Gemini Cell: A Shadow Ops Novel (Shadow Ops series Book 4) (10 page)

OP TEMPO

The armor was almost as light as clothing. Schweitzer could feel the thin layer of liquid beneath the fabric, weight shifting gently to redistribute itself with his movements.

“Shear-thickening fluid,” Eldredge said, “stronger than any Kevlar or ceramic you’ve ever worn. Light and completely maneuverable when you’re not under fire, but the moment it gets hit, it goes solid. The harder you hit it, the harder it gets.”

This is not armor,
Ninip said.

Yes, it is,
Schweitzer replied.
They were experimenting with this stuff before . . . before all this went down. It’s the best stuff there is.

He could feel Ninip’s contempt. The jinn flashed him a mental image of a man, soaking wet, pierced by arrows. Schweitzer flashed back an image of a raging torrent, sweeping those arrows aside. Ninip dismissed the image.
We do not need it. We cannot be killed.

Eldredge went on. “We hope that, without trauma, you can last forever. We’ve never had an Operator with us long enough to . . .”

“Rot?” Schweitzer asked.

Eldredge looked embarrassed. “We’re reasonably certain that the magic prevents it, but we’re equally sure that your body no longer heals. It can be damaged beyond repair. It can be shredded or burned. You can be destroyed.”

Schweitzer felt Ninip’s disdain.
Never.

“Then?” Schweitzer asked.

“We don’t know. Jawid has never recalled the same jinn twice, so it stands to reason that you go on . . . somewhere else.”

Was he talking about heaven? Religion had always come to Schweitzer through preaching and reading, rendering God into some textual abstract. He knew what God was supposed to look like, what heaven was supposed to be like, if his Sunday-school readings were to be believed, but the resonance was never there. Sarah’s open contempt for religion was the final nail in the coffin.

Ninip crept forward as Schweitzer thought about it, leaning in to probe at the memories of the pictures in the young Schweitzer’s Vacation Bible School Primer. Schweitzer didn’t bother to fight as the jinn followed the thread, starting with John 3:16, then down the rabbit hole through sermon after confession after Bible study. He drew back, aghast.
This is the faith of your people?

One of them, but the biggest.

You worship a wounded weakling nailed to a piece of wood and bleeding out his life. He is no warrior.

That’s kind of the point.

How can you be so mighty, have such incredible weapons, then sway in a cult that reveres peace above all things, ruled by a broken dead man?

Schweitzer shrugged internally.
We’ve never gotten a whole lot of points for consistency.

You worship a jinn. Like me.

It’s not the same thing.

Is it not? He was slain. On the third day, he rose again. How is that different?

Schweitzer paused. The truth was that he didn’t know anymore. He’d always taken all these things for granted: Magic wasn’t real. Dead was dead. There was no heaven.

He was wrong about the first two. Maybe he was wrong about the third.

He was about to ask Ninip where Jawid summoned him from when Eldredge spoke.

“Now, your targets are on the other side of that wall.” Eldredge gestured to a seamless barrier of cinder block, some twenty feet high, extending the full width of the room. Cameras were set into the corners of the ceiling, tiny black insects hiding in pockets of gloom. “Get over there, assess, and discriminate. Only take down the red targets. Beat thirty seconds.”

An LED readout on a display at the far end of the room was just visible over the top of the wall. The face lit up with huge red block numbers indicating the countdown.

Schweitzer hefted the carbine slung across his chest, nestling the stock into the sweet spot of his shoulder, finger indexed along the upper receiver. The carbine had been modified to accept .50 caliber rounds. The huge bullets required an extended magazine, not just long, but wide, a plastic drum extending from the weapon. Schweitzer hefted it. He knew that it would be impossibly heavy for any normal man to fire accurately, but those days were behind him now.

Schweitzer looked up at the wall before them, eyes roving across the seamless surface.
They clearly expect us to get up that.

Leave it to me,
Ninip answered.

It’d help if you . . .

A buzzer sounded and the LED numbers began to tick down. Ninip engaged the shared muscles of their legs and set their body leaping forward, barreling toward the wall, head down. Schweitzer lifted their head, tried to slow them, turn them aside before their skull shattered against the hard surface. Ninip growled and pushed back.

