by Jon Land
A grenade blast shook him, and then he felt shards of exploded glass pepper the back of his flak jacket and prick his legs through the thick fabric. Another trio of blasts followed in rapid succession, screams trailing them until rapid bursts of fire silenced those too.
The fighters were killing his men. How many of the medical personnel had they found already, as well? How long before they found Vicky?
The last time he’d seen Vicky, ten years before, Max had wanted so badly to kill Dale Denton in order to save her from him. Now he had to save her from something else. As if the forces of the cosmos were conspiring to tear them apart yet again, after they’d finally found each other.
Not this time, he thought, as he pushed forward, not again.
The sand storm thickened around him, seeming to swirl about in concentric circles that further fed its power.
I’ve got to find Grif.
Max vividly recalled the area in which his second-in-command was posted, just as he could recall them for all the members of the team he was commanding. The problem was the sand storm had stolen his sense of direction from him, turned the world into a dark room where bearings were as valuable as gold.
“Grif, can you read me? Grif, do you copy?”
Only static greeted his call, and Max decided to let instinct guide him to Grif. Relinquish his conscious thought and let the more primal mechanisms at work inside him find the man he trusted more than anyone else in the world. Because Grif would do the same for him.
The swirling sand cleared in a pocket to his right, exposing a stream of fighters surging down the street, wearing goggles that made them look like giant insects. Max opened up with one spray and then another, none of the fighters even spotting him until he was halfway through the third burst that tore the legs out from two of the fighters and blew a third one into the air. All three wearing goggles comparable to his own, high-end models that were strictly military ordnance, meaning these fighters were exceptionally well-financed for a terrorist group.
Max ducked back into the thicker swirls of the storm, the cacophony of gunfire everywhere around him, realizing in that moment how badly his palm was aching now under his glove. And he could feel the warm soak of blood oozing out of the mark, starting to push its way through the neoprene material. Max tried to ignore it, but the stinging pain was like holding a cigarette lighter to his skin. The worst it had ever been, and it had been pretty bad as of late.
Then he heard a high-pitched scream, Vicky’s scream, and the pain didn’t matter anymore.
* * *
Inside the mosque, Vicky had stayed low through the battle, minutes stretching into what felt like hours, hunkered on the mosque floor low beneath any sightline from the windows when she heard the rear door crash open. She lurched back to her feet, just as a pair of fighters with faces like Halloween masks burst from a room in the rear.
They grabbed her before she could reach the front door, one on either side. Tugging, tearing, yanking, and finally dragging her toward the altar, their gleaming eyes all she could see beneath the black hoods draped over their heads.
* * *
Max felt something stirring deep inside him, like a surge of static electricity mixing with his blood. He felt a strength, a power, starting to rush through him, different from anything he’d felt before. He felt no fear, no trepidation, only certainty in the task before him. In the height of battle, there was never time to feel weak or vulnerable. But in this battle, somehow, there was time to feel supremely confident and, even, invincible. He was certain the scream he’d heard came from the mosque he recalled from his nightmare, was sure it was Vicky’s.
Just like he was now sure she was the woman in the mask. It hadn’t been a nightmare aboard the plane, it had been another vision, the meaning of the shadow figures, the altar, and the mask itself still unclear to him.
The surge he felt pulsing through him was eerily akin to the ones he’d experienced in the midst of so many of his experiences. Only what he felt today was different. More intense, more concentrated, more powerful. He felt as if he were floating, detached from his own body and gliding through the air instead of feeling his way over the ground.
He could still feel the sand peppering his face and clothes, could feel himself slogging through the increasingly powerful winds, but something was different. Because, suddenly, he could see through the swirling sand, as if the rage he felt bursting from inside him was acting as some kind of filter. The street was suddenly crystal clear before him, to the point where Max wondered if he’d lapsed into yet another vision.
He wanted them all dead, but not just dead. He wanted them to die in pain, in a lingering agony that visited upon them the wrath their actions demanded. By his hand. Pay the price for what they’d done, the pain he was about to inflict upon the sons of bitches worse than any they dispensed. That thought revived, recharged him.
Max didn’t stop to consider the inelegance of his intentions. He thought only of killing the dozens of remaining fighters, every single one of them in as agonizing and gruesome a fashion as he could.
First, though, he needed to save Vicky, had just turned toward the mosque, when her piercing scream split the sandblasted air around him.
* * *
A quarter mile away, Mohammed al-Qadir stood in the company of his private guards, waiting for the battle to end and the American hostage to be delivered unto him. Up until that moment he’d felt celebratory, even joyous. Up until that moment, God’s light was shining upon him even through the blessed storm that had engulfed the town of El Mady.
Then a blast of frigid air struck him. It was more like a wave, then a current, showing no signs of abating, even as it chilled him straight to the bone. When he went by another name, he’d thought nothing could be chillier than the dank air of Britain. But this burst of cold didn’t feel like the product of nature at all, at least any nature al-Qadir knew or understood. It didn’t just leave him trembling, it reached down to his core like icy tentacles that wrapped themselves around his very insides.
