Gorgon: An Alex Hunter Novel

by Greig Beck

  Atalay’s eyes went wide. He dropped the flare gun and drew his own revolver, then roared a single instruction: ‘Fire.’

  Automatic gunfire shattered the dawn air, and muzzle flashes dotted the small hillside, as hundreds of rounds sped toward the figure. It seemed to writhe and shake at their impact, but didn’t fall. The head swiveled slowly, seeming to take in the men on the hill. At each sweep, the sound of gunfire lessened.

  When the huge head finally swung toward Mehmet Atalay, he had the fleeting impression of a ghastly white face streaked red by the flare, and slitted reptilian eyes that could only be hell-born. Images of snakes, fiery pits, roaring giants, and monstrous many-headed hounds crowded his brain, and it seemed to slow, like a clock winding down. A tiny dot of pain in his forehead grew and bloomed, and he saw the figure was gliding toward him. He wanted to fire his gun, or stab at it, or throw a punch, but his muscles refused to obey. The thing went past him without a glance, and he realized he was as inconsequential to it as an insect that just happened to be in the way.

  A veil of gray started to pull over his vision. He turned his head on a creaking neck to glance at his men. They were frozen in place on the hill, some with rifles still at their shoulders. A stone army, armed and ready for battle, for eternity.

  *

  Gülhane Military Hospital, Ankara

  Doctor Layla Ayhan pushed the long curved needle in through the flesh of the young boy’s tricep and lifted it out the other side of the vicious gash. She tugged and the skin came together like the mouth of a purse being pulled closed. She repeated the zippering stitch a few more times, felt the flesh around the wound, as if testing for ripeness, and then gave it a quick swab of alcohol. She stood back to survey her work.

  ‘Looks good … and you’ll have a nice scar to frighten the girls.’ She smiled and pulled off her gloves.

  The boy bobbed his head and grinned back, trying to pull the skin on his arm around to see her work.

  ‘Ack.’ She batted his hand away from the wound.

  The pager vibrated on her hip, making her jump. The electronic relic was only ever called by her mother and some select close friends. She lifted the small black box from her belt to read the brief message that scrolled across its miniature screen: PRIORITY – BAYKAL – COMING IN AT LOADING BAY – 5 MINS.

  She raised an eyebrow as she tapped the box against her chin for a moment. What are you bringing me that is so important and secretive you have to use the back door of my hospital, Kemel?

  She pushed some loose hair back behind her ear, turned to the boy and lifted him off the gurney. ‘Out,’ she said with a smile, and pushed him into the arms of his mother, who looked far less impressed by the wound than he was.

  Layla quickly tidied her combined office and laboratory, sweeping coffee cups and food wrappers into a wastepaper basket. She went to an old wooden cupboard that doubled as a filing cabinet and pulled open the door, quickly checking her face in a small mirror on its inside. Satisfied, she shut the door, and was straightening her clothes when there was a knock on the door and it was immediately being pushed open.

  Kemel Baykal stared at her for a second or two, his bushy moustache turned up at the corners with the hint of a smile, then gave a little bow. The large Special Forces commander was twice as fearsome as any man Layla knew, but in her presence he always seemed to revert to the stumbling schoolboy. She liked that.

  Baykal stepped to the side to allow two soldiers to push a covered gurney into the room. He dismissed them and turned to her, his face serious.

  ‘A puzzle, Doctor … and an urgent one, I’m afraid.’

  He flipped back the sheet, and the question forming on her lips was immediately cut off.

  She approached slowly. ‘Is this a joke?’

  ‘Far from it,’ Baykal responded softly.

  She walked the length of the gurney, her hand hovering over the figure. She reached into her pocket to retrieve some rubber gloves, pulled them on, and touched the corpse. It was rock-hard.

  ‘Impossible. This is not real.’

  Baykal stared down at the figure. ‘I agree it is impossible. And I wish it wasn’t real. But this was one of my men, and I think there will be others.’ He looked up, his eyes tormented. ‘Layla, help us understand it.’

