‘Let’s go,’ Jason said, calmly opening his door and stepping out from the truck. He directed his face away from the house and clutched his AK-47 low behind the opened door.
Meat got out and stripped the AK-47 from the dead man. The safety was off and he checked the clip. Full. Gripping the weapon, he hurried around the truck, headed straight for the door. His face was knotted with determination and adrenaline.
‘So much for being subtle,’ Jason mumbled and fell in behind him.
At the door, Meat intercepted a second unlucky Arab who’d been calling out for the dead guy. Without hesitation, Meat levelled the AK-47 at his chest and squeezed off a quick burst that opened his torso like overripe fruit. Then he charged inside.
Jason stepped over the body and shadowed Meat with his weapon drawn. Peering in at the house’s tight rooms, he was glad to have an AK-47 since the weapon’s short muzzle and rapid-fire action were just what the doctor ordered for a raid in a place like this. He turned right and swept the first room. Nothing but a wooden table and two metal folding chairs.
Like a raging bull Meat stormed to a second door that led into a narrow hallway. He held his AK-47 with a straight arm, turned flat. What he liked to call ‘gangsta style’.
Jason heard frenzied voices overhead. Three distinct tones. He immediately moved back against the wall just as the plaster ceiling tore apart in a hail of bullets. He dropped to one knee, raised his AK-47, and strafed the ceiling in a wide ‘G’, followed by a tight ‘X’. In one corner, a heavy
whump
shook the floorboards, followed by a second
whump
near the middle of the ceiling. In both spots, blood dripped down from the sieve of bullet holes. The voices had gone silent, but a single set of footsteps pattered fast towards the centre of the house before Jason could line up for another sweep.
Meat also heard the runner and bolted to the base of the house’s central staircase. He immediately spotted his target and opened fire. An agonizing scream rang out just before a rifle came cartwheeling down the stairs.
By the time Jason made it to the hall door, Meat had ducked into the next room and reappeared, shaking his head to indicate that it was empty. Jason signalled for him to remain still.
A perfect silence settled over the house.
Then Jason heard a small voice coming from a room at the top of the stairs. He listened intently. Someone was chanting a prayer.
‘Fuck this,’ Meat grumbled. ‘Cover me.’
Before Jason could stop him, Meat charged up the stairs.
Jason raised his AK-47 to cover the landing, fully expecting Meat to get hit with a faceful of lead. But there was no resistance from above. At the top of the stairs, Meat popped in and out of the room to the right, then disappeared through the left door.
Three seconds later, he yelled down, ‘Google, get up here!’
Crawford shone the floodlight up at the gaping hole the marines had opened on top of the rubble that dammed the tunnel passage.
Emerging from the other side, a grimy face capped by a sand-coloured helmet appeared in the light. The marine reported, ‘It won’t be easy, but we can get through.’
‘Fine, Corporal,’ Crawford said. ‘We’ll make it work.’
‘Colonel, there’s a lot of blood on this side,’ Corporal William Shuster reported matter-of-factly. ‘Some fingers and tissue too. Not pretty. I’m sure there’s plenty of meat buried under these rocks. I don’t see how anyone could’ve survived the explosion.’
Crawford remained stonefaced. ‘Al-Zahrani managed to walk out of here. Let’s make sure no one else does.’
Shuster scuttled down the rocks, holding a flashlight in his right hand, an M-16 slung over his shoulder. His left hand was balled up in a fist and he opened it to reveal a palm full of gum-ball-sized metal ball bearings covered in a tacky film - trademark shrapnel used in padding suicide vests. ‘Found these on the ground,’ he said. ‘They’re covered in C-4 residue. Not sure why one of them would have detonated himself in there. You’d think he’d have waited for a few of us before pushing the button … take a few infidels with him on his way to paradise.’
