Adira looked up at the glow on the horizon and inhaled deeply before going on. “Jābir ibn Hayyan’s work was purely focused on Takwin, and he even had several maps or recipes for creating false creatures such as scorpions, snakes, and, it is said, even humans in a alchemical laboratory. The created beings were without thought or conscience and totally under the control of their creator.” She looked up. “Who wouldn’t want an army of warriors like that?”
“You seem to know an awful lot about this,” Alex said, his eyebrows raised. Then he slowly turned, looking back the way they had come. Sam did the same.
“Anything?” Sam asked. He lifted a scope to his eye.
“No. Just a feeling.” After another moment, Alex waved them on. Casey caught them up as the HAWC leader turned back to Adira. “What you’re telling us is all just one big weird puzzle,” he said.
She nodded. “Yes, it is like pieces of a puzzle that mean nothing by themselves, and are therefore easy to ignore. But when more start turning up, a picture starts to emerge.” She looked at him. “This is what is happening now. The picture is emerging and becoming horribly clear.”
“You know, there are recent precedents for using dark magic,” Sam said.
“Like what?” Casey asked.
“During the final stages of WW2, Hitler started to search for anything that would give him an advantage. He turned to mysticism, and began a global hunt for holy weapons. There were two items he desperately wanted. The first was the Ark of the Covenant, the final resting place of the Ten Commandments, which he never found.”
“Bullshit. That’s just a made-up story,” Casey sneered, but then her brow knitted when Sam shook his head. “Isn’t it?”
“Oh, it’s real all right,” the big HAWC said. “The second item Adolf searched for, the Spear of Destiny, sometimes known as the Holy Lance, he had more success with. This is the weapon used by the Roman soldier who pierced the side of Jesus of Nazareth as he hung dying on the Cross. Hitler obtained it, used it, and nearly conquered the world.”
Adira nodded. “Napoleon, Caesar, Mao, all megalomaniacal leaders, sought and used dark magic or second sight — mages and seers — to gain a military edge. The Iranian mullahs also seek this advantage, and perhaps they have finally found a way to translate the Book of Stones’ secrets.”
Alex exhaled, his mind whirling. Part of him wanted to scoff like Casey, but he had seen things in his life that would tear at a normal person’s sanity. And he had seen with his own eyes the thing in the room — its dead flesh, suddenly becoming reanimated. The world still had so many secrets.
Adira looked up at him. “You asked if I was scared? Yes, I was, but not for myself. There is an old Jewish prophecy that says that Israel will stand until the dead rise to wage war against it. Maybe someone has managed to find a way to get the dead to fight.”
“The rabbi stopped the Golem by erasing part of the inscription carved into it,” Sam said. “Maybe there’s something similar we can use.”
Alex shrugged. “We beat it. We proved it could be stopped.”
“We beat it?” Adira looked back at the ground. “There were five crates, four empty. You beheaded one, and we know of three more that were deployed. Two carried out their mission, and one we took down in the Golan Heights. That leaves one unaccounted for. Where is it? Whose country is it walking toward right now?”
They walked in silence for another few minutes, until Alex reached out to grab her shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll find them and figure this out — together.”
She smiled weakly, but didn’t look convinced. Alex had wanted to tell her that they’d kill them all, but he knew they hadn’t even killed the one whose head he carried. He felt the head now, still squirming, as if silently screaming in his backpack.
The Mosul captives, now free, ran from the city. They headed back to their hometowns, by stolen pushbike, by car, or on foot.
One man in a tattered blue shirt half ran and half staggered back to a small oasis he knew. With still a quarter of a mile to go, he saw a tiny figure running toward him, her ragged dress flying, her long dark hair waving behind her like a shining banner.
Leyla leaped into his arms, hugging him and sobbing into his neck. After a moment she pulled back.
“Papa.” She smiled, blinking away wet eyes. “I prayed, and you were right; they came. The angels. Did you seem them — was it them that saved you?”
He nodded. “They saved us all, and sent the bad men all to hell.”
“Good.” She nodded, satisfied, and then closed her eyes. “Please God, now bring down your hammer on Hell itself.”
CHAPTER 8
Hammerson read the intercepted Israeli information brief, and collated it with Alex’s data from the desert. The debris from the Golan Heights indicated enough raw high energy material to construct a bomb of about thirty-five kilotons — bigger than both Soran and the Baghdad blasts. They were getting more audacious and deadly.
Alex had said they uncovered plans to transport one to Italy. That was a horrifying thought in anyone’s book. But more worrying was the fact that they believed it was the Iranian IRG that might be behind it. Hammerson exhaled, sitting back, his mind working on plans and permutations.
If it was true, that the Iranians were behind the nuclear blasts responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of innocents — including many Americans — it was grounds for a full-scale war.
Hammerson stared into the distance as he thought through the implications. The blasts also meant the Iranians had nuclear capability, no matter what they professed to the UN inspectors. Hammerson knew they didn’t have perfect ICBM technology, so missile delivery was still years away. But someone walking, driving, or flying a big tactical nuke anywhere in the world, meant nothing other than an aggressive plan of gross annihilation.
Why? he wondered. Why this huge risk? We could turn their entire country into slag.
His fingers tapped on his desk. There were the final negotiations between the Iranian government and the White House going on. Washington was seeking to enlist their help in fighting the Hezar-Jihadi in return for allowing them to keep their uranium enrichment program.
By having the terrorists seem to be using weapons of mass destruction, then it would add to a sense of urgency on the West’s part. Time was the enemy of good negotiation, and creating this pressure on the adversary was the key to pushing them into a bad deal.
The Iranians had even called for a combined military force, and wanted the US and other western armies to gather, to help overwhelm the terrorist fighters. They had even suggested a staging point outside of Dabiq, near Syria. The White House was hailing it as a grand gesture of cooperation. And following two nukes going off in the Middle East, the idea had already gained traction.
Still, it didn’t make sense, Hammerson thought. There was something he was missing. He steepled his fingers at his chin, thinking. If he could prove the Iranians were behind the blasts, or that they already had working nukes, then the negotiations would collapse. There’d be a lot of pissed off people on both sides. Not to mention the grounds for war. But he knew if he passed this up the line, there would be immediate political interference. The CIA would intercept any Intel he provided.
He knew they needed more information. They needed to go in. Hammerson’s senior confidant was General Chilton, theirs was the Commander in Chief himself, who seemed to want this deal as much as the Iranians. Hammerson would be outranked and outflanked. But only if he decided to share what he knew.