by Jacob Hammes
It was at about that time, in the deep abyss of hopelessness, that Gregory hung up the phone. He had been chirping away for the last half hour making deals with the Department of Defense so that his team could mobilize and start tracking this guy. He had good news to give the crew.
Everyone stopped what they were doing, save Phillip who was sleeping, and looked expectantly toward Greg seated at the head of the table. He stood so that everyone could see him—it was the usual sign that he would be addressing the room. He practiced the old arts of business management and one rule he abided by was to stand taller than those which one addresses.
“The Department of Defense has given the go ahead on the mission. Two hours and you will be shipping off to figure this one out first hand. First stop, Afghanistan. Pack some sunscreen, people.”
It figured. Marcus would not be making it home to his own prospects tonight. He wondered why the team would not be more useful analyzing the situation from home first, trying to figure out the man’s next move, but decided it would be better to start from the beginning. He did feel a twitch of anticipation at the thought of exploring ruins in the mountainous regions of a war torn country.
“Everyone needs to bring the works—weapons, battle gear, and rucksacks,” Gregory said. “You may be staying a few days, until you get a lead on this guy. We will have the analysts pick apart this video piece by piece and give you any updates we receive en route. In addition, we’ve received e-mail photos of the object in question and were compiling a team of experts to figure out what it is. You should be getting a detailed report on what John and his team were doing up in Afghanistan, too.”
“We should have the second surveillance video shortly as well, the one that has John entering the shop two days before the man was murdered. Perhaps that will tell us a little more about what is going on here. Just look over the summarization notes. I’m sure it’ll be a thousand pages to read.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I want you all to be safe. This is an important find for the Unusual Operations Division. It’s not every day we get to figure out how a dead man is walking around the world killing people over some piece of golden history. We need to track this man, figure out the significance of this object, and get back here safe.”
The team immediately perked up. Even Phillip had cocked his head noticeably. He might be asleep, save the slow twitch of his pointer finger against his shoulder.
“Marcus, you’ll be team leader. You’ve got more experience with this sort of thing than the rest of us do. Henry will be your assistant team leader and you can do what you will with the rest. I do have one requirement, though—bring David Hines. The guy needs some field experience and I’m sure he’s sick of being left behind. I’ll also have Cynthia Gordon meet you at the landing pad.
“I assume our first stop will be the cave where this all started,” asked Marcus. “The place in the Badak, Bakad…”
“Badakhshan province,” Henry finished for him. Marcus smiled in gratitude.
“Yes,” Gregory answered. “The only logical point for you all to start would be the cave the Special Operations group was supposedly scouting out. Additional teams have been dispatched in the interim and the area is reportedly clear of any hostile activities so you should all be relatively safe. Just know the locals are not as friendly to Americans as your local 7/11 so stay on high alert,” Gregory advised.
“You’ll be flying into a Kandahar airport and catching a flight up into the mountains. Unfortunately, you’re going to have to sleep on the flight as best you can. Your ETA is around 0400. There won’t be much time to rest from then on.”
Mountains, flying, and the possibility of encountering bad guys—it was the best thing Marcus had heard all morning.
Another hour of logistics was laid out while the team anxiously awaited dispatch. The fine details of the flight, security and safety concerns, rules of engagement, and where they would be going were more details than could be fit into a single pep talk. Sixty minutes later and the team was off, ready to start their newest case.
Chapter 5
The rain was dumping harder than ever, falling through dim morning toward the hard, cold, unforgiving pavement below. Eventually, whole buildings, canyons, and mountains would all succumb to this wet villain and its relentless trickle, but for today the building was safe. Its outside was decorated in an old gothic design—pillars and gargoyles. They spouted water from their grotesque muzzles away from walkers below. Each and every one of them had been handpicked by Gregory to serve specific religious and superstitious needs. Their tongues and teeth were long, their facial features were madly over exaggerated and they had useless demonic wings
Gargoyles—meant to ward off evil spirits, and charged with the important task of keeping the sidewalk dry.
Truth be told, the building was a product of meticulous planning. Seventeen stories were chosen for a specific purpose as well as how the building sat squarely and magnetically north to south and east to west. It was a powerful object in both numerology and astrology. Two highly underrated arts. Gregory was a superstitious man and so was the Unusual Operations Division.
Because of the deep pockets of the United States Government, the already standing building had suffered through one meticulous makeover. Once a research laboratory for questionable experiments, the building already had many attributes the division was looking for. It had multiple stories underground, stayed far enough away from the tourist areas, and had two basement floors that were used for nothing but storing dangerous things.
Marcus helped load the bulk of the gear into a transport vehicle in the second story belowground which housed a large quiet parking garage. The big duffle bags were unceremoniously tossed together in the front while weapons like M4’s, 9mm pistols, an M203 grenade launcher with a barrel magazine, and assorted shotguns were carefully placed in racks along the van’s interior walls. Six boxes of 5.56 mm ammunition, forty five magazines of 9mm, twelve boxes of shotgun shells, and a box of grenades were also loaded.