  She pressed the man’s cheek. Powder drifted down onto the gurney. She noticed some fragments had broken away, and went to her bench to gather a spare slide and a scalpel. She used the blade to scrape the debris onto the slide, and took it back to her bench where a large microscope stood waiting. She flicked on a light at its base and placed her eye over the lens.

  ‘Where did this occur?’ She adjusted the microscope’s resolution, then lifted her head to look once again at the strange remains on the gurney. ‘How did it occur?’

  Baykal was leaning against the wall, his arms folded, his face dark with concentration. He blinked at the sound of her voice.

  ‘The Basilica Cistern – something happened to him in a newly discovered deep vault. Been sealed for centuries, we think.’

  She peered into the microscope again, using the tip of one finger to fractionally move the slide to examine different aspects of the sample.

  ‘Cell structures, blood vessels, muscle striation, bone – it’s all there. If I hadn’t seen this myself, I would never have believed it. Full ossification . . . amazing.’ She stood up and turned to the SFC commander. ‘When did this happen – I mean, over what period of time?’

  Baykal used his shoulders to push off the wall. ‘Just a few hours ago … and it took only minutes.’ He blinked, remembering. ‘I saw it happen myself.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Hours ago?’ She leaned back from the scope. ‘Impossible.’ Layla moved quickly to the gurney, where she pulled back more of the sheet. The body lay among fragments of stone and mounds of gray dust. ‘Simply amazing.’ She picked up one of the fragments with her gloved hand and rolled it between thumb and forefinger.

  Baykal sighed. ‘It’s impossible, I know. But trust me, I saw it. He must have become infected or contaminated by something.’ His eyes widened. ‘In the deepest pit, there was a huge bronze urn. It had just been opened. It was empty when we got there, but we had the feeling there had been something in it.’

  Layla turned to him. ‘You think something came out of it?’

  Baykal shook his head. ‘Came out, taken out, I don’t know, nothing is making sense. But could there have been something contagious in there?’

  Layla wiped a finger along the body’s upper arm and lifted it to her face. ‘It’s degrading, becoming even more ossified to the point of losing its chemical cohesion – turning into powder. Soon it’ll be gone.’

  Baykal grunted. ‘Perhaps to the same place where all the other bodies went. Well, is it? Contagious?’

  She rubbed her thumb and finger together, and the smooth dust floated away. ‘Contagious? I don’t see how – there are no living cells anywhere in the matrix, neither internally nor externally. There is absolutely nothing living here – it’s as sterile as can be. So, no – no vectors, no transferable fluids, no biological residues, nothing.’ She looked down at the frozen face of the soldier. ‘Whatever caused this, it switched on very quickly, and then just . . . switched off again.’

  She pulled more of the sheet back. ‘What is his clothing made from?’

  Baykal frowned momentarily. ‘Flame-retardant wool.’

  She nodded. ‘But not the belt – that’s nylon mesh, right?’

  He nodded.

  She reached out to the stone hand. ‘There’s a ring on his finger.’ The digit snapped off in her hand and she held it up. ‘See, still gold. But everything else with a biological base, the flesh, bone, clothing, was . . . infected.’ She pushed a strand of hair back off her face. ‘That might not be the right word – afflicted might be better.’

  ‘Afflicted, infected.’ He shrugged. ‘By what?’

  Layla walked to a bookshelf, and reached up to select a couple of mo
nstrous tomes that made her strain with the effort. Baykal rushed over to take them from her. She pointed to the table, and he set them down. She immediately began to flick through the first volume’s thousands of pages. She slowed her search, and ran a finger down one of the columns.

  ‘It is near impossible,’ she said, ‘and it’s certainly rare. But something like this has been documented before – just never on this scale or acting with such aggressive rapidity.’

  Baykal pointed to the gurney. ‘This has happened before? When?’

  She was reading down the page, her brow furrowed in concentration. ‘Hmm, well, not exactly like this, but … here …’ She waved him over, and started to read. ‘Okay, here we go. There are actually several conditions that can cause flesh to solidify, or ossify, as it’s termed.’ She looked at the gurney. ‘Nothing as complete as that …’

  Baykal leaned over her shoulder. ‘Please, tell me everything. Anything might be helpful right now.’