Schweitzer pictured their lowered head smashing into the wall, coming apart like an eggshell. Ninip swatted the image aside, showing Schweitzer only blackness.

He said we can’t heal, this is a really bad . . .

Ninip’s presence contracted, pulsed, channeled into the muscles of their legs. They took a galloping leap, squatted deep, and sprang.

Schweitzer felt the ground vibrate as they left it, saw the walls of the room rush by. The length of the wall shot past them, five feet, then ten, then fifteen. Schweitzer marveled as he planted their hand on the top, felt the gritty, uneven surface of the cinder block take their weight, and vaulted over to the other side. Then the world rushing past them again as they fell, landing in a crouch on the dirt floor just as the first targets popped up.

No, not targets. Black shapes, low and surging like waves, deep rumbling rising from sable throats.

Eldredge had set them down in a pack of dogs.

They were the same animals Schweitzer had run a dozen ops with, sniffing out explosive materials, turning corners for the team, risking their lives to distract dug-in enemies, drawing fire so their human masters could bring their guns to bear in safety.

Their names had been deliberately meek: Tripoli and Jennifer and Strawberry. They’d been a mix of breeds, mostly Belgian Malinois, happy and playful off the job, steel-eyed killers on it.

Schweitzer knew how his new form must smell to them, the thick reek of chemical preservative riding over the more familiar smell of dead flesh. Alien, threatening.

They lunged.

Ninip seized control of their arm, thrusting it forward and up, claw extending from a rigid finger, angling for the animal’s belly. Schweitzer pulled the claw in, curling the hand into a fist that slammed into the dog’s chest, cracking a rib and sending it rolling and yelping across the floor.

He could feel Ninip’s attention turn to him, coiling with contempt.
It is a dog,
the jinn said.

They were full members of our unit,
Schweitzer replied, conjured images of the SEALs jumping with the animals strapped into their harness, playing with them at unit barbecues, pinning medals on their collars after successful ops.
They were family.

You were fools,
the jinn spit.

Another dog lunged for their ankle, fastening his teeth around the armor, biting down hard.

Schweitzer kicked the leg back and forward before the dog could put pressure behind the bite, moving even as the jinn began to drive their hand down.

The dog whipped through the air, jaws ripping free with an audible click, teeth flying out of its mouth, trailing threads of blood. The rest of the pack hung back, snarling threats that masked fear.

Kill them,
Jawid’s voice rang in his mind.

No thanks,
Schweitzer replied. Even contorted into snarls, their black muzzles were a whisper of the life he had known. They had been weapons, yes, but also comrades.

Ninip said something, but it was lost in the buzz of the barking and the hissing of the air vents, drowned by Schweitzer’s focus as the first real target finally did pop with a loud thunk, wood reverberating against its metal housing.

The superhuman run and jump had taken Schweitzer by surprise, but as soon as the man-shaped piece of wood slid into view, he was back in his element. The carbine popped into its familiar spot on his shoulder, finger brushing the trigger, easing out the slack even as the weapon came up, eye dropping onto the sights.
I’ve got this.

Red target. Engage.

Ninip slid aside, releasing their shared limbs to Schweitzer’s control. The first target was only twenty feet away. At that range, the high-caliber round obliterated it, leaving a smoking shower of splinters. Schweitzer fell into the old groove instinctively, grateful for the familiar space, a shred of the known in the strangeness that had become his world. Ninip shared that space, marveling at the precision of his movements, the firm ease with which he let the trigger slide forward until he felt the slight click of the reset, keeping just the right amount of tension to hold it there. His eyes narrowed, his shooter’s vision alert for threats, moving, moving, never settling. Contact right. Red. Turn, sight, fire. The target exploded, and Schweitzer moved through the wreckage, the front sight post the only point of clarity in a blurred world. Bang. Bang. Single shots. Each impacting in the tiny triangle where he’d put them all his professional life.

Impressive,
Ninip said. Schweitzer ignored him. This killing space had always been his refuge, the immediacy of combat shutting out all distractions, giving Schweitzer the only true peace he’d ever known, his mind surrendering to the reptilian repetition of move, sight, shoot. The irony was one only other SEALs ever understood, that there in the midst of the maelstrom of battle was the only real rest they ever truly got.

