by Brian Parker
He turned the corner at the end of the block and slipped his hand inside his pants pocket. The number was hidden in his cell phone contacts list under the name “Beverly.”
The private dialed the number and waited as it connected. “Yes?” a woman answered in Portuguese.
“Ah, this is Private Melo. I am the contact at the Cuiabá State Police.”
“We have many contacts in the State Police,” she stated dryly.
“I work at the headquarters,” he replied emphatically.
“Yes? What is it?”
“I have information. Information that will interest your bosses.”
“What information?”
“How much will I get paid?” he prodded.
“If your information turns out to be good, I can authorize up to one hundred thousand Brazilian Reais.”
He blanched the Real was not as strong as it once was, but that was more than triple his annual salary. “Two hundred thousand reais,” Melo countered, taking a risk.
“You think your information is this good?” she asked.
“Yes.”
There was a momentary pause. “Fine. I have found your bank information and will transfer the money once you tell me what you know.”
“Two hundred thousand?” he asked loudly in his excitement.
“Yes, yes. What information do you have for my employers?”
He wiped the sweat from his palm before cupping his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. “There is an American Special Forces unit in Cuiabá. They just arrived at the headquarters building and will depart for the facility in two hours.”
“This is good information. How many men, and are they going to fly or travel overland?”
Melo answered her questions to the best of his ability. He’d only briefly seen the Americans, so he inflated the numbers slightly to ensure he captured all of them. When he was finished, the woman said, “Very good, Melo. Very good indeed. I have transferred your money. Return to the headquarters and keep us informed if the situation changes.”
The phone clicked dead and Private Melo frantically punched in his banking information onto the phone’s touch screen. He laughed aloud when he read his account balance. They’d paid him the full amount. He was rich.
A heavy club descended on his temple and he was pulled into an alley. Through the haze in his mind he heard a man say, “Quick! Grab the phone before the screen locks.”
Someone stepped roughly onto his hand, snatching the phone away. “It’s unlocked. Holy—Miguel, this guy is rich!”
“Transfer it to our account.” A face swam into view. It was just another street thug, one of thousands in the city. “What’s a rich man like you doing walking all alone in the city wearing an Army uniform?”
“I’m not a rich man.”
“Not anymore,” the thug agreed. “Take him. Those foreigners are paying top dollar for workers at that big building in the jungle.”
“No,” he mumbled. “No. I work for them. No.”
The club descended once more and Private Melo fell into oblivion.
TWENTY-FOUR
* * *
BRAZILIAN HIGHLANDS RAINFOREST, BRAZIL
MARCH 24TH
Major Taavi Shaikh looked at Lieutenant Khavari for several seconds before exploding. “How old is this message?”
“I just received it, sir,” the young officer replied. “It says the informant passed the information almost four hours ago.”
“Four hours? That strike team could be outside our doors right now.”
The lieutenant looked hopelessly lost and over his head. “It doesn’t matter,” Shaikh grunted. “Have the runway cleared of any supplies. Get the pilots from wherever they are and prepare the plane for movement. We will take the final group of martyrs to the airport now instead of tonight.”
“Yes, sir,” Khavari said, clearly relieved to be receiving orders that he could take action on instead of making them up himself.
While the lieutenant relayed his orders, Shaikh flipped the switch that turned on the rotating red lights mounted throughout the interior of the facility. The lights would notify his security element of the danger without alerting anyone observing from the outside. Then, the major rushed to the locker room to put on his tactical gear. He didn’t want to get into a firefight with the Americans, but he needed to be prepared for the possibility. His mission was to get the remaining martyrs onto the planes.
Once that task was complete Kasra Amol would release his wife and children. That was all that mattered to him now.
Shaikh heard his orders over the radio and he smiled. The lieutenant could be relied upon for simple tasks. If they survived this assignment, the youth had a future in the army.
It didn’t take long before his orders were followed and the martyrs showed up together. The men, two Iranians and two North Koreans, each held passports stating they were Lebanese and South Korean respectively. They were to go to the cities not previously visited by the other groups and continue to spread the disease among the homeless. Once the Cursed rose, there would be no stopping them.
“Secure this,” Shaikh ordered the Iranians after inspecting their passports one final time. “The Americans are coming, so we have moved up our timeline. Your flights will remain the same out of Rio, but we will arrive several hours earlier than expected. Once we get to the airport, I must return here to direct the fight, if it comes to that. Do not do anything stupid and get yourself expelled from your flight. Understood?”
When everything was secured, Shaikh went into his office and removed the green Pelican case that held the serum the men would use to infect the cities they were headed to. Then, they made their way out the back exit to the runway.
The oppressive heat of the jungle pressed in around the Havoc team as they chopped their way through the dense underbrush. Grady’s mind wandered as he thought about the extremes in temperature that they’d been through in the past forty-eight hours. From the frigid trek across eastern Russia and North Korea, to the bone-chilling waters of the Sea of Japan, and now to this godforsaken jungle. Add in the mere minutes of sleep over that same period, and it was a recipe for disaster.
