by Toby Tate
Gordon sighed loudly. “This just keeps getting better and better.”
* * *
El-Hashem’s men gathered around the smaller group as Scooter once again laid out the plan, splitting up some of the Saudi soldiers and pairing them with as many of his own men as he could. Now they would have twice the coverage, which was good. They all carried Heckler & Koch G36 carbines and had the same night vision goggles as his team. But Scooter still did not feel comfortable with the whole scenario. If el-Hashem and his men decided to cut and run when things got hairy, they would be left on their own. But he had confidence in his men, and he knew they would finish the job no matter what.
Getting shot in the back was also another concern, but that was why he had paired them up—so they could keep an eye on each other. There were a few extra men from el-Hashem’s team that he paired up together, putting the ones who understood the most English with the ones who didn’t, and handed them some radios. He would put them in the group going into the bunker, and leave his own two men—Mad Dog and One Shot—outside to guard their exit. He wasn’t about to put el-Hashem’s men outside with M240s and anti-tank guns.
Once they were paired off, Scooter said, “Okay, we’re going to have to go in quietly.” He waited for the English-speakers to translate. That was going to be a pain in the ass, he thought. “Mad Dog will jam their radio frequency, and then we’ll move in. Gabe, Gordon, el-Hashem and your men will go with me toward the entrance—we’ll have to crawl in close, in case Abel and Bio miss taking out the guards, which I don’t think will happen, but you never know. Once the guards are down, we’ll move to the complex and then gain entry as quietly as possible. But, we need to be prepared to go weapons hot and lay down some shock and awe once our presence is discovered. We’ll enter the complex and go room by room, find Cain, do what needs to be done, and get the hell out of there. Mad Dog and One Shot will cover our exit and call in Max and the Little Bird if they need to, take out any vehicles with the AT4s that might roll out of the bunker. Alright, that’s it. Any questions?”
The silence of the vast desert seemed to press in on him as Scooter glanced around at all the faces. His stomach was tight with knots, but he didn’t let it show. He took the cigar out of his mouth and tossed it onto the sand.
“Let’s get the show on the road,” he said.
Chapter Fifty
Gabe, Gordon, Abel, Scooter, and his team piled into the MCAT, while el-Hashem and his men appeared out of the darkness in a six-wheeled TPz Fuchs personnel carrier. A man with a machine gun peered out of a porthole on top.
“Damn, that’s a nice vehicle,” Gordon quipped, gazing out the side window of the MRAP. “Amphibious, with a Mercedes V8 diesel. The Germans know how to build their war machines.”
“And the Saudis can afford it,” Gabe said.
They drove nearly a kilometer, stopping just on the other side of the last dune before reaching Cain’s compound.
Gabe, Gordon, Abel, Scooter, Bio, and el-Hashem took the lead and crawled on their bellies to the top of the sand dune as the rest of the company followed behind, and then stopped to look down at the compound.
Scooter produced a hand-held thermal imager and peered through it at the scene below.
“What are we looking at?” Gordon whispered.
“I just see the two guards, about ninety meters out,” Scooter said. “There are quite a few construction vehicles and a lot of supplies, solar panels, plus Cain’s Range Rover. Engine’s still warm. If he knows we’re here, he sure isn’t showing it, unless they’re waiting inside for us. If that’s the case, then we’d better be prepared for some shit.”
He put the imagers on his hip and made a motion for Abel and Bio to take out the two guards. The men crawled over and down the dune with their suppressed MP5s until they were as close as they needed to be to take out their targets. Gabe heard the muffled pop of several rounds being fired, and then watched through her NVGs as the two guards heads’ exploded with pink mist from beneath their helmets, and both dropped where they stood.
“Alright, that’s our cue,” Scooter said over the radio headset. “Everybody, nice and quiet.” Gabe stood and lowered her NVGs over her eyes, and then started moving slowly down the dune, carbine raised as she and Gordon followed closely beside Scooter.
