Gemini Cell: A Shadow Ops Novel (Shadow Ops series Book 4) (23 page)

The man from the road.

Naked, showing no sign of pain from landing barefooted on the broken roof of a car.

He’d jumped. He’d jumped across hundreds of feet of road. He’d practically flown.

Panic and disbelief swarmed in the pit of Chang’s stomach, but his training answered, surging through him and pushing it back down, keeping him suspended in the state of hyperalertness, of focused calm.
Later,
his mind told him.
You can sort it out later. For now, stop the threat.

The man crouched on the roof, then raised his chin, sniffed the air. His head sawed unerringly in Chang’s direction, a low growl emanating from his throat, sounding more rottweiler than human.

Scary, sure. But the man made a perfect target, silhouetted against the night sky, spreading long-fingered hands to give Chang a perfect centerline for his shot.

He dropped his eyes back onto his gun sights and thumbed the button on the light. If that fucker was to die, let him die blind.

But the light washed over his target, and Chang’s battle bubble popped.

The man’s corpse-gray skin nearly reflected the light back at him, waxy and hairless as a store mannequin. It was crisscrossed with tiny scars, with yellow-white stitches clinging stubbornly to three puckered mounds over his left pectoral. Chang recognized them as gunshot wounds, carelessly sewn closed in the manner of an undertaker preparing a corpse for burial, knowing the rough work would be covered by clothing.

The shape of the man’s body showed Chang he was male though his manhood had been cut away, the site stitched shut with the same sloppy carelessness. Horns sprouted from his head, uneven spikes of bone, piercing the skin of his scalp, matched by a broken mountain range of spines running down his back. What Chang had assumed were long fingers were claws, as if the bones of his hand had sprouted tapered branches, making him a thing of spikes, a human porcupine.

Across his chest, marred by the wound scars, was the faded remains of a tattoo: an eagle, wings spread, perched proudly above crossed cannons on a waving American flag. A banner scrolled beneath:
DUTY, HONOR, COUNTRY
.

The man growled again, his jaw unhinging like a snake’s, his gray tongue lolling out a foot long, weaving in Chang’s direction like a sentient thing.

His eye sockets were hollow, gray pits. Whatever meat had resided in those depths was long gone. In its place, twin gold flames flickered, tiny balls of metallic, malevolent fire.

The panic surged in Chang again, an electric jolt up his spine, the tiny muscles along its length seizing in horror, his brain sparking as it tried to wrap around what it was seeing, a flood of words selected and discarded in an instant. Zombie. Ghoul. Wraith.

Devil.

Chang’s conscious mind reeled, his subconscious mind did what it was trained to do. Devil or not, it had a man’s shape, and he knew how to kill men. The target went blurry, the front sight post came into clear focus, and Chang snapped the trigger back three times. The gun kicked, but he held it steady, his solid frame pushing it back into place between each shot, eyes never leaving the jumping sights.

The fear and amazement must have been getting to him; the first shot came in low, punching through the top of the man’s sternum, just under the hollow of his throat, but the next two shots impacted where Chang had intended, the first holing the man’s gray Adam’s apple, and the second pushing through his eye socket to explode out the back of his skull, carrying scraps of skin and fragments of bone with it.

Forty-five caliber rounds packed a hell of a punch. The man’s head snapped back, and he practically somersaulted off the car’s roof, landing with a thud behind it.

Chang wasn’t dumb enough to race around the vehicle. Instead, he dropped prone in the mud, lining up for another shot before flashing his light through the undercarriage. The white beam flooded over mud and clumps of grass. No body. Nothing.

The whooshing sound again.

Chang looked up just in time to see the man hurtling down toward him. He launched himself back, stumbling to his feet as the man landed, swiping out with one clawed hand, sharp bone tips of his claws singing through his shirt, tracing shallow, bloody lines across Chang’s chest.

This close, Chang could see the bloodless, black entry wounds his rounds had made. The bullet had passed through the empty eye socket without affecting the gold flame that flickered there, dancing hypnotically, as the man turned his head to follow Chang’s movements.

Chang’s brain had now switched monikers. Thing. Creature. Whatever this was, it wasn’t a man.

He raised the pistol again, but the thing stepped forward quicker than a cat and brought its forearm down like an iron bar on his wrist. He felt the bones snap, his body barely registering the pain in the rush of adrenaline. The gun went tumbling from his limp hand.

And now his training betrayed him. His conscious mind understood that the thing before him didn’t respond to the tools in his toolbox. A high-powered round through the eye wouldn’t put it down. The only thing to do now was run. But his body wouldn’t let him. Years of training had put it on autopilot, so that all he could do was stand and watch himself as he stepped into the attack, close as a lover, hooking two of his fingers over the thing’s sternum, pushing in and pulling down, seeking the nerve cluster that he knew would have no effect because the thing was dead, and pain was nothing more than a distant notion.