The weapons were such a turn on. Too bad the team would be busy for half the flight loading magazines for the M4’s rifles.
The team, including the two late members Cynthia and David, loaded into a different van. They each wore battle uniforms now, unlike the casual clothing they had worn to work earlier in the morning. Those comfortable clothes sat quietly in a locker room now, locked away until the team came home. Henry Bauss wore a black t-shirt and black assault bottoms, the type with eight pockets. He had every intention of sitting this hiking trip out and watching after the jet.
Everyone else wore either the marine multi-cam uniform or a variation thereof. Its dark, subtle tones were suited well for caves, foliage, and desert alike. It was the type of area the team had been briefed to expect. Over the uniforms were strapped load bearing vests—mesh vests capable of storing extra magazines, canteens, and grenades. They even stored a few candy bars and a questionable looking drink for Phillip.
They looked like a small contingent of the Special Forces getting ready for battle. Marcus hoped they wouldn’t be using the weapons they were packing but something in his gut told him otherwise.
The biggest problem Marcus could foresee his team running into was lack of sleep. The nine hour flight would put them in Afghanistan at around four in the morning the next day, leaving the team with either no sleep whatsoever or in dire need of sleep. In fact, the only person he was not worried about was himself. He hadn’t slept the night before and could not wait to get seated so he could pass out. Nine hours for Marcus would fly by, no pun intended.
The rain had let up some before the vans left the sublevels of the building and even more on the way to the nearby airbase where a military jet awaited them. By the time the luggage had been unloaded and thrown onto a wet hand truck, it had all but stopped. Just the faintest flecks of moisture still floated sideways on the breeze. The team all had their own small curses about the rain, but kept them to themselves.
The hum
of the jet was alluring to Marcus. It meant he was getting close to finally trying to figure this new puzzle out. The UOD took an extremely active role in solving crimes of this nature. The United States Government did not want the general public knowing about Relics, nor the fact that people could be negatively affected by something science could not explain. It made for an interesting job at the end of the day, but a closely guarded secret to be kept at all times.
Marcus thanked the drivers and ran lightly up the stairs into the large jet. It looked more like a commercial jet liner inside than anything else. The front half was full of plush seats able to recline to drastic angles, like one huge first class. The other half was all business with cargo and jumping capabilities.
He took the first seat available and pulled out his rugged notebook computer from the one piece of carry-on he had. The onboard Wi-Fi let him connect to his government homepage and search through all the files Gregory had promised would be uploaded.
Analysts were already looking over the golden orb, trying to get a handle on what it was. No news on the Special Forces team’s mission yet. No surprise there. Something did catch Marcus’ eye though; an early morning sighting had just arrived and John was apparently still hanging about the Chinese city in which he had murdered the shop keeper. Another man was murdered and a local service agent swears he saw John on the street at the time of the incident.
He would have to continue this later. Marcus’ eyes were growing heavy in the plush seats, even before the jet had begun its taxi to the runway. His dreamy eyes saw Julie, lying on the bed with nothing but a sheer sheet between her and complete nudity. He wondered what she was doing right now. She obviously did not think he would be headed halfway around the world. He would have to remember to call her later.
The way she laid there, looking at him with those eyes, made him smile. Her pouty lips were easy to kiss and that body was easy to touch. She was perfect. The only other woman he had felt anything like this about was his wife, before she had been murdered.
His thoughts turned to her, the woman he had married what seemed like a lifetime ago. Her soft brown hair tumbled in curls down over her shoulders the day they were shot. She’d looked like an angel even in death. Without thinking, his fingers traced a circle around the scar he bore in his chest, just below his heart. If she could see him now, he just hoped she would be proud of him.
Within minutes he was asleep, thinking about all that his life had been.
Brenda, however, did not spend the night with the other sex. She was well rested and all business today. She looked over pictures, which had been e-mailed to her within the last few minutes, of the golden sphere they were tasked with finding. The thing was beautiful, wrapped completely in jewels and scrawling text. She had never seen anything like it, yet as long as she stared at it she could not figure out why it amazed her. It had a very distinct writing style, something she had seen in a textbook long ago. Maybe she had seen it in art history. Just where she’d seen the writing before evaded her, however long she stared at it.
With the flick of a finger, the picture was gone and a new one appeared. It was the box the orb had been transported in. Obvious Chinese characters were written up and down the sides of the dirty wooden box. At the top was an eagle. Again there was something very familiar about the marking. It reminded her of something out of the World War II era.
Brenda bit her lower lip as she studied the box. She had a bad habit of making every man around her uncomfortable with her unintentional sexual subtleties. A yellow pencil twirled through her hands as she looked down at the eagle. Something had been there before, but it was burned from the face of the wood. The distinct mark it left behind was a charred, black circle.
It was the Nazi insignia during World War II. The only difference was that the swastika the eagle usually grasps in its talons had been burned away.