They crept across the barren landscape, the sliver of a moon providing little in the way of actual light. The construction trucks loomed as they drew near to the two guards who lay motionless on either side of the opening to the concrete bunker. As they approached, Gordon poked one with his rifle and Scooter the other one. They rolled them over. They were both young men and looked to be European mercenaries, judging by the weapons, and quite dead.
“Alright, Mad Dog, you may not hear from us for a while once we get inside, so just keep your eyes and ears open,” Scooter said over the radio, followed by Mad Dog’s “Roger that.”
“Max, the same goes for you. If it sounds like trouble, get your ass in the Little Bird and get over here. Copy?”
“Copy that.”
“Okay, let’s see what we can see,” Scooter said, and they stepped up to a large, steel door with a single lever-like handle and no lock. “Guess they weren’t expecting a break-in.”
“Yeah, or maybe they were,” Gordon said.
Scooter grabbed the handle and raised it, and he and Gordon pulled the heavy door open. Inside was what seemed to be an endless passageway with an incline of about thirty degrees descending down into the darkness. Gabe thought it looked like the passageway to Hell.
“Well,” Scooter said,” might as well see where this thing leads.” He motioned for the others to follow and began making his way toward whatever waited at the other end.
* * *
Cain watched on the video monitor feed as Gabrielle Lincoln, Gordon Powers and their team of mercenaries and soldiers made their way down the passageway. He could simply kill them now, have his own men close in from each end and incinerate them with flamethrowers. But where would be the sport in that? And although Cain was nothing if not logical and ruthless, he could not resist a challenge. Additionally, he wanted to know who this mysterious man was, the one who looked like him. The team was close enough now that he could read the thoughts of each one of them. Most of them were focused on the task at hand, and some were fearful that they might not make it out alive. Well, they were certainly right about that. But the other man, the tall one with the blonde hair poking out from underneath a black ball cap, Cain was not getting a signal from. Somehow, his mind was closed off, as if an impenetrable force was blocking it. That was very interesting, indeed.
He would find out who this man was, in time. But for now, he had a few surprises in store for this party. He stood from his chair in the monitoring room and headed out the door toward the tunnel.
Chapter Fifty-One
“Looks like another door down at the end of this thing,” Gabe said over her headset mic as they continued along the downward-sloping tunnel. At least one good thing, she realized, was that it was getting cooler the farther down they traveled.
“Yeah, it probably leads to the rest of the complex,” Scooter replied. “There are likely more entrances besides this one. I remember going into Saddam’s bunker in Baghdad, protected by sixteen feet of reinforced concrete and shock absorbers. Even though they had bombed the shit out of everything above it, all the installations and equipment inside had survived. But the floor was covered with an inch of sewage and the whole place smelled like shit. There was nobody inside.”
“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure there’s somebody inside this one,” Gordon said. He held up his iPhone and checked for Cain’s little red blip on the screen. “Just what I was afraid of. No signal down here.”
As if in response to his statement, a face suddenly appeared in the darkness ahead of them. Even with her NVGs, Gabe hadn’t seen him until the last second. He seemed to appear out of nowhere. She stopped behind Gordon and Scooter and stared at the green-sha
ded image, her heart in her throat—it was Cain. The entire group raised their weapons.
“So, you found me,” Cain said. “I must admit, I have a certain admiration for your tenacity and resourcefulness.” Then Gabe saw him glance directly at Abel. “You’re the one that’s been inside my head.”
Abel lowered his weapon. “Yes,” he said.
Cain stood silent for several seconds, and then said, “Are you a clone?”
“Yes. They kept me hidden from you all those months, locked away from civilization. But I learned much while I was there. Everything that you know, I know. Everything you experience, I experience.”
“Why is it that you can read my mind, but I can’t read yours?”
“I am able to block brain waves as well as read them.”
Gabe and the others stood silent, watching the proceedings with awe. It felt surreal.
