Post by brad on Oct 16, 2007 9:27:57 GMT
This is the first chapter to a novel I started six months ago. It's now complete, and currently under consideration for publication by Penguin Australia. Enjoy =]
Government Eye: Operation Black Dust
Copyright© 2007 Brad Bassett
Chapter one: Swag.
The setting sun represented the swagman’s mood; carefree and optimistic. Lighting the sky with a glorious conflagration of pink and gold, the swagman glanced up at the display admiringly. It seemed to capture the very essence of beauty and express it through the passing clouds; an artist’s inspiration, and through that, a work of art.
Returning his attention to the track, his mind shifted to his aching legs and he reflected upon the long weeks he had spent hiking along these mountains. His situation wasn’t great, and he knew it. He was low on supplies, lacked dangerously of energy and all that he owned were the clothes on his back, and even then they were proved to be ineffective when faced with the elements.
The wind was bitter cold, and his tattered polo shirt and jacket did little to protect against the persistent howling gusts that bestowed him and swept the land. The swagman scowled at the sky as if Mother Nature was proving her point. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately; it had become somewhat of a habit.
He shivered as he looked behind him at the now miniature city of Melbourne. He then sighed as he pressed on, knowing that he was to never return.
A strong gust of wind caused the surrounding oaks to sway fiercely and the hoots of a cluster of owls to echo profusely throughout the countryside. The twilight sky dotted sparsely with shimmering stars lit up a winding gravel path in the distance, illuminating his only company as the towering silhouettes of the swaying trees and the occasional lone aircraft flying ahead.
Then, as all had seemed peaceful, his heart stopped. The once in inviting land seemed to close in around him when the bright night sky revealed something shocking up ahead, where the grass met the bluestone. An elderly man dressed in a smart beige suit lay gasping for air several meters in the distance, curled in the gravel and grasping his chest with a slightly aged hand covered in blood. The swagman stood still, aghast, unable to clasp the severity of the unfolding situation. It felt as if he was drowning in his fears, his sorrows, unable to break free of a nightmare that had leached itself upon him and constricted his very last breath from his lungs.
After regaining his composure, the swagman rushed toward the stricken man before kneeling down beside him and taking his pulse. The stricken man returned a frightful stare, not at the swagman himself but what stood before him in the half light. But the swagman didn’t dare look back; he felt his surroundings begin to disorientate around him creating a menacing whirlwind of thousands of possibilities flashing through his mind.
Who was standing behind him? Was it the person who had just claimed this man’s life?
If so was he about to take his own?
Then his whole life flashed before his eyes, reliving his sinful past and painful memories as he heard the unmistakable sound off the safety of a pistol.
“Mr Sandez, I believe?” A familiar voice slurred, his approaching footsteps squelching noisily in the gravel as he approached.
The swagman was left utterly speechless as his brain worked frantically to try and recognise that voice. That’s when it struck. Could it be, Henry?
His suspicions were confirmed as a well built man came into view, obscuring the pearlescent moon in the twilight sky.
“Robert my dear friend, long times no see.”
It made no sense; Henry had supposedly died three years earlier during a military exercise in Nevada. Now he stood before him, his hazelnut eyes reflecting his speechless and shell shocked expression.
Henry grinned menacingly, obviously entertained by Robert’s reaction as he directed the muzzle of his pistol at Robert’s head. “I’m terribly sorry old friend,” he said insincerely, “but it looks like our reunion will be short lived.”
“Why?” Robert stuttered as he eyed the pistols barrel. “Why did you kill that man?”
“I had no choice,’ Henry replied half heartedly. “The man was working for Iraqi intelligence and just happened to be after the weapon that you created when you still worked for MI5.”
“Excalibur?” Robert gasped in apparent disbelief. “That’s impossible; I destroyed all traces of it before I left!”
“Enough talk,” Henry said impatiently, “Sorry to do this to you old friend, but you’re coming with me.”
***
Robert awoke to the gentle hum of an outdated air conditioner unit mounted to the bedside wall above him. “Where am I?” He moaned, genuinely confused as he sluggishly waved a blurry hand in front of his eyes.
He soon came to realise that he was propped up on a hospital bed in a small room. He suspected that he’d been drugged and transferred to MI5 headquarters to complete his project, but what he saw next blew his idea out the window.
He was being approached by a cluster of tall well dressed men of Middle Eastern appearance, followed by two gun toting guards of a similar complexion. One of the men stopped alongside him, his beefy hand resting on a leather holster strapped to his shoulder. He spoke in a foreign tongue which Robert immediately recognised as Arabic. “Do you know who we are?” The man barked, pointing indignantly towards an oversize poster of Saddam Hussein. Robert nodded reluctantly, although he barley understood a word said.
