Flaherty shrugged. ‘Actually, it’s a pretty smart idea. In Sin City there are plenty of misguided sheep to herd.’
‘I still can’t believe a preacher is involved in all this. It’s so absurd.’
‘Don’t let the righteous-holy-man stuff fool you. From what my office dug up on this guy Stokes, he’s in deep. Lillian told me Stokes is under investigation for untraceable offshore funds running through his not-for-profit corporations. He’s got some powerful, highly influential friends too. You ever see him on television?’
She shook her head.
Flaherty took out the folder Lillian had prepared for him, flipped to a picture of Stokes.
‘Recognize him?’
Studying the photo, she couldn’t quite place the handsome face. He looked like he belonged on a daytime soap opera. ‘Don’t think so.’
‘He’s got this weekly show that’s huge in the south. He’s got a band, celebrity guests, the works. Big production with big aspirations. Not so big here in the northeast, though.’
‘Too many liberal thinkers,’ Brooke said.
‘I suppose. Around here, Pastor Stokes broadcasts on some obscure Christian cable channel. I forget the station. Anyway, he’s managed to build quite a following. With everything going on in the world these days, people are looking for answers. And his message seems to resonate.’
‘Exactly what is his message?’
Tommy shrugged. ‘I’ve only seen his show once. From what I remember, he’s pretty positive. Focuses on finding inner peace, Jesus as a personal saviour … Mixes in some apocalyptic material to keep folks honest. Really animated guy … super charismatic, smooth talker. Could charm the stripes off a zebra. Like a New Age version of Billy Graham. He’s got a good line of patter.’
‘Sounds to me like you’re a fan.’
‘Nah. I just find it fascinating.’
The Yukon emerged from the tunnel and curved along McClellan Highway towards Logan Airport. Overhead, a wide-body jet was roaring in for a landing.
‘Jason says Stokes has been talking to that platoon colonel in Iraq?’ she asked.
‘That’s right. And he wants me to find out why. There are a few more things you’ll need to know about the preacher.’
Flaherty didn’t need to go to the folder to relay what Lillian had told him. He explained that in a previous life, Stokes was a Special Ops commando who’d served loyally in some of the most hostile regions on the planet, alongside Bryce Crawford. Then he told her how in 2003 Stokes had been discharged from service after losing half his right leg to a soccer ball packed with explosive.
By the time he’d finished, the Yukon had turned off Logan Airport Service Drive and was angling between the massive aeroplane hangars bordering the airstrip.
‘Aren’t you going to tell him that he missed the terminal?’ Brooke whispered to Flaherty, motioning to the driver.
‘We’re not going to the main terminal,’ Flaherty said. ‘We don’t have time for that. Especially with all the flight delays from the storm. Lillian made other arrangements for us. She’s fond of Jason. Pretty much gives him whatever he wants.’ He pointed through the window to a sleek Cessna Citation X jet idling on the tarmac. It was brilliant white with no markings. Not even an N-number on its tail fin. ‘We’ll be getting express service at 700 miles per hour.’
Like those of a fiendish voyeur, Randall Stokes’s prying eyes glimmered with immense pleasure as he watched how his unwitting Arab detainees reacted to the eerie noises emanating deep within the mountain’s belly. In the background, mechanical sounds echoed through the passage - gears engaging, pistons whining, a droning whoosh. The Arabs were mistaking the noises for guns, or artillery. A man with a patchy beard was trying to hush the others, but to little avail. Adjusting the audio level, Stokes listened to them yammering on in their native tongue. During his extensive tours in the Middle East, Stokes had picked up enough Arabic to get the gist of the animated exchange. The Arabs spoke of infidels, Allah’s divine plan and retribution in the name of the Great Prophet. All the while, they were readying their weapons. And while the four underlings, huddled around the dim cell phone light, attempted to hash out a hasty defence strategy, Al-Zahrani was surprisingly cool; resolute beyond what the situation warranted. Though he stood away from the light, the infrared clearly showed him studying the exchange - assessing behaviour; mentally separating the strong from the weak. Clearly he wasn’t pleased with what he was hearing.
