by By Jon Land
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The Last Prophecy
[Kamal & Barnea 07]
By John Land
Scanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU
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PROLOGUE: Trench Delta
Buchenwald, April 1945
S
eventy-eight bodies and still counting, sir,” the corporal’s voice crackled, muted slightly by the surgical mask that covered his mouth.
Colonel Walter Henley switched the walkie-talkie from his left ear to his right. “Keep me informed, Corstairs.”
“Yes, sir.”
Henley did a rough count in his head. Since its arrival two days before, his unit had exhumed nearly a thousand bodies from the trenches that littered Buchenwald, the process as physically exhausting as it was spiritually draining. Henley replaced his own surgical mask and started back toward the wing of a wrecked bomber a dozen of his men were cutting up to convert into morgue tables. The job of transporting the survivors, once they were made fit to travel, to medical facilities far better equipped to treat them, was monumental. Henley had ultimately accepted the recommendation of his motor staff to convert the holds of their two-ton transport trucks into makeshift mass ambulances.
Two days, Henley reflected. Is that all it’s been?. . .
He recalled the cryptic orders that had dispatched his unit here from Frankfurt, vague yet suggestive enough to lead Henley to temporarily transfer all forty of the 121st Evacuation Hospital’s nurses to another unit. Like everyone else, Henley had heard of the Nazi death and labor camps, but had difficulty believing the substance of the tales, the whispered rumors and hushed action reports cloaking their existence in a surreal fog. Still, the reality of Buchenwald had dwarfed anything his imagination could conjure up.
It had started with a faint odor drifting through the beech wood forests of Weimar that swelled to a pastelike thickness by the time the 121st’s trucks pulled up to the camp’s front gate. There, a sea of fetid humanity garbed in soiled striped uniforms greeted them with gaping stares of grateful relief mixed with lingering hopelessness—as if those prisoners lucky enough to survive had forgotten how to smile or lacked the capacity.
A truck driver had given one of the starving, emaciated figures a chocolate bar. The disembarking members of the 121st then watched in horror as the prisoner, after gobbling up the candy, writhed and spasmed toward death, his body thrown into toxic shock by the sudden burst of nutrients into his system. It was in that moment that Henley first grasped the gravity of what his unit was facing. As the first medical personnel anywhere to enter one of the Nazi camps, they had no protocol to call upon, no textbook to consult, no procedure to follow.
Then again, the very nature of the 121st was new in warfare: a completely self-contained, totally mobile four-hundred-bed hospital that could be on the move with minutes’ notice and equipped to handle anything the battlefield had to offer. Four hundred beds, of course, was hardly sufficient to care for the twenty-one thousand prisoners they found waiting for them in Buchenwald.
In the early hours, medics washed and deloused inmates too weak to lift their own arms; poor souls suffering from dysentery, typhus, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and malnutrition. Flattened tents became makeshift hospital beds. The stacks of corpses outside the trenches were carefully unpiled and personnel raced about with stethoscopes glued to their ears in search of possible heartbeats.
Henley learned that Buchenwald was actually a transfer center from which inmates were shipped to other locales, including death camps. Nearly 250,000 prisoners from thirty different countries passed through its gates on their way elsewhere, a fifth of whom died before they could be moved.
After two days, though, the 240 men of the 121st had finally managed to reverse the trend that awaited them at the gate. The death rate was falling by the hour, and the first patients were being prepared for transport atop stretchers made of planks stripped from the decaying buildings. The stench, though, lingered. Something worse than death; the dirt, the world itself maybe, gone sour and spoiled.
“Colonel Henley, this is Corstairs again. Do you copy?”
Henley pulled off his surgical mask and raised the walkie-talkie back to his ear. “Come in, Corporal.”
“I’m still at Trench Delta, sir,” Corstairs said breathlessly. “You’re needed here stat.”
“We’ve just begun transport, soldier. Can this wait?”
