The SEALs rushed in, weapons up.
One man in the kitchen recovered and whipped his arm up and around. A pistol extended toward the figures entering the back door. The man quaked as three times, dark red dots burst on his chest before his finger closed on the trigger. His body slammed into the counter top, head banging on an open cupboard door. A shelf inside tipped, sending a dozen ceramic coffee mugs crashing to the floor. The Korean soldier slumped in a quickly spreading pool of his own blood.
“One down. Kitchen clear,” Forester spoke into the radio. His voice was calm and detached, clinical.
Wasner’s team swiftly filtered into the front room and saw no one.
“Living room clear,” Marcus said.
Wasner ordered, “Boone, Harold, clear the garage!”
“I’m going up,” Forester said. His team moved to the staircase at the end of the house. The stairs went up six feet to a landing, then turned 180 degrees and led toward the center of the house. A handrail ran along the open left side of the stairs.
Noise and voices came from the garage.
“He’s running!” Boone shouted into the mike. “Snipers! Man out of the garage!”
“Try to keep him alive!” Marcus called.
One of the North Korean commandos sprinted out the side door of the garage. He lunged for the Suburban. A loud pop cracked from the trees at the end of the driveway.
“Suspect down!”
“Two SEALs coming out the garage! Don’t shoot us!”
The North Korean soldier writhed in the snow. Blood surged in streams from his right shoulder. A mass of bone jutted out of the skin. The man bellowed in pain as he twisted and flailed on the freezing ground.
Boone and Harold were nearly on him. The man managed to find his pistol with his left hand and raised it to his temple. A bright explosion lit the darkness like a camera flash. Blood and brains sprayed over the surface of the snow. The man’s agonized twisting and shouting came to an abrupt stop. His limbs twitched spasmodically, then fell still. His face was still intact, but the bullet had hollowed his skull.
“Damn! He killed himself, Cchief!”
“All right, let the CSI guys take it from there. Come back in and finish clearing the house.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Inside, the men tried to use the heat-imaging capability of their night vision glasses. The heater in the house was too high. Random reflections and ghost images seeped up into their view. They couldn’t tell where the men were. They flipped the lenses up and out of the way. They had to do this one low-tech, old-school style.
As they topped the staircase, two of the balaclava-masked SEALs poked their weapons over the ledge. They swept their muzzles side to side across the flat landing. They carefully peered down the wide-open hallway that ran the length of the upstairs area. Two more men passed the first pair and took opposite kneeling positions at the top of the stairs.
Six identical doors lined the hallway, three to the left, two to the right and one at the end, directly facing the stairway. Presumably, three were bedrooms, one was a bathroom, and one was a linen closet. Which was which had to be determined the old-fashioned way. They would need to open each, one at a time.
Forester and Beckwith passed the two pairs of SEALs in a fast, crouching walk.
The first two men who had reached the top, Bell and Stingle, stayed where they were to guard the approach from below and keep an eye on the doors down each side of the hallway. The others started with the nearest door on the left.
They tensed, took a deep breath, and paced their heart rate. Forester put his hand on the knob and slowly twisted. He shoved the door open and Beckwith burst in, Forester right behind him. It was a small bedroom with a window at the back, and an empty closet with a broken door that hung open on a twisted hinge. A bed and a small nightstand were the only objects in the still room. No people.
“Room one clear,” Forester whispered into his microphone.
The two men backed out. Philips and Miller swung open the next door, which turned out to be a linen closet with no place to hide a man.
“Room two clear,” uttered one of the men.
Forester and Beckwith passed them and took the door across the hall to the right. They got on either side. Philips and Miller covered them across the hall as Beckwith put his hand on the doorknob.
A sound like wood and metal clacking together came from the end of the hall. Stingle shouted from the stairwell. “On the left! Freeze!”
Something small, dark, and hard thumped heavily at the top of the staircase, bounced into the air, and halted on the carpet between the six SEALs.
“Grenade!”
Bell sprung forward and wrapped his body snugly around the baseball-sized mass of deadly steel. A muffled explosion thumped through the house. A bright flash of light shot out from under Bell’s body. Beckwith turned and fired two short bursts in the direction of the door. From the room, a man let out a scream, followed by a heavy thud.
