Dark Rising (23 page)

‘Alex,’ he said. ‘Call me Alex.’

He looked down at her small hand and for the first time noticed the tiny blue star on the skin between her thumb and forefinger.
Brand of the fighter
, he thought. He smiled again then moved away to talk to Sam.

*

‘
Achhh, wake up
,’ Adira told herself sternly. Her heart was beating in her chest and she could feel the heat in her cheeks. She had crawled into pitch-black terrorists’ tunnels and kicked down doors under enemy fire, and here she was with shaking hands because the handsome captain had smiled at her. She didn’t even know him, and perhaps never would. Still, after seeing him in battle, she couldn’t help feeling he was different from any man she had ever known.

Adira was a warrior herself; she had never married, and rarely dated.
Who could ever keep up with me?
was the little excuse she used to justify the lack of close relationships in her life. She rarely even saw her family these days; her closest link with them was her contact with her uncle, General Shavit, but they hardly ever spoke of personal things. She wondered now how the general had managed to have a wife and his own family while still focusing on his military career. Or perhaps it was different for a man. Adira was respected as an equal in the Israeli military, but would that equality remain in married life?

She looked at the broad form of the HAWC as he walked away.

How would Alex Hunter treat his woman? she wondered. As an equal or as some fragile being who needed his protection? She shook her head. Her job wasn’t to daydream about good-looking American soldiers; it was to discover this secret weapon the US military had developed and pass that information on to Mossad.

If you’re not the Arcadian, you should be
, she thought as Alex made his way over to Sam Reid.

In all her time in the army, and now Mossad, Adira had never disobeyed an order. But the thought of submitting Alex’s name to her superiors felt like a betrayal of him . . . and herself. Besides, the report would be premature – what good was the end result without learning how that result had been achieved?
Not yet then
, she thought,
not just yet
.

‘And you can call me Addy,’ she said under her breath.

Alex’s powerful hearing picked up Adira’s words and he smiled back at her over his shoulder.
Addy, nice name
, he thought.

He slapped an adhesive patch over the tear in his suit and crouched down next to Sam and Zach.

‘Never seen anything like it, boss,’ Sam reported. ‘Those men were shrunk down to the size of five year olds, just empty bags. Even their eyes were shrivelled down to Californian raisins. And another thing – they all had these thumb-sized holes in them, but I don’t know what type of weapon could cause that.’

‘Could it have been a laser?’

‘Doubt it. No burns to the clothing or cauterisation of the flesh; just shrivelled bodies with a single small hole . . . oh, yeah, and a bad smell.’

Sam looked worried and Alex didn’t like it. There wasn’t much the man feared – something had rattled him.

‘Describe the smell,’ he said.

Sam’s gaze seemed to turn inwards as he took himself back to the tent for a few seconds. ‘Vinegar, sugar and almonds . . . musty-sweet, disgusting. Animal, but not.’ He sat quietly, deep in thought for a few seconds.

‘Uncle!’ Alex brought him back. ‘What else – any tracks?’

‘Nothing except the Iranians’ footprints. All the action occurred in the tent. There was a hole in the corner – big and deep, all the dirt pushed upwards. My guess is something came up out of the ground, ambushed them, then went back down the same way. Maybe they were shot full of some toxin that destroys blood cells. Or microwaved – I’ve heard the Chinese are refining a microwave weapon that cooks you from the inside out. But one thing’s for sure, those men hadn’t been dead for very long – their fire was still burning down when we got there.’ Sam shook his head slowly and ran his fingers up through his hair. ‘Maybe radiation poisoning, maybe a hundred things I’m just not thinking of. But I’ll tell you, boss, nothing I know of works that quickly, or does that to flesh and bone.’

Alex looked across at Zach who was sitting on the sand with his feet and legs drawn up to his chest. He anticipated Alex’s question. ‘No, not radiation. Even a mega-sievert blast wouldn’t cause that type of damage. Blistering, skin vaporisation, cell destruction and DNA mutation, yes, but not that sort of physical . . . desiccation. Besides, there was no secondary irradiation or any trace of lingering particles – so, no, not radiation. I think it was something biological – did you tell him about the night bugs?’

