Military Fiction: THE MAC WALKER COLLECTION: A special ops military fiction collection...

by D. W. Ulsterman

  Mac ignored Allid’s question.

  “What we do is justice. The Muslim world has every right to revenge for the crimes the United States has inflicted upon it. Don’t think for a moment you can sit upon your moral high horse and think yourself beyond our justice.”

  Mac shifted himself in the mud, pretending he wanted to face Allid when in fact he was using that movement to work more forcefully against his bonds.

  “Did you say high horse? I thought you people ate horses?”

  The fleshy skin of the pig farmer’s face quivered as he shook his head angrily.

  “What? No, we do not eat horses!”

  Mac chuckled at how easy it was to confuse the over-confident and hapless Allid.

  “Oh, my apologies, I must have been thinking of pigs. You love eating pigs, right?”

  The Muslim pig farmer appeared horrified at the suggestion, pointing Mac’s own weapon at him to emphasize his disapproval.

  “Never! Such a thing is forbidden!”

  “C’mon, man, don’t you ever just want to bite into a big beautiful piece of bacon? Maybe a slice of ham with a couple eggs on the side?”

  Allid eye’s grew wider as his face contorted into an outraged snarl.

  “You mock me? So close to death and yet you would say such things? “

  Mac’s hands were finally free, though he kept them hidden behind his back.

  Allid lifted the Sig P226 above his head and attempted to shoot it into the air, not knowing the safety remained secured. Mac knew that meant he had to get moving before the pig farmer had time to react.

  “This gun…how do you shoot it?”

  Mac was pushing himself halfway back up onto his feet when he heard Allid’s question.

  This idiot is actually asking for instruction on how to use my own weapon against me?

  The back of both Mac’s legs were gripped by terrible cramping as the muscles screamed in protest over being forced to once again support his full weight. Mac ignored the pain and grasped the top of the pen fence to pull himself over much to the shock of Allid who was falling backward waving the safety-locked gun in front of him.

  “How did you…get back! Back!”

  The pig farmer continued to cry for Mac to get back into the pen. By then Mac was convinced Allid Safarah possessed an intellect rivaled only by a very dull and rusted collection of garden tools.

  With the muscles of his legs already warming to the task, it took Mac no more than a few seconds to reach the pig farmer, grab his right wrist, and rip the weapon from his hands.

  “I think this is mine, asshole.”

  It was Mac Walker who then pointed a gun at Allid, though this time the weapon’s safety was no longer engaged.

  “Please, I don’t know anything! They just use my pigs to…you know.”

  Mac was in no mood for understanding, recalling the pig farmer’s recent boast of how he disposed of the female CIA agent and how the same would be done to Mac. The Muslim was more of an animal than the assortment of hogs he kept.

  “Yeah, I know – now get your fat ass in there with the pigs.”

  Allid shook his head frantically from side to side.

  “No-no-no, that is not possible! You might as well shoot me right now.”

  Mac shrugged.

  “Ok.”

  A single shot ripped a hole through the black rubber at the top of Allid’s right boot. The pig farmer instantly fell to the muddy ground below screaming as both his hands grabbed onto his punctured foot. Mac then pointed his weapon at the pig farmer’s face.

  “You want me to shoot you again?”

  Allid shook his head as his eyes avoided looking at Mac.

  “Fine, then get in the pen.”

  Allid hobbled to the pen’s small gate and opened it, making a loud hissing noise that caused the pigs to back several feet away from him, though a few snorted loudly while several more let out an assortment of high pitched squeals.

  “I think they might smell the blood filling up that boot of yours. Tell you what, Allid, you start talking and I won’t shoot you in the other foot.”

  The pig farmer’s eyes rolled erratically inside his oversized skull as he waved his hands rapidly in front of himself.

  “I told you, I don’t know anything!”

  Mac saw Allid’s eyes glance at the dilapidated farmhouse that sat a hundred yards north of the pig pens.

  “How much they pay you for the use of your pigs, Allid?”

  The pig farmer looked down at the ground hoping to again hide his eyes from Mac’s gaze.

  “That is not your business. I want to speak to a lawyer.”

  The comment genuinely stunned Mac. So much so he momentarily lowered his weapon.

  “What?”

  Allid straightened his shoulders and puffed his chest out, thinking he had discovered a way to threaten Mac Walker.

  “You heard me. I want to speak to a lawyer! I have rights and you are in very big trouble!”

  “Allid, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but you have no rights here. I’m not a cop so you can forget about speaking to some lawyer.”

  The pig farmer’s facial expressions became even more exaggerated as he looked upward into the sky above him.

  “Who are you? Why do you do this? I did not bring you here. It was not my choice. Please, don’t hurt me.”

  Mac silently noted how Allid had gone from pathetically stupid to just pathetic. It all seemed….

  He’s stalling, hoping Gilani is on his way back.