“My Arabic is a little rusty,” He replied jokingly, before realising that now of times was hardly the time for his dull sense of humour.
The stocky man gave Robert a blank stare as he asked one of the men beside him to translate. After a brief moment of fragmented translation the man approached Robert, grabbing him by the scruff of his shirt and pressing his pistol firmly against his head. “Do you know who we are? He screamed, once again pointing toward the oversized poster of the diplomatic figure.
“No!” Robert screamed, shaking his head frantically and waving his arms in front of him like a mad man. “No I don’t!”
There was a loud thud as the large Middle Eastern man dropped Robert face first onto the cold tiling. “Take him to his cell,” he barked, before stopping suddenly just outside the door. “On second thoughts, take him to Raneen’s office; he’s been expecting him.”
Robert yelped out in pain as the larger of the two guards sunk a gigantic fist into his stomach before together lifting him to his feet and dragging him out the open doorway. “You better learn some respect for us,” the guard spat, his face turning a bright red. “Or you’ll be feeling a lot of pain real soon.”
They had passed through several marbled hallways plastered with present and former dictators of the Middle East when Robert arrived outside the glass frontage of a large office. After a series of knocks and a brief wait, a stocky figure emerged from the shadows. “Leave,” the man barked powerfully in the direction of the guards, and then gestured for Robert to enter.
The room was quite spacious, full of expensive decorative ornaments and a deep beige carpet that swallowed your feet as you walked. Who ever worked in this office must be of high authority. The short balding man gestured for Robert to take a seat at his desk. A menacing ear to ear grin slowly crept its way along his dark skinned face. He then cleared his throat before speaking in fragmented English. “Robert, you had a pleasant flight I presume?”
When Robert didn’t answer, the balding man went on.
“Pleasantries aside, I do expect you to conform to my plans. Before I ask you to get to work however, I think it’s only proper that I introduce myself and inform you to why you have been brought here.” The man cleared his throat with three more coarse coughs before beginning.
“My name is Raneen al-Fadi, leader of the Iraqi branch of Al-Qaeda. For the past eighteen years we have fought brutally against the United States and its Western allies, bringing forth justice in a series of delicate and well planned attacks.”
Robert sat opposite the balding man, struggling to keep up to speed with the sudden influx of information.
“Unfortunately,” the man continued, “We are unable to compete with their significantly advanced technology and are finding it increasingly difficult to infiltrate the country and carry out our attacks.” As he said this Raneen pulled open a set of drawers and produced a thick grey folder before setting it down on the desk in beside Robert. A thick white sticker along the top right hand corner labelled it as Excalibur.
“Now, with your weapon in hand, we can turn the tables on this lopsided war in our favour. There is no way that the United States could recover from such an attack, it’s ingenious.”
Once he was sure that the man had finished, Robert leant forward snatched up the beefy folder. He then flipped through the first couple of pages before setting it back down again. “How did you get hold of this?” He asked incredulously, “this is a classified file.”
Raneen grinned, “We have our ways; there’s always a corrupt agent willing to photocopy some classified files in return for a car or enough money to put down a deposit on a house.” As Raneen rambled on about his methods, too Robert it suddenly clicked. He allowed his mind to delve back four years ago to when he still worked for MI5. It was Henry; he had always acted suspicious in the workplace and been caught on numerous occasions trying to smuggle classified documents out of the mission control and briefing rooms.
“It was Henry wasn’t it?”
“‘That’s irrelevant,” Raneen said firmly, sweeping the question away with his hand. “What matters now is that you complete your project so we can carry out our plan.”
A veil of confusion overwhelmed Robert’s shock and he found himself with a thirst for answers. “But Henry said that he was trying to prevent Iraqi intelligence from acquiring information about Excalibur, that’s why he killed that man,” he retorted, “how do you explain that?”
Raneen frowned and interlaced his stubby fingers with a look of concern. His hardy eyes of steel scanned Robert’s icily as if trying to depict the motives behind his objections. Then after a long while, he stood up and walked toward the door. “Enough said,” he replied blatantly as he opened it and gestured for Robert to leave, “the guards will escort you to our laboratory, and I expect you will cooperate.”
Robert stood and scowled at Raneen with a look of hatred and demise, “what if I refuse?” he said defiantly, before exiting the office and out into the marbled hallway.
The balding man laughed as he followed Robert out of his office, “then I’d expect you will be killed. And I’d also believe that you might want to go over this briefing by the way,” Raneen said as he handed Arthur the Excalibur document. “You might need to refresh your memory.”
Robert could feel his insides swelling with an untameable fury. But he decided against lashing out, as it would only land him in more trouble, and Raneen’s satisfaction. “I’ll be sure to devote myself to it,” he said simply.
