Operation Syria

by William Meikle

  “Sarge, get through here, that’s an order. On the double.”

  He had to step away to allow the sergeant to come through, so he didn’t see what happened next but he could make a good guess; the spiders had noted that Brock was exposed and launched an attack. The sound of Brock’s return fire came loud even through the blocked hole.

  Hynd fell head first out of the hole and both Banks and Wiggins stepped forward in unison, their weapons raised. Brock stood with his back to them, firing into a wall of spiders that crawled along the floor, the walls, and even the roof in a squirming mass of thick bodies and hairy legs.

  “Get down, lad,” Banks called and Brock went to his knees while the three of them pumped round after round into the approaching spiders. They put down the front rank quickly enough but more quickly moved forward to fill the space. It was the situation Banks had feared; a mass attack in a confined area. They were lucky to have got their people out through the hole.

  But that doesn’t help Brock.

  “I’m out,” Brock shouted, dropping his rifle and reaching for his handgun. Banks knew it wouldn’t be long before he too ran dry.

  The spiders kept coming.

  *

  “I’m dry,” Wiggins said and stepped back. Davies filled the space quickly barely missing a beat in the firing. Spider bodies littered the corridor floor, reaching to Brock’s feet now. Banks knew he was down to his last few rounds and was about to step out when he felt warmth near his ear.

  “Fire in the hole,” Hynd shouted and Banks ducked as a flaming gas canister soared past his head and through the hole, halfway along the length of the corridor. Brock, thankfully, had the good sense to duck and cover, and Banks looked away as the small tank went up in a roar of flame that set spiders running and scurrying off into the dark distance along the corridor.

  Banks wasted no time.

  “Private Brock, get through here, right now.”

  Brock scrambled into the hole and began inching his way forward. Banks immediately saw he’d been wrong earlier; Brock’s rear end was the equal of Wiggins’, if not even larger, and the private was having trouble getting through.

  “For fuck’s sake, man, get through here. Remind me to put you on a diet when we get back.”

  He and Wiggins took an arm each and began to pull. They’d almost got Brock all the way through when he let out a yelp of pain. They tugged harder and he popped out like a cork out of a bottle. The front end of a large spider filled the hole where he’d been. Fangs the length of fingers clacked excitedly together.

  Hynd stepped forward and put three shots in its eyes. It fell away from them, giving them a sight of a vision from hell—the whole corridor beyond was filled with a mass of squirming, scuttling spiders. Some of them smoldered, some of them were burning and spreading more flame as they tried in vain to find escape. Hynd had a remedy for that too. He lit another canister, stepped forward, and casually dropped it through to the other side of the hole.

  “Duck,” he said, smiling.

  - 20 -

  The torrent of noise, flame, and confusion were too much for Maggie’s senses to bear. She stood to one side of the hole in the wall, holding Kim’s hand while the fighting raged. The noise only faded after the sergeant dropped the canister through to the other side. It went up with a flash and a soft whump. Flame came back through the hole, accompanied by high, wild shrieking from the other side.

  Then everything fell mercifully quiet.

  The silence was only broken seconds later by Brock. The young private had sat down, slumped against the wall.

  “Sir, I think I’m in trouble.”

  Maggie was first to bend to him and her heart sank when she saw the deep slashing wound at the man’s ankle. It was already starting to blacken at the edges.

  Just like Jim White.

  Private Davies pulled her gently aside and went to work on the wound but all Maggie could think of was how quickly it had taken White and how much he’d suffered.

  Captain Banks stood looking back through the hole, from which black smoke drifted slowly to hang above them.

  “All clear, for now,” he said. “Sarge, get the ammo redistributed. I want everybody to at least have a few rounds available in case of emergencies.”

  Hynd moved to comply and Banks turned to Davies.

  “How’s the lad?”

  “It’s a deep one, sir. I got some peroxide in it straight away and I’ll bandage him up good. He’s going to need something for the pain and we’ll need to keep an eye on him until we get him to a real doctor but he should be okay to move out, as long as we don’t have to do any running,”

  “Jim White went out like a light within minutes,” Maggie said.

  “Toxic shock, probably,” Davies said. “I’m hoping getting the peroxide on it early will prevent that.”

  “Aye, and I’ll have some of yon high-class drugs, please, doc,” Brock said through gritted teeth. “It’s like somebody’s pressing a red-hot poker against my skin. I’m hurting bad here.”

  *

  While Davies administered to his new patient, Maggie had her first chance to look around this latest chamber they’d arrived in. She could only see what the gun lights showed her but it was obviously another room that had been extensively carved, although these had none of the vibrant paint colors they’d seen earlier. She got Wiggins to train his light on a particular patch that looked more intricate than the rest.

  Kim pointed at the distinctive, simple outline depicting a basic carving of a small fish.

  “Jewish. 1st century at a guess,” she said. “Hebrew inscriptions, Early Christian imagery. And if I’m reading this right, it’s a depiction of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. This is more than important, it’s historically significant. The find of the century.”

  “Fortune and glory, Indiana Jones shite?” Wiggins said and Kim smiled thinly.

