by Greig Beck
“Keep going,” Adira said.
Casey scoffed. “Holy shit, where’s the freaking cock?” She craned her head. “There’s nothing down there. Hey, maybe its not a man after all.”
“What the hell is going on here?” Sam couldn’t hide the disgust in his voice.
Alex reached into the crate to turn the head again. “It’s not a man, not a woman, not an anything. Mary Shelley, eat your heart out.” He felt an odd sensation under his fingertips. “No pulse, but there’s … something.”
Adira held up a strip of material she had kept from the table. “This cloth, I believe it’s a headband. Terrorists carry a prayer, or a plea to enter paradise when about to go into battle. Perhaps this, this thing, was meant to carry the name of its target – Al-Rûm.”
“Giant pack mules. The damned Iranians are loading them up here, and then setting them loose. But …” Sam rubbed a hand up through his hair. “But this one is dead, if it ever was alive.”
Adira turned the strip of material over. “More words.” She frowned, trying to make sense of the ancient script. She spoke them softly, halting and starting again until she had the translation right.
Alex felt a tingle run up his spine to his scalp, as if static electricity had filled the room. “Jesus.” The lump of flesh beneath his hand quivered, and the thing’s eyes opened. Alex went to jump back, but one huge hand shot up to grab him by the throat.
Alex gagged as the large hand compressed. He used both his own hands to tear at the huge fingers, but he had never felt such power from another human being in his life. As the fingers started to close together, the thing sat up, its expression as slack and indifferent as if it were waking up, simply rising from bed.
Sam and Jon-Pierre rushed forward, grabbing at the hand, then forearm, without any effect.
“Feels—like—iron—get back!” Sam let go of the thing’s arm as it started to rise up. He then raised one huge boot, intending to use the MECH assisted framework to stomp down on it with pile-driver force.
In one rapid movement, the being swung Alex’s body like a baseball bat into Sam and Jon-Pierre, knocking them both to the ground, and then flung Alex into a far wall with enough force that some of the bricks shifted in their mortar.
Alex looked broken, and the French pilot and Sam lay still.
*
The thing then rose to its full height, and towered over all of them, its face slack. As it went to step from the crate, Casey braced her legs.
“Fuck you – fire!”
Casey, Adira, Eli, and Moshe opened up, dozens of silenced rounds smacking into the dead flesh with a sound more like that of a paddle on a side of beef.
Where the flesh was exposed, they could see holes puncturing the flesh, but no blood flowed. The being reached down to grab the ten-foot crate it had risen from and flung it at Casey, who had to dive fast to avoid the massive projectile.
“Do not let it leave,” Adira shouted, holding a handgun in each hand, and firing up into its face. Holes opened in the skull and chips of bone were blasted away, but if the thing registered pain, it gave no sign.
The patchwork being then moved fast, grabbing a reloading Moshe Levy, who managed to yell a curse before it took him in both hands and lifted. Moshe pulled free a dark blade and slashed at the hands and wrists of the thing, but he might as well have been trying to cut steel cables. In one quick movement, the huge thing’s hands came together, twisting and screwing Moshe’s body like an old rag. Gurgled pain was now overlaid with the sound of bones crunching and flesh and tendons popping as the Mossad agent was mangled together.
“No-ooo!” Adira yelled, running in and side kicking the thing. But she bounced off as ineffectively as if she had kicked a wall.
“Form up,” Casey screamed. “Concentrate firepower on …”
The thing opened its mouth but no words came. Its totally white orbs seemed to fix on her, and she sensed it tense, coiling for an attack. She knew what was coming. Bullets were useless and she dropped her gun. She then pulled out two of her longest blades, holding one in each hand.
“Then come and get it, motherfucker.”
Ignoring the bullets Eli and Adira still pumped into it, the being opened huge arms, and just as it began to accelerate the few dozen feet across the floor to Casey, there was a flicker of movement from behind it. One of the large flat girders that had been stacked near the wall chopped down and across in a blur.
