The Gamma Option

by Jon Land

  With the quick silence of a big jungle cat, McCracken slid out to the floor, kneeling with his pistol in hand since the cumbersome Uzi had been left behind in the basement. He glided forward, using the matched Oriental runners to hide his footsteps. He could tell exactly where the window was from the way the rays of sunshine streamed through. And there was a shadow, Hassani’s shadow.

  He reached the edge of the forwardmost bookshelf and spun round it in combat position ready to fire.

  “Don’t move!” he screamed.

  And found himself facing off against a black marble bust of the Ayahtollah Khomeini that had been placed to cast just the shadow it had. Before he could turn, another voice echoed through the huge library hall.

  “Drop your gun, Mr. McCracken,” Hassani ordered.

  Blaine obliged and then drew his hands into the air.

  “Now turn around. Slowly. And keep your feet spread as well.”

  Again McCracken obeyed and found himself standing fifteen feet from General Amir Hassani who was holding a submachine gun.

  “You have been quite a nuisance, Mr. McCracken, I must say.”

  “We meet at last, General,” Blaine returned icily. “Or should I say we meet again … Yosef Rasin.”

  The uniformed figure’s reaction was shock first and then hearty laughter. His free hand edged to his face and tugged a good portion of his beard away to reveal a much tighter growth and lighter shade of hair beneath it. A few more pulls and pinches on the theatrical makeup and the face shown was unmistakably that of Yosef Rasin.

  “My regrets that you were not named minister of defense,” Blaine taunted.

  “I suppose I have you to blame for that, Mr. McCracken. But don’t fret. There’ll be plenty of other ceremonies I’ll be attending before long.”

  “Funerals, Rasin, all of them your doing.”

  “Hardly. I’m going to be a hero. The people of Israel will rally to me once the truth of what I’ve done becomes obvious.”

  “Millions of deaths?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You’ll be likened to Hitler, not Moses.”

  Rasin stood there and tried very hard to show no emotion. McCracken had to keep the madman distracted any way he could. While the two had been talking he had begun stealthily to close the distance between them. He’d already made up one yard, and with one more covered he’d almost be within lunging distance. If he could only keep the exchange going a little longer …

  “Lace,” Rasin called toward the door.

  The double doors parted and the biggest woman McCracken had ever seen entered. A half foot over six feet at least. She was decked out in black leather beneath a pale face and stubbly blond hairdo.

  “You!” Blaine exclaimed, recognizing her from Boston and Masada, realizing in that same instant this was the woman who had killed John Neville, Henri Dejourner, and Hiroshi, and kidnapped Matthew.

  Lace’s reaction to him was to stand to the rear and right of Rasin and fold her arms. A variety of weapons worn through her belt clanged together for an instant after she stopped moving. Blaine recognized one of them as a scimitar.

  Hiroshi had been killed by just such a blade.

  “You bitch,” McCracken muttered under his breath.

  The huge woman grinned at him.

  “There were two of you, weren’t there?” Blaine spit at her. “What’s the matter, the other one getting it from someone else on the side?”

  Lace’s smile grew taut. The leather jacket worn over her midsection was tight enough to reveal long, hard bands of muscle bred from years of bodybuilding. Rasin might be a slouch, but this woman was anything but. McCracken was going to have to rethink his strategy, especially since the bruises inflicted by bullets pounding the Kevlar body armor at the barricade promised to steal some of his strength and quickness.

  Go ahead, make your move, Lace’s eyes told him, but Blaine fought to keep his hate for her down. Improperly channeled, hate could make you respond the wrong way at the wrong time. Stick to the subject, he urged himself, stick to the subject!

  “How’d you do it, Rasin?” he asked. “How’d you pull off the greatest hoax in history since Elvis got himself embalmed just to fool his fans?”

  “It was quite simple, really. The real Hassani contacted my people in search of asylum in the closing days of the lost war effort. Figured he might as well sample the good life now that his country was falling, and my hatred for Arabs had him thinking he had plenty to trade in return.”

