The Gauntlet

by Mike Kraus

  While the tech stood up to Malcolm at first, the threat works and he backs off. Malcolm nods and relaxes his posture, taking a step back from the man. As the tech works, Malcolm tugs at his collar, wishing he could douse himself in a bath filled with ice water. The heat isn’t the only thing bothering him, though. There’s still a nagging feeling in the back of his head about the requests he’s been fulfilling for his contact, Mr. Amari. The requests seem to be benign; Malcolm visually inspected the contents of the crates that came through the port and found nothing irregular. Still, though, he knows in his gut that what he’s doing must be a precursor to something larger.

  What choice does he have, though? He became a slave to Mr. Amari the day he didn’t report the payoff of his gambling debts. Every time he’s ‘consulted’ in exchange for more cash to pay for more debts or luxuries in his life he’s sold another piece of his soul. Whenever he thinks about how deep he is with Mr. Amari he pushes the thoughts away and focuses on something else. Even if he wanted to get out—and with the way the money is he doesn’t—he couldn’t.

  Shaking off his feelings of apprehension, Malcolm finishes up his work at the port. When he’s done he heads to his car and leaves the port, dialing the temporary number on his burner phone. After a brief conversation with the person on the other end of the line, the call ends and he removes the battery from the burner phone and disposes of both the battery and the phone in a nearby dumpster.

  While the ‘consulting’ job at the port is the first of its kind, it is not the last. More jobs are assigned to Malcolm and he is soon tasked with instructing associates of Mr. Amari in how to deal with the imports on their own. Each new job brings a new, brief twinge of worry in the back of Malcolm’s mind, but he pushes it aside, consumed by his own greed and inextricably trapped in a web of his own design. Unfortunately, though, it is a web that not only endangers himself, but countless others as well.

  Chapter 5

  The last thing Frank Richards could remember was intense heat, light and sound before everything faded to black. As the world pushed through the darkness and everything took on a fuzzy tint, he first became aware of an intense ringing in his ears. After a few seconds—or minutes, he couldn’t tell which—the ringing started to die down, though it was immediately replaced by what sounded like distant shouting.

  “Get up! Frank, get up now!”

  Frank Richards forced his eyelids to open as he awoke in hell. The sound of gunfire came through in the background followed by another explosion and the shouts of Jackson who was standing nearby.

  “Get him up! We have to move right now!”

  Linda pulled Frank up and checked him over, nodding with satisfaction before pushing him toward Jackson. “He looks fine! Just a little banged up!” Frank stumbled forward, glancing briefly at what looked like an enormous amount of blood on the side of Linda’s face.

  “Are you hurt?” He yelled without realizing it, his ears still ringing.

  “Just a scratch; keep going! We have to get to cover!” Linda pushed Frank forward again and he looked around, his memory suddenly flooding back to him. They had been in a Humvee when an RPG hit one of the back wheels, the force of the explosion sending the vehicle rolling over. The Humvee’s back left section was in tatters but the interior was mostly intact thanks to its armor plating.

  A piece of glass nicked the side of Linda’s head causing the bleeding that looked far worse than it actually was. Jackson had survived relatively unscathed but Frank had suffered the worst as he briefly lost consciousness and was dealing with a pounding headache from the concussion suffered when his head met the roof of the vehicle with an overabundance of speed.

  Another rocket whistled by and exploded several dozen feet behind the trio, prompting Frank to break out into a run before he tripped and fell next to Jackson who was taking cover behind a building. Linda helped Frank back up and sat him down next to Jackson before handing her wounded companion a rifle and grabbing the sides of his face to direct his attention to her.

  “Frank!”

  “What?”

  “You took a nasty hit on the head. We have to clear the path and once we do we’ll get a medic to check you out, okay? Just stay here and keep safe!”

  Frank nodded slightly, then winced in pain as the throbbing grew worse. Linda tapped Jackson on the shoulder as she spun around to crouch behind him. “Where the hell is unit two?”

  Jackson pulled out his radio and shouted into it as a small cluster of soldiers crouched behind a nearby wall began laying down suppressive fire on the main warehouse. “Unit two, report!”

  There was a squelch and a burst of static before the breathless voice of a soldier came back through the radio. “Almost there, sir! Thirty more seconds!”

  “Don’t wait for my order to engage; as soon as you see those sons of bitches you open fire, understand?”

  “Copy that!”

  Jackson slid his radio back onto his belt and peeked out from behind the building, peering through the scope on his rifle and firing off a few shots at a pair of exposed heads looking out through windows in the warehouse. Linda did the same, all while Frank sat next to them, his right hand pressed against the side of his aching head while cradling his rifle in his left arm.

  Just over thirty seconds later, a hail of gunfire erupted from the direction of the main building and Jackson stood to his feet though he still kept himself hidden behind their building. “That’s them! Everybody get ready to move out!” He grabbed his radio and shouted into it. “Take in the APC now!”

