by Matt Rogers
The alternative was wondering what it could be for the rest of his life.
So he trudged the few steps across the gravel and lifted the rusting receiver off its cradle. He pressed it to his ear.
Silence.
‘Hello?’ he said.
More silence.
‘Hello?’
‘I take it I’m speaking to Colt Griffin.’
Griffin hoped no-one had eyes on him at that exact moment, for the blood drained from his face in an instant. Even though a faint voice had told him the call was for him, he hadn’t truly believed it. He’d been expecting either the static associated with a malfunctioning payphone, or a quick burst of unintelligible Dzongkha — the native language of Bhutan — followed by the person at the other end of the line hanging up.
He certainly hadn’t been expecting an American voice.
‘You are,’ Griffin said, hesitant to divulge anything.
‘I apologise for the nature of this call,’ the voice at the other end of the line said. ‘But I don’t believe you took your phone to Bhutan, did you?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Was that deliberate?’
‘Sure was.’
‘You haven’t asked who you’re speaking to.’
‘I imagine you’ll tell me,’ Griffin said. ‘In due time. No point trying to force it out of you.’
‘My name’s Lars Crawford.’
‘I’m going to need a bit more information than that.’
‘I know. In due time.’
‘You want something from me?’
‘Yes, actually,’ Lars said. ‘I want to recruit you.’
Griffin paused. Was this what his superiors had been referring to?
A job offer from a division of the military that officially did not exist.
Why the hell was it coming in the form of an anonymous call to a Paro Valley payphone?
‘This is a strange way of going about it,’ Griffin said.
‘I know. Trust me, I’d rather do it some other way. I get the sense you know something about me?’
‘A little.’
‘Well, that’s good. Even though you’re not supposed to know a thing. This might come as less of a shock if you have a rough idea of where you’re headed.’
‘I’m supposed to be in Washington soon,’ Griffin said. ‘Can’t this wait?’
‘I wish it could.’
‘You need me now?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘I can be on the first flight out.’
‘No. I need you in Bhutan.’
‘You might want to start explaining what you’re on about, or I’ll hang up this phone and carry on my way. I have no way of knowing if you are who you say you are.’
‘You hang up this phone and you’ll be directly responsible for ignoring a bioterrorism threat. Right now you’re the only chance we have of preventing it.’
Griffin paused. ‘Go on.’
‘I’m the chief handler for the division known as Black Force. I feel like we should start there.’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘That’s kind of the point.’
‘You’re interested in me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘The results of your Operator Training Course in the Delta Force.’
‘Thought as much. What was so special about them?’
‘Your reflexes and reaction speed, mostly. You’re an all-around excellent soldier, but your ability to react quickly and intuitively is off the charts. Your brain processes events in a live combat situation at an astronomical rate.’
It sounded like Lars was reading directly off a fact sheet. Griffin grew restless. ‘That’s it? You’re going to bring me into this black operations unit because of my reaction speed? I guess I always thought there was more to it than that.’
‘That’s the foundation of an indestructible soldier,’ Lars said, and Griffin sensed intense passion in the man’s voice. He wondered if Lars had specific expertise in this field. It certainly sounded as much. ‘Everything you do is based off how fast you can react to situations on the fly. And I don’t run a unit. I run a batch of independent, solo operatives. Those who can react at the speed of light stay alive. It’s as simple as that. And it’s better if they’re alone in the field, so they don’t have to be responsible for anyone else. If you can retaliate in the blink of an eye but your fellow soldiers can’t, it’ll only hold you back. That’s the basis of what we do here. And, on March 15th, I was prepared to offer you a position in our ranks.’
‘It’s not March 15th,’ Griffin noted.
‘It certainly isn’t.’
‘And you’re calling me on a payphone.’
‘Desperate times. Desperate measures.’
‘What do you need?’
‘That can’t be summed up in a few sentences. I need to break this down to you, and you need to listen to every word I say.’
‘I can do that.’
‘Right now, there’s some serious shit going on in the mountains around the Paro Valley.’
‘Look,’ Griffin said, interrupting. ‘I get it. You need to test me or something. Just come out and say it — I’d rather you be honest with me. You really expect me to believe there’s some terrorist threat unfolding in South Asia, and I just happen to conveniently be here?’
‘No, I don’t expect you to believe it,’ Lars said. ‘Cause I hardly fucking believe it myself. And, trust me, I’d rather we had anyone else. You’re untested in the field, if we’re being honest. But you need to understand this isn’t a drill. This is life or death. And you can turn me down, but you’ll never hear from me or my organisation again.’
‘Okay. Go on.’
‘What are you doing in Bhutan?’
‘Soul searching.’
‘Cut the shit.’
‘Okay. I threw a dart at a map.’
‘I said—’
‘I know what you said. You’re just going to have to believe me, because it’s the truth.’
‘You don’t know anything about what’s going on?’
‘No.’
‘You haven’t received any illicit job offers in that part of the world?’
‘No.’
‘You’re not currently working for a paramilitary force, off the books?’
‘No. And I suggest you get explaining if this is as serious as you say it is.’
