Dark Rising

EIGHT

Alex felt good today; a slight headache behind his eyes, but that was normal following one of his visits to the medical unit. He was looking forward to being back out in the field – he found it difficult to sleep well unless his body was being subjected to the physical demands and stress of a dangerous and complex mission. To compensate he had been spending half his days either in the gymnasium or on the track carrying hundred-pound weight discs in a backpack. Without the energy burn, his mind wouldn’t shut down properly and nighttimes were the worst. He was slowly learning to control his body while he was awake, but at night, in the dark, he couldn’t govern which doors in his mind were opened or the emotions that were unleashed. Night-time was the danger time, when he sometimes destroyed his room in his sleep.

It was the night rages that had finished off his relationship with Aimee, sending her fleeing from their room in fear for her safety; that and his dangerous assignments all around the world. Alex and Aimee had travelled to the depths of the Antarctic together, seen wonders hidden for a thousand millennia, lost friends, colleagues and good soldiers, and barely survived being pursued by an ancient monster beneath the ice. Afterwards, they had tried real hard to make it work, but in the end Aimee had left him.

Alex remembered all too well the night, a year or so ago, when he and Aimee had gone for a pre-dinner drink at a little bar in Milwaukee. A football team on a stag night had been in the bar too, and when Alex returned from the restroom he had seen Aimee slap the face of one large brute as he tried to squeeze her breast. Fifteen minutes later, Aimee had called Major Hammerson requesting urgent assistance – for the footballers. A lot of big men had got badly hurt that night, some permanently. It had cost the military a lot in hush money, and the guilt still hung over Alex’s head like a dark thundercloud.

The problem was that Alex had enjoyed the destruction – once he started, he couldn’t stop. He’d wanted to hurt those guys; more, he’d wanted to kill them. And the release had felt good.

He still thought of Aimee, her dark hair and fair skin, the quick temper that made her blue eyes go hard as ice chips, then soften and darken to a deep ocean blue when she kissed him. He wondered whether she was fully recovered from the Antarctic expedition and her own nightmares. He also wondered whether she still thought about him, whether she was really over their time together. He didn’t blame her for leaving. It was the best thing she could have done for both of them. He couldn’t contemplate what he would have inflicted on himself if he had ever hurt her.

He remembered her face after the fight in the bar – the look of horror and disbelief on those beautiful features. She was terrified – not of the men who had assaulted her, but of him. ‘Jack Hammerson’s Frankenstein monster’ she had called him in a moment of anguish and confusion. She had tried to laugh about it later, but from then on, deep in her eyes, he’d seen tension and wariness.

She was right: he was a monster. A monster created by an accident on a battlefield on the other side of the planet. She had begged him to seek medical opinions from specialists outside of the military, but he couldn’t even do that for her. Hammerson had said no. Aimee had exploded when Alex tried to explain. She didn’t believe his reasons and wouldn’t listen to him after that.

Alex trusted Jack Hammerson; the major had looked out for him, always got him home safe, and Alex owed him his life a hundred times over. He would die for the Hammer, and he would also kill for him. He just wished he hadn’t had to lose Aimee.

Alex walked slowly towards the small group of men Hammerson had put together for this mission. The HAWC recruitment pool was drawn from the ranks of the Green Berets, the Navy SEALS, Special Forces Alpha, and Hammerson’s old stomping ground, the Rangers. Hammerson’s job was to select the best of the best – soldiers with outstanding skills in various forms of physical or technological combat techniques. Each man or woman in this unit was a controlled killer; a force of nature unleashed by the Hammer as and when necessary. Now it was Alex’s job to test them for final preparation and mission readiness.

Alex looked analytically at each of the four men. Two he’d worked with before and two were ‘potentials’. The new men both looked to be in their thirties – battle-hardened professionals. Alex needed to get inside their heads – give them some scenarios and ask how they would resolve them; talk to them about their successes and how they’d achieved that success; about their failures and what would they do differently next time.

Alex enjoyed testing the recruits. They nearly all believed they were made of iron, world-beaters, and in their own units they probably were. But in the HAWCs they were among peers; they joined a small team of men and women as good as or better than they were. Sometimes it took a little while for them to adjust, sometimes they needed a ‘push’, and the part Alex liked best was when someone pushed back.

He looked at the four faces watching him; all had an even expression except for a mean-looking guy with red hair who was barely concealing his irritation. My money’s on you for the push-back, Alex thought.