“Excellent,” Raneen replied, although something in his tone told Robert otherwise. It seemed that now he wasn’t so sure of himself, his thoughts otherwise occupied, disturbed. Then at the click of the burly man’s fingers, three armed guards appeared by his side, ready for his command.
“Take him to the laboratory, and make sure he cooperates.” Raneen paused for a second as if to gather his thoughts, and then added, “Use force if necessary.”
Following a stiff salute, the three guards frog marched down the hallway obediently following there masters orders, two of which grabbed one of Robert’s shoulders whilst the other trailed closely behind pointing an automatic rifle at his back.
Robert suspected that he’d struck a nerve when he suggested to Raneen that Henry was up to something behind his back, something that felt strangely reassuring, despite the cloudiness around the topic.
He had no idea what the terrorist group Al-Qaeda planned to do with Excalibur or how they planned on using it, but what he did know for certain was that it wasn’t going to be pretty. Hundred’s of thousands, if not millions, were in danger.
The base was quite large, entangled with numerous hallways and rooms of which held everything from mundane paperwork to illegally acquired automatic weapons. Inside one office Robert could vaguely depict two figures having an animated conversation behind a veil of tinted glass; one that he was sure would erupt into violence in the moments to come.
After several minutes of being ushered at gun point, Robert arrived at a reinforced steel door equipped with a high-tech security clearance system that identified authorized personnel by scanning there retinas. The third armed guard stepped forward and engaged in the identification process, whilst the other two scattered back down the hallway to return to their duties.
There was a long creek as the heavy steel door swung open, revealing a dank room and the silhouettes of equipment that were scattered throughout it.
“No funny business,” the guard barked as he shoved Robert into the dark space.
There was complete and utter darkness as the door slammed shut, leaving Robert to feel blindly along the walls around him in search of light. After several anxious minutes of search he flipped a switch, and had to shield his eyes as one by one fluorescent tubes above him plinked to life.
It then took several seconds for his eyes to adjust to the newfound light before he chose to investigate the contents of the room. Two marble topped benches beside him were covered in a large array of vial’s and canisters, each containing different chemical substances and there own unique colour.
The benches also sported several ports were Bunsen burners were to be attached, along with other equipment counterparts used to bring out certain chemical reactions and behaviours.
Robert paused; something didn’t seem quite right about him being here. An unnerving nagging feeling that this was not where he was meant to be...
Then something caught his eye and the feeling magnified ten fold. At the far side of the room, Robert was dumbfounded as he approached a row of metal shelving above a mass of protective gear; it was maxed out with glass canisters that were labelled with such diseases as Small pox, Anthrax, Malaria and various others. It made no sense; Excalibur was a nuclear weapon, one capable of sending off a humungous explosive charge without leaving behind any long lasting nuclear residue. But why has he been secluded in a laboratory only capable of developing biological weapons?
He stood there belittled, constantly going over scenarios in his head searching for a plausible explanation. That’s when he remembered the beefy folder that Raneen had handed him only ten minutes earlier.
Robert scanned the room for somewhere comfortable to sit, before walking contently towards the southernmost corner. The corner sported an inbuilt metal framed sofa bed that hung less then a meter above the floor, complete with tattered cushions and quilt scattered alongside it.
It seemed that the laboratory was to be his new home, or at least until the terrorists had acquired their weapon and conducted field tests to assure that it wasn’t a dud bomb.
Robert was extremely concerned for the innocent lives of Westerners that were sure to perish if something wasn’t done to intervene.
He didn’t know what he could do to prevent such a disaster, but one thing he knew for sure was that he couldn’t take appropriate action until he was fully informed about the terrorist’s intentions and true motives behind the creation of Excalibur. Robert sat down on the coarse, bare mattress of the sofa bed and opened the folder to page one of the briefings. He sighed as he turned to the second page, the number next to the heading read page one of one fifty two.
On the fourteenth of July 1979, Julia eita Sandez gave birth to a boy by the name of Robert Mondo Sandez in the capital of Mexico Distrito Federal. Robert’s father Marcos Elias Ramiro left Julia and his son Robert to join the Mexican Marines, the only way that he could financially support his family. Three years past since Robert’s birth and Marcos was yet to return. After his first three days military leave in the sandy white beaches of Hawaii, Marcos had failed to meet at Ketchikan port where he was to be deployed Vietnam.
Julia left behind her life in Mexico and migrated to Great Britain where she remained for the next seventeen years before returning in recent lost of close friends and family members in a car bomb attack.
Robert by this time twenty years old remained behind to complete his master’s degrees in microbiology and atomic physics. Three years later Robert graduated from Oxford University and moved to Wales to work for the Atomic national Commission to pursue his deep interest in atomic physiology.
