Through bared teeth she hissed gutturally, spittle dribbling down her chin. All the while she kept her fingers wrapped around her beaded necklace - an object from her native land. Was this how she communicated with the other realm? Enliatu wondered. Regardless, he was certain that she was cursing him, summoning her demon spirits to destroy him.
The time had come.
He signalled to the warriors. They forced her to the ground, face up, and restrained her splayed limbs. The largest warrior came forward, tightly gripping the haft of a formidable axe, its bronze blade glinting orange in the firelight. He crouched beside her, grabbed a fistful of hair at the crown, and yanked her head back to expose the smooth flesh of the neck. A momentary assessment just before he raised the axe high, then brought it down in a precise arc aimed directly above the collar.
The blade split the soft skin and muscle to bring forth a rush of blood that seemed to glow in the firelight. A second fierce chop sank deeper into the gaping muscle to separate vertebrae - the vile blood splashing up, painting the warrior’s face and chest. He delivered two more blows, until the head was cleanly separated.
Grunting with satisfaction, the warrior tossed the axe aside and grabbed the severed head by its soft locks. But his smile vanished when he looked into the glowering eyes that still seemed alive. Even the soft lips remained frozen in a taunting grimace.
Enliatu went to the fire pit. ‘
Extending the ghastly head away from his body, the warrior dropped it into the boiling resin. Enliatu watched it sink lazily into the opaque sap amidst a swirl of blood - its dead eyes still glaring defiantly, as if to promise that the stranger’s curse had only just begun.
1
NORTHEAST IRAQ
PRESENT DAY
‘I’m empty!’ Jam called over to his unit commander who was four metres away, crouched behind a massive limestone boulder.
Keeping his right eye pressed to the rifle scope, Sergeant Jason Yaeger reached into his goatskin rucksack, pulled out a fresh magazine, and smoothly tossed it to Jam. Hot metal intermingled with the discharge gases blowing downwind from the muzzle vent on Jam’s rifle. ‘Slow it down or you’re going to lock it up!’ Precisely the reason Jam had earned his nickname, he thought.
Jam ejected the spent clip, snapped in the new one.
The unit’s mishmash of Russian weapons, scrounged from a wandering Afghani arms dealer, gave each man’s rifle a unique report that helped Jason to roughly keep a count on expended rounds. Jam was heavy on the trigger of his Cold-War-era AK-74 - more pull than squeeze. The others in the unit were far more judicious with their shots.
Though the ten remaining Arab militants had superior numbers and a high-ground advantage, the art of the kill was heavily weighted in favour of Jason’s seasoned team. The dwindling ammo supply, however, couldn’t have come at a worse time. If the bad guys were to call for backup, Jason’s unit could be attacked from the rear in the open flatlands leading to the foothills. Worse yet, the enemy might slip through the nearby crevasse and head deeper into the Zagros Mountains - a rebel’s paradise filled with caves and labyrinthine, rugged passes.
Over the border and into Iran.
He whistled to Jam, made a sweeping hand motion that sent him scrambling up the hill and to the right. He fought the urge to scratch at the prickly heat beneath his scruffy beard, which, along with contact lenses that transformed his hazel eyes to muddy brown, a deep tan that could be the envy of George Hamilton, an unflattering galabiya robe, vest, and loose-fit pants combo, a keffiyeh headwrap with agal rope circlet, and sandals - had respectably passed him off as a Bedouin nomad. The other unit members had donned similar dress.
It took less than a two-count before a red-and-white chequered keffiyeh popped up over the rock pile, a Kalashnikov semi-automatic sweeping into view an instant later. Sliding his index finger off the trigger guard while matching crosshairs to chequers, Jason squeezed off three successive shots that would’ve left a perfect dime grouping on a bullseye. Through the scope he saw a pink mist and red blobs spit out behind the headscarf.
He adjusted the remaining target tally downward: nine.
Ducking from sight, he grabbed his rucksack and scrambled away just as a pomegranate-shaped grenade arced over the boulder, landed in the sand and popped. A ten-metre uphill dash brought him to a rocky hillock covered in scrubby brush. More automatic gunfire burst in his direction as he dived for cover.
While the militants screamed back and forth to one another in Arabic - not Kurdish? - Jason brought out his Vectronix binoculars and scanned the two enemy positions. The device’s laser automatically calculated GPS coordinates while recording live images on to its micro-sized hard drive.
Dipping beneath the hillock, he flipped open a laminated field map to verify the correct kill box on the grid. From his vest pocket he fished a sat-com that looked nearly identical to a civilian cell phone. He placed a call to the airbase at Camp Eagle’s Nest, north of Kirkuk. A barely perceptible delay followed by a tiny digital chirp confirmed that the transmission was being securely encrypted, just before the command operator responded with the first authentication question: ‘Word of the day?’
He pressed the transmitter button. ‘Cadillac.’
Chirp. Delay.
‘Colour?’
Chirp. Delay.
‘Magenta.’
Chirp. Delay.
‘Number?’
Chirp. Delay.
‘One-fifty-two.’
Pause. Chirp.
‘How can I help, Google?’
Even under fire, Jason had to smile. He’d earned his new nickname a few months ago, after joining the boys at the air-base for a drink-while-you-think version of Trivial Pursuit. Jason had circled the game board and filled his pie wheel without ever cracking open a beer. The other players weren’t as fortunate, but maybe that was their intention. Obtuse facts - ‘things no self-respecting 29-year-old should know’ - were Jason’s forte. What he wouldn’t do to have that beer right now …
‘We’re low on ammo. Copy,’ Jason reported loudly over the persistent rat-a-tat-tat-tat in the background. ‘Nine militants pinned down. Some light artillery. Need a gunship ASAP.’ He provided the operator with the kill box and INS coordinates. ‘Have the pilot call me on approach.’
‘Roger. I’ll have Candyman there in four minutes.’
Noting the time on his no-frills wristwatch, he slid the sat-com back into his vest and mopped the sweat from his eyes with his sleeve.
He needed to make sure that the others weren’t too close to the intended strike zones.
First he glanced over to Jam, who was now a good fifteen metres further up the slope, curled up in a gulch, cursing at his weapon’s stuck slide bolt. Vulnerable, but he was adequately covered.
Along the roadway at the hill’s base, Camel was still dug in behind a felled, bullet-riddled Arabian one- humper. For the past few months, former marine sniper Tyler Hathcock had shared a strange - at times, disturbing - bond with the beast, which, coupled with his preferred cigarette brand, helped to inspire his nickname. Earlier, Camel had used the beast as a decoy by riding it bareback down the narrow roadway to block the approaching enemy convoy. When the ambush began, he’d been trapped in the open. So he’d dismounted, shot his humped buddy through the ear and used it as a surprisingly effective shield.
Crazy bastard.
Not far from Camel’s position, he spotted Dennis Coombs - dubbed ‘Meat’ for his imposing stature that was pure Oklahoma farm boy muscle - still pinned down behind the severely strafed Toyota pickup that had been the convoy’s lead vehicle. In the driver’s seat was the slumped body of an Arab male, back of the head blown open,
