Juan Gómez-Jurado - Contract with God aka The Moses Expedition

I see the canyon up ahead. Fuck. Thank God this didn’t happen ten minutes ago. It must be the simoon they warned me about.

He would need at least three minutes to land the plane, and the wall was less than twenty-five miles away. He made a quick calculation. It would take the simoon another twenty minutes to reach the canyon. He pressed the helicopter conversion mode and felt the motors slow down immediately.

At least it’s working. I’ll have time to set down this bird and squeeze myself into the smallest space I can find. If half the things they say about this thing are true…

Three and a half minutes later, the landing gear of the BA-609 was settling on the flat ground between the camp and the excavation. Duke cut the engine and for the first time in his life he didn’t bother to go through his final safety check but got out of the plane as if his pants were on fire. He glanced around but couldn’t see anyone.

I have to let everyone know. Inside that canyon they won’t see this thing until it’s thirty seconds away.

He ran towards the tents, although he wasn’t so sure that being inside a tent was the safest place to be. Suddenly a figure dressed in white was walking towards him. Before long he recognised who it was.

‘Hey, Mr Russell. I see you’ve gone native,’ Duke said, feeling nervous. ‘I hadn’t seen you-’

Russell was twenty feet away. At that moment the pilot noticed that Russell had a pistol in his hand and stopped in his tracks.

‘Mr Russell, what’s going on?’

The executive said nothing. He simply aimed at the pilot’s chest and fired three quick shots. He stood over the fallen body and fired three more times into the pilot’s head.

In a nearby cave, O heard the shots and alerted the group.

‘Brothers, that’s the signal. Let’s go.’

AL MUDAWWARA DESERT, JORDAN

Thursday, 20 July 2006. 1:39 p.m.

‘Are you drunk, Nest Three?’

‘Colonel, I repeat that Mr Russell just blew off the pilot’s head and then ran towards the excavation. What are your orders?’

‘Fuck. Does anyone have a visual on Russell?’

‘Sir, this is Nest Two. He’s climbing the platform. He’s dressed kind of strange. Should I fire a warning shot?’

‘Negative, Nest Two. Don’t do anything until we know more. Nest One, do you read me?’

‘…’

‘Nest One, do you read me?’

‘Nest One. Torres, pick up the fucking radio.’

‘…’

‘Nest Two, do you have a visual of Nest One?’

‘Affirmative, sir. I have a visual, but Torres isn’t there, sir.’

‘Shit! You two, don’t take your eyes off the entrance to the excavation. I’m on my way.’

The first sting had been on his calf, twenty minutes ago.

Fowler had felt a sharp pain, but luckily it didn’t last long, fading into a dull ache, more like a hard slap than the initial bolt of lightning.

The priest had planned to suppress any screams by gritting his teeth, but forced himself not to do so yet. He’d try that with the next sting.

The ants had gone no higher than his knees, and Fowler didn’t have the slightest idea if they knew what he was. He tried his best to seem like something that wasn’t edible or dangerous, and for both reasons there was one thing he could not do: move.

The next sting hurt a great deal more, maybe because he knew what would come next: the swelling in the area, the inevitability of it all, the feeling of helplessness.

After the sixth sting he lost count. Perhaps he had been stung twelve times, perhaps twenty. Not many more, but he couldn’t take it much longer. He had used up all his resources – gritting his teeth, biting his lips, flaring his nostrils wide enough for a truck to enter? At some point, feeling desperate, he had even risked twisting his wrists in the handcuffs.

The worst thing was not knowing when the next sting would come. Up to that point he had been lucky, since most of the ants had gone half a dozen feet to his left and only a couple of hundred covered the ground beneath him. But he knew that at the slightest movement they would attack.

He needed to concentrate on something other than the pain, or he would go against his better judgement and start trying to crush the insects with his boots. Maybe he’d even manage to kill a few, but it was clear that they had the numerical advantage and in the end he would lose.

A new sting was the last straw. The pain ran up his legs and exploded in his genitals. He was on the verge of losing his mind.

Strangely, it was Torres who saved him.

‘Padre, your sins are attacking you. One by one, just like they eat away the soul.’

Fowler looked up. The Colombian was standing almost thirty feet away, watching him with an amused expression on his face.

‘I got tired of being up there, you know, so I came back to see you in your own private Hell. Look, this way we won’t be disturbed,’ he said, turning off the walkie-talkie with his left hand. In the right hand, he was holding a rock about the size of a tennis ball. ‘Now, where were we?’

The priest was grateful that Torres was there. It gave him someone to focus his hatred on. Which in turn would buy him a few more minutes of remaining still, a few more minutes of life.

‘Oh, yes,’ Torres went on. ‘We were trying to work out if you were going to make the first move or if I was going to make it for you.’

He threw the rock and hit Fowler on the shoulder. The stone tumbled over to where most of the ants were massing, once more the pulsating lethal swarm that was ready to attack whatever it was that threatened their home.

Fowler closed his eyes and attempted to control the pain. The rock had hit him in the same place a psychopathic killer had shot him sixteen months before. The whole area still hurt at night, and now he felt as if he were reliving the whole ordeal. He tried to concentrate on the pain in his shoulder to block out the ache in his legs, using a trick that an instructor had taught him what seemed a million years ago: the brain can only handle one sharp pain at a time.

When Fowler opened his eyes again and saw what was happening behind Torres, he had to make an even bigger effort to control his emotions. If he betrayed himself for one moment, he was finished. Andrea Otero’s head had appeared from behind the dune that lay just past the exit to the canyon where he was being held prisoner by Torres. The reporter was very close, and without doubt in a few moments she would see them, if she hadn’t already done so.

Fowler understood that he had to make absolutely sure that Torres didn’t turn around to look for another rock. He decided to give the Colombian what the soldier least expected.

‘Please, Torres. Please, I beg you.’

The expression on the Colombian’s face changed completely. Like all killers, few things excited him more than the control he thought he had over his victims when they began to beg.

‘What are you begging for, Padre?’

The priest had to force himself to concentrate and find the right words. Everything depended on making sure that Torres didn’t turn around. Andrea had seen them, and Fowler was sure that she was close, although he’d lost sight of her because Torres’s body was blocking the way.

‘I’m begging for my life. My miserable life. You’re a soldier, a real man. Compared to you I’m nothing.’

The mercenary was smiling broadly, revealing his yellowish teeth. ‘Well said, Padre. And now-’

Torres never got a chance to finish his sentence. He didn’t even feel the blow.