Origin Z

by Tony Hartzell

  O’Reilly was hanging out the special door they had made for them. He had his night-vision visor down and was using hand signals to the copilot to get them perfectly positioned for the forty-foot drop jump. He finally gave the closed-fist signal for the pilot to hold position. He turned to his team and gave a quick nod, and then he turned and jumped.

  O’Reilly had changed over the last couple of months, but he supposed that they all had. The sergeant was no longer a joker. While the three of them were becoming more focused, confident, and serious, Anderson was just becoming scarier and scarier. He hadn’t done anything that would cause him to be culled from the team yet—just idle threats toward Laudner mostly and body language that he played off as jokes.

  Raines moved up next and flipped his visor down. He saw O’Reilly move out of the clearing where he had landed. Raines jumped to the clearing and landed in a crouch. He didn’t need to tuck and roll. It felt as if he had only jumped down ten feet. Quickly he moved out of the way and heard soft grunts as Anderson and then Laudner landed in the clearing. He watched the helicopter move away as they gathered in an area that had good cover.

  They were two miles from the compound. It wouldn’t be easy to move fast due to the dense jungle. Laudner and Anderson started deploying the spy drone while he and O’Reilly kept watch. They didn’t expect that there would be patrols out this far, but there was no need to be sloppy and get surprised. He heard the drone whir as it climbed into the sky through an opening in the canopy. They all flipped down their drone visors. They could immediately see animals in the surrounding area. The only threat they could see in their path was what looked like a panther. It was about a half klick west of their position. O’Reilly took out a sonic gun and pulled the trigger in the direction of the panther. There was no discharge or even a sound that they could hear, but the panther started running away from them.

  They could start moving now. They started zigzagging through the jungle, avoiding anything that would make a sound and alert anyone of their approach. They moved through the jungle as silently as the panther, stopping every five hundred meters to reposition the drone. The light armor hid them as well as kept them cool. They would flip down the drone view on their visors when repositioning the drone to make sure the way was clear.

  They were armed with both their Spartan air pistols that shot darts and with HK MP5Ns with two laser sights. One was visible only with their night-vision visors down, and a green laser would temporarily blind anyone who had it shined in their eyes.

  They stopped ten yards out from the no-man’s-land around the compound.

  Laudner pulled out the camo tent and let it open slowly. He then ducked inside, took out their computer, and pulled up the drone view on the screen. It showed their beacons and dozens of figures moving around inside and outside the walls. He input some information, and the motion sensors that surrounded the campus popped up on the screen showing their range and the angle radiuses that each would cover. When Laudner was finished, he enabled the visors in each soldier’s visor to be able to see the alarm field. This was the best of the intelligence that Reed had provided them. They could now tell where they could approach without causing an alarm.

  When they saw that the patrolling guards were far enough away, O’Reilly and Laudner took off toward the towers that were closest to them. The plan was for them to take out the tower guards that were closest first, and Raines and Anderson would take out patrols when they got close enough to their position.

  Raines could see that they were scaling the sides of the towers as the first patrol was getting close. He started to creep slowly toward the edge of the trees, and Anderson did the same. When he stopped and crouched in the shadow of a palm plant, he felt something hit his leg, and it began to burn. He didn’t dare move, as the patrol was just far enough away that they couldn’t attack yet. They had to have the element of surprise to take them out quietly. It felt as if whatever it was that had latched onto his leg was chewing now. His leg had started to feel cold.

  The patrol came into the optimum position, and he and Anderson fired their dart guns simultaneously. They took both of them in the eye. The guards fell immediately and without a sound. They jumped out of the edge of the trees to grab and drag them into the brush.

  Raines reached down and grabbed the snake that was still attached to his leg and squeezed until he heard the head pop. He grabbed his knife and stabbed it into his leg right where the snake had bitten him. He then squeezed his leg to try to get as much of the poison out as possible. He took some tape out of a fold in his suit and pulled the wound together and taped it shut. He couldn’t have gotten all the poison out, but he didn’t feel it was affecting him.

  He looked at Anderson, who smiled and nodded to him. Fucking asshole thought it was funny. The second patrol was approaching, so they both turned their attention back to the job at hand. When they were in range, they used the darts to take out the new patrol also. They dragged them into the brush and started to move around the edge of the perimeter, being careful not to get into range of the motion sensors. He spotted some muzzle flashes from the towers and knew that O’Reilly and Laudner had started taking out people inside the walls. There was a patrol in front of them that had noticed the flashes too.

  Then he saw the green light of a night-vision scope light up as one of the men was pointing his gun at Anderson. He saw a couple of flashes and heard a grunt before he could lift his HK and take out the shooter. He saw Anderson grabbing his side and knew that he was hit. Anderson pulled at the hole in his body suit and stuck his fingers in to rip it open. He pulled out some of the tape and applied it to the wound front and back. He gave Raines a nod of his head and continued on. They were expecting about forty to fifty heavily armed cartel soldiers, so they still had a lot of work to do.

