Dark Rising

by Greig Beck

  General Shavit’s assistant opened the door and showed in the young woman who had been seated in the large comfortable waiting room outside the general’s office.

  ‘Boker tov, Captain Senesh,’ Shavit greeted her.

  ‘Shalom, General.’

  Adira Senesh stood stock-still at attention until the assistant departed and the door closed, then her face broke into a wide grin and she moved quickly to embrace the general, who was slowly getting to his feet.

  ‘You look well, Addy.’

  ‘I feel better for seeing you, Uncle.’

  Adira was Shavit’s favourite niece. Her name meant ‘mighty’ in ancient Hebrew, and it suited her. She was related to the famous Chana Senesh, who was sent by the Kibbutz Sdot Yam to save Jews in the Nazi-occupied countries and was betrayed to the Nazi regime. Severely tortured, she never informed on her friends and was sentenced to death by firing squad in 1944. Her bravery was exemplified by her refusal to be blindfolded so she could look the soldiers in the eye as they pulled their triggers. The general knew that the brave Senesh blood also flowed strongly through the veins of his handsome niece.

  Adira was above average height and had to bend slightly to kiss the general’s cheek. With a smooth olive complexion and dark eyes like pools of oil, she could have passed for any normal young woman who liked to spend her time perusing the shopping arcades of downtown Tel Aviv. However, when shaking her hand one felt the calluses and raw strength of a soldier trained in unarmed and armed combat. Adira Senesh was a captain in the Metsada and acknowledged as one of the best trained operatives in the field. She was responsible for single-handedly entering a Hamas terrorist tunnel network and rescuing a captured twenty-two-year-old border guard. No terrorists had survived.

  Her courage and skills were never questioned, but it was her mind that set her apart from the other Metsada professionals. She was a Middle East specialist, and had spent many years studying the present and past cultures, politics and military capabilities of Iran, Syria and Lebanon. She could speak and read Farsi, as well as many ancient Persian dialects. She made General Meir Shavit proud as an Israeli and an old soldier, but even more so as her uncle.

  ‘Come sit down with me, Addy, I need to speak with you.’

  The general waved her to a hard leather couch and poured each of them a small cup of strong black coffee from a silver urn. Then he sat opposite her and took a sip of his coffee. ‘We have problems with our friends in the east. Yesterday, our Iranian monitoring department picked up an enormous radiation signal emanating from about thirty miles north-east of Shiraz – probably at or under the Persepolis ruins.’

  Adira lowered her cup. ‘What type of radiation? What strength?’

  ‘Mainly gamma and some minor X-ray. The gamma sievert intensity was off the scale, and though it only flared for less than a second, it was at least blast strength.’

  Adira sat forward and put down her small china cup. The general watched her face carefully. He knew that current intelligence predicted the Iranians were not expected to have any real capability for nuclear fission for many years. The thought of them conducting tests with a potential working model was sickening for any Israeli. The Iranian president was a fanatic who believed he spoke with the authority of God. Many times he had called for Israel to be burned from the pages of history – most recently just days after he had boasted of Iran achieving nuclear fuel purification capability, when he had claimed that the ‘Zionist regime’ would soon be eliminated. The only thing that held the madman back was the knowledge of Israel’s military might. Though Iran was many times larger than Israel, it didn’t yet have the military technology, or the muscle and steel, to go head to head.

  The general was not alone in his view that if the Iranians gained weapons of mass destruction, the usual deterrent of MAD would not apply. The Mutually Assured Destruction principle only worked when a nation actually feared destruction; it was meaningless to a leader who believed that vaporising his people in a fiery conflict with Israel would make martyrs of them all. It was common knowledge that the new president of Iran, Mahmoud Moshaddam, was a deeply religious man who frequently quoted from Qur’anic scripture in his speeches.

