‘Stand down, Corporal,’ Crawford said. He turned to the two guards. ‘You two go outside and make sure no one comes near this tent … and I mean no one.’
The marines rushed to the door and disappeared.
‘Colonel …’ Levin pleaded, grabbing Crawford’s arm. ‘This man is very, very sick! He’s got—’ His fearful eyes went to Al-Zahrani, whose face and tunic were pasted with bloody vomit.
‘Get your mangy paw off me, Corporal. I know damn well what he’s got.’ Crawford’s crazed eyes went wide. He forcefully shoved the medic back into the table, sending the laptop and microscope hurling to the ground.
Groaning, Levin picked himself up off the ground. The horror of Crawford’s words came crashing down upon him. ‘Wait. What did you say?’
Crawford looked away, calculating his options.
‘What do you mean you know what he’s got?’ Levin’s voice was tremulous.
A malevolent expression came over Crawford. ‘Don’t you worry about that,’ he hissed. ‘Just have Al-Zahrani ready for transport. This is your last chance.’
‘Look at him!’ Levin screamed, pointing at Al-Zahrani. ‘It’s too late to bring him anywhere! Besides, don’t you hear what’s going on out there! He needs to be quarantined! We all need to be quarantined!’
Crawford smirked. ‘No we don’t,’ he replied knowingly. He noted that the notoriously cautious medic wasn’t wearing his flak jacket.
The colonel’s response confused Levin. ‘But I saw what’s happening inside of him! Anyone who touches him … anyone who goes near him—’
Realizing the futility of the situation, Crawford snatched the M9 pistol off his belt holster and fired a single shot into Levin’s unprotected chest.
As Lance Corporal Jeremy Levin crumpled to the ground, the tent’s rear door opened. Crawford wheeled instantly and dropped to one knee. He aimed his pistol at a turbaned man who was coming inside.
The man froze and raised his hands.
Seeing the intruder’s face, Crawford lowered the gun.
‘Easy,’ Staff Sergeant Richards said. ‘It’s just me.’
Crawford collected himself and got back on his feet. He holstered the pistol and waved for him to keep moving. ‘Let’s go, we don’t have much time.’
Striding towards Al-Zahrani, Richards eyed the dead medic, sprawled face down in a pool of thick blood that was creeping over the sand. ‘What did you—?’
‘Just keep moving,’ Crawford replied dismissively.
Richards ripped down the American flag that hung behind Al-Zahrani and threw it aside. Making a sour face, he positioned himself at the head of the bed and reluctantly hooked his arms under the prisoner’s sweaty armpits. ‘Grab his feet,’ he told Crawford.
Crawford hesitated at the prospect of touching Al-Zahrani.
He glanced at the medic’s body and, for the first time, felt doubt. What if the medic was right? What if Stokes didn’t really know how the contagion would respond in a real-world setting? After all, Randall Stokes hadn’t managed the scientific aspects of the project — that responsibility had been delegated to Frank Roselli. Though Frank had parlayed his military service into a top post at Fort Detrick, he’d spent the majority of his career with Force Recon running Special Ops missions throughout the Middle East. Frank was a bright, industrious guy. But he was no scientist.
Despite the fact that Frank Roselli had recruited USAMRIID top geneticists and virologists to work on Operation Genesis, the scientists had been kept in the dark as to the true purpose of their engineered contagion. For all they knew, it was just one more experiment that would be packed away in USAMRIID’s ever-growing stockpile of biological agents. And in typical military fashion, each team member worked on only one facet of a very complex gem.
After Frank’s superiors learned about the covert cave excavation and subsequent on-site installation he’d managed here in Iraq, Frank had been forced to resign … before definitive clinical tests had been performed. Regardless, Crawford was highly sceptical that a controlled laboratory environment could ever simulate the countless ‘what-if’ scenarios that might play out in the real world. The fact that Al-Zahrani had somehow already gotten infected only proved that point.
Since its inception, Operation Genesis had been on the fast-track. With things getting sloppy, no clear objective and no way out, Crawford found himself wishing for simpler days, when conventional battles were fought using conventional tactics. Mano y mano.
If only Stokes — the smartest of the three — hadn’t gotten his leg blown off and had an epiphany to single-handedly rewrite the rules of modern warfare. Stokes was one charismatic son of a bitch, thought Crawford — a salesman to salesmen. The question was: had Crawford himself fallen under Stokes’s spell? With all of Stokes’s TV-talk of Revelation and Judgement Day, there seemed a very real possibility that Stokes might well himself be the silver-tongued Antichrist.
Secreting Al-Zahrani out the back door of this tent would surely seal the fate of humankind. A new balance would be struck. Al-Zahrani would be the ultimate experiment. The ultimate ‘what-if’ scenario.
‘Sir! Please … I can’t do this alone,’ Richards insisted.
Snapping out of his funk, Crawford rushed over to the bed and hooked his hands under Al-Zahrani’s ankles. He counted to three. They hoisted Al-Zahrani from the bed, carried him out the back door, and loaded him into the passenger seat of a pickup truck that sat idling outside.
52
‘I need to speak with Crawford … Now!’ Jason insisted to the two marines who blocked the door to the tent. ‘So step aside!’ He had to yell to compete with the barrage of gunfire throughout the camp. He dared a step closer, but the marines aimed their M-16s at his chest.
‘No exceptions!’ the taller marine screamed robotically back at him. ‘No one goes inside!’
Jason stared disbelievingly at their weapons. ‘You’re making a big mistake,’ he warned. ‘We need to get Al-Zahrani inside the MRAP! It’s the only place he’ll be safe!’ The MRAP was a rolling fortress designed specifically to sustain high-calibre rounds and direct hits from light and medium artillery. With the ambush intensifying, the tent was an easy target. How could these morons not figure it out?
The guards stood their ground.
Jason’s adrenaline was pumping hard enough to make him see stars. It was precisely this blind allegiance that he’d come to loathe about the military. Even the most intelligent minds were malleable, so that over time a soldier’s thoughts and core ideals could be deconstructed and craftily reprogrammed. Successful armies relied on this group psyche to bond soldiers under extreme conditions, but he’d also witnessed how ego-driven leadership could easily exploit loyalty for purely self-serving objectives that inevitably led to unnecessary casualties. It happened often, and it was happening right now before his very eyes. Jason clenched his fists and glared at the guards.
‘Sorry. We have our orders,’ the shorter, less malleable one replied.
‘And we have ours!’ a deep voice blasted over the din.
In unison, Jason and the marines turned to the voice.
Meat, Camel and Jam stepped up in a V formation, pointing M-16s at the marines.
‘Let’s keep things friendly, fellas,’ Meat suggested. ‘Let the man inside. You know he’s right. So be smart, will you please? Right now we’ve all got a real battle to fight.’ He tipped his head towards the road where the remaining marines were mobilized, struggling to hold back the advancing enemy convoy now a half klick south.