  “And he did, didn’t he? Far more than he ever suspected.”

  “He told me everything I needed to know to take his place. Days, weeks of interrogation. Early on, the plot was just a fantasy, but the more I listened the more I started to believe with the proper preparations it could work. The military coup in the wake of Khomeini’s death became an incredible stroke of fortune. When the Revolutionary Guard called to Hassani to return from exile, it was I who appeared.” His face glowed with triumph. “Imagine having Hassani contact me barely a month after Eisenstadt came to me about Gamma.”

  “You saw the connection immediately, of course,” Blaine said, but his eyes lingered on Lace, who was still standing there, huge and menacing.

  “Certainly. Gamma was indeed a tremendous find, but to accomplish my true goal of leading the next generation of Israel, I needed a rationale to employ it.”

  “You wanted to be a hero, so you worked up a means to make yourself one.”

  “If you choose to put it that way, yes. Hassani and I were the same height and build. A professional makeup artist did the rest. Once I went into self-imposed exile four months ago, the impersonation was simple. Before then, and often even since, a double was utilized. The woman who drew you into this killed him.” He laughed again. “I might say she was quite shocked when I apprehended her at the airport on the verge of her escape. She didn’t recognize me. I didn’t realize how effective my disguise truly was until I interrogated her.”

  “But it all worked out, didn’t it? You had the militants of the Arab world eating out of your hand and begging for seconds. Must’ve been a hell of an acting job.”

  “It was passion, McCracken, something a man like you should appreciate even if no one else can. I loathed them all so much. They could see the fire in my eyes and mistook it—I made them mistake it—for passion for ‘their’ cause. I’ve lived most of my life coming to terms with who these people are, what makes them tick. Their entire lives are fueled by dreams of destruction. Life to them is death. They have no appreciation for simple pleasures and absolutely no desire ever to live in peace. Believe me when I tell you that. There will never be a negotiated settlement, and if there is they would subvert and destroy it. Barbarianism has been their way of life, of death, for five thousand years. That won’t change.”

  “So the unified ‘invasion’ ends up helping you on two fronts. First it provides the reason for the Israeli government to embrace you and your weapon. And second it gives you the means to get Gamma released in all the countries at the same time through those vials you gave your ‘delegates.’ ” Blaine took a deep breath before continuing. “You who claim to cherish life so much, how could you go through with this knowing what Bechman’s findings showed and what stopped the Americans from utilizing Gamma when they had the opportunity?”

  “Go through with it?” Rasin asked, quite shocked. “My dear, Mr. McCracken, that is precisely what I’m hoping for.”

  “The end of humanity?”

  “Hardly. Other countries, countries we choose, can be provided with the vaccine too … if they are willing to pay a premium, of course.”

  “This isn’t about running Israel, it’s about running the world.”

  “Israel will be running the world, with me as its leader,” Rasin qualified. “And don’t we have—”

  Rasin stopped when Lace turned suddenly toward the door.

  “There’s someone in the corridor coming this way,” she told him.

  “Tilly perh
aps, coming back from escorting our friends to the tunnel.”

  “No. Someone … bigger.”

  “Check it out.” When she seemed reluctant to leave he added, “I’ll finish with Mr. McCracken myself.”

  Johnny Wareagle had lost count of how many guards he had encountered en route to the voices. It hadn’t been necessary to kill any of them, although considering the fate that awaited them once the enraged masses beyond brought their fight within these walls, that fate might have been more merciful by comparison.

  He had discarded the Uzis early into his stalk because of the noise they made clacking against each other on his back, but he was hardly weaponless. He had broken off the business end of a thick broom on the second floor, which left him with a shaft handle formed of olive wood nearly five feet long and a weighty inch in diameter. Not the finest staff he had ever wielded, but it would more than do and already had.

  Rounding the hallway on the third floor, Wareagle could hear the voices clearly. One of them was McCracken’s, and one was unfamiliar. Beyond the sound of the voices, however, Wareagle sensed an evil presence both cold and ominous, as deadly as any he had ever felt before. He grasped the staff tighter and continued on.

