The Genesis Plague - Michael Byrnes [6]
Could the blast hole be that deep? he wondered. And why would they corner themselves like that?
2
From behind a boulder, Jason scanned the opening with his binoculars. No sign of the jihad quintet, but when he zoomed in, he did notice something peculiar: about two metres into the opening the black void was framed by a rectangular enclosure - like an open doorway. Tighter magnification revealed bolt heads lining the hard, unnatural lines.
‘What do we have here?’ he muttered.
Someone whistled loudly.
Lowering the binoculars, Jason peered over to Meat, who was pointing to a smoking object that lay not far from where he’d taken cover. Even from a distance, Jason could tell that the mangled and blackened rectangular hulk of metal was the door that had been blown clear off the frame he’d just spied. Scoping the object, he determined it to be roughly one by two metres, fat as a phone book, with a wide circular turn-crank like he’d expect to find on a submarine hatch. The door’s unmarred sections showed that it had been painted to match the mountain’s earth tones. Around its edges were remnants from military-grade camouflage netting. Must have been quite effective, he thought, if no one had spotted it earlier. The opening was certainly positioned high enough to trick the naked eye.
Maybe the militants hadn’t intended to slip through the mountains. Maybe they were heading to this place all along. Perhaps it was a bunker.
Then again, Jason had seen the Arabs do a double-take before running into the opening - like they were equally surprised to see it there. Either way, since this was no mere blast hole, there was a strong possibility that whatever had been protected behind that security door ran deep - really deep; the snaking cave systems running beneath these mountains could put Rome’s most impressive catacombs to shame.
He’d read in his field manual that the Zagros Mountains were formed from the ancient tectonic collision between the Arabian and Eurasian plates. The jagged range stretched 1,500 kilometres from northern Iraq down to the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, with peaks reaching 4,500 metres (even taller than Colorado’s Pikes Peak, he’d noted). Caves and tunnels resulted from the erosion of the softer mineral-laden rocks inside the mountains. The Zagros’s most bittersweet contribution to the region, however, was the sedimentary deposits trapped beneath its eastern foothills - Iran’s massive oil fields.
From out of the cave came a muffled fizzy sound, like a freshly cracked bottle of pop releasing its carbonation. Just as Jason’s eyes found the opening, a blinding glow flashed in the black void beyond the doorframe … the silhouette of a projectile … a resounding whump. In the next instant, a roiling fireball billowed out from the opening, throwing heat waves that rippled down the slope. Huge rock fragments shot out in all directions.
The Americans went for cover as the debris came raining down around them.
A softball-sized stone plummeted down and struck Jason squarely between the shoulder blades, knocking him flat to the ground. The wind heaved out from his lungs in a heavy gasp. Pain jolted up his spine, down his arms. He rolled on to his back, arcing his spine, groaning in pain, seeing nothing but white for a five-count. Had he not been wearing a Kevlar vest under his robe, the stone might have paralysed him.
Fast footsteps crunched along the gravel and came to a stop next to him.
‘You okay, Google?’
He blinked his eyes and drew a steady breath. ‘Yeah, I’ll live.’
Jam helped him to his feet and Jason squeezed his shoulder blades together to coax the pain away.
‘That’s gonna leave a mark,’ Jam said.
Jason noticed that Jam’s left cheek was red and blistered, the curly black scruff sizzled away.
‘You should talk,’ he replied with a wince.
‘I was a bit too close when the missile went off.