children. To the terrified Iranian Special Forces soldier, Alex looked like an ancient Persian demon of vengeance. Mere bullets would not stop this beast from Jahannam. He decided to run, but before he fled into the desert he had one final gift for the HAWCs. He pulled a fragmentation grenade from his belt and dropped it next to the bound men.
Rocky saw the live grenade fall to the sand beside him. All he could do was groan and turn his head.
Alex also saw the grenade drop and did some quick calculations: probable high-power fragmentation device – ten-foot kill radius, thirty-foot wound radius. Flechettes – notched wire or ball-bearing fragments – and now two seconds till detonation. He dived across the fifteen feet that separated him from the deadly explosive in a single motion, grabbed the small metal globe and swung his arm faster than a normal eye could see.
The grenade flew out into the dark – and was just twenty feet from his hand when it detonated in a powerful concussive blast that dispersed flechettes in all directions. Alex, who was standing between the blast and his men, was knocked backwards to land on top of his bound HAWCs. Tiny razor-sharp metal stars thudded into his suit and raked across his helmet visor.
