The Pressure of Darkness

by Harry Shannon

  Monteleone shook vigorously. With a straight face, he said, "I guess maybe we greaseball Guinea motherfuckers are good for something after all, huh?"

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  With Bowden in the van, Burke and Benny hurried northwest into the R4 industrial area situated close to the far end of the Los Angeles basin. The streets were lined with a pastiche of old houses and nondescript storage facilities; small business owners liked the cheap rent and relatively good security provided by the tall barbed-wire fences and armed guards, and the residents couldn't afford to move. Burke drove to the prearranged location and honked his initials in Morse code. Bowden looked at him askance.

  "Don't look at me. That was Cary's idea."

  A bearded man with white hair emerged from the parking garage carrying an open Playboy magazine that barely disguised a silenced automatic; behind him in the doorway, with half of her upper body hidden in shadow, stood a thin woman in a smart business suit.

  "Oh, shit. It's Dave and Cora."

  Bowden sighed. "Great. Someone you've pissed off."

  "I'm afraid so."

  The agent Burke humiliated in the coffee shop reluctantly lowered his weapon. He tucked it into his belt, dropped the magazine. He opened the heavy metal gate and shoved it out of the way while his partner kept watch. Burke steered the van into the enclosed area and remained in the vehicle, hands on the wheel, until the area was secure again.

  Dave, his broadcaster's voice heavy with irony, spoke first. "Oh, so one of my favorite people needs a favor, eh?"

  "Look, I'm sorry about grabbing your nuts and all that," Burke offered, weakly. "I was having a really bad day."

  The man known as Dave glared. "Yeah, well thanks to you, so did I. If it wasn't for the Major's orders, I'd . . ."

  Burke hopped out of the van. "You'd likely kick my ass. I wouldn't blame you. But right now we've got work to do."

  Cora, from the doorway. "He's right."

  Burke, over his shoulder. "Wait in the truck, Father."

  "No, I want to help."

  Father Benny slid out and trailed the three men and one woman into the darkened storage unit. Cora slammed the door behind them, flipped on the lights. The cement-floored facility was packed, floor to ceiling, with wooden crates and cardboard boxes. Most were marked with the names of fruits and vegetables.

  Dave sighed and calmed himself, then found a plastic clipboard. He started scribbling. "Tell me what you need."

  Burke touched his arm. "First thing I need is that we don't write anything down."

  Dave gnawed at his moustache and sucked air through his lower teeth. He slowly set the clipboard down on a metal desk. "Major Ryan said anything you wanted. How hot is this going to get?"

  "Scalding."

  Dave looked at Cora; Cora looked at Dave. Finally, they both shrugged. "The Major has covered our asses more times than we can count. What the hell. We're in."

  "Scotty? You know what to do. Start unpacking some gear. Dave, I'll explain while you help me load the van. Fair enough?"

  "Fair enough."

  Bowden located a hammer, knelt on the filthy floor and made some nails squeal, then yanked the lid away from a slatted wooden box marked RADISHES. He reached inside and removed two brand new thermobaric "bunker buster" charges and some small, portable rocket launchers still packed in a light coating of grease. Father Benny went a bit pale. Burke unpacked two Assault Rucksacks, already filled with emergency food, water and medical supplies. Bowden moved to a crate marked CARROTS and eased out a pair of vintage black M4 carbine rifles with PEQ2A laser sights, two 30-round magazines and two CA-15s with pump shotguns attached to the bayonet fixtures. One crate contained nothing but grenades modified to be powerful to the nth degree. Meanwhile, Cora and Dave were unpacking rope ladders, black flak jackets, and other safety equipment.

  "How many on your team?" Cora asked.

  "Actually, I was going in alone at first," Burke replied. He looked up. "But now there'll be two of us on the ground."

  Bowden belched loudly, injecting some easy laughter. "I can hardly wait."

  Burke opened a Dragon Eye system, small enough to fit into his backpack. It was a five-pound reconnaissance craft that could beam video directly to a camera on a soldier's wrist. But after mentally running the mission—and the speed that would be required of them—he replaced it in the carrying case.