‘Mystery solved,’ Crawford grunted for show. None of this news surprised Crawford. It wasn’t just the lingering smell of motor oil that clued him in on the source of the blast. Stokes had been quick to inform him about the clumsy gunman who’d let loose some rounds into the man who’d been strapped with plastic explosive. With the cameras knocked off line, however, even Stokes had seriously underestimated the extent of the collapse. More troubling was the quiet calm on the other side of the blockage. Crawford anticipated activity. Lots of activity. And not from the holed-up Arabs. ‘Now I need you to take a couple men in there with you. See how deep that tunnel runs. Make sure it’s empty.’
‘We could use the PackBot,’ Shuster suggested.
Crawford wasn’t hearing it. ‘No time for robots, Corporal. Don’t think. Just do.’
Shuster was amazed by Crawford’s stubborn fixation with this tunnel, particularly in light of the devastating ambush that the platoon had marginally endured (thanks to Crawford’s refusal to radio for backup). With the medic having been killed by Al-Zahrani’s abductors, the wounded were left to tend to one another. Every remaining able-bodied marine had been ordered back to the tunnel to finish the debris removal. No one could yet confirm if Crawford had radioed for reinforcements. That had the platoon grumbling about the colonel’s motive. With Staff Sergeant Richards unaccounted for, discontent was fast brewing throughout the ranks.
Crawford turned to the six men tightly congregated in the passage behind him. ‘Ramirez … Holt. You two get in there with Corporal Shuster and see what we’ve got.’ The marines looked at one another in a way that clearly suggested latent dissension. More reason for swift action. ‘This isn’t a democracy, gentlemen. Get your lights and your weapons and get in there! And your radios won’t be any good under this mountain, so leave them behind.’
The reluctant designatees took up their M-16s and light gear packs, filed past Crawford and clambered up the rocks.
‘And where’s that damn Kurd?’ Crawford blasted.
‘Here, sir,’ a quiet voice called from the rear.
The four marines made room for Hazo to shuffle through.
Crawford squared up with the interpreter. He had to make a conscious effort not to react to the Kurd’s appearance. The man looked haggard and feverish, his eyes bloodshot. The striking similarity to Al-Zahrani’s early symptoms was alarming. Since the onset of Operation Genesis, Stokes had been forthright about the wide reach of a custom virus that would target Arab males. ‘It won’t be only the terrorists who fall. Know that the innocent fathers of our future enemies, too, will be sacrificed along the way,’ Stokes had told him. ‘If we have any survivors in there,’ Crawford briefed the Kurd, ‘I’ll need you to talk some sense into them. Tell them to be smart and surrender. Can I count on you to do this?’
‘Jesus, Colonel,’ Shuster said defiantly. ‘Clearly he’s in no condition to—’
Crawford’s chest puffed out like a rooster. He stepped up to Shuster and put his face so close, the two men touched noses. ‘Corporal, you are way out of line.’
‘Please,’ Hazo said, putting an appeasing hand on Shuster’s arm. ‘I will help you.’
‘I hope you’re right about all this, Colonel,’ Shuster warned.
Thick veins webbed out over Crawford’s red face.
Shuster unstrapped the M9 pistol from his side holster and proffered it to Hazo. ‘If you’re going in there, take this.’
Hazo nodded and accepted the gun, though no matter what might happen, he vowed not to go against his beliefs.
Shuster gave Hazo a quick tutorial on how to flip off the safety and fire the weapon. ‘And stay behind us,’ he added.
‘I will,’ Hazo said, clumsily holding the gun away from his body.
Shuster climbed up and disappeared through the hole.
‘Good luck,’ Crawford said to Hazo.
Hazo offered no reply and began his climb towards the hole.
The instant Stokes attempted to close the vault’s door, Flaherty snatched the clay map from Brooke and bolted after him. He was only four steps away when the door stopped short from seating against the doorframe. On the other side of the door, Stokes tried pulling harder on the handle, yet the door didn’t budge. It took mere seconds for Stokes to detect the problem: the dead-bolt was slightly engaged so that the thick slide bolt protruded just enough to keep the door from seating. While no one had been watching, Flaherty had tampered with the deadbolt just before he’d come into the vault.
Immediately, the door swung inward.
But Flaherty was already in a wide pitcher’s stance with the clay tablet cocked back above his right shoulder.