Griffin sensed Lars hesitating on the other end of the line, and he wondered how ridiculous the following sentences would sound. He was expecting madness, but nothing could have prepared him for what followed.
‘Okay,’ Lars said, taking a deep breath to compose himself. ‘Right now, the U.S. government is under the impression that a rogue paramilitary organisation has been holed up in an abandoned monastery for the better part of six months, paying a group of scientists obscene quantities of money to smash a few pathogens together into a chimera virus more deadly than anything ever manufactured.’
Griffin said nothing.
Suddenly, the air got a whole lot colder.
4
‘I, uh…’ Griffin said, staring into the distance at the nearest mountain range, draped in cloud and hovering ominously in the Bhutanese sky. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘If I were you I’d be calling bullshit.’
‘You sound like you’re about to have a heart attack,’ Griffin said. ‘So I assume it’s not bullshit.’
‘It’s not.’
‘A paramilitary force?’
‘We have to go off what our informant is telling us.’
‘Who’s the informant?’
‘Ex-U.S. military. He was taking any job he could get after he got dishonourably discharged — morals be damned. Ended up roped into this scheme with a party of fourteen other mercenaries and spent a couple of months as a low-level grunt patrolling the monastery’s perimeter before he finally discovered what was going on and fled back to America.’
‘You going to
go easy on him?’
‘Probably not. He confessed to a lot of shit before he even stepped foot in Bhutan. He’s an unsavoury character… to put it mildly.’
‘So what makes you think he’s telling the truth?’
‘We didn’t. For weeks. All of it sounded like a bunch of made up horse shit, but then we started taking a closer look at the Paro Airport, and none of it looks good.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The flight logs, for starters. They don’t add up. There’s a different number of planes coming in every day based on which report you read, and there’s a different quantity of cargo being offloaded from each incoming delivery. All of it points toward a cover-up. And the monastery the guy was rambling about exists. We scoured the satellites and found the fortress buried in the depths of the mountain ranges. It’s been abandoned for what seems to be centuries. Could barely make out the outline of it on the feed.’
‘All good points,’ Griffin said. ‘But doesn’t prove anything.’
‘He knows … certain details. About the concept of a chimera virus. He knows things he shouldn’t. We’ve had his claims independently verified. And none of it is looking good in the slightest.’
‘In terms of the consequences? Or the fact that your informant knows stuff he shouldn’t?’
‘Both.’
‘What is it? I’ve heard of a chimera virus before. I just don’t know exactly—’
‘It’s an amalgamation of various viruses. Like the old mythological creature. Goat, lion, serpent — all combined. That’s a chimera virus. They’re trying to take the worst parts of a bunch of different shit and smash it all together into one super-virus — anthrax, smallpox, Ebola. I don’t even want to think about what happens if they pull it off.’
‘How close are they?’
‘We don’t know. The informant looked over a bunch of documents he wasn’t supposed to have access to before he fled the monastery. But he got caught in the act. He barely made it out alive. So, even if they don’t know that he’s in our custody, they know he’s out there somewhere. And they’re probably hurrying this along. Or at least packing things up. They’ve had a week to get out of the monastery, but that’s not going to be an easy task. We think they’re still there.’
‘Can you know for sure?’
‘No. That’s why we’re turning to you.’
‘I don’t know what I can do. I’m not armed.’
‘We can arrange certain things…’
‘But why me?’ Griffin demanded. ‘I don’t even know who you are. Round up the Bhutan military. Send in your own soldiers. Swarm the place. What can I do against a fourteen man paramilitary force? I’ll get shot to pieces on sight.’
‘Don’t underestimate the amount of thought we’ve put into this. You’re our best option. We’ve considered everything from dropping a MOAB on the monastery to sending all seven thousand men in the Bhutan army into the mountains to swarm the place. Everything we try and consider has a laundry list of disadvantages. You included.’
‘But I’m your best shot?’
‘Our informant tells us there’s a giant subterranean cave complex underneath the fortress. That’s why it took him so long to wise up to what was going on — he just thought he was protecting underworld VIPs.’
‘Which means you can’t storm the place, because you don’t know where the caves lead.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And if they see you coming, they’ll probably enact a contingency plan.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you can’t bomb it, because the cave underneath it might not collapse the way you want it to, and then you’ll lose the scientists forever after they escape.’
‘Exactly. I knew we were looking at you for a reason.’
‘So what is this?’ Griffin said. ‘You want me to run into an ancient fortress and take out fourteen men?’
‘That’s not including the scientists themselves. We want them all dead. If our informant’s telling the truth — and all signs point to it — then these are some corrupt bastards. They’re being paid to deliver a bioweapon into the hands of terrorists. So you need to take out the paramilitary force, and the creators themselves.’
‘And you think I’d accept that? It’s a death wish.’
‘In fact, I know you’ll accept it,’ Lars said. ‘I know almost everything about you. We don’t recruit anyone here. We only accept the best of the best, and on top of that it takes a certain personality type to do what we do. You fit that personality type. You’ve acted selflessly in the field countless times, and we think you’d make a unique fit to Black Force. I was going to tell you all of this on March 15th, but we need to hurry along with the schedule.’