He acknowledged the two men he knew first; each nodded once in return – Second Lieutenant Hex Winter and First Lieutenant Samuel Reid. Both had been HAWCs for a while now. Hex Winter, at just thirty, was the youngest HAWC Alex had vetted and had also come from Alpha. Hex stood about six feet four inches and only weighed in at around 190 pounds – he looked a bit like a scarecrow with a coat hanger stuck down the back of his shirt. His nose had been broken several times, his hair was white-blond, and his eyes were the pale grey of a North Atlantic storm swell – the name ‘Winter’ was appropriate indeed. When Alex had first met Hex, the thing that caught his eye was the multiple knives the lieutenant carried on one hip – unusual in an age of guns. Alex had been able to identify the standard US long-bladed Ka-Bar – his own pick due to the blade’s low chromium steel mixture, which kept a razor edge in combat. In the field you could dry shave with it. Or open a man’s throat from ear to ear before he even knew he’d been touched. But the other two were less familiar. One was a German Kampfmesser 2000, the standard knife of the elite Bundeswehr and the strike forces of the German Army. It was a beautiful weapon, a laser-cut seven-inch stainless steel alloy tanto blade with a distinctive forty-five-degree chisel-shaped end – balanced and deadly. The third was a new version Kampfmesser, the KM3000, with a spear-point blade instead of the 2000’s tanto point – not as tough, but better balance and weight for throwing.

Alex had asked for a demonstration of it in action, pointing to a crossing of beams in the waist-high fence running around the edge of the oval, more than fifty feet from where they stood. Without hesitation, Hex Winter had spun the knife in a back-handed motion at the fence. Alex’s enhanced vision had seen that the knife was going to find its mark, dead centre, before the blade had even travelled half its distance.

The young man came with a few other ‘tools of the trade’ as well, including an upgraded M24 long-gun variant sniper rifle with his own modifications – longer receiver, detachable sight on a raised rail with maximum sound suppression. It also took a more powerful. 338 Lapua magnum cartridge – accurate to 5000 feet with enormous penetration power. A beautiful and deadly precision weapon. When Alex had asked Hex about his accuracy, he’d replied that he could split Alex’s thumb at a mile. After the knife demonstration, Alex had believed him.

First Lieutenant Sam Reid, older than the others by a few years, was an electronics expert who exuded confidence and was as laidback as they came. Hammerson had personally selected Reid for HAWC training – he was a Ranger, 75th Regiment. Sam – ‘Uncle’ to his friends – was the best man on the planet for military strategy and red zone logistics, and had an IQ of 160 that put him into Mensa territory – brains as well as brawn. After Alex’s accident, his problem-solving abilities and mental acuity had become vastly superior to most men, but First Lieutenant Sam Reid was in a league of his own.

Then Alex turned to the two new men. ‘I’m Captain Alex Hunter,’ he told them, and asked for their rank and military history.

The man on the left of the line stepped forward first. He was the shortest of the group, standing at around five feet seven inches in his boots, but what he lacked in height he more than made up for in breadth – he had a barrel chest and arms like a bear. Alex also noticed his hands were extraordinarily rough and callused.

‘Second Lieutenant Rocky Lagudi,’ the man said, and saluted.

Alex grabbed the man’s hand, turned it over and looked at it. Deadly, he thought. ‘Black belt?’ he asked.

‘Yes, sir. Shotokan Karate 8th dan Master. Also Zen Doh Kai, 7th dan.’

All Special Forces personnel were proficient in lethal and non-lethal hand-to-hand combat methods, but Zen Doh Kai was a martial art that used deadly hard-edge striking. Alex had witnessed some full-contact bouts and it had been like watching bare-knuckle cage fighting for masochists.

Lieutenant Lagudi tried to turn his hand back over, but Alex held it – a subtle but effective test of will and strength. Rocky tried again, exerting all his strength this time, but his hand might as well have been trapped in a steel vice for all the give he got from Alex’s single-handed grip. Alex could easily have pulverised the stocky lieutenant’s fingers and all his metacarpal bones, but released instead. Okay, he thought, perhaps you’ll be the one today.

‘Carry on, Lieutenant,’ he said, and listened to Lagudi’s overview of the various combat assignments he’d taken part in and his background in the Green Berets. Seemed Lagudi was the battering ram, the first man over the top. Good, thought Alex, a brave heart in that huge chest. I can use him.