“As far as I’m concerned, you’re one of them, and so you can partake in my little experiment.”
“Experiment?”
“Yes. I will be stalking all of you throughout the bunker. You will not know when or where I will attack. I will use only my prowess, and this knife.” He held up a large KA-BAR knife with a nasty serrated edge. “Your exit has been blocked, so you must continue forward. You make it to the end, your reward will be to have all your questions answered. You will know everything about what I have been doing here all these months, and why. But first, you must pass the test.”
“And if we fail?” Gabe asked.
A faint smile passed Cain’s lips. “Then you die.”
“Well, that’s a hell of an option,” Bio said from behind them.
Suddenly, one of the Saudis cried out and broke through the group, and began firing semi-auto rounds at the apparition. The noise was deafening inside the confined space and Gabe jammed her fingers in her ears to block it. El-Hashem elbowed his way through the group and grabbed the man’s shirt, yanked him backwards and knocked the carbine from his grip. He yelled something in Arabic at the soldier and slapped him across the face. Gabe glanced over to where the Saudi had been shooting and saw that Cain was gone.
* * *
“What just happened?” Gordon asked.
“Cain wants us to see what he’s been doing here,” Abel said. “It’s a matter of pride. And he can’t resist the challenge of fighting armed soldiers. As intelligent as he is, he can’t help himself—he must defeat the enemy, either real or imagined, at all costs. It’s the way he was trained.”
“He could have killed us before we ever found this place,” Gabe said.
“Yes. He wanted us to come in here.”
“Well, at least we have something in our favor,” Gordon said.
“What’s that?” Gabe asked.
“He hates Saudi soldiers more than he hates us. They’ll be the first to die.”
“Well,” Scooter said, “I guess there’s no other way to go but forward.”
He turned and began walking toward the other end of the tunnel, carbine raised, as Gabe and the rest followed close behind.
Chapter Fifty-Two
The team continued down the passageway in silence, until they came to the end. Another steel door, like the one they had first entered, stood before them. Scooter turned and looked at Gordon, who shrugged. He laid his HK over one arm, finger on the trigger, and then grabbed the handle and raised it. The door swung open. He grabbed one of the flash bangs off his belt, pulled the pin, and tossed it into the room, then slammed the door. He heard a muffled bang from inside and opened the door slowly. There was no sound. The room was empty. He peered around the corner through his goggles and didn’t see or hear anyone. He stepped through the entranceway, followed by Gordon and the rest as they rushed into the room, weapons drawn, taking it by sectors—Gordon high and right, the next man low and left, the next right and low, the next left and high, until they had covered the room.
Looking around, Scooter saw that it was semi-circular and huge, with doors along every wall. The ceiling was bare, with cables, lights and plumbing fixtures running different directions, and the floor was concrete. He glanced across the room and counted the doors—fifteen in all. They would have to go through each one to figure out where to go next, he realized.
“Shit, it’s like the game show from Hell—‘Guess what’s behind door number one,’” Bio said.
“Welcome to the funhouse of horrors,” Scooter replied, and then turned and glanced at the wall beside the door. He saw a light switch and flicked it on. Nothing. “Cain turned off the power to the lights.”
“He’s not going to make this easy,” Gabe said. “But so far, Cain had been the only one we’ve seen, other than the two mercs outside.”
“I have a feeling that’s about to change. We’re going to have to split into teams and search each room one at a time. El-Hashem, you take your men and split into two or three-man teams and start on the far end. We’ll take the other end.”
The Saudi looked like he was about to say something, but nodded instead, and then turned and waved his men forward, heading off across the room.
* * *
The first door Gabe and Gordon came to had a yellow sign on the front that said “Caution, Radioactive Materials,” with the symbol for ionizing radiation in the center.
“What the hell would he be doing with radiation?” Gordon asked.
“I hate to think about it,” Gabe said.
