The Omega Sanction by Andrew Scorah (the best ebook reader for android .txt) 📕

Hardesty nodded to the men then came over to speak to Decker.

“It appears a small group of officers, and some scientists have taken refuge in one of the mining complexes they did not manage to blast upon their retreat. I want you men to go in and flush them out before they destroy anything else.”

“Only the seven of us, sir?”

“The Oberst there says they are not heavily armed, everyone else is tied up with other duties for now, head on down see if you can find them, I’ll send some others down as soon as I can free up some bodies.”

Hardesty pointed up the valley. “I’ve put two men at the entrance, head up there, they’ll give you a radio.”

Without another word, he walked over to the jeep and climbed in alongside th infantrymen. The jeep reversed then headed away.

“Another bullshit duty, “Cole griped.

“Quit yer moaning, let’s get this done then you can get back to losing money”

Genaro laughed.

Some twenty five tunnel entrances were bored into the hillside overlooking the valley. Evidence of vast construction activity lay all around. Some of the entrances had been blasted shut, the ones that were intact now had infantrymen on permanent guard duty outside, their weapons trained into the tunnels.

As they approached, a guard waved them over. Decker and his men jogged up the side of a train track embankment then up to the tunnel.

A metal canopy had been built above the tunnel entrance, possibly the beginning of some kind of camouflage system.

“Just the seven of you?” He asked, as a greeting.

“Fraid so,” Decker answered.

“How many’s supposed to be down there?” Cole asked.

“About twenty two, officers, scientists and a couple of Waffen bodyguards.”

“But there maybe more, right?” Decker threw down his cigarillo, crunching it out under his boot.

The guard shrugged.

Cole took the radio off the other guard, and strapped it to his back.

“C’mon then, let’s do this.”

Decker strode towards the tunnel. The first few feet had been dug out of solid rock, stretching into semi darkness, the way lit by weak lights every few feet. The hairs on the back of Decker’s neck stood to attention. He knew this was a shit detail, also, he had a fear of confined spaces, after falling into a sinkhole when he was a kid. The land around the farm he had grown up on in Alabama was riddled with tunnels from a nearby mine, he had been out wandering the fields with his dog, Skip, when the ground beneath his feet had opened up, swallowing him and his dog. Despite his screams, he was not discovered until the next day.

He felt a cold sweat break out all over his skin. A hand on his shoulder broke the spell. He turned to see Genaro.

“You okay, Sarge?”

“Yeah, let’s do this, eh.”

Gripping his Thompson, and taking a deep breath, he stepped into the cool air of the tunnel.

Keep it together, Decker thought.

Not wanting to appear weak in front of the others. He took point. They walked in single file through the ruff cut tunnel. No on spoke, only the noise of their breathing came back at them from the tunnel walls.

Decker felt the whole weight of the earth and rocks above him.

A series of twists and turns brought them to a concrete wall, with a closed metal hatch door set in the center. Decker held up his hand.

“Stay where you are, they could have booby trapped the door.”

Decker put his hand on the central locking wheel but stood to one side of the door. He looked to the others, signalling them to hit the deck against the wall of the tunnel.

He had seen it before, where doors or vehicles had been turned into bombs. The thought made his hand sweat. He rubbed his hand on his jacket before placing it back on the wheel. Giving it a hard twist, he threw himself away and against the wall. Nothing happened. He turned back to the door, and pulled it open. Machine gun fire erupted from the open door. Bullets, spanged off the walls, and caromed around the tunnel.

Genaro and Cole returned fire.

Decker pulled a grenade from his utility pouch, pulled the pin, and then tossed it through the door. The explosion when it came was loud. He felt his ears pop. He jumped in front of the door and fired from the hip. There was no need though, he saw the German soldier who had been operating the Spandau machine gun, slumped over the sandbag emplacement, blood pouring from his head.

Decker stepped through the hatch, weapon at the ready. He moved to one side of the door as the others followed. The interior here was different. The walls were constructed of reinforced concrete. A well-lit corridor extended before them, four doorways on either side leading off to who knew what. They could also hear a faint whining noise coming from beneath their feet.

Before moving off, they checked the rooms leading off the corridor. Finding nothing but desks and scattered paperwork, they headed deeper into the complex. The noise became louder as they descended deep underground, along a series of switchback corridors. Each one is leading to workshops or storerooms. The workshops were full of strange equipment the likes of which they had never seen before.

“This is a wild goose chase, sarge, the krauts probably long gone by now,” Genaro said, his face etched with the tension they all felt. The strange noise was now ear splittingly loud.

They had come to a larger hatch door set in a grey wall of the now familiar block building work. A Swastika was emblazoned above the door.

Decker was about to answer when the hatch burst open, a man in a white coat stumbled out. His face was red. Blood poured from his ears and eyes.

“Die Glocke läutet, Die Glocke läutet, Kammler ist verrückt!”

The man screamed before collapsing, his body wracked by some kind of fit.

They all froze except for one of the men who made to move towards the man.

“Don’t touch him. We don’t know what they’ve been doing down here,” Decker said, “Anybody understand what he was saying.”

“Something about a bell ringing, and someone called Kammler being crazy,” Genaro supplied.

They all looked straight at him as if he had been the one raving.

“What! What? I had a German friend before the war, taught me a few words, education guys, you should try it sometime.”

