Rise of the Beast: A Novel (The Patmos Conspiracy Book 1) (2 page)

1

Jersey City, New Jersey

BURKE HAD DONE THE ROUTINE a thousand times. Ten thousand times. Raise the gun, set the site on the center of the torso or head—the correct placement of a kill shot is always situational—and pull the trigger.

The Heckler and Koch 45 caliber handgun weighed just over two pounds. The kickback was manageable. Many inexperienced shooters opted for 40 caliber or 9mm handguns, following the logical but false assumption that a smaller load meant less recoil. Burke fought with the Desert Eagle 50 caliber in Afghanistan and Iraq—recoil was not an issue for him. Lean and muscular, highly trained and naturally skilled, the weight and kickback of the HK45 was no problem.

His target was ninety feet away. He lifted the gun, opted for a headshot, and squeezed the trigger. The roar of the discharge created no loss of aim for Burke. The barrel pulled up and left; to be expected. But with right arm ramrod straight, left arm slightly bent to provide stability for the classic two-handed shooting stance, he made the subtle adjustment of his site line, firmed his hold, pulled the trigger, and discharged nine more bullets in less than five seconds. He was confident he fired ten kill shots.

Burke flipped the switch and a chain rattled as it pulled the small target to him. There was only one hole in the head, four centimeters in diameter. All ten cartridges had zeroed in on the same spot. He shot a squirrel with a .22 at a more than a hundred-yard range when he was eight. He still had the master marksman’s gift of physical calm in the midst of a violent explosion.

And he needed it now. He was nervous. If he were personally out on the front lines of a dangerous operation, he would be fine. But putting an amateur into the battlefield—and knowing this was D-Day—was grating across his nerves like nails on a chalkboard.

She was perfect for what needed to be done. But she was in over her head. She knew what she was getting into, I told her myself, he repeated in his mind for the thousandth time.

I didn’t sugarcoat any of the risks. I was completely honest with her.

But he knew better. Is it honesty if the person you are speaking to cannot truly fathom the meaning of your words? Concepts like danger and risk aren’t visceral when discussed in a coffee shop. You don’t go up against the kind of adversary they were facing if you really knew the danger. You would have to be a fool.

What does that make me?

When fighting a monster, all of us are amateurs, all of us are in over our head, he thought.

Tall and slender, generously endowed, full lips, large hazel eyes flecked with golden amber, creamy skin, high check bones, thin aquiline nose, luxuriant honey-colored hair—a beauty queen—she was not without natural defenses … nor weapons. Could she pull off what he tasked her to do? He would know soon enough.

Another thought gnawed at him no matter how hard he willed it to slink back into the darkness of his subconscious. He liked her. He wanted her to be okay. He wanted to know her. He somehow sensed she was his path back to decency. This was certainly no time for sentiment, but there it was, refusing to surrender to his iron will.

Maybe his feelings were simple biological reaction to her feminine allure.

You can’t think like that and survive in this business, he repeated to himself. Again.

He pinned a new target to the holder, hit the switch to send the chain rattling away, popped the spent magazine from the handle of the Heckler, and jammed a fresh spring-loaded holder with ten more rounds in his German designed instrument of death.

The mathematical law of regression to the mean suggested his next ten shots would not be as accurate as his marks from the first magazine. But laws were meant to be broken. When he took a surreptitious glance behind him at the viewing window, he saw that he had attracted a small group of spectators—not what he wanted, but he might as well put on a show.

He racked the first bullet in the chamber, switched to a one-handed stance, and squeezed off ten rounds. He was certain the new target would come back with ten shots clustered in a single hole.

So why keep practicing? Why not? What else am I going to do while I wait except go crazy?

The chain clattered back with a target bearing a four-centimeter hole in the chest. He wadded it up and dumped it in the trash can. He broke the Heckler and Koch down and cleaned it carefully, pushing the bristle brush in and out of barrel. He laid the polymer frame gently in the hard shell carry case. He walked over to the corner of shooters alley, picked up the broom, and swept the spent shell casings into a dustbin. He exited the two doors leading to the lobby, took off the Howard Leight earmuff set, and nodded quickly at a few gawkers. He kept his eye contact to a split second, announcing he wasn’t in the mood to socialize.

