A westerly wind quickly thinned the smoke.
Down below, Camel broke cover and sprinted up the slope. Jason covered him with suppressive fire until he did a home-plate slide through the gravel and came to a stop at Jason’s feet.
‘Safe!’ Camel called out, grinning ear to ear like a school kid out for recess.
Some guys are born for this. Then Jason got a good look at Camel’s face. It appeared as if he’d stuck his head in a bucket of gore. ‘You all right?’
‘
I’m
fine. My camel’s fucked. Why the ceasefire on the second position?’
‘Fahim Al-Zahrani is with them.’
‘
What?!
‘ Camel’s brow crinkled, cracking the congealing camel blood like dry clay. ‘Can’t be. Intel said he’s in Afghanistan.’
‘Intel’s wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time.’
‘You sure about this?’
‘Show you the pictures later,’ he said, tapping his binoculars. ‘He’s the tall one in the middle. Remember, the Pentagon wants him alive. So try not to shoot him and we’ll get home a lot faster.’
Suddenly, Jam screamed over to Jason: ‘They’re heading uphill!’
Jason and Camel went storming out on opposite sides of the boulder with weapons drawn.
The black smoke was still thick enough to provide cover for the Arabs, but Jason was relieved to see Al-Zahrani’s awkward, tall form being pulled up the slope by a pair of cronies. The remaining two Arabs trailed behind them, hauling a second polyethylene case.
As Jason and Camel closed in behind them, Meat broke cover to pull up the rear.
Then Jam popped out from the gulch and began sprinting along the ridge in a perpendicular intercept. He had his now-useless AK-74 clutched menacingly in his right hand, knowing the best he could do was intimidate the Arabs, maybe slow their advance.
The dragnet was closing.
When Jason broke through the smoke, he saw that the Arabs had decided against the crevasse and were instead heading for a sizable opening in the cliff face that looked like a cave. Judging by the flames licking the rocky outcropping above the opening and the fresh scars above it where an entire section of the mountain had sheared away and tumbled down the slope, Jason figured that it had been the impact point for the deflected Hydra missile.
Once the Arabs had funnelled into the opening and disappeared from sight, Jason slowed his advance and signalled to the others to take cover. No telling what the Arabs were planning, and chasing after them into a cave wouldn’t be smart.
Could the blast hole be that deep? he wondered. And why would they corner themselves like that?
From behind a boulder, Jason scanned the opening with his binoculars. No sign of the jihad quintet, but when he zoomed in, he did notice something peculiar: about two metres into the opening the black void was framed by a rectangular enclosure - like an open doorway. Tighter magnification revealed bolt heads lining the hard, unnatural lines.
‘What do we have here?’ he muttered.
Someone whistled loudly.
Lowering the binoculars, Jason peered over to Meat, who was pointing to a smoking object that lay not far from where he’d taken cover. Even from a distance, Jason could tell that the mangled and blackened rectangular hulk of metal was the door that had been blown clear off the frame he’d just spied. Scoping the object, he determined it to be roughly one by two metres, fat as a phone book, with a wide circular turn-crank like he’d expect to find on a submarine hatch. The door’s unmarred sections showed that it had been painted to match the mountain’s earth tones. Around its edges were remnants from military-grade camouflage netting. Must have been quite effective, he thought, if no one had spotted it earlier. The opening was certainly positioned high enough to trick the naked eye.
Maybe the militants hadn’t intended to slip through the mountains. Maybe they were heading to this place all along. Perhaps it was a bunker.
Then again, Jason had seen the Arabs do a double-take before running into the opening - like they were equally surprised to see it there. Either way, since this was no mere blast hole, there was a strong possibility that whatever had been protected behind that security door ran deep -
really
deep; the snaking cave systems running beneath these mountains could put Rome’s most impressive catacombs to shame.
