‘That was bubonic plague too. It became a pandemic and killed over a hundred million people worldwide … at that time, almost a quarter of the world’s population.’
‘Jeez, and we’re worried about the lousy flu,’ he said. ‘But the Black Death didn’t just kill men,’ he pointed out. ‘And you’re saying it might have killed half of them … not
all
of them.’
‘True,’ she admitted. ‘And the Black Death took a lot longer than two days to spread. It took months.’
‘So you think something like the Black Death killed these guys?’
‘With such a high mortality rate, probably something worse. I’m no epidemiologist. I mean, humans have been fighting these kinds of diseases ever since they started living in sedentary settlements. Since Iraq was home to the earliest cities and gave birth to agriculture, Mesopotamians would have been among the first people to transmit infectious disease. They’d have picked up all sorts of germs from domesticated cows, sheep, chickens, you name it. So it makes sense. And these men that Lilith killed belonged to a sizable, relatively isolated population. If they had no immunity to a disease brought in by an outsider, it would have spread like wildfire.’
Flaherty slowed to make a left on to North Hollywood Boulevard. ‘All right, let’s hold off on this for a little while, because we’re almost there. We need to talk about how we’re going to handle this Stokes character.’
‘He may not even be here, Tommy.’
‘He’ll be here,’ Flaherty replied confidently. ‘Remember: he needs that encrypted phone line to talk with Crawford.’
Nestled at the foot of a desert mountain, the modern edifice of the megachurch glinted in the afternoon sun.
‘Holy cow, will you look at that,’ he said.
‘Wow. It’s
huge
.’
‘Supposedly seats up to ten thousand.’
Jason was inside the tunnel entrance when he heard the
rat-tat-tat-tat-tat
of automatic gunfire. He dropped the rubble-filled bucket he’d just taken from the marine in front of him, ran to the opening, and squatted low. Then he cautiously poked his head out and scanned the camp. Behind him, four marines queued up.
‘I heard it too,’ one of the marines said. ‘What’s going on?’
Jason held up a fist to signal for them to remain quiet.
In the moonlight, he could see a marine crossing the roadway - presumably the shooter. On the other side of the road, the scout swiftly moved around a hillock with the stock of his M-16 raised up against his shoulder. The other marines stayed back and hunkered down to cover him.
Then the scout lowered his weapon and shook his head, pointing to something that lay on the ground behind the hillock. Jason couldn’t hear clearly what the scout was saying, but saw five marines go out to have a look at what he’d shot. When the scout reached down and held up a limp, bloody fox by its tail, they all lowered their weapons and gave him a good ribbing.
Jason didn’t like the fact that the scout was so quick to shoot a suspicious target. What if instead that had been some curious Iraqi kid who just wanted to see what was going on? He sighed and turned to the others. ‘False alarm.’
Disappointed, they went back to their positions as Jason grabbed his bucket and lugged it outside.
As he dumped the stones down the slope, he was surprised to see that the carefree marines remained out on the open road, clustered together, heckling the shooter. Why wasn’t Crawford or Richards reprimanding them?
‘Not smart, fellas,’ he grumbled to himself.
Jason scanned the area, but Crawford and his officers were nowhere to be found. Probably back in the tent grilling Al-Zahrani again, he guessed. Ten minutes ago, one of the marines who’d been assigned to watch over the prisoner came looking for Crawford, visibly distressed. But another man had redirected him down the hill to where Crawford had gone to check on the men working inside the MRAP. Now Jason was wishing he’d asked the guard if there was a problem.
If something was wrong, would Crawford have said something? Jason wondered. Studying the area around the tents, he thought: No, that stubborn jackass wouldn’t say a damn thing.
Something wasn’t right … he could feel it.
‘Guys, I’ll be back in a few minutes,’ he called to the men in the cave.
As he loped down the steep incline, a
whump
-
hsssss
sound - like Fourth of July fireworks being shot up into the sky - made him stop dead in his tracks. He crouched low at the same time as his eyes locked on to a fiery orange light streaming through the night … on a direct path for the loitering marines.
