Black Mountain: An Alex Hunter Novel 4 Read online

  A small blush of a rash on the men’s cheeks, but they were fine – sane looking, normal. He turned to Lieutenant Marshal, a glow of gratification on his face. ‘Ready them for the next round of testing.’

  *

  Nes Tziyona, Israel – The IIBR, Israel Institute for Biological Research – Deep Core Biohazard Containment Facility II

  General Meir Shavit wrinkled his nose at the sight before him. Doctor Moeshe Weisz chuckled softly at the look on his face and turned back to the man on the bed. His body was coated head to foot in an oyster-coloured, jelly-like substance that had also stained the pillow and sheets he lay upon – it was a ghastly sight.

  ‘He’s physically intact, but lapsing in and out of consciousness,’ Weisz told the general. ‘Don’t be too concerned by the way he looks; his body’s still expelling the bacterial residue. Stinks like gasoline and old fish, doesn’t it? We also found this when we did a full body scan.’ He held up a test tube with a small flesh-coloured pellet inside. ‘It’s quite sophisticated miniaturised electronics – tracking device, I’d say.’

  Shavit’s eyes narrowed.

  Weisz nodded. ‘Seems someone wanted to keep an eye on him. We disabled it, of course.’

  Shavit turned his attention back to the man on the bed. ‘Turn it back on, and have it dropped out in the centre of the Negev.’

  Weisz had no intention of heading out into the Negev Desert himself. He opened his mouth to tell the general he needed to delegate the task to someone more appropriate, but the general’s cold stare spoke of authority and a ruthlessness beyond anything Weisz could summon. Weisz swallowed the words he’d been about to say and simply nodded.

  He cleared his throat and read from his clipboard. ‘This is the most interesting case I’ve ever worked on. The microorganism that infected him has a pathogenesis like nothing I’ve ever seen in my life.’ He motioned towards the form on the bed. ‘This man should be dead a hundred times over, but his extraordinary physiology and the compounds he was being treated with have made him a unique specimen – a unique and valuable specimen.’

  Shavit lit a cigarette and blew smoke into the air, making Weisz wince at the breach of the laboratory’s sterile conditions. ‘Will he live?’

  Weisz paused for a few seconds to consider the question. ‘Yes.’

  Shavit grunted. ‘Good. Send me the file.’

  *

  General Shavit sat alone in his office. He drew deeply on his cigarette, let the smoke escape through tight lips and tried hard to stifle the wet cough that squeezed up from lungs congested from decades of smoking. He lifted the folder on his desk and smiled grimly at the Hebrew characters on the cover: Project Golem – his little joke, or perhaps his wish. All Jews knew the legend of the golem – an ancient mythological figure moulded from the clay of the Vltava River by the holiest of rabbis, Judah Loew ben Bezalel. The powerful man-like creature had defended the Jews in their time of need. Unfortunately, the story didn’t have a happy ending – the creature that had at first been their saviour had become increasingly violent, until the rabbi returned it to an inert state.

  A golem berserker – maybe that is what we now have in our possession, Shavit thought, and his laugh deteriorated into a wheezy cough.

  He opened the folder to the report’s latest pages and read silently for a few seconds, his brows knitted. Every report produced by the scientific team charged with investigating the American Special Forces soldier both astonished and frustrated him. Every time they learned a little more about Alex Hunter, known as the Arcadian subject, it turned out that they actually understood less.

  Colonel Jack Hammerson, commander of the secretive HAWCs division within the US Special Forces, had worked with Mossad, Israel’s intelligence and covert operations organisation, to get Hunter out of the country before his own medical teams could claim the soldier’s near lifeless body for experimentation and dissection. Hammerson had taken a huge gamble by handing Hunter over to a foreign power – both in terms of the man’s life and his own career. Hammerson’s own agency believed the Arcadian subject was now nothing more than powdered ash in the bottom of one of their powerful military furnaces.

