by Terry James
“Yes,” the bearded man answered.
“You’ve been given a cell by yourself, Musahad. You’ve been allowed to keep your hair and your beard, while the other prisoners have been shaved. Have you wondered about that?”
Jenkins’ question was, itself, issued with a tone of curiosity.
The Afghani said nothing. He lowered his eyes to avoid those of his inquisitor.
“Says here,” Jenkins said, flipping a page of the document, “that you are Mujahadeen, that you are Taliban. Is this true?”
Still, the prisoner stood mute, his eyes affixed somewhere on the tiled floor upon which he stood.
“You have a brother, his name is Yusef Kahlied. Is that true?”
Musahad Kahlied raised his head slowly, letting his gaze meet that of Jenkins. “Yes,” he said in a quiet tone.
“I have some bad news for you, Musahad. Your brother faces a death sentence, I’m afraid.”
The black ops director squinted in concentration, watching the prisoner’s unchanging countenance.
He spoke again after several seconds of studying the Afghani’s expression.
“He’s about to be shot by firing squad, Musahad. He was caught after setting an IED that killed some women and children in Pakistan.”
Jenkins reached to the console in front of him and flipped a toggle switch.
“See, here’s your brother,” he said pointing to a large screen. The prisoner turned his head to the right to see the scene that displayed his brother tied, with hands behind his back, to a large pole. Soldiers were preparing for their firing squad duties by checking their AR-15 weapons and chambering rounds by pulling back the bolts of the receivers.
“You can stop the execution, Musahad. All you have to do is agree to undertake a mission for us.”
The prisoner said nothing, lowering his eyes to stare at the vacant floor between himself and George Jenkins behind the console board.
“Have nothing to say, huh?” Jenkins said in a soft, almost amused tone. “Old Yusef will just go to get his 72 virgins, and be with Allah, right?”
Musahad Kahlied remained silent, eyes turned downward.
“I’m afraid Yusef won’t get those 72 virgins, Musahad. He –and all your other brothers…” Jenkins again paused to thumb through the several sheets of the document he held. “Five of them, I think, all will go straight to Satan, I’m afraid, Musahad. You see, the people in Pakistan have been ordered to round them up. As a matter of fact, they’ve already rounded them up.”
Jenkins flipped a toggle, and another screen came to life beside the one showing Musahad Kahlied’s brother affixed to the pole.
“Yes. These are your brothers, aren’t they? And your father. Yes, your father, too.”
The prisoner looked at his father and brothers, who were all bound with their hands behind their backs, standing side by side against a high stone wall somewhere in Pakistan. His eyes widened, his mouth gaping open. Tears began to stream down his face.
“Got some more bad news, Musahad,” Jenkins said, flipping yet another toggle, lighting up another video broadcast from Pakistan.
“Recognize what’s going on here, Musahad? As you see, it’s not a pretty scene.”
The screen displayed several huge hogs being herded into a pen.
“These will be killed and rendered. There skins will be removed, in preparation for your father and brothers, Musahad. These skins will be the burial apparel –the robes—your father and brothers will be wrapped in once the firing squad has executed them.”
Musahad’s face contorted, and he screamed, as if in pain. He cried out, “No! No!” in Urdu.
“Before their execution, each will have his body shaved. The blood and oil from the pigs will then be poured over them, in preparation for their deaths. Guess you could call it an anointing, as part of our little burial ritual.”
The Afghani dropped to his knees, weeping, bowing before George Jenkins, who smiled tightly. The DOD assistant director then spoke in a consoling tone.
“Now, now, Musahad. We don’t want to send your father and brothers to the great Satan for eternity. You, alone, can save them from this…unfortunate end.”
The DOD black ops leader motioned to the guards standing behind the Afghani without saying anything. They moved forward and lifted the prisoner to his feet.
Musahad Kahlied lifted his face, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Please,” he said in a quiet, pleading voice. “Do not do this.”