  He and Anderson moved around the perimeter and took out the last patrol and the remaining tower guards. Leaping to the top of the wall, they were in a position where they could see about a score of cartel soldiers behind the edge of buildings and hiding behind vehicles. They jumped down and crept up and started methodically taking out the soldiers one by one. After they had taken out the last one who was a direct threat, they hit the buttons on their visors to see where more were hidden. There were five in a building to their right and half dozen at different vantage points in the building directly in front of them.

  Raines felt cold inside his suit and a little bit nauseated. He saw O’Reilly and Laudner moving toward the building with the half dozen and flicked his head to Anderson and tapped his chest. Then he motioned that he would move around the back of the building with the five.

  He went to the back door and kicked it open, then ducked left. The opening erupted with splinters as it was torn apart by shotguns and automatic assault rifles. He heard a couple of thumps from an HK, and attention turned toward the front of the house. As soon as the wood stopped flying from the door next to him, he ran through it and took out two cartel soldiers to the right. As the only other cartel man turned toward him, Anderson’s HK thumped, and the man fell to the floor. Raines moved farther into the house and checked rooms, sweeping outward, leapfrogging with Anderson. They didn’t come across any more men.

  They moved out into the courtyard and found O’Reilly and Laudner there. O’Reilly moved into the building and checked the bodies that were sprawled across the floors, rolling bodies over and comparing them to pictures he pulled from a pocket in his armor.

  “Neither of the Camino brothers is among these. We haven’t gotten them yet.”

  O’Reilly nodded his head at Laudner, who kicked open a door to go out and grab the computer in the camo tent. He showed up a few minutes later with the computer and sat down. O’Reilly moved in behind Laudner to look at the screen with him. Raines and Anderson moved to keep an eye on the front and back in case there were any soldiers left alive.

  Raines looked at himself in a mirror and noticed that he ha
d a gray hue to his skin. He felt cold all over now.

  Laudner moved the drone over their building and brought it down to thirty feet. “We’re about out of battery.”

  They only saw their beacons in the building. He then moved it building by building and found one that had some faint glows in a middle room.

  They all went to that building and to where the glow was situated. There was definitely a space that was unaccounted for in the layout when they had searched through the rooms. It had to be a safe room.

  O’Reilly had Laudner check the rest of the buildings, and they found no other places where people were hiding.

  Anderson took off his backpack and pulled out the explosives that he had inside. O’Reilly searched around a bookcase and found an outer door. The inside door was made of steel with exposed hinges. Anderson placed the explosives against the hinges and nodded his head toward the door. The three moved outside as he set the timer to thirty seconds and ran out after them. The explosion was a dull thud.

  When they went back inside, they had their weapons up and ready. The people inside the vault were stunned. There were two men, Demarco and Miguel. Two women, whom Raines assumed were their wives, and several children were screaming and holding their ears. O’Reilly and Raines were first in and took out the men with quick taps to the head.

  They moved their sights to the women and hesitated. They were bringing their rifles down just as one of the women pulled her hidden weapon up and fired at O’Reilly, hitting his shoulder. He pulled his rifle back up and took both women in the head with two quick thumps.

  The children were still screaming, and O’Reilly looked over at Raines as he was shaking his head no. Anderson moved up and took the three children in the head as Raines was still shaking his head. Then he realized what had happened. He looked at Anderson with a horrified look on his face. “What the fuck is wrong with you!”

  Anderson looked back and shrugged his shoulders. “They were making too much noise. Besides, what were we going to do? Take them out with us?”

  Raines and Laudner looked at O’Reilly, who was still staring at the children. He looked up at the men and just turned and left the building. They looked at Anderson again. This time he smiled and turned to leave the building too. Raines and Laudner looked at each other and shook their heads. That was when Laudner noticed Raines looked like shit.

  “Are you feeling OK? You look gray!”

  “No, actually. I feel like shit too! I got bit by a snake out there, and I’m pretty sure it was poisonous.”

  “Holy Shit. Lots of poisonous critters in this jungle.”

  Raines nodded. “I must have gotten most of the poison out. I’m still walking and talking.”

  Then he smiled and turned to leave.

  Laudner pulled his camera out and took pictures of the two cartel heads. Then, looking over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching, he took pictures of the kids too. This was the second time Anderson had gone too far. It was one thing killing people who killed. But those children were innocents. Even if they had no plan to extract them, he shouldn’t have killed them in cold blood.

  _______

  They were all silent while waiting for the helicopter to return. They weren’t even looking at one another. Anderson was off to the side spinning his knife around his fingers and making fighting and stabbing motions.

  The helicopter moved down close to the ground as one of the soldiers onboard pulled a cargo net across the door for them. They took a running start and jumped up about twenty-five feet to grab the net and scramble into the helicopter one at a time. They moved off toward the base still not talking. This wouldn’t be one that they would brag about even if they were allowed. That is, all but Anderson. Raines looked over at him, and he was staring into space with a half smile on his face.