There was an unmoving solemnity and drive about Al-Zahrani that commanded respect - qualities typical of a general. The fact that this revolutionary was a star Oxford University graduate and hailed from a wealthy Saudi oil family was most intriguing. Most men could only dream to gain the luxurious life that Al-Zahrani had staunchly abandoned. Such indifference to material things required incredible inner strength, yet, to Stokes, underscored the potency of the new enemy that threatened the modern world. Tainted ideology was a most fearsome force.
In videotapes Stokes had heard Al-Zahrani repeatedly mention that Allah spoke directly to him and protected him like an avenging sentinel. If that claim once seemed farfetched to Stokes, Al-Zahrani’s current actions dispelled any doubt that the man believed his own story. The dire circumstances Al-Zahrani was facing would ruin even the best of men. Clearly, however, this cave bore little threat for him.
‘Who
are
you?’ Stokes said, glaring at the notorious terrorist.
In Al-Zahrani, Stokes couldn’t help but see his own reflection, for he too claimed to speak directly to God and proclaimed to know the path to Heaven. And just as Al-Zahrani had been tutored by Islam’s most prestigious imam, Stokes, too, had been enlightened by a prodigious mentor. For an iota, Stokes entertained the possibility that God might be pitting him and Al-Zahrani against one another.
Lord, show me the righteous way, he thought.
Suddenly, Al-Zahrani silenced his four underlings in a punishing tone. Stokes watched as the fearless leader pointed towards the noises and scorned the men for their faulty appraisal. ‘What you hear is not soldiers,’ he seemed to be saying. Stokes pieced together his next words: ‘The soldiers are behind us … back there.’ Al-Zahrani pointed in the opposite direction. ‘If there is an enemy in our midst, it is not human. Yet we must confront it. We cannot turn back now.’
Goosebumps ran up Stokes’s spine; he was amazed by Al-Zahrani’s remarkable precognition.
Next, Al-Zahrani commanded the men to move forward -
towards
the commotion.
Stokes eased back in his chair and pressed his fist to his chin, wondering how this might play out. He hadn’t expected them to press on. A retreat was the expected outcome - the
sane
choice. Either Al-Zahrani had profound faith … or a death wish. Harbouring concern that the Arabs might critically impact Operation Genesis, Stokes quickly dismissed the notion that these five men could materially affect what was now under way. The numbers were heavily weighted against them.
Concern quickly gave way to intrigue. Stokes squared his shoulders and leaned forward with renewed intensity.
The Arabs disappeared from camera view for a three-count before the next camera picked up their trail. Now the passage was tightening, allowing just enough room for single-file procession.
The ringleader, a man with a patchy beard, was at the front, cell phone light extended out in his left hand, AK-47 clutched tight in the crook of his right arm. The other three men trailed in his wake, weapons at the ready, and Al-Zahrani pulled up the rear, swinging a handgun at his side. They’d stopped talking and their trepidation was rising to a fever pitch. Now even Al-Zahrani was visibly tense, because the metal-on-metal sounds they’d been hearing had given way to something much different.
Ahead in the darkness, something was moving.
Writhing.
‘Best to turn around, my friends,’ Stokes muttered, his left eyebrow tipping up.
The audio crisply picked up scratching and clicking.
The procession halted abruptly as the ringleader made the first visual confirmation.
When he spotted the horror that lay ahead, he screamed out in terror and wheeled around so fiercely that he barrelled into the two men behind him. He stumbled and the cell phone fumbled out of his grasp, clattered along the rocky ground.
Then the panic infected the others.
‘Go back! Go back!’ the ringleader was pleading as he regained his footing. He shoved at the others, trying to speed them along. Spinning, he attempted to retrieve the cell phone, but it disappeared beneath the slithering mass that crashed into him like a violent wave. He recoiled, levelled the AK-47, and opened fire. The weapon’s consecutive muzzle bursts flashed brilliant white in the infrared images on Stokes’s monitor; the deafening retort squelched the computer’s speakers.
‘No …’ Stokes grumbled.