  “And assuming Bechman was right in his conclusions and your … plan works as you hope,” McCracken probed, “what then?”

  “Civilization rebuilds, virtually from scratch, with proper guidance this time. So long the object of scorn, persecution, and holocaust, the Jew will be in a position to control all. A world without Arabs, Nazis, and with no one to replace them.”

  “Not quite,” McCracken followed, his meaning obvious. “I’ll give you credit for this much, Rasin. I’ve met up with a lot of madmen in my time, but your aims seem more genuine than any of the others. A shame they won’t be realized.”

  “Don’t be childish. Even you cannot change the inevitable now.” Yet the expression on Blaine’s face indicated assurance and determination. Rasin was suddenly unnerved. “The clothes you’re wearing, I know those clothes.…”

  “These? Happened to pick them up at the end of a certain tunnel the Indian and I used to get in here. Figured they had been left there for a number of Arab gentlemen to aid in their escape from the area.”

  “No! You’re bluffing!”

  Blaine showed the miniature detonator he had pulled from his pocket thirty seconds before. “I figure they’ll be well into the tunnel by now. Don’t worry, I was sure to place my plastic explosives at key structural stress points. Assure an even and fair collapse that way.”

  “You can’t press it! You can’t!”

  “Drop your gun, Rasin.”

  “No! … Lace, stop him!”

  The leather-clad woman giant lunged back through the double doors at the same time Blaine turned toward them. The gun he had been forced to discard was only a yard away. He dropped for it as she whirled a chain from her belt in his direction.

  It can’t be on target. She had no time to aim… .

  Blaine looked away from the blur, hand going for the pistol. The ease of reaching it surprised him, for he didn’t realize that Lace’s intended target was his other hand, the one holding the detonator. He felt the gnarled edges of the link dig into his wrist, powerless to maintain his grasp of the detonator against the pain. It flew outward, and Blaine felt his wrist explode in fiery agony as he was yanked away. He had the pistol briefly, but the vicious thrust of Lace’s motion stripped it from him.

  Stunned, McCracken awaited certain death as he watched Rasin bring the machine gun up to fire. Suddenly a second huge shape charged through the open double doors. Johnny Wareagle’s staff preceded him and smacked hard into Rasin’s ribs, which caused his first burst of fire to stitch a jagged design in the far wall.

  Instantly Lace released her grip on the chain digging into McCracken and sped inside the second strike, which Wareagle had aimed for her. The miss carried Johnny sufficiently off balance for the huge woman to pound a shoulder into him with force sufficient to propel both of them through the door into the corridor.

  Blaine saw Rasin staggering, machine gun dangling from the shoulder strap supporting it. He knew the madman was struggling to right it on him again and just as fast made the decision to go for the detonator and not the pistol. He couldn’t take a chance that the Arab delegates carrying the Gamma vials would make it out of the tunnel while he and Rasin were fighting. He dove headlong and slid off the carpet onto an exposed portion of the hardwood floor to where the detonator had come to a rest. His outstretched hand just managed to find the red button when Rasin’s desperate burst coughed fragments of wood everywhere around him. He was rolling to avoid the next burst when the floor in the hall began to shake, the tunnel underlying the royal palace caving in on itself under the force of the blasts. The explosion blew out a number of windows in the library, turning the glass into flying shards that fell over a prostrate McCracken and then slid harmlessly to the floor.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

  Rasin’s scream barely preceded the rat-tat-tat of his machine gun fire aimed at the downed figure of McCracken. But Blaine was already in motion away from it, rolling over the shattered glass that had coated him toward the cover promised by the long shelves of books.

  Wareagle still felt the battle was his to win. In close, the advantage of his staff was negated, but there was strength to consider at this proximity, and the woman’s was no match for his. Strangely, the thought that he was battling a woman never crossed his mind. His feelings revealed to him a spirit as black on the inside as her leather garb was on the outside.

