Demon (5 page)

You could have done that on the road right after that old man slit his throat. Could have done it then and there and all this would be over.

The more Hank thought, the more his head hurt. Ever since leaving the road, he'd second-guessed and doubted his decision-making abilities. His vision had failed in his left eye. His right eye saw images as if looking through a Vaseline-smeared window. He still coughed up blood and tissue and could manage only short, quick breaths with whatever remained of his lungs.

“Sad sack of shit,” Hank said.

He looked at the picture in his hand of his family. The images were so blurry he could tell them apart only from memory.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

Then he glanced at himself in the rearview. Hemorrhaged blood vessels had turned both eyes red. Dried phlegm, blood, and salt coated his cheeks and forehead.

“Hey, good-looking,” Hank said and chuckled. Pain reverberated down his spine and across his ribcage. He didn't regret laughing, though, because it would be the last time he would.

His right eye drifted away from the rearview and settled on the assault rifle on the seat. Sitting there, waiting for him to pick it up. Waiting for him to pick it up and swallow a lead slug.

So do it,
he thought.

He'd avoided it long enough. Hank nodded and reached for the rifle.

Only his hand didn't move.

Hank tried again. Still no movement.

This time with his left hand, but that arm wouldn't move, either.

Hank's heart thumped harder and faster. His short, quick breaths multiplied. He tried to kick out with his feet, to maybe rock himself over to the rifle, but his legs wouldn't even so much as twitch.

Jesus,
he thought.
Fucking paralyzed!

Only his right eye moved, swiveling around in the socket. His head throbbed as it sent panicked signals to dead nerves. No sound came even though he ordered himself to scream. Nothing responded.

Then the little bit of vision he still had in his right eye disappeared, and he plunged into darkness. He couldn't feel the heat of the cab anymore either. Or pain.

His breathing slowed and his chest tightened, constricting his airways, like a clamp slowly squeezing his torso, trying to make his breast and spinal column touch. No matter how hard he fought, he couldn't force himself to breathe faster.

Sitting in the truck in the middle of the desert, Hank stared at darkness and drew his last few breaths. He managed to flash through a few images of his family, piecing together a quick highlight reel from memory.

At . . . least . . . you're . . . dying . . . fast,
he thought.
Could . . . have . . . been . . . worse.

Then Hank sucked in one final breath. For a moment, he seemed to float in a black pool of calm water and thought he saw his family with him.

And then everything was gone.

CHAPTER SIX

“A
n Iraqi patrol helicopter found the site just after sunrise this morning,” Greengrass said. “Ever since then, it's been a regular hornets' nest of activity out here.”

Mike followed Greengrass, listening. The sand was loose under foot, and he had trouble walking through it, as opposed to the major, who seemed to glide with little problem.

“You from Death Valley or something?” Mike said.

“Why?”

“You seem comfortable in this climate and topography.”

“This is my fourth tour in this lovely land.” Greengrass smirked. “But I also grew up in Yuma, Arizona. Sure that helps.”

“I bet.”

“Where are you from?”

“Virginia.”

“What part?”

Mike smiled. “Langley.”

Greengrass shook his head. “That some spook joke?”

“Well, you know what they say, Major. Once you're CIA, everything before ceases to exist.” And for Mike, it had. Both his parents were dead and his marriage had failed. And his daughter . . . Mike blocked the thoughts. Never thinking about her in the field was his unwritten rule. If she didn't exist to him, she couldn't exist to those who might use such information against him.

All to ensure her safety,
Mike thought. He shook his head and chased the self-hate away, focused on the work.

The site had garnered quite a bit of attention. Mike noticed agents from NCIS on hand, snapping pictures. They had a forensic team with them. The Iraqi police hovered but didn't seem to be participating too much.

Then Mike saw the first of the bodies. The head had been bashed in with some kind of blunt object. Another body had a screwdriver sticking out of its chest.

“Nasty business,” Mike said.

“That about sums it up,” Greengrass said.

