by J. Manuel
“Roger, Jacob, we’ve got an Osprey headed out to you from Bangor, but I don’t expect that those boys can get to you in under an hour. Can you hold out until then? What else can I do for you?” John knew that he had little to offer his friend. The other XPS team that was positioned as a quick reaction force was at least two hours away, sitting on a couple of speed boats on the Saguenay River.
“Send the QRF! Do we have any other assets available, and do we have any intel on these guys?” Jacob looked again at Katerina who was shaking uncontrollably. She might have expected trouble, but she was in shock nonetheless—she couldn’t fake that. Her skin had paled, her teeth chattered against her clenched jaw, and her body rocked rhythmically back and forth.
“Wait one,” came John’s reply after a long pause. “Jacob, whatever happens you cannot let that case out of your possession. It can’t be lost.” John’s tone was unemotional. His words truncated. Jacob knew in that moment that this was not about diamonds.
He glanced again at Katerina and without breaking eye-contact he responded, “Can we destroy it?”
“Not safely. Not with anything you have,” then a long pause; “It’d have to be thermobaric: white-phosphorus.” An intense silence followed.
Doug and Tim searched Jacob’s eyes for answers. He had none for them. They all knew what those words meant.
“Please repeat. That was a negative copy on the last.” Jacob hoped he had misheard.
“I repeat. That’s a negative on destroying the case.”
The obvious questions clamored in Jacob’s mind. Why weren’t they in nuclear, biological, and chemical protection suits while they were transporting the case? What the hell was in the damn case? What if anything could they do if they were exposed?
“Roger that. Solid copy,” Jacob locked eyes with Katerina who had just now begun to regain her composure.
“Maybe we should throw her out the door and let whoever the hell is after the cargo, take it!” Doug growled.
“Sounds like a good idea to me. What do you say Katerina?” Jacob shot her a sarcastic grin, though he was genuinely toying with the idea. He didn’t know who this woman was, what her motives were, or what she wanted with the unknown contents of the case, but he did know that she posed a severe threat to him and his team.
Then suddenly, there was darkness.
- - - - - - -
Jacob yelled into the eternal void and thrust violently against it, but there was only emptiness. When he came to, he was staring down at his chest. He smelled the acrid fumes of burned propellant and caustic smoke. The world was upside down as he hung suspended in the pancaking SUV. It wobbled slowly and incrementally, collapsing into the ground with each successive crunch of the turret, crumpling under its weight. He looked at where Tim should have been, but didn’t see him. Doug’s baritone voice suddenly droned just above the muffled ringing in his ears.
Jacob felt the pull of a powerful arm across his shoulders as his still limp body was dragged from the smoking wreckage. He coughed violently, tasting a column of acrid bile at the back of his throat. Automatic fire ripped the brisk evening air. Doug dragged him behind the second SUV which was laying down a steady stream of fire. He set him down behind the relative safety of the rear wheels. The tracers leapt from the Minigun’s whirling barrels like flames from a dragon that belched thunder from its scaly innards. Jacob assessed the scene quickly. His entire team was in the fight by some miracle, though not unscathed. Tim held his left arm low to his side, blood trickling from his hand. Doug had suffered facial lacerations that bled profusely, but they appeared superficial. Jacob feared looking down at his own body, but discovered that though his body felt as if it had been crushed in a vice, he had only suffered some minor cuts and scrapes. The obvious concussion that had robbed him of his balance and focus was the real problem. He reclined against the SUV, unable to move, his thoughts lumbering. He looked up at his team, attempting to shout instructions, wanting to get a sitrep and the ETA of the QRF team, but his lips did not move, and his words were swallowed by his warm, bloody tongue.
Over to his right, in a drainage ditch that paralleled the highway, Tanner and Odin engaged their attackers with their rifles, while Katerina and her bodyguard shrank into the muddy ground behind them. Without warning, the bodyguard pushed his way past Tanner, who was too focused on the battle at hand to stop him. The bodyguard popped his head out from the drainage ditch and suddenly sprinted across the road. He got no further than two strides could carry him before he crumbled in a heap as bullets zipped through his torso and cut him down. Panic is treacherous.