After less then three months working for the A.N.C, Robert was recognized for his outstanding abilities and was offered a job to work for the British army where he was to work alongside Britain’s leading scientists in creating weapons of war.
During his three year stay with the army, Robert was required to part take in military training exercises where he learned both advanced firearm and unarmed combat skills. After six months of rigorous espionage and combat training, Robert had decided that he didn’t agree with its approach on The War of Terror and decided he would leave immediately after his contract expired.
Britain’s leading scientists had created a weapon of mass destruction like no other before it, capable of wiping out millions without polluting the land with radioactive residue.
Six months later, the British government appointed Robert to work for MI5 headquarters in London and take charge of the top secret weapon that was later named Excalibur. Robert never left his laboratory; he was too fixated on ways to improve the weapon and enhance its explosive and destructive capability. Then one fateful day under catalytic circumstances, Robert’s mother Julia Sandez was killed by rogue militants who were presumably after Excalibur.
After the passing of his mother, Robert had decided that Excalibur wasn’t to be and destroyed the prototype and blueprints in hope that his life’s work was to never be conceived. He then fled the country for Australia where he is believed to have disappeared to the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, where he has supposedly been living for the last eighteen months.
He is considered a traitor of the British Empire and is wanted on a large array of war crimes. Unable to locate Robert Sandez the British government has long given up on its hopes of capturing him and reattaining the weapon along with the billions of dollars that they have invested in its development.
However, on the twenty-fifth of August 2007, Robert was spotted hitchhiking off the west coast of Melbourne, Victoria and is currently believed to be scaling the notorious mountainous regions that it so abundantly provides.
Robert flipped through another half dozen pages in hope of finding information more relevant to his capture. He found it disturbing how his whole life had been documented and contained in a single file. Robert paused when he came across something much more disturbing and saddening, a large portrait of his mother and father. The picture was full of promise; Julia and Marcos lay happily on a white sandy beach on what Robert suspected to have been there honeymoon.
Something didn’t seem quite right about the setting. There seemed to be subtle yet recognisable faults in the landscape and the pictures content. At first Robert dismissed it believing that the stress of the situation had got the better of him, but a further investigation proved otherwise. He first noticed it as he stared admiringly at his mother’s beauty; her stunning brunet shoulder length hair untainted by the evening breeze. That was it, her hair.
Clearly it had been a windy day; the tropic palms swayed fiercely in the horizon and the pristine water crashed ferociously down onto the sandy shore. And yet Juliet’s hair remained perfect, too perfect. The second difference he noticed was more subtle and difficult to pick up. If it wasn’t for his untameable fascination with his father Marcos, it would’ve gone unnoticed. In the portrait Marcos sported a gold Christian cross bound around his neck by a silver linked chain. Robert has vast knowledge of his family’s religious beliefs and knew for sure that his father wasn’t Christian.
Julia and Marcos Sandez were both brought up in a small Islamic orphanage on the outskirts of the poverty stricken state of Chiapas and raised by Muslims. Robert also recalled his mother Julia telling him that one of Marcos’ main reasons behind serving the Mexican marines was to fight for his religion and acceptance of his Islamic beliefs.
Robert realized the photo was a fake, but couldn’t grasp the reason or motive behind it. Why would they go through so much trouble to create a falsified portrait? There was no specific reason that stood out to him, other then the fact that they wanted it to serves as a means of distraction...
His thoughts were abruptly interrupted, as the reinforced door burst open revealing a single armed guard. He stared hesitantly at the guard wondering how many seconds it would take him to send a ball of flaming led screaming through his skull. His attention shifted contently as he realized the guard was carrying a steel tray containing food and water.
The guard marched toward him and placed the tray on one of the marble topped benches at the front of the room. “Eat,” the guard barked, before he hastily retreating from the dank laboratory. Robert’s enthusiasm died down almost instantaneously as he approached what he expected to be his dinner. There were two dishes, curried rice topped generously with soy source, and a desert Robert immediately recognised as eggplant yogurt. Both of which he despised.
Growing up in an Islamic community meant that Julia had often cooked Islamic dishes for Robert throughout his childhood. Robert absolutely despised such food and protested on a number of occasions that his mother’s curry resembled human excretion. Despite this, Robert was always forced to eat the food given to him and ever since hasn’t touched the stuff, and he wasn’t going to start now. He grabbed the jug of water and swallowed it contently, he was starched and every drop felt as if it had doused the flames of a thousand fires.
As Robert placed the now empty jug down on the bench and wiped away the beads of water dripping off his chin, his stomach rumbled loudly and he realized that he was hungrier then he had first thought. He stared miserably at the two saucers as if consuming them would be the worst event of his day, then gazed at the now empty jug of water and cursed at his stupidity.
