From Filth & Mud (31 page)

Odin and Tanner provided a thick wall of covering fire for him and Doug as they took cover behind a gurney in the corner of the hallway. The spray of bullets whittled the doorway from where the two soldiers had momentarily emerged. One of the soldiers peered again through the doorway and was immediately shot by Tanner and Odin. The floor immediately quieted. The only noise was that of a solitary man pleading for his life as he sobbed and panted heavily for his last few breaths. Jacob waited for the sobbing to subside before he moved cautiously forward through the hallway. The team members cleared several rooms, which appeared to be makeshift apartments for the Chinese soldiers. There were pictures of wives, children, and family back home, happy and serene.

Jacob reached the feet of the soldier who had been dispatched outside of the room and pushed quickly into the last room, his weapon leveled at the ready. Inside much like the other rooms was another makeshift apartment with a small kitchenette, couch, a bed, and small living area. Jacob whirled around at the sudden rustle from under the bed.

A hand shot out accompanied by a frightened voice speaking in English. “Please don’t shoot. Please. Please don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

“Come out. Keep your hands where I can see them, or I shoot you right here!” Jacob ordered the man.

A curly, dark-haired, Arab-looking man emerged from under the bed. He was visibly shaking and continued to beg for his life.

“Who are you?” Jacob demanded.

“Manny Monte-Alban! Manny Monte-Alban!” The doctor had his eyes closed and was cringing in agony awaiting the stinging burn of the inevitable bullets.

“Relax, doctor, you’re okay. We’re here to rescue you,” Jacob assured. The doctor turned around and lunged unexpectedly onto Jacob and immediately fainted.

It was now 6 a.m., and the sun had begun to rise over the horizon; the morning would dawn on a lull in a heavy gun battle that had shaken the streets of Basrah.

Doug lifted Monte-Alban off of the floor and dumped him unceremoniously onto the bed. Monte-Alban coughed a few times and awoke.

“Doctor, are you okay to move?” There was no answer. “Doctor we need to move out now!” Jacob tried to sound reassuring.

“I’m not going back!” Monte-Alban yelled suddenly. “You can’t send me back to Eckert, to BioSyn. They’re working with the Chinese!”

“What? What the hell are you talking about?” Jacob was confused. “Doctor, we are here to get you home.”

Monte-Alban pulled himself onto the edge of the bed and glared at Jacob. “I said I am staying here. I’m not going back! They’re killers!” Monte-Alban screamed and pointed to the dead Chinese soldier. “They killed every one of the lab workers. They just spared me because I’m valuable to them.”

“What are you talking about? What happened? What do you mean they killed the lab workers?”

“I have perfected the cure, but they want the weapon!” Monte-Alban was shaking once again. “They want the weapon, not the cure. They killed them all!”

“Doctor, you need to be clear here. What’s going on?”

“The Chinese found out that I had been treating the locals, mainly children. I was able to perfect the cure, or rather a research assistant mistakenly did. It’s the second-generation Lilicytes that are the key. I was treating the children, and they were well and did not exhibit the deadly side effects, but the Chinese weren’t happy. They didn’t want their workers treated with the new Lilicytes. They wanted me to inject them with the original Lilicytes, but I warned them that they would all die. I didn’t think it at first, but that is exactly what they wanted. They wanted to study how Lilith kills. They want her as a weapon.”

Jacob was incredulous. “What are you talking about? I was sent here to rescue you and the cure from the local militia who overran the hospital and had killed you, but yet here you are.” Jacob drew his pistol and grabbed the doctor by his tattered collar.

“
I’m sorry, Jacob, but it’s a lie. BioSyn lied. Eckert lied. This is not a cure. It’s a weapon.” Dr. Monte-Alban trembled uncontrollably as Jacob held the cocked Colt pistol to his head.

“The
hell
it is doctor! I don’t know what kind of deal you cut with the Chinese for this thing, but I’m not letting you walk out of here. You’re coming with me whether or not I take you back as you are or with a few broken bones.” Jacob hurled the young doctor toward the floor, taking his legs out from under him. He pinned him with a knee on his back and zip-tied his hands together. He violently lifted Monte-Alban from the ground by his chicken-winged arms, while Doug kept a watchful eye through the window of the small kitchen.

“How does it look like out there?” he barked to Doug.

“The street is quiet right now. I’ve got a few guys milling around at the end of the alley, probably spotters. I see a guy with an AK-47, and it looks like he’s calling in his buddies on a cell phone, and he’s pointing this way.” Doug’s tone had an unusual timbre of stress that worried Jacob.

