Pale Horse Sample Chapter from the Dark Paradigm series by Jay Tinsiano and Jay Newton.
All Rights Reserved.
Cache 5
Parque Nacional Sierra de las Nieves, Andalucia, Spain
Day 1
It was the incessant sound of early morning birdsong close to where he was sleeping that pulled Joe Bowen from his troubled dream.
That and the unfamiliar smell from the canvas tent that surrounded him in an almost claustrophobic cocoon. He rolled onto his back and sat upright on the cot bed before taking a long pull from his water bottle, the coldness of the water in his mouth sending a sharp pain through his jaw even as he swallowed.
He had set up the single-man tent when the previous evening had drawn in, just a few hundred metres from the supplies cache hidden in the woods near Iznájar.
He checked his phone: 6:25 a.m. No signal.
Within fifteen minutes, he had taken down the small tent and packed everything away so there was no sign of him being there and walked through the surrounding dry woods to where the hidden cache was located. It was unusually cold for the time of year, and Joe remembered Javier talking about some extreme cold front coming across Europe in the coming weeks. Perhaps this was the start of it?
The fresh morning air was almost sweet as Joe set off, and at a circle of trees that formed a natural clearing in the woods, Joe paused and knelt down on one knee by a clump of rocks. There, he brushed a hand over an area of dry bracken and loose stones, revealing a rough wooden hatch with a thick combination-styled padlock looped through a locking clasp. When the hatch was clear of debris, he held the padlock, forcing the little numbered wheels to correct the combination, and when it clicked open, removed it. Pausing for a moment, he looked around the still woods, straining his ears for any unusual sounds.
Satisfied he was alone, Joe pulled up the hatch door. A step ladder descended into the dark hole, and Joe took a flashlight from his backpack before climbing down. The space was just a bit higher than Joe, standing at six feet, but he still stooped a little as he moved along the recess, pointing his beam of light towards a larger space ahead that was around seven metres long and just as wide. Along the walls, metal shelves stacked with crates and tubs of supplies filled the underground room. Joe focused his light on one of the sealed tubs, marked as containing packets of freeze-dried meals. The dates, written in marker pen, told him the dry food bags inside only had a few months left before they needed to be replaced. He intended to take these back to base camp. He walked around the shelves, inspecting each one, then began moving the tubs containing outdated supplies to the bottom of the ladder, ready to take out. He regretted not bringing someone to help at the thought of hauling it all out of the hole by himself, but he’d manage.
This cache was one of many ‘holes’ in the ground that Liberatus groups on the ground had prepared in the previous years to provide supplies in whatever scenario they would be needed for. The location of such hidden stashes with food supplies, tools and basic survival packs was known only to those who needed to know.
Time to bring the truck nearer, Joe thought.
Joe climbed back out, closed the hatch and began heading through the trees, his boots crunching once more the dry bracken. The air had assumed a metallic edge, tainted now with a hint of chemicals, as if there were a distant fire.
Joe checked his phone again and frowned. Still no signal. He stopped and rummaged around in his backpack and pulled out an older Nokia ‘burner’ phone he always kept on him that had a better internal aerial. No signal on this one either, which he thought was quite unusual. He’d never had connection problems in all the previous times he had been in this area before. He continued walking until he reached the truck. It was parked in a clearing just off the narrow road that ran through the woodlands, again hidden from any passing vehicles.
Joe’s plan was to drive it a mile down the road and turn off into a track that led nearer to the cache. They had used it many times when supplying the hole, and the relative seclusion kept any supply runs away from prying eyes.
That plan wilted on the vine as Joe turned the ignition key and was met with a distant spooling of the starter motor but no spark of life from the engine. After a few more failed attempts, Joe leaned his tattooed arms on the steering wheel and considered his options. If the battery became dead by fruitless cranking of the engine, he would certainly need to commandeer another vehicle and use his jump leads to get the vehicle going. Assuming it was the battery. He checked his phones again. Both still without signal. He was going to have to take a walk and see if anyone in the nearest town could help.
This was going to take a while.
Joe took out a flask of black coffee and poured himself a mug, gulping the now cold beverage down between bites of a wrapped pastry he had bought the previous day en route.
He began to feel unsettled, as if something was wrong. It was more than the phones not working or the vehicle not starting, but he realised it stemmed from an odd quietness which had settled around him. Even at this far distance, in this relatively remote location, he could normally hear the traffic from the highway, but as he strained his ears, he could hear nothing apart from that which was coming from the wildlife. He scanned the clear blue skies and saw no contrails of any passenger aircraft anywhere, although he knew this area was under the flight path of several major airlines.