“Nice shooting,” the kid working behind the ammunition counter remarked.

Burke just nodded, running a hand through dark hair, cut short, the first hints of white on his temple.

“We finally got the Federal Hydra Shok back in stock, if you need any ammo,” the kid continued, trying to engage. “It’s about impossible to get lately, but I’ve got a case stashed in the back.”

Burke turned back and said, “I’ll take six boxes,” peeling three 100 dollar bills from his gold money clip with the 7th Ranger Regiment insignia onlay—a rare souvenir of his past life. Would he ever use the over-the-counter bullets? Only at a range. In real life, his ammo was custom made.

“Were you Army?” the kid asked. “Where’d you learn to shoot like that?”

Questions were why it was better to not draw attention.

“My dad was a marksman and taught me,” Burke lied.

He quickly exited the storefront, put the gear in the trunk of his rented Chevy Malibu, and pushed the button to start the car.

I did tell her the truth of what she as getting into. So why do I feel so empty?

2

Northern Yemen

NICKY WANTED TO VOMIT AT what he witnessed. The only redeeming quality of the executions was watching the American put up a hellacious fight. Nicky had to hand it to the man. He did not die quietly.

The young Saudi prince was a whole different matter. He was surprisingly pliant. Stoic? At peace? In shock? He accepted the blade with nothing but a blank, expressionless, stare, with only a single flare of his smoldering onyx eyes as the executioner touched the scimitar to his neck to mark where he would sever the man’s head with a savage stroke of power and grace.

The Saudi was the son of a powerful Wahhabi sheikh. He was the model for the “new Arab man.” Intelligent, savvy, urbane, but ever faithful to Allah. Even after earning degrees from the Sorbonne University in Paris and Heidelberg University in Germany, he was still a true believer; maybe more of a believer after experiencing firsthand the empty decadence of the West. Nicky knew that the sheikh’s son had despoiled more than a few virgins in his student days, but he had eschewed the drug and party scene that seemed requisite on the resume of a wealthy heir to an oil fortune.

The prince’s father, Sheikh Sulaymon, was not a billionaire, but close enough. His fury and vengeance would be colossal when he
discovered that his eldest son, his beloved son, his anointed son, had been slaughtered by a toothless, barbaric, drug-addled, two-bit rival.

The American was far from stoic. He was obviously not anticipating immediate entrance into paradise with a bevy of eager virgins awaiting him.

He was strong, a demon with his hands, and he fought frantically and loudly to keep them free. He administered at least two broken wrists, one oozing, dripping eye socket, and a crushed larynx to the men who ultimately overpowered him. He bellowed and roared in the night as testimony to the survival instinct.

But unlike scripted scenes in action movies, there is no choreography in a real life fight that presents one combatant at a time to be dispatched by spins, jumps, kicks, and fists, administered in artistic arcs and jabs. A fight is messy business. Put enough bodies, enough weight, enough flesh, enough fists and boots on one man and he will buckle and fall.

Even on the ground, his hands bound, his muscles spent and trembling like gelatin, the American mustered enough energy for one last head snap to break Sheikh Malmak’s nose.

There’s a reason you have bodyguards and other underlings taste your food for poison and fight your battles, Nicky thought. But out of pride the sheikh insisted on looking into the eyes of the American to let him know he was defeated.

The broken nose was no real matter in the long run. The Sheikh was a hideously ugly old bird, with a missing ear, a mouth full of qat-stained rotten, broken teeth, and a misshapen mole the size of a euro coin that sprouted a menagerie of black and bristly white hairs. A half-smashed nose wouldn’t be the reason he didn’t make the cover of GQ. Not even the Yemen edition.