Comfortably ahead of the others, Al-Zahrani was now back in the previous camera frame, blindly clawing his way through the darkness. But something scurried beneath his feet and caused him to trip and fall. He screamed out when something took a chunk of flesh out of his hand.
Then Stokes’s eyes bounced back to the other frame where the gunman lost his footing and suddenly tumbled backwards, forcing the assault rifle to swing up over his head, spraying bullets along a wild arc. The lethal barrage strafed the two men trailing behind him about the face and chest, sending the pair crumpling to the ground.
An instant later, a ferocious explosion ripped through the passage and obliterated the camera.
‘What in God’s name—’ the combat engineer gasped. ‘What happened to those people?’
On the LCD panel, the bot’s camera swept slowly side to side for the second time, panning over the ghastly bone pile forming an enormous ring ten feet high.
‘Looks like a fucking mausoleum,’ Crawford grumbled.
Jason looked up at Hazo, knowing that for him, the images would slice deep. It was a similar portrait of mass death that drove Hazo to become an ally to the Americans.
The Kurd stared emptily at the screen.
In 2006, US forces had used satellite imagery to scan the Ash Sham Desert for undulating mounds that hinted at the presence of mass graves. Over 200 sites had been identified for potential exhumations. One of the first confirmed graves contained three dozen male skeletons wearing Kurdish attire, all of which had been blindfolded and bound with arms tied behind the back. Every skull bore an executioner’s bullet hole. Though most of the bodies could not be identified, Hazo’s father - formerly an industrious carpet retailer - had been carrying business cards in his vest pocket. The name on the card, Zirek Amedi, enabled forensic investigators to match dental records for the partial denture still affixed to the skeleton’s jawbone. The positive identification brought bittersweet closure for the victim’s surviving family members who’d already suffered tremendous loss at the hands of Saddam Hussein.
‘You should take a break,’ Jason said to Hazo in a low tone. ‘Have something to eat with the guys.’ He pointed to the cave entrance where Meat, Camel and Jam were blissfully spooning rehydrated beef stroganoff from foil packs.
Hazo sighed wearily and nodded. Then he went over to join the others.
‘Looks to me like another hiding place for evidence of Saddam’s genocide,’ Crawford said.
‘No,’ Jason said. The only similarity he saw here was the sheer number of bones. ‘Doesn’t look anything like Saddam’s handiwork.’
‘How so?’ Crawford challenged.
‘First off, not one of the skulls we’ve seen on that screen shows signs of execution. No bullet holes, fractures—’
‘Hey, smart guy, Sarin doesn’t leave its mark on bones,’ Crawford countered smartly.
Crawford was right. Sarin attacked the nervous system synapses. So once a victim’s soft tissue decomposed, evidence of the toxin would be erased. ‘There aren’t any clothes on those bones. No jewellery, nothing. How do you explain that?’
‘Maybe they burned the clothes, Yaeger,’ Crawford said. ‘Maybe they were a bunch of sick perverts who liked playing games with naked Kurds. Does it really matter? And we both know that soldiers have sticky fingers, would have confiscated any jewellery and valuables. For all we know, these bones might have been exhumed from another site and moved here for safekeeping.’
Jason wasn’t buying the colonel’s argument, but held back a rebuttal. Crawford was clearly determined to see things his way.
‘Wait …’ the engineer interjected. ‘Look at this,’ she said.
Crawford and Jason turned their attention back to the screen.
‘See this?’ she said, pointing to something on the wall just to the right of where the bot had entered the cave. ‘Looks similar to the pictures and writing on the wall of the entry tunnel.’
Jason examined the image. A section of the wall had been hewn flat, then covered in relief images and lines of wedge-shaped text.
‘More pictures and scribble,’ Crawford said. ‘Let’s cut the—’
But the colonel was cut short by a bellowing blast that echoed out from the cave and shook the ground.
Professor Brooke Thompson stared out the jet’s cabin window at the angular patchwork of docile farmland that blanketed the flat Midwest landscape in squares and circles hued in russet and ochre. The layout repeated itself as far as the eye could see, interrupted only by a random village or a grove of naked trees surrounding a rural home.