Tim crouched down next to Jacob and shouted unintelligibly in his face several times before pushing him down into the pavement. The ground suddenly rippled. The world seemed to tear itself into an infinite, fractal existence. Jacob’s labored breath was violently sucked from his lungs, and as he desperately inhaled to fill them with life-giving oxygen, a second and third explosion rattled him to his core. His head flopped back onto the cold pavement as a vision tore the night above. The large wingspan of an otherworldly dragon covered the heavens, black against the navy-blue background, ghostly, swooping down from the dark heights, like a wraith emerging from an ethereal plane, its eyes spewing hellfire, its belly glowing with brimstone—it descended, and it came for him. Two of its glowing-eyed spawn carried him into its belly before it ascended into the inky, turbulent heavens from whence it came.
- - - - - - -
Visions birthed in and out of existence, violent and shocking. A woman, Katerina, ran from burning wreckage toward gunfire. Tracers darted brightly past her head. He screamed for her to get down, his words lost in the cacophony of the intense firefight. There was a sudden flash of light then darkness. His consciousness was again disoriented in abyss.
Another vision: one much older, birthed. Jacob ran up to PFC Mendes, who was crouched behind a disabled Humvee. Rifle and machine gun fire whizzed overhead and stung into the sides of the Humvee with a steady metallic crescendo. Two-hundred meters ahead, the first squad of his platoon was pinned down under heavy mortar and machine gun fire. They had sustained heavy casualties including their squad leader, Sergeant Bradley, and the platoon commander Lieutenant Pabon, whose remains were charred inside a second burning Humvee. The remaining squad members had taken up positions behind a small dumpster and alleyway where they were being slowly picked apart by a whittling hail of bullets.
Jacob looked out of the side of the Humvee just in time to see an RPG streak across the alley from an adjacent rooftop and explode inside the dumpster where three Marines had just taken cover. Jacob stared with horror as body parts were instantly stripped away from the Marines, and carnage was splattered against the walls of the building behind them and into the street’s open sewer.
PFC Mendes shook desperately and his fellow fire-team members crouched in fear behind him.
“Get that SAW up and running, Mendes!” Jacob shouted into the ear of the young Marine. “You’ve got to get that SAW into the fight. We’ve got to provide cover fire so that we can maneuver across the alley toward first squad.”
Mendes looked at him blankly. His eyes nearly blackened by his dilated pupils. His body seized by adrenaline. Jacob grabbed Mendes by the collar of his flak jacket, “Mendes get the fuck up and get your guys over to that far building!” Mendes nodded quickly and turned to the two junior privates who were hunkered down waiting for their orders. Mendes gave them a nod and they sprinted thirty meters across the alley. Jacob and Mendes unloaded a barrage of covering fire as they moved. Jacob signaled Mendes when the two privates picked up the covering fire from their new position. Once Mendes crossed, Jacob broke out across the street, but he was instantly engulfed in gunfire. He lost his footing midway through the crossing and rolled to a crashing stop, exposed, as bullets pock-marked the earthen street around him—he was a dead man.
The fire increased with growing accuracy as bits of dirt spiked around his torso and head. Jacob willed himself to burro
w lower into the ground. Out to his left, Mendes and his Marines were now hunkered down and returning fire toward the unseen enemy. Mendes motioned to him to get up, but Jacob was blanketed by a new volley of gunfire. Mendes grimaced, broke from his cover, and sprinted to him. Jacob tried to wave him off and pleaded for him to stop, to no avail. The gunfire increased exponentially as Mendes neared, and then he fell. Mendes’ face exploded out toward Jacob, his brainy matter and bits of his nose, jaw, and teeth, showered him before the rest of Mendes crumpled on top of him. Jacob shouted, horrorstruck, as he stared into the bloody, meaty mess that was once Mendes’ head. One eye hung from its socket, still attached by its elongated optic nerve to the brain inside, and drooped onto Jacob’s cheek. Mendes’ corpse shook dully as more bullets riddled it. Jacob cried out again. It was his fault. It should have been him. He clung to the body, shielding himself like a coward, as he cried to Mendes for forgiveness, but the contorted eye eternally damned him.
