Threatcon Delta

by Andrew Britton

  “Trouble,” Phair said suddenly as a password prompt appeared on the screen. “The computer is locked.”

  Adjo opened his eyes. He blinked away a clinging blur, then leaned forward and input 777OVERRIDE777. The computer became active.

  “You can do that to any system?”

  “Only those that use government communications systems, which all tourist sites do,” Adjo replied. He was breathing heavily now. Something definitely wasn’t right. “It’s part of our domestic anti-terror program.”

  “I don’t know if I’m impressed or angry,” Phair replied.

  Adjo didn’t move.

  “What’s your superior’s e-mail address?” Phair asked.

  “Adom-dot-Samra, A-D-O-M, at command central, one word, seven, seven, seven, dot defense. I must inform him what happened here.”

  Phair said, “I’m telling him that the occupying force gassed us and has left the monastery for places unknown and we’re in the archives. I’m also telling him about the monks.”

  Adjo nodded. He sat slumped in the swivel chair, his head back. He couldn’t understand what was happening. He was finding it increasingly difficult to think, his mind skipping here and there over the last few days.

  “I’m copying Kealey and Carla,” Phair said.

  Adjo nodded, at least in his mind. His head was still reclining, his eyes watery and staring. He was sick. That had to be it. Maybe from spending cold nights in damp clothes. He couldn’t think. He just wanted to sleep.

  “That was quick,” Phair said.

  “What?”

  “Your superior just responded.”

  “That’s him, always working,” Adjo said. “What does he say?”

  Phair said, “ ‘Stay where you are. We are sending help.’”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  JEBEL MUSA, SINAI PENINSULA

  The lights of the helicopters took Kealey back to the Indonesian tsunami, when bright lights at night, fueled by chugging generators, meant that bodies were being dug from mud, foliage, or rubble. A sour feeling rose in his throat and stayed there.

  As the mob swelled forward behind him, Kealey felt his phone buzz. The chanting was so loud and the sounds from the rotors so enveloping, it would be difficult to hear. He snapped the unit from his belt. Harper had anticipated the problem and sent a text message. Kealey backed from the mob toward a small scattering of boulders. As he read the message, he felt the sounds and whiteness close in, drawing sweat from the back of his neck.

  777 POSSIBLY INVOLVED IN MOSES MOVEMENT. POTENTIAL PLAGUE SCENARIO.

  Shit.

  That was the only word that came to mind. It was also the only word Kealey had time to think as he received a second message, this one from a monastery e-mail address that had apparently been hijacked by the sender:

  TO LIEUTENANT GENERAL SAMRA: ADJO STUCK IN ST. STEPHEN’S CHAPEL. ILL. PARAMILITARY ENEMIES PRESENT.

  Shit.

  That answered the first question that occurred to him: Was Adjo involved?

  Kealey was about to text Carla and Phair to warn them about 777 when he received a message from Phair: that Samra’s cavalry was on the way. Suddenly shit didn’t suffice.

  Kealey sent a message back: AVOID 777. He had no idea whether it would be received. There was no way Kealey could get to the monastery quickly, not with the crowd all around him. Even if he appropriated a vehicle, there were too many people.

  Calm and focused, Kealey texted Carla. He asked her to respond with the name of her hometown; if she had reached the MFO position, her phone might have been appropriated.

  A few seconds later he received the reply:

  CARACAS

  Kealey updated her concisely and instructed her to go to back to the designated rendezvous spot from earlier that evening and to remain out of sight. He added that he would get back there as soon as possible.

  Kealey tried to send another message to Phair, a simple “respond to this,” but received no reply. He hoped that Phair had gotten out with Adjo. That hope was crushed by a message from Carla.

  LIGHTS JUST WENT OUT IN COMPOUND

  Someone must have ordered the power cut to the monastery. According to the schematics he’d reviewed, the transformers were in a shed near the garden. Kealey sent a message to Carla to look out for Phair and Adjo in case they managed to get out. She wrote back:

  SOLDIERS MOVING IN

  So much for escape. He hoped that Adjo was alert enough. He’d been there before. Perhaps he’d reconnoitered a hiding spot.

  There was nothing Kealey could do for any of the others right now, and he felt bad for allowing Carla to get in this far. With luck, they could all hunker low until things had played out and this field junta had moved on.

  That’s too much luck for my taste, he told himself. But it was all he had for them right now.

  Luck was a quality he had never courted. He relied on planning and effort over chance. There were studies that said it was a percentage of every endeavor, but he had still refused to count on it. Not in Indonesia, Sudan, Mexico, or any of the other places he had gone undercover, airdropped with special-ops teams at night or— where his skin color wouldn’t give him away—shuttled into a city or market by car or train or on foot. Even if luck were a factor, it was available to the other guys, too. Let them look for it and be disappointed.

  But Kealey didn’t feel like pushing it away. Not now. He didn’t think it was a virtue of age or circumstance. He didn’t think it was because this was the least experienced team he had ever led into danger and he felt both guilty and protective. There was something else at work, a sense that structures were collapsing around him, rotted from the inside by pockets of religion and politics and self-interest. Who were all these new groups and peoples?