‘The what?’ Alex looked from Zach to Sam and then back again when Sam shrugged his shoulders.

‘This might be totally unrelated,’ Zach went on, ‘but I’ve smelled something like that before, when I was in a student share hostel. It was the odour of a night-bug infestation – I believe you call them bedbugs. Entomology is not my area, but night bugs give off a distinctive sweet smell from the abdominal scent glands – only detectable by humans when they’re in large numbers.’

Alex raised his eyebrows and looked at Sam. The big HAWC motioned with his hand back to Zach. The inference was clear –
it’s his story, let him tell it
.

‘You think bedbugs did this?’ Alex asked.

‘No, of course not. That would be crazy.’ Zach looked down at the ground and knitted his brows. ‘Crazy,’ he said again.

But not crazy enough for him to voice his concerns and be clearly affected
, thought Alex. He also noticed Sam never once contradicted the kid.

‘Okay. Sam, lay out a few seismic sensors. Don’t want anything creeping up on us – man or bug.’

Alex stood up and had turned to leave when Zach spoke again. ‘One more thing – these parasites live on blood and bodily fluids. And the bodies were . . .’ He shrugged.

Alex looked at him silently for a few seconds, then nodded and disappeared into the dark. He tried to pick up any sign of the mysterious presence out there in the desert, but all seemed silent and still.

THIRTY-TWO

T
he HAWCs were now a few miles out from the Sassanid cave and just as many again south of Arak. An hour ago they had received an information packet from Major Hammerson telling them that further gamma pulses, just slightly smaller than those from the Persepolis site, had been detected in Arak. It confirmed they were on the right track.

It was dark now, and cloudless, and the day’s heat had quickly fled, leaving cold stars glittering like brittle chips of ice on a thick, black blanket. While the others took some much needed rest, Alex prepared to do a perimeter sweep. He had only taken around fifty steps from the group when the wave of pain and nausea passed over him. He put his hands to his ears in an attempt to block out the subsonic assault to his brain. The eerie alien howl caused him agonising pain, and for a brief moment he felt the furies strain within him again – he wanted to fight. He crushed his eyes shut and breathed deeply until he calmed. But after the pain subsided, the unease remained. This time the strange scream had come from nearby. Way too close.

From the darkness he looked back at the group. O’Riordan had his suit down to his waist and was injecting a cocktail of steroids and tromadiene directly into the purple trauma area on his side. His ribs would stay broken until he returned home, but at least he wouldn’t feel it. Lagudi had a massive split lip, which he’d stitched himself; he’d lost a tooth and one of his eyes was the colour and size of a ripe summer plum. He’d told Alex he felt better than he looked. Alex saw him turn to O’Riordan now and say, ‘You see the captain take out those Takavaran guys? He was unbelievable. No wonder I couldn’t knock him down back at base during the exercises. He was just playing with me.’

‘So what,’ O’Riordan sneered. ‘The guy’s a freak – he was probably hopped up on some drug.’

Alex realised the two men thought he couldn’t hear them from this distance.

Lagudi blinked at O’Riordan’s response and touched his bloated lip. ‘Bad business about Hex – not a good way to go out.’

‘Yeah, well, he was the team leader and he walked us into a freakin’ trap. That could’ve been all of us on that bonfire.’

Lagudi exploded. ‘Are you shittin’ me, man? Did you see them Takavaran guys – they were no slouches! Could you have done better? Anyway . . . I seem to remember you were the man out at point.’

O’Riordan’s tone became belligerent. ‘I was out in front doin’ my job, but he was leadin’ us! He’s supposed to be one of those experienced super HAWC soldiers, but we ended up being led into a stinkin’ ambush. It was bad luck it turned out like it did. But you know what – some days you’re the dog and some days you’re the hydrant. Like I said, it coulda been all of us.’

O’Riordan went to walk away, then spotted Alex standing about fifty feet out in the black desert, staring at him. The HAWC looked back for a few seconds, then shrugged and continued on his way. Clearly, he had no idea he’d been overheard. Alex felt the rage begin to build in him again, but summoned the sound of waves crashing on sand to calm himself. O’Riordan would keep.

