by Greig Beck
“Pretty big for a washerwoman.” He clicked his fingers at one of the other men. “Hey, get the ASVs on the line; get us a visual.”
All the five guards now strained to see the approaching figure. Zaid frowned. “Looks like they’re wearing a niqab, but … I think it must be a man, or the biggest woman in the world.”
Hajii still grinned as he lowered his field glasses. “It is a washerwoman. See, she brings her washing machine with her.” He guffawed.
Jamal Barzani, their superior officer on watch, joined them. He motioned with his head. “Someone better get down there and get that fool off the road. The traffic is backing up.”
Horns blared, and the lanes still open became sluggish as drivers slowed to stare or yell abuse at the slow moving man. But on he came, one foot after the other, bent forward, his deep shawl hanging loosely, totally covering his face. The giant man never looked left or right, just walked on as if the world around him didn’t exist.
Zaid heard Jamal call his name and he turned to his officer. “You’ve notified the ASVs?”
Zaid nodded.
“Good.” Jamal leaned on the railing. “Go down there, take Hajii, and be careful. Could be a diversion.” He went to turn away, but paused then spun back. “Call it in to HQ. Just in case.”
Zaid and Hajii both groaned, but nonetheless shouldered their automatic weapons, went to the end of the tower platform, and descended the steps to the street. Shoulder to shoulder they jogged down the roadway.
“By all the prophets.” Hajii slowed. “It is a giant.”
Zaid also slowed. “Still think it’s the local washerwoman?”
Even hunched forward, the figure was taller than both men; straightened, he would have stood nearly seven feet tall.
“Cover me.” Zaid walked forward while Hajii, who was cradling his rifle in his arms, brought the barrel around in the direction of the huge figure.
Zaid held up a hand. “Hey, you there, stop.”
The giant ignored him, or didn’t hear him.
“Hey, you. I said, halt!”
The huge person lumbered on, neither looking one way nor the other. Zaid turned to shrug at his colleague. In turn, Hajii shook his head and then pointed his gun in the air. He fired twice, the reports loud even over the sounds of the traffic.
The being stopped, and there was an almost imperceptible lifting of his head, as though checking on his whereabouts. He was now over the river and only a half mile from the direct center of the Zone.
“Identification papers.” Zaid came forward, feeling his heart race in his chest. There was a strange smell surrounding the figure, like old meat left out in the sun. Zaid kept his hand on his gun. Even though the person’s head had lifted slightly, he still had no hope of seeing the face underneath the folds of the long cowl.
The man suddenly shrugged off the large pack, and let it slide to the ground. Chips of road pavement flicked out, and Zaid felt the thump of the impact through the soles of his feet. Whatever it is, it must have enormous weight, he thought.
The huge hands came around to the pack, and Zaid saw they were ripped and scored with raw scars in the shape of some sort of unintelligible Arabic script. The fingers worked slowly and methodically to unstrap the pack, and flip the top open. Zaid leaned forward, his eyes suddenly going wide.
“Bomb!”
The single shout seemed to freeze time and space for a fraction of a second. In a city once wracked with shootings, kidnappings, and sectarian tension, this one word was the most feared. It was like yelling shark at a crowded beach.
People screamed and ran, cars sped away or tried to futilely back up. Zaid and Hajii raised their weapons, screaming orders, their training taking over, and the ASV machine gun turrets swung around.
With the pack now open, the man straightened, flipped back his cowl, and looked skyward, revealing his dead gaze, and a patchwork of scars and differing hued flesh, as though the huge, monstrous being was a human quilt sewn together. On his carved face, his lips opened, as if the thing wanted to speak, but could not.
Zaid fired first, immediately followed by Hajii. Their M16A4s each had thirty round clips, and both were set to full automatic. Two streams of 62-grain rounds smacked into the massive body at close range. The giant being’s clothing dappled and jumped from the strikes, but the man didn’t go down. Instead, he simply bent back to the drum-sized package.