“Tim? What do you see out there?” His earbuds were silent momentarily and then squelched with two short bursts of static hiss, a signal that Tim was momentarily preoccupied. He knew that the two bodies in the alleyway would give away his shooting position to any experienced fighter, and given the type of coordinated resistance that they had seen so far, he did not want to take a chance.

Doug looked back at Jacob questioningly. “What are we doing here? Who is this guy? What is he talking about: a cure, a weapon?”

This was not the time or the place to fill Doug in on the mission specifics, and he needed him laser-focused.

“This is the last VIP. He’s more VIP than the others. This guy was thought to be dead, but it turns out he just turn-coated and tried to steal some valuable property so that he could sell it to the Chinese. You should be psyched; he’s our extra bonus for the job. I’m guessing he’ll fetch us a cool $25k each.” He sized up the good doctor as he held him firmly by the zip ties and pushed him into a plastic chair.

Doug nodded in approval. Jacob didn’t know if Doug was buying what he was selling, but he returned his gaze out through the window. Jacob’s earbuds filled with Tim’s whispered voice.

“I just dropped another Tango. A guy with an AK-47 and phone headed to your position. I had to make way to the north side of the street, 400 meters from you.”

“Roger. Give me an ammo count.”

“32 rounds of 7.62, 60 rounds of 5.56, and 45 rounds of 9 mm,” Tim chirped.

“I’m down to my last two mags and then its four mags of .45.” Doug looked down at the pistol wrapped around his thigh.

Jacob was down to his last magazine for his M-4, and he would be damned if he had to rely on his Colt to fight his way back through the maze of streets and alleyways to reach the third team. He looked down at the Chinese security guard and scavenged what he could. He tossed a CZ Scorpion pistol and its extra magazine to Doug and unceremoniously pulled the limp body off of the QBZ-95 assault rifle. Jacob slung the bullpup rifle over his back and prayed that he wouldn’t need to use the damned thing.

Doug looked at his new Scorpion pistol with disgust. “This fucking thing is going to get me killed the second I pull this trigger. I give it five rounds before it jams.” He shoved the metal stamped auto-pistol into the crease of his load-bearing vest and threw the magazines into his cargo pocket. “It’s better than trying to butt-stroke our way out of here, right?”

Jacob pulled the doctor out of his seat and signaled Doug to exit the apartment into the hallway. Doug threw the door open and a barrage of gunfire instantaneously splintered the door. They were pinned down by the heavy gunfire streaking and snapping through the hallway.

Jacob yelled at Doug, “We’re going to have to run the rabbit.”

Doug sprang over to where the security guard lay and hoisted his body against the wall, slipping his arm through the guard’s body-armor, donning him like a shield. He held his M-4 in the other and tucked it against the guard’s torso.

Jacob crouched over Dr. Monte-Alban who was quivering with each report from the fury of bullets that awaited them.

“Listen, doctor, you’re going to have to save yourself here. We can take care of ourselves, but you have to carry your weight if you’re going to get out of this alive.” He motioned to Doug for the Scorpion. Jacob cut the doctor’s ties and pulled his hands in front of him placing the pistol in his shaky palms.

“I can’t!” Monte-Alban recoiled.

“You’re going to have to, or they are going to come for you. When they do, we will be long gone. They will behead you, and you will be alive when the do it,
doctor
!”

Monte-Alban was shaken and locked eyes with Jacob. “It’s Manny. Call me Manny.”

“Okay then, Manny. Just point down the hallway to the right and squeeze that trigger until it stops shooting. You don’t have to hit anything. Just squeeze the trigger. It’s ready to go.”

Monte-Alban shook his head repeatedly, his adrenaline making him so lightheaded that he could have fainted again. He propped himself up on his wobbly legs and waited for Jacob’s signal.

Doug ran through the doorway shielded by the armored guard’s body. Jacob pushed the doctor to the ground in the hallway as he propped the barrel of his rifle against the doorway and opened fire. The violence of action caused the attackers to seek immediate cover. They wounded one or two militiamen with the initial barrage. Doug tossed the bullet-riddled guard to the floor and continued forward on the far side of the hallway as Jacob pushed the doctor and headed down the nearside. The pair assaulted through the hallway, unleashing short, deliberate bursts from their rifles all the while maintaining the initiative in the firefight. The remaining militiamen scattered as they heard the gunfire descending down the hallway toward their hastily sought shelters. 

Tim interrupted the din of the assault: “I see three Tangos with small arms, hot-footing it out of the building.”