One moment, the thing’s deformed face was glaring down at Casey, and the next, its head was rolling across the ground. The huge being then collapsed like a giant sack of meat.
Alex stood behind it, the girder in his hand. There was silence for several seconds as they all continued to stare at the thing.
Casey still gripped her blades tight. “What the fuck was that thing?” She jammed her knives forcefully back into their scabbards.
Adira shook her head, her lips working in a silent prayer. “Takwin.”
“What did you say?” Casey asked.
“Franks.” Casey turned at the sound of Alex’s voice. “Get me a bag.” Alex held up the huge head by the hair and stared into its face. The thing’s lips still moved.
Sam came back to the group, helping the French pilot to stand. Jon-Pierre looked at the ghastly trophy Alex held aloft, his face chalk-white.
“Can we go home now?”
*
Ten miles south of Mosul, Alex and the small group moved fast, heads down and racing the approaching dawn. Alex slowed his pace, dropping back to come abreast of Adira, who seemed lost in thought.
“Hey, I’ve known you a few years now.” He looked across at her, but she didn’t look up. “Never seen you like you were back there. You were scared.” He waited, but she trudged on, head still down. “And I don’t think it was that thing that scared you, but something else … maybe what it represented.”
Sam eased up beside them and Adira looked up then, first to the big HAWC, and then Alex. Her jaw was set. “Have either of you ever heard of something called the Golem?”
“Sure, who hasn’t. Something like the Hebrew superman, wasn’t he?” Alex said.
She snorted softly. “Something like that.” She sighed. “This might sound crazy, but the story of the Golem begins with a Prague rabbi in the 16th century, called Judah Loew ben Bezalel, who created an artificial being. He named it Golem, and called upon it to defend the Jews from attacks by Rudolf II, under the Holy Roman Emperor.”
She looked up, as if checking to see if either of them was laughing. Satisfied, she went on. “The Golem was made from nothing but the clay from the banks of the Vltava River, and brought it to life through rituals and Hebrew incantations. It is said a prayer was either inscribed on his forehead, or inserted into his mouth.” She smiled weakly. “Golems are extremely powerful, but are not thinking creatures. They act on commands only – you tell them to do something, and they do it without question. And they don’t stop until that task is done, or they are destroyed.”
“This thing was certainly powerful,” Alex said. “But it was flesh and blood, not clay.”
“Yes, flesh and blood, sort of,” she said. “But there are similar legends from other cultures. The Middle East is an age-old place, with civilizations dating back thousands of years, before science, to a time of magic and alchemy. I recently had the pleasure of working with an old friend of yours, Professor Matt Kearns. You might like to ask him about ancient magic.”
“We will.” Sam grinned. “As soon as he’s out of therapy.”
She nodded, as if expecting it. “In our search for the Necronomicon, Matt and I came across many ancient texts. But there was one I remember, named the Book of Stones, that referred to something called the Takwin – the creation of artificial, or synthetic life. In the 9th century, long before the Golem was even thought of, there was a man, a great Muslim alchemist, Jābir ibn Hayyan, who believed it was possible to create this type of life.”
Adira looked up at the glow on the horizon
and inhaled deeply before going on. “Jābir ibn Hayyan’s work was purely focused on Takwin, and he even had several maps or recipes for creating false creatures such as scorpions, snakes, and, it is said, even humans in a alchemical laboratory. The created beings were without thought or conscience and totally under the control of their creator.” She looked up. “Who wouldn’t want an army of warriors like that?”
“You seem to know an awful lot about this,” Alex said, his eyebrows raised. Then he slowly turned, looking back the way they had come. Sam did the same.
“Anything?” Sam asked. He lifted a scope to his eye.
“No. Just a feeling.” After another moment, Alex waved them on. Casey caught them up as the HAWC leader turned back to Adira. “What you’re telling us is all just one big weird puzzle,” he said.