“It is all up to you, Musahad,” Jenkins said in a tone as soft as that used by the Afghani. “You must make the decision.”
The horn sound blasted, the ooga-ooga sound that tore him from the thoughts of pleasures of dealing with the heathens. Jenkins reached to the console and pushed a button. A small monitor among a row of monitors of equal size popped alive with a man’s face.
“Yes?” Jenkins question was tinged with irritation.
“Sir, Mr. Snidely is on monitor three,” the man in the black uniform said from the screen of the monitor in the middle.
Jenkins switched the monitor off, and switched on the one to its right, where the screen filled with the image of Wayne Snidely. Jenkins recognized the backdrop behind the assistant to the secretary of defense as part of the Situation Room at the center of the Pentagon’s basement.
“Yes, Wayne?”
“Are you alone?” Snidely’s words cut the air in an inquisitor’s fashion.
“Take him to the cell,” Jenkins said to the guards. He watched while they hustled the prisoner from the nerve center of the complex.
“I’m alone now, Wayne. What’s up?”
“We have decided to move more quickly than expected. We want one more test with the hybrids. We will just have to take the chance, regardless of how that turns out.”
“But, we know it works with the hybrids. We need more testing with the human subjects,” Jenkins said with frustration.
“If we can get him, even in a state of…disassembly… we can still use the DNA to prove the job has been done.”
Jenkins paused, glaring at the screen.
“Well?” Snidely said with impatience.
“Very well,” Jenkins said, finally. “We will get the test set up.”
Clark Lansing’s eyes popped open. Faint, diffused light filtered through the curtains on the wall to the left of the bed. He blinked, trying to grasp his reality, finally remembering it was the cabin-room. He was in Colorado, the area of Crestone Needle. He was here for a story, or research that might lead to a story.
He struggled to an elbows-supported position on the mattress, continuing to try to understand his surroundings. His mind wouldn’t completely clear, and he wondered why his circumstance eluded his clouded sensibility.
The floor was rough when he stood from the right side of the bed. Not cold, but rough and tolerable, like the weathered wooden planks he had felt on the floor of the cabin at the deer camp in Arkansas while hunting with his father as a teenager.
Why was the floor of wood? There had been carpet.
The quandary gave way to a more profound one. The entire wall of the cabin seemed to come apart, to disintegrate before his amazed eyes. A green glow grew into a bright mist that caused his vision to blur, his surroundings to become indistinguishable.
He stood now on surface of another sort. At first it felt like thick carpet-grass of a plush lawn, but it melted, or smoothed to a flat, hard surface.
Still, he couldn’t distinguish his surroundings, and now he seemed to be swept by an indefinable something. Not a harsh wind, but the hard surface upon which he stood, itself moving him in conveyor-like motion through the greenish fog toward a rift, a split in the distance.
He was at the same time separate, and an ambient part of the bright fog, until he was conveyed through the split and found himself standing, or hovering. He couldn’t tell which. Yes. Hovering well above the strange scene within the vast, oval chamber.
A lab. Yes! A laboratory, with instrumen
ts–technology--he had never seen. Circular walls, and himself suspended somewhere above a table. No. Two tables, side by side. Operating-type tables.
The gigantic room pulsed with an amber glow that seemed to have a life of its own. Now men and women in white lab coats moved about, checking console boards and lighted screens 360 degrees around the high, rounded walls.
His eyes seemed drawn then to the tables like a camera zooming in for a close-up, drawing the white-sheeted tabletops closer, ever closer. Human forms, covered from the waist down, lay atop the tables that looked to be constructed of stainless steel, as they glinted in the constantly blinking, colored lights around the walls, and the bright, operating room-type lights suspended above the subjects of attention.