Why, Brenda thought, was the WWII Nazi insignia on a box covered in Chinese characters that had mysteriously appeared in an Afghanistan province and was now in China somewhere? There was something deep going on here; something very deep. In fact, it did not sit well with Brenda that such an object had pinged the satellite with such a high amount of energy. They had learned long ago that the more violent an object’s past, the more volatile its power was.
She tried to put it out of her mind and went back to studying more relevant material. An article on John’s accomplishments was forwarded with the rest of the missing information. He had earned seventeen army ribbons, spoke three languages, scored outrageously high on aptitude tests and was fairly attractive to boot. The man was an obvious catch for the government and had been put to work almost immediately in a field of his choosing.
He had joined the army when he was eighteen and finished college on his own between deployments. John did not claim a significant other, nor had anyone but his mother and father been notified of his death. He had a savings account of seventy-eight thousand dollars. According to his parents he had been saving for a house.
John had been a quick study. There were notes written along the margins of assessments stating his aptitude for picking up a skill after being shown only once. He had undergone extensive training in the Army. After basic training and infantry school, he had gone through airborne school and directly into Ranger school. Through every training event, he scored highest among his peers. The man truly was a national treasure.
A year as an Army Ranger and John decided that it was not for him. He joined the Special Forces and started along the path to the Green Beret. The program is a year of rigorous training and is followed up by twelve more months of language training.
Once again, John scored top of his class. It was no wonder this guy was Special Forces—he was hardwired for the job.
He sounded to Brenda like the perfect candidate for the victim of some Relic’s mind games. Not that the ancient artifacts had an affinity for intelligent people. It just figured that someone so intelligent, deadly, and full of useful skills would be allergic to something so rare and so mind-bendingly strange.
She studied the case for hours, looking over page after page of useless information. If the guy they were after was under the influence of an electromagnetic hypnosis, he would be a mere shadow of his former self. The usual behavior resembled nothing of the old man or woman. At best, they usually ended up like Linda Blair in the Exorcist—deranged, angry, and wanting to kill. The worst of them ended up in mental institutions, broken from the inside out. They drooled themselves through days of uselessness until finally their bodies gave out and they simply died as a mere husk of what they once were.
It looked like a lost cause, but Brenda studied diligently anyway. She would not be dissuaded. That was an analyst’s life.
She put the computer to the side for a moment and rubbed her eyes. The day was going to prove to be a long one and Brenda wanted to get as much studying done as she could before they landed in Kandahar. Once there, time would be short and she knew it.
When she opened her eyes again she noticed Stephen, a few seats up on the opposite side of the aisle, had turned around and was smiling in her direction. He had an amazing smile. The way his eyes squinted shut and his mouth cocked up on one side made her giddy. Looking at the big man made her feel good. A sense of warmth spread through her insides, washing the feeling of grogginess away. Suddenly it seemed like her priorities may have been backwards.
“Maybe it’s time to take a break after all,” she thought. Brenda closed the lid of the computer and went to sit near the big black god of a man. The two were quickly whispering away at each other. Her small frame curled up into one seat. Stephen covered both of her petite feet with one kind hand.
Less than seven and a half hours later and smoke billowed from screeching wheels as the massive jetliner touched down in Kandahar Airport, Afghanistan. The pilot had told the crew that they were ahead of schedule; very ahead of schedule. The military had some very useful gadgets, especially in the way of super-fast transportation
it seemed.
Chapter 6
“I love you,” the woman looked like a ghost, floating toward him in the same gown he had seen on her the day she died. She was beautiful, just like Marcus remembered. Not a detail had changed or faded from mind. Each of them was a razor that dragged over his skin, seared his flesh. There was soft brown hair framing an angelic face, and a curvaceous body beneath the sheer white gown.
He tried to speak but could not manage. His words were stuck in his throat as he watched her circle. The room was lit with candles that flickered against wooden picture frames and soft, egg-white painted walls. They sent ghostly shadows dancing across the ceiling, across the walls and pictures, across her. The evening would have been romantic, despite the fact that Marcus hated candles. He had promised her that he would let her do whatever she wanted with the house tonight.
“Don’t you love me back,” she asked. Her voice was soft, as soft as her beautiful brown hair. Her features were masked in the dark. Shadows danced menacingly across her dark face. He knew the answer but refused to give it.
“Why don’t you answer me, Marcus?” she pleaded. Her hand, red painted nails, reached toward his. He backed away, afraid. He knew this scene. He had lived it a hundred thousand times. It would happen soon and then he would wake up.
A song played in the background, something very familiar. It was an obscure music, tortured soul genre. A man was singing, his voice excruciatingly beautiful over a quietly playing guitar. He wished it would stop, wished it could be different. If only he could throw the damned radio through the window he would hear what was coming next. Maybe he could prepare or even change what had happened.
The door busted open loudly behind her silhouette. It seemed as if the music was blaring in that moment. Men came in with flashlights; four of them. The candles blew out with the rushing wind, leaving only the men’s flashlights for light. The beams danced like spirits down the dark hallway. Marcus could not see the men, just the bobbing lights. Behind the shining orbs were killers; cold-blooded, heartless men that wanted nothing but money and would do anything in pursuit of it.