Government Eye: Operation Black Dust
Copyright© 2007 Brad Bassett
Chapter one: Swag.
The setting sun represented the swagman’s mood; carefree and optimistic. Lighting the sky with a glorious conflagration of pink and gold, the swagman glanced up at the display admiringly. It seemed to capture the very essence of beauty and express it through the passing clouds; an artist’s inspiration, and through that, a work of art.
Returning his attention to the track, his mind shifted to his aching legs and he reflected upon the long weeks he had spent hiking along these mountains. His situation wasn’t great, and he knew it. He was low on supplies, lacked dangerously of energy and all that he owned were the clothes on his back, and even then they were proved to be ineffective when faced with the elements.
The wind was bitter cold, and his tattered polo shirt and jacket did little to protect against the persistent howling gusts that bestowed him and swept the land. The swagman scowled at the sky as if Mother Nature was proving her point. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately; it had become somewhat of a habit.
He shivered as he looked behind him at the now miniature city of Melbourne. He then sighed as he pressed on, knowing that he was to never return.
A strong gust of wind caused the surrounding oaks to sway fiercely and the hoots of a cluster of owls to echo profusely throughout the countryside. The twilight sky dotted sparsely with shimmering stars lit up a winding gravel path in the distance, illuminating his only company as the towering silhouettes of the swaying trees and the occasional lone aircraft flying ahead.
Then, as all had seemed peaceful, his heart stopped. The once in inviting land seemed to close in around him when the bright night sky revealed something shocking up ahead, where the grass met the bluestone. An elderly man dressed in a smart beige suit lay gasping for air several meters in the distance, curled in the gravel and grasping his chest with a slightly aged hand covered in blood. The swagman stood still, aghast, unable to clasp the severity of the unfolding situation. It felt as if he was drowning in his fears, his sorrows, unable to break free of a nightmare that had leached itself upon him and constricted his very last breath from his lungs.
After regaining his composure, the swagman rushed toward the stricken man before kneeling down beside him and taking his pulse. The stricken man returned a frightful stare, not at the swagman himself but what stood before him in the half light. But the swagman didn’t dare look back; he felt his surroundings begin to disorientate around him creating a menacing whirlwind of thousands of possibilities flashing through his mind.
Who was standing behind him? Was it the person who had just claimed this man’s life?
If so was he about to take his own?
Then his whole life flashed before his eyes, reliving his sinful past and painful memories as he heard the unmistakable sound off the safety of a pistol.
“Mr Sandez, I believe?” A familiar voice slurred, his approaching footsteps squelching noisily in the gravel as he approached.
The swagman was left utterly speechless as his brain worked frantically to try and recognise that voice. That’s when it struck. Could it be, Henry?
His suspicions were confirmed as a well built man came into view, obscuring the pearlescent moon in the twilight sky.
“Robert my dear friend, long times no see.”
It made no sense; Henry had supposedly died three years earlier during a military exercise in Nevada. Now he stood before him, his hazelnut eyes reflecting his speechless and shell shocked expression.
Henry grinned menacingly, obviously entertained by Robert’s reaction as he directed the muzzle of his pistol at Robert’s head. “I’m terribly sorry old friend,” he said insincerely, “but it looks like our reunion will be short lived.”
“Why?” Robert stuttered as he eyed the pistols barrel. “Why did you kill that man?”
“I had no choice,’ Henry replied half heartedly. “The man was working for Iraqi intelligence and just happened to be after the weapon that you created when you still worked for MI5.”
“Excalibur?” Robert gasped in apparent disbelief. “That’s impossible; I destroyed all traces of it before I left!”
“Enough talk,” Henry said impatiently, “Sorry to do this to you old friend, but you’re coming with me.”
***
Robert awoke to the gentle hum of an outdated air conditioner unit mounted to the bedside wall above him. “Where am I?” He moaned, genuinely confused as he sluggishly waved a blurry hand in front of his eyes.
He soon came to realise that he was propped up on a hospital bed in a small room. He suspected that he’d been drugged and transferred to MI5 headquarters to complete his project, but what he saw next blew his idea out the window.
He was being approached by a cluster of tall well dressed men of Middle Eastern appearance, followed by two gun toting guards of a similar complexion. One of the men stopped alongside him, his beefy hand resting on a leather holster strapped to his shoulder. He spoke in a foreign tongue which Robert immediately recognised as Arabic. “Do you know who we are?” The man barked, pointing indignantly towards an oversize poster of Saddam Hussein. Robert nodded reluctantly, although he barley understood a word said.
“My Arabic is a little rusty,” He replied jokingly, before realising that now of times was hardly the time for his dull sense of humour.
