“Heading down to the next level,” came Priest’s voice.
After a monotonous process of clearing rooms and levels, Priest and Shaw ended up at the main research facility lab. They came to two enormous steel doors with 12”X12” windows in each, about five feet high.
Shaw looked through the left window into the lab. “The lab space looks empty, still no power visible feeding any of the equipment.”
“Let’s take a look,” Priest replied.
Shaw entered first and took up cover to the left, and Priest covered to the right. The lab was a large room with various working counters laid out in a row in the middle of the room. Along each wall were glass-door cabinets containing various beakers, bottles, and other research materials. The left and right sides of the room were desks situated with computers and servers, which all were powered off.
Shaw and Priest separated from each other to inspect the computers and servers on opposite sides of the lab. Priest updated the Team, “We are in the main lab facility and all the hard drives from the computers and servers are missing. We have also cleared the drawers and filing cabinets. There is absolutely nothing here. They have cleaned everything out. This place is completely sanitized. The intel is shit.”
Webb shouted, “Ok, get the hell out of there, I don’t like it. This mission is fucked!”
“Copy that!” Priest and Shaw made it to the second-floor landing, and as they were silently making their way to exit the building, they stopped in their tracks.
“Wait…you hear that?” Shaw called. “It sounds like shuffling.”
“Shit, it does. Stand by; we may have someone in the facility. Maintain silence until further notice,” Priest said.
Shaw and Priest made their way out of the stairwell into the second-level hallway. The dark hallway was long with multiple doors on each side. They inched their way down the hall. Priest shouldered his M4 at the ready with Shaw checking his M48. They strained to hear the sound they heard in the stairwell. At first, nothing. Then they heard the shuffling again. Then they heard a noise… an unfamiliar noise.
“What the hell is that?” whispered Shaw.
“I don’t know. I can’t place it. It almost sounds like a clicking.”
“Yeah, it’s creepy.”
Priest and Shaw were on their way down the hallway towards the sound. “Click, click… click, click” Shaw motioned toward the fourth door on the left. They set up on each side of the door. “Click, click… click, click”? The sound was louder now, and the cadence that reminded them of the Tick-Tock sound of a clock.
Priest give the signal to breech quietly. Shaw tried the door, and it is unlocked. “Click, click… click, click. “He slowly opened the door to a medium-size conference room. The NVG’s washed the room in an eerie green tint as they search for the source of the sound.
They spotted a figure sitting in a chair with its back to them at the end of the conference table. Priest noticed that the figure’s head was tilting from side to side in unison with the click-click sound…...click-click.
Shaw moved silently up to the figure, slowly swung the chair around, and backed away. In the chair sat a man. His blood-covered face wearing an oversized smile. He tilted his head to one side, then the other side while continuing to make the clicking sound. He was missing his left eye, which is just a bloody socket.
He met eyes with Shaw and then lunged out of his chair with an ear-piercing scream. The movement startled Shaw at first, but Shaw, being trained in hand-to-hand combat, threw a palm strike to the man’s face. The strike caused the man to stumble back.
Shaw then raised his M48 and fired a three-round burst right in the man’s face. The rounds exploded out the back of the man’s head, taking off the right side of his skull. Brain matter slid out of his skull and splattered on the ground. The rest of the man’s body hit the floor a split second later. “Holy shit,” Shaw barked. “Never seen nothing like that.”
“Who has?” Priest searched the body for identification and found a door access key with the man’s picture… Dr. Ahmadi. “He is one of the missing biologists from Pakistan.”
“What the hell is he doing all the way over here in Turkey?” Shaw asked
“Spider, we have a situation. This op is FUBAR! We need to beat feet,” Priest barked into his squad comms.
“Copy that, Father. Make your way out and we’ll cover your six. Bacardi, get us an Uber, ASAP. Time to blow this popsicle stand. Everyone on me.”
Priest and Shaw exited the facility after a few moments and posted up on Webb.
He looked at both men, “Sit rep.”
Priest chimed in first, “The facility is clean… sanitized. No documentation, no hard drives, no USB’s, nothing.”
Abarra spoke next, “Exfil in 20. We will just need to pop smoke.”
“Got it. What is the deal with the doctor in the…”? Webb trailed off. He heard faint clicking noises. Not just one, but many. By the look on the faces of the rest of the team, they heard it too.
Just then, the comms activated, “Spider, this is Overlord.”