Closer, ever closer to the subjects. His view seemed to lock, then, in close-up of the individuals who lay side by side, each upon his or her own operating table. His attention was drawn to the several people who moved in, dressed in surgical garb, their faces covered with surgical masks. Two of those people held instruments of a configuration he couldn’t determine. The long, thin, cylindrical tube-like devices shone with a red, pulsing glow, and were tipped, it appeared, by electronically produced light.
His attention went again to the subjects on the table. They were face up, their noses and mouths covered with masks that apparently were part of the anesthesia machinery to which the masks were attached by several thin, tube-like lines. He saw that the subject on the right was a much longer form beneath the sheet that covered the body from the navel to the feet. A man. The other subject, a woman.
One of the figures dressed in surgical garb approached the unconscious woman. The person removed the anesthesia mask. Clark’s gaze went instantly to the face. The face that he loved so very much. His sister! It was Morgan’s face!
Clark’s vantage changed in the next instant. He now viewed the scene from a new perspective. Dark, boiling masses invaded from everywhere within the chamber. They moved through the floor, the walls, the rounded ceiling. The masses were humanoid in form, and they towered over the white lab-coated humans in the chamber. The despicable creatures surrounded Morgan and the other subject. They seemed to invade the bodies, reaching long black finger-like projections through the chests and abdomen of the unconscious man, and of Clark’s sister.
Clark struggled to free himself from the position high above the scene. But his struggle was in vain. He was locked in an inalterable state of powerlessness. A distant chime disrupted his concentration on the horrific scene below. The chiming became distinctive, and louder. It caused him to tumble toward the hard surface of the laboratory-chamber, his mind thrust again into consciousness with another shrill chime of the cell phone.
Clark fumbled for the cell phone on the nightstand, his fingers running over several other objects before finding the leather-covered instrument. He hesitated before answering, wanting to clear the cerebral cobwebs.
“Hello,” he said in a groggy tone.
“Clark. Is that you?”
Morgan! The voice of his sister helped pull him the rest of the way from the nightmare.
“Sis? Yes. It’s me.”
“Didn’t sound like you. Are you okay, big brother?” Her question harbored a hint of a giggle, knowing her brother’s notorious sleepy-headedness upon first awakening.
“Where are you? Are you okay?” His question retained the concern from the dream he had just exited.
“I’m good. I’m in New York. Where did you think I would be?”
“Oh. Just had a crazy dream. The black, smoke-like things, again.”
“Oh, those…”
“You were in the nightmare. You were on an operating table in some laboratory, or something. I was watching it all from above. Some guy was on another table beside you. These…things…were reaching inside you both. Right through the skin, into your bodies.”
“Creepy! Well, I’m fine. As a matter of fact, I have great news.”
“Let’s hear it. I can use some good news after that episode, believe me.”
Clark stood from the side of the bed and reached to the night table to check the time. The travel clock read 5:58.
“Sorry to wake you up, but I’m leaving soon, and I don’t know when I’ll have a chance to call.”
“Oh? Leaving? Where you going?” He reached to boot the laptop on the little desk.
“I really don’t know, yet. Oh Clark! I’ve been promoted. I’m an account executive now. I’ve been assigned to handle public relations for…Well, I can’t say just yet. But, it’s a major corporation that is tied to U.S. Department of Defense contracts, that sort of thing.”
Clark sat on the chair at the desk and began manipulating the mouse to retrieve his e-mail.
“And you don’t know what this travel will involve, yet?”
“All I can say, all I know, really, is that I will be gone for no more than a week or two at a time. I can still have my apartment in New York.”
“How did this come about? That’s quite a rise, from copywriter to account exec in charge of a corporate PR situation.”
“Don’t you think your little sister can handle it?” Her tone feigned disappointment.
“We are Lansings. We can handle anything,” Clark responded, remembering their father’s encouraging, only half-joking words so often spoken while the two of them were growing up.
“As well as anyone, and better than most,” Morgan added, the same words her dad always added to the statement of confidence-building.
“What about the Peanut?” Clark asked.
“He’ll go with me wherever I go. Wouldn’t have taken the job, otherwise.”
