Code Name "Spearhead"(2)
1413 Words
***
Inside the transport, Kane rested with his eyes closed.
The cabin vibrated. The engine's roar was audible even through noise-cancelling headphones. He counted his breaths—four in, four hold, four out. A battlefield trick to settle pre-op adrenaline.
But today, something was off.
His eyelids still felt gummed. Not physically, but perceptually—each blink felt like peeling a transparent film from his eyeballs. He rubbed his eyes. The skin temperature was normal, no unusual discharge.
The deep-sea sensation washed over him again.
Not a memory. A *feeling*. Of being encased, pressurized, isolated in some liquid space. He shook his head, clearing it.
"Spearhead, three minutes to drop point." The pilot's voice crackled in his ear. "Clear skies, good visibility. Good luck."
"Copy."
Kane checked his parachute harness. His fingers froze on a metal buckle.
On its edge was a small, irregular dent. Like it had been struck by something. He stared for a few seconds. An image flashed—
A bullet.
A shell casing.
A brass casing ejecting, spinning through the air, hitting a metal floor with a sharp *ping*.
Gone in an instant.
Kane drew a sharp breath. The oxygen in the cabin seemed to thin.
"Spearhead? All good?" the pilot asked.
"Good." Kane's voice was steady, unnervingly so to his own ears. "Ready for drop."
The cabin door light went from red to green. Wind howled in, whipping his suit. Below lay the outskirts of the New Kiev Free Zone, night lights sparse as scattered diamond chips.
He moved to the door, knees bent, ready to jump.
In that exact moment—
The sticky eyelid feeling returned. This time, accompanied by a faint, liquid sound. Not from the cabin. From inside his head. Like someone gently shaking a half-filled bottle inside his skull.
"Jump!"
He launched into the night sky.
Wind screamed past his ears. The ground rushed up. He pulled the cord. The chute deployed with a violent *whump*, yanking him upward.
Descent slowed. The world came back into focus.
Kane glanced up at the canopy, then down at the approaching LZ—a clearing at the edge of a coniferous forest. Everything by the book.
But that image of the shell casing was stuck in his mind. Why a casing?
He hit the ground, rolled, stowed his chute in undergrowth. Pistol charged. Night vision engaged, painting the world in sickly green.
The estate was eight hundred meters ahead, searchlights sweeping its walls.
Kane began his approach. Light steps, a cat on fallen leaves. His mind shifted into mission mode—tracking guard patrol intervals, calculating camera blind spots, mapping ingress.
Twenty minutes later, he scaled the perimeter wall, dropping onto the inner lawn.
The study was on the second floor, east side. He scaled a drainpipe, used an electronic pick on the window latch, slipped inside.
The room smelled of old paper and cigar. Kovalenko wasn't there—according to schedule, he'd still be at dinner. Kane's eyes swept the room, landing on an antique wooden cabinet in the corner.
Target.
He crouched before it, using a penlight on the lock—an old mechanical dial. He placed a stethoscope-like device against the mechanism and began turning the dial.
*Click. Click.*
Gear sounds were stark in the silence.
The outer lock released. Inside was a metal safe—the real target. Kane switched to a micro-drill, boring into the safe door's edge to implant shaped charges.
The drilling was quiet, but to him, it sounded like a pile driver.
His temples throbbed. A dull ache.
The deep-sea feeling surged. Stronger now—he could almost *feel* fluid flowing around him. Cold, viscous, enveloping. His eyelids were leaden again, not from sleep, but from a sodden, swollen immersion.
"Focus," he whispered to himself.
The drill bit pierced the final metal layer. He carefully inserted the micro-charge, set a three-second delay, retreated to the window.
Three.
Two.
One.
A muffled *thump*. The safe door buckled inward, bolts shearing.
Kane rushed forward, yanked it open. Inside lay a yellowing file folder, its seal still bearing the Nazi eagle in wax. He grabbed it, shoved it into a waterproof pouch, turned to leave—
The study door opened.
