Don Pendleton - Nightmare Army

Richter checked on the pair that had split off. They had reached the top of their hill and had a great view of the darkened valley, lit only by the lights of the walled village below. Both men unslung their cases and began removing equipment. One uncased a long sniper rifle, uncapped his scope and turned it on, then lay down. After adjusting his position one last time, the second man covered him with camouflage netting, then lay down behind a spotting scope and covered himself. When both men were ready, they radioed in to the rest of the team.

Meanwhile, Firke had reached what looked like a four-foot-high water outflow pipe buried between two hills. An ankle-deep rivulet of water splashed out and trickled down the hillside. The opening of the pipe was covered by a latticework of what looked like rebar. Checking to make sure he couldn’t be seen by anyone on the walls, Firke took a small cutting torch from a pocket, turned it on and began cutting through the bars. Within five minutes he had burned through enough of the latticework to bend back a large portion of it.

He signaled the rest of his men forward to the entrance. Turning on their night-vision goggles, they entered the sewer pipe, the tunnel lit only by the eerie, bright green of the NVGs. Occasionally, Richter saw the fleeting shape and heard a squeak of a rat in the pipe, but Firke and his men didn’t seem bothered in the least.

They progressed deeper into the pipe, until Richter estimated they had gone at least one hundred yards. At an intersection Firke pushed his goggles back onto his forehead and peeked around a corner to see a dim shaft of light and a trickle of water coming down into the sewer from above. He waved his men forward again. When they reached the light and water, Firke took a hand-held screen attached to a small cable and fed the cable up through the sewer grate. A picture flickered into life on the screen and he studied it for a few minutes before stepping past the grate and waving two of his men forward.

They pushed the grate up and turned it sideways to fit it down the hole with them. Carrying it back, the other three hunkered down a few meters away and watched as Firke carefully stuck his head above the hole and looked around.

His camera took in cobblestoned streets and a neighborhood that could have come right out of anywhere in nineteenth-century Europe. Sturdy, wattle-and-daub buildings that had probably been built sometime in the last century lined the street, their tiled roofs two stories above the street. At this hour, the entire place was deserted. The camera caught the glow of the wall lights above, but none was turned to look inside the perimeter.

“What are they doing, Doctor?” The scientist monitoring the recordings, a callow youth of twenty-five—a near genius when it came to breeding virus stock, but relatively untutored in much of the outside world, including this sort of operation—blinked in confusion.

“They’re taking stock of the situation, making sure there will be no surprises when they make their move on the water supply.”

“But there’s no one there now. They could be in and out in just a few minutes.”

“I am sure Mr. Firke knows exactly what he is doing. I suggest that you concentrate on your duties and leave him to concentrate on his.”

“Yes, sir.” The scientist bent over his monitors again, while Richter and the rest of the watching scientists also waited. Five minutes passed, then ten. The other lab-coated men and women fidgeted or grew distracted as the time stretched out. Only Richter did not move a muscle, waiting for the operation to truly commence.

Finally, Firke rose out of the pipe and signaled his men to take their positions. Two men fanned out, one going left, one going right to flank. Kepler and the fourth man waited until the first pair were both ready to cover, then they quietly replaced the drain grate. Pulling their silenced pistols, the two men moved into the village square, staying low.

Like most Armenian villages fortunate enough to have one, the water tank was mounted on top of a tall building that looked to be some kind of hotel. This would be the trickiest part of the op, getting to the tower without being detected. Richter had stressed the importance of planting the compound in the tank itself, not in any kind of well. He didn’t know what if any effects it might have on the groundwater table, and they weren’t ready for any sort of test on that scale—at least, not yet.

With the two flanking men covering the intersection, Firke and his partner headed down a narrow alley that would give them access to the roof where the water tower was located. At the end was an industrial garbage bin, with bags of garbage piled next to it. Taking a folding grappling hook from his harness, he set the rubber-coated tines, then twirled the rope and let it fly up onto the roof. It didn’t connect the first time and came tumbling back down, smacking the team member’s hand when he tried to catch it. The second time was the charm, and soon both men had climbed the rope and were on the roof.

They reached the water tower without incident. Kepler stood guard at the base while the other man climbed a strut hand-over-hand until he reached the top. This was the crucial point—the man would have to drill a small hole into the pipe to insert the compound. Kepler alternated his glances up with a slow scan around the perimeter walls, watching for any potential trouble.

It came in the form of a door creaking open down the street. Two people slipped out of a building at the far end of the village. A young man and woman, both giggling, snuck through the silent streets, holding hands as they flitted from shadow to shadow.

The four-man squad froze. Richter listened to the conversation between them.

“Leader, I have visual on both approaching targets. Permission to fire?”

“Negative, keep them covered, but let them approach. We’ll take them out only if necessary. Tank, hold your position.” Firke melted into the shadows on the roof, holding his pistol in front of him with both hands as he disappeared.

The couple came closer, and Richter saw that they were tourists, maybe two students hooking up on a trip across Europe. They both took shelter in a darkened doorway, the man tilting the woman’s head up for a long kiss, his hand stealing down to cup her breast. She moaned and pressed her body against him, her mouth opening to his. Ordinarily, Firke wouldn’t have cared about them, but they were now blocking the escape route, and their noises might eventually attract the wall guards, which could not happen.

“Three, take them.”

Lost in each other, they didn’t notice the urban-camouflaged man emerge from the shadows and slowly creep toward them. When he was a few steps away, he aimed his silenced pistol and fired two carefully placed shots, one into the head of each. The couple, still locked in each other’s arms, collapsed to the ground. The man strode over and put one more bullet into each unmoving form. “They’re down.”

“You and Four remove the bodies. Put them in the large garbage bin at the back of the alley. Longshot, keep your eyes open for others, and sing out the moment you see anyone. Tank, resume your mission.”

Richter watched as the woman’s body was picked up and slung over the man’s shoulder as he began walking down the alleyway. Over Firke’s microphone, the faint whine of a small cordless drill could be heard in the background. At the garbage bin, he dumped the limp form inside and waited for his partner to dump the other body. The two men covered both of them with bags of garbage before returning to their original positions.

Waiting for the cry of alarm that could come at any moment, Richter scarcely remembered to breathe while Tank finished his job, dumping the viscous, black liquid into the water tank, then sealing the hole with a bit of fast-drying putty. He affixed a small, wireless camera to the top of the tank, aiming it down so that the entire street could be seen, then descended just in time to rejoin Firke. The two men tied off their rope and climbed down, then retrieved the rope at the bottom by untying the slipknot and coiling it up. They picked up their flankers and were on the way back to the sewer grate at the spot where they had first come out of the jungle.