She nodded. “Yes, it is like pieces of a puzzle that mean nothing by themselves, and are therefore easy to ignore. But when more start turning up, a picture starts to emerge.” She looked at him. “This is what is happening now. The picture is emerging and becoming horribly clear.”
“You know, there are recent precedents for using dark magic,” Sam said.
“Like what?” Casey asked.
“During the final stages of WW2, Hitler started to search for anything that would give him an advantage. He turned to mysticism, and began a global hunt for holy weapons. There were two items he desperately wanted. The first was the Ark of the Covenant, the final resting place of the Ten Commandments, which he never found.”
“Bullshit. That’s just a made-up story,” Casey sneered, but then her brow knitted when Sam shook his head. “Isn’t it?”
“Oh, it’s real all right,” the big HAWC said. “The second item Adolf searched for, the Spear of Destiny, sometimes known as the Holy Lance, he had more success with. This is the weapon used by the Roman soldier who pierced the side of Jesus of Nazareth as he hung dying on the Cross. Hitler obtained it, used it, and nearly conquered the world.”
Adira nodded. “Napoleon, Caesar, Mao, all megalomaniacal leaders, sought and used dark magic or second sight – mages and seers – to gain a military edge. The Iranian mullahs also seek this advantage, and perhaps they have finally found a way to translate the Book of Stones’ secrets.”
Alex exhaled, his mind whirling. Part of him wanted to scoff like Casey, but he had seen things in his life that would tear at a normal person’s sanity. And he had seen with his own eyes the thing in the room – its dead flesh, suddenly becoming reanimated. The world still had so many secrets.
Adira looked up at him. “You asked if I was scared? Yes, I was, but not for myself. There is an old Jewish prophecy that says that Israel will stand until the dead rise to wage war against it. Maybe someone has managed to find a way to get the dead to fight.”
“The rabbi stopped the Golem by erasing part of the inscription carved into it,” Sam said. “Maybe there’s something similar we can use.”
Alex shrugged. “We beat it. We proved it could be stopped.”
“We beat it?” Adira looked back at the ground. “There were five crates, four empty. You beheaded one, and we know of three more that were deployed. Two carried out their mission, and one we took down in the Golan Heights. That leaves one unaccounted for. Where is it? Whose country is it walking toward right now?”
They walked in silence for another few minutes, until Alex reached out to grab her shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll find them and figure this out – together.”
She smiled weakly, but didn’t look convinced. Alex had wanted to tell her that they’d kill them all, but he knew they hadn’t even killed the one whose head he carried. He felt the head now, still squirming, as if silently screaming in his backpack.
*
The Mosul captives, now free, ran from the city. They headed back to their hometowns, by stolen pushbike, by car, or on foot.
One man in a tattered blue shirt half ran and half staggered back to a small oasis he knew. With still a quarter of a mile to go, he saw a tiny figure running toward him, her ragged dress flying, her long dark hair waving behind her like a shining banner.
Leyla leaped into his arms, hugging him and sobbing into his neck. After a moment she pulled back.
“Papa.” She smiled, blinking away wet eyes. “I prayed, and you were right; they came. The angels. Did you seem them – was it them that saved you?”
He nodded. “They saved us all, and sent the bad men all to hell.”
“Good.” She nodded, satisfied, and then closed her eyes. “Please God, now bring down your hammer on Hell itself.”
CHAPTER 8
Hammerson read the intercepted Israeli information brief, and collated it with Alex’s data from the desert. The debris from the Golan Heights indicated enough raw high energy material to construct a bomb of about thirty-five kilotons – bigger than both Soran and the Baghdad blasts. They were getting more audacious and deadly.
Alex had said they uncovered plans to transport one to Italy. That was a horrifying thought in anyone’s book. But more worrying was the fact that they believed it was the Iranian IRG that might be behind it. Hammerson exhaled, sitting back, his mind working on plans and permutations.
If it was true, that the Iranians were behind the nuclear blasts responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of innocents – including many Americans – it was grounds for a full-scale war.
