Authors: Mainak Dhar
'Captain, sorry to wake you up.'
David looked as if he was ready to murder Dan.
'This better be good.'
Dan reached over and handed over David's M4 and vest.
'We're under attack.'
That got David's attention, and he grabbed his gear and rushed out of his cabin. Mike had also just come out of his cabin next door, wearing a Kevlar vest over his t-shirt, carrying an M4 as well. The CIA officer shouted out at David as he saw him.
'The Taliban must have gone nuts. Trying to attack us here is suicide!'
There were soldiers milling around everywhere. The members of the small TF121 detachment were `guests' here, sharing the base with its usual occupants, an Army Ranger unit. Given the secretive nature of their HVT hunts, and the time they spent outside in the mountains, David and his men had never really got to know the Rangers too well. But now David saw their Commanding Officer, Major James Lafferty, roaring orders to his men.
'You there, reinforce the western side! I want snipers covering every angle.'
David jogged over to him. Compared to the lean, wiry SEAL, the Ranger Major looked like a giant pitbull.
'What's up?'
'Two of my boys are down. Some Taliban must have sneaked in and attacked our sentries.'
David considered that for a minute. He had been fast asleep but there was no way he could have slept through gunfire. James must have read his mind.
'They bit them. We never picked them up till they were too close.'
David took in the bizarre details.
'Did we get them?'
James looked down straight at his eyes, and David thought that he saw fear in the giant man's eyes.
'The boys pumped them full of bullets, but get this, the two of them fell down, then got back up and ran away.'
'All clear!'
The Ranger who had shouted sounded scared, and David could sense that as word of the raid got around, everyone was spooked. It was one thing to deal with an enemy who shot at you, and reassuringly stayed dead when you shot back. What did you do with enemies who bit you and then got back up when you shot them? He saw Mike a few feet away. The CIA officer had seen his share of crazy stuff, but this was something too weird even for him. The Rangers were now busy tending to the two wounded men, who were bleeding profusely from bites to their hands and necks.
'Get them Medevaced now!'
The next morning, they were airlifted to Kabul and then were on a flight to Ramstein airbase in Germany, when doctors at the base in Kabul said they just could not deal with the strange symptoms they were seeing. When the flights landed, horrified medics found everyone on board bit and scratched by their patients.
David and his team were out on the road again. He had heard that he was being recommended for a Navy Cross for the mission that had taken out Mullah Omar and Al-Zawahiri. Medals were always nice, but the biggest thing on his mind was the fact that he was finally doing something that mattered. His father, a New York firefighter, had perished in the rubble of the World Trade Center, and David had dedicated every single moment of his life since that day to avenging his father, and the thousands of others who had died on 9/11. He didn't look like much a warrior, standing five feet eight, and with a lean body, but what he lacked in size, he more than made up in determination and speed. He had hung in there when stronger and more experienced men had quit all around him at SEAL training in Coronado, and then he had taken his revenge in missions around the world- from Iraq to Afghanistan.
Mike was right by his side.
'Do you reckon there's any truth to this at all?'
'Mike, I've seen all kinds of terrorists and tough guys. They all like to talk it up but believe me, when you shoot them, they all stay down. Our boys must have been just panicked. Most of them are just kids on their first combat tour. I bet they never even hit those Taliban once.'
Rumours had been spreading like wildfire all over Afghanistan. Tales of black-turbaned Taliban who had come back from the dead, and who could not be killed. Monsters who had superhuman strength and speed, and were rampaging through whole villages at night, biting and scratching people and then disappearing into the mountains. David and his team were to check out the last reported sighting. Their brief was simple. Find out if these mythical `undead' Taliban existed, and if they did, then to shoot a few of them dead to prove to the Afghan people that they were just a figment of someone's imagination, or as David suspected, the Taliban propaganda machine in overdrive.
They were an hour into their hike through the hills when Rob spotted some movement behind them in the dark. David turned around to see a black turbaned man standing on a small hillock just fifty feet behind them.
How the hell had anyone got on their tail without their noticing it?
David brought his M4's scope to his eyes. With his night vision optics on, what he saw was bathed in a ghostly green light. Their stalker had a black turban tied around his head in the fashion the Taliban favoured, but the rest of him scarcely looked human. Despite the cold, he was wearing tattered clothes, revealing a body covered in boils, pus and blood. His skin was a sickly yellow and his mouth was open, revealing teeth with jagged, sharp edges.
'Dan, drop the bastard!'
Dan brought up his M82 to his shoulder but even before he could take aim, the man had disappeared from sight, moving faster than David had seen any man move. Just then Rob screamed, an ugly, keening sound. David turned to see him on the ground, a black-turbaned man on his chest, leaning over and biting his shoulders and chest. David's M4 was up in a flash and he fired a three round burst into the man. The shots sent the man sprawling against the rock face, but then to David's horror, the man got up. Close up, he looked even more horrible than the other man David had seen through his scope. He smelt like a cross between a dead mouse and a toilet that has not been flushed or cleaned for some time. His eyes were focused on David, and his lips were pursed back, revealing the sharp, blood-covered teeth.
Then, he leapt at Mike with surprising speed and bit him in the arm. The CIA officer had his handgun out and fired three 9MM rounds at point blank range even as the man's teeth sank into his left hand. The black turbaned man fell to the ground, and then seemingly jumped off the edge. David peered over to see him climbing down the sheer rock face. He then saw the two wounded men on the ground, blood oozing from their wounds. David had never been a particularly religious man, but he crossed himself, shuddering at the horror of what he had just seen with his own eyes.
