The Pilgrim Strain

by Edgar, C. P.

  As Rainer had been counting down, Einberg had once again reached for the door handle trying to synchronize his movements with the countdown. On “two” he turned the door handle unlocking the door and on “one” he flung the door open allowing Kef to catch it in the open position.

  Immediately, Miller shot through the door just as a loud explosion echoed from the front of the hangar. Miller’s weapon was at the high ready scanning for threats and he moved to the inside left of the entryway just two steps into the interior but careful not to backlight himself in the now open door. Einberg followed taking up a stance opposite of Miller. Kef was the last man to enter and took up a position just inside the door with his body just off to the side but in-between his two partners.

  As the door swung shut, Kef moved his left heel in its path so that the door would not fully close. All three were scanning their sectors of fire in the complete darkness although their NVGs gave them a perfect view of the interior of the hangar.

  The first indication to Kef that something was very wrong about their situation was the body that lay on the floor between Miller and Einberg’s position and directly to his front. Most of the man’s neck and part of the man’s lower jaw had been sheared off, and part of the man’s stomach lay half out of a long gaping hole in his abdomen. Kef’s first thought was that they may have stumbled into some sort of torture facility. He whispered to his team, “Body twelve o’clock five meters.”

  Miller turned and took a quick look which lingered for just a second longer than normal and then he turned back to covering his corner.

  Kef caught movement ahead in the shadows near the center of the room. He thumbed a selector on his MLRF and squeezed his pressure switch. A broad beam of IR light illuminated the center of the room. Although invisible to the naked eye, it was like aiming a search light in the room through his NVGs. Centered in the room and clustered around another body on the floor was a small group of people. Kef thought they reminded him of a group of medics working on a soldier on the battlefield.

  Einberg shifted his stance, trying to get a better angle and view of the group surrounding the body on the ground. Farther within the hangar and moving toward the front hangar doors, he could see more people. His foot brushed against a brass bullet casing lying on the floor causing it to spin and roll a few inches making a few subtle “clinks” as it went along.

  Kef heard the casing and watched as two of the people in the group hovering over the body immediately turned in their direction. The first was a woman with shoulder length hair. Her face was splattered with blood and she had what looked like a long thin sliver of flesh hanging from one corner of her mouth. She lifted her nose and sniffed the air.

  She opened her mouth letting the meat fall to the ground and coughed loudly twice, spit and other fluids spraying into the air as she did so. Others in the group turned in their direction, their eyes glowing bright green in Kef’s NVGs. The scene reminded him of hyenas in the wild African plains.

  Kef didn’t let the scene play out. He fired a quick four round count at the female initiating their compromise, slamming each round into the bridge of her nose, blasting her head into shards. He yelled over the firing, “Compromise! Out, now!”

  Miller turned and blasted through the door leading outside. Kef fired another three rounds in quick succession at a male that had made it to his feet dropping him back down to the ground. Screams registered but were muted from the firing. Einberg yelled, “On you.”

  Kef turned and ran through the door with Einberg immediately on his heels. Miller closed the door quickly and the three, with guns trained on the door, began walking backwards in the direction from where they first came.

  Kef keyed up his radio, “Top, we’ve got a situation here. We’ve backed out from inside the hangar. Something is very wrong here, man. They were fucking eating someone in there!”

  “Say again?” Rainer said looking at Daggan who had on his ‘what the hell’ face.

  “There were two bodies down in there and I counted at least six persons engaged in eating those downed bodies. I dropped two on our way out but there is something seriously fucked up with them. I ordered a compromised retreat because it looks like a chem-bio situation in there, over.”

  “Okay, clear out and take up a firing position at our original flank,” Rainer said and picked up the team of three moving away from the hangar. He looked down at his watch. It seemed like they had been here for hours already but in fact it had been less than one.

  “Runner,” broke the silence and Rainer looked up just in time to see three runners coming out from the hangar. They were once again streaking across the field toward the two natives that had picked up their woman from where she had been beaten to death and they were carrying her slowly back toward the forest from which they had originally emerged and where the others in their group had fled.

  Daggan opened up with a long burst from the FN MK 48. Green tracers tore across the open expanse along with hundreds of lead projectiles. Grass and dirt blasted up and out of the ground in the area around the first runner, the rounds coming in and finding his legs and then stitching up his torso. Large chunks of flesh broke free from his body and fell to the ground intermingling with the pockets of dirt and grass falling to the ground. Daggan eased off the trigger and let the weapon take a break while he scanned for the other runners. The debris had momentarily caused him to lose the others.

  More shrieks from the hangar and Rainer had had enough. “Daggan shift your fire to the hangar and concentrate on the interior!”

  Daggan began pounding the interior of the hangar, strafing rounds from left to right and right to left. Showers of sparks could be seen as the rounds ricocheted off metal within the structure.

  Rainer turned his attention to the two runners still moving rapidly toward the natives. The natives, seeing that they were once again being pursued, had begun running toward the forest although slowed considerably by the dead weight of the female they carried, her body limp and uncooperative.