Kovalenko stood in the doorway, holding an old-fashioned revolver. His hooked nose looked like a blade in the low light.
"Put it down," he said in accented English.
Kane didn't move. His mind calculated: five meters, revolver, six rounds, elderly, slow reaction. His own silenced pistol was ready. Draw-and-fire time: 0.8 seconds.
Plenty.
"I said, put it down." Kovalenko's finger tightened on the trigger.
Kane smiled suddenly.
"You know," he said softly, "two things I hate most in this life. One is having a g*n pointed at me. The other is—"
He didn't finish. His body was already in motion.
Dive left, roll, draw, aim—the sequence fluid, rehearsed a thousand times. The silenced pistol coughed. The round punched through Kovalenko's forehead.
The old man fell backward. The revolver clattered onto the carpet.
Kane stood, moved to confirm the kill. Blood welled from the entry wound, spreading a dark stain on the expensive rug.
He needed to move. Guards would come, even for a silenced shot.
But his feet were rooted.
His eyes stayed fixed—not on Kovalenko's hand, but on the revolver beside it.
More precisely, on the revolver's cylinder. It was swung open. Five rounds remained. The sixth chamber was empty.
The fired round was now embedded in the wall opposite.
But Kane wasn't seeing the bullet.
He was seeing what was ejected, what had fallen onto the carpet after that shot was fired—
The shell casing.
Brass, faintly warm, glinting with a sickly hue in his night-vision green.
Time seemed to slow.
Kane stared at that casing. His mind detonated with a cascade of images:
A casing spinning in the air.
A casing striking a metal floor.
A casing rolling to his boots.
A boot stepping on it.
The owner of the boot looking up—a face blurred, but the stars on the shoulder insignia were piercingly clear.
That was...
"Alert! Intruder east side!" A guard's shout erupted from the estate grounds.
Kane snapped back to the present. Footsteps pounded down the hall.
He grabbed the file pouch, sprinted for the window, and leaped from the second floor. His knees buckled on impact, nearly spilling him. He gritted his teeth, pushed up, and ran flat-out for the extraction point.
Bullets whined past, slamming into tree trunks, spraying splinters.
His lungs screamed. But worse than the burn in his chest was the pain in his head—the liquid immersion sensation returned, now accompanied by a high-pitched tinnitus, like nails on a chalkboard.
The RV point was ahead. A black SUV idled on a forest trail.
Kane yanked the door open and threw himself inside. "Go!"
The vehicle lurched forward, leaving pursuit behind.
He collapsed into the back seat, breathing hard. The file pouch was clenched in his fist, knuckles white.
The driver glanced at him in the rearview. "You hit?"
"No," Kane said.
But he knew. Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
The SUV sped into the pre-dawn darkness. Kane leaned against the window, watching the forest blur past. The gumminess returned to his eyelids, this time so severe he could barely keep them open.
He forced a few hard blinks.
In that instant—the split-second of darkness between closed and open—he didn't see the passing trees.
He saw a massive, cylindrical glass tank.
Filled with pale blue fluid.
Suspended in the fluid was a human brain.
Across its neural network, tiny electrical sparks danced.
The vision lasted a tenth of a second.
Kane's eyes flew open. The trees were still there outside the window, the sky lightening to a fish-belly grey.
He touched his forehead. His hand came away slick with cold sweat.
"You look pale," the driver said again.
"Shut up and drive," Kane said.
He rested his head against the window glass and closed his eyes. This time, he didn't fight the deep-sea feeling.
He let himself sink.
Down into that cold, viscous, dark liquid.
The SUV drove on.
Ahead, the horizon began to glow. A new day was coming.
But for Kane, some nights never truly ended.
They were only sealed away, waiting for the right moment—
To c***k open.
Like powder igniting in a shell casing. Like a bubble rising from the abyss.
Like memory.
- Writer