  The thrum of an enormous diesel engine filled the air, punching through the still-present ringing in Frank’s ears and causing him to sit up to see the source of the sound. The APC had been parked behind a nearby brick wall, out of sight of the soldiers and the ambushers in the main building. With the enemy distracted by the advance of the second unit, the APC roared to life and smashed through the bricks like they were made out of tissue paper. Frank scooted over near the edge of the building, behind Linda and Jackson, and watched the scene unfold, his headache all but forgotten.

  After taking an RPG from the main building, the other Humvee traveling with Jackson, Linda and Frank had laid down suppressive fire on the source of the RPG while the APC provided armored cover for them to escape. As soon as Linda and Jackson had pulled Frank from the wreck, the APC drove off, both to ensure it wouldn’t take any serious damage and to make the attackers think that it had gone off to circle around from another direction.

  The other two Humvees on the opposite side of the compound, meanwhile, had not been spotted by the attackers and stopped just outside the industrial complex. The soldiers moved in swiftly and on Jackson’s orders opened fire on the warehouse, both to provide a distraction and thin the herd of attackers as much as possible.

  With the enemy engaged the APC pushed forward, racing toward the warehouse at full speed. It didn’t slow down until the front end of the vehicle smashed through the side wall, rattling the entire structure and tearing huge chunks of sheet metal from where they had been so carefully riveted into place. Soldiers who had been forced to wait out the brief ambush inside the safety of the APC burst forth like a tidal wave as they moved through the warehouse. The enemy's two-dozen-strong advantage of superior numbers—and a surprise attack—meant nothing against the fury of the trained soldiers, and the mass of enemies in the warehouse was quickly put down.

  Jackson and Linda raced forward as the APC plowed into the building but by the time they arrived most of the fighting was over. As soon as they started moving Frank pushed himself to his feet and took off after them, not wanting to be left behind. He lagged far behind, though, as he walked forward over the open ground at a slow but steady pace, feeling particularly vulnerable since he was out of cover.

  He reached the warehouse as Jackson and Linda were talking to one of the soldiers who was in charge of the second unit. The rest of the soldiers were going through the various rooms in the place, calling out when each a
rea was clear. After the brief gun battle that ended when Linda and Jackson arrived there was relative silence in the warehouse. As Frank stepped up through the hole the APC made, though, there was a flurry of shouts from somewhere down below which were immediately followed by the sound of heavy gunfire.

  Linda whirled around, instinctively checking her surroundings and saw Frank leaning up against the APC, looking like he might collapse at any moment. “Frank?” Linda rushed to his side and helped him into the armored vehicle where he slowly sank down into a seat. “We told you to stay put!”

  “And let you have all the fun?” he cracked a smile. “Fat chance.”

  “Rollins!” Jackson called for her out in the warehouse and she patted Frank on the leg.

  “Stay here, okay? I’ll be right back.” She ran out as Jackson shouted for her again.

  “Rollins! You need to see this!”

  “Sorry,” she said, hurrying up to him, “Frank came over and I was getting him situated in the APC. What’s up?”

  Ignoring the update about Frank, Jackson pointed toward the far end of the warehouse. “They found something.”

  ***

  Jackson walked quickly through the mess of bloodied bodies, toppled-over boxes and twisted metal as he wound his way back through the warehouse to where one of the soldiers had told him the stairs were. Linda followed close behind, keeping a wary eye on the second level of the warehouse even though she knew that it had already been checked for any more attackers. At the back end of the warehouse stood a wide set of double doors, one of which had been blown off of its hinges. A soldier stood at the top of the steps, holding a radio in his hand and carrying a nervous expression on his face.

  “Is it down there?” Jackson stopped and addressed the soldier.

  “Yes, sir. Down and to the left. Some of the lights were broken in the firefight so watch your step.” He glanced at Linda and nodded at her. “Ma’am.”

  Jackson and Linda descended the stairs, each of them pulling out their flashlights and switching them on. While the smell of gunpowder pervaded the upper section of the warehouse, the first smell that reached Linda’s nostrils from the bottom level was that of sweat. She wrinkled her nose in response and cast her light about, trying to find the source of the odor.

  “It smells awful down here.” Jackson was the first to mention it and Linda nodded in agreement.

  “What could be the cause?”

  Jackson shrugged. “I don’t even know what they found. They just said that you, Frank and I needed to see what was down here.” Jackson took a deep breath and made a face. “I bet they’ve been living down here, underground so that they wouldn’t get spotted.”

  “How many were there?”

  “A couple dozen.”

  “Yeah that would explain it. I wonder what they’ve been doing, though.”

  “Sir!” a soldier ran up to Jackson. “It’s over here, sir.”

  “What is ‘it’ exactly?” Linda asked.

  “One of the crates, ma’am. The ones you’ve been looking for. We found one.”

  Jackson and Linda looked at each other with wide eyes and broke into a run as they followed the soldier back to where he had come from. The floor of the warehouse basement was concrete, though it was filled with cracks and crevices from years of use and abuse. The place had originally been used to store raw materials before they were processed in other areas of the compound but the virtual abandonment of the structure meant that the basement was more or less empty—aside from everything brought in by the attackers.