- - - - - - -
Jacob awoke with the expected start. Doug and John stood over him. His head still hurt. He was nauseated, and his mouth was dry.
“Water,” his voice cracked as the room swayed uneasily. He clung to his bed, his arms shaky, and weak. Doug and John also fought to maintain their balance against the shifting floor.
“Where are we?” Jacob managed roughly despite his sore throat, burned no doubt from one of the fireballs that had engulfed his SUV.
“We’re onboard one of our XPS transport freighters,” John replied. “I hate to break it to you, but you lost the cargo,” John’s voice was grave.
“Katerina?”
“The bitch took off with the case and the Russian assholes,” Doug interjected.
“Jacob, it looks like we were all played on this one. Katerina ran into the woods after your vehicle was hit with the IED. She seemed to know where she was going because she wasn’t hit in the crossfire. Tim and Doug saw her run to a group of guys who were hiding out in the tree line. She jumped into a car and took off down the road with them.”
“How long have I been…” his head hurt too much to continue.
“About six hours. The Osprey was going to get you and your team up to Saguenay, but had to divert east in midflight. Our QRF team was hit by the same guys that took out your convoy. The Osprey dropped you guys off at the mouth of the Saguenay River where the ship was docked. We’ve been steaming up the Saint Lawrence River ever since.” John cleared his throat, paused, and continued in a somber tone, “Our client is not pleased.”
A stout, Asian man, who Jacob had previously not noticed, rose from his seat in the corner of the room. He was dressed in civilian attire, but he stood with the unmistakable presence of a high-ranking, military man. He approached Jacob quietly and bowed ever so slightly in little more than a nod. He spoke softly and firmly with a bubbling trace of a drowned accent.
“I am sorry for the loss of your man, Mr. Harrington. You have my sincerest condolences. I hope that you will, yourself, recover from your injuries most quickly,” he said smiling politely. He bowed once again and exited the room, as another Asian man opened the door from the outside.
“Who was that?”
“That was our client, Jacob. Get some rest. We’ll talk more when you feel up to it.” John headed toward the door and reminded him, “Call Sarah. She’s worried about you since you haven’t called her in a day. I told her that the trip was going to take a couple of extra days, but that you were fine; just bad cell coverage where you were.”
Jacob fell back into his pillow, his head still throbbed. He closed his eyes to alleviate the pain that came with staring into the fluorescent lights of the ship’s single-room, medical bay, but that just prompted the jackhammering to begin in his ears. He lay motionless, fearing another bout of nausea, but he fell asleep before it came.
- - - - - - -
The heavy swaying woke Jacob from his bed, and the nausea followed closely behind. He was momentarily disoriented then slowly began to recognize that he was not stuck in a deserted alley, in the middle of a firefight, in Fallujah. He gathered his wits and nerves, and rose out of the bed, dressed, and headed topside. John would be there.
John was silhouetted against the rising sun that bathed the sky in an eerie orange glow and broke against a dark bank of clouds that held above the North Atlantic. “What have we stepped into here, John?” Jacob shouted as he steadied himself against the bulkhead of the superstructure from which he had exited. “Tim filled me in on the details. These Russians were equipped with first-class weapons and gear. One of them even had Spetsnaz, meat-tag tattoos, and our client, looks Chinese to me, definitely military. Start talking, John.”
John did not turn to answer the litany of questions. “Jacob, these Russians are prior military like us, probably working as mercenaries for some Russian version of XPS. We don’t know who, yet. As far as the client is concerned, that’s none of our fucking business.” John lost his cool and slammed his palms onto the deck railing and glared back at Jacob.
