From Filth & Mud

by J. Manuel

  “What’s the showstopper?” Tim interjected.

  John grinned with mischief. “I thought you bastards would never ask!” He leaned under the table and pulled out another small briefcase. He opened it to reveal a small gyrocopter drone within. He unfolded its wings and assembled it with a few snaps of clips, much like an erector set toy. He pointed to a bay that ran the length of the drone’s fuselage and pressed a quick-release latch. A small door hung open, and John grabbed a thin, rectangular package and unwrapped it, exposing a brick that resembled a block of cheese. “Each of these babies is equipped with a block of C4 that packs a big enough punch to help you out of a tight spot if need be.”

  Jacob shook his head. John never failed to come up with some sadistic weaponized use for just about everything.

  “We’ve got a fleet of these things that we can send up at a moment’s notice if you need some air cover. Well, you guys have some work to do. Get at it.” John slapped his friend on the shoulder and showed them the way to their observation post.

  Once their gear was brought in from the 4Runners, Jacob took Tim up to the rooftop and ordered the rest of the team to get two hours of sleep. He and Tim lay on the rooftop and observed the laboratory and the surrounding neighborhood. They spotted several militia men loitering around the smoldering building. The men shooed away any passersby and blocked the adjacent streets to vehicle traffic. They guarded their posts until several pickup trucks appeared with several more militia men. The newly arrived men ran inside the laboratory and emerged with monitors, shelves, boxes, desks, chairs, and anything that could be removed and transported by pickup truck. The men loaded the pickups and sped away as quickly as they had arrived. The men kept this schedule throughout the day until the call to evening prayer.

  Jacob keyed his earbuds, “What’s it look like to you, Tim? I’ve lost sight of the guards.”

  “I’ve got eyes on the target. Four Tangos are still in the back of the building. Those two trucks that you saw pull up have been doing that pretty much on a forty-five minute rotation for the last couple of hours,” Tim reported from his new observation post located about a kilometer to the west of the rooftop.

  “Any idea where they’re dropping that stuff off?”

  “Looks like they are headed northeast.”

  Jacob switched frequencies and radioed John. “Any idea where those trucks are headed?”

  “We’ve peeled off one of our drones. It’s en route. We’ll notify you as soon as we know.” John loved having that God’s-eye-view of the battlefield. It was something that they sorely lacked when they were in Iraq previously.

  Jacob’s team continued to recon the lab throughout the night. The building stood unlit in the dark, undisturbed until morning, when the militiamen returned to continue their looting, keeping the same schedule as the day before.

  Jacob and his team arrived back at the operations center where they debriefed John and the other two teams.

  “Okay. We go tonight and hit the lab. My team will conduct a quick recon before we close in on the lab. This will be a foot movement for a few city blocks. From what we’ve seen, we shouldn’t encounter any Tangos or civilians. Everyone shutters their homes at night, so there’s a low possibility of being spotted. Once inside the lab, we grab whatever looks important: documents, computers, lab equipment; though I’m guessing there’s not much left that the militia hasn’t rat-fucked. We are looking for anything that will lead us to those Chinese workers, the VIPs, and those crates. Understood?” Jacob searched each of the men’s eyes for confusion. Satisfied that there was none, he continued.

  “My team will take point. Teams two and three will provide overwatch from the alley to the north and south. John’s team will cover the exfiltration route to the east. The objective is to be in and out of that lab in twenty minutes without being noticed. Let’s keep our heads in the game, gents. There will be absolutely no itchy trigger fingers out there. No one is to take any shots unless I give the okay directly. We aren’t here to start a war with the local militia. They probably don’t know what they have, and we don’t want to tip them off that it might actually be important because then they might offer some resistance.” The men grunted in approval and dispersed to make their preparations.

  - - - - - - -

  That night, the plan was executed flawlessly. Jacob’s team approached the lab under the cover of darkness. The alley near the lab was desolate except for several mangy, wild dogs scavenging for food. The dogs were undeterred by the armed quintet as they navigated their way stealthily through the littered alley. The bright lights of the city center cast a faint glow in the sky above but left the neighborhoods below in undisturbed darkness. The dirt and gravel street narrowed down from a one-lane causeway to a pedestrian path that was barely wide enough for Jacob’s team to walk two abreast. As they neared the lab from the rear, north-side entrance, the alleyway narrowed further, barely wide enough for Doug to walk normally. Jacob glanced behind him as Doug shook his head.

  “Should’ve brought my KY!” he whispered as the team paused to hold their laughter.

  Jacob tapped the tablet screen on his wrist and accessed the live feed from the drones circling overhead. There they were five human heat signatures and one distinctly canine tucked in behind a high garden wall and a series of abandoned buildings. There were no other human heat signatures in the area. Jacob motioned back to Doug to turn Van Damme, their sturdy Belgian Malinois, loose. Van Damme was a specially-trained reconnaissance canine that XPS had provided for the mission. In the Marine Corps, Jacob had worked along his four-legged friends while dropping into hostile landing zones under cover of night. Van Damme and dogs like him were a force multiplier for small, special operations teams, providing them with superior stealth, speed, and superhuman senses.