They moved around the now still figure. Edging towards the door. The noise now was deafening. A reddish purple light glowed beyond the door.

Decker stepped through followed by Genaro, Cole and the other men.

The sight, which greeted them, was the strangest any of them had seen before.

Beyond any experience.

They stood in a vast cavern, taller than a cathedral, and wider than two football fields. Around the edges sat various pieces of electronic equipment, the purpose unknown to Decker or the others. The bodies of many dead scientists lay on the floor of the cavern. They had all been shot.

The strangest sight was located in the middle of the cavern. A massive circular structure, 30 meters wide and 10 high. With its 12-meter-thick columns and horizontal beams. The structure was part-reminiscent of some ritual pagan edifice, reminding Decker of the concrete base of a cooling tower, only bigger. Attached by thick, heavy looking chains to the concrete columns, but floating in the air was a device which looked like a huge bell. By Decker’s estimation, it was about fifteen feet tall, and ten feet wide. The base of the bell was furiously spinning anticlockwise. Electricity arched from the top of the device. The bell was throwing off a reddish purple glow, enveloped in this glow were the men they had come to find. Twenty-five men stood beneath the bell. Some in uniform others in scientific smocks; the glow bathed the group of men.

The noise was now climbing up the scale, becoming unbearable. Decker dropped to his knees. The others followed. He felt a popping in his ears, felt warm wetness run down his neck.His skin tingled and itched as if he was covered with ants crawling all over him. As he watched, the bell began to lower onto the group. One of the men, in the uniform of an officer, smiled at him and raised his right hand in a Sieg Heil gesture. The bell covered them all. Suddenly a bright flash exploded from the bell shaped device, which spread out-wards. Where it touched Decker, it burned like nothing he had ever felt, he had a fleeting image of being back on the farm, running with Skip, and then nothing.

DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

BACKGROUND REPORT

CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET/EYES ONLY

AUTHOR: WEBB, CHARLOTTE (D-6)

SUBJECT: GEHEIME STAAT

INCIDENT 1: 9/9ATTACK ON A MARINE BASE

Helmand Province, Afghanistan

In the early hours of December 12, a large and heavily armed force of over one hundred men attacked a remote United States Marine Corps staging and supply base in southern Afghanistan.

The force attacked with precision, skill and overwhelming violence, killing all of the twenty-two engineers and maintenance staff stationed at the isolated base.

The attackers’ objective, it seems, was not the murder of US service personnel. They were after the aircraft kept at the base.

The attackers took 8 Black Hawk attack helicopters plus 8 Marine Corps V-22 Osprey ‘Warbird’ gunships

INCIDENT 2: 10/10

THE THEFT OF THE ‘Kruzenshtern ’

One month and one day later, on October 10, a Russian cargo freighter, the Kruzenshtern , was seized by persons unknown, off the west coast of Africa.

According to its cargo manifest, the ship was carrying timber, fuel and building supplies destined for Zimbabwe and its seizure was initially believed to be the work of West African pirates. But then the Russians sent half of their Atlantic fleet to find the ship.

Our investigations have revealed that the Kruzenshtern was actually carrying a large weapons shipment intended for sale to three embargoed African regimes. Its cargo was:

* 310 AK-47 ASSAULT RIFLES;

* 4.5 million rounds of 7.62mm AMMUNITION for those rifles;

* 90 RPG-7 GRENADE LAUNCHERS;

* 9 STRELA-1 ANTI-AIRCRAFT VEHICLES, each equipped with four 9M31 surface-to-air missiles;

* 12 ZALA-421-08 unmanned aerial surveillance DRONES;

* 18 machine-gun-mounted JEEPS;

The freighter was manned by a ten-man squad of Spetsnaz special forces troops.

This last fact makes it extremely unlikely that the Kruzenshtern was taken by African pirates. African pirates are usually poor fishermen who attack commercial vessels for the purpose of securing ransoms; at the first sign of any military presence on a ship they invariably flee.

On the contrary, the force of men that took the Kruzenshtern knew exactly what was on it and was skilled enough to defeat a team of crack Russian paratroopers to get it.

INCIDENT 3: 11/11

THE TORTURE OF AN AMERICAN OFFICIAL

Washington, D.C., USA

Shortly after midnight on March 3, a small group of unidentified men raided the Georgetown home of the former US Secretary of Defense, killed his two bodyguards, and kidnapped the ageing Secretary.

The secretary was found - alive - by two early-morning hikers in Rock Creek Park, bound to a torture device. He had been waterboarded. During his subsequent debriefing, the Secretary exhibited symptoms of severe shock. He continually shouted Geheime Staat

INCIDENT 4: 12/12

Soon after midnight on January 1, a temporary UN prison camp in the Darfur region of Sudan was raided by a force of armed and masked men.

102 prisoners variously described as ‘revolutionary fighters’, Islamic militants from several African nations, and narco-mercenaries’of German origin were freed from the prison and spirited away. All but two of the camp’s UN guards were killed.

The two surviving guards reported that the raiding force used a variety of Russian-made assault weapons and two American Cobra attack helicopters. The raiders departed with their large number of escapees in two V-22 Osprey gunships with US Marine Corps markings.

Before they left, they spray-painted a message on one of the prison walls: ‘Geheime Staat JUST GOT STRONGER ...’

INCIDENT 3: 11/11

A ROBBERY OVER GREECE

In the early hours of November 11, an unmarked German