  Yes, Hammerson had gambled, but so had Shavit. He had authorised his niece, a Mossad operative, to retrieve the man, even though his body was riddled with a disease that everyone thought would turn it to mush, and which could have devastated Shavit’s entire country. But Shavit knew he had no choice: the possible rewards were too great to ignore. Hunter had been brought to the Israeli military’s secure laboratory beneath the Negev Desert, where Weisz’s team had succeeded not only in eradicating the lethal microorganism but also in reviving the man.

  Shavit felt he had won that round, but knew he was still in a race – to unlock the Arcadian’s secrets before the man self-destructed. And it was one he fully intended to win; the future of Israel depended on it. The Americans would eventually succeed in reproducing their experimental soldier, but although they were magnificent at creating outstanding advancements, they were terrible at hanging on to them. Within a few years, the Russians and Chinese would have stolen everything they needed to create their own Arcadian soldiers, and then their proxies across the Middle East would soon follow.

  The general flipped to the report’s next page and started reading the section headed ‘Cellular Repair and Revivification’. Analysis of Captain Alex Hunter’s DNA showed that the ends of his chromosomes, his telomeres, had stopped fraying. A side note from Weisz explained the significance of this to the layman: a telomere was a biological capstone, like the plastic tip on a shoelace, and its role was to stop the chromosome deteriorating, or fraying. Most cells had an ability to divide about fifty times before they started to deteriorate and shorten, and therefore begin aging. Scientists could read the length of a cell’s telomeres and provide an accurate picture of the cell’s age and how many more times it would replicate. But Alex Hunter’s DNA strands had ceased fraying – in fact, the telomere tips were almost totally intact. Weisz hypothesised that this could be why the man had such enormous potential for rapid cellular repair. It also meant that Alex Hunter might stop aging; or, at the other extreme, his entire system could turn malignant, as the only other cells known to have no finite chronological barrier were cancer cells. Like most of the analysis in these reports, it ended with a brief notation stating that more time and work was needed.

  Shavit shook his head. ‘Always more work needed. Never anything we can use now.’

  He lit another cigarette, and screwed an eye shut as the smoke curled up one side of his face. He turned to the section on neuro-architectural analysis, skipping paragraphs of dense jargon and stopping when he came to several topographical images of Alex Hunter’s brain side by side with a normal brain. The normal brain looked like an average-sized pink and grey cauliflower with its folds, bulges and coils. By comparison, Hunter’s brain had hundreds more folds. The known sulcus folds were labelled, but other arrows indicated numerous newly identified folds. As with the cellular repair data, however, the notations below the images stated Uses Unknown time and time again. Shavit swore.

  ‘Useless,’ he said to the empty room.

  He frowned as he noticed a paragraph at the bottom of the page stating that the latest neuro-mapping had found no trace of the metallic object that had been embedded deep in Hunter’s cortical mass when he came to them. This was puzzling, as all reports on the Arcadian subject had clearly shown that the bullet lodged deep within his cerebellum had been the initial genesis of his condition. How could it suddenly be gone?

  Shavit had read of cases where sharp objects had worked their way through people’s bodies. There was an old woman in Tel Aviv in 1985 who’d fallen on one of her knitting needles; the tip had broken off in her heart. At the time, surgery was determined to be too high risk an option and so they’d kept the woman in hospital for a number of weeks. While there, she had developed a cough – a cough that had eventually brought up the broken tip of the knitting needl
e.

  Maybe, he thought.

  He read on. More notes and diagrams and arrows . . . strangely, there was something still remaining in Hunter’s brain, or perhaps something totally new – a whitish trauma zone with a solid central mass that showed up in the CAT and MRI scans and X-rays. At first, the scientists had thought it was a blood clot, but then found indications that it had a dense biological core. Further scanning had suggested that there was some form of electrical activity taking place within what the report now described as a synaptic bundle – it was as though the small mass was firing off its own electrical impulses.