Jason cupped his hands and yelled, ‘Get off the road!’
But it was too late.
The marines had no time to react. The RPG mortar struck directly at their feet and popped, tearing them to pieces in a billowing fireball. Shrapnel spray took down three more marines posted nearby.
Jason looked over his shoulder and saw the marines streaming out from the cave. Hazo and Camel were with them. They’d clearly figured out what was going on.
‘We’re under attack!’ one of them yelled to the others still inside the cave. ‘Everyone out!’
Down below, chaos broke out as the marines tried to determine where the enemy was positioned.
Another mortar fired at the camp from a different angle. This time, Jason traced the exhaust trail and pinpointed a gunman sinking below a hummock situated fifty metres south from the camp. The grenade struck one of the Humvees and threw out a huge fireball, sending marines dashing for cover.
At the same time, automatic gunfire started raining down from elevated positions along the neighbouring mountaintop. That’s also when Jason spotted trucks less than a klick south along the roadway. He scrambled down to the camp, his sights locked on to the tent.
The chaos happening outside the tent - gunfire, explosions, shouting - rang loud and clear, but Lance Corporal Jeremy Levin was unfettered as he pleaded with Crawford, ‘But we can’t move him now! I just told you he’s infected!’
‘Stand down, Corporal,’ Crawford said. He turned to the two guards. ‘You two go outside and make sure no one comes near this tent … and I mean no one.’
The marines rushed to the door and disappeared.
‘Colonel …’ Levin pleaded, grabbing Crawford’s arm. ‘This man is very,
very
sick! He’s got—’ His fearful eyes went to Al-Zahrani, whose face and tunic were pasted with bloody vomit.
‘Get your mangy paw off me, Corporal. I know damn well what he’s got.’ Crawford’s crazed eyes went wide. He forcefully shoved the medic back into the table, sending the laptop and microscope hurling to the ground.
Groaning, Levin picked himself up off the ground. The horror of Crawford’s words came crashing down upon him. ‘Wait. What did you say?’
Crawford looked away, calculating his options.
‘What do you mean you know what he’s got?’ Levin’s voice was tremulous.
A malevolent expression came over Crawford. ‘Don’t you worry about that,’ he hissed. ‘Just have Al-Zahrani ready for transport. This is your last chance.’
‘Look at him!’ Levin screamed, pointing at Al-Zahrani. ‘It’s too late to bring him
anywhere
! Besides, don’t you hear what’s going on out there! He needs to be quarantined! We
all
need to be quarantined!’
Crawford smirked. ‘No
we
don’t,’ he replied knowingly. He noted that the notoriously cautious medic wasn’t wearing his flak jacket.
The colonel’s response confused Levin. ‘But I
saw
what’s happening inside of him! Anyone who touches him … anyone who goes
near
him—’
Realizing the futility of the situation, Crawford snatched the M9 pistol off his belt holster and fired a single shot into Levin’s unprotected chest.
As Lance Corporal Jeremy Levin crumpled to the ground, the tent’s rear door opened. Crawford wheeled instantly and dropped to one knee. He aimed his pistol at a turbaned man who was coming inside.
The man froze and raised his hands.
Seeing the intruder’s face, Crawford lowered the gun.
‘Easy,’ Staff Sergeant Richards said. ‘It’s just me.’
Crawford collected himself and got back on his feet. He holstered the pistol and waved for him to keep moving. ‘Let’s go, we don’t have much time.’
Striding towards Al-Zahrani, Richards eyed the dead medic, sprawled face down in a pool of thick blood that was creeping over the sand. ‘What did you—?’
‘Just keep moving,’ Crawford replied dismissively.
Richards ripped down the American flag that hung behind Al-Zahrani and threw it aside. Making a sour face, he positioned himself at the head of the bed and reluctantly hooked his arms under the prisoner’s sweaty armpits. ‘Grab his feet,’ he told Crawford.