  DEAD MAN WALKING

  It was a gray, rainy day, which was ironic because Raines had a seriously gray hue to his skin. His black eyebrows and short hair were in stark contrast and made it very obvious. He had been avoiding everyone since they got back from the Colombian mission. He tried to eat more of the sandwich Laudner had brought him from the cafeteria, but it had no taste, and he had no appetite. He literally had to wash it down his throat with water. Something was seriously wrong, and he felt it was bad. He looked at himself in the small mirror in his footlocker lid. It was getting worse.

  He looked around and saw Anderson walk past his door, obviously coming out of the shower. He had a towel wrapped around him, but up high, as if he were hiding something. He would have thought about it more, but he had his own issues. He looked back into the mirror and then slammed his footlocker shut. He stood up slowly. His joints were stiffening.

  He thought, Jesus, I’m fucked!

  He pulled up his pant leg to look at where the snake had bitten him. It wasn’t getting worse, but it wasn’t getting better either. They had told him his injuries would heal. He stared at the floor thinking, I have to go see someone.

  But he didn’t trust anyone connected to Reed.

  _______

  Anderson looked in the mirror at the place where the bullet had come out of his body. It was about four inches below his ribs on the right side. The area around the healed wound and below, down to his pelvic region, was turning black and starting to swell a little. He was sure that no one had seen him take the bullet in Colombia three days ago. They hadn’t received another mission yet, and he was getting antsy. Ever since he had started getting the enhancement injections, he wanted them all the time. The steroids that he had used before didn’t even come close! These made him feel like a superhero. He felt as if he could do just about anything. He looked down at his side again and pushed on it gently with his fingers. It didn’t hurt at all, but he could feel something that seemed like liquid moving around under his fingers.

  They had stopped giving them examinations after every mission. Maybe he should have gone straight to one of the doctors when he got back from Colombia, but he didn’t want to miss out on a mission. Now it was too late. That was fine, though; it would fade soon. He had had bruises before, and this just looked like a bad one.

  He hoped that they would have another mission soon, or he would go batshit. He got dressed in his shorts and a T-shirt that was a size too small to head over to the gym. Working out always cleared his head.

  When he got to the gym, he saw the soldiers who were always there. He nodded his head at the Bald Guy who had spotted him when he did bench presses.

  “Hey, Anderson, spot me before you get started?”

  Anderson couldn’t remember the Bald Guy’s name. He had always just thought of him as Bald Guy. He nodded and walked over to stand above him to help him lift the weight out of its cradle. Anderson looked at the weight and noticed how much it was.

  “Shit, is that four hundred pounds?”

  Bald Guy nodded and smiled.

  “Are you sure about this?”

  Bald Guy nodded again. “I was benching three seventy-five all last week. Speaking of, where you been, man? I haven’t seen you around as much lately.”

  Anderson just looked at him evenly. “I’ve been part of some special training over in Area 51.”

  Bald Guy’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, yeah. What the hell is going on over there, anyway?”

  Anderson didn’t answer. He just poked his chin at the barbell. “Are you going to do this or not?”

  Bald Guy smiled and spun around to position himself under it. Anderson grabbed the bar in the middle as Bald Guy placed his hands to the outside just over shoulder width apart. They both grunted as they lifted the weight. Anderson let the weight rest on Bald Guy’s arms but left his hands under the bar. All the veins were bulging on Bald Guy’s face and neck. Down, up, one. Down, up, two. Some quick breaths as he pushed toward the cradle, and Anderson helped him to get it there. The guy jumped up and started screaming, “Yeah!”
>
  Everyone was looking at them now. Some of them were applauding, and some were shouting.

  Anderson looked around and then looked at the weights. He hadn’t had an enhancement injection for about a week, but he knew he could do better. He started loading another one hundred pounds onto the bar, and Bald Guy just looked at him.

  Anderson looked at him. “Come on, man. Spot me.”

  Bald Guy smiled and shouted for someone else to come over. They would have to spot from both ends as well as the middle with this much weight. They moved into position as Anderson did the same. He stretched his pectorals several times before he positioned his hands. Bald Guy grabbed the middle of the bar as the others grabbed the ends, and all helped him move the weight to start the press. Bald Guy let the weight go, and Anderson brought it down, and then up. One. Down, up. Two. Some quick breaths, and Anderson brought it down for the third time, then a fourth.

  “Fuckin’ A, man.”

  Two quick breaths, five, six. Anderson heard a barely audible pop, and a reeking smell filled the gym.

  Bald Guy grabbed his face and nose. “Holy shit. That fuckin’ smells!”

  He started choking and backed away, gagging. Everyone was looking and had their hands over their faces.

  “What’s that black shit?”

  Bald Guy was pointing at the floor and Anderson’s T-shirt. Anderson pushed the barbell back into its cradle and put his hand down to his side to pull up his shirt. When he moved it, he saw a split in his skin where it was oozing black jelly that smelled like death itself. Anderson grabbed his bag and covered up the black stain. He headed for the door and pushed through it as he heard someone laughing behind him.

  One of the guys close enough to hear said to Bald Guy, “Fuck, man. What was that guy eating! I’ve shit my pants lifting before, but that was nasty!”