Sub-Sahara

by Ethan Arkwright

  ‘Wait!’ Rebecca called to everybody. ‘We need to work together on this. Our supplies are all gone; we have no food, no water, and no shelter. We need a coordinated response to this—and to the way the message of the city goes out to the world.’

  The people with phones in their hands ignored her and walked away to continue their calls or messages.

  Phil was standing directly in front of Rebecca. His face darkened. ‘I don’t work for you,’ he stated flatly, before turning away to raise the phone to his ear.

  Frantically, Rebecca reached for her phone.

  Chapter 9

  11:59:00 to Endgame

  The sun was just beginning to set over the small Channel Island of Chisark, between England and France. The island was wholly owned by reclusive billionaire Sir Henry Stratton and was in the unique position of not being part of the United Kingdom. The billionaire had purchased the island for an undisclosed sum fifteen years previously and was technically holding the island as a fief on behalf of the queen. This arrangement suited Sir Henry for a couple of reasons: the intrusive British press could come nowhere near his castle on the island, and some of his privately funded projects could be developed further without being subject to laws of the United Kingdom.

  As the sun dipped over the horizon, Stratton’s large S-92 executive helicopter roared over the shore of the island from the direction of London, banking steeply towards the island’s helipad before landing in a colossal roar of rotors and wind that flattened all the vegetation around it. The wheels had barely touched the ground when a side door flew open. A woman in her mid-thirties in a smart, black business suit and white shirt leapt out and ran towards the black golf buggy that was waiting on the edge of the helipad area.

  ‘Where’s Cavill?’ the woman yelled as soon as she sat down.

  ‘He’s in the killing house,’ the driver replied as he punched the accelerator. The golf cart jerked forward to head down the hill at pace.

  ‘They’re mid-exercise. They can’t be disturbed.’ He was talking loudly as they put some distance between the huge helicopter, with its engine running and rotors turning, and themselves.

  ‘They bloody well can be,’ the woman yelled back. ‘They need to be on that bloody chopper in ten minutes. This is exactly what the boss is paying them for.’

  The buggy followed a looping concrete path along the edge of the grounds of the huge private castle. Manicured lawns gave way to more traditional fields as they crested a small hill. In the distance, they could see a long, windowless, two-storey building.

  ‘What the hell are they doing in there?’ the woman yelled over the wind as they sped through the darkening day.

  ‘They’re practising clearing a room of enemy fighters in a purpose-built practise house that mirrors the original Special Air Service “killing house” training facility,’ the driver yelled back. ‘We’ll be there in a couple of minutes.’

  ‘Good,’ the woman replied. ‘I always questioned why the boss would fund his own special-forces team. He’s about to get some serious return on investment now.’

  ***

  Up at the house, a four-man team crouched by the newly installed front door in black full-protective combat gear: Nomex flame-resistant assault suit, assault vest, ceramic armour plates, ballistics helmet, respirator, medical kit, spare ammunition, radio, grenades, some ‘flashbangs,’ pistol, and Heckler & Koch MP5 9mm submachine gun. Another four-man team waited behind them as backup. One of the men pressed a detonator in his hand, and the door exploded outwards in a hundred shards. The first four men were instantly up and charging through the hole with automatic weapons drawn in front of them. Three of them sprinted up the stairs; the fourth brought up the rear to give covering fire in case any hostile heads popped over the railings, offering to be blown off. The men slowed at the landing, checked it was clear, and moved across to the door of the room in which the heat signatures showed the hostages and terrorists were located. The backup team filed in and covered the rear while being prepared to help the forward team at any time.

  The drill was for the four-man team to clear the room, which held a mix of terrorists and hostages. One man kicked the door in, and another threw in a flashbang. These were stun grenades containing mercury and magnesium powder that created a blinding flash and one hundred and sixty decibels of sound, the effect of which was to blind, deafen, and disrupt the balance function of a person for at least five seconds. The men charged into the room as the explosives went off. The plugs in their ears and the tinted eyepieces of their full-face respirators protected them. Years of training in special-forces units had gradually conditioned them to the effects of the flashbangs in their kit, so they knew what to expect, which gave them a critical time advantage. Each man instinctively covered his respective arc in the room to prioritize and take out threats. The room lit up with muzzle flashes as each man instantly pumped half a clip of ammunition into three gun-toting rubber dummies in different corners of the room. Their guns immediately swivelled to three people on the opposite wall with their backs to them. It was a video projection on the wall. Suddenly, all three figures moved and turned, but only the one on the far left had a weapon. The troopers fired a three-shot burst into the target simultaneously.

  ‘End-Ex. Stand down,’ a loud voice said over the intercom system. All the lights in the room came on.

  The four men relaxed and immediately pulled off their respirators to suck in deep breaths of air. Continued exercises while carrying nearly forty kilograms of kit in a confined space and breathing through a respirator was hard work.

  The rest of the unit piled into the room until twelve people in total made a circle for the debrief – the two four man teams and the last four members of the unit who had been observing the exercise via closed circuit television.