He’d read in his field manual that the Zagros Mountains were formed from the ancient tectonic collision between the Arabian and Eurasian plates. The jagged range stretched 1,500 kilometres from northern Iraq down to the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, with peaks reaching 4,500 metres (even taller than Colorado’s Pikes Peak, he’d noted). Caves and tunnels resulted from the erosion of the softer mineral-laden rocks inside the mountains. The Zagros’s most bittersweet contribution to the region, however, was the sedimentary deposits trapped beneath its eastern foothills - Iran’s massive oil fields.
From out of the cave came a muffled fizzy sound, like a freshly cracked bottle of pop releasing its carbonation. Just as Jason’s eyes found the opening, a blinding glow flashed in the black void beyond the doorframe … the silhouette of a projectile … a resounding
whump
. In the next instant, a roiling fireball billowed out from the opening, throwing heat waves that rippled down the slope. Huge rock fragments shot out in all directions.
The Americans went for cover as the debris came raining down around them.
A softball-sized stone plummeted down and struck Jason squarely between the shoulder blades, knocking him flat to the ground. The wind heaved out from his lungs in a heavy gasp. Pain jolted up his spine, down his arms. He rolled on to his back, arcing his spine, groaning in pain, seeing nothing but white for a five-count. Had he not been wearing a Kevlar vest under his robe, the stone might have paralysed him.
Fast footsteps crunched along the gravel and came to a stop next to him.
‘You okay, Google?’
He blinked his eyes and drew a steady breath. ‘Yeah, I’ll live.’
Jam helped him to his feet and Jason squeezed his shoulder blades together to coax the pain away.
‘That’s gonna leave a mark,’ Jam said.
Jason noticed that Jam’s left cheek was red and blistered, the curly black scruff sizzled away.
‘You should talk,’ he replied with a wince.
‘I was a bit too close when the missile went off.’ He stroked the tangle of toasted hairs. ‘I needed a shave anyway.’
Jason looked up at the grey smoke cloud spewing out from the ridge. The doorframe was lost behind the collapsed cliff face. He shook his head in disbelief.
‘That was an RPG … right? I mean I barely saw it.’
‘Yeah, it was.’
He shook his head and put his hands on his hips.
Meat, Camel and Hazo jogged over to join them.
‘Everybody all right?’ Jason asked the trio.
‘Super,’ Meat grumbled. When he got a good look at Jam, he stepped closer and cringed. ‘What’s with your face?’ Then he got a whiff of the singed beard and said, ‘Aaah. I hate that smell … burnt hair. Shit, I’m gonna vomit.’ He shook his head violently.
‘You’re one to talk, Dracula. That blood mask really brings out your eyes.’
‘Ha, ha, very fun—’
‘All right fellas,’ Jason cut in. For frontline fighters, adrenaline surges always came with euphoria - at least if you were still standing when the bullets stopped flying. It was the junkie high that kept them coming back for more. But it also made the hyped-up men tougher to rein in. ‘Good to see that everyone’s all right. I’m sure you’ve noticed that we’ve got a new problem on our hands.’ He motioned to the smoking cliff.
Camel pulled out a small round tin from his vest, opened it, and pinched out some chewing tobacco. In passing himself off as an abstaining Muslim, a nicotine patch would have been far subtler, but the chew sure beat puffing away on cigarettes. ‘Looks good to me. The rag-heads went and buried themselves.’ He began stuffing his cheeks full of tobacco.
Jam pulled a hunting knife off his belt and began cutting the singed beard away, since it did stink something fierce. ‘Seems to me they don’t want us coming in after them.’
‘I’d go with that,’ Meat agreed.
‘These caves …’ Hazo chimed in, his tone level and one notch too low. ‘The tunnels can lead anywhere. It’s no good. They could find a way out. Maybe on the other side of the mountain … maybe a kilometre away.’
‘Or they went and buried themselves,’ Camel reiterated before hawking a brown gob on to the rocks. ‘Crawled into a hole. Just like your buddy Saddam.’
The Kurd frowned.
Jason was inclined to agree with both assertions. ‘Let’s have a closer look at that door.’ He waved for them to follow, then strode over to it.