  Shavit raised his eyebrows and glanced at the section on further data collection options. Neurosurgical needle biopsy . . . hmm – he took another deep drag on his cigarette – maybe, but not yet. His niece would not react well if the man she had risked everything to retrieve was sent back to her with holes drilled into his skull. Weisz might end up needing surgery of his own. Shavit laughed dryly, and flipped to the last page to review the progress of the recent test subjects. He sighed and scratched his forehead. As with the previous week, the week before that and every week since Hunter’s recovery, they had been trying to replicate the process that had led to his condition. But every time they had failed.

  Shavit ground out his cigarette in disgust as he read through the new list of names, treatment variations and the familiar, dismal results: Patient Comatose; Patient Psychologically Disordered; Patient Emergency Termination. He would love to know how the Americans were approaching the problems his team kept encountering. After several months, they still had nothing.

  He sat back and placed one gnarled hand behind his head, staring at the ceiling. Almost nothing. They still had control of the original Arcadian. Alex Hunter himself was the key: locked away in his memory – if it were still intact – were the events that had led to his superior physical and mental condition. If the information could be extracted . . . or, better yet, if he could be encouraged to tell them . . . Perhaps the man needed something to jog his memory, such as being with something he remembered or someone he trusted. A friend.

  General Shavit lit another cigarette, then lifted his pen and made some notes. When his niece finished her current mission, he’d organise for her to pay Captain Alex Hunter a visit. Maybe even spend some prolonged time with him.

  As he signed the order, a sound came from deep in his chest that could have been the beginning of a cough or a rumbling laugh. He liked to gamble, and he liked to win.

  FIVE

  Beirut, Lebanon

  The woman walked slowly with the stiff-ankled rocking motion of the old and arthritic. Her traditional black abaya attracted the heat and must have made the ninety-degree early summer temperature significantly warmer. To anyone watching her pass, she appeared to be a devout Muslim, also wearing a niqab, or face veil, and black gloves. Around her neck, reading glasses with thick black frames hung from a short length of string and banged against her ample bosom as she walked.

  She paused and looked back down the steep, cobbled street. Beirut was a mix of ancient and modern, home now to major industry and corporations and even considered as a candidate for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games. A smart black AMG Mercedes shot past, no doubt headed for one of the fine restaurants on the waterfront that did a roaring trade with the tanned and well-heeled locals. The woman inhaled deeply; the city’s leafy avenues, rich with the smell of coffee and cinnamon, made it seem a world away from the troubles of the south. Beirut reflected all the magnificence of modern Lebanon, with Christians, Druze, Shias, Sunnis and many more seeming to live together in cultural and political harmony. The modern mixed with the ancient, the religious with the carefree; in Beirut it seemed the Middle East was one of the happiest places on earth.

  The woman walked on, towards Gemmayze Street in the Ashrafieh district. The streets narrowed to thin, winding lanes here and it was easier to get lost. She checked her bearings, and hoisted her string bag a little higher; the loaves of fresh bread, cheese and onions would be a welcome breakfast for the men. She paused to rest on an old wooden chair in the shade of a young olive tree. Beirut was a small pool of calm water in a turbulent sea; unlike the south, where the poor begged in the streets, resentment fomented, vengeance was plotted and hatred often boiled over into bloody violence. The south had been the frontline for the Israel–Lebanon conflict for many years. It was where Hezar-Jihadi ruled – the Party of a Thousand Martyrs, they called themselves. They were political, religious and paramilitary; their leaders called for the destruction of Israel, war with the West and a true Islamic state in Lebanon. Violence was their first negotiating tool of choice.

  The woman lifted the glasses from her chest and placed them on her face, then sat as immobile as the street’s surrounding bricks and mortar as she watched a young man walk quickly up the street towards a solid wooden door recessed into an old-fashioned apartment block. He looked around furtively, then knocked three times.

  The woman waited for another minute after he’d disappeared inside, then she got to her feet and hobbled towards the same door.

  *

  Abu ibn Jbeil opened the door a crack and peered out. He looked the old woman up and down. She lifted her bag a little higher and groaned softly under its weight. The eyes behind the thick glasses were like blurred pools of oil – unreadable. She moaned again, her arm shaking from the weight of the bag.

