Brandt cocked an ear. The rush of discovery had taken over his senses. But even with all his attention focused he didn't hear anything out of the ordinary.
"There," Talli said, moving to the vent. "It's faint, but it sounds like..."
Then Brandt heard it. Tap. Tap. Tap. Pause. Tap. Pause.
Fucking Morse code. The sequence continued until it finished and then repeated, over and over again.
They are here.
There was no doubt who the "they" were. Also no doubt that his team had disobeyed a direct order and stayed long beyond the three-hundred-second window. He wasn't quite sure if he should court-martial Lopez or kiss him on the mouth.
"We're on the clock, people," Brandt stated, indicating to the hole. Getting the Rinderpest and destroying it was all the more important with the enemy at the gates. He would deal with the "they" later.
Harvish and Talli hustled through the hole.
Brandt followed them into a small chamber that lay just on the other side of the official outpost. This chamber's walls were covered in salt. Covered. It was like being inside a saltshaker. The floor, the ceiling, everywhere you could see, touch, or smell was crunchy and just a bit acrid.
The only exception to this glistening white oddity was a small refrigerator unit. Through its glass door Brandt could make out four bright yellow vials.
The Rinderpest.
It glowed an otherworldly canary color in the dim light. So much destruction in such a tiny container. Despite their small volume, those vials contained enough bacteria to wipe out an entire continent's livestock. Enough to throw the world's economy into a tailspin with chaos, riots, and civil war not far behind.
Just like any villain, though, Rinderpest had its vulnerability. Heat. The bacteria had to be kept chilled until it found a susceptible host. Warmed or worse heated, boiled, Rinderpest was about as harmful as the mold on blue cheese.
"Do it," Brandt ordered Harvish. The point man pulled out a flare from his belt and then yanked opened the refrigerator door open. Sparking the flare up, Harvish pointed the flame toward the vials.
The brilliant clear yellow rapidly turned a tarnished, turbid brown. Satisfied the bacterium was going down without a fight, Brandt guarded the door as he instructed Talli, "Let the others know that we have joy."
"They're taking care of the Rinderpest," Davidson whispered.
Rebecca breathed out, tears spilling down her cheek. Not only was Brandt safe, he'd found the plague and apparently was destroying it. Now they just needed to get him and the rest of his team out of there safely.
Surprisingly, Rebecca found that her hunger for the tablets evaporated. History for once could stay put in the past.
"Plus he made it pretty dang clear he wants us to get the hell out of here," Davidson added.
"Which is going to be a little hard to do," Lopez answered. Those other vehicles were approaching fast. "It would be one against four."
"We can't leave him," Rebecca interjected. The corporal had to come up with a better plan than making a run for it.
Lopez turned to her with a grin. "Like I've come this far, I'm not going to see it through?"
Bunny however looked ready to emulate her namesake. "Maybe we should make a run for it and get the authorities out here?" The younger woman glanced to her feet as everyone stared at her.
It wasn't her fault though. Any reasonable, rational person would think the same thing. The only problem was the car wasn't filled with any of those besides her.
Rebecca patted Bunny's knee. "Even if we could, I don't think the Jordanian authorities would be all that helpful."
Lopez snorted. "Then we'd just be facing three assault forces."
Rebecca shot the corporal a look. That was not helping.
"Or maybe we do need to get going?" Davidson stated.
All eyes turned to the young man.
"I think the thing Brandt needs right now more than anything is a distraction. Something to divide their forces."
Before they could debate what that might look like, a bright light shot up out of the nearby vent along with a jaw-rattling bang.
Thank God he'd replaced the sheet metal before the fucking Disciples tossed a flash bang into the outpost's storage room. His ears still rang, but at least he wasn't blinded. It wouldn't take them long to get through that piece of metal.
"Harvish?"
"Coming along, Sarge," the point man said. "Think it's safe?"
Brandt looked over his shoulder. The vials were now the color of untreated sewage. "Do it."
Even if the Rinderpest wasn't 100 percent deactivated, they had to finish the job before they were overrun. The risk of exposing themselves to any of the active bacteria paled in comparison if they allowed even a drop of the Rinderpest to leave this facility.
Harvish smashed the vial, splattering the liquid onto the bottom of the refrigerator. He then took the torch to the liquid itself. Boiling the shit out of it. Cremating it out of existence.
"Don't stop," Brandt ordered, "until you've melted the fucking glass."
He wanted that Rinderpest gone.
"Talli?" Brandt asked. Now looking forward to their post-Rinderpest lifespan. "Anything?"
"Except for this alcove where I believe the fragments of the tablet were kept, there's no break in the walls."
Not exactly what Brandt wanted to hear, but that was kind of the definition of a cave wasn't it? A chamber with no fucking outlet.
Guess it was time to make a last stand.
Brandt dropped to one knee as another grenade went off it the adjacent room.
This wasn't going to be pretty.
Davidson ducked his head as a shot bounced off the roof. They'd created a distraction alright. Lopez was driving in and around the buildings like some kind of drunk Pac-Man.
"Turn right."
The corporal obliged, of course going about ten miles an hour too fast for the turn as they skidded out, their rear bumper hitting the building. Even so, Davidson let off a shot, shattering one of the chase cars' windshield.