  Perhaps Allid was not as hopelessly ignorant as his behavior suggested. He may not have been smart, but it would seem he was more than capable of attempting to be clever. Mac once again pointed his weapon at Allid’s head.

  “Your time is up, Allid. If you have nothing to tell me, I have no reason to keep you alive.”

  For a half moment Allid was certain the American was bluffing, but then he looked into Mac Walker’s eyes and saw the truth of the threat placed against him.

  “Perhaps I know something of a plan.”

  Mac lowered his gun halfway as his eyes narrowed.

  “No games, just tell me what you know.”

  The right corner of the pig farmer’s mouth quivered as he suppressed a smile. He was certain he had just bought himself more time.

  “I know they are preparing to do something – something big, something soon.”

  Mac shook his head.

  “You’re talking but you’re not saying anything, Allid. I warned you, no games.”

  Another shot rang out as a bullet tore the lower half of Allid’s left ear off.

  “You shot me in the head! I’m bleeding! I’m bleeding!”

  Mac’s mouth was a grim slash across a face covered in two day’s worth of stubble. He growled a warning while keeping his weapon pointed at Allid’s head.

  “Last chance, Allid…tell me what you know.”

  The pigs grew increasingly restless, their hungry squeals sounding more urgent as they inhaled the smell of Allid’s fresh wound that dripped blood from the remnants of his ear lobe onto the muddy ground.

  “You said you wouldn’t shoot me again! You lied!”

  “No, what I said was I wouldn’t shoot you in the foot again. And that was a promise made only if you started giving me information – real information. Your pigs sound hungry.”

  The hogs gathered no more than six feet from Allid, their beady dark eyes regarding their caretaker with a new urgency born of a taste for flesh he had so enthusiastically instilled in them.

  “Take off your jacket.”

  Allid looked at Mac as if the American had gone insane.

  “Why?”

  “Because I said – now take it off and hand it to me.”

  Allid did as he was told, his hands noticeably shaking as Mac took the jacket from him.

  “Get on your knees.”

  The color faded from Allid’s face as he realized he was going to die. The American was a far more capable adversary tha
n Hamid had apparently thought him to be.

  Hamid’s arrogance is my own death! Why would Allah allow such a thing?

  The pig farmer looked up and realized Mac’s earlier deception.

  “You aren’t working for the Iranian government.”

  Mac grunted as he shook his head slowly. The pigs pushed within a few feet of Allid though they had grown strangely quiet.

  “That CIA agent who was brought here, was she really alive when you fed her to those pigs?”

  Allid sneered back up at Mac, suddenly finding a brief moment of courage.

  “Yes! I told you already, the bitch screamed, and screamed loudly.”

  Mac Walker watched the hogs as they edged closer to Allid’s injured foot and then looked into the pig farmer’s eyes one last time.

  “Ok, I guess this is one of those what comes around goes around moments.”

  As Mac turned around to make his way toward the house, Allid shouted from behind him as the pigs suddenly unleashed a barrage of intensely aggressive squeals.

  “Allah will protect me! Allah will---“

  The pig farmer began to scream.

  Loudly.

  6.

  The interior of Allid’s farmhouse somehow managed to be even more dilapidated than the outside, and the stink was worse as well, a mix of rotted wood, pest droppings, and old food. Mac quickly looked through the main areas of the low ceilinged kitchen and living room but found nothing beyond piles of garbage strewn about the space.

  Upstairs proved no better. Allid’s room was at the end of the hallway and contained a single bed and unwashed clothes left everywhere. Two other rooms were nearly empty as was the small hallway bathroom.

  The cellar.

  Mac made his way back downstairs and located the cellar door inside a small room adjacent to the kitchen that had at one time been a pantry but now contained bags of garbage piled ceiling high to the right and left of a narrow and locked doorway. The dirt covered linoleum was well worn leading to the cellar door, indicating Allid had made his way into and out of the cellar often. Mac unholstered his sidearm and proceeded to shoot the lock off and then kicked the door open.

  The cellar gloom was disrupted by a single overhead light bulb hanging from the ceiling at the bottom of a set of rickety stairs in serious need of repair. Several of the steps were broken and the railing leaned inward as the wood connecting it to the stair frame was falling apart, destroyed by moisture and decades of neglect.

  Mac moved carefully down the steps with his weapon drawn. He paused as he heard the sound of faint humming coming to his left. The light bulb above flickered with each step he took toward the dirt covered cellar floor.

  The entire cellar was no more than a twenty by twenty space, with the home’s plumbing lines running a foot above Mac’s head and a myriad of electrical chords carrying power to other locations throughout the home. Mac glanced left and saw the source of the humming. It was a small desk and computer and a single, well worn lime green painted wooden chair.