His knuckles rocked into the entry wound as his fingers sank deeply enough that a living man would have dropped screaming in pain. But, of course, the thing showed no reaction, leaning casually aside and forward, the extended jaw clamping over his shoulder, the mouth bone dry. He felt the teeth sink into him, grinding against the bone beneath. No man’s teeth were that long, that sharp. It gave a quick jerk of its head, like a hunting cat, and Chang felt hot blood spray up his neck. His arm went numb.

His blood. His arm.

Nonetheless, his body was in full control now, the training driving him even as his conscious mind acknowledged the fact that it was useless, that he had lost, that a dead thing could not be killed.

He twisted, feeling the flesh of his shoulder tear, ripping clean of its mouth, the agony still a distant thing. He rolled across its shoulder, bringing his elbow down hard against its short ribs, felt the satisfying crack beneath that would have put any living man out of the fight. His face slid along the thing’s triceps. It smelled of hospital antiseptic and something spicy that reminded him of the Arab suqs he’d been to in Qatar, Yemen, and Oman.

The thing lifted its arm, and Chang saw a dark scrawl down its side. He couldn’t read it in the dark, but he knew it was tattooed lettering: blood type and serial number. He had it, too. Most operators did.

Not just a zombie. A zombie of one of his own.

And then his body did register the pain, and the claws slid up under his rib cage, rising through his lungs, his heart, beyond. He felt the hand follow, drilling into the wound, and all his strength suddenly left him. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. His knees buckled, and he sagged in the creature’s arms. It held him like a baby, its face hovering over his own, close enough that he should have been able to smell its breath. But it wasn’t breathing.

The gold flames of its eyes bored into his own and it croaked something, a few words in a language that sounded like Hebrew, garbled and truncated, wind blown through an ancient chimney.

His vision went gray, collapsing into a tunnel that shut out all except those twin burning fires. His mind clung to a single thought, that he had been going somewhere, that this losing fight was all the more a tragedy because it had stopped him from something important that he needed to do.

Sarah,
he thought as he slid further into the dark, even the light of the golden fires fading.

Oh, Sarah. I’m sorry.

ALIVE

Schweitzer and Ninip went in on foot.

The helo set them down around three klicks out, on a slope of broken scree that spoke of a rockslide in months past. The larger stones had all been carried off, which let Schweitzer know that there was a settlement nearby. If his memory served him, it was likely to be farther up the slope, back to a harder piece of the mountain, hidden and defensible.

Bring up the map again,
Schweitzer sent to Jawid.

His vision went white as the Sorcerer reached out to him, channeling his own vision of the screen in the briefing room. Schweitzer could see Ty out of the corner of Jawid’s eye, looking at the Sorcerer with something akin to fear.

Beyond him, the screen showed a drone’s camera image of a large compound. It was built around a low house of at least three stories, judging from the tiered balconies. A higher wall ringed the open space beyond it, enclosing two smaller buildings and two towers. White dots clustered in a corner. Goats, most likely. A few darker points were likely people. Cars were parked in neat rows just outside one of the gates.

The bodies glowed bright white in the thermal-imaging lens. Two of the cars glowed white up front, the heat from their running engines lighting them up for the camera. The building corners glowed in stark relief, so brightly in some spots that Schweitzer could tell where the generators were stored.

All, save one.

A long, rectangular building, certainly a single story, was nestled alongside the main building’s side, ringed with what Schweitzer guessed was tall fencing.

It was pitch-black.

That’s where they’re storing the bodies,
he said to Ninip.
It’s refrigerated.

He could feel the jinn’s impatience, but Ninip was slowly learning the benefit of taking his partner’s counsel.
Why are they trafficking in corpses? Perhaps they have their own Gemini Cell.

Eldredge did say there were other Sorcerers besides Jawid. Maybe there’s another program, more Operators like us.

Ninip mused as they trudged along a ridge, keeping to the far side and just out of sight.
Us against another pairing, with an ancient soul of its own? That would be a worthy contest.

Yeah, well. Hopefully that’s not what we’re running into here.

You hope for strange things.
Schweitzer could feel the jinn’s hunger rising as they closed on the target. Schweitzer kept their shared ears tuned, the incredible fidelity filtering through a sea of sounds. The wind sighed along the ridge, insects foraged in the scrub grass. He could hear the high whining of the drone’s tiny engine, kilometers above them, the whispered conversation of the men back at the grounded helo. Somewhere to the northeast, a jackrabbit stomped its foot to warn of approaching danger. Schweitzer listened for a moment before deciding that it was at least a kilometer away.

