by Tyler Hanson
“Originally the goal was capture if possible, kill if necessary. However, we’ve had far too many unexpected setbacks along the way to afford that distinction anymore. His allies have provided him with intelligence and resources that, quite frankly, leaves me scared shitless.”
“Go in, shoot, leave, get a medal,” Ben summarized. “I assume you found him?”
“Yeah, he has a compound here in Abbottabad, just south of the military academy. But it won’t be that easy. The compound is likely wired with traps, hence our need for a competent EOD.” He gestured at Stacey. “Our intelligence team, if they can be fully trusted, tells us that the compound is filled with other people, not just Bin Laden. We’re looking at two, maybe three dozen potential hostiles.”
Johnson paused, glancing throughout the cramped space. “Let me be absolutely clear. Stopping Bin Laden takes precedence over all other lives in this town. Yours, mine, or the possible toddlers strapped in dynamite and AK-47s. DEVGRU doesn’t generally operate alongside CANSOFCOM, and I want to make sure we’re on the same page. Are we?”
The six Canadian operatives nodded, almost in unison.
“Good. We have the element of surprise. It’s clear now that someone is leaking our information to the enemy. So, all official records will state a planned attack by helicopter, set for tomorrow night. I pray this is all the edge we’ll need.”
The transport vehicle shuddered to a stop. The captain checked his watch. “We’re a little after midnight. Let’s make this quick.”
The dozen operatives quickly, but quietly, hefted themselves from the truck. It waited, idling. Stacey took in the surroundings. There were flat expanses of dirt in every direction. The only object visible was the tall, tan building in front of him, surrounded by high walls of the same color and composition. Strangely, all the lights appeared to be off.
Maybe they don’t run night security to avoid suspicion, Stacey guessed.
The twelve men fanned out, rifles raised, green laser sights pointed to the compound gate. Stacey moved ahead of the pack to investigate. There was patterning in the dirt that made it clear were mines were buried around the entrance. He gestured for the group to gather around him.
“See those rings? Avoid them. I could blow them with the laser I packed,” he patted the box on his hip, “But then we’ll lose the element of surprise. Just be careful.”
They nodded and filed behind him in a line to avoid any unfriendly ordinances. When Stacey reached the gate, he paused. There was nothing other than iron bars, but the door itself swung inward. He retrieved a small flashlight and shined it through the bars at the ground. There, glinting in the light, was a thin wire. He traced the wiring up to where it embedded itself into the walls at head-height on either side of the gate.
“Okay, so . . .” Stacey paused, surveying the walls above him, but they were too high to climb by hand. “We have an issue. Explosives are set to trigger once the gate opens enough to upset the trip wire. We aren’t equipped to climb around it. I can set a controlled charge to detonate the explosives. Thoughts?”
Captain Johnson stood solemnly. Stacey felt the small pinch of his migraine return.
“This isn’t my preference,” Johnson replied, “But I say we blow it and enter loud and fast. I’m not as close to Bin Laden as I’d like to be before alerting everyone, but we’ll make it work. Won’t we, soldiers?”
“HOO-YAH,” the other five DEVGRU members whispered at once.
“Alright, then,” Stacey said. He retrieved a breaching explosive and some putty from his bag and adhered it to the gate, entering something into the device as he worked. Stepping back, he unspooled a long red wire, motioning for the others to follow him to a safe distance. Once they were out of the assumed blast radius, he opened his hand to the group with all five fingers showing.
5 . . .
He dropped one finger per second, visualizing the countdown.
4 . . .
3 . . .
2 . . .
1 . . .
Stacey squeezed the detonator in his hand.
The gate exploded from its hinges, and as it did so, the wire-activated traps in the walls shattered the concrete with their own fire and fury. Stacey and Xander rushed in, followed by four of the Johnsons, then Lincoln and Daanis, the last two Johnsons, and finally Ben and Adam. They filed into the courtyard like ants into a colony while Stacey searched in the dark for more mines or traps.
