Hammer of God

CHAPTER 6

Yuval Goldmeir, a satellite technician, watched the OPsat satellite’s data feed of his section of the Golan Heights. It was a strategic piece of land, captured during the Six-Day War, and over three thousand square miles of basaltic plateau bordered by the Yarmouk River in the south, the Sea of Galilee in the west, Mount Hermon in the north, and the Raqqad Wadi in the east. He and many others each monitored multiple grids of the vast area, night and day.

Today Yuval Goldmeir’s area of interest was the town of Nawa, close to Syria. He leaned forward, frowning. The analytics built into the geo-security systems had picked something up, and alarms had demanded his attention.

He drilled down to a view position a few miles above ground. There seemed to be a single figure walking alone in the desert, about three miles southwest of Nawa. After rewinding the feed, he could see that the person had skirted the city, but had effectively walked across the landscape.

Goldmeir leaned back in his chair, half turning. “Yev… oy, Yev, what do you make of this?”

Yev Cohen, his closest technician colleague, swung around and craned to see his screen. He shrugged. “Miles away, and only a single person. Forget it.”

“We’re supposed to call in anything strange… and risk analytics has flagged it as a level-one threat.” He circled the figure and then typed some queries into his system. His eyes narrowed. “In seventy-four minutes, this person will walk into the Golan.”

“Then border patrol will pick him up.” Cohen turned back to his own screen.

Goldmeir continued to watch for a few more seconds before commanding the image magnification to drill down even further. The huge weight on the figure’s back now became apparent. The technician’s brows were furrowed as he hurriedly entered more commands, asking it to search for a high energy particle trace. His eyes went wide as a second warning began to flash on detection confirmation.

“A Traveler. I think it’s a Traveler… and radiation is off the scale.” He spun from his desk, his mind spinning. “What do we…?”

Beside him, Yev Cohen snatched up a phone.

The IAF F-15E Strike Eagle came in at just under Mach-1. Its radar saw the target long before the pilot would obtain a visual.

“Target acquired; deploying Vulcan.”

The bottom of the Strike Eagle opened and a multi barrelled weapon lowered. The weapon chosen was the M61 Vulcan, a pneumatically driven, six-barrel, air-cooled, electrically fired Gatling-style rotary cannon, which fired 20mm rounds at a rate of approximately 6,000 per minute. The laser-sighted and the computer-directed gun locked onto the lone figure.

“Clear to fire, Fox-1,” came the mechanical voice directly into the pilot’s headset.

“Firing.” The pilot let loose a short burst of fifty high penetration M56 rounds.

“Good strikes, command. Coming around.” The pilot banked, taking multiple pictures and preparing to head on home.

“That’s a negative on kill shot, Fox-1. We still have movement.” The mechanical voice had a touch of urgency this time.

The pilot looked back at his targeting screen. “Impossible on a miss, command. Confirm miss.”

“Computer says you had good strike rate, but target is not down.” There was strain in the voice over the radio. “Target has stopped and is now removing pack. Suggest immediate missile deploy.”

The pilot banked hard, coming in on another run. He knew there was no way a normal human being could have survived even a single strike from a huge 3.6 ounce M56 round. He should have had a hole the size of a hubcap in his chest.

It didn’t matter; the next weapon he chose to deploy on the single, slow moving target was an AGM-84HK SLAMER. It was a precision-guided, air-launched cruise missile specially designed for striking both moving and stationary targets. To add to its accuracy, the pilot could control the SLAMER all the way down.

The pilot’s targeting system locked in.

“Target acquired and locked.”

“You are go on launch, Fox-1.” The voice had regained its confident edge.

The pilot pressed a small button on his joystick, and the shining spear shot away from the plane.

“Bird away.”

The 500-pound destex-packed warhead would destroy anything it hit, and it never missed. The SLAMER rapidly picked up speed, arrowing forward and then down. From the air, the explosive force of the strike seemed small as the pilot banked away. As he looped back around, he tilted the Strike Eagle, and looked down. There was nothing there but a blackened crater.

“Target destroyed, confirm, command.”

“Confirmed, target destroyed. Good day’s work. Bring it home, Fox-1.”

“Roger that, command. Coming home.”

General Shavit continued to look at the screen for many minutes. The satellite image had drilled down to a perspective of only a few feet from the ground. Nothing remained larger than a few smoking fist-sized pieces of debris, and it was impossible to tell if they were biological or something other. He pressed a button on his comm. unit, and was put through to his bio-defense unit.

“Send a cleanup crew. I want every scrap from that site brought back here for analysis.”

Shavit sat back, sucking in wheezing breaths. So close, he thought. Too close.

The cleanup crew was on site within the hour and moved as quickly as they could manage in the bulky radiation suits. The residual HREs were high, but containable, and they were easily identified and secured in lead lined casing.

The biological remains were less easy to identify, as many of the fragments were nothing but splintered bone or flesh charred down to flakes of ash. However, outside of the impact crater, some blackened lumps of meat were found, and bagged to be sorted and tested back at base.

Later, Yair Shamir, the head scientist for the Bio-Defense Unit, stood beside Major David Mitzna, both in simple biohazard suits and masks. The physical debris collected was laid out in a refrigerated room. Yair stood with his hands clasped behind his back, looking down at the assembled flesh fragments laid out on a long steel bench top before them.

“So, he, it, is not dead then?” Mitzna continued to stare down at the blackened lumps.

“Oh, it’s a he all right. Has definite XY heterogametic sex chromosomes, and I think alive or dead are very loose concepts in relation to this sample.” Yair picked up a long probe and used it to prod at one of the lumps of charred meat. Dark, sticky liquid oozed from one end onto the gleaming bench top.

“You know, if you hadn’t told me when and where you had recovered this from, and shown me the footage, I’m not sure I would have believed you. I mean it’s still functioning at a cellular level. You see, we can even see its cells attempting to wound-heal.” He pointed with his probe. “Platelets adhering to the site of injury, coagulation, cross-linked fibrin proteins in a mesh. It’s amazing, and not real.” He straightened.

“Not real? What does that mean?” the major asked, leaning forward.

“I mean, it just seems… unreal, and I can make out some stitching. Also, there are several DNA samples, suggesting multiple people, all sort of attached or melded together.” Yair shook his head, frowning now as he searched for the right words. “Like it was made from scratch, pieced together like a quilt.”

“And it’s not dead,” Mitzna said softly. “How can I explain this to General Shavit?”

Yair shrugged. “Not dead, but not alive; something in between I think. It’s probably why the bullets didn’t stop him. I wish I had more to test.”

“How is that possible?” Behind the Perspex plate of his mask, the military man’s face betrayed his revulsion. “And who can do this?”

Yair walked along the bench to a scrap of flesh, no more than the size of a cigarette packet. It was blacked at the edges, but there were rents in it that could not have come from the bomb’s obliteration. It looked like script, but in an ancient language.

“These are words, carved into the flesh.” He looked up. “How? Why? I have no idea. And who? No one, no one has the capability to do this… today.”