A young man wakes up in the desert. The wreckage of an ambulance lies smashed against a boulder and charred to a crisp. By the stitches on his head and face, he assumes he was the patient. But why was an ambulance driving through a desert? Where wa...
Anyone who saw Zill would have taken him for a mummy covered in black bands, geared with thermal goggles and a sniper rifle strapped in his back. And they wouldn't be quite wrong, as flesh and blood were all he had left in common with men. His mind barely housed any remnant of humanity, having been constantly and implacably warped by war and mud to chisel it into the original instrument of a hunter. His mere presence was harrowing even to other Nizar agents, his aura exuding a fledging atrocity, perhaps his greatest credentials for being considered the best murderer of Nizar and the best sneaking agent Seiber had, along with Celik.
The dark bands that covered him from head to toe were made of a special fabric that absorbed and retained his body heat inside the bands, making him virtually invisible to any type of thermal vision, none one of which could register more of him than a few lines in motion. On the outer sides of his limbs and spine, he carried thin beams attached parallel to his bones as an exoskeleton which provided him greater strength, balance, and speed at a run. At their ends, located in fingers and toes as servo phalanges, were small-scale gear systems that hid a few tiny retractable hooks, acting as crampons to scramble up different walls. There was also a retractable syringe needle in each of the index fingers used to inject drugs or poisons furtively into his enemies, as well as treat himself using intravenous drugs in hostile territory. Rumors and hearsay among his enemies, as well as Nizar, suggested that at some point in the past, he had infiltrated a station in Eastern Russia and stolen that gear, along with other camouflage and foray prototype materials. The mortuary silence inherent in his personality did nothing but feed that and other legends around him.
In his bandaged head he wore thermal goggles coupled with internal night vision lenses at all times, which he could switch on and off at will with a twitch of his left little finger, triggering a knob across the beam up to the goggles. At his waist, he carried a tactical belt that had a Stechkin automatic pistol and a semi-automatic AMT Hardballer, along with 9x18mm Makarov and 10mm Auto cartridge magazines, respectively, and one suppressor geared for each gun, as well as several capsuled drugs and poisons. On his back, he bore a Dragunov rifle he seldom used to kill, but he often used its scope as binoculars to glass across the terrain. It was something that, in a way, he couldn't help; he believed watching through a scope was part of being a hunter, some sort of ancient ritualism long yet forsaken. He had personally inserted a rangefinder next to the muzzle and, on the rifle's side, a thin slot for a little notepad and a pencil, with a rotating hinge to fit a scientific calculator. That way, he could calculate quickly the trigonometric and physical functions that concerned him regarding his objective, so by the time he used the rifle, there was barely any space for luck between the trigger and the prey, for whom, unfortunately, mathematics is an exact science. Finally, he had several tactical knives scattered between the bands of his torso and limbs, both for easy access from anywhere on his body, and as armor, a last protection against iron and shrapnel.
He had become one of Ulrich Seiber's most valuable assets, and Seiber considered him an extension of his own body in enemy territory, sending Zill on missions most of his subordinates would have deemed suicidal. And Zill didn't fail. He never had. For that reason, he alone had been entrusted with the most important task of all those he had ever done before. He didn't know and didn't care why his boss gave so much importance to this mission; he only knew he should carry it out, and he was the fittest individual within Nizar to do so. That was why it didn't take more than fifteen minutes from the time Seiber's voice on the radio gave him the green light to the time he snuck into the mining station that cold African night, totally unnoticed.
For this occasion, he had a capsule of chloroform, just to save the formalities with Conan; Ulrich's brother was the only target he had confirmed visually. The other, that guy Skyler Landau, was supposed to be on the same plane, but he had disappeared at the last minute. No matter. He should have ended up in that facility, too, if the presence of his brother, the warlord, was anything to go by. Zell knew that because he had picked up Conan and the bearded man through his scope when they got off the plane, perhaps in a display of recklessness. But the warlord was to be ignored, Ulrich had said; he had to be left alone. Let him be unaware of anything, and, of course, no hurting or killing him. Why? It did not matter. Whatever the case, both his targets had to be there, behind any of the doors to those corridors, balconies, roofs. Perhaps the courtyards.
While most of the staff were sleeping and Atticus was out to reassess one of the adjoining warehouses, Zell jumped meticulously up and into the least protected side of the fenced area, moving around while avoiding the guards and floodlights until he got to the building, tweaking the surveillance cameras that pointed at the yard to clamber stealthily up the wall of bricks, and entering the first floor by the window. Once inside, protected by the sober dark, scarcely debated by the dull emergency lights through the corridors, he made use of his night vision goggles and toured the station silently, examining every nook and cranny with the care and dedication implicit in his cold professionalism.
He thought he reviewed all the floors. He thought he got to the kitchen, to the dining room, to each staff member's room. He thought he had seen the face of each one of them slumbering nonchalantly on their pillows. And none of them was Skyler. Not even Conan. He hadn't gotten it wrong; that was for sure. They were simply not there.
Unaware that they were actually locked in a secret basement, preparing for days alongside the crew to take off eventually and retrieve the Sea Shadow, he had to rehabilitate the surveillance cameras, retrace his steps, and return to the hill from which he had been watching, where he had left a portable radio he used to contact his boss.
"Sisumara," he said with his enigmatic and gritty broken voice.
"Tell me, and don't beat around the bush," replied Ulrich tersely.
"They aren't here, sir, neither of them."
"Any coming and going of vehicles?"
"None so far, but I've seen Atticus Landau. He's in this station, too."
"As long as he's there, his brother will be around. Camp there and stand by. Sooner or later, both of them will show up."
"Yessir. I'll keep you filled in."
*****
Finally, after more than ten years of absence, Blake Norton and Cyril Clausich met again. Both stared at each other, challenging, undeterred, exchanging defiant glances from which emerged old memories of confrontation. Norton from his bed. Clausich by his side. Only the drops falling inside the drip broke the icy silence, drops from a new serum Clausich had designed exclusively for his patient. There was a clear intention for that conversation to be as short as possible.
"Mr. Norton."
"Doctor Clausich."
Clausich remained silent for a moment before speaking again, attempting to control the tempo of the conversation.
"You know I'd be lying if I told you I'm glad to see you."
"We both knew we'd meet again, sooner or later."
"Yes, but I hoped it would be in another life."
"Yeah, you're very funny."
"Although I'm surprised you endured this long. I'd bet fifty dollars you wouldn't reach ten years."
"I sense some disappointment on your part."
Clausich shook his head at nothing.
"Listen, Norton, I'll do everything in my power to help you out, but then I'm leaving, and I promise you, this time, you won't find me."
The lips of his patient outlined a condescending smile.
"Yeah, good one."
Clausich turned around and headed towards the lab, but he turned back one last time.
"You saved my life once, and then I saved yours. I thought we'd keep this a tie. You now owe me one more salvation."
Norton rolled his eyes and turned away in a taciturn mood.
"Yeah, and you owe me fifty bucks."
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