by Greig Beck
Adira’s captor was preparing to flee when he saw Alex knocked backwards by the blast. His blood-encrusted mouth broke open into a grin and he let Adira’s hair go so he could draw his weapon.
Alex shook his head to clear his vision, and saw the man step forward and aim his gun at his face. If he put a bullet into the weakened visor at this range Alex knew he was finished. The Takavaran’s finger started to depress the trigger when he was quickly spun around. Adira was on her feet, shredded plastic hanging loosely from her unbound hands. She stood before the open-mouthed Takavaran in blood-stained underwear, yelled something at him in Hebrew, then brought her hand up and into the man’s already swollen nose. There was no light twig-snapping sound this time, more a deeper thump as she finished the job she’d set out to do earlier. The man fell like a tree in front of her, dead before he hit the cold, dark sand.
Alex got to his feet and looked into the darkness where the remaining Takavaran had fled; there could be no witnesses. His enhanced senses allowed him to pick up the rapid footfalls of the fleeing man even though he was moving at speed and nearly a mile away.
‘No! They have already called in our capture, so we must leave the area before more Takavaran teams arrive.’ Alex heard Adira’s voice, but it sounded distant.
He faced the desert and listened to the running man getting farther away, and the voice in his head screamed at him to hunt the man down and tear him to pieces.
‘No!’ came Adira’s voice again, from right beside him.
He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. He heard the sound of waves on a beach. He inhaled through his nose and smelled sea salt, drying sand and the scent of green apples. He forced himself to relax. His breathing slowly returned to normal and the chaotic storm in his brain calmed. When the bloodlust had dissipated enough, he opened his eyes.
Adira was right: it was time to go.
He drew a shortened Ka-Bar blade and sliced through O’Riordan’s and Lagudi’s restraints. Adira noticed that Alex’s upper arm was damp with blood and went to say something to him about it, but he turned away and barked angrily to the HAWCs: ‘Rekit, soldiers. We leave in sixty seconds.’
Adira scrambled along with the HAWCs to get back into their armoured suits and recover as much of their weaponry as they could find. There were no apologies, no thanks. For now they simply needed to evacuate the area and complete their mission.
Hex’s remains had collapsed into the fire, and Alex let them burn. Hex’s soul had long left his broken body.
THIRTY
Early evening in the desert of Iran was a busy time for nocturnal creatures. The sand was still warm, and snakes, scorpions and spiders were out hunting lazy insects or rodents not yet in their burrows for the night. The Corsac fox silently wound through the spindly brush, its enormous bat-like ears listening for the smallest footfalls of its prey; and massive owls lifted snakes and rodents from the desert floor. By late evening, the sand would be cool and the air temperature near freezing; the desert would be silent and still.
Sam was moving carefully through the twilight. For a large man, he trod as silently as the other night predators. He stopped and turned to motion Zach to lie flat on the ground; his scope had shown him an encampment ahead, probably desert traders, but possibly an ambush. He could make out the glow of flames in the distance, but could not detect any movement or thermal signatures other than the small fire. He would have preferred to skirt the camp, but a small human-like form slumped in front of the open flap of the tent had attracted his attention. Might be a kid, he thought, it’s too small to be a man. He observed the prostrate form for three more minutes, but with no heat signature he had to assume it was dead. He would still be cautious though – it was possible the bodies were booby-trapped.
He crawled back to Zach. ‘We need to check something out, son. Could be an ambush, but I’d still feel better if you were close so I can keep an eye on you.’
Zach nodded quickly, but his eyes were round and he looked nervous.
Sam moved from cover to cover – a low bush here, a mound of sand there – alert for noise, vibrations, or anything else not in keeping with the night-time sounds of the desert. He had Zach draw his pistol to cover his back, but knew that in a firefight the scientist was only there to draw his share of the attention or make some noise so Sam could target and destroy the enemy.