All around Mike, bodies littered the ground. From what he could tell, they had met their end by physical, close-contact means. Bloody wrenches, hammers, and other tools lay strewn about. Then he noticed the hands on one corpse, covered in dried blood. Deep lacerations crisscrossed the knuckles.

Greengrass must have noticed Mike staring because he said, “There are a couple like that. Seems some beat a few to death with their bare hands.”

Mike shook his head, nothing making sense. “Why would they kill each other?”

“No idea.”

“And you're sure no one else was involved here?”

“No guns, no shell casings, nothing. Not even knives or scimitars. These people turned on each other—except for two.”

Greengrass pointed at one body. The stiff was on its knees, a utility knife in his right hand, both wrists slashed; the sand under both arms was black from dried blood.

“Way we figure,” Greengrass said, “that guy was the last man standing. After he won, he slit his wrists.”

The one time Glenn had given him a real case to work and it turned out to be a Sherlock Holmes mystery. Mike pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers, hoping the headache starting up would subside. His flask was in the car and he longed for a small sip.

“Why would he kill himself?”

Greengrass shrugged. “Because he had no one else to kill?”

Mike had no response to that.

After a few moments of silence, Mike said, “You said there were two people who didn't kill each other. Where's the second?”

Greengrass motioned him to follow and led him to a pit a few feet away. Mike saw a flatbed whose back half had fallen into a fissure. His eyes traced the six-foot-deep crevice as it snaked away and ended at the pit. A giant section of sewer pipe lay at the bottom. Then he noticed the dead body to his right near the edge of the pit.

“This is the other one.” Greengrass knelt next to the corpse. “Nouri al-Hasad. He was Iraq's top archeologist. As near we can figure, when that flatbed over there fell into the crevice, a few chains holding the sewer line snapped. One of the shackles hit Nouri, killing him on impact.”

The headache hit Mike full on between the eyes. This was getting stranger and stranger. He needed a taste
now
.

“So, what was he doing here?”

Greengrass stood and pointed in the hole. “Under the pipe is a tomb or temple or something. When the pipe fell in, it broke the slab covering the entrance in half. Nouri was here to excavate whatever's down there. At least, that's what we've been able to translate from his journal so far.”

Mike couldn't see any tomb under the pipe. Instead, he saw a few broken pieces of stone. “Was there an earthquake?”

“No reports of one. A sinkhole is what we were guessing.”

Mike looked from the pit to Nouri's body. Then to the flatbed. And then to the bodies.

“There was a complete work stoppage, right?” Mike said. “Because of the discovery of the tomb.”

Greengrass wiped sweat from his cheeks. “Yeah, standard procedure is to cease work, cordon off so many feet to either side of the find, and call in the officials to excavate.”

Mike rubbed his lips and pointed at the flatbed. “That truck was carrying this section of pipe. Work was stopped, but the piece was already on-site. The ground somehow collapsed, like a sinkhole. The sudden shift of weight snapped the chains. The pipe fell in the crevice, rolled, and hit the tomb, breaking the stone doorway.”

His fingers tingled as Mike put the facts together.

“Yeah,” Greengrass said. “Pretty much what I just said.”

“Then everyone started killing each other.”

Greengrass shrugged. “Not sure when the killing started.”

“Had to be after the pipe fell in.”

“Why?”

Mike pointed at Nouri. “Because he died from an accident. Everyone else killed each other except the one who offed himself.”

Greengrass's face slackened. “You're not saying what I think you're saying.”

“There was something in that tomb. And when that piece of pipe hit the cover and broke it, whatever was down there was released.” Mike shrugged. “You were looking for explanations.”

“No fucking way.” Greengrass placed his hands on his hips and shook his head. “No fucking way.”

“This idea didn't occur to you?”

“Shit, we just put together the fact they killed each other before you showed up,” Greengrass said. “And no chemical alarms went off anywhere in the area.”

Mike looked around at the bodies once more. “I don't like the way it sounds either, Major. But it's the only thing that makes sense right now. Whatever was down there, whether it be some kind of nerve agent that wasn't detected or an ancient hallucinogen, caused these people to go fucking nuts.”