“No, sir, I don’t think so.” A rustling sounded as Corstairs lowered his surgical mask, his voice strained and slightly broken when he resumed. “Under the bodies, Colonel... we found something else.”
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Chapter 1
LOGON COMPLETE
ALL STATIONS CONFIRMED ACTIVE ON-LINE
ENCRYPTION PROCEDURES IN EFFECT
MESSAGE RUNNING
From: UNITED STATES
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Sensitivity: Company-Confidential
To: ALL
MIME-Version: 1.0
IM secure status: active
X-MailScanner: Found to be clean
THE SITUATION HAS BEEN CONTAINED AS OF TODAY. ALL PROCEEDING AGAIN ON SCHEDULE.
From: GREAT BRITAIN
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To: ALL
MIME-Version: 1.0
IM secure status: active
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DISCUSS POTENTIAL COMPLICATIONS.
From: UNITED STATES
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To: ALL
MIME-Version: 1.0
IM secure status: active
X-MailScanner: Found to be clean
LIMITED.
From: RUSSIA
X-Priority:
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To: ALL
MIME-Version: 1.0
IM secure status: active
X-MailScanner: Found to be clean
SPECIFY.
From: UNITED STATES
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To: ALL
MIME-Version: 1.0
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EXPECT MANDATED INVESTIGATION. EASILY CONTAINABLE.
From: JAPAN
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CONTAINMENT CRUCIAL. OTHERWISE SUGGEST PUSHING BACK TIMETABLE.
From: UNITED STATES
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AGENTS ACTIVATED. ALTERATION OF TIMETABLE NOT PRACTICAL. ANY ALTERATION THREATENS PROJECT GOAL.
From: FRANCE
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HOW MANY DEAD?
From: UNITED STATES
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REPEAT MESSAGE.
From: CHINA
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T
o: ALL
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HOW MANY KILLED TO CONTAIN SITUATION?
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34. ACCEPTABLE NUMBERS. PRIMARY THREAT ELIMINATED. COLLATERAL DAMAGE EXPECTED.
From: GERMANY
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ARE WE CERTAIN PRIMARY THREAT ISOLATED PRIOR TO CONTAINMENT?
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NO EVIDENCE OF SHARED INTEL.
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SECONDARY TARGETS?
From: UNITED STATES
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ONE. NO COMPLICATIONS EXPECTED.
From: RUSSIA
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CONFIRM COUNTDOWN TO PROMETHEUS.
From: UNITED STATES
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TEN DAYS.
MESSAGE TERMINATED
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Chapter 2
Y
ou’re not needed here, señor,” Colonel Riaz said stiffly. “Everything is under control.”
Ben Kamal trained the binoculars one of Riaz’s men had provided on the school. “How many hostages still inside?”
“Fourteen.”
“That doesn’t qualify as under control.”
“We have gained che release of thirty-one, señor.”
Ben pulled the binoculars from his eyes and looked at Riaz. The stiff wind blew some of his neatly combed hair onto his forehead and he brushed it aside. Like his father’s, Ben’s hair had actually thickened with age even as the first tinges of gray dappled the dark mane. He was past forty now, and crow’s feet dug deeper around his eyes, seeming to dim their radiant shade of blue. Ben had never liked the color of his eyes, wishing they were darker, just as he wished his stomach was as flat and his build as powerful as Riaz’s.
“Does that include the three killed when the gunmen took the school?” he asked the colonel.
Riaz stiffened. His dark brow was creased with sweat, and now beads of it had formed on both deeply pockmarked cheeks. He mopped at the right cheek with a forearm. “One of those three was my man: the security guard.”
“And one of them was the U.N.’s: the principal. Which means there was one child among the three.” Ben’s stare hardened. “Who does he belong to, Colonel?”
Riaz scowled. “We did not ask for the U.N.’s help.”
“You didn’t have to. It’s our school.”
