Dead Six

“Can you pick it?” I asked.

“Probably,” Tailor replied, lifting his night-vision goggles up onto his head. I covered him as he pulled out some bump keys and began to work on the door. It wasn’t the best lock ever designed, and thankfully the door wasn’t dead-bolted. It was open in a few seconds.

I turned off my NVGs and lifted them off my face. Giving my eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness, I nodded to Tailor. We readied our weapons, and Tailor quietly opened the door. It led into a large kitchen, but no one could be seen, and the lights were off. Tailor and I crept inside, silently closing the door behind us.

Music could be heard from the next room. It sounded like a radio or a television, and we could hear men talking in Arabic. We moved through the kitchen, and I risked a peek around the corner into the other room.

It was a living room. Against the far wall was a huge television. Four more men sat around it watching a porno flick. Cheesy music, grunting, and moaning resonated though the house. I looked back at Tailor and told him what was happening through hand signals. Three men were sitting on a couch, facing the television. Their backs were toward us. The fourth sat in a chair off to the side. He’d be able to see us if he looked away from the TV.

Through hand signals, Tailor told me what he wanted to do. Tailor crawled up right next to me, very slowly so as not to make noise, and stood up. We simultaneously leaned around the corner, bringing our weapons to bear. A short burst from Tailor’s Vector tore into the head of the man sitting in the chair. Tailor’s target slumped forward, his blood pouring down his neck.

At the same time, I put the reticule of my holographic sight on the back of the couch and held down the trigger. The .45 rounds ripped through the couch in puffs of fabric and stuffing. I swept from right to left, stitching bullets across them. The men gasped as bullets tore into them, but they were quickly silenced. Tailor switched targets and emptied the rest of his magazine into the three men as well.

It was over in seconds. They never knew what hit them. We both quickly changed magazines and moved into the living room, doing our best to cover all angles. The men on the couch had been thoroughly ventilated. A few stray rounds had gone into the far wall, but the television was still blaring pornography at an unpleasantly high volume. A cloud of smoke hung in the room, and the air smelled like burnt powder.

This is too easy, I thought, but I wasn’t about to get complacent. Complacency is what had gotten these assholes killed. We still hadn’t found Adar, and we knew from the surveillance that three more individuals were in the house.

“Control, Xbox,” Tailor whispered. “Main floor clear. Four more tangos down. Sweeping the building now.” I could barely hear Sarah’s voice. She was drowned in static. Tailor tried again, but he got the same result. Something in the area was interfering with our transmissions.

Tailor pointed up. He proceeded to an ornate staircase, weapon shouldered and at the ready. I followed, constantly swiveling my head around to make sure no one was coming up behind. The top of the stairs revealed a wide hallway, with a few doors on either side. Strange music resonated through the upper level, and it included people chanting in some language that wasn’t Arabic. At the end of the hall was a closed door that probably led to the master bedroom.

Tailor started down the hallway, and I followed. Most of the doors on either side were open, and we carefully checked each one before proceeding past. One was locked, so we kept going.

A toilet flushed. Tailor and I froze and swung our weapons toward the bathroom door just as it opened. The man inside was buttoning his shirt back up when he saw us. He had a pistol in a shoulder holster. His eyes grew wide, and he reached for it, but he wasn’t nearly fast enough. His white shirt splashed red as we both hit him with a two-round burst. He fell over backward, hitting the hardwood floor with a thud.

Tailor immediately swung his weapon toward the door at the end of the hall. I swung mine back toward the stairs. Back to back, we waited for a long moment. Nothing happened. The strange music was the only sound that could be heard. The upstairs of the house must have been sound-dampened or something. Sweat trickled down Tailor’s blackened face. He nodded at the door at the end of the hall and started toward it. All of the rooms in the upstairs hallway were now empty. If Adar was in the house, he was through that door.