  “Why, Corporal, do you have a whip?”

  “Ask me nicely,” Wiggins replied with a grin of his own until Banks put a stop to the banter with a sharp glance that shut the corporal up fast.

  Maggie took more pictures while the opportunity was there but it was only a matter of seconds before Banks announced they had to move.

  “I have to catalog this,” Maggie said.

  “If it doesn’t help us get out of here, it’s hindering,” Banks replied. “You’ll get to come back, if you help me keep you alive for a wee while.”

  She dragged herself, reluctantly, away from the carvings and followed behind Banks and Davies, heading out an entrance to the north of the chamber. Kim took her hand tightly again. Brock hadn’t fallen victim to the coma that had taken White and limped along, helped by Wiggins at his shoulder, with Wilkins and Hynd bringing up the rear.

  *

  They arrived immediately in another archaeological wonder, a set of chambered catacombs, obviously, to Maggie’s eyes, of the same Jewish period but the ravages of time and looting had not been kind here. Broken sarcophagi lay tumbled along the walls, fragments of skeletons and clothing showing where looters had desecrated the tombs in search of anything of value.

  “Bastards,” Kim said.

  Banks spoke from the front of the group.

  “This is a good sign,” he said. “We’ve reached areas where people have been relatively recently. Keep an eye open; if looters can get in here, we can get out.”

  At least the area was free of any webbing and they were able to progress for thirty paces along the center of the catacomb chamber. As they closed on the far end, Maggie saw two exits ahead of them, both little more than darker shadows in the gloom.

  “Right goes toward town, left goes toward the outer walls, is that right?” Banks asked.

  Both Maggie and Kim replied at the same time.

  “Yes.”

  Maggie continued, “But there’s no guarantee either way and…”

  Banks put up a hand to stop her.

  “I know,” he said. “But we already ken
that the town is infested, so we can’t realistically go that way. I’m hoping there’s some way out for us to get to open ground where the chopper can reach us easily. It’s about the only plan I’ve got, unless you’ve got anything better?”

  Maggie had no answer to that. Kim held her hand tighter as they went left, into a narrower corridor of roughly hewn rock that sloped gently downward.

  *

  It was only a few steps inside before Maggie noticed a smell in the breeze, a vinegary tang. There had been so many noxious smells assaulting her nose and throat in the past hour that it took her a while to identify this new one but once she noticed it, there was no mistaking it.

  “There’s spiders around here somewhere.”

  “No shit, Sherlock?” Wiggins said at her back but Banks took note and stopped at the front.

  “Yes,” he said. “I smell them too. But what choice do we have?”

  He turned back and continued onward. After only a dozen more paces, the corridor opened out into another worked area, an empty, cathedral-like space of pillars and arches that was more recent than anything else they’d seen so far. Half a dozen opening led off to the left and right and they could see, right at the edge of the gun lights, a darker, larger opening leading out at the far end to the north. Fresher air came from that direction and Banks led them toward it, upping his pace.

  “Late Persian. 4th century,” Kim said. “A storeroom at a guess.”

  It was a fine feat of architecture but there were no carvings, no statues and Maggie took some pictures where the light allowed it, more to document their trail than from any archaeological curiosity as they made their way through the large, empty area. It was while she was taking one more photograph that the relative quiet was shattered by a loud rat-a-tat clattering from behind that was immediately joined by others, coming from openings both to the left and right.

  Banks broke into a run and they all followed.

  *

  When they reached the exit at the far end of the chamber, they found it was a wide and high archway, leading into a man-made tunnel of expertly worked stone, eight feet in circumference. Banks stood aside to let Maggie, Kim, Wiggins, and the injured Brock in behind him. The other four soldiers stood in a line at the entrance, waiting for an attack.

  None came, although the clattering rat-a-tat echoed from all the other exits and when Banks swung his aim at the nearest to the left, it showed two sets of the red compound eyes reflecting back at them.

  “It’s as if they want us to go this way,” Maggie whispered.

  “Aye,” Banks replied. “We’re being herded, like so many bloody sheep.”

  She didn’t ask what they might be being herded toward.

  I don’t think I want to know the answer.

  - 21 -

  Banks stood under the archway for several seconds, weapon trained on the exit off to his left, but the eyes of the spiders merely gazed implacably back at him, the beasts showing no sign of pressing an attack, content merely to block off the exits.

  The sense of being herded got even stronger when Banks turned away and once again led the group down the worked tunnel. Hynd spoke in his helmet after twenty yards.

  “They’re following us, Cap. Staying beyond our light. Should I let them have a volley?”

  “Negative. Save your ammo. I’ve got a feeling we’re going to need every bullet before too long.”

  The excited clacking of the spiders echoed around them as they went down farther into the tunnel. It descended in a gradual slope but there was little danger of falling as the path was dry and even underfoot. All they had to worry about was the spiders, which matched their pace, coming on at their back.

  All of Banks’ instincts were telling him they were heading into trouble but he’d brought them all this far and at each stage had made what he’d thought to be the correct decision for their safety. He could only hope he’d get a chance to make another.