“Medic! Get the medic up here!”
Stingle immediately turned Bell onto his back and started to pull off his body armor when he realized there was no need. Bell’s death-dulled eyes stared blankly into space. Blood ran in streams from the open armholes of his vest and out of his mouth and nose. The Mormon boy from Utah was going to get the hero’s funeral that would make his mother proud.
Forester and Beckwith kicked in the nearest door while Philips and Miller rushed the end of the hall. The room on the right was another empty bedroom, and they quickly cleared it then rushed to the room from which the grenade had come. Philips and Miller had already entered and found the body of a dark-skinned Caucasian man lying facedown in a pool of blood on the floor next to a bed. He held a pistol in one hand. Another hand grenade, pin still in place, lay on the floor nearby. A metal box with an electronic keypad lay on the bed. It looked like a land mine. They cleared that room and went to the last one at the end of the hall.
Forester put his hand on the doorknob. The others tensed up. A dozen holes suddenly appeared in the wooden door and nearby Sheetrock as a burst of gunfire rang out from inside the room. Splintered bits of wood from the door stung the men’s faces, and a shard of wood cut into Forester’s left arm through a gap in his armored vest just below the shoulder. Miller grunted and stumbled backwards as one of the rounds struck him full in the chest. It crunched into his armored vest, sending him backwards, and knocked the wind out of him. He landed flat on his butt.
Lucky for him, the heavy wooden door had slowed the bullet enough that by the time it hit the vest, it was rendered non-lethal. His eyes rolled as he coughed and gasped for air, his lungs shocked by the impact. The medic left the dead body of Bell and sprinted across the hall to Miller, who would say later that it felt like he had been hit with a small Buick.
Beckwith fired a pair of three-round bursts through the Sheetrock wall
into
the room, then kicked the door
open
. He rushed
in
, followed by Forrester and Philips. A blond-haired, blue-eyed man stared back at them. He was mostly naked, except for a pair of colorful boxer shorts. A vial of the chemical was gripped in one hand and a pistol in the other.
Blood soaked through the cloth of his boxer shorts near the hip and ran in thick, red rivulets down his right thigh. The man looked like he could have been taken out of a Nazi propaganda poster, except that now he had a crazed look in his eyes as he backed slowly toward the window.
Beckwith faced him, weapon raised. “All right, buddy, put down your weapon and the vial. Put them down gently on the bed.”
“You are too late!” Adem Jankovic’s Kosovar accent was evident. A mix of hatred and fear quivered in his voice. “You were too late to save my people in Kosovo, and you are too late to save your own people here.”
Forester whispered into his mike. “Snipers? Can you see the dude in his underwear? Top floor, south corner, back of the house?”
“Too late for what?” Beckwith asked calmly.
“I see his shadow,” the sniper responded. “But no good shot. Try to back him up closer to the window.”
Adem suddenly became calm, demonically calm. His eyes glimmered with evil intent. “You will see…you will see even now!” The blond Nazi poster boy raised the vial in his left hand.
“Shoot him!” Forester grunted hoarsely.
Beckwith squeezed the trigger on his MP-5, sending three 9mm rounds into Adem’s chest. The blond Kosovar shuddered, but stayed on his feet. He gripped the vial tightly. He opened his mouth to speak, but a hiss of air was all that escaped his gaping lips. Adem swayed, then stumbled back toward the window.
His body convulsed in a spasm that jerked him aside. A round hole appeared in the window. The high-powered bullet zinged past him and splintered the wooden doorframe inches from Forester’s head.
Adem blinked rapidly as razor shards of glass sprayed his back. Blood ran in a hundred tiny streams out of the wounds that peppered his flesh. He tilted dizzily. Beckwith and Forester lunged forward to grab the vial before he dropped it.
In an unexpected burst of energy, the Kosovar smashed the test tube hard against his own forehead as he fell to the ground. Fluid ran across his face and chest. Small droplets of the yellowish substance splashed into the air as the vial burst. The two warriors barely avoided landing on the man.
As they rolled their bodies away, Forester shouted, “The chemical is out! Evacuate the building!”
