‘Man, you guys don’t mess around,’ said the slight copilot with an air of admiration.
Jason wasn’t about to explain why they’d set the house ablaze. The act was not something to be glorified.
But Meat felt the kid deserved to hang on to the outlaw image, saying, ‘We like to be thorough.’ He managed a thin smile.
‘I’ll say,’ the copilot said. ‘Who was in there anyway? Some of those Al-Qaeda fuckers?’
Jason gave Meat a stern glance. Meat said nothing.
‘Even for a rookie you’re an idiot,’ Candyman chastised the copilot. ‘Why don’t you go jerk off to
Full Metal Jacket
for the two-hundredth time and leave these guys alone?’ He worked the controls and lifted the Blackhawk smoothly into the air. As he banked north, the chopper’s downdraught whipped up the smoke and flames.
To the west, two klicks out, Jason spotted three Humvees angling fast along the dirt roads that bisected the fields, heading for the blaze. In the glare of their bouncing rectangular headlights he spotted Iraqi Security Force insignias. His jaw clamped tight.
Now
they were showing up?
‘Don’t worry about the sand cops,’ Candyman said as if linked into Jason’s thoughts. ‘Our guys will get there first and send them on their way.’ He swung the chopper a bit. ‘There … see?’ He raised his hand for Jason to see, then pointed down and left.
Down below, only a klick away, a second convoy was cutting its own path through the wheat fields on a beeline for the burning house. This time, the headlights highlighted nothing but desert camouflage. Six marine Humvees.
Jason’s jaw slackened.
‘Two more platoons are heading for the cave,’ Candyman added. ‘Another unit’s already handling the chopper wreck. Said they found a bunch of shot-up Al-Qaeda in a ditch. That your handiwork too?’
Jason said nothing, so Meat spoke up. ‘They were taking pictures of the wreck, like they were at Disney World … probably looking to update their Facebook page. We didn’t feel that was appropriate.’
The eager copilot chimed in with, ‘Yeah, gotta teach these sand monkeys some manners.’ But Candyman shot him a biting stare and he sank into his seat.
‘By the way, Google,’ Candyman said solemnly, ‘sorry to hear about Camel and Jam. That’s a goddamn shame.’
‘Thanks.’
A few more seconds went by without conversation.
Eventually, Candyman had to ask, ‘Did Crawford fuck things up as badly as you said?’
‘Worse,’ Jason said. ‘You have no idea.’
‘That guy’s going to be in a world of hurt when the BG finds out what he’s done …’
The BG, thought Jason. Despite his distaste for conspiracy theories, there was no telling if the brigadier general wasn’t part of this too.
The inverted-V ceiling dropped precipitously once more as the passage drilled through the mountain in a wide hollow tube that reminded Shuster of an earthen storm drain. He kept the procession drumming along to a steady, furtive cadence - Ramirez, Holt and Hazo following in his wake. Sweeping his light in wide arcs over the rough stone confirmed an absence of mining or tool marks. Only time and the elements had been this tunnel’s quarrymen.
The tunnel curved gently from left to right, then back again, the ground rising and falling along a general downward trajectory. The air quality was degrading quickly, and Shuster worried that if something were not soon found, he’d need to abandon the exploration. One thought kept cycling through his mind: why would Fahim Al-Zahrani have retreated back towards his enemy? If Al-Zahrani had met a dead end, they had to be nearing it - which coincided all too well with the strange sounds that were growing stronger with every step. He paused once more to try to decipher the noise.
‘Goddamn it, what
is
that?’ Ramirez said.
‘No idea,’ Shuster replied, trying to conceal his deepening anxiety.
‘Sounds like something’s alive down there,’ Holt said.
No one challenged the idea.
‘Wait here,’ Shuster suggested. ‘I’ll go check it out.’
‘Absolutely,’ Ramirez said. ‘That’s a very good idea.’
They all watched in silence as Shuster disappeared around the bend.
With time to rest, Holt became acutely aware of Hazo’s worsening health. Hazo, bracing himself up with the tunnel wall, was ashen and sluggish, and his chest heaved every time he inhaled.