There were no wires on the ground and his scope didn’t pick up any laser trip lines. Sam moved to the tent and ducked his head in – odd smell, but no movement. Three small bodies in oversized crumpled clothing. He called Zach in as he began to examine the tent further.
‘Phew! What’s that smell? Sort of a sweet vinegar… yeech.’ Zach held his hand over his nose as he joined Sam, who was bending over one of the small figures.
‘What do you make of this?’ Sam said, using the muzzle of his gun to turn the face towards Zach; he was taking no chances by using his hand to touch the body.
It might have been a man once, but now it was barely a humanoid shape: four feet in length with skin the colour and consistency of tanned leather. At first Sam thought the eyes had been removed, but on closer examination he could see small, shrivelled balls like dried raisins inside the collapsed sockets. He pressed his gun barrel a little harder against the skull and it collapsed inwards with a puff of dry powder.
‘What the hell could do this?’ Sam looked up at Zach, whose face was screwed up in an ‘I reserve the right to throw up’ expression.
He was about to move on when he noticed the small circular hole in the man’s chest. He went from body to body and found similar holes in all of them, either on their front or back. The only exception was a mutilated corpse with its head cleaved in two. From the excoriated remains, Sam could see that the insides of the body – all moisture, muscles and organs – had been somehow removed. Even the fluid and marrow from the bones had been extracted, leaving odd structures like brittle cobwebs. The cadavers were just empty cases.
Zach had both hands over his mouth and talked nervously through his fingers. ‘I’ve taken hundreds of biology classes on a hundred different subjects and I’ve never come across or even heard of anything that could inflict this type of damage on a human body. These men are totally devoid of all fluid. Even if it was a type of bleed-out virus like ebola or hanta, there would still be traces of the fluid leakage everywhere. The desert is extremely dry, but for this effect they would have needed to be in the direct sun for months.’
Sam nodded. ‘But the fire outside tells me that whatever happened here only occurred in the last few hours.’
He looked around the tent quickly and quietly, checking maps, inside boxes and turning over blankets. ‘Over here,’ he said. In the corner of the tent was a hole about three feet wide where the sand had erupted around its edges. This was the source of the smell, and it made even the battle-hardened HAWC hesitate. The hairs on the back of his neck rose slightly.
He pulled a small pencil torch from his pocket and shone the beam into the hole. It wasn’t deep and trailed away outside the tent. He moved the torch closer, leaning forward as he did. The edges of the hole were greasy and coated in a waxy substance. This close, the smell was overpowering. On his knees, he leaned closer.
‘Don’t!’ Zach’s voice was so sudden and sharp it made the large HAWC jump. When Sam looked up at him, he seemed about to faint.
Sam turned back to the hole and spoke over his shoulder. ‘Could it be some sort of tunnel – like Hamas use along the Gaza?’ After a few seconds silence, Sam answered himself. ‘I didn’t think so either.’
Zach had his thin arms wrapped around his body and refused to come any closer to the pit. ‘Night bugs,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Night bugs. When I was a first-year student I had to share temporary accommodation in a low-rent suburb with about ten other students. The beds were infested with night bugs. That smell reminds me of the stink.’
Sam had seen enough. ‘Let’s get the hell out
of here.’
It was cooler now and the creature could travel over the surface without fearing the crushing heat of the yellow sun. It felt stronger after feeding on the small fluid-filled animals; they were soft and slow, with no defensive claws, teeth or stingers. The creature could survive here; its kind could rule here.
It stood again on its powerful jointed legs, lifting two-thirds of its body from the sand and extending its shivering eyestalks. Its bulbous, chitin-covered compound eyes enabled it to see ultraviolet, infrared and polarised light, and its multinocular vision gave it almost unlimited depth perception – mandatory in its own dim and vicious world where it was the alpha predator.