  She saw the worry on his face. It was one of his men lying there, and more were still missing. The odds were they had met the same fate.

  ‘Well, there is a disease called scleroderma,’ she said, ‘which means “hard skin”. It’s characterized by a thickening of the epidermis. However, the real damage is done under the surface of the skin, where the immune system destroys the small blood vessels through the creation of excessive collagen. The patient ends up with thick and tight leathery skin that feels like it’s burning. Supposed to be very painful.’

  Baykal’s mouth turned down. ‘Yes, his face . . . it certainly looked painful. But isn’t collagen the stuff they inject into Hollywood stars’ lips?’

  She laughed, but stopped quickly when she saw his question was genuine. ‘No, not quite. Eventually the build-up of the leathery, fibrous connective tissue destroys the lungs, heart, gastrointestinal tract, kidneys, muscles, just about everything. Pretty horrible.’

  Baykal motioned to the gurney, his voice a little louder. ‘But this isn’t just the skin becoming leathery – look at him.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ Layla quickly flipped through some more pages of the medical tome, running her finger down a dense column of information. ‘This is more what I was thinking of. Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva.’ She looked up at Baykal. ‘Stone man syndrome. Maybe . . . possibly . . .’

  Baykal leaned closer, trying to see over her shoulder. ‘Right now, possibly will do. Tell me about it.’

  ‘It’s very, very rare, and was described as early as 2000 BC by the early Greeks, although there are cases documented all over the world. Basically, the body starts to over-produce calcium, which causes unnecessary changes to the skeletal structure, turning the skeleton into a series of bony plates.’ She frowned as she read down the page. ‘Hmm, and not only the skeleton – eventually all the organs succumb. You can cut away the affected tissue or bone, but it simply repairs itself – not with connective tissue, but with more bone.’

  She pushed the book nearer so he could see.

  Baykal read the text aloud. ‘An American, Harry Raymond Eastlack, began to develop calcium build-up in his system at ten years of age. By the time he died, his body had completely ossified. He could just move his lips to speak, but everything else was as hard as stone.’ He frowned. ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘But the process usually takes several years,’ Layla finished. ‘You say this happened to your man in just a few hours?’

  Baykal looked up at her slowly. ‘No – while we watched – in minutes.’ He sighed. ‘He just stopped moving, then dried up – turned to rock and dust.’

  Layla frowned and went back to the microscope. ‘No, not dried up, of that I am sure. The cells are still hydrated. This body was not desiccated, it was just …’ she sighed. ‘I don’t know, it’s as if its life force was extracted, leaving nothing living behind. I bet if I had an electron microscope I’d see that even the bacteria on his skin and in his gut is ossified as well.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t think I have many answers for you. Sorry.’

  He smiled. ‘Actually I’ve learned a lot. But I’ve also learned there is a lot more we don’t know. More work to do.’ He made a small bow. ‘As always, you are amazing, Dr. Ayhan. Ah, I almost forget. Can you get this analyzed?’ He pulled a small bottle from his pocket, and shook it before handing it to her.

  ‘Sure.’ She held it up, peering at it closely. ‘Looks like old fish scales … very old. The cisterns have carp – some quite large.’ She looked back at the bottle. ‘I might be wrong, and we won’t know for sure until we get it analyzed.’ She reached into a drawer to pull out a padded envelope, wrote an address on the outside, dropped the sample inside and sealed it. ‘‘I’ll send this to a friend at the museum. He’ll identify it. But it’s your job to find out how it got there.’ She placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘You’ll figure it out, Kemel. You always do.’

  He reached up to place his hand over hers, just as his phone jangled in his pocket. He made a guttural sound in his throat and pointed at her chest. ‘Don’t go away.’

  He put the phone to his ear and turned his back on her, lowering his voice. ‘All of them?’ He closed his eyes, and Layla could see his teeth grinding behind his cheeks. He disconnected, but remained staring out of the large window over the city rooftops.

  ‘What is it?’ Layla came up behind him.

  ‘It has happened again.’

  ‘Another stone man? In the Palace Cisterns?’