  Tiny, upstart mammals nipping at the toes of dinosaurs.

  What had changed for Kealey was just one thing. This was the first time in his life that he was not optimistic.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  JEBEL MUSA, SINAI PENINSULA

  Phair didn’t know who cut the power or why and he hoped it didn’t matter. Adjo told him that Task Force 777 had a number of men in the MFO unit. They would be coming soon enough.

  He made Adjo comfortable on the floor. The young Egyptian was sweating profusely. This was something other than tear gas and exertion. Phair wondered if it had to do with the monks he found in the room. He wanted to research the symptoms—here he was, only connected to new technology for a few months, yet he suddenly felt helpless without it.

  Taking a moment to consider his own bodily functions, Phair determined that anything unusual he felt was a result of the stress of the mission and not illness. He couldn’t understand why Adjo was ailing and not himself. The young man had been crawling around ancient tunnels and the mountain itself. Had he been exposed to something before they arrived?

  Leaving Adjo, Phair felt his way outside the room so he could see the Egyptian soldiers when they arrived, call them over. To the right, he saw the dim edge of a light beyond the outer wall, heard the sounds of movement outside the gate. Phair assumed that was the cavalry coming to their rescue but taking care before entering. He leaned against the ancient wooden jamb and looked up, offering a short prayer of thanksgiving to God.

  There had been nights in Iraq that were this quiet, this starlit, but never one that had such an underlying restlessness. Wherever he was in Iraq, there had always been the chance of an explosion, a kidnapping, a shooting. But those events were isolated and sporadic. The sense of unrest here was palpable, as though the mountain kept alive every bit of tumult and reverence that had gone on beneath its peaks. He had heard that there were energy vortexes like that around the world, in the Himalayas, in Arizona. Perhaps this was one of them. Or maybe it was something coming from him, drawn out by the holy place.

  He wondered if the Children of Israel felt that when they were here. Or were they just tired and spent and ready to return to bondage?

  Maybe the new prophe
t has learned that you must be quick on the liberating, he thought. People want their milk and honey now.

  He heard voices to his right, some way off. Hinges complained, and he could hear the gate itself being opened. He went back inside and felt his way with hands and toes. He came upon Adjo. The man was asleep.

  Phair gently shook the Egyptian’s shoulder. Waves of heat seemed to be rising from the young man’s body.

  “Help is here,” the cleric said in a hushed voice.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Adjo assured him. “You don’t happen to have water, do you?”

  “They took everything, I’m sorry,” he said. He thought of the water bottles he had seen in the back room. If the army had not been so near he would have gone back and gotten them.

  Phair went back outside. He heard a vehicle drive in, the headlights blinding, forcing Phair to look away. He waved at the driver, then stepped back inside. The reflected light illuminated the room sufficiently so that he could look around. He spotted a decanter of water on a desk and retrieved it. He knelt by Adjo’s head and dribbled water on his hot cheek and forehead, then cradled his head and fed him some. The young man responded quickly.

  And his eyes came alive.

  He pushed the stainless-steel container gently aside. “Water,” he said weakly, his eyes searching somewhere other than the room.

  “Yes, water,” Phair replied and tried to give him more.

  Adjo’s hand kept him back. “Water—on the mountain.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The voice. The man who captured us—that’s where I heard him. He brought me water.”

  Phair felt a shock go through his spine. “Are you certain?”

  “I’m sure,” Adjo said. “They know we’ve escaped our bonds—won’t let us get away now.”

  Before Phair could figure out what to do with the information, the doorframe brightened. Boots scuffled across the stone walk and shadows stretched toward them in the headlights. The men were in the doorway a moment later.

  Phair didn’t know whether they’d be shot and taken away, or simply taken away and never heard from again. It didn’t seem to matter. He couldn’t leave now, and he wouldn’t have left without Adjo. He began to pray.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Adjo said, with a small chuckle. His back was to the door and he couldn’t see anything.

  Phair laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder as the men entered. Their leader was the same man who had interviewed them earlier.

  “We would have come back for you and the monks later, to give you all a fitting interment in the holy desert,” the man said. “We just had to come back a little sooner.”

  “I drank none of your water,” Phair said. “You’ll have to kill me.”

  “You were close to him,” the man said, indicating Adjo. “That was enough.”

  “You . . . traitor . . .” Adjo rasped.

  “No, Lieutenant,” the man replied, with an edge. “We are saving this country—from outsiders, from theocrats, from jihadists. What we do here may save the world.”

  “How?” Phair demanded.

  Two men came forward with handguns.

  “By destroying the enemies of civilization,” the man replied.

  “You call this civilized?” Phair exclaimed.

  “I call this survival,” he replied coldly.

  The men with the guns stood above Adjo and Phair.

  “You can’t destroy everyone,” Phair said. “It’s been tried.”

  “Not by us,” the man replied.

  Phair suddenly did not care whether or not he lived. He felt despair deep in his soul, that nearly seventy years had passed since the last great genocide, yet humankind had not progressed.