The bizarre chanting music grew louder as we drew closer, but it was muffled enough that I still couldn’t tell what language it was. As we approached the end of the hall, I felt strange. Apprehension grew in me. My heart rate sped up. The Calm was wavering. Something was wrong.

I put a hand on Tailor’s shoulder. He stopped and looked a question back at me. My mouth opened, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. Looking irritated, Tailor just jerked his head at the door and reached for the handle. He signaled me to go right while he’d go straight. It’s hard to properly cover the angles in a room when there’re only two of you. We’d have to be quick. He hesitated for a long second, hand hovering over the handle, then grabbed it and slammed the door open. Together, we rushed into the room.

The bedroom was huge. Directly opposite the door was a large four-poster bed, with some kind of big painting hung above it. Against the far wall was a mirrored dresser, a desk, and what looked like a vanity.

Adar stood in the middle of the room. He was taller than I thought he’d be. He was also completely naked and splattered with blood. He clutched some kind of curved dagger in his hand.

In front of him, hanging from the ceiling, was a woman. Her hands were bound over her head. Her hair, matted and wet, hung down in her face. Blood dripped from her ravaged body onto plastic sheets spread across the floor. She’d been utterly mutilated. Adar had split her open like he was cleaning a game animal. Bloody lumps that appeared to be internal organs had been neatly arranged on the dresser. Behind them was an iPod and a set of speakers, the source of the strange music.

My stomach lurched. My mouth fell open. It felt like my balls were trying to crawl up into my stomach. It took me a moment to process what I was actually seeing. I could hear a strange buzzing in my ears over the bizarre rhythms of Adar’s music.

“Jesus Christ,” Tailor said, turning toward Adar. I don’t know why neither of us fired. The whole thing was surreal.

Adar, as if noticing our presence for the first time, turned toward us. His face was a mask. If he was surprised or afraid, he didn’t show it. My heart was racing now. My knees were weak, and I thought I was going to fall. I wanted to turn and run out of the room. Adar spoke to us then. He said something in Arabic that I didn’t understand. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth as he talked. I looked over at the dead girl again, then back at Adar. I felt numb. Adar smiled. I closed my eyes . . .

“Val!” Tailor yelled, startling me.

I blinked, realizing then that my revolver was in my hands. Confused, I slowly reholstered it.

“Nightcrawler, Nightcrawler, Control, what’s your status?” Sarah asked, the concern in her voice obvious. I tried to speak but couldn’t.

That’s when I saw Adar. He was lying on the floor, on his stomach, in a huge pool of blood. Some of it was his, some of it was the girl’s. A gory wound protruded from the center of his lower back. There was another exit wound on the back of his neck; hebeen nearly decapitated.

“Get it together, goddamn it!” Tailor yelled, grabbing my body armor and shaking me.

“I’m . . . what happened?” I asked. “I think I blacked out.”

“You fucked him up is what happened!” Tailor said, letting me go. He walked across the room, stepping over Adar’s corpse, and smashed the iPod. The horrid music silenced, Tailor keyed his microphone. “Control, Xbox, radio check.”

“Loud and clear, Xbox,” Sarah replied, relief obvious in her voice. “What’s your status?”

“The target’s dead,” Tailor said. “We’re fine. Stand by.” He looked up at me. “Why didn’t you just shoot him with your submachine gun?”

“I don’t know.” I didn’t remember shooting Adar. “Why didn’t you just shoot him?”

Tailor hesitated. “I don’t know, either,” he said. “Fuck it, it’s done. Let’s check for intel and get the hell out of here. This place is freaking me out.”

Nodding, I looked around Adar’s room. The mirror behind him had shattered, presumably from my bullets passing through him. The painting above the bed depicted a horrific monster, a mass of tentacles and teeth, devouring a girl. I looked back over at Adar’s victim. I felt dizzy, turned, and threw up on the floor.

“You alright, Val?” Tailor asked, calmer now.

“No,” I replied. “We can’t leave her like that!”