Ninip ranged over the map as well, and Schweitzer was surprised to see him struggling with his own impulses, trying to consider the best breach point.
We should go in from the back of the main building,
the jinn suggested.
The wall looks high there. There are no windows that I can see, and it is taller than the towers.

It’s not taller than the towers,
Schweitzer said.
You have to get used to looking at this kind of imagery. It’s deceptive. You need to count balconies. Anyway, that’s an awning.
He flashed Ninip a slice of the image, a light gray patch on top of the building’s roof, closest to the far wall.
If they’re at all security conscious, they’ve got men underneath it.

Then we will kill them.
Ninip couldn’t resist falling back on his old habits.

Sure, we can. And wake up the whole damn place in the process. Here’s where we go in.
He indicated a long stretch of wall farthest away from the towers, just opposite the refrigerated building. Eyeballing it from the top down, he put it at around thirty feet.

Easy day.

Normally, we’d have to blow a hole in the wall, bring the whole place down on us. Now we can just jump over.

Ninip was already flashing images of slaughter, the presence quivering with anticipation of the hunt. Schweitzer felt the infectious thrill, the temptation to give the jinn rein, to lose himself in the gory dance. Why bother acting the part of the hard operator when his body wasn’t his own anymore? There were only two marriages for him now, either to the feral monster who shared his body, or to the legions of screaming dead in the void beyond.

It was a familiar set of choices that any SEAL was long used to, bad or worse, frying pan or fire.

Despair and panic rose in him, stubbornly sticking in spite of his attempt to put them off with the old drill: tip the hat, do the job. Ninip, lost in his frenzy, didn’t bother to try to stop Schweitzer as he reached behind the armor and pulled out the engraved dog tags, looking at the outlines of his family’s faces, smiling as if the world were a wonderful place where all you loved wasn’t snatched away from you in an instant. The lines seemed clearer still, some of the rust shaken off against their chest.

He forced their dead lungs to draw a breath, deep and long, like he had used to. Ninip growled at the sight of the dog tags, began to resist, forcing the arm down. Schweitzer let him, focusing on the breath, the old reflexes, muscles moving, tissue expanding and contracting. He almost felt alive.

Which was why this way was better. Not for the chance at revenge. Not for justice. But because it was what Sarah would do. Because it was the best chance to visit his family’s graves someday, to see people inhaling and exhaling as he had just done. To hear voices speaking, music playing, to turn pages and stretch limbs. It wasn’t life.

But it was as close to a second chance as he’d ever get.

And if the price of that was that he kept doing the job he’d loved all his life, with just the one added task of keeping a muzzle on this rabid dog inside him, well, that wasn’t so bad.

There was still a ways to go before the compound, and Schweitzer found himself wondering about Jawid’s village. Was it close by here? Did it have the same broken landscape? He tried to remember the images of the burning wreckage of Jawid’s home that the Sorcerer had shown him when he’d first awakened into his new life.

He felt a stirring as the channel opened up between him and Jawid, as it had when he sat in the COP waiting for Ty to begin the briefing.

You are learning,
Jawid said.
You can reach out to me now.

Ninip stirred, began to sniff at the channel linking them, but Schweitzer didn’t want to lose this chance to speak to the Sorcerer and shoved the jinn sharply back.
I’ve always been a fast learner. I saw a girl last time, Jawid. You were thinking about her. Who was she?

Grief filtered through the channel between them, but Jawid only sighed.
That’s lost to me now.

Ninip said the same damned thing.

I gave you your answer,
the jinn snarled.
Leave the goatherd in peace.

He is right,
Jawid said.
Focus on the op.

Jawid, we’ve got another klick to cover at least before we reach the compound, and I can hear a rabbit taking a dump in the next valley over. Nobody is going to catch me with my pants down.

There is no sense in looking over our shoulders,
Jawid said, sounding angry now.
The past is the past.

You still sound just like Ninip. What is with you guys? You were both human beings. Hell, you still are.

I am not,
the jinn groused.
Do not compare me to that pathetic lot.

But you were,
Schweitzer said.
What the hell happened to him, Jawid? Is this what magic does to you? Turns you into a dried-up, bitter douche bag? Because I don’t see that happening to me.

The void, the soul storm, is magic,
Jawid said.
It is the wellspring, the source. I brought Ninip back just after you died, while your soul was still tied to your body. When Ninip came back, so did you.

So?

So, the void is a cauldron of magic. You . . . soak in it. It goes into you, changes you. It makes the soul of a man . . . something else. The longer you soak, the more you change. And when I bring the soul back, the magic comes with it.

Schweitzer thought of the horns, the claws, the burning silver of their eyes.