Hammerson stared into the distance as he thought through the implications. The blasts also meant the Iranians had nuclear capability, no matter what they professed to the UN inspectors. Hammerson knew they didn’t have perfect ICBM technology, so missile delivery was still years away. But someone walking, driving, or flying a big tactical nuke anywhere in the world, meant nothing other than an aggressive plan of gross annihilation.
Why? he wondered. Why this huge risk? We could turn their entire country into slag.
His fingers tapped on his desk. There were the final negotiations between the Iranian government and the White House going on. Washington was seeking to enlist their help in fighting the Hezar-Jihadi in return for allowing them to keep their uranium enrichment program.
By having the terrorists seem to be using weapons of mass destruction, then it would add to a sense of urgency on the West’s part. Time was the enemy of good negotiation, and creating this pressure on the adversary was the key to pushing them into a bad deal.
The Iranians had even called for a combined military force, and wanted the US and other western armies to gather, to help overwhelm the terrorist fighters. They had even suggested a staging point outside of Dabiq, near Syria. The White House was hailing it as a grand gesture of cooperation. And following two nukes going off in the Middle East, the idea had already gained traction.
Still, it didn’t make sense, Hammerson thought. There was something he was missing. He steepled his fingers at his chin, thinking. If he could prove the Iranians were behind the blasts, or that they already had working nukes, then the negotiations would collapse. There’d be a lot of pissed off people on both sides. Not to mention the grounds for war. But he knew if he passed this up the line, there would be immediate political interference. The CIA would intercept any Intel he provided.
He knew they needed more information. They needed to go in. Hammerson’s senior confidant was General Chilton, theirs was the Commander in Chief himself, who seemed to want this deal as much as the Iranians. Hammerson would be outranked and outflanked. But only if he decided to share what he knew.
Chilton’s last instructions were for him to follow the leads, then find and remove all threats to America and the free world.
Hammerson smiled. He already had his orders.
CHAPTER 9
Tel Aviv, Israel Defense Forces, Biological Containment Room-7
Alex, Sam, and Adira stood around the steel surgical table. The fragments of charred flesh recovered from the Golan Heights were now all in sealed jars. But the thing that held their riveted attention was the head of the being Alex had b
rought with him.
It balanced on the stump of its neck, twitching, eyes rolling, and mouth working. Thankfully, the eyes never seemed to focus, because if the thing managed to stare into their eyes, it might have been too horrifying to comprehend.
“How?” Adira said. “That’s all I want to know; how?”
Yair Shamir unfolded his arms. He had on plastic gloves and in one hand he held a long steel probe. He put the probe beside the head, and then gripped it in both hands, rolling it gently to the side, exposing the ragged flesh of the neck.
“See, no blood.” He bobbed his head. “When did you say you removed the head?”
“Last night … approximately ten hours ago.” Alex kept his eyes on the thing’s twitching features.
“Yesterday?” Yair raised his eyebrows, picking up the probe. “There’s no blood, and there hasn’t been blood in this thing for weeks, perhaps months.” He indicated the tubes and flesh hanging from the neck, and then scraped at it with the probe. But all that came free was a sticky black substance more like tar than any sort of bodily fluid or excretion.
He leaned forward onto the table, resting on his forearms. “Cells are wonderful things. They can grow, they can repair themselves, and even replace their own parts. They can also split and duplicate themselves. We have cells that are highly specialized – some programmed to be sensitive to light, heat, sound, or pressure; others for the creation of materials such as hair and bone; and still others for the manufacture of things like milk, hormones and adrenalins.”
He saw Adira’s impatient expression, and sped up. “We also have nerve cells, which transmit electrical impulses – how our brain gets our biological mechanics to work, which gives us movement. In fact, some would say, we are nothing but water, and small packets of electrical charges stored in the minute back alleys of our mind.”
He used the probe to rake at the darkened flesh again. A sweet cloying smell was filling the room the more he scraped at it. Yair narrowed his eyes, and leaned in closer to the stump.