The stocky man gave Robert a blank stare as he asked one of the men beside him to translate. After a brief moment of fragmented translation the man approached Robert, grabbing him by the scruff of his shirt and pressing his pistol firmly against his head. “Do you know who we are? He screamed, once again pointing toward the oversized poster of the diplomatic figure.
“No!” Robert screamed, shaking his head frantically and waving his arms in front of him like a mad man. “No I don’t!”
There was a loud thud as the large Middle Eastern man dropped Robert face first onto the cold tiling. “Take him to his cell,” he barked, before stopping suddenly just outside the door. “On second thoughts, take him to Raneen’s office; he’s been expecting him.”
Robert yelped out in pain as the larger of the two guards sunk a gigantic fist into his stomach before together lifting him to his feet and dragging him out the open doorway. “You better learn some respect for us,” the guard spat, his face turning a bright red. “Or you’ll be feeling a lot of pain real soon.”
They had passed through several marbled hallways plastered with present and former dictators of the Middle East when Robert arrived outside the glass frontage of a large office. After a series of knocks and a brief wait, a stocky figure emerged from the shadows. “Leave,” the man barked powerfully in the direction of the guards, and then gestured for Robert to enter.
The room was quite spacious, full of expensive decorative ornaments and a deep beige carpet that swallowed your feet as you walked. Who ever worked in this office must be of high authority. The short balding man gestured for Robert to take a seat at his desk. A menacing ear to ear grin slowly crept its way along his dark skinned face. He then cleared his throat before speaking in fragmented English. “Robert, you had a pleasant flight I presume?”
When Robert didn’t answer, the balding man went on.
“Pleasantries aside, I do expect you to conform to my plans. Before I ask you to get to work however, I think it’s only proper that I introduce myself and inform you to why you have been brought here.” The man cleared his throat with three more coarse coughs before beginning.
“My name is Raneen al-Fadi, leader of the Iraqi branch of Al-Qaeda. For the past eighteen years we have fought brutally against the United States and its Western allies, bringing forth justice in a series of delicate and well planned attacks.”
Robert sat opposite the balding man, struggling to keep up to speed with the sudden influx of information.
“Unfortunately,” the man continued, “We are unable to compete with their significantly advanced technology and are finding it increasingly difficult to infiltrate the country and carry out our attacks.” As he said this Raneen pulled open a set of drawers and produced a thick grey folder before setting it down on the desk in beside Robert. A thick white sticker along the top right hand corner labelled it as Excalibur.
“Now, with your weapon in hand, we can turn the tables on this lopsided war in our favour. There is no way that the United States could recover from such an attack, it’s ingenious.”
Once he was sure that the man had finished, Robert leant forward snatched up the beefy folder. He then flipped through the first couple of pages before setting it back down again. “How did you get hold of this?” He asked incredulously, “this is a classified file.”
Raneen grinned, “We have our ways; there’s always a corrupt agent willing to photocopy some classified files in return for a car or enough money to put down a deposit on a house.” As Raneen rambled on about his methods, too Robert it suddenly clicked. He allowed his mind to delve back four years ago to when he still worked for MI5. It was Henry; he had always acted suspicious in the workplace and been caught on numerous occasions trying to smuggle classified documents out of the mission control and briefing rooms.
“It was Henry wasn’t it?”
“‘That’s irrelevant,” Raneen said firmly, sweeping the question away with his hand. “What matters now is that you complete your project so we can carry out our plan.”
A veil of confusion overwhelmed Robert’s shock and he found himself with a thirst for answers. “But Henry said that he was trying to prevent Iraqi intelligence from acquiring information about Excalibur, that’s why he killed that man,” he retorted, “how do you explain that?”
Raneen frowned and interlaced his stubby fingers with a look of concern. His hardy eyes of steel scanned Robert’s icily as if trying to depict the motives behind his objections. Then after a long while, he stood up and walked toward the door. “Enough said,” he replied blatantly as he opened it and gestured for Robert to leave, “the guards will escort you to our laboratory, and I expect you will cooperate.”
Robert stood and scowled at Raneen with a look of hatred and demise, “what if I refuse?” he said defiantly, before exiting the office and out into the marbled hallway.
The balding man laughed as he followed Robert out of his office, “then I’d expect you will be killed. And I’d also believe that you might want to go over this briefing by the way,” Raneen said as he handed Arthur the Excalibur document. “You might need to refresh your memory.”
Robert could feel his insides swelling with an untameable fury. But he decided against lashing out, as it would only land him in more trouble, and Raneen’s satisfaction. “I’ll be sure to devote myself to it,” he said simply.