On the other side of the door, Stokes was raising his gun to prepare for a cautious re-entry. His eyes, however, went to the room’s centre - not directly in front of him.
Flaherty’s faster reaction time won out. He launched the five-pound tablet at Stokes’s head.
The tablet whirred through the air on a direct line for the pastor’s face. Stokes nimbly bobbed sideways so that the tablet instead skimmed his right ear. In the process, he managed to fire one misaligned shot that sailed past Flaherty and thwacked into the thick security glass on the front side of the display case containing Lilith’s head.
Before Stokes regained his footing, Flaherty charged forward like a linebacker and buried his right shoulder in the preacher’s abdomen. The tackle lifted Stokes, brought him crashing down on to the floor with his chest catching the brunt of the impact.
There was a loud pop and Flaherty felt something under him give way. He was shocked to see a glossy wingtip sticking up over his shoulder. Flaherty realized it was the business end of the pastor’s prosthetic limb - tangled under his arm.
Stokes was quick to respond and the gun came arcing towards Flaherty’s face.
With both hands, Flaherty grabbed at Stokes’s wrist and forced the Glock sideways. A second shot rang out and punched through the wall.
Getting into a wrestling match with Stokes was a losing proposition, Flaherty was certain. But Stokes had two things working against him: a missing leg and Anthrax-tainted lungs. With the struggle escalating, Flaherty could hear bubbling sounds coming from Stokes’s chest.
Stokes responded with a head butt that caught Flaherty on the bridge of the nose and made him see stars.
‘Aaaghh!’ Flaherty screamed out. He managed to hold on to the gun. At the same time, he buried his shoulder in Stokes’s face.
Choking, Stokes struggled to push Flaherty away.
Then Stokes let out a muffled scream and Flaherty felt the gun pinned hard against the floor. He glimpsed a chunky black clog grinding down on the gun.
‘Let it go, Stokes!’ Brooke yelled. She pulled her foot up again and stomped down a second time. Finally the gun fell free from his mashed fingers. A swift kick sent it skittering across the carpet.
Desperate for oxygen, Stokes flailed and bucked, trying to use his liberated stump for leverage.
Like riding a bronco, Flaherty couldn’t control the crazed pastor. To regain his balance, he had to relinquish his grip on Stokes’s wrist. That meant he had no choice but to pull his shoulder off Stokes’s mouth.
The pastor coughed fiercely, spraying blood on Flaherty’s neck.
Another forceful buck sent Flaherty tumbling on to the floor.
Stokes rolled on to his elbows and retched blood and bile on to the carpet.
It was the opportunity Brooke had been waiting for. In her hand, she clutched the nearest solid object she could find - the clay tablet. With all her might, she swung the map of Eden down at Stokes’s head. It connected. The pastor collapsed on to the floor.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Jason gasped, standing at the top of the stairs. He had to cover his mouth and nose with his sleeve to fight off a fetid stench.
In the room to the right, he caught a quick glimpse of the two men he’d struck blindly from downstairs. In opposite corners of the room, each body lay face down and twisted on the splintered floorboards.
‘In here, Google,’ Meat called again.
Jason lowered his AK-47, stepped over the dead guy Meat had gunned down on the landing, and went into the second room. The horrid smell sharpened, and its source was immediately apparent.
Sprawled atop a mattress that was the room’s only furnishing, Fahim Al-Zahrani lay in a gory mire of blood, vomit and tissue. Since much of the stringy red slime still draped from the corpse’s blue lips, Jason assumed it to be a puree of Al-Zahrani’s innards. Blood streamed like tears from the corpse’s lifeless eyes - the orbs solid red. And the entire mattress beneath his lower half was completely saturated in red, suggesting that blood and liquefied organs had found their way out every possible exit.
‘Man,’ Meat said from the far corner, ‘what the hell’s going on here?’
An elderly Arab - unarmed - sat on the floor beside Meat, legs tucked to his chest, rocking back and forth. He was chanting prayers in Arabic. Every few seconds, a spate of coughing interrupted the recitation. The old guy displayed the same pallid complexion Jason had noticed in the man whom Meat stabbed in the throat.