  "Let's take one anyway," Bowden called. "Just in case."

  "Forget it." Burke turned his attention to collecting ammunition. He also packed several modified grenades and a large amount of plastic explosive. The grenades, medical supplies, new-age devices and eerie-looking NVG night vision goggles rapidly covered the cement. Father Benny went from white to green. Moments later he was outside, vomiting in the dirt. Dave and Cora looked puzzled.

  "Don't worry," Burke said. "He's just the designated driver."

  FIFTY-NINE

  "Can't someone please just talk to me?"

  Indira Pal is cold and hungry but afraid to eat the yogurt. She has handled the clear plastic container but the top could easily have been penetrated by a needle. Her surroundings are already horrifyingly medicinal, and the idea of eating something that has been tampered with makes her stomach curdle.

  "Hello?"

  She would love to pace the room just to get some blood flowing but the paper gown is backless. Indira is emotionally shaken, and she can feel she is being watched through the ubiquitous two-way mirrored tiles. The drug they have given her is wearing off and has left behind a pounding headache and a deep thirst.

  Shahr-e-Khamosh. Kali Ma, help me.

  She is thirsty but also afraid to drink the water.

  Her conversation with Burke sticks in her mind. She knows that there were drugs in the food and drink at the last spiritual retreat, that most of what she has wanted to believe for years is almost certainly false, that she will soon be drugged again . . . and then burned alive, along with the body of her husband. The City of Silence cannot let her go. She knows too much. But how much has she told Burke? Ah, and that is what they will be hoping to find out.

  "Are you comfortable?" The voice comes from nearby and startles her.

  Indira clutches her legs and squirms back up onto the cot. She works herself deeply into the corner. Her eyes roam the room and finally land on the tiny metal speaker set deep into the sealed surface of the ceiling. "What?"

  "I asked if you were comfortable."

  Indira begins to cry. "Mo, I know that it is you. What are you going to do to me?"

  "Hush, now," his voice soothes. "Don't work yourself up. There are many things to come that will truly horrify you, my dear, but nothing that is going to happen just yet. You must save your energy."

  "Why?"

  "You will need it for screaming."

  Indira feels her innards quake. She knows the darkness in her husband. She has seen him beat servants and abuse followers not obsequious enough to suit him. He has beaten her many times as well, carefully and systematically, and always in ways that left no mark.

  "Why are you doing this?"

  Pal laughs, the speaker rattles like phlegm. "You dare to ask that question after laying with another man, grunting like a pig with him? After violating your vows just before we are to share the sacred rite of Sati?"

  "Sacred to you," Indira replies. She can feel herself gathering strength. "Personally, I don't want to die yet, Mohandas."

  He mocks her. "Why, neither do I, my dear. Who does?"

  "This is just to satisfy the bottomless pit of your ego."

  "Oh, it is for so much more than that," the disembodied voice intones. "It is to prepare the earth for the return of Kali-Ma, to create the sacred City of Silence on the face of the earth."

  "Nonsense." Indira hurls her darkest feeling. "Your religion is a lie. You drugged us and tricked us, Mo. You're a fakir, a charlatan."

  After a long moment, Pal chuckles. "Oh, I suppose you do have a point. I played a trick or two on the group. And I may ha
ve fudged a little here and there to impress the heathen . . . but I can assure you, I mean everything I say in the larger sense."

  Indira hugs her knees again. "I don't understand you."

  "No mortal could." Another laugh, a bit shriller. "But then I suppose that sounds like I'm quite mad, doesn't it? And I'm not, I assure you."

  "Let me go."

  "Quite impossible. But to be sporting, I will give you a choice in how you die. You may die of a horrible sickness and have your body burned, or you may be burned alive along with my body instead. It's rather a Hobson's choice, eh? If I were you, though, I would take the burning. If you inhale the flames you will die more quickly and with considerably more dignity."

  "Go to hell, Mo."

  "I will give you a few hours to come to a decision. If you refuse to make one, I will toss a coin. Does that seem fair enough?"

  Indira shudders. "Burke will stop you."