How long exactly was Ninip soaking in the soul storm? Before you brought him back?
Schweitzer asked.

A long time,
the jinn said.

A very long time,
Jawid agreed.
The longest of any jinn I have ever known.

And that is the root of our strength,
Ninip said.

Would it happen to me?
Schweitzer asked.
If I . . . soaked in the void long enough?

It is happening to you,
Jawid replied.
You are steeping in the magic as we speak. It comes to you through the jinn.

I am your cauldron now,
Ninip said.

Schweitzer thought of Ninip’s talk of an addiction to slaughter that was stronger than pure heroin.
You’ve got the wrong guy,
Schweitzer said.
You two can chuck your humanity in the trash all you want. I am James Schweitzer, and that is never going to change.

You will learn,
Ninip said, and Jawid sighed and closed the channel between them.

As the ridge finally gave way to arid plain, Schweitzer dropped them into a low crawl, pushing back against Ninip’s desire to run toward the compound. He shifted their vision into the infrared, seeing the faint heat outlines of a trio of jackals prowling about a klick out, the tiniest wavering lightness indicating the compound in the distance.

Eyes on,
he sent to Jawid.
Approaching from the northeast, entry on target at point bravo.

Roger,
Jawid sent back. The military radio jargon sounded silly coming from him with his beard and robes. A moment later, he came back with,
Overhead reports no pickets in your zone of approach.

I already knew that,
Schweitzer thought, but didn’t send, as they rose to a crouch and began to make their way more quickly toward the wall. The jackals lifted their heads, sniffed the air in his direction, bolted the opposite way.

Ninip swung the carbine onto their back and forced them down on all fours, loping along like an ape. It was faster than the duck walk, so Schweitzer didn’t bother trying to wrest control back.

A moment later, Jawid came back, his voice wooden, repeating words someone was saying to him.
Adjust your approach to the east, enter at point delta.

Schweitzer pictured the map. Delta marked the back of the building, what Ninip had wanted.
There’s an awning up there,
Schweitzer said.
That approach is covered.

Negative. You’re misreading the imagery. That’s your approach.

Fuck that. Not doing it.

Command has called point delta as the app—

I heard you the first time. I’m not doing it. Fire me.

Being dead had its upside.

Ninip moved them across the intervening distance, allowed Schweitzer to slow them back into the crouch, then finally rose from it, steady-stepping to the base of the wall, carbine at the low ready.

He could see the heat signatures in the nearest tower, but the man wasn’t looking his way, or if he was, Schweitzer and Ninip were lost in the thick shadows that swarmed the plain.

They crouched and sprang, watched the wall lengthen, then shrink as they crested it, landing in a light crouch that barely hinted at their impact. Their peripheral vision caught the man in the nearer tower. The enemy had tied a shemagh around his face to keep the blowing dust out, and a light-colored baggy tunic and trousers reflected the starlight, obviating Schweitzer’s need for infrared vision. An enormous antimateriel rifle was slung across his chest, a high-end nightscope perched on its Picatinny rail. Expensive stuff, and one hundred percent American manufacture.

Schweitzer filed the information away, sighted, and fired. The carbine emitted only a dry click, and the man gave a single short gasp as the back of his head came off, arcing out over the tower before clearing the wall and falling to the ground. The rest of him dropped, disappearing behind the tower’s low railing.

Schweitzer and Ninip crouched, listening to see if the shot had been heard, the casualty seen. The only sounds seemed peaceful enough; a muttered conversation between a man and a woman, a low-horsepower motor running steadily, goats in the courtyard crowding together for warmth.

He was beginning to believe that all was clear when Ninip asserted himself, forcing control of their limbs and leaping out over the tower railing, claws extending.

No, you fucking idiot!
he shouted at the jinn. The ground was already rushing up at them, he glanced about wildly, trying to assess the layout. Heat signatures flashed by far too quickly for him to fix any one of them.

And then solidity under their feet, crunching, then soft, liquid spraying around him, a high, inhuman wail sounding up between his legs.

They’d landed on a goat. Ninip was even now driving a fist down into its skull, cutting the wail short. The rest of the goats were scattering in all directions, bleating madly. Ninip snapped their teeth at one of them, breaking through the chinstrap and knocking the helmet askew. Schweitzer raised one shared hand to rip it off and cast it aside while Ninip took control of the other, lashing out and slashing through one goat’s hindquarters, spraying blood and sending the animal screaming, dragging its limp hindquarters along the ground.

Congratulations. You’ve maimed a goat,
Schweitzer said, but the jinn was senseless in his search for slaughter, and Schweitzer found himself yanking back on him to keep them from racing after the nearest animal, whose voice was joining the terrific noise that now echoed through the courtyard.