The two Guardian Armored Security Vehicles opened up with their turret mounted M2HB Browning machine guns. The heavy caliber weapons chewed up the road surface as they traced a line toward the figure, at last belting into him. One of his trunk-like arms was nearly blown from his shoulder, and fist-sized chunks of flesh exploded from his neck and trunk. But if the thing felt pain, if he heard or sensed anything, he didn’t show it.
Finally, he reached into the pack with his remaining good arm, and then pressed down hard on something. The world turned white-hot.
*
“It’s all gone.” Five-star General Marcus “Chili” Chilton threw the folder onto the desk. “The International Zone is gone; even the surrounding land will be uninhabitable for the next decade, and that’s only if we get scrubbers in there.”
He sat down heavily. “Sixty thousand dead. That’ll end up more like a hundred thousand once the critically injured die. And that included a helluva lot of our people.” He sighed. “Greg Swan and his family were in there. Good people, all vaporized.”
Chilton turned to Jim Harker, his staff sergeant. “Thirty fucking kilotons, Jim. Bigger than Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined, and the first goddamn thermonuclear device to be set off in a major city for over seventy years.” He clasped one fist in another. “A big tactical weapon, a city killer, brought right to our front door.”
“Walked to our front door,” Harker said softly. “Jack Hammerson is calling them Travelers; he’s sent us some images you should see.” He called up the data on his tablet and handed it to Chilton. “It’s just like Soran.”
Chilton stared at the small screen for a moment. “Yeah, just like Soran.” He snorted softly as he watched the satellite trace track backwards in time. “And emanating from Mosul again.”
Harker nodded.
Chilton laid down the tablet and sat back. “We burned through a lot of blood and treasure in Iraq, we’re pulled out for less than a year, and already its cities are being overrun by medieval barbarians. They’re beheading, burying alive, butchering, and raping their way across the countryside. Many can’t even read or write, and now they suddenly get access to nukes? This is not a good picture being painted here.”
Chilton stared into the distance. “We should go back in, to Mosul. But it would take a thousand troops and a mountain of armor to fight our way into that city. Congress would never allow it.”
“And even if you got approval, what if you managed to get your troops and mountain of armor to kick down Mosul’s front door, and they had another nuke, just waiting for you?” Harker shook his head. “Can’t bring ashes home in body bags, sir.”
Chilton turned, his face grim. “We still need to go in.”
“We need to go in, but can’t be seen in there. Need something that can travel under the radar, but has high lethality.”
Chilton picked up the small computer tablet, and looked once again at the screen images. “Hammerson gave us this, did he? Seems he’s already taking an interest.”
Chilton’s finger tapped on the desk for a moment as his eyes narrowed. “If I know that old hardhead, he’s already halfway there.” He leaned forward and snatched up a phone. “Get me Jack Hammerson, now.”
*
Hammerson put the phone down – the Iraq mission was a green light. He looked back to his screen. It was a shot of the Middle East taken from low orbit. A huge oily stain spread across the landscape, from the center of Baghdad, out for a hundred miles, almost touching the city of Fallujah to the west.
He recast the impression timeline. Once again the HRE trace had emanated
from Mosul, and this time it was a 220-mile walk. Hammerson frowned, and pulled out a calculator, tapping in numbers. He wrote the result and began again. When he finished he compared the numbers and then sat back.
“You sons of bitches left at the same time, didn’t you?”
Based on his calculations, the walking bomb vectors, the Travelers, had set off from Mosul at the same time, the extra distance to the ground zero point at the Zone had delayed the second bomb detonation. Hammerson looked at the time line – the speed and pace were constant for days on end. This vector didn’t sleep, didn’t deviate, and never stopped, not even for a sip of water.
“Who or what the fuck are you guys?”
Hammerson rubbed both hands through his iron-gray crew cut before springing forward and snatching up his phone to call their electronics surveillance factory beneath the base. He sought out Gerry Harris, a friend and the man responsible for coordinating the constellation of orbiting birds that fed back a lot of the high-altitude intelligence from over the United States mainland, and also much of the globe.