‘Hey, Hazo,’ Ramirez said. ‘You know anything about this place?’
Hazo shrugged. ‘Just legends.’
‘That’s a start,’ Ramirez said. ‘What legends?’
Hazo paused. ‘A demon was buried here,’ he explained bluntly. ‘This is what some say.’ His thoughts flashed back to Monsignor Ibrahim and Michelangelo’s painting of a half-woman, half-serpent entwined around a tree.
‘Demon?’ Holt jumped in. ‘Exactly what kind of demon?’
There was no reason to keep secrets at this juncture, thought Hazo. ‘Those are her pictures on the wall near the entrance. Her name is Lilith,’ he explained weakly. ‘Thousands of years ago, she came to this place … these mountains. She killed every man and boy.’ The conversation quickly exhausted his lungs, forcing him to cough.
‘Crazy bitch,’ Ramirez seethed as if one of the victims had been his own brother.
‘How? How did she kill them?’ Holt pressed. He felt like he was a boy scout again, hearing haunted campfire stories. Hazo reluctantly cast his bloodshot eyes to the ground. ‘Come on, Hazo. If we’re stuck in a demon’s grave, it would be nice to know what we’re up against.’
Trying to catch his breath, Hazo managed to force one tentative word from his lips: ‘Pestilence.’
‘Pest-a-what?’ Ramirez asked, agitated.
‘Disease, Ramirez,’ Shuster said. ‘Learn the language, will you?’
Ramirez lingered on the word, his M-16 drooping in his grip. He repeated it to himself with a sense of fatalism: ‘Disease.’ He pulled a gold crucifix out from under his collar and blessed himself with it.
‘It’s just a story,’ Holt reminded him.
‘A story? You saw Al-Zahrani when they pulled him out of here. Man, he was sick … real sick. You saw him.’
Holt rolled his eyes and spread his hands.
Then Ramirez took a hasty step back from Hazo, looking spooked. ‘And look … now
he’s
sick,’ he said accusatorily. He tightened his hold on the M-16. A psychosomatic tickle came to the back of his throat and he grabbed at it. ‘I don’t want to catch no damn disease …’
‘Settle down,’ Holt said.
‘Guys!’ Shuster’s voice echoed up from the mountain.
Holt cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted back: ‘Yeah?’
‘Get down here … I found something!’
Holt set off on a brisk pace through the tunnel, Ramirez and Hazo bringing up the rear. The passage essed twice and curled sharply before spilling into a cavernous black hollow. Holt stopped dead in his tracks. ‘What the …?’ he gasped.
‘Over here,’ Shuster called to him from deep within the hollow.
He spotted Shuster’s flashlight floating in the voluminous darkness. The light played over the surface of a massive angular form plonked down in middle of the cave, which resembled an unhitched semi-trailer or a railroad boxcar. And it seemed that the sounds they’d been hearing - now clearly recognizable as the whirring of mechanical parts - were coming from inside it.
‘Come on, Holt!’ Shuster shouted. ‘Get over here!’
‘Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?’ Ramirez said over Holt’s shoulder.
‘This ain’t no dream,’ Holt said, pointing his light down to illuminate the ground. He was surprised to see that a section of the cave floor had been levelled into a two-and-a-half-metre-wide path, definitely not by natural means, but by some kind of excavating machine. On either side, the natural limestone formations had been left intact, looking like a moonscape. Around the cave’s perimeter walls, his light glinted off enormous stainless-steel holding tanks shaped like inverted baby bottles. For a moment he felt like he was back on the tour of the local Budweiser brewery, in the fermentation room.
Holt and Ramirez trotted over to Shuster, while Hazo paused to catch his breath.
‘How did this get down here?’ Holt asked.
‘Must have been brought in here in pieces … assembled on site. Modular construction. See there,’ Shuster said, moving his rifle muzzle up and down so that the light emphasized one of many riveted seams connecting the container’s outer steel panels.
‘Looks like a shipping container,’ Ramirez said.