  Van Damme came up to Jacob, and he dosed the Malinois with the scent of the marking dye that had been used to track BioSyn’s shipping crates. Van Damme sniffed the end of the small dispensing tube and continued at a slow pace with his nose waving back and forth over the ground. He emerged from the alley and made his way slowly in the direction of the lab. Jacob watched him pause intermittently, picking up his muzzle, as if to clear his nostrils of the putrid smell of wastewater that bathed the street. Van Damme reached the lab and looked back to the team in the alleyway giving them the all-clear. Jacob toggled the drones above, and the team’s five heat signatures were the only ones in the picture. Jacob, Doug, and Odin emerged from the alleyway and walked quickly along the twelve-foot-tall garden wall, staying relatively undetectable from any peering eyes that might have been in the surrounding buildings. Tim and Tanner straddled the adjacent walls of the narrow alley and Spider-manned their way to the rooftop of the market across the street. Tim radioed that he was in place and gave the all-clear for the three to move out.

  The three adopted a tight wedge formation and stalked swiftly through the alley until they reached the lab. Jacob, on point, arrived first and slapped Van Damme’s mane for a job well done. The Malinois did not reciprocate the affection; his mind was on the business at hand, and he was keen on gaining access to the interior. Jacob and Doug made their way down the side of the building to an exterior stairwell, while Van Damme kept watch on the alley. The two quickly climbed in silence, but paused just before cresting the roof.

  “You’re clear,” Tim’s voice guided them from his vantage point on the market rooftop across the street

  Jacob and Doug climbed onto the roof and ran to the interior access stairwell where they quietly made entry into the building. Jacob activated his tablet and keyed the prompt for Van Damme’s collar control. Van Damme responded instantly to the ultra-high-pitched signal, which instructed him to continue his search for the crates. Van Damme paced around the building until he came across a broken window and jumped through it. He switched his display to Van Damme’s collar camera, and he followed along as the canine navigated the remnants of the lab below.

  Van Damme paused momentarily o
n the first floor, his ears listening for the faintest human sounds. Hearing none, he followed his nose up a flight of stairs to the second floor and pushed his way through a set of double-swinging doors of a makeshift infirmary. Only a couple of beds and torn mattresses remained. The canine walked toward a back room as Jacob could hear his nose working hard to find the crates. The camera panned around several times in the small back room and then came to a standstill as Van Damme sat, signaling that he had found his target.

  Jacob and Doug emerged from the rooftop stairwell into the desolate interior of the building’s innards. The ambient light within was nonexistent, and they both activated the infrared illuminators on their NVGs and the integrated infrared flashlights of their weapons to navigate in the pitch black. The interior hallway immediately brightened in their night-vision, as if the power had come back to the building, but to the unaided eye, the hallway remained lost to the dark. They took a knee and listened as their earbuds augmented the ambient noise three-fold. Jacob was satisfied that they were the only two living beings in the building, though the countless souls who had died here throughout the last decade and a half were surely watching their every move.

  They reached the double doors of the infirmary and scanned the room for threats. Finding none, they headed down the dual rows of empty beds toward the back room where Van Damme still sat. Doug pulled a small chew toy out of his ballistic vest and handed it to Van Damme along with a beef liver treat. Jacob concerned himself with the room. The crates were not there and had most likely been taken in the initial raid. A cursory search of the room revealed nothing but the discarded waste of chaos. He cleared some boxes from the floor and found some loose papers and a couple of notebooks embossed with the BioSyn seal. He tucked these into his daypack along with a couple of mangled thumb drives. Jacob expected that the mission would turn up very little. Experience had taught him that people living in war zones tended to be extremely efficient at scavenging through the wreckage of war.

  Their mission accomplished for the night, he motioned to Doug to move out. As the two headed back through the infirmary, Jacob noticed that Van Dammehad not followed. He peered back into the room to find that Van Damme stood perfectly erect against the back wall. Jacob called to him, but the dog did not move. Jacob triggered the collar command, but again Van Damme remained motionless.

  “He’s signaling,” Doug said as Jacob came to the same realization.

  Jacob and Doug began to take a second look through the office. After a few fruitless minutes, Jacob studied Van Damme who was now looking toward the back wall. Jacob followed his gaze up to the drop ceiling where a few missing panels exposed the support beams and some PVC piping. Jacob jumped up onto one of the laboratory work benches and peeked into the ceiling. A few mice scurried quickly away as his head crested the lattice framing. Their scurrying paws kicked up dust and rodent feces into his face, and he gagged as his nostrils flared with the putrid stench of urea and fecal matter. Undeterred, he scanned the interior of the ceiling, panning his infrared flashlight into the dark and that is when he noticed it. A small metallic box, the size of a lunch box was lodged up against the wooden framing of the floor above. The box was about six feet away and impossible to reach from his position.

  “Found something?” Doug whispered.

  “I see a small box up there that looks like someone went to some lengths to hide. I’m guessing that fact alone makes it worth our while.”