“According to GPS, we should be able to see the site,” Bazan called over the team frequency.
Grady snapped back to the moment at hand. How had he allowed himself to zone out like that? They’d come from the opposite direction of the village, through the jungle to avoid detection, but the foliage and the underbrush didn’t allow them to see shit.
“I don’t have eyes on,” he admitted. “Does anyone else?”
“Nope,” Knasovich replied. “We need to keep pushing forward until we can see something.”
Grady checked his own GPS. They were only a few meters from the edge of the jungle. The target building was set in a large clearing about a mile from the little unnamed village. “Rob, have the Brazilians reached that town yet?”
“Negative contact from them, boss.”
“Fuck,” Grady muttered. The entire trip here, the colonel’s men had been jumpy. It got worse the closer they came to the facility. They knew something about what was going on out here, but they weren’t talking about it. “I think they ghosted on us.”
“Are we compromised?” Knasovich asked.
“No idea,” Grady whispered. “Doesn’t matter. We are the only ones on the ground right now that can put a stop to this. You saw what those things were back in Korea. We can’t let them make it up into the States.”
“I didn’t see them,” Knasovich grunted.
“You saw video, Alex,” Hannah hissed. “And you sure as hell saw what they did to Simon. Don’t be such a dick all the time.”
“Control your girlfriend, Harper,” the sniper said harshly.
Grady seethed. What the hell was happening to his team? They were all sleep deprived and their mission parameters had changed wildly, but they were supposed to be professionals. “All of you, shut the fuck up. We’re on a goddamned op and you’r
e acting like fucking teenagers. We are literally minutes away from killing motherfuckers and you’re bickering. Fucking cut it. Now.”
He glanced ten meters to the left and saw Hannah’s face turned toward him. “Sorry, Grady. Sleep deprivation.”
The team leader looked to Knasovich. He flipped Grady the bird. “I’m going to find a hide,” he said, referring to his sniper position.
“Hannah, go with—”
“No fucking way, Harper. You wanted her on this mission. You keep the liability with you on the ground.”
“Mother fucker,” Grady groaned silently. Then, into his radio, he said, “Alright, Rob, you go with Alex to provide security. Find your spot quickly. I want intel in ten minutes.”
Rob smiled at him as he walked by, hurrying to catch up to Knasovich as the sniper took off northward to where satellite imagery showed a small rise three hundred meters from their current location.
Bazan shifted over to stand beside Grady. “This isn’t good, what’s happening between Alex and Hannah.”
“I know.”
“Both of them are now so distracted that—”
“I know,” Grady grumbled.
The engineer held up his hands. “Alright, alright. We just need to get through this, without that crazy son of a bitch shooting us from afar and then taking all the contract money for himself.”
Grady’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t think he would do something like that, do you?”
Bazan shrugged. “He’s crazy, and greedy, so I have no idea. Just watch your back, boss.”
The darker man stepped away and blended into the jungle. Grady shook his head and looked to where Hannah knelt, wiping sweat away from her forehead with a bandana. Knasovich is right, he thought. She’s not an operator. Why did I bring her? The obvious answer was that he’d wanted a pilot in case they had to steal an aircraft for a quick escape, but was that it? Had they ever needed a pilot to get them out of sticky situations before?
Grady pushed the remainder of his team forward so they could see through the foliage. The jungle suddenly gave way to a clearing and they stopped. He had everyone slip back just inside the dense underbrush. The front of the building looked like any other concrete office structure. It was large, rectangular, and unassuming. There weren’t even any signs declaring the front company’s name. There were only a handful of beat up old cars and trucks in the parking lot.
“What do you wanna bet there’s more to this place than what it looks like from the outside?” he whispered.
“That journal said it was an underground facility,” Rob stated. “Are we sure we’re hitting the right place?”
The large vertical stabilizer of a C-130 was just barely visible from behind the building. “We’re in the right place,” Grady assured him.
“In position,” Knasovich said over the radio. “There’s a lot of activity at the facility.”
“What kind of activity?” Grady asked. The front part of the building was virtually abandoned.
“I don’t know. Bunch of men running around, carrying boxes and pushing carts off the runway.”
The throaty cough of engines turning over echoed across the quiet afternoon. “Shit!” Grady cursed. Those were the C-130 engines starting up.
“The props on the C-130 just started spinning,” the sniper announced. “The fucking Brazilians sold us out.”
“Goddammit!” Grady cursed again. They couldn’t see anything from where they were. “Bound up. We can’t see shit. Baz, you’re with me. Chris, Hannah, move toward the northwest inside the tree line until you can see the engagement area. Set up a support by fire position there and cover us.”
“Five men just left the building, walking toward the bird,” Knasovich observed.
Grady and Bazan got to their feet and rushed toward the building two hundred meters away. They were almost to it when the sniper said, “They’re carrying some type of hardened case. That may be the germs or whatever the fuck it is.” After a momentary pause, he continued, “What are we doing, Harper?”