  Abu ibn Jbeil could not care less about her suffering, but she was expected and her food would be welcome. He opened the door a little wider, but as she entered he stopped her with his hand and roughly felt her sides, back and front, searching for guns, knives or explosives. She coughed wetly, and he held his breath, hurrying through his examination. How he detested being so close to the old hag, touching her body. It was probably a waste of time, but it was best to take no chances considering how close they were to their goal.

  Finished, he stood back and waved her impatiently towards the kitchen, resisting the strong urge to kick her large behind as she hobbled past him.

  *

  The woman shuffled slowly towards the five men sitting around the table in the darkened room. All had stopped talking at her arrival, and now sat smoking their thick, pungent shisha tobacco and sipping syrupy-sweet coffee. Though her limbs were slow, her eyes darted from one man to another. She recognised Hezar-Jihadi faces and also some senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Unfurled on the table, the corners held in place by a bottle of whisky and several ashtrays, were the schematics for the new Iranian missile, the Shihab-2, the Meteor.

  She stopped at the table and turned to the black-eyed young man who had let her in. ‘May I use the washroom, edame?’

  The young man looked to one of the older men at the table, who shook his head without even looking up. ‘No,’ the young man said. ‘Leave the bag and go, halla, halla.’

  She nodded her understanding and turned towards the kitchen. On the way, she pulled off her gloves and pushed them into a fold of her robe. If the men had been watching, they would have been surprised to see such strong and youthful hands on one so bent and infirm. She lifted the string bag onto the kitchen bench and in the same motion drew up the front of her long abaya. Strapped high between her smooth, muscular thighs was a squat black pistol. She pulled it free of the tape and secreted it in one of her long, loose sleeves. She whispered one word: ‘Installed.’

  From one arm of her glasses, came the reply: ‘Proceed.’

  She drew in a deep breath and turned to hobble back out to the men.

  The young man who’d let her in was looking at her with ill-concealed disgust and contempt. He felt in his pocket, pulled out some crumpled Lebanese pounds, rolled them into a small ball and dropped it at his feet. The woman slowly bent to retrieve it; however, when she came back up it was not the wrinkled money she had in her hand but an unwavering black Barak pistol. There were no words needed – the gun barked once in the young man’s face, and before his body had even begun to fall she turned and fired at
the men at the table.

  Two went down with precision headshots; the third was taken high in the sternum, throwing a plume of blood and shattered spinal column over the wall behind him. Of the remaining two, one took up a vantage point behind some furniture and the other launched himself at her across the table. Perhaps his mind was fooling him into believing it was an old woman under the dark robes and she would easily buckle under his 200-pound frame. Maybe he realised his error when he was in the air, but by then it was too late.

  The woman took up a combat stance and, with perfect balance, launched a flat-soled kick to his face. Even though the man easily outweighed her by over fifty pounds, the muscles in her thighs uncoiled with enough force to smash his nasal septum up into his brain. He was dead before his large body had hit the ground. She dropped and rolled to the left, slamming her back to the wall. She needed to reacquire the final target.

  A voice sounded in the quiet from amongst the toppled furniture. ‘Bat-Tzion, you have stopped nothing. There are hundreds like us, and we will eventually bulldoze your bodies into the sea.’

  The woman remained silent at the threat. Seconds passed as she quickly looked around the room, now heavy with the smell of cordite and coppery blood.

  ‘Bat-Tzion, if you let me leave, I will give you Nazranasha. I know you have been searching for him. He is here, you know, right now, in Beirut.’

  Nazranasha was the leader of Hezar-Jihadi and the mastermind behind every assassination, bombing and cross-border raid for a decade. He was the first prize for every Israeli soldier and agent.

  Tempting, but not for today, the woman thought. She began to slide forward in the shadowy room, towards where the voice was coming from.

  ‘Israeli, I surrender to you. Here . . .’ A new Glock handgun clattered on the floor in the centre of the room.