Kill Them Wherever You Find Them (22 page)

The man finally spoke, "That little exercise
demonstrates this is a live feed, not prerecorded. Your slut
girlfriend, Mona, is an enemy to Islam and all of humanity. She
spreads the lies of the Zionist entity, seeking to
steal
the
hearts and minds of the true believers. Her lies will be silenced.
No longer will this serpent, this agent of the Jew devils, be
allowed to speak."

"She has been given an injection with a
compound that has temporarily paralyzed her so that we will not
have to hear one more filthy word from this Zionist spy. She can
see, hear and feel absolutely everything. We want you to see how we
permanently silence those who would corrupt and destroy with their
wicked tongues." He continued, "I must advise you to
not
avert your eyes. If you don't witness our actions
as
they
occur, the severity of our anger will be visited on your prostitute
many times more. Any additional pain will be as if from your own
hands. Now activate your web cam so that we can confirm a captive
audience."

As No'am activated his camera he could view
the live video feed of himself on the lower right-hand quadrant of
the screen. Her captor indicated that he had a visual on No'am,
this also meant that they could hack into his computer if they
desired.

Access to his computer was cause for alarm.
Almost as alarming was the fact that the man in the video spoke to
him in Hebrew with an Ashkenazi accent, then spoke to somebody
behind the camera in Farsi, and finally sent the phone texts in
English.

Obviously highly educated, he most likely
spent a great deal of time in Israel to speak so flawlessly. Was he
Israeli, Iranian, American or British? No'am could not rule out the
less likely possibilities of Australian, New Zealander, or a
citizen of another English-language country. He couldn't rule out
the distinct possibility that none of these countries nurtured him
in childhood. The only certainty was that his education was well
above the average citizen of any country and was most likely a
sociopath. Either of the two alone being dangerous, the combination
was deadly.

At that moment a woman opened Mona's mouth
and held it pried open with some tool that appeared to be dental in
nature. Another man, previously hidden from view, came forward and
inserted some kind of tool into Mona's mouth, loudly cracking the
tool against her teeth with no apparent concern. No'am audibly
groaned as he realized that they were going to pull her teeth.

What happened next caused him to vomit where
he sat. The grotesque tool in her mouth found its target,
synchronized with the slight smile spread on the face of the man
who employed it. With a thick, liquid-like sound, he clamped down
and pulled. Red muscle came out of her mouth, as her eyes grew wide
and then shut from a loss of consciousness. No'am was witness to
the horrific reality that Mona's tongue was pulled from her mouth
without any anesthesia to dull intractable pain.

No'am sat with his own mouth agape, lips
searching to form a word or by default a scream. Nearly catatonic
from the shock of what he saw, he was unable to move, unable to
coalesce any thought that resembled the product of a logical mind.
What he had been forced to watch defied logic, reason,
humanity.

Fear elevated to hysteria as the man said
something to the camera as the screen went blank. NorAm's mind
began to shut down as he tried to come to grips with what he just
experienced. Hysteria seized his emptied stomach, all neurons of
his brain triggering at once, clamoring for attention. He felt
himself seem to fall as everything went dark.

~ ~ ~

While the scene of her torture played out
Avi's feelings were no less visceral, nor the feeling of terror any
less soul-destroying, than those of No'am.

Avi realized by the texts sent and received
by the terrorists that there had to be somebody else viewing it
remotely. His memory again returning to what was said in the forest
about another person, he knew there was somebody else, but had no
idea who.

When the feed was cut and his monitor went
blank, he forced himself to accept the fact that this was almost
certainly the last he would see Mona.

He wondered if she had been informed of the
murder of her mother. Told of her mother's death or not, surely
there could be no doubt but she would suffer the same fate – most
likely sooner than later as there was no real advantage in keeping
her alive. The terrorists knew that her value as a hostage was
spent. She might be kept alive in the attempt to extort more
information from him and whomever the other person is.

Head still aching from earlier worries, now
it was even worse. Avi considered more aspirin but decided against
it as he was sure the replaying of Mona's torture in his mind
wouldn't allow him to keep anything down.

Instantly, he felt guilty that among his
first thoughts was that of alleviating his headache. The pain she
would feel when she regained consciousness would be indescribable.
For her sake, he felt guilty for having this thought too; he hoped
she would never regain consciousness. The thought of what other
mutilations might be in store for Mona sickened Avi.

He knew that self-recriminations would do
nothing to help Mona; or, for that matter, himself. Selfishness or
not, he had to do what he could to get back on his emotional and
physical feet to do something,
anything
.

Various scenarios flashed through his
thoughts, each intruding on, while none allowing, the previous
scenario to completely play itself out. Court martial and its
consequences were the least of his worries, though to be sure, a
significant concern. There would be time to deal with that
later.

Avi knew he had to inform the General
immediately, in-person. This was a matter much too sensitive to
handle any other way. Gazing out a window he noted that the sun was
high in the sky. He had slept through the night and into late
afternoon of the day following the successful human trial of
The
Project
.

The General would be taking a few days off
after making his initial reports to the Prime Minister. The PM was
also at the facility to view the test, so such a report would be
brief. Once the results were fully compiled and analyzed, other
branches of the military would be brought into play, but not yet.
There were yet months of datum to be correlated and reviewed before
they would proceed. Thus, other than speaking with the PM this
morning, the General would be off with his wife for some
well-earned vacation time. He mentioned something about spending
some time at a resort in the swank area of Eilat. By now he would
already be there. The Americans have a saying of a person "not
letting grass grow under their feet." The General was the very
personification of this adage.