Then they made another sharp left, cutting off the sight.
A shot shattered their rear window. They were damned lucky that it wasn't the vaulted sniper after them or that bullet would have probably taken one of them down.
Davidson didn't bother to give Lopez instructions. The corporal turned the wheel hard to the left, slamming on the emergency brake, spinning the SUV in a tight circle. Davidson let the world blur before him. The desert, the building didn't matter. Only one thing did.
The glint of the man's watch.
Davidson let loose the shot. As the SUV kept spinning, Davidson didn't need to look back at the man to know he was down. He'd heard the garbled scream.
Once out of the spin, the SUV leapt forward, speeding between two of the outbuildings and then into the desert only to skid around a right turn and head back to the main building's entrance.
No other gunmen.
This hadn't been a large enough distraction. The Disciples hadn't sent up any reinforcements. Brandt was still facing the full contingent down there.
"We've got to create a bigger ruckus," Davidson said. "Draw them out."
Lopez looked to the detonator on the seat. Davidson picked it up. They both looked to Rebecca. They shouldn't of course. She was a civilian, but then again so was he. And this mission was so off-book, it wasn't even funny.
Rebecca frowned for a moment. Then a fierce grin emerged. The woman in the backseat wasn't the same woman Davidson had met a year ago in the Amazonian jungle.
The change became her.
"Hell yeah," Rebecca said. "Let's blow some stuff up."
"Enough!" Aunush yelled as the men fired at the metal. She pushed her receiver in hard against her ear. "Say again."
The transmission was garbled nearly beyond recognition. The man sounded wounded...fatally if she wasn't mistaken. Somehow the additional guards provided by the master had gotten themselves killed. Just as well. They had seemed tepid at best.
But he was trying to say something else. Something about C-4?
Then she heard it. An explosion. Not huge. A target bomb. The noise sounded like it came from far above. Why would they target the ground level? Then another sounded and another as the walls began to shake.
Were they trying to bring the roof down?
No matter their intent, her prize was just beyond that metal slab.
"We cannot afford any delay," Aunush hissed, hearing another explosion. This one closer.
The sniper though didn't fire. Instead, he held up a handful of grenades.
He was right. The time had come to commit fully to God's grace.
Backing out of the room, Aunush headed for a good fifty feet from the grenades the sniper was planting before stopping. Not that Aunush didn't trust God, she just found He helped you best if you helped yourself first.
The walls shook all around Brandt. Chunks of salt fell from the ceiling.
So, okay, now it really was just like being in a saltshaker. Large blocks of wall tumbled down, sending shards of the crystalline material flying like shrapnel. Little known fact. Salt was fucking sharp.
And it turned out, not all that strong. The far wall began to crumble. Actually the salt tumbled away to reveal...a passage?
"Go!"
Harvish tossed aside the torch and dove through the opening. Talli crashed through as the ceiling threatened to cave in. Brandt was only halfway across the chamber when an explosion caught him in the back, picking him up, carrying him through the hole, throwing him a good ten meters down the hallway.
The ride was great. The landing not so much.
Shell-shocked and nauseated, Brandt couldn't resist as Harvish and Talli picked him up by the arms and hauled his ass out of that tunnel as it collapsed around them. They made it out of the decimated passage, stumbling into a huge cavern.
Shaking off his men, Brandt tried to find his feet, but lost them again, dropping down to his knees. Salt stung his palms as he steadied himself. Now was not the time to pass out. Not the time at all. First he had to stop his stomach's attempt to leap out of his abdomen, and it wouldn't hurt if it didn't sound like the National Church Bell Ringing annual competition wasn't going in inside his skull.
"What the hell?" Harvish stated in an almost reverential tone. Really? The guy had made fun of St. Basil's tomb.
Then Brandt looked up.
What the hell...was exactly right.
Aunush brushed away the dust as the sniper helped her up.
They'd wanted to blow the damn metal, not the whole facility. She shoved the sniper's hand away. "What have you done?"
She stalked down the hallway to the storage room. To her surprise it was still intact. The grenades had done their job and taken down the large metal blockade. But what was revealed beyond made her take pause.
Even with all the destruction, the chamber clearly had been a salt cave. Tentatively she stepped over the threshold and into the most hallowed chamber.
"There is still the risk of a complete cave-in," the Chinese guard warned.
Aunush ignored him. She also ignored the smashed refrigerator with its petty contents. She had eyes only for the small alcove. Stepping over mounds of salt and rubble, she made her way to the resting place of the tablets.
Her hand hovered over the sacred spot. Even though the air was choked with dust and smoke, Aunush sucked in a deep breath.
They had found it. The ark that was no ark.
The house that God had built for his greatest gift to man.
"The Rinderpest is gone," the Chinese guard snarled. "This has been a waste of time."
Aunush swung around, pulling her gun in the same motion, shooting the guard in the forehead. As the man dropped, dead before he hit the salt-covered ground, his guards pulled their weapons. She noticed though they did not even attempt to fire as the sniper had a gun on each of them.
She indicated to the far wall where there clearly had been a passage.