  Two shots momentarily deafened the survivors in the small room.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  JEBEL MUSA, SINAI PENINSULA

  The choppers had landed in widely separated groups of five and the rotors had been turned off to protect the oncoming multitude from being assaulted with dust and foliage. Men were moving around the drop-down cargo hatches in the backs. Once again, organizationally, it reminded Kealey of the tsunami relief efforts he had witnessed in Indonesia. Crews moved purposefully but without haste, unloading crates on dollies and by hand, in teams, leaving the crates stacked behind each helicopter. The only difference was that no one was moving to unpack the cargo.

  The prophet seemed to be making his way to the center of the three groups of helicopters. People followed behind and were now spread all around him as far as the light reached. They had stopped chanting and there was a general murmur. It sounded as though they were saying “manna.” That would figure. Most of them had probably come carrying very few supplies. They assumed—correctly, Kealey believed—that the helicopters were unloading food and drink.

  A sudden night wind, strong and chilling, swept over them from the west, rushing toward the mountain.

  The hand of God pushing us back? Kealey couldn’t help but wonder. He wasn’t a religious man, but such thoughts were not only possible here, they were inevitable. It was no wonder the pilgrims believed in the holiness of the man who moved among them. Virtually all one had to do was look the part.

  Kealey heard crowbars, then saw the bundles being pulled open by helicopter crew members. The prophet himself climbed onto a mound of earth from which he addressed the group. Kealey had no idea what he was saying, but the way he kept pointing all around him with the top of his staff, he was obviously urging the pilgrims to continue their journey with him.

  As the fringes of the crowd began to cluster around the prophet and the choppers, the crewmen began passing out loaves of bread. They were yelling something in Arabic and, from the subsequent actions of the pilgrims, they had apparently been told to break some off and pass the rest back.

  That was when it hit him.

  The bakery fire, Kealey thought. If the food had been made there, contaminated there, they would have destroyed the place to cover any evidence.

  Is that what this was about? Mass murder? The killing of—

  People who had crossed the border illegally, he thought. The radical fringe of 777 making a statement.

  Kealey looked down, thinking. If there were some kind of virus or bacterium in the food, how was he going to keep them from eating it?

  He looked up. People had started to consume the loaves. They were going to eat it and follow the prophet, where? To Saudi Arabia? Israel? Other Arab nations when they all went home?

  Did it matter? A pandemic wouldn’t respect national borders.

  Kealey slipped away, behind a slope of rock. He took out his phone and called Harper.

  “They’re passing out bread,” Kealey said.

  “Contaminated at the factory,” Harper said.

  “No doubt. What do I do? These people will die.”

  “If 777 is controlling this, we can’t ask the MFO to intervene,” he said. “The Egyptian officers will shoot us down. The most we can do is tell the neighboring countries to seal their borders—”

  “I can’t accept that we’re helpless,” Kealey said. He was staring into the darkness, thinking, coming up against dead ends. “Can you post something on the websites that have been carrying videos? Maybe we can stop some of them from eating—”

  “What would they believe, the photo of the dead monks?” Harper asked.

  “It’s better than nothing,” Kealey said.

  Harper agreed.

  “What about that bakery fire?” Kealey asked.

  “The fire department is still going through the ruins, but Gail says that fires like that, where there were gas ovens fueling it, are usually hot enough to incinerate microscopic residue of organic matter. If you can get us a sample of the bread, we can start working on an antidote.”

  “Who knows when and how I can get back to Cairo,” Kealey said. “Dammit, is that the best we can do?”

  “You know as well as I do that sometimes the best isn’t a he
lluva lot,” Harper said. “We didn’t set this timetable.”

  “No, and I’ll get the damn bread,” Kealey said. “But there has to be something we can do. There has to.”

  “You’re on-site. You tell me.”

  “The goddamned Staff,” Kealey muttered. “If I had it—”

  “Would it make any difference now?” Harper asked. “Would it part the masses and destroy the helicopters? We needed it hours ago, to plant doubt before the prophet came down.”

  Harper was right. God damn it all. He wanted to ask if Harper knew anything about what happened at the Sahara well, but thought better of it. If the deputy director had a hand in it, he wouldn’t admit it. More than likely someone let something slip to 777. They must have taken it; they had the resources.

  “We’ll keep working on the problem here,” Harper said. “Let us know if you hear from the others.”

  Kealey hung up. It was ridiculous, he thought as he set out to get some bread. It only just occurred to him that if the disease were airborne, he himself could be infected. Even now, he could see that the crewmen had turned the job over to pilgrims. The team was headed back to the helicopters. The prophet was still on the mound, making benedictory motions with his hands and with the staff.

  Keeping the people there to kill them. Kealey wondered if he even knew. And if he didn’t, if he would believe.

  Not that Kealey could communicate with him.

  The American moved forward, feeling desperate and angry—at the situation but also at himself. There was a saying in special ops, “Failure is the solution you missed.”

  He still had time.

  He had to look harder.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  JEBEL MUSA, SINAI PENINSULA