It only took a few seconds to pass safely from the gate to the side door of the house. Stacey tried to examine the frame and knob, but one of the Johnsons pushed him aside and blasted the entire locking mechanism from its hinges with a shotgun, sending the door freely swinging open. They rushed forward.
What awaited inside was nothing like what Stacey had expected.
Moving into the large, multi-story home, he discovered an open living-room-style floor area filled with cots and mattresses. Blankets, pillows and various knick-knacks indicated it as a sleeping area.
But why so many people? And where were they all right now?
The thought had no more than crossed Stacey’s mind when his vision adjusted a little better. Along the back of the room, from one side of the wall to the other, were ten to fifteen shadows of varying heights. As he raised his flashlight to see them better, a loud alarm sounded throughout the compound, and searing white floodlights clicked on all around him. The intense pain from behind his eyes caused him to drop to one knee, the rifle shaking in his hands. Heavy boots stomped from the floor above Stacey’s head, approaching a staircase on his left.
The DEVGRU and CANSOFCOM operatives opened fire on the group in front of them.
His eyes refocused, and Stacey could see three children, four adolescents, and eight adults scrambling in front of him. They were not all Pakistani, however. In fact, most did not even look Middle Eastern. He saw a relative rainbow of skin tones and a mix of differing physical features. One of the children looked Inuit, and the man gripping their shoulder had very dark skin, his clothing similar to what Stacey had seen on a mission in Botswana. The mixtures of tattered clothing gave Stacey the impression of refugees, not terrorists.
One of the Johnsons on Stacey’s right muttered, “Who they hell are they?”
Stacey barely heard the words over the gunfire. It was too late to ponder, anyway. They’d already engaged the “enemy.”
The possible Tswana stepped in front of the incoming bullets, shielding the child from harm. Instead of penetrating his torso, though, they ricocheted off his skin with an awkward wobbling sound, flying into the walls and furniture around him. He extended both arms, and much to Stacey’s surprise, they stretched out like taffy to strike both Lincoln and the Johnson next to Stacey. The two men yelped in shock and pain as they flew out of Stacey’s field of vision. He moved to help them, but he didn’t have a chance.
The footsteps from above reached the staircase.
He and two of the DEVGRU operatives turned their rifles to address the incoming threat. Nothing appeared within their line of sight for several seconds, though the footsteps did not cease. Like a ghost, a white-haired albino man in jeans and a white t-shirt suddenly popped into reality a few centimeters from Stacey’s face. Before Stacey could let out a startled cry, the albino man punched him in the gut with one fist and the chin with the other, sending him reeling backward and collapsing to the floor. The two men with Stacey released bursts of machine-gun fire, but he vanished. The bullets passed through air, striking the staircase banister instead.
The albino man reappeared behind one of the Johnsons with a dagger in his hand. He jabbed it into his side, and the DEVGRU operative cried out in pain, stumbling a little. Stacey crawled to his feet, but the attacker noticed, disappearing and reappearing in front of Stacey to kick him in the face. Stars filled Stacey’s vision, and everything grew blurry. He collapsed to the floor and felt wetness on his upper lip as his nose began bleeding.
Gunfire raged all around him, bullets whizzing over his
head, and he could hear the slick swishing noise of the albino man’s knife slicing into the operatives. He wiped his face and rolled to his shaky feet just in time to avoid the pattering of stray projectiles exploding into the space where he laid. The albino man stood over one of the DEVGRU men with his knife raised, about to strike a final blow.
Stacey screamed, leaving his rifle behind in the heat of the moment, and leapt at the attacker. He tackled the albino man to the ground, knocking the knife from his hand, but the man vanished, leaving him alone on the ground. The man reappeared a few steps away, reaching for his knife.
Before the albino man could retrieve his weapon, a cluster of bullets buzzed past Stacey and pattered into the assailant’s chest like raindrops on a tin roof. The man fell over, bloodied and dead. Stacey looked behind him to see Xander approaching with an expressionless face, smoke pouring from his rifle barrel.