He got him on first ring. “Gerry, it’s Jack, I need a favor. Can you tap into the Iraqi communications grid and find me any data from the last twenty-four hours relating to the Zone?”
“Easy. What are you looking for, Jack? Ah, wait, the nuke in Baghdad, right?” There was a furious tapping of keys. “Give me a few minutes. I’ll extract comms and bounce around the security grids for any stored CCTV.”
“Good man, Gerry, I’ll be here.”
Hammerson went back to his mission files and started to select a team. He wanted a small unit – two or three bodies, max. He had several HAWCs off-mission. He needed the best, the most formidable and experienced, and given they might need some local support, he had the perfect candidates in mind.
He selected several classified HAWC files, and then called up each individually. Firstly, there was Alex Hunter, the mission leader. His picture was at the side of screen file. Hunter was six foot two and had a brutally handsome face that could turn women’s heads or deliver a stare that’d freeze combatants to the spot. Alex Hunter was his protégé, and in some ways he was like a son. After all, Hammerson knew he was responsible for raising Alex from nothing – first to the HAWC ranks, and then later bringing him back from the brink of death.
Hammerson stared at the photograph. Hunter was older now but didn’t show it, other than a haunted sadness behind his eyes. After a mission in Chechnya, Hunter had suffered a catastrophic battlefield trauma and was brought back to the HAWCs more dead than alive. He’d been expected to live out his life in a vegetative state until his body withered, perhaps with his mind trapped inside, screaming to be free. But Hammerson had handed him over to the newly formed ASRU, the Alpha Soldier Research Unit of Fort Detrick’s Medical Command Installation. Hunter was to be their test subject for the experimental Arcadian treatment. It wasn’t expected to do more than deliver some cerebral stimulation for enhanced cognizance and muscular mobility. After all, the man was little more than a vegetable. But Alex Hunter had woken – and was much more than he had been. In fact, much more than anyone had ever been on the planet.
He was the one real success of the Arcadian treatment. Something already in Hunter’s system had bonded at the DNA level, changing him – mostly for good. He had increased strength, increased speed, improved cognitive abilities and wound recovery. But there were dark psychological side effects, some which nearly destroyed him. Hunter managed them, but the monster from the Id lurked inside the man. His fury was chained for now, but always there, waiting to break free.
Hammerson half smiled. The codename had stuck; Hunter wasn’t just the only Arcadian subject, now he was the Arcadian.
Hammerson’s phone buzzed and he lifted it to his ear. “Gerry?”
“Got something, Jack. Weird, but it might fit. No footage, but a call from the suspension bridge’s watchtower over the Tigris. Seems they had someone walking across the span bridge, carrying something on their back. The words they used in Arabic translated to: it looked like a giant.”
“Carrying a thousand-pound nuke on its back?” Hammerson frowned. Even Hunter would struggle with that. And this guy carried it, day and night, for hundreds of miles. Impossible, he thought.
“A walking WMD; like I said, weird,” Gerry said. “Give me a call if you need anything else.”
“You got it, and thanks, Gerry.”
Hammerson put the phone down and looked again at Alex’s picture. “Send a WMD to find a WMD.”
He flicked to the next screen. The scarred face of Second Lieutenant Casey Franks appeared. She had been HAWC Special Forces for a number of years. Standing five foot ten she was the most ferocious HAWC they had for hand-to-hand combat, and spent her time training her body – ripping it and punishing it – until she looked like she was assembled from whipcord and iron. With ice blue eyes and a snub nose, her face may have been called attractive once, but a cleft scar running from just below her left eye down to her chin pulled her cheek slightly to one side, giving her appearance a permanent sneer. If you ever needed someone to kick a door down and go through it to Hell, she’d be your first choice.
Hammerson selected her for the mission and moved to his last team member. The next image made him smile as the broad face of Sam Reid stared back at him. Sam was a two-legged tank, standing at six foot eight.. He was older than the rest of the team by a few years, and a man who exuded total confidence and calm. He was as laid-back as they came and was “Uncle Sam” to the team. Sam had been personally recruited by Hammerson himself – he was an ex-Ranger, 75th Regiment, just like he had been.