  ‘Captain Senesh,’ the general continued, his use of her rank indicating the importance of what he was about to say, ‘I do not believe we can afford to take a wait-and-see position on this. I will be mobilising our network in Iran to gather information. If the Iranians have detonation capability, we would be taking a huge risk by sending in a strike – just a single Iranian nuclear blast over Israel would mean millions dead, and could perhaps lead to another world war. We will take that risk if we have to, but first we must try other options.’

  Adira held his gaze, a question in her dark eyes.

  The general breathed out slowly and a look of pain crossed his face. ‘We need to go in, Captain, but not alone this time. We need our muscular friends from across the water. The Americans are bound to go in, and when they do, we will be with them.’ General Meir Shavit paused and looked deep into his niece’s eyes. ‘Addy, Iran cannot have this terrible power, now or ever. You must bring it down around them; leave nothing standing, leave no one to remember anything.’

  Adira nodded once, her face like stone.

  ‘There is one more thing.’ The general handed Adira a sealed folder. The red cross on the front signified its secrecy. ‘The Americans have developed a new form of warfare, like nothing we have ever seen before. Our best agents have been able to obtain little more than a codename: Arcadian. We hope to have more information soon, but for now…’ He shrugged as he indicated the slimness of the file. ‘They will probably use this weapon on the mission, Addy. Seek it out, and bring it or the seeds of its creation back to us. It may be Israel’s only hope in the coming storm.’

  SIX

  Major Jack Hammerson stared at the computer in front of him but without seeing what was displayed on the screen; instead, his focus was turned inwards, contemplating the call he had just received from an old friend. General Meir Shavit had confirmed what Hammerson already knew about the Iranian gamma pulse, its strength and location, and that none of it was good.

  It had been one of America’s fears for decades: a nuclear-armed regime that hated the West. Everyone in the military had expected it to be the North Koreans – a nightmare, sure, but they were manageable, they were for sale. But Iran – shit! After twenty years, there was still no hint that they wanted to play ball. This was the start of an arms race across the Middle East that would lead to unsecured warheads being mislaid, sold or stolen, then potentially turning up in some terrorist’s arsenal. If some idiot with a hundred bags of ammonium nitrate could blow the shit out of an Oklahoma office block, kill 168 people and cause nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars worth of damage, then the thought of a nuke hidden in the back of a pick-up didn’t bear thinking about. For Israel, it was even worse – they literally had the devil on their doorstep.

  Hammerson gripped one of his large hands in the other and cracked his knuckles. The Israeli general had assumed the US were going in and had offered them access to Mossad’s Middle Eastern covert networks, scientific resources, plus a ground base for landing and take-off. Shavit had been most insistent that the US team meet at the Israeli base before travelling on to Iran. ‘Acclimatisation’ he had called it. ‘Bullshit’ Hammerson called it. The general was up to something. He’d also promised two Israeli experts – one a specialist in the field of geophysical and astrophysical sciences; the other an authority on language and logistics. Hammerson guessed at least one of them would be a Mossad torpedo.

  If the Iranians had nuclear technology, then the balance of power would shift and Israel would be tempted to strike before an Iranian delivery system could be perfected. It was no secret that the Israelis had been equipping their fighters with long-range fuel tanks and performing practice runs over the Mediterranean for the past five years. Of course Iran would retaliate, other countries would take the opportunity
to take a bite out of Israel while it was occupied, Israel in turn would up the ante, and pretty soon the whole goddamn continent would be on fire. Forget about oil from the Middle East for the next few decades. The only winner there would be Russia, who still had billions of barrels of its own black gold held in reserve.

  Hammerson knew an Israeli attack would be a waste of time as the Iranians tended to bury their secret bases so deep that even the best ground-penetrating bunker-busters would only sever the supply tunnels. In a month they’d just dig ’em back out. Best way to deal with it was to send in a small team to infiltrate and destroy the capability from within. Shavit had agreed; most likely that was what he’d wanted all along.

  Hammerson picked up a small bayonet-shaped letter opener from his desk and turned it over in his fingers. He smiled grimly. Okay, I’ll roll the dice and see what that old fox Shavit is up to.

