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CHAPTER 14
SOUTHWEST OF AL-QADR
SYRIA
THERussian soldier performed the salute that General Aleksandr Semenov insisted on, but never returned. He enjoyed the mindless subservience of the gesture and, even more, he enjoyed the irony. Strictly speaking, he’d never been a member of the armed forces. The rank bestowed on him by the Russian government with great pomp and circumstance was just a convenience. A way of garnering the unwavering obedience of the men assigned to him.
Even more ironic was the fact that there was perhaps no category of human he disdained more than soldiers. While many had no choice but to join for a relatively brief mandatory service, those who made it their career were clearly defective. Men who lacked the intelligence, creativity, or strength to do anything more meaningful than offer themselves up as Moscow’s cannon fodder.
Even worse than the common foot soldier was their leadership. One would have thought that Russia’s failures on various battlefields would have caused a light to dawn, but the opposite was true. Everydefeat entrenched them deeper in the conviction that they needed to continue along the same path, but with greater resolve. And then there was the corruption. Left to their own devices, his fellow generals would issue their men guns made of cardboard and sell the real ones to pad their already swollen Swiss bank accounts.
Soldiers, by their very nature, were slaves. To their superiors. To their ideologies. To their illusions of glory and honor. Having said that, it was undeniable that they could occasionally be useful idiots.
Semenov continued the length of the hallway and pushed through a door at the end. The man sitting behind the desk that dominated the office leapt immediately to his feet. He was in his early sixties, with unkempt gray hair and a lab coat that identified him as something much more deadly than a soldier. A scientist.
“Give them to me,” Semenov said simply.
Dr. Konstantin Novikoff retrieved a plastic bag of white pills and handed it over.
“They’re larger,” Semenov said. The round shape stamped with two crescent moons was familiar, but the visual and physical weight had changed.
“Yes, sir. We’ve solved the physical withdrawal problem, but the compounds necessary added a bit of mass. Still, they continue to be smaller than most over-the-counter pain relievers.”
“When you say you’ve solved the withdrawal issue, definesolved.”
“We’re using something similar to xylazine. Severe withdrawal symptoms last an average of three times longer than they do for users of heroin and fentanyl.”
“What about pharmaceutical interventions like methadone?”
“Completely ineffective.”
Novikoff turned his computer monitor and started a video that depicted a whitewashed cell containing a single prisoner. It ran at five-times speed as they watched the twitchy, almost comical motions of a man in agony. He threw the blankets to the floor, glistening with sweat, and then immediately retrieved them to shiver beneath. Theact was repeated a number of times before he lunged for the toilet to vomit violently into it. According to the timer, he spent almost a minute convulsing there before sinking to the concrete floor and shouting up at the camera in the ceiling. There was no audio, but the pain and desperation on his face suggested that he was pleading for the narcotic that he’d become so dependent on.
“How much does the new formulation increase cost, Doctor?”
“About fifteen percent.”
Semenov nodded silently. Still far cheaper than a tank. And far more effective. It could flood across the borders of NATO states with only token resistance. No Javelin missile could destroy it. No surveillance drone could track it. And no embargo could starve it of fuel, ammunition, or spare parts.
“It was the last piece we needed to get one hundred percent voluntary uptake,” Novikoff added hopefully.
The scientist had been told that when he accomplished his scientific mission, he would be sent home to his family. And despite his undeniable intelligence, he actually seemed to believe it. In reality, he would eventually end up in the same mass grave as his many victims.
“I want to see.”
The observation area was on the top floor and had been created by replacing the windows looking into an interior courtyard with open railings. Even out of the sun, the heat was oppressive, but it did provide an excellent view of the fifteen or so prisoners below. All were wearing similar orange jumpsuits and all were being denied the gender separation customary in the region.
They were crowded into the shade on one side of the ten-meter-square space, with occasional skirmishes breaking out as men jockeyed for position and women tried to stay clear. Despite having access to far better food and medical care than they’d enjoyed in their prisons and refugee camps, all had a similar pallor and unsteady gait.
This was the cream of the many crops they’d run through thefacility. They were the ones who, despite being forced to use ever-improving captagon formulations, had maintained their ability to refuse it when use became optional. For some it appeared to be a simple genetic resistance to addiction. For others it was the depth of their religiosity. Still others relied on their unusual reserves of willpower or hatred of their captors. Now iteration 64XZ had broken through those defenses. Or so Novikoff said.
There was a large digital clock on the wall and as it crept closer to time for the pills to be distributed, the group’s agitation increased. With two minutes to go, the most desperate braved the sun and began to form a line in front of a barred window beneath Semenov’s position. The hierarchy was one that had formed organically numerous times—the strongest men at the front, descending to the weakest women at the back. A few shoving contests broke out between participants who were too evenly matched to have their positions completely codified. No damage was done, though. All had been denied their fixes for more than twenty-four hours and were now significantly weakened by withdrawal symptoms.
At precisely 1400, the window opened, and a woman dressed as a nurse began passing single doses through the bars. Semenov watched in silence as every one of them took their allotment, slammed it in their mouth, and swallowed without the aid of liquid.
The effect manifested much more slowly in pill form, but he was happy to wait as the test subjects became increasingly dazed. At the twenty-minute mark, a number of them—including one of the women—began stripping their clothes off. Others wandered aimlessly, losing their place in space and time. One man seemed frozen at the center of it all, staring directly into the sun. It was an interesting compulsion that left around seven percent of test subjects blind.
If this group of hardened resisters could be broken, what hope did drug users in Europe and America have?