“Who’s going to see after you? I mean, beside Jeddy?”
“I’m a grown woman, now. Guess you haven’t noticed.”
“Who’s looking after you?” Clark asked again, more insistent.
“There’s this really terrific guy I’ve met. Clark, he’s the most wonderful guy.”
“A guy? Who? What has he got to do with this new job?” His growling, interrogating tone irritated her, but, at the same time, she understood her brother’s ever-present guardianship over her.
“His name is Blake Robbins. He has a top position with the company that has the defense contracts.”
“And, he is the one who’ll watch out for you?”
“Well, he’ll be close by while we travel.”
“WE? He’ll travel with you?”
“Yes, my sweet, wonderful, but overly concerned brother. He will be traveling with me, and that’s all.”
Clark was silent for several seconds, then his tone became serious, and softer.
“Morgie, that is YOUR view of things. I’m not so sure about his…”
“Where are you?” She interrupted. Her question was as much to change the subject as to satisfy her curiosity.
“I’m doing something I can’t tell you about right now. I’d have to kill you…”
“Okay, so long as you keep the phone turned on,” she said with a sigh.
When they hung up, Clark’s thoughts went back to the scene of the nightmare. His mind recalled vividly the face of his sister. And, to his surprise, the face of the one on the stretcher next to her was etched firmly in his memory. The eyes of the male face were open, unlike his sisters on the other table. The eyes were black. Not just the pupils and the irises, but the entire eyes were black…
The rottweiler’s dark forehead wrinkled when his mistress called his name. He stood from his lying position, and cocked his head, trying to understand Morgan’s words.
“Ready to go for a walk, Peanut?”
The dog stretched and shook, then trotted to Morgan’s side, seeing the leash they always used for their constitutionals around the building.
“Now, Peenie, I want you to be on your best behavior this morning. We will have a new friend walking with us. Well, you’ve met him, but only a couple of times. Remember the guy who fell when we were jogging in the park?”
She atta
ched the leash to the canine’s collar while explaining. “I want you to become friends with him,” she said. “His name is Blake. We will see him quite a lot, because Mommy will be working with him.”
The rottweiler cocked his head again, trying to grasp the meaning of her musical inflection while she talked.
“You wait and see. You will come to really like him.” Morgan smiled at her silliness, talking to Jeddy as if he understood every word. But, then, he often surprised her with his grasp of things. If “Mommy” liked Blake Robbins, Jeddy could learn to like him…
Five minutes later, the dog led Morgan from the elevator onto the lobby floor. People stepped aside, unsure the young woman had as firm a grip on the leash as necessary, in case the rottweiler was hungry, or just didn’t like their looks. Morgan smiled appreciation when one person said, “What a beautiful animal,” and silently nodded “no” with a smile when another asked, “Will he bite?” Of course, she knew he would, under the right circumstances.
Typical of busy New Yorkers, most just sidestepped and moved ahead to whatever their next pressing matter involved.
The morning sun was up, but low in the sky, and its most brilliant rays slanted painfully into Morgan’s eyes. She tugged on the leash for Jeddy to stop, and before he could respond, his great strength jerked her forward from her position when she tried to plant her feet on the sidewalk just outside the buildings main front door.
“Peanut!” She said, struggling to find her sunglasses in her purse. “Hold up a sec.”
The dog obediently stopped, although anxious to get to his familiar places of business.
The rottweiler ignored the people walking by them, for the most part, each pedestrian giving him wide berth, eyeing him warily or admiringly –sometimes doing both.
“We need to wait here for a little,” she said, after finding and placing the dark glasses on the bridge of her nose. She walked to him, taking in the leash by winding it around her right hand.
“Now, I want you to be on your best behavior, Peanut,” she said, kneeling, without letting the right knee of her denims touch the stone-imbedded concrete of the sidewalk. “He’s a really nice guy. We mustn’t act badly.”