It called once again to its kind, and waited. After a few barren minutes it dropped back to the sand. Its landing startled a sand viper, which struck out at the larger creature. The snake had no chance of penetrating the arthropod’s inches-thick armour plating and its strike got a defensive reaction from the creature – a lightning-quick jet of its saliva. It was the same fluid the predator injected into its prey, which liquefied organic matter so it could be easily drawn up by its feeding tube. Concentrated, however, it had another defensive use – the combination of formic and caprylic acid, mixed with dozens of other unknown enzymes, made the saliva a strong biological corrosive.
The snake fled quickly, winding its way across the cooling sand, its body already starting to dissolve and leave a trail of scales and liquefied flesh in its wake. The creature watched the small animal flee: it was too small for a meal and no threat. It tasted the air once again and continued its scrabbling movement across the dark desert sand.
THIRTY-ONE
Alex’s head shot up and he raised his hand in a closed fist gesture meaning an immediate halt. He made a chopping motion left and right and the HAWCs spread to either side of him and took cover.
Something was out there; something he had never heard before. The scream was below the range of normal human hearing. It made his skin crawl. He waited for it to be repeated, but nothing came.
Alex waited a few more moments and tried to open his senses – but still nothing came. There’s something out in the dark, he thought, and a sense of unease settled in the pit of his stomach.
He shook his head and pressed his comm stud. ‘Sam, come in.’ Change of plan; he’d bring the teams together now.
When Zach and Sam had caught up with Alex and the others, the reunited team took the opportunity to share their experiences. Alex gave them a short rest stop, and Zach took his boots off. Alex saw that his toes and heels were rubbed raw, and then rubbed again. Good on the kid for not complaining, he thought.
When Alex heard the discussion turn to the details of Hex’s execution, he walked away – he didn’t want to hear it all again. The few moments of solitude gave him the opportunity to take a quick inventory of their situation. He had one man down, two injured but operational, the Iranians now alerted to their arrival and potential position, and something moving out on the desert flats that worried the shit out of him. They were still on schedule, but things were definitely not getting any easier for them. Ahh, every day above ground is a good one, he thought.
He decided they could afford to rest for twenty minutes now, and then have some longer downtime when they got to the cave mouth. The two teams had been running for several miles and he knew even his strongest HAWCs were exhausted – and he couldn’t carry them all.
Adira intercepted him as he rejoined the group. She touched his arm. ‘You’re bleeding, Captain Hunter.’
A flechette had grazed his upper arm just above the bicep, managing to part the toughened para-aramid synthetic fibres of his combat suit. Alex had patches in his kit to glue tears together to maintain the biological and thermal seal – and he wasn’t worried about his flesh.
‘It’s nothing, I heal quickly,’ he said.
‘You certainly do. Not many men can slay two Takavaran squads with their bare hands. You should be dead – not least from the viper’s bite, Captain.’
She reached up to try to check his injury again. Alex turned slightly so she wouldn’t see the wound and instead grasped her hand before she laid it on his arm. He held it for a minute and smiled into her eyes. He could see the intelligence and strength in those dark pools. As a reflex she reached up and laid her other hand over the top of his and smiled, blushing at the same time.
‘Alex,’ he said. ‘Call me Alex.’
He looked down at her small hand and for the first time noticed the tiny blue star on the skin between her thumb and forefinger. Brand of the fighter, he thought. He smiled again then moved away to talk to Sam.
*
‘Achhh, wake up,’ Adira told herself sternly. Her heart was beating in her chest and she could feel the heat in her cheeks. She had crawled into pitch-black terrorists’ tunnels and kicked down doors under enemy fire, and here she was with shaking hands because the handsome captain had smiled at her. She didn’t even know him, and perhaps never would. Still, after seeing him in battle, she couldn’t help feeling he was different from any man she had ever known.
Adira was a warrior herself; she had never married, and rarely dated. Who could ever keep up with me? was the little excuse she used to justify the lack of close relationships in her life. She rarely even saw her family these days; her closest link with them was her contact with her uncle, General Shavit, but they hardly ever spoke of personal things. She wondered now how the general had managed to have a wife and his own family while still focusing on his military career. Or perhaps it was different for a man. Adira was respected as an equal in the Israeli military, but would that equality remain in married life?