  James Cavill, the leader of the unit, stepped up. Dressed in black combat gear, he was six foot three, muscular, and had black hair and grey eyes.

  ‘That was good, lads, but still not quick enough. It’s three seconds to empty a clip, and you took four.’

  One of the combatants stepped forward with his mouth open to speak.

  ‘Sealed,’ Cavill said.

  All twelve people reacted instantly by closing their eyes and putting their fingers into their ears just before a flashbang went off in the room.

  As soon as the blinding flash and concussive sound were over, Cavill used hand signals to move his people to new positions in the room, according to where he wanted them. Closing their eyes and blocking their ears had mitigated the effects of the stun grenade somewhat. The men were affected, but they were still operational. Speaking the code word ‘sealed’ in isolation of a sentence alerted team members that a stun grenade was about to detonate. They practised the exercise infrequently, due to the potential for long-term hearing damage, but the tactic was handy in situations in which they could not use guns or wanted to destabilise a room. The split-second reaction gave them a huge advantage over an adversary that would experience the full effects of the grenade.

  The exercise was over in five seconds; everybody had successfully defended himself against the blast and was now positioned exactly where Cavill wanted him.

  ‘I told you we would complete two more exercises this afternoon,’ Cavill said, smiling.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ one of the black-clad troopers said. ‘Wasn’t expecting that.’

  ‘Well, we’re in great shape,’ Cavill said. ‘I know that we only do these live-fire exercises three times a year and can only do them here because of the UK gun laws, but I’m pleased how none of you’ve lost the edge. Now, let’s get out of this kit and go grab a beer.’

  All of the soldiers cheered.

  Outside the building, the golf cart carrying the woman in the suit skidded to a halt in the gravel. The woman leapt out and marched towards a man standing guard and holding a radio handset at the entrance to the house. Next to him, a sign said, ‘Danger—live-fire exercises.’

  ‘Give me that ra
dio,’ the woman demanded.

  The guard recognised the woman as one of Sir Henry’s top advisers and immediately handed the handset over.

  The woman depressed the communication button on the side of the radio. ‘Code word is “fortitude.” We have situation alpha-nine in progress.’

  Ten seconds later, Cavill came bursting out of the front door with his twelve-man team sprinting behind him.

  ‘How long has it been since the distress signal?’ Cavill asked as he came to an abrupt halt in front of the messenger. The woman was momentarily taken aback by the striking presence towering over her.

  ‘I…I’ve been sent to pick you up. We have the Sikorsky still running. Orders are to get your team and your kit to the briefing point ASAP. They’re loading your standard away containers as we speak.’

  ‘Right.’ Cavill turned and yelled to his unit, ‘We leave in ten, which gives five for each of you to check your correct kit has been loaded. Go!’

  They all sprinted and leapt into two parked Land Rover Defender 110s and roared off towards the helipad.

  Chapter 10

  As the large Sikorsky landed outside Stratton’s private hangar at Biggin Hill Airport in Kent, Cavill could see two Gulfstream jets being readied on the tarmac. He ordered his unit to supervise the transfer of their kit from the helicopter to the jets and then hit the showers to prepare to leave. He wanted his people fresh when they left, as he did not know when they would be seeing showers again. Cavill ran straight to the executive offices for his briefing. There was a small shower stall on board that he could use, but it would not do twelve or more people.

  When he got to the executive offices, he fully expected to see Sir Henry Stratton, but was instead greeted by an empty boardroom with a large television screen at one end. This disconcerted him a little, and he turned to see the woman in the suit catching up to him. She shot him a breathless glare, pressed a button on her phone, and closed the door on Cavill. He was in the room by himself and a little confused. The huge screen lit up to fill with the larger-than-life figure of Sir Henry Stratton.

  ‘James, m’boy! Good to see you.’ Sir Henry’s voice boomed though speakers integrated into the ceiling. ‘Sorry I can’t be there in person but couldn’t get out of my current…commitments. Take a seat. You’ll need it for what I’m about to tell you. This could be the finest moment of our endeavour.’

  Cavill grabbed a bottle of water from a selection on the side panel and sat down.

  ‘Now,’ the large image of Stratton said, leaning towards the camera. ‘One of the philanthropic organisations I give a lot of money to has been funding an advanced weather satellite that is programmed to be the first to find and track weather anomalies. It gives the greatest accuracy and clarity of picture to boot. So we were quite excited to get the first and best sight of what that hurricane over West Africa was doing. It’s a relatively small enterprise, funded mostly by me, which has the advantage that whatever information we get can be digested quickly for action. The Americans and other large countries will see similar pictures, but anything that needs to get to a different agency or branch of government always takes time, you see.’

  Cavill didn’t see. He was waiting to be told of a mission where his special-forces team could make a difference in the world, and Sir Henry was going on about weather satellites.

  ‘In essence,’ Sir Henry continued, ‘we have a head start on everybody else.’

  ‘What’s the objective?’ Cavill asked.

  ‘A picture still paints a thousand words, doesn’t it?’ Sir Henry said. ‘If you go to the printer in the corner, I’ll send through these pictures that everyone’s so excited about. These can only be sent over wired connections in a closed VPN for now, for obvious security reasons.’