  "Not a chance that he even knows where you are. It took much effort to manipulate the two of you into bed again, but with the help of my followers and Peter Stryker, I have succeeded."

  "You wanted us together?"

  "I want his wounds to be fresh, for Mr. Burke to suffer as I have suffered. And now he will."

  "Jack will find me."

  "Hold on to your hope. How much have you told your lover, hmm? How much does he know of my organization, my plans?"

  "Everything."

  A laugh, followed by a deep, wracking cough; it takes Pal some time to recover. "Why, that is simply impossible, sweetheart. Why, even you don't know everything."

  Indira thinks, takes a shot in the dark. "He knows about the formula."

  She can hear the hissing intake of breath and takes satisfaction in having startled him. She makes herself grin wickedly, as if filled with feelings of triumph. The speaker clicks off. Indira sits, waiting for the torturer to arrive, waiting to be beaten or drugged. But no one comes. She remains still, completely isolated in the empty room.

  SIXTY

  They sat quietly in a deserted, dilapidated hanger near a private airstrip a few miles north of the Mexican border, listening to a swirling breeze claw some dried sage across the tarmac. Burke opened his cell phone, punched some numbers to retrieve messages. He waved to Bowden and sighed. "Gina and Stryker's daughter are okay. She just left a message that they're at the hotel in Vegas."

  "The one your friend's family owns?"

  "Yeah, same place as your ex and the kid. One less thing to worry about."

  Scotty Bowden stopped screwing around with the Dragon Eye monitor long enough to flash Burke a wan smile. "Too bad we can't hump this sucker. I have one more question. Just out of curiosity, how exactly do you plan on not getting us killed?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Didn't you tell me that Cary Ryan already lost two teams over this dude? How are we going to keep from getting toasted?"

  Burke walked to the makeshift chalk board, combat boots crunching through small twigs and pebbles. "First of all, there will only be the two of us going in, and from a different direction. Look." He made an elaborate sketch with blue chalk as Bowden watched. "You've already seen the sketch of the layout. The property is about eight miles outside the town of Los Gatos, which is pretty much under the control of Juan Garcia Lopez, also known as Buey, The Ox."

  "Okay, so it is kind of a hacienda in the middle of a military compound."

  "That's about right, Scotty. It is a pretty fancy hacienda with fountains and horses and all the accoutrements you'd expect, but it's fenced off in a seriously organized way. Buey is one of the only guys I've seen who plays house a couple hundred yards from his drug lab."

  "Maybe he gets high on his own supply?"

  "Could be." Burke sketched some more. "Now, let's take a look at the land around the hacienda."

  Bowden lowered the weapon, rose and moved a few steps closer. "Okay, shoot."

  "This rock ridge is about twenty feet higher than the compound. It's on the east side, maybe one hundred yards out. Then you have one wall with a guard tower, a gate, and the side of the barracks. To the north, a long electrified fence, another guard tower joins the west wall and sits above a second gate. That long building, kind of a reverse 'L,' is what we believe to be Buey's private residence. At the ass-end of the 'L' is another gate and an extension of the electric fence."

  Bowden pointed. "And that's where the satellite photos show a shitload of dead bodies."

  "Unusual pockets of gas and other materials that indicate decomposition, yeah. So knowing what we know now, it's a mass grave under the ground."

  Bowden nodded. "But why are they letting them rot underground, Red? Why not burn them up, especially if they are fucking around with some kind of new biohazard as a WMD?"

  "We don't know."

  The door slid open with a clang. Bowden looked up and past Burke's shoulder, then smiled broadly. "Well, fuck me."

  Cary Ryan entered the room briskly, carrying a large stack of computer discs and file folders filled with photographs. "We're going to have to rush this up, gentlemen. I'm getting waved off big time."

  "It's been a long time, Major." Bowden shook his hand. They locked eyes a moment longer than necessary, an acknowledgement of shared history and mutual respect.

  Cary dropped his cargo, moved to the blackboard. He tapped the drawing to indicate a drab, square two-story building that squatted near in the middle of the drug lord's compound. "We think that's the lab where he makes his drugs and probably this spooky designer virus."