  The phone on his desk rang again.

  A sickly faced Lieutenant Marshal and two enormous military orderlies stood with their backs up against the tiled wall of the hospital room. On the floor at their feet were three broken syringes, their contents never administered. One of the orderlies had a swelling black eye and his arm hung at an unnatural angle from a dislocated shoulder.

  On the bed, Alex Hunter’s body seemed at war with itself. His teeth were bared and both arms, broken free from the restraints, hammered at everything around him. The heavy metal cabinets either side of the cot were heavily dented, the one on his left showing a deep split in the quarter-inch steel.

  Captain Graham, his eyes fixed on the carnage within the room, was speaking frantically into the phone. ‘He’s having an episode – he’s tearing us apart.’

  ‘Put me through,’ Hammerson said.

  Graham hurriedly pressed the communication button and the major’s stern voice boomed through the speaker in Alex’s room.

  ‘Arcadian!’

  The EEG flattened and Alex quietened. A few seconds later, he opened his eyes.

  ‘Captain Hunter, report,’ Hammerson ordered.

  Alex blinked for a few seconds before responding. ‘Fort Bragg Medical Centre – assisting science personnel with further physiological and psychological testing.’ He looked around him and saw the wreckage and the paralysed orderlies, still too shocked to move. He exhaled and said with a hint of resignation in his voice, ‘Seems I had another dream while I was under, sir.’

  Alex looked at Lieutenant Marshal. ‘Did I hurt anyone?’

  ‘Everyone’s okay, Captain Hunter,’ Major Hammerson responded, before any of the medical staff could speak.

  Alex rubbed his face hard and dragged in a long juddering breath. ‘My dream – it was Aimee again,’ he said softly to Hammerson. ‘Have you heard from her? Is she okay?’

  Hammerson wasn’t surprised by the question. The dreams had been the same for months now. ‘Saw her just the other day,’ he said. ‘She’s fine and getting on with her life.’

  ‘Good. Okay, that’s good, I guess.’

  Hammerson’s voice became stern again. ‘Captain Hunter, I’ve got some new team members for you. I’d like you to come up and take a look. Be here by 0800 tomorrow.’

  ‘O-eight hundred, confirmed, sir.’

  Alex stood and stretched, rubbed his face and pushed both hands through his perspiration-slicked hair. As he headed towards the door, the injured orderlies backed up a step. He stopped in front of the man with the bulging black eye. ‘It’s Carl, isn’t it? I’m real sorry, Carl, it was an accident.’

  The orderly flinched, but gave a crooked smile. ‘No problem, man. Just glad you’re on our side.’

  Hammerson’s voice blared into the small room. ‘Good man, Carl – take some extra R amp;R on USSTRATCOM. Just remember, you got injured in the gym.’

  Alex apologised again, then turned and pushed through the laboratory’s soundproof doors.

  Captain Graham switched the intercom back to his phone, making the conversation private. ‘Jack, there’s something else. It’s Alex’s brain

  … it’s… different now. We can only hypothesise based on the EEG and echo pulse readings, but we believe there’s been an increase in neocortical matter. His brain isn’t any larger – we think the additional mass is accommodated through new brain folding, possibly on both sides of his interhemispheric fissures. But without an MRI we don’t know what that extra folding means. I’d love to get in there and have a look.’

  Graham’s eyes went to the small electric bone saw in the cabinet of surgical equipment.

  ‘You think it’s the goddamn treatment causing it?’ Hammerson asked with an edge to his voice.

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. Maybe a combination of the treatment and his original injury. You ever hear of Phineas Gage, Jack?… Not surprised; he was a railway worker back in the 1800s. Had a metal spike punched into his head. He survived, but it changed him from a happy young man to one who became violent and eventually feared by the entire town. There are all sorts of conflicting stories about the feats of strength he supposedly performed after the accident. When he finally died and they opened him up, they found a brain that was very different from anyone else’s. Thing is, Jack, they believed his brain had continued to change long after the spike was removed. Of course, it might not be the same for Captain Hunter – the extra brain folding could be some form of physical response to the original trauma; or maybe the treatment initiated something else in there, something that’s ongoing. Well, you can see that I’m guessing – could be a hundred things. Bottom line is, we don’t know what the extra matter is for, or, more importantly, what it’ll eventually do to your man.’