A previous mission to the Amazon had ended badly for Sam, with him shattering his L1 and L2 spinal plates, and worse, severing the cord. But fortuitously, advancements in bionics and battlefield armor had moved to field-test phase, so a few years back, Hammerson had authorized Sam for a trial of the new MECH suit – or part of it. The Military Exoskeleton Combat Harness was designed as the next-generation heavy-combat armor. On Sam, the half-body synaptic electronics were a molded framework built onto, and into, the unresponsive lower half of his body.
The hyperalloy-composite exoskeleton framework was light, flexible and a hundred times tougher than steel. Sam could now do anything he could before, with a few small advantages like being able to run at fifty miles per hour and kick a hole in a metal door.
Hammerson selected him for the mission. Sam also had another role. He was the closest thing to a friend that Alex Hunter had. If Alex suffered one of his fury-episodes and things started to go bad, then Sam was probably the only guy able to talk him back down.
Three top HAWCs was all Hammerson needed. The team was small enough to reduce chances of detection, but each member was the equivalent of a platoon when it came to skill, experience, and lethality. Working on foreign soil came with added risk. And when it was a war zone, that risk was magnified a hundredfold. They’d need local Intel.
Hammerson laughed softly. “Better the devil you know.” He lifted his phone. “Margie, get me General Meir Shavit.”
*
“Do you know how many countries in the Middle East would like to see the total annihilation of Israel, Jack?” Shavit breathed noisily as he waited.
“Most of them,” Hammerson replied evenly.
“Yes. We can engage and defeat any army in our neighborhood; we have done it before. But if one of them suddenly had the ability to carry out that desire to totally annihilate us, or to arm a proxy to do it on their behalf, without even having to show their face?” There was a low growl over the line. “Jack, this is a scenario that cannot be allowed to stand.”
“Then we have common objectives. This is not just your problem, General. This is a global problem,” Hammerson said.
“We have two simple objectives – find the current stockpile, and destroy it. Then we must seek the source, and that too must be destroyed.” Shavit breathed raspingly for a few seconds. “And we must seek that source on wh
atever path it takes us. Are you ready for that, Jack?”
Hammerson knew what Shavit was saying. There were only a few countries in the region that had the technology and capability to supply nuclear material, or perhaps even a fully functioning bomb to the rogue states. Pakistan and North Korea were suspects, but the crosshairs were also on Iran. No one knew exactly what they were capable of, and every time they refused UN inspections, stalled for time, or played politicians for fools, they were suspected of furiously building up their own capabilities in their underground sites.
Hammerson’s mind whirled. If the path led somewhere dark, would he be forced to look away for political expediency? Hammerson smiled with little humor; his role was without politics – Chilton made it that way. In his world, he decided what was right and what was wrong. A threat to the USA or its allies had to be met head on and totally obliterated. And in that regard, his and Shavit’s objectives aligned.
“We stand with you, General.”
“Good, Jack. It is a nasty business, and one we warned would come one day,” Shavit rasped. “I fear these detonations are but the opening act to a much greater performance yet to come.”
“What do you know about them, General?” Hammerson sat forward.
“We know they were brought in by a new type of suicide bomber. But how can this be? Our experts tell us that the first device, detonated at ground level in Soran, would have weighed about five hundred pounds. The next detonation in Iraq was even larger, and the containment and detonation package was estimated to be closer to nine hundred pounds. How can a single man even lift that, let alone carry it for over two hundred miles?”
“They can’t,” Hammerson said. “Or at least no ordinary man can. We call them Travelers, and something isn’t right about them.”
“There are forces who would consign us to a fiery end in the blink of an eye. I fear they are marching to our door. This cannot be left unanswered.” Shavit coughed dryly. “I know you are with us, Jack. But are your masters? That I’m not so sure about.”