Kneeling beside the door, Jason could feel heat radiating off the blackened metal. He carefully hunted the surface for any telling marks: manufacturer’s stamps, engraved plates, painted emblems or Arabic scrawls, anything. He found nothing. ‘Let’s flip it,’ he told the others. ‘Cover your hands. This thing’s smokin’ hot.’
It took all five men to heave the thing up and over. It landed on the gravel with a crunching thump.
‘Weighs more than my wife,’ Camel grumbled.
‘Nah, she’s got a few more L-Bs on her,’ Meat said, as if to imply intimate knowledge. ‘More to love.’
The others chuckled. Camel’s chewing came to grinding halt.
‘Cool it,’ Jason said as he squatted to resume the analysis. The door’s reverse side was clearly what would have faced inward. The twisted hinges looked like they’d been lifted from a bank vault. The turn-crank was bent into a pretzel shape. No telling marks. Not even on the edges.
‘That’s definitely military construction,’ Meat observed.
‘You’re a genius,’ Camel said under his breath.
Meat ignored him. ‘I’m guessing that’s one of the old regime’s hideouts. A fallout shelter, maybe.’
‘Shit, maybe we’ll finally find some WMDs squirrelled away up there,’ Jam added.
Jason got to his feet. ‘Whatever’s inside that mountain must be mighty important to have been covered up like this.’
‘Hey wait. You missed something there, Sarge,’ Jam said, pointing to the corner where some camouflage netting had melted into the metal. ‘Here …’ He moved closer and tapped it with his knife. Then he stood and began cutting away the good half of his beard in large tufts.
Jason crouched and leaned in for a better look. Sure enough, there was a rectangular object caught up in the netting, slightly bigger than a credit card, thicker too. ‘Good eye.’
Whatever it was, it had taken a beating, just like the door. Curling his fingers under its edges, Jason tried to pry it free. But it had a plastic casing that had glued to the hot metal. He felt a tap on his shoulder.
‘Here,’ Jam said, handing over his Rambo-sized beard trimmer.
‘Thanks.’ Working the blade under the object, Jason managed to cut it away. Strings of melted plastic stretched behind it - like a shoe stepping off a wad of gum on a hot day. He let the strings cool before shaving them off.
‘You should put that stuff on your face, Jam,’ Camel said. ‘Be a good look for you.’
Handing the knife back to Jam, Jason turned the object over a couple of times. It was taupe, lightweight, with a now indiscernible picture on its topside - what might have been a passport photo. There was a long keyhole slit centred on its short edge where a clip or strap could be affixed. ‘Looks like a library card, or something.’
‘ID badge,’ Meat said.
Jason nodded. ‘Um.’
‘There’s probably a chip inside that casing,’ Meat added. ‘You know, like a swipe card.’
Jason proffered the card to Meat, who moonlighted as the group’s all-round techie. ‘Think you can open it up … see if there’s any useful data that might tell us who this belonged to?’
Meat took the card, flipped it over a couple of times. ‘Looks fried. I’ll see what I can do,’ he replied non-committally.
‘Make it happen,’ Jason said. ‘Now, we need to get into that cave. Fast. Unfortunately, as I see it, we’re going to need some help to make that happen.’
Everyone knew what he meant. None was thrilled about the proposition, yet no man could find adequate reason to oppose it. Autonomy went only so far.
Reluctantly, Jason pulled out his sat-com and radioed the command operator with instructions to immediately dispatch a marine platoon to his position.
Wrapping up a business call, Pastor Randall Stokes discreetly passed his eyes over the attractive female reporter from the
Vegas Tribune
who was seated on the guest side of his mammoth mahogany desk. Ms Ashley Peters was too busy taking inventory of the inner workings of Our Savior in Christ Cathedral to take notice. Late twenties, he guessed. A bit conservative with highlighted reddish brown locks pulled back in a tight bun, designer eye glasses whose lenses seemed strictly cosmetic.
‘Look, a cathedral without a carillon is like an angel without wings …’ he told the caller ‘… or a four-cylinder engine in a Corvette.’ Pause. ‘I know, I know. We’ve been through all that …’