The Genesis Plague (2010)

pieced together his next words: ‘The soldiers are behind us … back there.’ Al-Zahrani pointed in the opposite direction. ‘If there is an enemy in our midst, it is not human. Yet we must confront it. We cannot turn back now.’
    Goosebumps ran up Stokes’s spine; he was amazed by Al-Zahrani’s remarkable precognition.
    Next, Al-Zahrani commanded the men to move forward - towards the commotion.
    Stokes eased back in his chair and pressed his fist to his chin, wondering how this might play out. He hadn’t expected them to press on. A retreat was the expected outcome - the sane choice. Either Al-Zahrani had profound faith … or a death wish. Harbouring concern that the Arabs might critically impact Operation Genesis, Stokes quickly dismissed the notion that these five men could materially affect what was now under way. The numbers were heavily weighted against them.
    Concern quickly gave way to intrigue. Stokes squared his shoulders and leaned forward with renewed intensity.
    The Arabs disappeared from camera view for a three-count before the next camera picked up their trail. Now the passage was tightening, allowing just enough room for single-file procession.
    The ringleader, a man with a patchy beard, was at the front, cell phone light extended out in his left hand, AK-47 clutched tight in the crook of his right arm. The other three men trailed in his wake, weapons at the ready, and Al-Zahrani pulled up the rear, swinging a handgun at his side. They’d stopped talking and their trepidation was rising to a fever pitch. Now even Al-Zahrani was visibly tense, because the metal-on-metal sounds they’d been hearing had given way to something much different.
    Ahead in the darkness, something was moving.
    Writhing.
    ‘Best to turn around, my friends,’ Stokes muttered, his left eyebrow tipping up.
    The audio crisply picked up scratching and clicking.
    The procession halted abruptly as the ringleader made the first visual confirmation.
    When he spotted the horror that lay ahead, he screamed out in terror and wheeled around so fiercely that he barrelled into the two men behind him. He stumbled and the cell phone fumbled out of his grasp, clattered along the rocky ground.
    Then the panic infected the others.
    ‘Go back! Go back!’ the ringleader was pleading as he regained his footing. He shoved at the others, trying to speed them along. Spinning, he attempted to retrieve the cell phone, but it disappeared beneath the slithering mass that crashed into him like a violent wave. He recoiled, levelled the AK-47, and opened fire. The weapon’s consecutive muzzle bursts flashed brilliant white in the infrared images on Stokes’s monitor; the deafening retort squelched the computer’s speakers.
    ‘No …’ Stokes grumbled.
    Comfortably ahead of the others, Al-Zahrani was now back in the previous camera frame, blindly clawing his way through the darkness. But something scurried beneath his feet and caused him to trip and fall. He screamed out when something took a chunk of flesh out of his hand.
    Then Stokes’s eyes bounced back to the other frame where the gunman lost his footing and suddenly tumbled backwards, forcing the assault rifle to swing up over his head, spraying bullets along a wild arc. The lethal barrage strafed the two men trailing behind him about the face and chest, sending the pair crumpling to the ground.
    An instant later, a ferocious explosion ripped through the passage and obliterated the camera.

38
    ‘What in God’s name—’ the combat engineer gasped. ‘What happened to those people?’
    On the LCD panel, the bot’s camera swept slowly side to side for the second time, panning over the ghastly bone pile forming an enormous ring ten feet high.
    ‘Looks like a fucking mausoleum,’ Crawford grumbled.
    Jason looked up at Hazo, knowing that for him, the images would slice deep. It was a similar portrait of mass death that drove Hazo to become an ally to the Americans.
    The Kurd stared emptily at the screen.
    In 2006, US forces had used satellite imagery to scan the Ash Sham Desert for undulating mounds that hinted at the presence of mass graves. Over 200 sites had been identified for potential exhumations. One of the first confirmed graves contained three dozen male skeletons wearing Kurdish attire, all of which had been blindfolded and bound with arms tied behind the back. Every skull bore an executioner’s bullet hole. Though most of the bodies could not be identified, Hazo’s