Knowing there was a Shin Bet liaison officer
serving in the General's staff Avi would schedule a meeting with
him as soon as possible. He didn't want to blindside the General.
First he had to contact the liaison and come clean. Avi accepted
that his time as a free man was to last no more than a couple of
hours, if that.

Table of Contents

16. I am Become Death

"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to
burst at once into the sky that would be like the splendor of the
Mighty one … I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds."
-
Bhagavad Gita 11:32

Atlanta, Georgia, United States of
America

Doctor Bruce Honegger loved
his job. Generous
pay, excellent benefits but most of all he was able to do what he
enjoyed best, solve medical mysteries around the globe.

Now that he was the director of the Center
for Disease Control he wasn't able to go out and work in the field
as much as he'd have liked, burdened by far more paperwork than
anybody could imagine. Yet being the head of the CDC kept his
socially ambitious wife happy, making the paperwork tolerable. As
long as she was happy, so was he. Besides, much of the
bureaucracy-on-wood pulp and computer input he could delegate to
others.

As the Director, Dr. Honegger oversaw
everything and was able to inject as much, or as little, of his own
time and work into a case as he chose. When the first report
crossed his desk of a deadly outbreak of what initially appeared to
be a hemorrhagic disease affecting an apartment building in Los
Angeles, Honegger knew he
had
to be there himself. Normally
the Director doesn't go in-person to help with a medical
investigation but this was no normal investigation. Hemorrhagic
illnesses such as Ebola simply do not appear out of nowhere in the
Northern Hemisphere of the Americas.

He would be working closely with the CIA and
Homeland Security due to the very high possibility that this was an
attack. "Why attack an apartment building" Honegger wondered "whose
residents had no apparent link to government or financial
institutions based on initial findings?" The tenants . . . former
tenants, would already be undergoing a careful scrutiny of their
background by Homeland.

This attack, were it in very fact an attack,
made zero sense. "Much more likely," he postulated, "was somebody
recently traveled overseas and brought the disease back with them."
How such a person could have lived long enough to return home after
contracting the illness, then spread it throughout the entire
building so rapidly, presented a new mystery. Homeland was also
going over any travel of the tenants, contacting family, co-workers
and friends.

The apartment building itself was
hermetically sealed to the outside world, with investigators inside
working in Biohazard suits. The entire neighborhood was under
lock-down, resulting in panic spreading throughout the city. Los
Angeles seemed prone to rioting, a powder keg ready to explode.
Riot police were immediately deployed and the National Guard
blocked ingress and egress to the affected area. Area hospitals and
clinics were also advised of the situation as soon as the initial
diagnosis was made.

Moments after pushing their way into the
entryway, maneuvering the body of the Postal Carrier to gain entry
the first responders realized too late that they were victims too.
All four paramedics presented with symptoms within minutes of
arrival - time being calculated from the last call made to state
authorities. Whatever the origin of the disease proved to be one
thing was certain, it killed with a lethal speed and efficiency
that shocked all involved, including Honegger.

When there was no further communication from
the first responders after they contacted authorities with
observations and their own accelerating symptoms, another team was
dispatched under strict orders to remain outside the building and
observe what they could through windows. Seeing the paramedics and
postal worker on the floor of the entryway, it became obvious this
was something air-borne rather than a crazed mass murderer. All
were pronounced dead when the Biohazard team arrived.

Authorities determined that people who were
not inside the building at the time of the release of the toxin
appeared to be safe. Bruce thanked all the Saints above that the
hot day appeared to have kept the toxin contained within the
building, miraculously.

Beyond this information he knew nothing
though he could surmise a few things:

1. The speed of infection – at least when
symptoms first present – to the time of death, was unlike anything
he had ever seen, making it certain that this was a strain they had
never before encountered.

Anthrax was at the top of his list of
possibilities. At the CDC, as well as at a few high-security labs
in other countries around the world, lethal strains of various
diseases were maintained for study. Such repositories were
generally for peaceful purposes but there were some regimes with
the goal of engineering bio weapons of mass destruction.

2. Anthrax killed with resolute speed and
efficiency. Were this a terrorist attack they should be able to
determine the origins by a genetic fingerprint. If no match of the
DNA could be identified with known strains maintained by his and
other governments, it might prove that genetic manipulation had
been involved, pointing to a well-organized group with critical
financial and scientific support. Should there be an exact match to
any government research facility there would have been no genetic
manipulation. Yet that would mean a smaller group could be involved
which might prove be more difficult to identify and locate.

3. Whatever the agent was, Anthrax or
otherwise, is was certainly not indigenous to the affected area. It
arrived by either purely innocent, or purely malicious, means.
Whichever proved to be the case, the origin and means of
transportation had to be identified.

4. The duration of the lifespan of the
disease outside of a host had to be ascertained.

5. The means of infection (given the effect
on the first responders, air-borne infection was clear, yet there
remained other means of infection to be explored) must be
identified and quickly.

6. The obvious – can it be treated and
how?

7. If this were a terror attack, was this
building the intended target? That wasn't directly Honegger's
concern but indirectly it would be as, if other locations were also
to be targets, the medical community would need to know in
advance.

No sooner had Bruce read the report and
started to reach some initial conclusions and plan his course of
action, largely dictated by long-standing and time proven
protocols, than more reports came in. The positions of the bodies
and an estimation of their behavior showed that from first contact
death happened within minutes, catching victims completely unaware
and helpless. It explained calls to emergency services that were
incoherent and brief.