Then there was Operation Hallows. Zoe had suggested the date might be significant, alluding to October 31st. The files retrieved from Faber and Xael mentioned implementing the worldwide drill involving the military, political and intelligence apparatus of the Western Powers.
Joe knew these drills were often used as a cover for some nefarious event. Usually, the details were the same as the drill to cause maximum confusion for those involved. His own father, Frank, had once been caught up in one such event in Hong Kong where a supposed anti-terrorist exercise became an actual ‘live’ event, and his father had been caught like the proverbial fly in some web of lies and deceit. It had changed his father’s life forever and had led him into a life of deception with MI6 and Ghost 13 before he had seen the light and then used his skills to help Liberatus.
Frank, and to a lesser extent, Joe had learned valuable lessons from that, mainly that the governments and their military and intelligence agencies would do absolutely anything to keep the power structures and influence they exerted in place for their real masters.
Joe grabbed his bag, jumped down from the truck and locked it before walking back to his former campsite. He packed up his rucksack, which he had packed with dry food supplies, water, and MREs.
He was now unsure what was happening and wanted to be prepared. If there were bigger issues than just his truck not starting, he needed to get back to the hive.
Joe left the truck hidden and walked along the winding, narrow road that snaked through the woodland where some morning mist still lingered. It was a good twenty minutes before the nearest town, Tolox, came into view. This was a town Joe had only driven through a handful of times when he had visited the supplies cache. Normally, there would be little sign of any life in this sleepy town of only a couple of thousand souls, but this morning, small groups of people were gathered out on the main road and around one of the food stores in deep discussion.
Joe approached them, and a tall man on the outskirts of a group turned towards him as he approached and nodded a greeting.
“Hola. Buenos dias.”
“Buenos,” a few muttered in return before the group continued their discussion. There had been a complete loss of power by the sound of it.
Joe caught the eye of the tall man again and asked him in Spanish.
“What is happening? My truck’s broken down, and there’s no phone signal.”
The man nodded his head vigorously. “Si senor, there seems to be some kind of power outage. None of our phones work, and most of our vehicles will not start. My friend has just arrived from Madrid and said there was a rumour of a passenger plane crashing into the sea up the coast. We don’t know what is happening!”
At these words, Joe felt a lurch in his stomach. A feeling of dread. Along the street, he saw, for the first time, a handful of stationary vehicles in the middle of the road. A group of people were helping push a Subaru station wagon onto the side of the road. He drifted away from the group and walked down the street, looking into a dark café where a few customers were also in animated discussion, gesticulating at their mobile phones. A young woman behind the counter gestured to him.
“There’s no electrical power here, but our cooker runs on a gas bottle, so we can give you something.”
“Thank you. Do you have a phone? A landline, I mean,” Joe asked as he went to find a seat in the café.
The girl jabbed a thumb over her shoulder towards the back room.
“There is a dial tone, but it doesn’t work,” she said with a shrug.
“Do you mind if I look?”
The girl waved her hand. “Go ahead.”
Joe walked into the café, nodding at a few of the elderly men who simply regarded him suspiciously. Guided by the girl, he went around the back, where he saw an older man leaning over a large cooking pot sitting on a gas ring connected to a propane bottle, stirring the pot’s contents and mumbling to himself.
“Just here.” The girl pointed to the phone in the hallway. “Do you want a tortilla? No coffee until the power’s back, though,” she said, pointing to a Keurig coffee maker.
Joe smiled at her. “A tortilla would be great. And I guess just some water then.”
He picked up the phone, but if there had indeed been a dial tone, it was gone now. He drummed down the connectors a few times. Still nothing.
This was a major outage, but something gnarled inside him. The loss of power to the electrical grid and phone lines seemed to follow exactly what he had read about Electromagnetic Pulses.
Joe returned to the café, shrugged at the girl and sat down, placing his backpack under the table. He rummaged around, brought out his laptop, and fired it up. There was still battery charge. He clicked on the Internet Access icon to check if there were any Wi-Fi networks available at all, but his settings were blank.
Of course, without power, there wouldn’t be, but Joe felt compelled to make sure. With no phone signals, connecting to a hotspot wasn’t an option either.
Joe put away his laptop as the girl brought him the omelette and water, and he focused on eating his food, but his dark thoughts soon returned. He needed to get back to the base and fast.
Despite telling himself that it might just be a power outage, one maybe on a national level, and that things would still get back to normal for the country, deep down, he felt this was it. They had flicked the off switch to cause chaos, hunger and death. That would be the next phase. Now, it seemed obvious. All the signs had been there.
The massive drill that was Operation Hallows was in effect as the mask for the more sinister and real event: Pale Horse.
Order Pale Horse (Dark Paradigm #4) on Amazon Kindle or these stores.