  ‘Could it kill him?’ Hammerson asked.

  ‘Not sure, but I doubt it in the short term.’ Graham anticipated Hammerson’s next question. ‘Jack, we thought about halting the treatments, but we think that may either kill him or send his system into an irreversible vegetative state. At this stage, all we can do is watch and learn. He’s unique, Jack, and very valuable. When can we have him back?’

  ‘In a month or two, Graham. Just give him back in one piece.’

  Graham was silent for a moment, then spoke with a lowered voice. ‘Don’t forget our agreement, Jack. He’s yours until he’s killed or incapacitated. Then we own him.’ The scientist’s eyes went again to the bone saw.

  SEVEN

  ‘But there was no thermal energy release – there was nothing on the seismographic sensors, not a single tremor. I know it was subsurface, and I bet they had concrete and lead shielding, but that gamma flash must have gone straight through it – a controlled nuclear test blast should have been better contained. The radiation signature reads like something non-terrestrial.’

  Zachariah Shomron was arguing furiously with his professor; or rather, with himself, using his professor as an audience.

  Professor Dafyyd Burstein clasped his pudgy hands together above a stomach that was straining over a thin belt and raised his eyebrows in a look that he reserved for his best students, those who raised brilliant questions and probably already knew the answers. ‘Are you saying a stellar mass somehow fell to earth in the Iranian desert, Zachariah?’

  ‘Yes, no, of course not… maybe. It’s just that the pulse had all the characteristics of a cosmic gamma burst, but it’s impossible that it originated from Earth. Though it only flashed for microseconds, it gave off thousands of sieverts. A nuclear blast only delivers about 300 sieverts per hour downwind, but it also throws out neutrons, alpha and beta particles and X-rays. The only thing that saved Iran from being incinerated was the flash’s micro duration… and then, it just turned off. It’s impossible! This is so weird – it’s getting into dark matter territory.’

  ‘Yoish!’ exclaimed Burstein. ‘Okay, okay, we can discuss all this later. I came up to tell you that there’s a large and serious-looking government type waiting to talk to you in the foyer. Have you been late paying your bills again, Zachariah?’

  Burstein took Zachariah by one of his bony elbows and led him t
owards the door, nodding as the younger man kept up a stream of near impenetrable musings on obscure gamma-wave effects.

  Zach stopped mid-sentence when he saw the man in the foyer. He was the most perfectly square human being Zach had ever seen, all hard edges that looked machine-cut, starting from his flat-top crew cut and broad shoulders, and continuing down to column-thick legs stuffed into charcoal suit pants. The man took a step forward and Zach automatically took one back.

  ‘Boker tov, Zachariah Shomron.’

  Zach saw the man quickly check a photograph he held in his hand as if to validate he had the right person.

  ‘Shalom,’ Zachariah said and tentatively held out his hand for the other man to shake.

  Instead, the man pressed a letter into Zach’s hand. It had a distinctive stamp on the front – a blue, seven-candled menorah, the seal of Mossad. There was also an inscription in Hebrew: ‘Where there is no guidance the people fall, but with an abundance of counsellors there is victory’. Good advice about ‘good advice’, Zach thought.

  The man spoke as if reading from a script: ‘Zachariah Shomron, you are aware that national military service is mandatory for all Jewish men and women. You have the thanks of the State of Israel for completing your assigned service. Though you elected to resume a normal working life, you remain an inactive reservist until you are forty years of age. At the discretion of the State of Israel, in the event of war or extreme national risk you may be reactivated.’ He paused and stared into Zach’s eyes. ‘That risk now exists and you have been reactivated. Sir, your instructions are all in the letter.’