  *

  He was starting to worry about the descent—it had taken a turn westward and was surely taking them under rather than toward the town walls. Judging distances in his head, he was pretty sure they were at the outskirts of town already and going deeper into the hill hadn’t been on his agenda. But there were only spiders and death at their backs, so he kept them on their course.

  They arrived at the foot of the slope when the tunnel opened out into a far larger cavern beyond where they stood on a rocky ledge. There was evidence here that there had been a cave-in and recently at that, for rubble and dirt lay strewn around the cavern and high above, some thirty yards up a rocky slope to their left, the last of the daylight showed at an open hole. It was the dim light that had caught Banks’ eye first, so he was only alerted to the rest when Wiggins spoke, too loudly, at his back.

  “Fuck me.”

  Banks dropped his gaze from the daylight above and took in the rest of the chamber.

  It was as large and high-vaulted as a medieval cathedral but instead of stained glass and tapestries, this one was decorated in web, in traceries and rope bridges, vast flowing sheets as smooth as silk, and nets as geometrically perfect as any fisherman’s. And right in the center, some thirty yards below where the squad stood on a ledge, in the center of all the webbing, sat a spider from out of an arachnophobe’s worst nightmare.

  It was all white, as white as the webbing in which it sat, the only color in it the deep, blood-red of the huge set of compound eyes and the twin jet-black fangs, each as long as a man’s leg. The thing’s legs, each more than fifteen feet long on their own, sat splayed on the web, monitoring the vibrations, while the bulk of the body lay in darkness beyond, a swollen, bulbous, fleshy thing, rounded like a globe and pulsing obscenely, as if ready to burst. The spider wasn’t paying them any attention; all of its effort was going into feeding, as it plucked a human-sized cocoon from a pile in front of it, put it to its mouth and sucked like a child with a drinking straw, an obscene sound that echoed around the cavern.

  “Where’s Sigourney fucking Weaver when we need her?” Wiggins said at Banks’ back.

  Now that Banks’ eyesight had adjusted to the light in the cavern, he saw that there were numerous other caves leading off down below them, passages from which the dog-sized spiders scurried to and fro. He realized with dismay what kept them so busy. They were retrieving football-sized white balls from the rear of the large spider and ferrying them off in their scores down into lower levels of the system.

  Those are eggs. Hundreds of eggs.

  He turned to Hynd and spoke softly.

  “How many of those wee gas canisters do we have, Sarge?”

  “Two, Cap. Want them?”

  “Not yet. If we start a fire now, we’ll fry ourselves into the bargain.” He pointed up the rocky slope to where the light, fading fast to darkness, had come in.

  “There’s our way out. We head up there, double time, and if we get a chance, take this big fucker out from up there. We have to stay alive long enough to get above ground. I can call in the chopper once we’re clear.”

  As a plan, it had the benefit of simplicity. But he’d forgotten about Brock’s injury.

  “I’m not sure Badger can make it up yon slope, Cap,” Wiggins said.

  “I’m fine,” Brock replied but his skin had taken on a pale, greasy look and his eyes were sunk deep in their sockets. Every movement caused him a flare of pain.

  “We’ll fucking carry him if we have to,” Banks replied. “But we’re going up and we’re going now before we get noticed.”

  *

  Getting off the ledge proved to be the first hurdle to cross. The access to the slope and their way out was eight feet below their current position and no easy way to get to it.

  “Sarge, Wilkins, watch our backs,” Banks said. “We’re going to have to take this as a relay.”

  Davies, as the tallest of them, went first, lowering himself off the edge then dropping lightly to his feet on a large slab of rock below.

  “It’s stable, sir,�
� he said. “Send them down.”

  Banks helped Wiggins drop Brock down next. Davies managed to take the weight off the other private’s bad ankle but Brock let out a yelp of pain on landing. The white spider paused in its feeding and its left front leg trembled, testing the web, but Banks was able to let out a slow breath when it went back to its feeding.

  “Best hurry, Cap,” Hynd said. “We’re going to have company. Yon wee ones are coming up behind us in the tunnel.”

  Wiggins went next, dropping down beside Davies. Brock wasn’t able to put his weight on the wounded ankle and could only sit on the edge of the rock while Banks lowered first Kim, then Maggie, to the waiting men.

  “Time’s up, Cap,” Hynd said. “Here they come.”

  The remaining three men all dropped at the same time. The slab of rock moved, tilting alarmingly and sending a tumble of loosened debris deeper into the cavern. This time it definitely got the white spider’s attention. It ceased feeding and looked up, the plate-sized red eyes directed straight at them.

  “Move out,” Banks said. “Up that slope, right now. The sarge and I will cover you. Shift your arses.”

  The first of the smaller spiders looked over the ledge above them as Wiggins led the others away as fast as the hobbling Brock would allow.

  *

  “I think we’ve lost the element of surprise, Cap,” Hynd said evenly as two more of the dog-sized beasts appeared at the ledge above their heads. The only thing stopping them attacking was the presence of an overhang that, momentarily at least, had them confused.

  “Time for the gas?” Hynd added, waving towards the main mass of web. “It’s not like we’re short of fuel.”