***
TWO
Hina Rahman got up to get a cup of coffee, her creaking joints reminding her that she had come a long way from the days when she had been the heartthrob of every boy in college. Now she was just the crotchety old Professor who nagged them to do their assignments. Nobody would have told her that to her face, but while her joints may have weakened with age, her hearing was still sharp, and as she briefly looked in the mirror, her features were still sharp and the greying hair looked good on her. She savoured the hot liquid as she turned on the TV. Every news channel seemed to have only one item to report, the so-called Afghan Flu. She left CNN on as she set the dinner table. Over the clinking of glasses and plates, she heard the somber voice of the newscaster.
'In less than three days since it's first appearance, what doctors are calling the Afghan Flu is spreading like wildfire. Medical authorities are saying that there is still no cause for panic, but have warned against any travel to Afghanistan or Pakistan.'
Hina sniggered to herself with the thought that there wasn't exactly a long queue of tourists waiting to brave roadside bombs and drone attacks in India's two dysfunctional Islamic neighbours. Her father, a devout Muslim born in Lahore, would have probably hit her for such thoughts, but her home was Delhi, not Pakistan, which she had left at the age of one during the Partition in 1947. And while she considered herself a devout Muslim, she found nothing in common with the hateful radicals who seemed to hold sway nowadays in Afghanistan and Pakistan. She put the last plate in its place and then turned to the TV, planning to finish her coffee before she heated dinner. She flipped the channel to BBC, where they were interviewing the American President, who was in London for a summit. She had welcomed his election, not because of any other reason but because she found him strikingly handsome. She took comfort in the fact that sixty-five summers had still not entirely robbed her of the feelings and emotions that had once made her a vivacious young woman.
Those eyes that she had admired now looked filled with trepidation as the American President spoke.
'Ladies and gentlemen, we have been through a number of outbreaks before. Swine Flu, Bird Flu, SARS and many others. My heart goes out to everyone affected by this latest outbreak and their families, but I do want to reassure all of you that medical science is now at such a level that we can contain and eventually turn back such outbreaks.'
One of the reporters asked a question.
'Mr. President, could you update us on the latest number of confirmed cases in the US and Great Britain?'
The President turned to ask one of his advisors and then, for a brief moment, shook his head as if in disbelief, as he responded.
'We now have four thousand people in quarantine in the United States and two thousand here. Total confirmed cases worldwide stand at just under fifteen thousand.'
There was a collective gasp from the gathered reporters. Hina found herself mumbling a prayer. Fifteen thousand in just over two days? What disease was this that turned people so crazed that they bit anyone who came near them, and one bite was enough to infect a victim? And what about those rumours about them dying and coming back to life? How did medical science explain that?
Before the reporters could ask any more questions, the American President had left. Hina changed the channel to NDTV India, which was reporting the first confirmed cases in India. One of the `experts' was responding to a question on how the disease could have spread so fast.
'As far as it's known today, the infection was first spotted in a few young men flying out of Afghanistan through Pakistan. Hence the name. Then there are the American soldiers who developed the symptoms while being flown to Germany and infected dozens of others. Consider this simple fact. There are an estimated four million people traveling by air every single day across the world. Add people meeting them at airports, their families, staff on the planes and at airports, the taxi drivers who ferry them and so on. Literally each traveller could be in close contact with hundreds of people each day. So it's not surprising that the number of infections outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan has exploded so fast.'
Hina turned off the TV. It was a depressing enough day without having to worry about an exotic virus and it's bizarre effects. She brought the small cake she had baked to the table and sat down on the same chair that she had sat on at mealtime for the last thirty years. To her right was the head of the table, where Imran once sat. She stifled a sob at the memory. No, today was a day for celebration, not for sorrow.
She blew out the candle and cut a big slice that she placed on a plate and kept it where Imran would have once wolfed it down in a few bites. She took a small slice herself and whispered.
'Happy birthday, darling.'
Tonight, as had been the case for more than a dozen years, Hina ate alone. Also, as had been the case all those years, the table had been set for four. One for Imran, the love of her life, who had been taken from her by a heart attack; and two for her children, now in distant America, with lives and families of her own. Arranging plates for them served to remind her of a family that had once been, and yes, also made her feel less lonely.
She finished eating and then booted up her Macbook Air. She was a sixty five year old Professor of History, but when it came to technology, she was not a second behind any of her students. She surfed the Net for some time, and tiring of reading more gloom and doom about the Afghan Flu, she began to write.
This was normally the one time of day when Hina really felt all her worries lifting. When it was just her and her imagination, and of course her trusty keyboard, over which her fingers were now flying, almost as fast as the ideas coursing through her head. This was also her little secret. Hina Rahman, stern History professor by day, was also the worldwide bestselling author of a number of historical romances, which had been praised for their writing quality and historical authenticity and in equal measure loved and hated for their explicit content. Of course, nobody who knew solid, dependable Ms. Rahman would guess her capable of it as she wrote under a pen name, Alice Flowers. Alice had been the name of her favourite school teacher who had first encouraged her to write; and Flower was the literal translation of her Urdu name.
However tonight her mind was not really on her writing. She kept thinking of Rumana, her daughter in Boston and Said, her son in New York. With the infection spreading so fast, she hoped they and their families were okay. She saved her work and then got up to call them to check, but then realized it would be early morning for them. So she brought up the browser and checked CNN.com. There was a lot of breaking news and none of it was good.