Malmak’s name meant
highness.
The sheikh was pleased when the Saudi minister of religious affairs made it illegal for parents to name a baby boy Malmak anymore, a prohibition that migrated to Yemen.
He was pleased because he believed that when history recounted his exploits, his name, Malmak, would be less diluted by smaller men. Nicky got all that through his translator who might or might not be reliable.

Malmak. Highness. A great name, but the bearer was not destined for the history books. Pride precedes the fall, Nicky mused.

Don’t fall in the same trap. A mad sheikh in pain might be enough to get you killed before you get out of this cesspool. Uncle told me to delegate more. Beginning tomorrow, if there is a tomorrow for me, I will listen.

The American was spent. His legs and hands and waist were bound to a chair with duct tape. He got one last bite to the shoulder of the soldier circling him with the dull metal adhesive. Blood dripped from his mouth. Was it a chunk of meat from Azam, the guard he bit, or his own blood?

The video camera was on a tripod ten feet in front of him. The executioner was ready. In one single blow, the Saudi’s head had separated from his neck, fallen with a thud to the ground, and then rolled on the dusty, rocky ground, spewing a jet of blood. That took real strength—and a sharp blade that the executioner tended to with a gentleness that belied its ceremonial purpose in Malmak’s tribe.

The American would not be given a clean death. Because of the broken nose the sheikh had ordered the obese mute to use his dullest blade on the American. This was going to take time; it would be gory. Nicky knew better than to turn his head or avert his eyes. He had orchestrated the executions and now his job was to be strong, to watch every hack of nothing more than a dull, rusty machete, as it went through veins, muscles, arteries, tendon, and bone.

The American lifted his head, spat blood, and cursed the sheikh. Nicky almost laughed.

What a fighter.

The dull gray blade slashed sideways, but not with the force and length of stroke that killed the handsome young Arabian prince. Nicky
felt blood splatter on his face, as the metal dug into the neck about a fourth of the way through. Not deep enough to decapitate or kill the man.

The American glared, snarled, and bellowed but no clear words emerged, no more profanity and curses filled the air.

He would fight to the end. Nicky would like to have known him. If he had, he would have found another patsy to play the role of a treacherous American operative in this bloody charade.

A second slash of the blade landed with a little more authority but the American somehow ducked into it and lost an inch of scalp and flesh on the top of his head for his efforts. The moon and firelight showed an eerie, gleaming white patch of skull. The man’s mouth was wide open in pain and rage, but it was a silent scream.

Nicky nearly gagged from the assaultive stench as the man voided his bowels and bladder.

What was his name? I should remember. He deserves that much.

So much blood. The American couldn’t last much longer. Just don’t look away. Show no weakness. Nicky could feel the testosterone surging through the campsite. A laugh to his left. An excited shriek to his right. A chorus of undulating voices from all sides.

Don’t turn from the main show. Eyes straight ahead. Don’t flinch. Watch. Smile. Maybe let out a yell. Be one with them. And perhaps you will live another day.

The third stroke broke through the vertebrae deep enough that it stuck tight in a chunk of cartridge. The executioner, sweat roiling between the swells of his saggy chest and down his enormous belly, had to give several violent tugs to free the blade. Nicky had seen lots of blood—had caused lots of blood—but his stomach gave a violent wrench at the sight of the strands of bright red meat, appearing freakishly like the frayed end of a rope, spilling from the top and bottom of the gash. The ground around the American was now pooled in blood. His body continued to twitch and jerk—his brain might already be dead but his electrical impulses were still looking for a
fight. Any physical movement was nothing but unspent energy racing through nerve patterns.

The American fought a heck of a fight. His head still clung to his body on the fourth stroke, maybe by nothing more than skin. What a way to die. It was contagious in this part of the world. But dead was dead. Was the prince any better off for a clean death? What was a minute or two of less suffering he experienced than the American? Both would still be dead forever.