“Excellent,” Raneen replied, although something in his tone told Robert otherwise. It seemed that now he wasn’t so sure of himself, his thoughts otherwise occupied, disturbed. Then at the click of the burly man’s fingers, three armed guards appeared by his side, ready for his command.
“Take him to the laboratory, and make sure he cooperates.” Raneen paused for a second as if to gather his thoughts, and then added, “Use force if necessary.”
Following a stiff salute, the three guards frog marched down the hallway obediently following there masters orders, two of which grabbed one of Robert’s shoulders whilst the other trailed closely behind pointing an automatic rifle at his back.
Robert suspected that he’d struck a nerve when he suggested to Raneen that Henry was up to something behind his back, something that felt strangely reassuring, despite the cloudiness around the topic.
He had no idea what the terrorist group Al-Qaeda planned to do with Excalibur or how they planned on using it, but what he did know for certain was that it wasn’t going to be pretty. Hundred’s of thousands, if not millions, were in danger.
The base was quite large, entangled with numerous hallways and rooms of which held everything from mundane paperwork to illegally acquired automatic weapons. Inside one office Robert could vaguely depict two figures having an animated conversation behind a veil of tinted glass; one that he was sure would erupt into violence in the moments to come.
After several minutes of being ushered at gun point, Robert arrived at a reinforced steel door equipped with a high-tech security clearance system that identified authorized personnel by scanning there retinas. The third armed guard stepped forward and engaged in the identification process, whilst the other two scattered back down the hallway to return to their duties.
There was a long creek as the heavy steel door swung open, revealing a dank room and the silhouettes of equipment that were scattered throughout it.
“No funny business,” the guard barked as he shoved Robert into the dark space.
There was complete and utter darkness as the door slammed shut, leaving Robert to feel blindly along the walls around him in search of light. After several anxious minutes of search he flipped a switch, and had to shield his eyes as one by one fluorescent tubes above him plinked to life.
It then took several seconds for his eyes to adjust to the newfound light before he chose to investigate the contents of the room. Two marble topped benches beside him were covered in a large array of vial’s and canisters, each containing different chemical substances and there own unique colour.
The benches also sported several ports were Bunsen burners were to be attached, along with other equipment counterparts used to bring out certain chemical reactions and behaviours.
Robert paused; something didn’t seem quite right about him being here. An unnerving nagging feeling that this was not where he was meant to be...
Then something caught his eye and the feeling magnified ten fold. At the far side of the room, Robert was dumbfounded as he approached a row of metal shelving above a mass of protective gear; it was maxed out with glass canisters that were labelled with such diseases as Small pox, Anthrax, Malaria and various others. It made no sense; Excalibur was a nuclear weapon, one capable of sending off a humungous explosive charge without leaving behind any long lasting nuclear residue. But why has he been secluded in a laboratory only capable of developing biological weapons?
He stood there belittled, constantly going over scenarios in his head searching for a plausible explanation. That’s when he remembered the beefy folder that Raneen had handed him only ten minutes earlier.
Robert scanned the room for somewhere comfortable to sit, before walking contently towards the southernmost corner. The corner sported an inbuilt metal framed sofa bed that hung less then a meter above the floor, complete with tattered cushions and quilt scattered alongside it.
It seemed that the laboratory was to be his new home, or at least until the terrorists had acquired their weapon and conducted field tests to assure that it wasn’t a dud bomb.
Robert was extremely concerned for the innocent lives of Westerners that were sure to perish if something wasn’t done to intervene.
He didn’t know what he could do to prevent such a disaster, but one thing he knew for sure was that he couldn’t take appropriate action until he was fully informed about the terrorist’s intentions and true motives behind the creation of Excalibur. Robert sat down on the coarse, bare mattress of the sofa bed and opened the folder to page one of the briefings. He sighed as he turned to the second page, the number next to the heading read page one of one fifty two.
On the fourteenth of July 1979, Julia eita Sandez gave birth to a boy by the name of Robert Mondo Sandez in the capital of Mexico Distrito Federal. Robert’s father Marcos Elias Ramiro left Julia and his son Robert to join the Mexican Marines, the only way that he could financially support his family. Three years past since Robert’s birth and Marcos was yet to return. After his first three days military leave in the sandy white beaches of Hawaii, Marcos had failed to meet at Ketchikan port where he was to be deployed Vietnam.
Julia left behind her life in Mexico and migrated to Great Britain where she remained for the next seventeen years before returning in recent lost of close friends and family members in a car bomb attack.
Robert by this time twenty years old remained behind to complete his master’s degrees in microbiology and atomic physics. Three years later Robert graduated from Oxford University and moved to Wales to work for the Atomic national Commission to pursue his deep interest in atomic physiology.