“Fuck you, John. You know this shit stinks of some covert-ops bullshit. I had my fill of their shit back in Iraq, and I thought you did too? How many times did we get fucked with because we were following intel that didn’t pan out. How many times did we suspect that we were being played? Right now I feel someone tugging on my balls, John!”
“Jacob—”
“I’m out John. I’m fucking out! I’ve put in my time. I don’t owe you, XPS, or these Chinese assholes, anything!” Jacob stormed across the deck of the freighter, and back down below decks to his quarters as Tim and Doug emerged to see the end of the commotion.
- - - - - - -
Jacob returned home a week later, still shaken by what he had seen. The world was different again, much like it had been in his past. His fears were no longer relegated to daydreams, memories, and nightmares. They were real, tangible, and they had almost taken him away from his family. They had paralyzed him and made him a victim. Jacob shook the thoughts angrily from his mind as he grasped Luke and Nathan in a tight bear hug. He was done with XPS, and the monsters that came with it, not for his sake, but for his family’s. As he hugged his boys in that moment, Jacob was unaware of the coming maelstrom and the horror that would touch them all, for if he had been, he would have never let go.
CHAPTER 26
Eckert was on an urgent call with Under-Secretary Yi Long moments after the news had arrived that the convoy had been hit. The package had been lost. Jak reported that the Russians had hit the convoy just as they had feared. She stood quietly against one of the office windows while he made the call.
“Mr. Secretary, I assume that your men have already informed you about the loss of the package? We will arrange for its delivery as soon as possible. You have my word on this.”
There was a long silence on the line before the Under-Secretary spoke. “Mr. Eckert, you have failed to deliver and for this I am disappointed. Our deal was exclusive ownership of Lilith, and now it appears that our Russian counterparts have acquired the updated variant. This is the kind of problem that cannot be arranged, Mr. Eckert! Do you not remember that we have purchased five billion dollars of outstanding debt in your company? I would be hard-pressed to convince my superiors not to recall that debt immediately.”
Eckert ignored the threat. “Mr. Secretary, please have confidence in us. What the Russians got is of no value to them without our research team which is currently under your care. The variant is inert and will take years to reverse-engineer. By that time, you’ll be able to track it down and have it destroyed.”
“I am unsatisfied, Mr. Eckert. We will need a complete, in-person debriefing before the People’s Investment Committee. We expect you to personally deliver the debriefing on Monday.”
“That’s two days from now! Surely we can work out terms.”
“Or perhaps you would like your company’s debt recalled. It’s your choice, Mr. Eckert. Good day.”
Eckert ensured that the line had dropped bef
ore he nodded to Jak. He placed his palm over the tablet that lay on his desk, waiting momentarily for it to authenticate his identity. Once verified, the tablet triggered an electromagnetic pulse designed to send a constant stream of interference at all microwave, UHF, VHF, and radio communications wavelengths. His office was instantaneously transformed into a silent bubble. He removed a small device from his desk, pointed it at the far wall, and punched in an alpha-numeric code. The device activated and projected a blank image against the back office wall. The image lingered momentarily before it buffered and loaded the live feed from a small office located in Langley, Virginia. A rather grim-looking woman walked into frame.
“Mr. Eckert, I trust this is important enough for you to communicate with us?”
“I have a problem.”
“Of course you do.”
“The Chinese are threatening to call their debt on the company.”
“And how much are we talking about,” Samantha Walters asked, as if she didn’t know to the penny, or yuan, precisely the amount owed to the Chinese.
“Five billion dollars, so it’s kind of urgent.”
“Oh is that all? I am tired of you CEO types using your little red phone to call for bailouts every other day.”
“Sam, you know that I wouldn’t even be in this situation if you guys didn’t strong arm me and my company into delivering your drugs all over the world.”
“Mr. Eckert, do you really think that you’re in a bargaining position here? You’re a dime a dozen. So don’t push it. We should just let the Chinese recall their debt and let you disappear without so much as a whisper on Wall Street; just another failed biotech company that overstretched its balance sheet. As for you Mr. Eckert, let’s just say that the IRS would be mightily interested in your bankruptcy proceedings.”