She glanced inside the door of the next room—there were steel tables, sinks, computer monitors, beakers, and rows of what looked like incubators and monitoring equipment. What was Cain doing here? She held her MP5K at the ready and motioned for Gordon to come in. He slid through the doorway, shutting it behind him.
“Huh,” he said. “Looks like the maternity ward at the hospital.”
Gabe went to the nearest table and picked up a clip board lying there. “These are results from some kind of experiment.”
“Experiment? What would Cain experiment with in the middle of the desert?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll bet it’s got something to do with whatever he found in the ground out there.”
There were a few minutes of silence as they explored the room further, and then Gordon said, “So, what’s the deal with you and One Shot?”
Gabe glanced at him from across the room and muted her radio mic. “Seriously? You’re going to do this right now?”
Gordon shrugged as he continued looking around. “I’m just asking. You two seemed to hit it off pretty well.”
“Look Gordon, he’s just a friend, that’s all. Okay?”
He looked over at her with his NVGs and stood silently for a moment, as if processing this.
“Okay,” he said.
* * *
El-Hashem didn’t like taking orders from American pigs, but if he was going to gain their trust, he had no choice. Then, when they were no longer needed and the time was right, he would take pleasure in killing them. He thought that he may save the woman for last and have a little fun first. She had looked quite beautiful back in Saudi Arabia, naked and strapped to that table. He felt a rise in his manhood, but quickly put the thought away and focused on the task at hand. What the CIA man, Gordon, had said was in fact true—Cain hated the Saudis, especially after the way they had lied to him about his purpose in Saudi Arabia. But el-Hashem did not care about what Cain thought or didn’t think. His mission was to bring the man back alive if possible, and if not, to make absolutely sure he was dead. He would not fail in this.
He sent his men two at a time into five of the rooms, and took Jahiz with him into the first one. He swung open the heavy wooden door and peered inside through his NVGs. It was some kind of lab. He could see no one inside, and thought about tossing in a flash bang, but decided against it. No use making any more noise than necessary.
He went all the way through the door, motioning Jahiz to come in behind him. El-Hashem hugged the wall, going along it and looking out into the room as he did so, watching for any kind
of movement. He could hear the creak of his boots on the linoleum floor as he moved along, and it grated like sandpaper on his raw nerves. He had been in combat situations more times than he could count, but he had never been up against an adversary like Cain. He knew from first-hand accounts what the man—if he could be called that—was capable of.
Then he heard a sound, but couldn’t quite make out what it was. He stopped and listened. Nothing. He decided to chance calling out.
“Jahiz?” he whispered. No answer.
“Jahiz!” he said a little louder. Silence.
He peered across to the other side of the room, but didn’t see the other man in the green glow of his NVGs. Where was he?
El-Hashem surveyed the room and saw no other movement in the lab. He made his way slowly to the other side, moving around tables full of beakers and electronic equipment, specimen jars and chemicals. He spied a shape against the far wall, near the floor. As he got closer, he saw that it was Jahiz. He stopped and peered down at his second-in-command. His throat was sliced through to the spine, the wound split wide open, a yawning mouth full of blood and meat. Goggles still covered his eyes, now as useless as a child’s toy. El-Hashem felt the anger rise in his blood and he smashed his fist into the wall, leaving a dent.
Cain will die for this!
* * *
Rasheem thought he heard a sound like a thump from one of the other rooms, but couldn’t be sure. This whole thing had him shaken. He had gone up against enemy combatants, had fought in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, enduring bombs and bullets, blowing sand and starvation, but this was something else altogether. How could you fight against a power that was not of this world—a djinn? Some say that Cain’s birth was foretold in prophecy, and if that was so, then why were they here trying to kill him? The whole thing was foolishness, but Rasheem dared not speak his mind, for he knew to do so would mean a beating and possible jail time. So he kept his mouth shut and carried on. There were many things worse than death, and a Saudi military prison was one of them.