Stacey rolled to his feet and ran to pick up his own rifle. Around him was a blur of motion, a violent dance of maddening proportions. Some of the hostiles in the house were already dead or incapacitated. Lincoln, Adam, and two of the DEVGRU operatives fought the seemingly elastic Tswana, rolling and hopping to avoid his long, serpentine strikes. A woman in silk pajamas rushed past Stacey to attack Ben. As she drew close, her hands glowed with a purple light. Before she could use the light, Stacey and his comrade fired into her face, stopping her permanently.
More footsteps pounded above his head, and he turned to readdress the staircase. A woman, in some kind of robe and sporting a pink-and-black pixie haircut, ran into view, preceding a gust of wind. She rocketed over the banister, landing feet-first on the far wall. She pushed away in a blur, now only a few paces from Stacey. She reached behind her back and withdrew a short, wide sword with a decorative handle.
Oh, shit, Stacey thought, snatching his rifle from the floor.
The woman raised her sword, but Stacey unloaded the rest of his magazine in her direction; he was taking no chances, considering the situation. Instead of dodging or being struck by the bullets, though, her body separated in a dozen different directions. Multiple transparent torsos split away from her in the milliseconds of her attack, each one carrying her head and arms to a unique location, though all remained rooted to her at the waist. Each version of the woman had one of those swords, all using the flat side of the weapon as a shield against the bullets.
The grinding noise of lead striking metal filled the room, and the bullets flew away from the woman’s unearthly form, burying themselves into the walls, floor and ceiling. With another gust of air, the woman appeared before Stacey, swinging her sword down toward his head. Instinctively, he extended his hands to defend himself, but his vision blurred. Before he could register what happened, he was standing halfway across the room. The woman’s blade dug into the floor, and she looked up at him, a bewildered expression on her face.
Her eyes drifted to his hands.
Stacey looked down as well, turning his palms upward. They were smoking, but they didn’t feel much warmer than normal. He realized his rifle was gone, so he searched the room and found it lying close to the woman with the sword. The grip of the weapon, where he had last held it, was red-hot.
His headache returned, stronger than ever. The floodlights intensified, focusing like lasers into his eyes.
The pixie-haired woman lifted her sword in time to smack the flat of it against one of the passing DEVGRU operatives, knocking him to the ground. Gunfire erupted, and she split into her multiple selves again, deflecting the approaching bullets. All the while, she studied Stacey, observant of his confusion and distress. The woman took a few slow, nonthreatening steps in his direction, and she opened her mouth to speak in English.
“Do you know what you’re—“
Small-arms fire cracked nearby, and a hole appeared in her forehead, spraying faint red mist. She fell face-down onto the floor, revealing Captain Johnson holding a pistol. Blood pooled around her head, and Stacey saw the red silhouette of a giant butterfly embroidered on the back of her robe.
“Good work, Private,” Captain Johnson yelled over the gunfire. “Where’s your—”
More heavy noises above them sounded just seconds before a wide hole exploded from the ceiling. Four people dropped into the chaos, the largest of them landing directly on top of two DEVGRU men. The three smaller people wore hoodies, jeans, and scarves over their mouth. It was difficult to tell the exact size, build, or appearance of the three newcomers due to their clothing. They sported machine pistols aimed at Stacey’s and Johnson’s teams.
The fourth person, the larger one, wore long, grey sweatpants and nothing else. As the smoke cleared, Stacey realized his inhuman nature. Instead of skin, muscle, hair and bone, his body appeared to be made of thousands of small, pastel-colored pieces of glass all pressed together.
If Stacey squinted, he could see through the person’s chest to the other side of the room, albeit distorted by the refracted, colored light. As he moved—his motions just as fluid as anyone else’s—the floodlights sparkled colorfully across his body. It reminded Stacey of the sun passing through the mosaic windows of the ornate church he visited once or twice as a young boy.
The three hoodie-wearing assailants opened fire on Stacey’s teams, and the teams returned the favor. The mosaic man stepped off the two unconscious—hopefully, Stacey thought—DEVGRU men and wrapped one hand around Lincoln’s neck. The burly man choked out some words Stacey couldn’t hear and drew his sidearm. Lincoln fired his pistol directly at the mosaic man’s forehead, but the bullets just bounced away. The glass giant tossed Lincoln across the room, and he limply struck the wall.