  A few makeshift stoves and cookpots sat in a corner, their exhaust vents leading into rickety-looking lengths of pipe that stretched up through the ceiling so that the smoke could vent out into the top floor of the building. Thin, ragged mats covered with dirt and grime were laid out along one wall, and the blankets and pillows that rested atop them seemed like they could give Linda head lice or fleas if she merely glanced at them for too long. In one corner, far from the makeshift kitchen and sleeping quarters, sat a pair of blue portable toilets that had been stolen from a nearby distributor. Linda cringed upon seeing these, not wanting to imagine what they looked or smelled like on the inside.

  At the end of the basement, tucked into a corner behind what looked like hastily-constructed walls made from scrap metal, sat a large metal crate. It was roughly four feet on each side with dull red paint that was peeling and chipped on all sides, a healthy amount of rust on the bottom and a top painted blue, of all things. As an object unto itself it had no mysterious, unusual or extraordinary properties but when Linda laid her eyes on it she felt a shiver run up her back as the hairs on her neck and arms stood on end.

  “This one of them?” Jackson spoke to a soldier standing nearby, holding a digital display in one hand and a small green wand in the other. He was waving the wand across the device as he stared at the screen, and looked up as Jackson spoke.

  “It sure looks that way, sir. Radiation’s off the charts compared to background. Whatever’s in here is smoking hot with radiation.”

  “Huh.” Linda replied. She walked up to the crate and opened the top as Jackson and the soldier holding the radiation detector both shouted at her to stop. She looked back at them and rolled her eyes. “Please. I’ve been exposed to enough bad stuff that a few seconds of this won’t matter.” She peeked inside the crate with her flashlight, waving it around before stepping back from the crate and nodding.

  “There something in there?” Jackson asked.

  “Mhm. Something big. Lots of wires. I’m not going near it again.”

  “Perhaps next time, ma’am, you could wait until I give the all clear before messing around with an explosive device.” The soldier reached out and gingerly closed the lid, doing his level best to keep the majority of his body as far from the crate as possible. Linda took another step back and looked at Jackson.

  “You know what this means?”

  “What?”

  “Proof.” The response came from behind Linda and Jackson. They turned to see Frank standing behind them, hand out against the wall as he walked along. He looked somewhat better than before but Linda could tell that he was still in pain.

  “Frank, what the—I told you to stay still!” She walked over to him and tried to help him sit down but he waved her off and sniffed a few times.

  “It smells like crap down here. Were they all living down here?”

  “It seems that way.” Linda looked back at Jackson. “What do you think? Is this thing enough proof for your superiors?”

  Jackson snorted with amusement. “Are you kidding me? We’ll have everyone with a working pair of legs and eyeballs out searching for these crates.”

  “Good. They shouldn’t be hard to find if they’re all leaking like this one.” He looked over at a pair of soldiers who were moving the bodies of a few of the attackers to one side of the basement and shouted. “Cooper! I need the camera and radio!”

  “On it!” The soldier ran off and Jackson turned back to look at the crate while scratching his chin.

  “I’ll get some pictures of this thing and we’ll send it up the chain. Of course you know that your traitor is going to pick up on it, right?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Linda replied. “We already alerted them when you called in before. This is just going to make an even bigger splash.”

  “How many of these things do you think there were?” Frank stood next to Linda, swaying slightly as he fought to stay upright.

  “Good question,” Jackson replied. “If they were keeping them back here then… a dozen? A couple dozen? I’m not sure.”

  Frank looked at Linda and swallowed hard. “That’s a lot of cities that could be in danger.”

  “Yeah, plus it sort of leads to an obvious question.”

  Jackson glanced in her direction. “Which is?”

  “Why didn’t they move this one out?”

  The trio was quiet as they pondered Linda’s question. Cooper appeared a moment later, bea
ring a radio and the camera that Jackson had requested. He got to work documenting everything about the crate that he possibly could including some of the radiation readings, pictures of the crates from all sides and a few photos of the device inside. When he was done he gave the equipment back to Cooper along with orders to broadcast it. Once Cooper was gone, Jackson spoke to the soldier who had been scanning the crate with the radiation detector.

  “How dangerous is it to be down here with this thing leaking like this?”

  “Not terribly, but I wouldn’t stay down here any longer than necessary. You won’t grow a third eye in the next fifteen minutes but you probably don’t want to dose yourself up with this stuff for no reason.”

  “Understood.” Jackson nodded. “We need to think about containment, though. I don’t like that we’re messing around with this thing without knowing what could set it off.” Jackson paused. “You got some bomb defusal training, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. I want you in a radiation suit checking this thing over for a trigger. Don’t mess with it any more than you have to, but figure out what makes it tick. Anything we can send up the chain to try and make it harder for the bad guys to set these things off is going to be another point for the good guys.”

  The soldier nodded and ran off. Jackson looked at Linda and Frank. “Let’s get everyone out of here and get upstairs. I’ll follow up on that call and you two can try to get in touch with Sarah again.”

  As they headed back up to the main floor of the warehouse, Linda had mixed feelings about the situation. On one hand she was elated that they had finally found one of the devices they were chasing, but she also had a nagging feeling that they were missing something. “Jackson?” Linda stopped on the stairs and peered back into the basement level. “What if they left this one here because it was damaged, and that’s why it’s leaking?”