Nicky was in the process of delivering more than twenty-five million US dollars in weaponry to this obscure tribe in northern Yemen, not far from the border of Saudi Arabia. As the handoff approached, he had used an unwitting conspirator in his Middle East network to plant the story of a rival tribe—the Wahhabi tribe controlled by the prince’s father, Sulaymon—coordinated by the American CIA of course, which planned to steal the weapons from Malmak.

The American wasn’t CIA—at least not to Nicky’s knowledge— but he was big, athletic, and just happened to be negotiating a deal with the Wahhabi tribe to bring a stable electrical grid to the Hadhramaut Valley, a project the handsome Saudi prince had been working on since his return from the West. The output of his father’s oil wells was more than sufficient to improve the lot of the region the tribe inhabited.

With the way the man fought, Nicky mused, maybe the American was CIA. Nonetheless, he and the prince’s protestations of innocence fell on deaf ears. The two men had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time when Malmak’s men kidnapped them. Nicky felt a little bad for his part in their brutal ending, but he knew it was for a greater good. His uncle would be pleased.

That was the beauty of the plan. Arm men with long-standing grievances and up-to-date bad intentions, then spread rumors that their historical enemies have even more nefarious plans to inflict on them, and your work was mostly done for you. Passionate flames
of emotion that turned intentions into actions quickly raced out of control and the next thing you knew you were watching an elegant Wahhabi prince’s head bounce and roll. Once the first shot was fired— or the first head rolled—a response would always follow. In the case of the prince’s father, it would be a much greater response that would echo throughout the region, turning tribe against tribe.

With what we just gave Malmak, I give him a month rather than a week to survive the storm coming his way. The fool thinks he can win. Keep encouraging that thought. The only reason he will live out the year is that Sulaymon will keep him alive to torture him.

The Americans were weak at the moment and might not acknowledge the death of one of their citizens. But whether or not they had boots on the ground, they and their allies were enmeshed in the region and would be involved in the ensuing battles one way or another. Particularly if the battles spread to the territories of their allies who helped keep their energy costs inexpensive.

Malmak was foolish to think his ragtag, near destitute little tribe could wreak the damage he thought they could, no matter how many weapons Nicky supplied to them. But with Malmak’s righteous passion and enormous ego, Nicky was certain the bloodshed that would follow would be a good return on investment.

This moment, this incident was a carefully scripted scenario to measure impact. He wondered if it was even necessary.

The ISIS campaign in Syria and Iraq was not completely organic, but even with very little outside nudging, its exponential growth was nothing short of amazing. What Nicky was accomplishing—and he was not sure how much credit he could take—was significant, his uncle told him. Nothing pleased Nicky more than his uncle’s approval.

It was time for the killing to spread south and east on the Arabian Peninsula, to Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and on into the Emirates. Work was already underway to turn brother against brother in Egypt. Fighting in Syria had taken on a life of its own and was already spreading to Iraq,
Turkey, and Lebanon. Russian arrogance—
they forget their wasted years in Afghanistan
—had brought them to the fight. The Americans would be forced to redeploy.

No country was more vulnerable than tiny Israel, but with the Muslim war to purify the land from the
kafir
—infidel Muslims— perhaps the rise of their enemies was a blessing in disguise. His uncle thought that was the case.

Nicky’s orders were to build a network that traded in rumors and arms and to make heads rolls. He was succeeding beyond any reasonable projections. After they finished analyzing the results of this and several other Beta initiatives, then the full-scale implementation of their war plans would begin. His uncle’s goal was sixty percent carnage in the Middle East.

Was this actually attainable? Nicky hadn’t thought so in the beginning but he was growing more and more confident with each successful mission.

Seventy percent might be more realistic with what we have planned.

Nicky looked at the sheikh. His face was a swollen gourd of wrinkles, but he smiled through the rotten, brownish stumps of teeth, and spat a thick gooey stream of qat in the direction of the American. That was good. Nicky was certain he would live to face another day.

The network is in place. No one knows who is behind it. I will listen to Uncle and delegate what comes next, but far away from the killing zone.