  Cavill dutifully got up and moved to the printer as Sir Henry leant to the side and clicked a few buttons on his laptop. The printer sprang to life in a mix of light and sound and started pumping out a series of pictures. Cavill picked up each one for examination as it spooled out from the machine.

  ‘It looks like a ruined city in a valley with a silver pyramid at the centre,’ Cavill said.

  ‘That’s exactly what it is. So what, right? Well, there are a couple of interesting things about this place. One is that yesterday, we did not know it existed. That valley was buried under the sand of the Sahara. Bloody sub-Sahara, my friend. The force of that super hurricane blew all the sand clear off it. It’s moved the southern edge of the Sahara three hundred miles north, you know.’

  ‘Really?’ Cavill said. He still didn’t see where his unit fitted in with the information given so far.

  ‘The second fact is the far more interesting one. This mission is not about the city or the pyramid. It’s about what’s inside the pyramid. There’s a massive energy reading coming out of that building, and I mean massive. We’re picking up shifting temporal radio nuclei that don’t match any known isotopes and a frequency above one hundred exobars with median output of ten terajoules. Whatever it is, has been buried for a few thousand years of recorded history and is still pumping out huge amounts of energy. That means there could be some kind of sustainable energy source in there. God knows what it is or where it came from, but if that’s what it is…it would change the course of human history.’

  ‘So, we get in there first and secure the energy source,’ Cavill surmised.

  ‘Exactly. The world’s population is going to rise to eleven billion in the next hundred years. Energy consumption is going to rise by 50 percent in the next fifty years. The global energy mix is already a disaster, and the first to get a sustainable energy source could literally reshape geopolitics overnight. So the stakes are high.’

  Cavill was getting excited.

  ‘This is exactly why you and I put our special-forces team together,’ Stratton said. ‘All the major countries will be piling in for this, and all will serve their own self-interest. None of them can be trusted to do the right thing for the greater good.’

  ‘And if we do secure this energy source, what will we do with it?’ Cavill asked.

  ‘I’ll run it through my private science labs and share the results and resource with every decent nongovernmental organisation and charity in the world.’

  Cavill nodded at the screen. This was his group’s reason for existing. Cavill had been a major in the British Army and a captain in the SAS. In a desire to make a positive, first-hand difference in the world, he joined the British Army after graduating university. At age thirty, after a distinguished military career, he became frustrated that the army was always cleaning up the aftereffects of events happening, rather than being proactive in trying to secure an early positive victory. He saw many good people with good intentions who were hamstrung by the bureaucracy of government and the vacillating minds of politicians.

  He was tired of turning up in villages after they had been razed to the ground. He consequently resigned his commission and left the army.

  In an effort get to trouble spots more quickly and bypass the slow processes he endured in the army, he then worked in the private sector for various security companies across North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Although these organisations were more nimble and able to act more quickly than the armed forces, he became unhappy with how they operated above the law, with total disregard for human life, and with an interest only in profit.

  This prompted Cavill to start his own security company, made up of handpicked personnel from the SAS and other special-forces units around the world; good, decent men and women who shared his moral and ethical views and would sign up to his code. His company specialised in safeguarding humanitarian aid organisations and various charities operating in the world’s trouble spots.

  His work and reputation led Stratton to approach him. Stratton had the idea of taking James’s force to operating at what he called ‘the next level’ in making a positive difference. This meant a huge step up in funding, connections, access to resources, and getting to situations b
efore they turned into bad news stories.

  This mission was perfect.

  ‘How much of a head start do we have?’ he asked.

  ‘We estimate twelve hours,’ Stratton replied. ‘The pictures would have started in government weather departments. We estimate it will take twelve hours to get them shifted to and then digested by the right agencies and matched up with the energy reading before a decision is made to send in their special forces. I’ve already called your office in Victoria to tell them the time frame to get you to the Sahara. They have organised what they called “infiltration package six.” A rented Antonov will be waiting at Maaten al-Sarra Air Base in southern Libya. I pulled a few strings with friends in government, and the Libyans were happy to allow use of the base for a fee.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Cavill said. ‘Very good.’

  ‘We have an additional advantage,’ Stratton added. ‘We already have someone on the ground. I was funding the lead on an archaeological dig close by. Lady named Rebecca Grainger. Last time I spoke to her, she was literally about to walk into the ancient city.

  ‘More good news,’ Cavill said.

  ‘Good and concerning,’ Stratton said. ‘We can’t get hold of Rebecca. In her last contact, she said that everyone in her group was trying to contact outside parties. We don’t know how successful they were, and we’ve not been able to raise her since. Very unlike her. I think something has happened. We don’t know if she’s alive or dead. Find her, James.’

  ‘Will do. Anything else?’

  ‘Yes, here comes the bit you won’t like. You’re going to take a passenger from Biggin Hill and then pick up two more at the plane switch in North Africa.’

  ‘C’mon, Henry. This isn’t part of our deal.’ Cavill dropped the photos he was looking at on the table. ‘You know we don’t take passengers on operations.’