  He searched the room and found a broken broom handle, then quickly jumped back onto the desk. He reached for the box and gave it a few taps with the handle, but to his chagrin, the box did not move. A swarm of large cockroaches responded to the tapping and scurried toward him, climbing down his back and onto the table. Doug swatted a few of the two-inch long bugs off of his trouser legs and boots. There was only one way to get the box. Jacob sighed before leaping up to a wooden support beam that ran the length of the room. He struggled to hoist himself up into the tight confines of the drop ceiling and shimmied along the top of a support beam until he reached the metal box. Suddenly the sound of pitter-pattering rodents scurried closer. Jacob hastily grabbed the box and crawled back through the hole from whence he came.

  Once back on the floor, he inspected the metal box, which was slightly cold to the touch. After removing his shooting gloves, he opened the box to find an icy CO2 package and a couple of syringes within. He shut the box quickly and stored it in his daypack. He had learned over the last few months while sitting in hospital rooms with Nathan the importance of keeping certain medicine cold. He was convinced that he had just found what they were looking for, and if that was the case, he had to ensure that it was preserved as safely as possible.

  Jacob looked at Doug and nodded. “We hit pay dirt. Let’s move out.”

  The two men and their canine companion exited the building through the roof after receiving the all-clear from Tim. They picked up Odin just outside of the building and joined Tim and Tanner along the back alley. Jacob checked the drone swarm overhead, and the display only read their heat signatures in the darkened neighborhood. Their exfiltration route east was clear, and they soon joined John’s team before heading back to base.

  Jacob unslung his rifle and peeled his body armor from his chest as he sat in the makeshift operations center of the two-story building. He dug into his daypack, revealed the small metal box, and placed it on John’s table. His friend nodded affirmatively and ordered everyone out of the room.

  “What’s this Jacob?” John asked as he held the box gingerly between his fingertips.

  “Something tells me that you already know, John.” Jacob’s words were accurate.

  “I do. However, I don’t know if you necessarily want to report that you have this.” John lifted the lid of the box peeking warily inside.

  “Why is that?”

  “Well something like this is extremely valuable and in the right hands under the right circumstances, priceless.” John delicately shut the lid. “It’s also very dangerous. Jacob, I’m going to be honest with you. I don’t know exactly what this is, but I know that the doctor that we are looking for was developing this in a highly restricted lab, where they keep stuff that will make your eyes bleed. I don’t want to go home with a Gulf-War-Syndrome-type of disease, so I’m going to hand this back to you and advise you that you should put this somewhere safe until we find the doctor.” John slid the box back across the table to Jacob.

  Jacob grabbed the box, wrapped it in his keffiyeh, and placed it back into his daypack. “I’ll find a place for it, and I assume that you won’t be discussing it with Jak or the client?”

  “Discussing what?” John was stone-faced.

  “Alright, now let’s find ourselves the good doctor.”

  “Luckily for you, we’ve been flying the swarm since we’ve been here, and we think we found him.” John opened one of the drone control cases and brought up a live feed of a square mile of Basrah. “This building is the site of heavy inbound and outbound militia activity. They are the same guys who were raiding the lab earlier in the day. Now what is particularly fascinating about this building is that the militiamen are bringing in medical supplies into it and also patients.” John queued some video and replayed a clip from the previous day. The image froze, and he enlarged it. “You see here? Why would you bring a couple of guys in wheelchairs and three kids in a hospital van into a building that is otherwise occupied by militia fighters. And look here,” John forwarded the video a few hours later, “They are also bringing in medical personnel. My guess is that they have the doctor in here, and they are forcing him to take care of these people.”

  “But he’s not that kind of doctor,” Jacob said with a shrug.

  “Of course not, but around here a doctor is a doctor. Either way, it’s worth a shot. The problem is that this is one of their most heavily defended buildings, so it’s going to take a firefight to extract the doctor.”

  Jacob’s tactical mind was already spinning. “We’ll have to cr
eate a distraction. We’ll have to hit them with a massive attack on one of their other strategic locations, preferably as far as possible from this building.”

  “What do you have in mind, Jacob?”

  “Well since the rest of the XPS teams have now made it up the Shatt, we can use them for this attack. You take three teams and lead an assault on their operations center. I will take the other three teams with me, infiltrate that building, and get the doctor. I will start the assault on the building about fifteen minutes after you start your assault on their operations center. Can your guys provide some air cover with that drone swarm?”

  John chuckled. “You’re damn right they can. I’ll make sure that all of our drones are up and armed with their special payload! It’s going to be like old times!”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way, my friend.”

  - - - - - - -

  The sun was still under the horizon and would not rise for another two hours. Jacob checked his watch. His team was in place and ready to hit the militia stronghold right at its most unguarded hour. Attacks were always most effective in the predawn hours because of the body’s circadian rhythm. Even the most seasoned military men found it difficult to remain vigilant at this hour. Jacob checked with his overwatch and QRF teams; both were in place. They now waited for John’s team to mount their attack on the operations center, which lay two miles away, near the city center.