The pressure and heat behind Stacey’s eyes nearly overwhelmed his focus, but he pushed past the pain to take advantage of an opportunity. He retrieved a grenade from his vest and pulled the pin. “Live one out!”
He lobbed it at the mosaic man’s torso, intending for it to land at his feet, but the grenade never reached its destination. Swift as a striking cobra, the inhuman assailant plucked the explosive from the air with one hand and clenched it in their fist. There was a flash of light and a muffled vibration, and the mosaic pieces all along the thing’s body glowed their pastel colors with even brighter intensity. He opened his hand, and smoking bits of metal fell from his palm.
That last flash of light was too much for Stacey. It propelled his migraine beyond the point of reconciliation. Faint, orange light filled his peripheral vision; the floodlights were so intense that he could hear them in his mind. The inside of his skull felt like a hot iron seared his brain. He had struggled with milder headaches like this for years, but nothing so incapacitating ever occurred before.
Maybe I should have listened to Sam.
He stumbled across the floor, tears in his eyes, almost tripping over the Tswana’s dead body. There was a giant, bloodless hole in the man’s chest, and Stacey felt a lump in his throat when he noticed the Inuit child lying on their stomach nearby, lifeless arms still reaching out for the man. What did we do?
As he collapsed to the floor, pressing his back against the nearest wall, he heard something strange . . .
“We should use it!” Adam yelled, laying down cover fire against the mosaic person near the staircase.
“We should use it!” Xander said, gunning down the attacker in a red hoodie.
“We should use it!” Daanis called, digging through a satchel at her side.
“We should use it!” Lincoln muttered, otherwise still unconscious in the spot he’d been thrown.
“We should use it!” Ben grunted, engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the attacker in a brown hoodie.
“Wait, what?” One of the Johnsons replied, his team in a firefight against a heavily-armored assailant Stacey hadn’t noticed before.
Stacey squinted through his pain to watch the fight unfold.
The CANSOFCOM team worked in tandem to draw the mosaic man away from the walls, exposing him on all sides to the Canadian operatives. Daanis retrieved a f
at, silver tube from her bag and pressed a button on the side. Six metal spikes protruded from one end. For a moment she waited, poised, while Adam and Xander directed gunfire at the mosaic person’s face to keep them off-balance. When she seemed sure, Daanis pounced at their enemy. The silver tube’s spikes plunged into his crystalline back, adhering the device.
Stacey felt like he might vomit. He wasn’t sure how much nausea stemmed from the confusing, messy situation rather than his headache. He honestly felt like it was one hundred percent for each of those reasons, which must be why he felt two hundred percent nauseous. Something filled his nostrils; after a moment, he realized it was the smell of burning ozone.
Something’s wrong.
The device Daanis planted was unknown to Stacey’s personal knowledge of conventional weaponry. It looked and felt almost alien, and as he watched, it behaved as such, too. It offered a low hum that grew louder and increased in pitch with every passing second, like the charging noise of a Polaroid camera. The recipient reached his thick, glassy arms behind his back, scrambling to remove the device.
Daanis stepped closer. “You can’t fight forever,” Daanis hummed in a low voice, her tone disturbingly gleeful.
“You can’t fight forever,” Ben growled, shoving his knife into the neck of the combatant in a brown hoodie.
“You can’t fight forever,” Lincoln murmured, pulling himself to his feet.
“You can’t fight forever.” Adam laughed as he threw the fighter in a green hoodie to their knees, shooting them in the back of the head with his sidearm, execution-style.
“You can’t fight forever,” Xander huffed, removing the weapons from the two unconscious DEVGRU operatives for no clear reason.
“Okay, what the fuck?” The same Johnson responded.
The device reached a peak, and it offered a slight, organic shudder, like an insect burying itself into the dirt. When it did, the mosaic man screamed in pain as he shattered into thousands of crystalline pieces. Both teams ducked to avoid the shower of sharp points and edges.
