The Genesis Plague (2010)

ground. The wind heaved out from his lungs in a heavy gasp. Pain jolted up his spine, down his arms. He rolled on to his back, arcing his spine, groaning in pain, seeing nothing but white for a five-count. Had he not been wearing a Kevlar vest under his robe, the stone might have paralysed him.
    Fast footsteps crunched along the gravel and came to a stop next to him.
    ‘You okay, Google?’
    He blinked his eyes and drew a steady breath. ‘Yeah, I’ll live.’
    Jam helped him to his feet and Jason squeezed his shoulder blades together to coax the pain away.
    ‘That’s gonna leave a mark,’ Jam said.
    Jason noticed that Jam’s left cheek was red and blistered, the curly black scruff sizzled away.
    ‘You should talk,’ he replied with a wince.
    ‘I was a bit too close when the missile went off.’ He stroked the tangle of toasted hairs. ‘I needed a shave anyway.’
    Jason looked up at the grey smoke cloud spewing out from the ridge. The doorframe was lost behind the collapsed cliff face. He shook his head in disbelief.
    ‘That was an RPG … right? I mean I barely saw it.’
    ‘Yeah, it was.’
    He shook his head and put his hands on his hips.
    Meat, Camel and Hazo jogged over to join them.
    ‘Everybody all right?’ Jason asked the trio.
    ‘Super,’ Meat grumbled. When he got a good look at Jam, he stepped closer and cringed. ‘What’s with your face?’ Then he got a whiff of the singed beard and said, ‘Aaah. I hate that smell … burnt hair. Shit, I’m gonna vomit.’ He shook his head violently.
    ‘You’re one to talk, Dracula. That blood mask really brings out your eyes.’
    ‘Ha, ha, very fun—’
    ‘All right fellas,’ Jason cut in. For frontline fighters, adrenaline surges always came with euphoria - at least if you were still standing when the bullets stopped flying. It was the junkie high that kept them coming back for more. But it also made the hyped-up men tougher to rein in. ‘Good to see that everyone’s all right. I’m sure you’ve noticed that we’ve got a new problem on our hands.’ He motioned to the smoking cliff.
    Camel pulled out a small round tin from his vest, opened it, and pinched out some chewing tobacco. In passing himself off as an abstaining Muslim, a nicotine patch would have been far subtler, but the chew sure beat puffing away on cigarettes. ‘Looks good to me. The rag-heads went and buried themselves.’ He began stuffing his cheeks full of tobacco.
    Jam pulled a hunting knife off his belt and began cutting the singed beard away, since it did stink something fierce. ‘Seems to me they don’t want us coming in after them.’
    ‘I’d go with that,’ Meat agreed.
    ‘These caves …’ Hazo chimed in, his tone level and one notch too low. ‘The tunnels can lead anywhere. It’s no good. They could find a way out. Maybe on the other side of the mountain … maybe a kilometre away.’
    ‘Or they went and buried themselves,’ Camel reiterated before hawking a brown gob on to the rocks. ‘Crawled into a hole. Just like your buddy Saddam.’
    The Kurd frowned.
    Jason was inclined to agree with both assertions. ‘Let’s have a closer look at that door.’ He waved for them to follow, then strode over to it.
    Kneeling beside the door, Jason could feel heat radiating off the blackened metal. He carefully hunted the surface for any telling marks: manufacturer’s stamps, engraved plates, painted emblems or Arabic scrawls, anything. He found nothing. ‘Let’s flip it,’ he told the others. ‘Cover your hands. This thing’s smokin’ hot.’
    It took all five men to heave the thing up and over. It landed on the gravel with a crunching thump.
    ‘Weighs more than my wife,’ Camel grumbled.
    ‘Nah, she’s got a few more L-Bs on her,’ Meat said, as if to imply intimate knowledge. ‘More to love.’
    The others chuckled. Camel’s chewing came to grinding halt.
    ‘Cool it,’ Jason said as he squatted to resume the analysis. The door’s reverse side was clearly what would have faced inward. The twisted hinges looked like they’d been lifted from a bank vault. The turn-crank was bent into a pretzel shape. No telling marks. Not even on the edges.
    ‘That’s definitely military construction,’ Meat observed.
    ‘You’re a genius,’ Camel said under his breath.
    Meat ignored him. ‘I’m guessing that’s one of the old regime’s hideouts. A fallout shelter, maybe.’
    ‘Shit, maybe we’ll finally find some WMDs squirrelled away up there,’