Lucky for him, the heavy wooden door had slowed the bullet enough that by the time it hit the vest, it was rendered non-lethal. His eyes rolled as he coughed and gasped for air, his lungs shocked by the impact. The medic left the dead body of Bell and sprinted across the hall to Miller, who would say later that it felt like he had been hit with a small Buick.
Beckwith fired a pair of three-round bursts through the Sheetrock wall into the room, then kicked the door open. He rushed in, followed by Forrester and Philips. A blond-haired, blue-eyed man stared back at them. He was mostly naked, except for a pair of colorful boxer shorts. A vial of the chemical was gripped in one hand and a pistol in the other.
Blood soaked through the cloth of his boxer shorts near the hip and ran in thick, red rivulets down his right thigh. The man looked like he could have been taken out of a Nazi propaganda poster, except that now he had a crazed look in his eyes as he backed slowly toward the window.
Beckwith faced him, weapon raised. “All right, buddy, put down your weapon and the vial. Put them down gently on the bed.”
“You are too late!” Adem Jankovic’s Kosovar accent was evident. A mix of hatred and fear quivered in his voice. “You were too late to save my people in Kosovo, and you are too late to save your own people here.”
Forester whispered into his mike. “Snipers? Can you see the dude in his underwear? Top floor, south corner, back of the house?”
“Too late for what?” Beckwith asked calmly.
“I see his shadow,” the sniper responded. “But no good shot. Try to back him up closer to the window.”
Adem suddenly became calm, demonically calm. His eyes glimmered with evil intent. “You will see…you will see even now!” The blond Nazi poster boy raised the vial in his left hand.
“Shoot him!” Forester grunted hoarsely.
Beckwith squeezed the trigger on his MP-5, sending three 9mm rounds into Adem’s chest. The blond Kosovar shuddered, but stayed on his feet. He gripped the vial tightly. He opened his mouth to speak, but a hiss of air was all that escaped his gaping lips. Adem swayed, then stumbled back toward the window.
His body convulsed in a spasm that jerked him aside. A round hole appeared in the window. The high-powered bullet zinged past him and splintered the wooden doorframe inches from Forester’s head.
Adem blinked rapidly as razor shards of glass sprayed his back. Blood ran in a hundred tiny streams out of the wounds that peppered his flesh. He tilted dizzily. Beckwith and Forester lunged forward to grab the vial before he dropped it.
In an unexpected burst of energy, the Kosovar smashed the test tube hard against his own forehead as he fell to the ground. Fluid ran across his face and chest. Small droplets of the yellowish substance splashed into the air as the vial burst. The two warriors barely avoided landing on the man.
As they rolled their bodies away, Forester shouted, “The chemical is out! Evacuate the building!”
The chemical reaction was instantaneous. The blood and sweat that covered Adem’s body provided the liquid agent the bacteria needed to replicate, and the cancerous process started within two seconds. Orange lumps visibly rose from the handsome blond man’s face and across his chest. The lumps quickly grew as large as baseballs, disfiguring his flesh into grotesque masses where the fluid had contacted him. They spread rapidly.
The lumps turned red, and then got darker. They replicated across his flesh until his entire body bubbled and seethed like a thick, boiling soup. Wisps of an eerie red-orange smoke rose from Adem’s form. He screamed in horrifying agony as the sores pulsed larger and larger.
Swollen, red cysts burst open and turned black. Sick-looking orange foam expanded from the open wounds on his chest.
Beckwith stood transfixed by the scene in front of him.
“Beckwith!” Forester shouted, “Let’s go!”
Suddenly shaken from his mesmerized stare, Beckwith turned to run out of the room. The chemical reaction team was already coming into the area. Bulky green bio suits swished noisily as they passed Forester and Beckwith. The two commandos ran down the stairs and were met by a MOP-suited bio tech.
“Wait outside the front door!” the hooded man shouted. “Don’t go near anyone not in a suit! We need to detox you right away.”
The two men did as ordered while the bio team rushed to seal off the house. By the time the team reached Adem’s body, it was not recognizably human. Only the lower parts of the legs and feet remained untouched by the cancer. Within minutes, those parts too were completely engulfed.
The remains of Adem Jankovic transformed into a large orange, red, and black mass of slimy, deformed tissue bearing no resemblance at all to the man who had threatened to cut Marcus Johnson’s balls off only two days earlier.
Beckwith and Forester hurriedly stepped out onto the front porch. It was encased in a large, clear, plastic tent.
“Oh, dear Jesus!” Beckwith said in a near panic. “Help me, God! I think he got some of that crap on my clothes!”
“Just calm down and stand still,” replied one of the hooded men nearby.
Beckwith started to take his equipment off, but was stopped by the bio team. “Don’t! Don’t touch your clothes! Just stand still. The Nomex suit will keep you safe while we undress you. Now put your arms straight out sideways.”
Both men did so. One of the hooded detox crew startled with alarm. “Uh oh!” he said, pointing at Beckwith’s leg. “There’s smoke coming up from his trousers!”
A thin wisp of white smoke emanated from a small hole in the left shin of Beckwith’s trousers, just above the top of his boot. Through this, the bacteria had already started to spread through the sweat-soaked material of his thermal long underwear.
The bio techs rushed to get his boots and pants off as fast as they could. With knives, they cut the laces from the boots and pulled them off, placing them quickly into sealed bags. They then removed his belt and pulled off the trousers quickly to reveal the thermal underwear, which was discolored from the effect of the TZ-E on his shin.
“Oh, Jesus! Hurry up! Oh, God! Don’t let me die like that guy!”
They pulled off the long underwear and put it in a bag. The tech turned back toward Beckwith. He gasped as two small orange circles grew from mere dots to the size of silver dollar coins in a matter of seconds.
Beckwith felt a painful sensation on the surface of his skin. He looked down and saw the bacteria growing rapidly across his left shin, visibly spreading up his leg.
“No! No!” he shouted. “Cut it off! Cut my leg off! Hurry up, before it spreads!”
Forester reacted first. He, too, had seen how fast this thing spread and couldn’t let his fellow warrior to die that way. He quickly drew out his fighting knife and pushed the terrified tech aside.
Beckwith dropped to the floor of the tent. “Hurry! Hurry up!” He nearly screamed the words.
“Hold him!” Forester shouted to the technicians. “Hold him down!”
Two of the techs grabbed his shoulders and a third his right leg. Forester pulled a tourniquet from an open first aid bag and tightened it around Beckwith’s thigh. He held the limb down with his own body weight and placed the razor-sharp blade of his ten-inch-long SOG fighting knife under Beckwith’s kneecap, careful not to touch the infected surface of the leg six inches lower, where the bacteria was spreading.
The Marine grunted, sucked in a deep breath, and held it as his partner tensed and leaned his body weight onto the blade. In a single, rapid motion, Forester swiftly sliced up under the patella, then down through the knee joint, shearing tendon, cartilage, and bone until the lower part of the leg was amputated at the joint.