“Roger. Light ‘em up!”

Three successive shots cracked in the alley and found their marks, dropping the fleeing men dead in their tracks. The third barely heard the first shot before he too was dead.

Jacob radioed Tim: “Three coming out.”

Doug led the way as the three slowly emerged from the building, Van Damme hot on their heels. Monte-Alban was still gripping the pistol, finger still tightly wrapped around the depressed trigger. Jacob reached over and pulled his finger away from the trigger and inserted a fresh magazine.

“Keep that finger off of the trigger until you need to fire, and this time, you should try to aim. Just point it and hold the trigger down for ‘one-Mississippi’.” He nodded to the doctor, and he nodded back.

The three men emerged from the building under a hail of covering fire laid down by the second and third teams who had converged on their position. Tanner and Odin had already rendezvoused with the teams, and both were nursing winging shots and other minor wounds. They jumped into one of the waiting SUVs and made a speedy retreat back to base.

John’s voice broke into Jacob’s earbuds: “We’ve got to fall back to the river. Our base is under attack. All teams are to converge at the piers. I’ve already radioed the
Jonah
. It’s steaming toward the mouth of the Shatt right now. It will be there in a couple of hours. Don’t expect any cover from our QRF; they’ve already bugged out!”

“Any sign of the other lab workers?!” Jacob shouted back over to John.

“Negative,” was the lone response.

The motorcade sped up and tore through the crowding, early-morning streets of Basrah. Merchants had begun putting out their wares, and worshippers had begun to congregate for prayer. The mercenary motorcade was conspicuous and endangered. Jacob’s three teams reached the docks in fifteen harrowing minutes where they converged with John’s teams.

“We’ve got about five minutes before we come under fire, so load up quickly!” John shouted to Jacob, as he sprinted toward the Conex boxes at the end of the pier. Jacob and his teams sprinted in suit and jumped aboard the waiting Zodiacs by the time the first of the militia’s trucks opened fire on the docks. The docks were soon peppered with heavy machine-gun fire from truck-mounted, anti-aircraft guns, which instantly immolated the abandoned SUVs.

Six Zodiacs revved away at full throttle and opened fire on the docks from the water. Rounds impacted around Jacob’s Zodiac, sending spikes of water pluming into the sky. Tracers bounced by and disappeared into the banks of the widening river. The Zodiacs were soon out of the range of the anti-aircraft guns, but the crews remained alert as they carved their way down river through the brackish waters of the Shatt’s mouth and into the Gulf.

- - - - - - -

It had been an hour since they had made it back aboard the
Jonah,
and they were now relatively safe in the deeper waters of the Persian Gulf. Jacob had escorted Monte-Alban to his quarters and had seen to it that he was fed and cared for. After the doctor had calmed and rested a bit, Jacob renewed his questioning.

“Doctor, so what did you mean that it was a weapon?”

Monte-Alban sunk his face into his hands and rubbed his eyes and temples vigorously as if to wipe them clear of a haunting memory.

“It wasn’t supposed to be a weapon. It was supposed to be a novel, treatment-delivery mechanism. The project is called Lilith, after Adam’s first wife: the true, first mother of humanity. My good friend Dr. William LaPierre and I were working on a way to target therapies to the specific problem areas in the body, the benefit of which would be efficient delivery of treatments without causing collateral damage to healthy cells. Dr. LaPierre had recently lost his wife to pancreatic cancer, and he decided that our goal would be to target cancer. Of course he chose the most difficult and some say most inevitable disease. The inevitability comes from simple statistical math. There are approximately 37.2 trillion cells in the adult human body, each of varying types, shapes, sizes, functions, and life spans. Each cell carries the distinct DNA code that makes you who you are. 

“I don’t know if you are aware of this, Jacob, but every day that you live, billions of cells all over your body are splitting and recreating themselves, keeping you alive. Each time a cell splits through the process of mitosis, an exact copy of the cell is made. One cell turns to two, two to four, four to eight, and so on exponentially. Now each time the cell divides, there is a slight chance that the resulting cell will carry a gene mutation. It’s just statistics. Once in a while and for whatever reason, the DNA will become corrupted by a bad transcription. Most times, the resulting mutation is harmless and does not even affect the cell’s function. Other times, the mutation might directly affect that cell’s function and that cell will simply die, or will be eaten by macrophages, which are specific white blood cells of your immune system. Think of macrophages as the garbage men of your system. These little Pacman-like cells eat foreign bodies and most mutated cells, and they do this constantly because of the number of cells that are replicating within your body at any given time.