‘Sure does,’ Shuster said, making his way around it.
‘For what, though?’ Ramirez mumbled. Thoughts of the ancient legend had his imagination running wild. The short hairs on his neck bristled.
‘Take a look at this,’ Shuster called over.
Holt and Ramirez kept their M-16s at the ready and angled around the hulking container. A pale purple light glowed on to a grooved steel ramp that led down from the side of the container. The container’s short side was two and a half metres square, partially enclosing a central entryway a metre wide, two metres high. Beside it, a mechanical door mounted on rails had been slid open. Semi-transparent plastic flaps - like those used for meat lockers - dangled like a curtain from the top of the entryway to provide an air barrier. The flaps distorted the details of the container’s interior, but provided enough visibility to suggest that there was no one inside.
Ramirez immediately spotted six identical containers lined neatly in a row behind this one. ‘
Seven
containers?’
‘That’s right,’ Shuster said, backing up and aiming his light up over the container. ‘And take a look up there.’ He traced the beam along the tubular flex-duct leading out from the top of the container to where it joined a boxy central trunk that rose like a chimney for fifteen metres before disappearing through the cave’s lofty vault. Six identical flex-ducts branched off the main feed and patched into the tops of the other containers. The gentle breeze pushing out between the entryway flaps confirmed that fresh air was being pumped in from above ground. ‘It’s a ventilation system,’ Shuster said.
‘Detainment cells?’ Holt guessed.
‘Maybe Saddam’s weapons lab,’ Ramirez said.
‘Only one way to know for sure,’ Shuster said, noting PVC pipes snaking down beside the duct work. Water lines, he guessed. ‘Stay here. I’ll take a look inside. See what we’ve got.’ He swung his M-16 up on to his shoulder and ascended the ramp. Bathed in pale purple light, he felt like he was boarding a spaceship.
While the marines were preoccupied with the strange box-like structure at the cave’s centre, Hazo had just made a discovery of his own. As he’d squatted to catch his breath, his flashlight tilted towards the cave’s outer wall and highlighted a most unusual anomaly, easy to miss in the enveloping blackness. Amid the cave’s natural rock formations, anything man had touched stood out glaringly. And what he saw was nothing natural.
Resuming a standing position, he directed the light at the spot where the rock face had been smoothed flat around a modest arched opening burrowed into the rock maybe a metre up from the ground. It reminded him of a mosque’s
qibla
niche that directed Muslims towards Mecca during prayer.
He considered calling out to the others. But he needed to conserve his energy. A profound lethargy was settling into his limbs and his fever was spiking. Perspiration was welling out from his pores.
Compared to what the others had found, this was something he could inspect alone.
Mindful of his footing on the uneven ground, Hazo made his way to the wall in stops and starts. He squared his body with the niche and directed his light inside it. It ran much deeper than he’d thought, extending maybe two metres into the rock like a small tunnel. The interior surfaces were covered in hash marks. Hewn with a chisel, he guessed. A deep lip the width of his hand had been carved around the rim of the opening. Probably meant to keep in place a seal - a
thick
seal.
Perhaps the seal had never been set in place. Or more likely: the seal had been
removed
. It stood to reason that the contents had also been looted.
That got Hazo thinking about what might have been stored inside the niche.
The implied width of a seal that would seat into the rim also downplayed the idea that the niche was intended for repeat usage. That meant the contents were intended to be locked away or protected long term, maybe indefinitely. Anything placed deep inside the niche would require someone to squirm on his belly to reach it. Therefore, the design was best suited for something long and narrow that could be slid inside.
As he thought about the cave’s known mythology, the realization hit him like a wrecking ball.
‘A body,’ he whispered.
The niche’s dimensions could accommodate perfectly a prostrate corpse, he was certain of it. With some help, he himself could slide into it and still have room to spare.
Scrutinizing the base of the niche under the light, he noticed stains and dried material on the porous rock, which also supported the hypothesis. It appeared as if decomposed flesh had left discolorations in the rock.
He concluded that this niche had been designed to be a tomb - a most legendary tomb, despite its modest appearance.