  The lead runner was a short, slightly heavy male who didn’t seem like he should be moving so fast. Rainer gave him a minor lead and tracking him with his optics began sending rounds. Simultaneously, Rainer saw that the second runner was slammed by a round from Helechek that took most of the shoulder with it. Both runners went down hard piling into each other creating a mound of flesh just feet from the forest edge.

  Daggan had been relentlessly firing rounds into the hangar. Rainer could see no movement and thought that there was no way that anything could withstand that type of pounding. He also was getting worried about ammunition in case this was just the beginning.

  “Check your fire!” he yelled to Daggan as he lifted himself off the ground and took a knee, exchanging magazines.

  Daggan relented his assault and let the weapon fall silent.

  Rainer, having climbed back into the prone keyed the mic, “Hold, observe, and report.” He received two sets of double mic clicks indicating that Kef and his team, as well as Helechek, understood. All fell eerily quiet considering the sheer volume of noise that had just echoed across the landscape.

  Rainer watched out of the corner of his eye the two natives carrying the woman melt away into the forest, silently like wraiths.

  ***

  The Machatz-1 had been operating a stand off orbit for the past ten hours alternating its flight pattern into a figure eight. At 16,500 feet, the medium-altitude long-range unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was completely invisible from observation below. Maybe, if someone was looking at a single star constantly, they would note that it would blink as the UAV passed between them.

  The UAV made yet another slow and sweeping right hand turn back toward the designated target area. The dome housing the Forward-Looking Infrared (FLIR) mounted under the nose of the aircraft rotated along its axis keeping a constant visual on the scene unfolding below.

  The image was being delivered in near real-time by satellite uplink. This was being piped back first
to a small operational facility hidden in the Bursa Technical Institute in Bursa, Turkey within the information technology undergraduate program. Then the encrypted packet was passed through three systems disguised as online poker fronts maintained on the island of Antigua. Finally, the video relay was delivered to a receiving unit where the images of tracers streaking into a hangar were vividly displayed.

  Although Joshua could not manually pilot the UAV remotely from this receiving unit, he could toggle through the various commands and options which were displayed on the right-hand side of the screen, allowing him some level of control of the aircraft’s compartmentalized flight team operating in parts unknown.

  It was dark within the confines of his room and the stiff breeze outside caused the walls of the tent to flap. Dust seemed to invade every crack or gap, drifting across the wooded floor in wisps. He selected the option to arm one of the two GBU-44 Viper Strike laser guided munitions on the UAV payload.

  The command authorizing the kill was embedded within the metadata of a digital photograph of two somewhat overweight men wearing Manchester United jerseys and holding golden mugs of draft beer. This photo was then relayed back through another series of seemingly innocent web systems, one of which was in the Vatican. The photos were finally deposited into a two-man command post in the back of a panel truck in Ritabel, Indonesia. The Americans had made it very difficult to communicate without compromise.

  Difficult but not impossible, he thought to himself. He wondered who was the handler that had sent the photograph. Was it even a man? Had a seductive female operative sent it to him? His imagination was surfacing even during this tense moment. He had been boxed in for days in the rear of this shitty little truck and tent outpost, and it was wearing on him.

  The twenty-four-year-old graduate of the University of Virginia so desperately wanted to become a covert operator within the organization. He had already seen so many truly awesome things, so many horrifically awesome sights. I graduated from college as Joshua Mettzer, but now I'm Jason Bourne.

  He was getting excited again. He truly couldn't believe that he was living this life of mystery and intrigue. He so badly wanted to tell his mother and father what he had become. He wanted them to be so proud of him and his accomplishments. For all they knew at this point, he was simply an analyst at a small investment firm in Florida working crazy hours which kept him away from home and phone.

  He was thinking of all the people that set up the various relay stations around the world. He tried to do the quick math on all the shadow corporations created and all the highly-placed sources infiltrating the armies of the world. He visualized the tortuous executions of men who had tried to thwart them; many he had watched live via video uplink. All of it done in the name of secrecy and the mission.

  He felt a cold breeze blow across the back of his neck and down the gap between his fleece quarter zip pullover, he thought he could feel dust settling onto his skin there. He pushed his hand through his hair, a habit having formed some time ago.

  Suddenly, the image of the airfield came back on screen and in closer view. The UAV had made a turn back in its orbit for a direct run at the target area. He quickly scanned down the line of command lines finding the fire option and then watched as the FLIR began rendering objects. He could see with stunning clarity multiple positions where persons were in hiding along the boundary of the airfield, their forms showing up in white contrast to the greyscale background.

  As the UAV continued its track he quickly selected the command option to switch to thermal scan and moments later the screen shifted to a blue hue, the figures that were just moments before a brilliant white were now shades of yellow and red. The hangar loomed direct within the line of sight of the UAV and the system panned off the airfield border and centered upon the building. The building was a dark mass. No yellows, no reds, just darkness.