Outside, workers from the facility scrambled to finish unloading the large cargo plane. They’d expected to have hours to do so, not minutes. Shaikh chastised himself for allowing the men to work at their own pace instead of demanding that it be finished immediately. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
He began moving across the concrete receiving area with the martyrs when the sound of gunfire erupted behind them. Shaikh whirled in time to see one of his security men fall to the ground. He dove behind a crate and a chunk of concrete went flying into the air a few meters beyond where he’d stood.
“Sniper!” he yelled. He fumbled with the pistol on his hip and pulled it free.
One of the martyrs fell before the others took cover and pulled him to the safety of another large shipping container. He looked at the man. He’d been shot through the lower leg, probably shattering the bones there. It wasn’t immediately life-threatening, but it would keep him from escaping quickly. The Americans want prisoners to interrogate, he thought. He would have done the same thing.
Reports on the radio stated that men were seen running across the narrow field toward the facility. The small security force was trained to keep the Cursed in line, not fight off an American Special Forces team. Shaikh knew that the facility would be taken. He had to administer the remaining serum now and allow the disease to spread slowly outward from here in the Highlands.
“We won’t make it to America, Brothers,” Shaikh called to the martyrs. “Take the serum now.”
The men nodded in understanding as Shaikh opened the case and passed each of them the remaining vials. Empty glass tubes showed where he’d given the other groups their serum. The first group received the eye droppers, the rest were infected before they went through security. The men opened their eyes wide and poured the liquid into them. It was overkill as they only needed a few drops, but he didn’t’ say anything. It would be enough, he told himself. Enough for that bitch to follow through with her end of the bargain.
He returned the vials to the case and secured it. “Go to the village. We will hold the Americans here.”
“What about Yen?” the other Korean martyr asked of his friend.
More gunfire rang out as his men fought against the strike force. “Carry him,” Shaikh directed. “The amount of serum you just administered will take effect within the hour. You just need to remain safe until then.” He pointed toward another shipping container. “Go that way. The sniper is probably looking for targets near the fighting.”
Major Shaikh watched the men go, skittering from cover to cover until they slipped into the jungle on a well-worn path to the village. When they were safely away, he picked up the case and looked between the cargo plane and the facility. It was over a hundred meters from where he crouched behind the container to the entrance to the maintenance bay across open ground, three hundred to the plane. It was an easy choice. He glanced at his pistol and then holstered it. The gun would do him no good when he was sprinting full speed to avoid the sniper.
He stood, took several deep breaths and then raced toward the open doors. He juked and zigzagged as best he could to confuse the American that he knew was watching him through a rifle scope. He was only ten meters from the doorway now.
Taavi allowed himself a moment of hope that he would make it, then he was spun around by the impact of a bullet. His arms flailed wide in an effort to catch his balance. He pirouetted around in a full circle, the case flying away from him.
He continued running into the safety of the building and didn’t stop until he was through the maintenance bay, standing before a door on the far side. Shaikh swiped his card to gain entry into the facility and slipped inside.
When the door was closed securely behind him, he glanced down at the handle he still held. One side had been shattered, shot by the sniper. The other was sheared off from the force of the blow. The Pelican case, with all of the notes on the martyrs, their pictures, even their airline tick
ets, was outside. The Americans would find the case and use that to track the men down in the United States. He couldn’t let that happen.
He closed his eyes and pulled the radio from his belt. “Lieutenant Khavari, this is Major Shaikh.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Release the Cursed.”
“Sir?”
“We have always known this day would come. The Cursed are the only thing that can stop the Americans from destroying the facility.”
Grady fired another burst toward the defenders at the back of the facility. He knew they’d taken out at least two, but there were another five or so guards that needed to be dealt with.
“Hey, Harper. Those men I saw just escaped into the jungle,” Knasovich said over the radio.
He ducked around the corner of the building while Bazan fired. “I thought you shot one of them.”
“I did. They were carrying the guy. They used all those shipping containers as cover and I didn’t see them until they were ten feet from the jungle. I shot at them, but doubt I hit anything.”
“Two more down,” the team’s demolition expert yelled out.
Rounds pinged off the side of the building as the guards shot back, then a burst of machine gun fire turned his attention toward the jungle where Chris McCormick and Hannah were set up. The big man was getting in on the action.
“Eyes on the green case guy,” the sniper said. “He’s making a run for the building.”
“Shoot him!” Grady said. He pivoted and brought his rifle up, then he was knocked backward by a round hitting him in the shoulder. He spun and fell, face first behind the building.
“Harper’s down,” Bazan said calmly over the radio and continued firing.
Grady felt around his arm and shoulder. He’d taken a hit toward the outside of his deltoid when his shoulder was exposed. Thankfully, it was in the muscle and not the joint. “I’m okay,” he grumbled over the team net. “Not happy, but I’m okay.”