  He shook his head, turning slowly. ‘No, many miles away … and this time an entire army base. All dead … all turned to stone.’

  She froze. ‘What? But …’

  Baykal headed for the door. ‘I’ll be back – we still need to talk.’

  Layla grabbed her coat. ‘We’ll talk on the way – I have to see this myself.’

  CHAPTER 10

  1st Senate Building, Moscow Kremlin Complex

  President Vladimir Volkov read the single page of briefing notes. He could have spent an hour in a full briefing with his security chiefs, but he preferred the information summarized and delivered immediately – especially when it was of this nature. Though Russia had some of the most sophisticated electronic surveillance in the world, Volkov found that lowly paid people in all areas of office, in any city on the globe, were quite happy to sell out their country for the right price. Technology was expensive – people were cheap.

  He dropped the page and looked up, his almost colorless eyes fixing on the general standing rod-straight before him. The man was staring straight ahead, but Volkov knew he was aware of the scrutiny. He saw the man’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed, and a small bead of perspiration ran down the side of his face.

  Volkov laid his hands flat on the desk and spoke slowly. ‘A Turkish Special Forces team disappears while engaging with a force or forces unknown. A platoon of eighty soldiers in Polatli is totally wiped out, without a single enemy body being recovered – again, by a force or forces unknown. General Zhirinovsky, your thoughts?’

  The man swallowed again. ‘The Turks either have no idea what caused the deaths and disappearances, or they have succeeded in keeping it a secret.’

  One of Volkov’s hands curled into a fist. ‘Is that so? I know of the Turkish Special Forces Komandos – pretty tough guys. And taking out a force of eighty standard military, some with battle experience – also, not easy. To do all that without leaving behind a single fallen soldier of your own forces? I’m not sure even we could achieve that sort of surgical precision.’ He shook his head. ‘No, that requires something special, something we have never seen before.’ He grinned, his eyes unblinking. ‘Perhaps, like a new weapon.’

  Zhirinovsky finally looked at Volkov. ‘You think a testing ground? Possible. We know the Chinese are trialing magnetic pulse devices, and the Americans have new microwave technology. Perhaps someone is experimenting with something else … in the field.’

  Volkov nodded slowly. ‘Yes, my friend, and I can smell it – something new and fantastic; powerfu
l, unique, and unstoppable.’ His pale gaze bored into the senior-ranking soldier. ‘General, listen carefully. I don’t care who has it now, but if it is a new weapon, I want to know more.’

  Zhirinovsky saluted and stood to even more erect attention. ‘Yes, my President. We will find it, and obtain it. We will not fail you.’

  Volkov smiled, showing a row of small sharp teeth. ‘I know you won’t. I want a small force, one that will get in and out quickly and quietly, without a trace. I want someone who will not deviate from the mission, and will not be stopped.’ His smile widened, showing even more teeth. ‘Send Uli Borshov.’

  *

  The massive torpedo-shaped vessel breached the surface near the exact center of the Bering Sea. The Yeltsin’s 13,000-ton displacement and 390-foot length made for an impressive sight as the giant metal fish exploded out of the freezing gray water to cut the surface at twenty knots, down from its full attack speed of thirty-five. There would be no turbulence or acoustic signal, as the pressurized fourth-generation nuclear reactor gave the single muscular shaft enormous but near silent power.

  The Severodvinsk submarine was one of Russia’s new attack-class submersibles, and one of the fastest in the world. Its multi-billion-ruble technologies and array of air, surface, and deep-water armaments made it a conflict-theater game-changer. But it also had other non-lethal uses – the submarine’s advanced silencing technology made it ideal for close runs inside a country’s territorial waters for surveillance, or covert pickups of special cargo … like Uli Borshov and his package.

  The Yeltsin had been ordered to breach the surface once again when it was in international waters and well clear of the Alaskan bay where the assassin had boarded. The captain had cursed; even though they were near invisible, the American satellites could still pick up their vapor trails – changes to temperature and radiation given out as minuscule emissions. However, their guest was to receive an incoming call from Command; and refusal to obey orders would mean the captain’s next ship would probably be a fishing trawler.