He felt Ninip ingesting his experience, absorbing his skill. He shuddered internally, tried to shrug the presence away. Ninip laughed.
We are one. Will your hand deny your arm?

Both are dead,
Schweitzer said.

One of the dogs found its courage and leapt for them. Schweitzer was too absorbed in his shooting dance to react. Ninip seized the moment to lunge, moving them with lightning speed, throwing the carbine down to hang by its sling, reaching out to snatch the leaping animal out of the air.

Schweitzer strained against the jinn, but Ninip already had the momentum, bringing the dog down across their knee so quickly and with such force that the animal nearly broke in half.

The rest of the pack scattered at the sound of the dog’s final yelp, and Schweitzer shouted inwardly.
You fucking bastard!

The outpouring was unforgivable in his line of work. SEALs succeeded precisely because of their ability to maintain professionalism no matter what horrors unfolded around them. Schweitzer’s concentration broke just as his wide shooter’s vision caught a target springing up, so close he could feel the air stirring over his elbow. Too close to take a shot. His mind switched the action, immediately moving to drive the carbine butt into the head-shaped top of the board.

But Ninip blotted out his senses, the jinn’s filter sliding across his eyes. The hangar-sized room suddenly slid close, the cameras gleaming targeting lasers, painting Schweitzer’s forehead. Even the wooden target had changed, painted now with a mad grin, a malevolent clown smile showing razor teeth. Schweitzer’s nose filled with the copper smell of blood, making his mouth water. Anger swamped him, an animal need to escape the suddenly tiny room, slaughter anything that stood between him and the exit. His training receded to a splinter in his mind, dominated by the jinn’s feral presence.

It was the antithesis of how he’d always fought. No professionalism. No cold precision. Only red, raw rage. Was the target red? He couldn’t concentrate enough to tell.

He felt their shared throat flex, jaw unhinging, dropping until it touched the bottom of their sternum. Their tongue whipped out, lashed around the target’s neck, yanking the wood toward them. He gave in to the passion of the fight, and their head whipped forward, snake’s jaw snapping closed. He felt their teeth, dagger huge now, punch through the rough wooden outline simulating a man’s shoulders, upper chest. Ninip thrilled within him, drowning in animal joy, jerked their neck, tearing the top of the target off, ragged shreds of wood following like entrails. The terrified yipping of the dogs sounded all around them.

Schweitzer felt himself slipping away, a grain of sand drowning in a sea of the jinn, howling in predatory exultation. The room was close as a womb, the chewed wood in their mouth gobbets of flesh, the splinters blood spray. Ninip spit out the mouthful and howled just as two more targets sprang up, almost slapping them in the face, painted grins alive now, mocking him. Schweitzer felt the scythe claws extend, arms sweeping up to form a brief X before their face, then the muscles in their arms engaged, sweeping them down again, shearing the targets in half along the waistline.

Ninip was all. The jinn turned, eyes sweeping the dogs, cowering now against the edges of the room, as if by pressing themselves hard enough against the walls, they could pass through them. Their beating hearts and flowing blood were not human but were still far more interesting than the wooden targets.

Ninip stalked toward them, taking his time, savoring their animal terror.

Schweitzer was horrified. His entire life he’d thrown himself at challenge after challenge. Some had gone down easy, some he’d had to wear away. But they always fell. Ninip swept him away like a tsunami.

Schweitzer dug deep and pushed back against the jinn. Ninip pushed back briefly against him, then sullenly gave way.
Now you have seen what it is to fight.

Schweitzer’s vision slowly returning to normal, the room resuming its normal size, the targets shredded wood once again. Schweitzer could feel Ninip’s coiled strength. He knew that the jinn hadn’t really fought him, didn’t doubt that it would have beaten him if it had.

Schweitzer looked up, noted the countdown on the LED clock: five seconds remaining.

A buzz and click indicated a steel door swinging open at the far side of the room, four soldiers entering through it. Two held carbines at the ready, the other two carried what Schweitzer was beginning to see as the ubiquitous flamethrower and fireman’s axe.