The Genesis Plague - Michael Byrnes [2]
The blade split the soft skin and muscle to bring forth a rush of blood that seemed to glow in the firelight. A second fierce chop sank deeper into the gaping muscle to separate vertebrae - the vile blood splashing up, painting the warrior’s face and chest. He delivered two more blows, until the head was cleanly separated.
Grunting with satisfaction, the warrior tossed the axe aside and grabbed the severed head by its soft locks. But his smile vanished when he looked into the glowering eyes that still seemed alive. Even the soft lips remained frozen in a taunting grimace.
Enliatu went to the fire pit. ‘Eck tok micham-ae ful-tha.’ He pointed to the second simmering clay bowl.
Extending the ghastly head away from his body, the warrior dropped it into the boiling resin. Enliatu watched it sink lazily into the opaque sap amidst a swirl of blood - its dead eyes still glaring defiantly, as if to promise that the stranger’s curse had only just begun.
1
NORTHEAST IRAQ
PRESENT DAY
‘I’m empty!’ Jam called over to his unit commander who was four metres away, crouched behind a massive limestone boulder.
Keeping his right eye pressed to the rifle scope, Sergeant Jason Yaeger reached into his goatskin rucksack, pulled out a fresh magazine, and smoothly tossed it to Jam. Hot metal intermingled with the discharge gases blowing downwind from the muzzle vent on Jam’s rifle. ‘Slow it down or you’re going to lock it up!’ Precisely the reason Jam had earned his nickname, he thought.
Jam ejected the spent clip, snapped in the new one.
The unit’s mishmash of Russian weapons, scrounged from a wandering Afghani arms dealer, gave each man’s rifle a unique report that helped Jason to roughly keep a count on expended rounds. Jam was heavy on the trigger of his Cold-War-era AK-74 - more pull than squeeze. The others in the unit were far more judicious with their shots.
Though the ten remaining Arab militants had superior numbers and a high-ground advantage, the art of the kill was heavily weighted in favour of Jason’s seasoned team. The dwindling ammo supply, however, couldn’t have come at a worse time. If the bad guys were to call for backup, Jason’s unit could be attacked from the rear in the open flatlands leading to the foothills. Worse yet, the enemy might slip through the nearby crevasse and head deeper into the Zagros Mountains - a rebel’s paradise filled with caves and labyrinthine, rugged passes.
Over the border and into Iran.
He whistled to Jam, made a sweeping hand motion that sent him scrambling up the hill and to the right. He fought the urge to scratch at the prickly heat beneath his scruffy beard, which, along with contact lenses that transformed his hazel eyes to muddy brown, a deep tan that could be the envy of George Hamilton, an unflattering galabiya robe, vest, and loose-fit pants combo, a keffiyeh headwrap with agal rope circlet, and sandals - had respectably passed him off as a Bedouin nomad. The other unit members had donned similar dress.
It took less than a two-count before a red-and-white chequered keffiyeh popped up over the rock pile, a Kalashnikov semi-automatic sweeping into view an instant later. Sliding his index finger off the trigger guard while matching crosshairs to chequers, Jason squeezed off three successive shots that would’ve left a perfect dime grouping on a bullseye. Through the scope he saw a pink mist and red blobs spit out behind the headscarf.
He adjusted the remaining target tally downward: nine.
Ducking from sight, he grabbed his rucksack and scrambled away just as a pomegranate-shaped grenade arced over the boulder, landed in the sand and popped. A ten-metre