After less then three months working for the A.N.C, Robert was recognized for his outstanding abilities and was offered a job to work for the British army where he was to work alongside Britain’s leading scientists in creating weapons of war.
During his three year stay with the army, Robert was required to part take in military training exercises where he learned both advanced firearm and unarmed combat skills. After six months of rigorous espionage and combat training, Robert had decided that he didn’t agree with its approach on The War of Terror and decided he would leave immediately after his contract expired.
Britain’s leading scientists had created a weapon of mass destruction like no other before it, capable of wiping out millions without polluting the land with radioactive residue.
Six months later, the British government appointed Robert to work for MI5 headquarters in London and take charge of the top secret weapon that was later named Excalibur. Robert never left his laboratory; he was too fixated on ways to improve the weapon and enhance its explosive and destructive capability. Then one fateful day under catalytic circumstances, Robert’s mother Julia Sandez was killed by rogue militants who were presumably after Excalibur.
After the passing of his mother, Robert had decided that Excalibur wasn’t to be and destroyed the prototype and blueprints in hope that his life’s work was to never be conceived. He then fled the country for Australia where he is believed to have disappeared to the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, where he has supposedly been living for the last eighteen months.
He is considered a traitor of the British Empire and is wanted on a large array of war crimes. Unable to locate Robert Sandez the British government has long given up on its hopes of capturing him and reattaining the weapon along with the billions of dollars that they have invested in its development.
However, on the twenty-fifth of August 2007, Robert was spotted hitchhiking off the west coast of Melbourne, Victoria and is currently believed to be scaling the notorious mountainous regions that it so abundantly provides.
Robert flipped through another half dozen pages in hope of finding information more relevant to his capture. He found it disturbing how his whole life had been documented and contained in a single file. Robert paused when he came across something much more disturbing and saddening, a large portrait of his mother and father. The picture was full of promise; Julia and Marcos lay happily on a white sandy beach on what Robert suspected to have been there honeymoon.
Something didn’t seem quite right about the setting. There seemed to be subtle yet recognisable faults in the landscape and the pictures content. At first Robert dismissed it believing that the stress of the situation had got the better of him, but a further investigation proved otherwise. He first noticed it as he stared admiringly at his mother’s beauty; her stunning brunet shoulder length hair untainted by the evening breeze. That was it, her hair.
Clearly it had been a windy day; the tropic palms swayed fiercely in the horizon and the pristine water crashed ferociously down onto the sandy shore. And yet Juliet’s hair remained perfect, too perfect. The second difference he noticed was more subtle and difficult to pick up. If it wasn’t for his untameable fascination with his father Marcos, it would’ve gone unnoticed. In the portrait Marcos sported a gold Christian cross bound around his neck by a silver linked chain. Robert has vast knowledge of his family’s religious beliefs and knew for sure that his father wasn’t Christian.
Julia and Marcos Sandez were both brought up in a small Islamic orphanage on the outskirts of the poverty stricken state of Chiapas and raised by Muslims. Robert also recalled his mother Julia telling him that one of Marcos’ main reasons behind serving the Mexican marines was to fight for his religion and acceptance of his Islamic beliefs.
Robert realized the photo was a fake, but couldn’t grasp the reason or motive behind it. Why would they go through so much trouble to create a falsified portrait? There was no specific reason that stood out to him, other then the fact that they wanted it to serves as a means of distraction...
His thoughts were abruptly interrupted, as the reinforced door burst open revealing a single armed guard. He stared hesitantly at the guard wondering how many seconds it would take him to send a ball of flaming led screaming through his skull. His attention shifted contently as he realized the guard was carrying a steel tray containing food and water.
The guard marched toward him and placed the tray on one of the marble topped benches at the front of the room. “Eat,” the guard barked, before he hastily retreating from the dank laboratory. Robert’s enthusiasm died down almost instantaneously as he approached what he expected to be his dinner. There were two dishes, curried rice topped generously with soy source, and a desert Robert immediately recognised as eggplant yogurt. Both of which he despised.
Growing up in an Islamic community meant that Julia had often cooked Islamic dishes for Robert throughout his childhood. Robert absolutely despised such food and protested on a number of occasions that his mother’s curry resembled human excretion. Despite this, Robert was always forced to eat the food given to him and ever since hasn’t touched the stuff, and he wasn’t going to start now. He grabbed the jug of water and swallowed it contently, he was starched and every drop felt as if it had doused the flames of a thousand fires.
As Robert placed the now empty jug down on the bench and wiped away the beads of water dripping off his chin, his stomach rumbled loudly and he realized that he was hungrier then he had first thought. He stared miserably at the two saucers as if consuming them would be the worst event of his day, then gazed at the now empty jug of water and cursed at his stupidity.
But then, I suppose no-one's work is.