Ben had been in New York for security strategy meetings at United Nations headquarters when Alexis Arguayo personally pulled him out. Arguayo, head of the U.N.’s Safety and Security Service, was Ben’s direct superior. Arguayo had lured him into the organization with a promise of excellent pay and the opportunity to travel to exotic locales in primarily an advisory capacity. That all changed with the bombing of the U.N. compound in Baghdad at the former Canal Hotel. Suddenly Ben was thrust into the limelight as the lead United Nations representative involved in the investigation. For everyone else involved, the results of that investigation were as clear as the culprits were obvious. While others were busy holding press conferences, Ben squirreled his way into the bowels of the compound where he ultimately unearthed a hidden warren of storage chambers that led to the basis for a conclusion to which he alone subscribed.
Ben followed procedure and filed his report through the proper channels, a report that was swiftly denounced as outlandish and totally lacking in fact or evidence. Before he could prove his point, Ben was pulled from the investigation and returned to advisory status where he languished for six months, until that morning. Two hours after Arguayo had pulled him from the meeting, Ben was on a plane to Bogota. After arriving, he was driven ninety minutes south to the town of Macerta where Colombian rebels had taken students hostage at a school operated under the auspices of the United Nations education division.
Riaz leaned closer and lowered his voice. “I’m going to tell you something, Inspector,” he said. “You see that man over there, standing behind our line?”
Ben followed Riaz’s eyes, grateful to be out of reach of the colonel’s foul-smelling breath, and focused on a well-dressed man with high cheekbones and powerful Indian features.
“I see him.”
”His name is Pablo Salgado, Inspector. He is a top official in what’s left of the Medellín cartel. Salgado’s son is among the hostages.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
”This is a personal matter, a drug matter. This was a kidnapping gone wrong. What it becomes now,” Riaz added with a shrug, “it becomes.”
“Salgado’s son is in first grade, Colonel. I doubt very much he even knows what drugs are.”
“This is Colombia, Inspector. Sometimes it is better to let these things work out by themselves.”
“Do you think the parents of the other thirteen children would agree with you?”
“Their opinions are unimportant,” Riaz said.
Ben nodded tightly. “So the gunmen kill Salgado’s son and Salgado takes his revenge. . . .”
Riaz’s eyebrows flickered. “That’s what the Americans want, isn’t it?”
“I’m American.”
“I’m sorry. You look . . .”
“Palestinian-American.”
“Oh,” Riaz said, and left it there.
“This has been going on for seventy-two hours now, Colonel. They ran out of food and water twelve hours ago, which means you’re running out of time.”
“That’s the idea.”
Ben looked toward Pablo Salgado, struggling to light a cigarette in a trembling hand, his own soldiers who had accompanied him powerless to do anything but hold the match. He saw Salgado as a man, a father.
Ben turned back toward Riaz. “They’ve asked for food.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve refused.”
“Of course. My troops are in position, señor. I expect to receive the okay to storm the building once night falls.”
Ben’s mouth tightened. He checked the sky. Another ninety minutes of light, two hours at the outside. Riaz wouldn’t be too concerned about casualties; he had already made that clear. Ben looked toward Salgado, a father about to lose a son to another kind of senseless war.
Ben yanked the cell phone from Riaz’s belt and thrust it toward him. “There’s been a change in plans. Tell the men inside the food is coming.”
Riaz gave Ben a long look and snickered, flashing a set of yellowed teeth. “You have no authority here, Inspector. You are strictly an observer.”
“An
d right now I’m observing a man on the verge of causing the United Nations to pull out of his country in total,” Ben said, counting on the chance that Riaz didn’t see through his bluff. “How do you think your government would feel about that, Colonel?”
Riaz’s face reddened. “What do you want, señor?” he asked, barely able to contain his anger.
“To deliver the food they’ve been asking for.”
Riaz caught the look in Ben’s eyes and nodded slowly. “My men will not help you. You’re on your own.”
Ben continued holding the phone out until Riaz snatched it from him. “That’s nothing new.”
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Chapter 3
M
ohammed Sahib yanked open the warehouse door and, smiling, beckoned the woman to follow him inside. “Is better than what you were expecting, yes?”