He was still silent when he saw movement behind the girl — a boy, who shouldn’t have been more than ten years, left the jeep and stood behind her. His face was stained with blood, his nose was broken and he was holding a backpack against his chest.
“Are you alright?” Asimov asked the boy, who looked up at him. The girl stood in front of the tween with a protective air, as if the man had tried to pluck him out of her hands.
“Go away,” she spat out the words. The boy squeezed her arm, but she ignored him. “We have nothing, so... just go!”
Then all three heard the screams of the monsters — they were coming, attracted by the gunfight. Olivia saw the stranger shake his head and mutter something under his breath. Then he turned his back to her, kneeling beside one of the dead men and searching the body.
“We have to go with him,” Thomas said, out of nowhere. She looked at him and shook her head. “Olivia, we have to go with him, or we will die...”
Maybe it was the tone of the boy who convinced her, or then the expression on his face — it didn’t fit a frightened boy, but instead a fully grown man who understands the parameters that affect life and death. Thomas had been through so much in the last few days, witnessed so much evil... But, while those endless terrors had ripened the boy, to her, the exhaustion and terror had led only to paranoia.
Olivia could think of several arguments — we don’t know who he is, he can be dangerous, he will hurt us if he has the chance, we can take care of ourselves... — but she hadn’t the chance to say anything because the stranger spoke first.
“We can’t stay here,” Asimov said, rummaging through the pockets of another dead man and pulling out a few extra mags. “I won’t hurt you, so if you don’t want to come with me, it’s fine by me. OK?” He looked at her, then at the .38 in her hands; he stated it very slowly, “I just want to help...”
The boy squeezed her arm in agreement. At this, Olivia lowered her revolver — and saw the stranger’s warm expression rise to a tremendous alarm. In a movement almost too fast to follow with her eyes, Asimov took the rifle from his back and pointed it at her.
No, he pointed at something behind her.
“Down!” he yelled. The boy threw himself against the girl, knocking her to the ground and giving the man a clear view of the monster galloping behind her. The creature grunted and growled as it ran, and Asimov put three in the thing’s chest, making it trip and then fell.
The monster skidded on the ground to a stop, then raised its head and began crawling toward them, gnashing jagged yellow fangs, but Asimov didn’t shot it again — he was too busy facing the second creature, whose golden eyes seemed to wink at him. He fired quickly, six rounds, the last two in the head, knocking the creature dead to the ground.
Asimov registered a blur of motion — a third creature that launched into the air — an impossible leap, far above the ground. Asimov followed the ascending body with his rifle. The creature seemed to hover in the air, but the slowness of the plunge was an illusion — in the moment he sighted, the monster was already about to engulf him, an insane howl coming out of its mouth.
Asimov started firing, consciously that there was no room for miscalculation. The rounds tore through the flesh and muscles, pulverizing the bones. Asimov rolled to the right and the grotesque corpse crashed where he was standing just a second before.
When Asimov got up, he saw the others — dozens of monsters, churning toward them.
Get out of here, now!
He had a head-start of only thirty seconds. Asimov grabbed the girl by the hand and forced her to go with him, without waiting for any approval. In the sky above, the dark clouds had come and the first drops of water fell upon that cursed land.
RULES OF THE GAME
Ewan Hendrix’s eyes followed the brilliant trace that the silver lighter left toward the cigarette that stood out under his mustache, the light of the flame stopping only a few inches from his rigid face.
Smoking wasn’t allowed inside the submarine, but the captain made an exception, given the final destiny of Hendrix and his men. He was a medium-sized man with broad shoulders and dark skin. In those traits stood a face that seemed eternally closed in a frosty expression, with impassive and inscrutable eyes.
“So, are you going to tell us what the job is this time?” Daniel Devereaux asked. If Hendrix was Quasimodo, then Devereaux would be the closest thing to Adonis. He was a tall, stout fellow whose face emitted a glow that didn’t seem to be sane at all, and deeply believed in the concept of Yin and Yang, the existence of a connection between apparently opposing forces such as good and evil, light and darkness, life and death, etc., etc...
Hendrix looked at his men, one after another. They all looked up boldly, though with a certain appreciation too. There were no children there; they were all iron, fierce and wild-looking men, and had their place among the bravest soldiers the world produced, their loyalty wrote in blood.
They all came from JSOC — two of them from the DEVGRU, or SEAL Team Six, and the other four from the Delta Force — and each of them owned a long military career and operational experience. Now they worked for the CIA — more specifically, in the Agency’s paramilitary branch, the Special Activities Division. They were the tremendously intelligent guys who, for all their common sense, took a dangerous profession as a replacement for a quiet life — the whole world was a game for them, even extinction.
Aside from his team, there was a group consisting exclusively of SEALs sitting on the opposite side of the room, led by a guy called James Devon. They provide shipboard security for the USS Obama and would be Team B of the day if Hendrix and his boys couldn’t handle the job.
Hendrix smoked his cigar and then turned to a man whose profile didn’t fit with the other warriors — most especially because he wasn’t one.