  The UAV began banking again and started moving away from the airfield. Fleeing from the scene he could see five persons running in a formation, both tall and very short. He couldn’t tell from the image who they were or what they truly looked like, but he could see that they were intent on getting away as fast as possible from the airfield behind them. He sighed knowing that no one could be allowed to escape the area. He realized this wasn't entirely accurate. Only the chosen may leave.

  He noted that the UAV had automatically placed a triangular target indicator on the escaping formation. This was a standard weapons system feature which allowed for faster transitioning and added some autonomy to the deployment of ordinance especially the ‘fire and forget’ missiles and bombs.

  He traversed the options menu and selected fire after he had right clicked on the indicator. A moment later his request was fulfilled as he watched the FLIR momentarily “haze” which he knew from experience meant that the GBU-44 had decoupled and began falling toward the laser designated target area.

  ***

  Rainer ripped open the cover on his tablet. He made a few successive taps and brought up a display showing a satellite image of the surrounding area overlaid with the position of his men. He saw from the icons that Kef, Miller and Einberg had the flank position and looked to be in a solid skirmish line fixed upon the hangar. Rainer turned his attention to Helechek who was in a solo position and the farthest out from the main unit. He wanted his men consolidated and ready to get the hell out of here.

  Daggan broke the silence with a whisper, “Do you think there are more in there?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care. We’re not prepared to deal with this type of a situation and I don’t want to get involved in anything protracted. We’re out of here once the bird lands so keep your sights on that fucking hangar and light it up if any more of those fucking lunatics show up.”

  “Roger.”

  Rainer keyed up his mic, “Sierra One this is Top, over.” Rainer waited for a moment then hearing no response keyed the mic again, “Sierra One, Sierra One, this is Zulu One, over.” Rainer waited a moment longer and then looked to Daggan, the two meeting eyes.

  The radio squelched and then Helechek responded, “Send it.”

  Rainer exhaled. He always hated having snipers deployed solo. He once suffered a terrible loss in Afghanistan when one of his snipers, deployed on an over watch position without an observer, was taken by the Taliban. His headless body was recovered weeks later in a dried-out stream bed, the head never recovered.

  “Bring it in. Link up with Zulu Two.”

  “Roger, moving.”

  Rainer moved slowly to the position where he had dropped his pack and recovered the miSAT man-portable SATCOM unit. He flipped open the unit and began connecting the reflector pieces comprising the antenna. Once completed, he activated the unit and it began orienting the dish antenna toward the sky with minute angle adjustments back and forth in mechanical fashion until it finally signaled on its display that a connection had been established.

  Suddenly there was a tremendous flash followed immediately by an explosive shock wave. Rainer buried himself into the ground knowing that it was not quite on top of him but it was close enough that it registered as incoming and possibly artillery. He yelled into his radio, “Anyone see where that went off?”

  Kef came on, “It looks like it came from the area where those locals ran off, and it was big.”

  “Ok, looks like we’ve got incoming enemy artillery. Let’s circle the wagons on my position and expect company.”

  “I think it was an airburst, Top. It might have come in from the air.”

  “Shit,” Rainer said looking up. They hadn't heard any fast-moving jets and hadn't heard any rotary aircraft operating in the area. Was it even possible that the PNGDF had UAV support?

  Rainer turned to Daggan, “Get the package and make sure it’s ready for the extraction, then get back on the gun. I want that hangar covered when the bird sets down. No more surprises.”

  “Understood, Top.” Daggan slowly moved out to retrieve his pack. Rainer slid behind the MK 48 brin
ging his kit along with him.

  Rainer connected the miSAT unit to his Silynx radio harness and opened up the channel, “Fastback this is Speedwell ready for pick up, over.”

  “Copy Speedwell, you are ready for pick up, we are on approach and we will be wheels down in two-five minutes, over.”

  “Roger, be advised extraction will be hot, over.”

  “Roger Speedwell, hot extraction.”

  The Ilyushin Il-112 had been on approach to the area for approximately an hour. The pilot switched off the autopilot which had been maneuvering the plane by GPS waypoints. He flipped down the dual-tube night vision goggles mounted on his helmet and watched as the co-pilot mimicked his actions. They would be landing using the advanced avionics housed within the Russian aircraft and displayed on the six LCD monitors placed between the two seats.

  The pilot had brought up the runway specifications which had been hand delivered to him on a thumb drive and integrated them into the flight navigation. Once processed, it showed that the landing field was thirty degrees off the aircraft nose. He began to bank the plane and brought the landing strip square with the flight path.

  They began an aggressive elevation change as the avionics detailed the fast approach of the airfield. The copilot reached across and brought the landing gear down and modified the flaps as called out by the pilot. The notification from the team that they should expect a hot extraction was adding to the already stressful situation of landing with no lights and under night vision. The pucker factor was high, as both the pilot and copilot expected to see green tracers bursting from the surrounding forests and racing up to their plane at any moment.