Before him, the swirling sands continued to hide any view of the world beyond, and al-Qadir was almost glad, having no desire to regard the source of the shrill cold that seemed to be freezing him where he stood.
* * *
Max burst through the mosque doors, spotting the two fighters holding Vicky down atop the altar, about to strip off her clothes. The hoods they wore, that were part and parcel of the New Islamic Front uniform, eerily resembled the hoods worn by the dark shapes that had surrounded the naked woman who obsessed him in a vision he now grasped in all its meaning and purpose. Max glided toward the altar, noticing they’d covered her face in black fabric to cloak her screams, making her appear masked, just like the woman in his vision.
The wind pushed through the breached entrance, a shrill dry gust of air Max recalled from his vision aboard the plane as well. He kept coming, approaching the altar, the fighters never once acknowledging his presence. Realized his M4 was now shouldered behind him, fourteen-inch tactical blade with customized rubber handle in his hand.
Max felt himself pounce. The men were holding Vicky and then they weren’t, amid the swirls of sand blowing into the mosque from the street beyond. He felt the warm soak of blood, saw her unconscious frame covered in it, the bodies of the fighters lying in pieces around her.
Max scooped Vicky up and laid her over his left shoulder, unslinging his M4 from his right, as he moved back into the street. More fighters were coming, pouring into the square, converging on Max amid the already fallen bodies. He followed their motions with crystal clarity. Mohammed al-Qadir’s fighters needed to pay for what they’d done here, each and every one of them. They’d taken out his team, his friends, the closest thing he had left of a family. The anger and rage in the face of that was hardly new, the lust he felt for blood something else again.
Max heard the constant clatter of gunshots, could feel the heat of the bullets singeing the air all around him. He didn’t care about
living or dying, the last moment or the next. There was only now, each moment elongated so it seemed to swallow the one that followed.
Max knew the sand was there, even though he could see through it. The world seemed to turn to slow motion all around him, he alone moving at regular speed. Suddenly, the view before him sharpened to crystal clarity. Suddenly, he was breathing normally, the sand no longer sifting into his mouth, Vicky feather light in his grasp, almost like she weighed nothing at all.
The last thought he formed before lurching into motion was that he felt … cold, freezing even.
Of all things.
SEVENTY-ONE
The Vatican
“That’s quite a story,” Cardinal Josef Martenko said to Pascal Jimenez amid the breeze blowing through the Vatican gardens.
Jimenez watched him use a gold pen to jot some notes down on the small pad sitting on his lap, his gaze holding upon it.
“I’ve had this pen for a very long time,” Martenko said when he noticed, holding the pen up for Jimenez to see closer, “through all the most daunting phases of my life.”
Jimenez shook himself alert. “An excellent description of this past week, Your Eminence.”
Martenko shook his head, expression still framed by disbelief. “Of course I’ve seen the reports of the infected rising from apparent death in these monstrous forms to infect and transform others into the same form.” He shook his head again. “Horrifying, positively horrifying. To follow the media coverage of this scourge spreading through the Middle East is one thing, but to hear about it all firsthand…”
“There’s more, Your Eminence,” Jimenez told him.
“I don’t want to hear it, Pascal. Your conclusions have ventured into a realm the church can have no part in. We are not in the business of passing off science as superstition, searching for the paranormal when logical explanations inevitably suffice. You of all people should know this.”
Jimenez found his gaze straying to Martenko’s gold pen again. “I did, Your Eminence. I don’t anymore.”
“So you would have your version of the battle between the forces of good and evil be reviewed by those Vatican officials certain to reject it out of hand. You’ll destroy yourself in the process, Pascal, become a pariah in the only world you have left.”
“I’m well aware of that.”
Martenko twisted to better face Jimenez on the same park bench they’d shared many years before when the cardinal had convinced him to put his scientific knowledge to good use by debunking so-called miracles and providing rational explanations for the otherwise inexplicable. “I agreed to see you in my capacity as head of the Vatican Bank as a courtesy in view of our past relationship and my part in your becoming an investigator. In return for that courtesy, I ask that you rethink your intentions very carefully here, especially in such trying times for the church.”
“I’ve heard the Holy Father is not well.”
Martenko’s expression crinkled in a mix of mourning and regret. “He was just given Last Rites, isn’t expected to live through the day.”
“I’ve also heard you are one of the favorites to replace him, in all probability the favorite, Your Eminence.”
Martenko shrugged. “If that is to be my fate, then so be it.”
“And what of the world’s fate, Your Eminence? You would have us ignore the inescapable conclusions I just presented?”
“Yes, I would. First and foremost, you are a priest. You serve our Lord as I do, and everything we do must be with His best interests at heart. People are flocking back to churches in droves, Pascal. They are returning to God, because they feel He alone can save them. This report of yours would only confuse the issue, cast aspersions on the faith people have regained in His word and only His word. The last thing they need to hear is all this mumbo jumbo about stones and meteors and demonic children. Let us enjoy this moment and seek ways to keep the numbers of His flock strong.”
“Did you just say enjoy?”
“Figure of speech.”