While he stood staring out into the cold and dark desert, Adira walked over. She took a sip from her water canister, wiped it and offered it to him. ‘How’s the headache?’

‘It wasn’t a headache – it was something else, a sound, but it’s gone now.’ Alex turned to her. ‘Have you ever heard fingernails down a blackboard? It was like that – unpleasant and weird. But very low frequency, not like anything I’ve ever heard before.’ He went back to scanning the dark horizon, as if keeping guard.

‘I didn’t hear it, and I know most things in this desert. Can you describe it to me?’ Adira was looking intensely into his face.

Alex looked down at her and saw the concern in her eyes. How could he describe it to her though? How could he get her to understand it when he didn’t understand it himself? The mental pictures didn’t make sense, and neither did his ability to ‘see’ them. The sound had conjured images of sharp alien cliffs rising from a moist valley floor. Of pale grey bulbous-headed plants leaning over wet sand, and a sky that was orange, punctured by a weak blue sun. The images had jumped into his head with dizzying speed and left him dazed and confused. The call was a longing for that world; a lament of loneliness, and then of anger and frustration.

Alex shook his head slightly. He knew he should be telling Hammerson or Medical about these new changes in his abilities, but he worried that they would confine him to the base for more tests. And he wasn’t sure anymore whether the tests were making him better or worse.

He turned away from the dark to look at Adira again. ‘Describe it? I couldn’t even try. It wasn’t remotely like anything I’ve ever heard. Like I said, it was weird.’

Alex compressed his lips and breathed out through his nose. The weird scream from out of the desert, Sam’s description of the drained Takavaran corpses, and now the sense of danger close by made him feel he needed to be constantly vigilant.

‘I need to walk the line. Would you –’

‘Yes, and thank you for asking,’ Adira jumped in.

Alex had been about to suggest she head back to the group. He smiled.
Might as well take her with me – she’ll probably tag along anyway
, he thought. She was obviously a woman who was used to doing things
her
way. She returned his smile with a raised eyebrow. ‘No holding hands on a first date, okay?’ she said with mock seriousness.

Alex laughed. He couldn’t help liking her.

Adira liked his laugh. Although she was tired and could have done with the rest, she was determined to learn more about Alex Hunter. He intrigued her. She needed to understand him – who he really was, and how he was able to do the things that she had seen him do. She should have sent that information back to her headquarters immediately, but she felt that knowing
who
he was was less important than knowing
how
he’d got to be that way. This rendered the information incomplete. She almost believed the rationale herself.

She stole glances at him as she walked beside him in the cold, dark desert. She had seen him clutch his head in agony. She didn’t like to see him in pain, but was in some way glad that he could acknowledge a physical sensation. She had started to think there was something not quite human about him, marvelling at his indifference to wounds and fatigue. Adira knew Mossad’s training was comparable to that of any special forces around the world, but Alex Hunter’s skills made Metsada, Kidon and even his own HAWCs look like ordinary infantrymen.

Apart from General Shavit’s reference to the Arcadian, and the few details from the stolen American report – passed on to her by one of her agents in the past few days – she had little to go on. Other than his ‘creators’, no one, it seemed, knew who or what the Arcadian was. Most of the international spy networks had had to put it down to American myth-making, but Adira knew the Arcadian was no myth – the report and the man beside her proved that.

She remembered the impact when he had struck the group of Takavaran – their broken bodies had flown through the air like empty sacks. He had destroyed half a dozen deadly Special Forces soldiers without firing a shot. She recalled some of the analysis from the stolen report: ‘Potential ability to change lethal battlefield dynamics’.
Yes, he would
, she thought.
Alex Hunter in battle would change the rules of ground combat.

Adira looked again at Alex as he turned to listen to something out in the dark.
What would it be like if Israel had men such as he to patrol our borders? We could all sleep soundly again at night.

Her brows knitted as she remembered another line in the report: ‘subject displays sporadic periods of lethal instability’.
Lethal instability
, she repeated to herself,
what does that mean?
She knew all about battlefield psychosis, instability and trauma – she could see none of them in this man. He looked strong, in control . . . and stable.