  After glancing once more around the cellar to ensure he was in fact alone, Mac moved toward the pig farmer’s makeshift workspace. He touched the mouse and was rewarded with the screen illuminating.

  Guess he couldn’t be bothered to try and remember a pass-code.

  A quick check of the computer’s history showed nothing more than an affinity for pornography, weather reports, and online gambling. Allid appeared to have no email account. Mac was about to turn away from the desk when he noticed an icon in the upper left corner of the computer screen. It was a green and white Islamic star and crescent.

  Mac clicked on the icon and was greeted by the outdated computer emitting a series of electronic wheezing noises as it struggled to load whatever data it was retrieving. After several stop and start seconds, the computer pulled up a series of images that left even a man as battle-hardened as Mac Walker, sickened.

  The photos showed an attractive, red-haired woman sitting in the same corner of the pig pen Mac had so recently escaped from. She was bound like Mac had been and dressed in a mud-splattered dark grey pants suit.

  Mac knew he was looking at the missing CIA agent’s last moments of life.

  The images that followed showed the pigs descending on her, biting into the woman’s legs, hands, and feet as she struggled to push them away. Subsequent photos were no longer that of a living human being, but of a motionless corpse. The hogs were pictured fighting over the CIA agent’s remains, eventually pulling her limbs off, and then finally ripping into her stomach until nothing but a bloodied patch of muddy dirt remained.

  Mac whirled around at a sound coming from just behind him, his gun at the ready. He relaxed when he saw a large rat scurry into a corner of the room hidden in shadow. Then his eyes rested upon something he had missed earlier – the faint outline of a hidden door. The wall on the right side of the cellar had been painted white somewhat recently, absent much of the dirt and filth that covered the rest of the farmhouse. And in the middle of that wall Mac saw the small gap between the wood that he was almost certain was another door.

  He holstered his weapon and crossed the cellar floor and then lightly ran both his hands along the gap. That’s when he realized light was coming from the other side of the wall, a much stronger light than the single bulb illuminating the cellar.

  Mac pressed against the middle of what he believed to be a door, but the space didn’t budge. He then pushed the right side and was met with the same unyielding resistance, but when the left side was pushed that part of the wall swung inward several inches. Mac could see the corner of another space that was no more than five or six feet deep. He pressed his left shoulder against the wall and pushed the door further open, allowing him to step into what appeared to be a large hidden closet.

  A bright and buzzing florescent bulb hung from a set of small chains attached to the ceiling. Sitting on the dirt floor of the closet was a large four by four, locked metallic trunk. The lock was identical to the one that had been used to secure the cellar door allowing Mac to dispose of it in the very same way. His gun fired once and was then returned to its holster while Mac slowly and carefully pulled up the trunk lid.

  What Mac discovered brought a wide smile to his face as his eyes lit up with unexpected excitement.

  It appeared Christmas had arrived early…

  7.

  Ramtin Armeen sat in the back of the soft-leathered surroundings of his security enhanced slate black limousine and silently wondered if the Iranians were in fact monitoring his activity in Chicago. He had taken careful measures to try and move and then insulate as much of his business interests from Iranian influence, actions he knew would raise alarms within that government if discovered too soon.

  That possibility was enough to force Armeen to travel to the farm outside Chicago to question the man who had apparently claimed that very thing to Hamid earlier in the day. It was a journey that left the billionaire increasingly annoyed with each passing mile as he considered simply calling ahead and telling the pig farmer to kill the stranger and be done with it.

  Ah, but what if he has information that could be useful to me? What if it might help to further protect my Iranian holdings? Besides, I’m almost there. No sense turning back now.

  Ramtin had not survived the myriad of challenges that was the Islamic dominated Iranian regime by ignoring potential threats. He had funneled millions in bribes over the last decade to ensure his business remained his own. If someone among the Supreme Leader’s fawning cadre of sycophants intended to try and make an example of Ramtin, the billionaire would see that effort terminated sooner rather than later.

  But what if Hamid is involved in the conspiracy as well? Perhaps he has taken offense that I don’t share his own religious fervor?

  It was not the first time Ramtin had considered that very possibility in recent months. He found Hamid’s radicalism a useful tool to spread chaos and dissention across the globe, which in turn fed his burgeoning security business,
but it was a quality the billionaire knew could also potentially turn against him if allowed to do so.

  Ramtin Armeen knew the world was changing. The attack against the United States on September 11th, 2001 quickened the pace of that change and within that quickening was ample opportunity for those and others to profit both in money and more importantly, power. That potential power had led to a struggle between the great House of Saud and the Iranian-led Shi’a. The Saudis feared Iran’s emerging nuclear program and were willing to pay handsomely for any information that could help them deter its continued growth. Ramtin had been playing both sides for the last two years, giving details (at a considerable price) to the Saudis while at the same time charging the Iranian government for his assistance in smoothing over the United Nations’ ongoing nuclear inspections process.