Greengrass paced back and forth. The look on the major's face said it all. Mike could tell he was thinking hard, running through scenarios, wondering if his people were in danger.

“If that's the case, we've all been standing here breathing the same contaminated air,” Greengrass said.

“Maybe. But no one else has gone crazy since arriving, right? I'd say, if some kind of agent was released, these guys took the main hit of it before the rest of it disseminated in the air.”

Greengrass nodded. “True. Should still get a quarantine set up around this site. Just in case.”

“I'll agree with that.”

As Greengrass started to radio for a quarantine team, a short, fiery gunnery sergeant marched up and saluted. “Sir, we have all the identities of the bodies and have bounced them off the third-shift work roster on-site.”

Greengrass returned the salute. “Good work, Gunny. This is Jeremiah Hosselkus. He's a CIA spook.”

Gunny turned to Mike and offered his hand. “Gunnery Sergeant Lowe, sir.”

Mike shook it. “Gunny.”

“I'm calling in a quarantine team in case there was some kind of nerve agent down in the tomb there,” Greengrass said.

Lowe looked down in the pit, nodded, and then back at the major. “I'd hate to see the agent that caused this, sir.”

“You and me both.”

“Sir, we've got another problem.”

Greengrass lowered his radio. “What is it, Gunny?”

“There's one body missing, sir.”

Mike watched Greengrass's eyes narrow and wrinkles form on his forehead. This was the angry side of the major Mike had assumed existed.

“What do you mean a body is missing?”

“Sir, we have forty-nine workers and the archeologist for a total of fifty. But there're fifty workers listed on the roster. Right now, one of those workers is unaccounted for.”

“And who is that?”

“Henry Prince, sir. The site foreman.”

Greengrass clenched his fists. “Fuck!”

“We've got search teams combing the area, sir.”

“Find him, Gunny. If he's alive, he's the only witness who can tell us what happened here.”

“Yes, sir.” Lowe saluted and walked off.

“Major,” Mike said, “you don't know if this guy Prince was exposed. He could have been off-site when this shit went down.”

“Got to treat it like he was here and was exposed and may even be carrying whatever it is.” Greengrass's face had turned bright red. “Worst case scenario. Got to plan for it.”

Mike nodded. “Yeah, I guess you're right.”

Greengrass kicked sand and stomped off behind Mike. “A fucking survivor. Shit.”

Mike hoped if the survivor had been exposed to whatever might have been in the tomb, he hadn't carried it with him, exposing other people. Then Mike thought about it a little more and doubted Prince could be carrying it. There would have been more outbreaks of people killing each other, reports of civil violence, something. And if it was a nerve agent, it wouldn't be contagious. All he'd heard and seen so far outside R91 was the normal day-to-day cost of living in Iraq.

Mike turned back to the pit and wondered what the hell had been down there. What the hell could drive almost fifty people insane and make them savagely kill one another?

A weaponized hallucinogen,
he thought. Had to be. These people caught a whiff of something, and then they saw tentacles growing out of heads and started smashing away. Nerve agents caused runny noses, blindness, and convulsions. Victims suffocated from spasms; they didn't beat each other to death. And if it was biological, these corpses would be covered in blisters or would have had flu-like symptoms. They would have taken days to die after exposure.

Mike figured Mr. Prince was one lucky son of a bitch to not have been here when the shit hit the fan.

The ache behind his eyeballs thumped. Mike pinched the bridge of his nose again and tried to figure out how he was going to report this to Glenn.

CHAPTER SEVEN

L
ight. Visible for the first time in thousands of years. He blinked as his new eyes adjusted to the glare of the sun's rays bouncing off the sand. After a few moments, he was able to see his surroundings clearly.

Semyaza sat in some kind of capsule. A wheel made from the skin of an animal was in front of him. Craning his head around, he saw blood and chunks of tissue from the human he now inhabited littering the seat.