Crawford hesitated at the prospect of touching Al-Zahrani.
He glanced at the medic’s body and, for the first time, felt doubt. What if the medic was right? What if Stokes didn’t really know how the contagion would respond in a real-world setting? After all, Randall Stokes hadn’t managed the scientific aspects of the project - that responsibility had been delegated to Frank Roselli. Though Frank had parlayed his military service into a top post at Fort Detrick, he’d spent the majority of his career with Force Recon running Special Ops missions throughout the Middle East. Frank was a bright, industrious guy. But he was no scientist.
Despite the fact that Frank Roselli had recruited USAMRIID top geneticists and virologists to work on Operation Genesis, the scientists had been kept in the dark as to the true purpose of their engineered contagion. For all they knew, it was just one more experiment that would be packed away in USAMRIID’s ever-growing stockpile of biological agents. And in typical military fashion, each team member worked on only one facet of a very complex gem.
After Frank’s superiors learned about the covert cave excavation and subsequent on-site installation he’d managed here in Iraq, Frank had been forced to resign … before definitive clinical tests had been performed. Regardless, Crawford was highly sceptical that a controlled laboratory environment could ever simulate the countless ‘what-if’ scenarios that might play out in the real world. The fact that Al-Zahrani had somehow already gotten infected only proved that point.
Since its inception, Operation Genesis had been on the fast-track. With things getting sloppy, no clear objective and no way out, Crawford found himself wishing for simpler days, when conventional battles were fought using conventional tactics.
Mano y mano
.
If only Stokes - the smartest of the three - hadn’t gotten his leg blown off and had an epiphany to single-handedly rewrite the rules of modern warfare. Stokes was one charismatic son of a bitch, thought Crawford - a salesman to salesmen. The question was: had Crawford himself fallen under Stokes’s spell? With all of Stokes’s TV-talk of Revelation and Judgement Day, there seemed a very real possibility that Stokes might well himself be the silver-tongued Antichrist.
Secreting Al-Zahrani out the back door of this tent would surely seal the fate of humankind. A new balance would be struck. Al-Zahrani would be the ultimate experiment. The ultimate ‘what-if’ scenario.
‘Sir! Please … I can’t do this alone,’ Richards insisted.
Snapping out of his funk, Crawford rushed over to the bed and hooked his hands under Al-Zahrani’s ankles. He counted to three. They hoisted Al-Zahrani from the bed, carried him out the back door, and loaded him into the passenger seat of a pickup truck that sat idling outside.
‘I need to speak with Crawford …
Now
!’ Jason insisted to the two marines who blocked the door to the tent. ‘So step aside!’ He had to yell to compete with the barrage of gunfire throughout the camp. He dared a step closer, but the marines aimed their M-16s at his chest.
‘No exceptions!’ the taller marine screamed robotically back at him. ‘No one goes inside!’
Jason stared disbelievingly at their weapons. ‘You’re making a big mistake,’ he warned. ‘We need to get Al-Zahrani inside the MRAP! It’s the only place he’ll be safe!’ The MRAP was a rolling fortress designed specifically to sustain high-calibre rounds and direct hits from light and medium artillery. With the ambush intensifying, the tent was an easy target. How could these morons not figure it out?
The guards stood their ground.
Jason’s adrenaline was pumping hard enough to make him see stars. It was precisely this blind allegiance that he’d come to loathe about the military. Even the most intelligent minds were malleable, so that over time a soldier’s thoughts and core ideals could be deconstructed and craftily reprogrammed. Successful armies relied on this group psyche to bond soldiers under extreme conditions, but he’d also witnessed how ego-driven leadership could easily exploit loyalty for purely self-serving objectives that inevitably led to unnecessary casualties. It happened often, and it was happening right now before his very eyes. Jason clenched his fists and glared at the guards.
‘Sorry. We have our orders,’ the shorter, less malleable one replied.
‘And we have ours!’ a deep voice blasted over the din.
In unison, Jason and the marines turned to the voice.