The chemical reaction was instantaneous. The blood and sweat that covered Adem’s body provided the liquid agent the bacteria needed to replicate, and the cancerous process started within two seconds. Orange lumps visibly rose from the handsome blond man’s face and across his chest. The lumps quickly grew as large as baseballs, disfiguring his flesh into grotesque masses where the fluid had contacted him. They spread rapidly.
The lumps turned red, and then got darker. They replicated across his flesh until his entire body bubbled and seethed like a thick, boiling soup. Wisps of an eerie red-orange smoke rose from Adem’s form. He screamed in horrifying agony as the sores pulsed larger and larger.
Swollen, red cysts burst open and turned black. Sick-looking orange foam expanded from the open wounds on his chest.
Beckwith stood transfixed by the scene in front of him.
“Beckwith!” Forester shouted, “Let’s go!”
Suddenly shaken from his mesmerized stare, Beckwith turned to run out of the room. The chemical reaction team was already coming into the area. Bulky green bio suits swished noisily as they passed Forester and Beckwith. The two commandos ran down the stairs and were met by a MOP-suited bio tech.
“Wait outside the front door!” the hooded man shouted. “Don’t go near anyone not in a suit! We need to detox you right away.”
The two men did as ordered while the bio team rushed to seal off the house. By the time the team reached Adem’s body, it was not recognizably human. Only the lower parts of the legs and feet remained untouched by the cancer. Within minutes, those parts too were completely engulfed.
The remains of Adem Jankovic transformed into a large orange, red, and black mass of slimy, deformed tissue bearing no resemblance at all to the man who had threatened to cut Marcus Johnson’s balls off only two days earlier.
Beckwith and Forester hurriedly stepped out onto the front porch. It was encased in a large, clear, plastic tent.
“Oh, dear Jesus!” Beckwith said in a near panic. “Help me, God! I think he got some of that crap on my clothes!”
“Just calm down and stand still,” replied one of the hooded men nearby.
Beckwith started to take his equipment off, but was stopped by the bio team. “Don’t! Don’t touch your clothes! Just stand still. The Nomex suit will keep you safe while we undress you. Now put your arms straight out sideways.”
Both men did so. One of the hooded detox crew startled with alarm. “Uh oh!” he said, pointing at Beckwith’s leg. “There’s smoke coming up from his trousers!”
A thin wisp of white smoke emanated from a small hole in the left shin of Beckwith’s trousers, just above the top of his boot. Through this, the bacteria had already started to spread through the sweat-soaked material of his thermal long underwear.
The bio techs rushed to get his boots and pants off as fast as they could. With knives, they cut the laces from the boots and pulled them off, placing them quickly into sealed bags. They then removed his belt and pulled off the trousers quickly to reveal the thermal underwear, which was discolored from the effect of the TZ-E on his shin.
“Oh, Jesus! Hurry up! Oh, God! Don’t let me die like that guy!”
They pulled off the long underwear and put it in a bag. The tech turned back toward Beckwith. He gasped as two small orange circles grew from mere dots to the size of silver dollar coins in a matter of seconds.
Beckwith felt a painful sensation on the surface of his skin. He looked down and saw the bacteria growing rapidly across his left shin, visibly spreading up his leg.
“No! No!” he shouted. “Cut it off! Cut my leg off! Hurry up, before it spreads!”
Forester reacted first. He, too, had seen how fast this thing spread and couldn’t let his fellow warrior to die that way. He quickly drew out his fighting knife and pushed the
terrified tech
aside.
Beckwith dropped to the floor of the tent. “Hurry! Hurry up!” He nearly screamed the words.
“Hold him!” Forester shouted to the technicians. “Hold him down!”
Two of the
techs
grabbed
his shoulders and a third his right leg. Forester
pulled
a tourniquet from an open first aid bag and tightened it around Beckwith’s thigh. He held the limb down with his own body weight and placed the razor-sharp blade of his ten-inch-long SOG fighting knife under Beckwith’s kneecap, careful not to touch the infected surface of the leg six inches lower, where the bacteria was spreading.
The Marine grunted, sucked in a deep breath, and held it as his partner tensed and leaned his body weight onto the blade. In a single, rapid motion, Forester swiftly sliced up under the patella, then down through the knee joint, shearing tendon, cartilage, and bone until the lower part of the leg was amputated at the joint.