Jimenez looked away, then back again. “There’s something else, Your Eminence. The terrorist Mohammed al-Qadir—we both once knew him as Cambridge. In Nigeria.”
Shock glazed Martenko’s features. “How could that be?”
Jimenez held the cardinal’s stare. “There is much I still don’t understand. Only that everything has been connected. From the very beginning of this, it has all been connected.”
“The beginning meaning Nigeria?”
“Long before that, Your Eminence,” Jimenez said, shaking his head dismissively. “Billions and billions of years.”
“Something else it is better to leave out of your report, Pascal,” Martenko cautioned.
He pocketed his notepad, slid the gold pen back into his robe, and rose slowly from the bench.
“Go with God, Pascal,” Martenko said, leaning over to bless Jimenez with the Holy Trinity.
Then he turned and walked off.
* * *
One of the cardinal’s aids escorted Jimenez from the gardens, leaving him with only his thoughts until his phone rang. Jimenez answered, in spite of not recognizing the number on his caller ID.
“I catch you at a bad time, Father?” Red greeted, before he could say a word.
“No, not really.”
“Wrong. It’s a bad time, all right. You just don’t know how bad yet. I’ve got some fresh intelligence to share on our friend Cambridge, aka Mohammed al-Qadir, from back when he originally immigrated to England as a young boy. Remember how the whole Chechnyan refugee program had been arranged by the Catholic churches?”
“Of course,” Jimenez said, still trying to gather his bearings in the wake of his fruitless meeting with Cardinal Martenko. “What’s it have to do with what we’re facing now?”
“Only everything, Father,” Red told him. “I hope you’re sitting down.…”
SEVENTY-TWO
Western Iraq
Max awoke in the central square of El Mady, the sand storm beginning to thin out around him. Grit and dirt clung to his clothes, a cooling ooze soaking through them.
Blood, Max thought, realizing what was pasting the muck to him. But not his blood.
He looked down to see an unconscious Vicky beneath him, his heart skipping a beat when he saw her covered in blood too.
Oh God, please no …
Swabbing his hand across her revealed the blood not to be hers either, and he recalled using his knife on the two fighters about to rape her in the mosque. Their blood, then, not hers.
What had happened, though, in the interim between this moment and what he last recalled?
Max remembered the rage boiling over in him, as he emerged from the mosque with Vicky slung over his shoulder. Mohammed al-Qadir’s fighters needed to pay for what they’d done here, each and every one of them. The anger and rage in the face of that was hardly new, the lust he felt for blood something else again.
And then …
Nothing. He couldn’t remember a thing, including the source of the blood drenching him everywhere, so much Max felt as if he’d dove into a river of it.
Around him, the sand storm continued to dissipate, the swirls becoming less concentrated and intense, allowing him to view the street through the blaring sunshine starting to burn through. The dozens and dozens of mounds unrecognizable at first, until Max stripped off his stained goggles to better view the aftermath of the battle.
George H. W. Bush
The clearing of the sand storm finally allowed a drone to return to station over El Mady, the picture it revealed of the central square, streets, structures, and alleys below stealing the breath from both Red and Admiral Darby.
“Tell me I’m not seeing this,” Darby managed.
“Oh, you’re seeing it all right,” said Red, a twinge of what sounded like excitement lacing his voice. “The bodies with the flashing Xs are ours, thanks to the locators each SEAL carried. The rest we can take to be the New Islamic Front fighters who were converging on the
village.”
“You seeing this the same way I am?”
“I think so, Admiral. The location and spacing of downed friendlies indicates they were taken out in pretty short order. Took as many bad guys with them as they could based on the spacing, but the enemy numbers and firepower were just too much to overcome. All those remaining bodies, all that carnage confined mostly to the central square, well, your guess is as good as mine.”
“I’d like to hear yours.”
Red zoomed in closer, the downed bodies easier to discern. They hadn’t just been dropped by what would’ve been a nonstop torrent of heavy fire; their bodies had been shredded, mutilated. So much blood that, from the drone’s perspective, it looked like a black blanket covering the square in an impressionistic pattern around the bodies, including a dozen or so that looked to have been impaled with their own rifles.
“Mine? If you really want to hear my thinking, right now I’m looking at the same thing you are: Left side of the screen lists thirty-five dead SEALS, identified by the codes on their locators keyed to their names. That leaves one missing. Care to take a guess as to which, Admiral?”
Western Iraq
Max walked, Vicky’s weight no more a burden now than it had been in the town square. He carried her on through the last of the afternoon sun. Besides a few moans and mutters, interspersed with a fluttering of her eyelids that always stopped short of opening, she hadn’t shown any signs of regaining consciousness. As soon as they were clear of the village, Max laid Vicky down to check for wounds, the breath lodged in his throat. His heart felt firmly planted in his mouth, as he felt for an entry or exit bullet wound. But there was nothing, other than some bruises, his own dried blood, and scratches that likely came from her struggling with her two captors.
Max found a thick grove of brush and tucked himself inside it, protectively shielding Vicky. His plan was to wait out the sun here and move on, once darkness stole the sight lines of any possible pursuit through the flat ground that offered only meager cover.