  Burke studied Ryan's face. "Cary, who's fucking with you?"

  "Everybody."

  "You look pissed. Where is the pressure coming from?"

  "I don't know," Ryan replied. "Someone doesn't want this mission to happen, and ordering me not to stage it was only the beginning. Now some of my own people are trying to hack me, follow me, and track my whereabouts. I had to call in every favor in the book just to get here safely."

  "The agency has been penetrated."

  "At least to some degree."

  Father Benny had been sitting quietly in the corner of the room, ashen-faced and almost forgotten. "So let me get this straight," he said. "We are going into a situation that is so dangerous that two other groups of men have already died. The naughty boys probably know we are coming. If they do not manage to kill us on the spot, they will have a deadly new virus on the premises that may poison us later. Have I left anything out?"

  "Well," Bowden offered, deadpan, "we'll be outnumbered."

  His timing was perfect and the laugh provided a much needed release of tension. Cary Ryan gathered them around the metal desk and a flat computer screen. He tapped keys. "Here is some footage directly from the Predator drone." Actual photographs of the target area rolled by, now artificially colorized and digitally enhanced. "You can run this as many times as you want, but trash the disc when you're done, okay? And now watch this, carefully."

  Cary adjusted the angle. The computer slanted down and to the side of the buildings, penetrated and explored hallways and individual rooms. "This is our best guess at what's waiting for you inside. We don't know for sure because the other teams were stopped too early."

  "When?" Burke and Scotty asked in unison.

  "The first team got torn up right outside the north gate. The second inserted safely but ran into a meat grinder near the porch of Buey's home, before they managed to get inside the laboratory."

  Bowden and Burke exchanged glances. "And now you think somebody who works with you might be affiliated with Buey's gang?"

  "More likely this new cult being run by Mohandas Pal." Ryan sighed. "And if I had an inkling of that I would never have sent the first team in, much less the second."

  "So Buey knew they were coming, how and when. Most likely down to the minute," Bowden said. "That's just terrific."

  "Yeah, but he won't know this time."

  Burke lifted his eyes from the computer screen. "No offense, Major, but how can you be sure?"
/>   "I'm sure."

  "You mind explaining?"

  Cary Ryan perched on the edge of the desk. He slapped two folders together. "Let me put it this way, I got an urgent phone call about forty minutes ago reminding me that my orders were to stand down. I told them I had done so. They accused me of lying and demanded I call off this highly illegal mission."

  "Shit," Burke growled. "Then they already know."

  "I argued with the fellow for a long time, even threatened to resign. Then I struck a compromise." Ryan grinned, broadly. "The materials we're borrowing ostensibly belong to the Department of Homeland Security. The Director is in Athens for an international conference on terrorism and won't be back in the States for another six days."

  "So?"

  "I demanded some face time with him to discuss my concerns about the compound in Mexico, and why I thought another attempt at incursion was warranted. Finally, he agreed to that meeting."

  "So what?" Bowden was glowering.

  "So I also agreed that we will postpone any mission until after that meeting has taken place and the Director has approved the appropriation of these weapons for this specific purpose. This op has now been rescheduled. It will take place Friday night of next week."

  "Fuck that," Burke said. "We don't have six days. Indira will be dead by then, and whatever Pal has in mind will already have begun."

  "I know," Cary Ryan replied. "That's why we're going ahead tonight anyway, but completely off the record. No one else is going to know about it, as long as you don't get caught."

  "All right!" Even Bowden was pleased. "I always liked that 'don't get caught' part. It keeps things interesting. Just like the old days."

  Ryan went to the chalk board. He looked it over carefully. "Looks good. The only thing I would add to what Red has sketched here is that the guards in the two towers to the east are probably going to be wearing night vision goggles."

  "Just them?"

  "Yeah. The reason is that the only roads in the area are located on the west side of the compound. Buey probably figures that if the cops or another gang comes after him, it will be from that side because they'd need access for heavy vehicles. The guards there have lighting that spreads out into the gulley and down the roadway. The acoustics are probably terrific, so those guys would see or hear someone coming from a long way off."