‘So this is a job offer?’
‘It is. And we’re giving you the worst case scenario for your first operation before any of us have even met you. But your Operator Training Course results are something to behold. We think you haven’t had enough experience in the field to realise your true talents. We think you might show that today. You don’t know what you’re capable of, but we do.’
‘You’re good at selling your services.’
‘I have nothing to sell. It’s just an offer.’
‘And if I don’t accept?’
‘Then we’re probably going to have a chimera virus in the hands of a volatile mercenary force. We don’t know their motivations, or what they want to do with it. But our informant’s telling us there’s a general undercurrent of anti-American sentiment amongst all of them, so it’s not looking good for our capital cities. That’s why we’re involved.’
‘I’m your last resort?’
‘More or less. We can try other things, but they’ll almost certainly fail.’
‘Fly in a convoy of Special Forces soldiers. Surround the area. Flush them out.’
‘We’re not amateurs, Colt,’ Lars said. ‘What makes you think we haven’t already thought of that?’
‘I just don’t see how—’
‘The fortress is in full view of the Paro Airport, which I’m sure you know happens to be one of the most dangerous civilian airfields in the world. There’s less than a dozen civilian pilots who are allowed to land on that tarmac. And their fortress happens to have a direct line of sight to the airport. So we’d have to land somewhere else, and trek in on foot. It’d take weeks. And they’d see us coming from miles away. They picked the mother of all defences, whether they intended to or not.’
‘So they’ll see me coming.’
‘That’s the point. You’re a nobody. You can get in close and then raise hell.’
‘Like I said,’ Griffin said. ‘It sounds like a death sentence.’
‘You sign up for Black Force, and you’re signing your own death warrant. That’s the nature of the beast. But you have the chance to do great things along the way. And that’s all I can ever promise you. The rest is up to you.’
‘I’m your best shot at pulling this off?’
‘Yes. You are.’
‘Then I guess I don’t have a choice,’ Griffin said, before common sense could tell him otherwise.
5
The Dzong stood out amidst its surroundings — Griffin had passed the complex by many times before, but had never imagined he’d be striding inside its walls during his time in Bhutan.
A few days ago, a conversation with a pair of British tourists who had spent a month learning everything they could about the Paro Valley and its history had brought him up to speed on the country’s architecture. He knew a Dzong consisted of a fortress-like structure surrounded by smaller administrative buildings, temples, and a high perimeter wall. He knew the Bhutanese military occupied a handful of these complexes in the Paro Valley.
Now, he strode straight up to the entrance of one of them and waited patiently for a pair of perimeter guards to meet him.
He couldn’t believe what was happening. He’d absorbed Lars’ instructions quietly and patiently, but what he was about to do seemed like
some far-off, distant dream. The surreal nature of his surroundings didn’t help — it was like he’d been transported back to medieval times, moving through a quiet cold valley with the concept of combat on his mind and rudimentary plans running through his head.
It didn’t take long for the Bhutanese military to respond to his brazen arrival. Lars had reassured him of their co-operation, but once again none of it felt real.
The pair of hard-faced guards — Kalashnikov rifles swinging off straps on their shoulders — stormed up to him, anger lacing their expressions.
They studied him for a silent few seconds. If he hadn’t been the man they were expecting, he wondered if they might have chased him off with their rifles raised.
But the call must have gone through, because one of them nodded once and ushered Griffin straight through into the complex.
A spiralling gravel trail twisted up to the main building, complete with vast stone walls and enormous wooden entrance doors constructed in an imposing fashion. A particularly cold gust of wind whipped through the complex, setting Griffin’s nerves on edge. He was an imposter in this land, an alien presence who — for reasons the Bhutanese military couldn’t possibly fathom — had been allowed to step foot in the complex and arm himself with an arsenal of weaponry.
Griffin didn’t know the finer details. Lars had contacted the relevant parties and the urgency had clearly been stressed. Maybe it had gone directly through the President. Whatever the case, the Royal Bhutan Army occupying the Dzong had been told to hand over whatever Griffin needed, no questions asked, to deal with an undisclosed matter.
Nevertheless, Griffin wasn’t about to go all out. He still needed to make the trek to the monastery itself, which would test the limits of his physical capabilities. He would need to pack light, and dual-wielding assault rifles would achieve nothing anyway.
He followed the two perimeter guards wordlessly up to the main fortress in the Dzong. They hadn’t exchanged a shred of conversation, and Griffin imagined they didn’t speak a word of English. He didn’t speak a word of Dzongkha either, so he elected to stride patiently behind them and bow his head to protect himself from the sudden chill.
The calmness of his trip to Bhutan had dissipated the second he’d hung up the payphone. Now his senses were heightened, cortisol flooding his brain as he became wired, tuned into his surroundings, fully aware. He was about to step into a brutal world he hadn’t anticipated visiting for at least a couple of weeks. That required a change in demeanour, an icy hardness that was already starting to settle over him.