  Johnny felt his back smash up against the wall and drove his knee hard into the rippling muscles of the woman’s abdomen. The move drove her from him and started to double her over; the Indian’s next intention was to dip behind and loop the staff round her throat to crush it.

  He saw the scimitar sweep up at him only after he had committed himself to the move. A heavy sword with a sharply angled edge, it could be wielded accurately only by the strongest of warriors. He managed to backpedal at the last moment, sliding enough to the side to allow him to block the sword with his staff. The heavy blade dug into the wood but couldn’t cut all the way through.

  Lace was quick to pull it free and send the scimitar at him a second time in roundhouse fashion. But Wareagle anticipated the move perfectly and countered by darting to the innermost point of the strike. This allowed him to accept the blow at its weakest with the lower end of the staff while he crashed its upper end downward against the woman’s face.

  Lace wailed in agony, her cheekbone shattered. Wareagle went for the finish, a thrust to the throat while she was dazed. But Lace managed to duck under the move and used a sweep kick to take out Johnny’s left knee. He went down, maintaining the presence of mind to keep his grip on the staff, so when she charged at him, snarling, wielding the scimitar in a downward blow, he was ready.

  He jammed the staff up to meet the blow and felt his elbows lock tight an instant before the clash came. This time the wood split on impact, leaving Johnny with a segment in either hand. Lace wasted no time and swung the scimitar round again.

  If he had tried to regain his feet, death would have been the inevitable result. But Johnny did the last thing expected of him by remaining on his knees and actually closing into the blow while he jammed the more jagged piece of the staff hard against the woman’s blade-wielding wrist.

  Lace screamed again, the sound still piercing Johnny’s ears when he slid behind her and lashed the hard wood into her kidney through the padding of her leather jacket. Impact separated him from the more brittle portions of the staff, and he succeeded in smashing the woman’s already-damaged face straight into the wall. She spun around with the left side of her mouth curling up from the bulging swell of her broken cheek. Her leather pants were tight enough to let Johnny see the rippling tension in her leg muscles as she came forward, stalking him, clip-clopping on her boots and waving the scimitar through the air.

  I
t was instantly clear to Wareagle that those high-heeled boots were anything but ideal for rapid motions, and he seized this for his next strategy. She came at him when he expected her to—as he was climbing back to his feet. She came at him with the left side of her face swollen twice the size of her right.

  Johnny stopped rising, went down all the way to the floor, and swept the staff half he still held back at her as she passed. The blow broke the heel off her right boot. But Lace didn’t realize it until she planted to steady her next swing. With her heel gone, her leg buckled. She went down and Wareagle spun over her, brandishing the jagged staff half aloft, making ready to plunge it into her.

  The second shape lunged atop him from behind just as he started his motion. A scream punctured his ears and he felt himself going down, the weight of another, smaller woman enough to strip his precarious balance away. He struggled to pry her off while before him Lace had risen to her knees, almost to her feet, scimitar in hand, readying to come for him.

  “I’ll kill you, McCracken! I’ll kill you!” Rasin raged, and Blaine felt the machine gun fire skid close to him as he sped between the first and second book-lined aisles.

  The bullets followed him as far as the end of the row when he rounded the shelves and pressed himself against the books in the next aisle. Instantly, more rapid fire spit books from their places around him, pages torn from bindings and set to flutter free. McCracken went down but kept moving, propelling himself on his elbows. Another burst fired just over him showered Blaine with more book fragments. Rasin spun round one end of the book-lined aisle just when Blaine climbed back to his feet at the other. Again he was moving amidst the books, varying his path and target while Rasin’s bullets splintered the shelf into fragments and scattered classics everywhere.

  McCracken heard Rasin jam a fresh clip home an instant before another burst covered him with books jetting out under the bullets’ force. He pinned down Rasin’s position and steadied himself. He had to put some distance between the fanatic and himself and he had to do it fast, if he hoped to emerge from this alive.