Second Lieutenant Francis O’Riordan looked as Irish as they came, with his close-cropped startlingly orange hair and his pale skin. When he opened his mouth though, his accent was pure Bronx, every statement ending with a stab that made it sound like a question or a challenge. ‘Irish’ O’Riordan was from Special Forces Alpha, specialised in chemical engineering, and was proficient in explosive device construction, placement and disposal. The rumour was he could create a bomb from the contents of the average refrigerator.

Alex had read the man’s report. His previous Alpha team had been the best squad going – until they got blown to pieces. Irish had come home on a stretcher; the rest of his unit were spread over a hundred feet of steaming jungle. In the debrief, Irish had stated that Captain Dianne Chambers had ignored advice from her team and run them into hell – a claymore web: one way in, no way out. Follow-up psych sessions detailed a simmering anger against female authority, but also said O’Riordan was fit for duty. To date, he had continued to excel. Alex could see a mote of hostility in the man’s eyes now. Anger is okay; controlling it is the key, he thought. Time for a little push.

‘Where do you call home, Lieutenant O’Riordan? Riverdale, Throggs Neck?’ he asked.

Alex knew a little about the Bronx as he had spent some time at Fort Hamilton in New York. Though the Bronx was one of the most populous areas in the United States, and some of those areas were the toughest in the country, parts of it were fast becoming gentrified and Riverdale and Throggs Neck were two suburbs that were now more movie star than ‘gangsta’ turf. Alex heard a slight snigger from the other men at the question.

O’Riordan’s eyes slid to Alex and narrowed for a second before he went back to staring straight ahead. ‘Nah, sir. Born and raised in South Bronx just down from Fordham. Born and bred there, but it ain’t my home now; ain’t never goin’ back.’

It was a tough area – primarily Hispanic, African-American and Italian. A kid with red hair would stand out like crap on a snow cake – Irish would have had to do a lot of fighting growing up.

Alex stared directly into the man’s face as he said, ‘Put too much cream in your coffee, did they? Had some bad sushi at your last poetry reading, Lieutenant?’

O’Riordan’s jaw muscles worked and his eyes burned as they stared into Alex’s face. Alex could tell that it was only his army discipline keeping him in check. After a few more seconds he straightened. ‘Nothin’ to go back to. Some asshole bein’ transported to Rikers broke outta custody and tried to drag my dad outta his car at a stop light. Well, my dad, he was one of the last of the red Irish rhinos, he wouldn’t give in for nothin’. Even though that car was a pile of crap, he weren’t givin’ it up to some asshole car thief. Got a face full of lead for his trouble, and Ma took two in the gut. Nothin’ there for me anymore; army’s home now… sir.’

Alex looked hard into the man’s face for a few seconds more, nodded once and turned away. Hmm, a lot of anger there that’s going to need to be channelled, he thought. He’d read O’Riordan’s psych report again just to ensure this guy wasn’t going to explode under pressure. Still, he figured they were good to go for the induction. There was just one more thing.

‘All right, you new soldiers, this is the Hot-zone All-Forces Warfare Commandos and we are the best on this planet. The pay’s no better, there are no fast cars, no cheer squads – in fact, as far as Mr Joe Citizen is concerned, we don’t even exist. Our casualty rate is higher than any other Special Forces unit in the United States, and if you’re ever captured – well, like I said, we don’t exist. But what I can guarantee you is access to the best weaponry, intelligence and training the army has to offer. And if you like a challenge – well, you’ll find yourself being challenged like at no other time in your life. As a HAWC, you don’t just save lives, you save countries.’

Alex paused and looked at the two new men. Rocky Lagudi’s face was serious, but Irish O’Riordan seemed to be barely holding a smirk in check.

Alex spoke directly to the redheaded man. ‘This is your opportunity to speak your mind – to ask me questions, ask your fellow HAWCs questions. There may not be a better time, or any other time. Things happen fast in this outfit.’

He waited for a few seconds, and when both men maintained their silence he continued. ‘Most of the year you’ll be in training. You will learn new skills, use new weapons and technologies, and you will be tested time and time again in drill missions across various terrains and hostile environments. Just because you’re in the HAWCs doesn’t mean you have a right to stay in the HAWCs.’

Alex saw Sam Reid give a half-smile. He and Hex had been through the tests and knew what they entailed.

‘And then there are the live operations,’ Alex went on. ‘Arduous, dangerous projects that no one else wants and no one else could succeed at. Projects that are given to us because we are the deadliest, most feared unit on the entire planet.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Gentlemen, listen up. We are about to take on just such a project.’