No, sir, he was a senior CIA analyst, and he was visibly sweating. This wasn’t Desmond’s fault, though — if it was difficult to keep track of his claustrophobia in an underground bunker, what to say now, inside a submarine, surrounded by tons of water and water and more water...
Better think of something else...
He realized that the men were all waiting for him to instruct them. So far only Desmond, Hendrix and the submarine’s captain, Alfred Kiersey, knew about the mission details. Secrecy was total — that was a CIA operation from start to finish, even though the Company, technically speaking, lives only in the paper nowadays.
Despite being fully aware of the mission, Hendrix would let Desmond do this part — after all, if the analyst wanted to play as a soldier, then he could at least use his mouth for something more than just eating eggs and fresh bread — it was a special meal that day, in fact, the cook claiming that “every man deserves a good meal before his execution.”
Oh, yes, there were a lot of rumors about their “super-ultra-mega-secret” mission, as one of the sailors had said. But the main question wasn’t what Hendrix and his men were going to do, but what Desmond was doing with them.
Hell, that was a goddamn good question —one that Desmond was making too.
Desmond still remembered the uncomfortable feeling of staying with the CIA director in a videoconference with President Jameson, General Walker, and also their respective aides. Ironically, the most fearsome person wasn’t the President of the United States of America, but General Walker — he was a gigantic man, making everyone around him seem impotent, and he kept looking at Desmond with obvious disinterest.
“You’re wasting my time,” Walker’s face seemed to say to Desmond, to which the analyst could only bow his head. President Jameson’s assessment was no better and Bosworth, supposedly the only ally he had, just smiled a fake smile that quickly vanished into his stone face.
To make things better, he could see on the screens, flanking both the general and the president, dozens of people staring at him with risks discontentment. But there was something else there, too, favored a feeling, something that Desmond wouldn’t have noticed if he
wasn’t a good analyst: despair.
Operation Blood Hammer had failed on a massive level. The numbers of Shades highly outnumbered the military and it was “Custer vs Indians” all again. Basically, General Walker and his staff had been caught with their pants down. They suffered high casualties — casualties that they couldn’t afford to sustain.
In the meantime, the Plague continues to spread and hundreds more are dying every day. Initial projections said that they have less than six months to win the war; otherwise, there wouldn’t be anybody left alive in the country. The global situation was on the same boat; Europe was completely devastated, and South America was in the dark. If they still dreamed with a possible victory, they would need to change tactics.
And it was because that that Desmond was standing before the three most powerful men in the country — it wasn’t a very pleasant moment.
“Desmond Steger, right?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
The President turned his head toward the director Bosworth, which put his elbows on the table and said, “Do you remember the theory you told me a few days ago? Could you explain it to the gentlemen here?”
No one interrupted him as he told everything he knew — or what he thought he knew — about Polansky, even if the impatience of most of the listeners present was quite evident. Desmond took note to try to be more objective next time he speaks in public — more than ever if that audience includes POTUS.
“That’s all you got?” General Walker asked as he finished, staring at his assembled comrades as if he had gone to the movie theater and lost the most important scene of the film, “A scientist putting a box in the mail? Why the hell should I care?”
Desmond opened his mouth to reply, but, to his surprise, Bosworth came to his aid.
Desmond opened his mouth to reply, but, to his surprise, Bosworth came to his aid.
“The possibility that a vaccine exists isn’t something we should just ignore. After all, isn’t that what our fellow scientists are trying to do now?” Desmond thought the old man would stop there, but he continued. “Let’s face it, okay? We all agreed that Operation Blood Hammer was a complete failure. We lost almost every FOB established in the mainland, our military forces have been virtually obliterated and, if we don’t stop those things in the next days, the human race will be exterminated. Now it’s time to give science another chance, and all the options are on the table.”
Left unsaid was: Even the crazy ones.
There was anger in his voice and a split second of tension stretched in the air. President Jameson scratched his head and looked away, and General Walker only frowned and growled quietly. Desmond imagined that, if Bosworth was a military man, he might have been called out for insubordination. These two men might not be enemies, but it was clear they weren’t friends.
“And how promising is that option?” The general asked. Desmond should sell his fish and say it was great, but he didn’t feel the urge. The truth is, it was probably too late — despite his original hurry, it had been days since his “meeting” with the director, almost a month. All sorts of things happened during the mean time.
“Sir, I’ll be honest with you. I have no idea what Polansky’s family actual situation is. Almost a month has passed. They could be anywhere, if not dead. Besides, my work is based on a theory, a hypothesis that could, in the end, be completely wrong…”
Walker just nodded at his negative words. Bosworth, however, just smiled.
“Oh, my boy,” he said, “first, let me ask you something. Have you ever played poker?
And then he explained his plan. At first, Desmond was surprised, then proud and cheerful. But in the end, Desmond didn’t like it at all — and he didn’t think Hendrix’s men would like it either.
There’s only one way to find out, Desmond told himself, turning his mind back into the here-and-now and placing his hands on the laptop he had brought. A photo of a boy appeared on the projection screen behind him.