She looked at the broad form of the HAWC as he walked away.
How would Alex Hunter treat his woman? she wondered. As an equal or as some fragile being who needed his protection? She shook her head. Her job wasn’t to daydream about good-looking American soldiers; it was to discover this secret weapon the US military had developed and pass that information on to Mossad.
If you’re not the Arcadian, you should be, she thought as Alex made his way over to Sam Reid.
In all her time in the army, and now Mossad, Adira had never disobeyed an order. But the thought of submitting Alex’s name to her superiors felt like a betrayal of him… and herself. Besides, the report would be premature – what good was the end result without learning how that result had been achieved? Not yet then, she thought, not just yet.
‘And you can call me Addy,’ she said under her breath.
Alex’s powerful hearing picked up Adira’s words and he smiled back at her over his shoulder. Addy, nice name, he thought.
He slapped an adhesive patch over the tear in his suit and crouched down next to Sam and Zach.
‘Never seen anything like it, boss,’ Sam reported. ‘Those men were shrunk down to the size of five year olds, just empty bags. Even their eyes were shrivelled down to Californian raisins. And another thing – they all had these thumb-sized holes in them, but I don’t know what type of weapon could cause that.’
‘Could it have been a laser?’
‘Doubt it. No burns to the clothing or cauterisation of the flesh; just shrivelled bodies with a single small hole… oh, yeah, and a bad smell.’
Sam looked worried and Alex didn’t like it. There wasn’t much the man feared – something had rattled him.
‘Describe the smell,’ he said.
Sam’s gaze seemed to turn inwards as he took himself back to the tent for a few seconds. ‘Vinegar, sugar and almonds… musty-sweet, disgusting. Animal, but not.’ He sat quietly, deep in thought for a few seconds.
‘Uncle!’ Alex brought him back. ‘What else – any tracks?’
‘Nothing except the Iranians’ footprints. All the action occurred in the tent. There was a hole in the corner – big and deep, all the dirt pushed upwards. My guess is something came up out of the ground, ambushed them, then went back down the same way. Maybe they were shot full of some toxin that destroys blood
cells. Or microwaved – I’ve heard the Chinese are refining a microwave weapon that cooks you from the inside out. But one thing’s for sure, those men hadn’t been dead for very long – their fire was still burning down when we got there.’ Sam shook his head slowly and ran his fingers up through his hair. ‘Maybe radiation poisoning, maybe a hundred things I’m just not thinking of. But I’ll tell you, boss, nothing I know of works that quickly, or does that to flesh and bone.’
Alex looked across at Zach who was sitting on the sand with his feet and legs drawn up to his chest. He anticipated Alex’s question. ‘No, not radiation. Even a mega-sievert blast wouldn’t cause that type of damage. Blistering, skin vaporisation, cell destruction and DNA mutation, yes, but not that sort of physical… desiccation. Besides, there was no secondary irradiation or any trace of lingering particles – so, no, not radiation. I think it was something biological – did you tell him about the night bugs?’
‘The what?’ Alex looked from Zach to Sam and then back again when Sam shrugged his shoulders.
‘This might be totally unrelated,’ Zach went on, ‘but I’ve smelled something like that before, when I was in a student share hostel. It was the odour of a night-bug infestation – I believe you call them bedbugs. Entomology is not my area, but night bugs give off a distinctive sweet smell from the abdominal scent glands – only detectable by humans when they’re in large numbers.’
Alex raised his eyebrows and looked at Sam. The big HAWC motioned with his hand back to Zach. The inference was clear – it’s his story, let him tell it.
‘You think bedbugs did this?’ Alex asked.
‘No, of course not. That would be crazy.’ Zach looked down at the ground and knitted his brows. ‘Crazy,’ he said again.
But not crazy enough for him to voice his concerns and be clearly affected, thought Alex. He also noticed Sam never once contradicted the kid.