“Our target is Thomas Polansky, the eleven-year-old son of Doctor Antoine Polansky. For those who don’t know, this man is responsible for the creation of the Plague, but everything else is classified” he hastened to continue before there was any turmoil, “Polansky’s family was in Brazil at the time of the outbreak and was stuck in the country ever since. At this moment the boy is traveling with the local maid of the family, Olivia Arraes. The doctor’s wife died during the epidemic. Our mission is to find the boy and extract him; the girl too, if possible.”
The six operators whispered from side to side.
“Why risk our lives for a silly boy?” Frank Schaeffer asked skeptically. He was a tall man of an astonishing pallor.
“Because that boy is carrying a package,” Desmond pressed his palms to the table, his eyes on the faces of the operators in the room. “And inside that package is the possible vaccine that will kill all the Shades for good.”
This caused a slight commotion among the men, but Desmond realized that the team was suddenly paying more attention to what he was talking.
Schaeffer leaned forward, visibly interested in the mission. “Okay, I’m listening,” he said.
Desmond nodded and changed the slide, showing them a satellite image of the country’s north coast. “That, gentlemen, is Brazil today. Thomas and Olivia are somewhere here, and we’re going to meet them here, in a town called São Sebastião.”
Nicholas Knight looked confused. “How do you know they’ll show up? I mean, how do we know they’re not being eaten up by a Shade right now?”
“We’re keeping in touch with them every day.”
“Okay, so I guess it’s my turn to ask a question,” Patrick Archer said, his arms crossed in front of his chest. “How did you find them in that whirlpool, to start?”
Desmond used the same words Bosworth said when he himself asked that question, “She called us.”
The men grunted in reply, but they said nothing as Desmond explained in the most concise and straight manner possible. In fact, they were almost certainly thinking the same thing he thought when Bosworth told him that the maid had a satellite phone. Antoine Polansky had some contacts in the government, and he had given his wife that phone and a number that she should use in case of an emergency. The wife passed it to the maid, and the girl was very lucky that someone was still alive to answer the call.
Less than a minute later, Bosworth was informed, and a thing that some time ago was only a crazy theory of an analyst began to gain physical shape. It was luck — in fact, 50% of the success of that mission would depend on luck.
Desmond’s mouth dropped open, on the other hand, when Bosworth told him what was in the package that Cussler had sent to the Polansky family, a package that the maid still carried along with the boy.
“You were right,” the director told him. “Cussler was experimenting with the boy.”
Yeah, he was right. Desmond couldn’t help but feel a little pride — which quickly vanished when Walker said he’d personally make sure of the success of the mission. He almost had choked when the director nodded.
Goddamn bastards!
He tried to focus on the present. There would be time to squeeze the life out of Bosworth when he returned to the bunker — if he returns. Desmond cleared his throat and continued, realizing that he had stopped talking.
“We’ve been tracking her phone ever since then,” Desmond concluded and, with that, Hendrix got up from his chair and stood before the group.
“Okay, you bastards,” he said, putting his platoon sergeant’s voice into action, “now that we know the name of the game, here’s the rules. The team call signs for the op are going to be Immunity One and Immunity Two…”
“Which one I am?” Schaeffer asked.
“You are the casualty if you interrupt me again. Now listen: South America is in the dark; nobody has heard of Brazil and its neighbors, and our analysts — that means Desmond — believes that the situation in the country is as bad as that of Europe. Actually, is
worse. Our satellites have discovered some isolated groups of survivors here and there, but no coordinated military resistance. It is assumed that more than 90% of the Brazilian population is dead or have turned in Shades.”
Hendrix tapped on the keyboard of the laptop to the next slide. “Back in the base, one of the scientists showed me a video, and I’ve never seen anything like it. Here, see for yourself.”
The video was short, just thirty seconds. It had been filmed by a bank’s surveillance camera. The quality was way too bad, but they all saw a pickup being chased by a bunch of Shades. Those are ordinary Shades — if you could call “ordinary” such creature.
The “average” Shade resembles more a undead thing than anything else — it had a emaciate look, with its yellow eyes smoothing on the head, the gray skin covered in bruises and open sores, stretched over the bones.
They had the same strength and speed than a normal human, and all they knew was eat and sleep. But, though they were no smarter than zombies, what they lacked in intelligence they had in numbers.
The truck driver lost control and flipped over, the Shades — almost a dozen — encircling the vehicle, breaking through the doors and pulling out two men and one woman inside. All men in the room already knew what was going to happen, but they didn’t look away when the Shades engulfed the people.
And that’s when it happened. The civilians were there, being torn apart, and the next moment they disappeared, the Shades that attacked them were now lying on the street, wounded or dead.
“What...?” Schaeffer exclaimed.
“There’s a gap in the video,” Archer said, “a cut.”
Without explaining anything, Hendrix repeated the video three more times, slower and slower, until the men noticed — there were six figures that seemed to fall from the sky. Three of them attacked the Shades, while the other three took the civilians. In the next instant, they jumped and disappeared from the video.
The War Within #1: Victims Page 5