Sub-Sahara

by Ethan Arkwright

  ‘Right,’ Cavill said as he dropped to a prone position. They were all crouched below the ridge of the dune, which meant the opposing force had their rifles over the top of it, ready to unleash a torrent of fire at any movement.

  ‘Lampack, Harcourt, you guys see anything?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Lampack replied. ‘And nothing in front either. They’re still on the dune. We’re in position in case they come running off it and around the next one.’

  ‘Same here,’ Harcourt said.

  ‘Good,’ Cavill said. ‘Bill, how far away are they?’

  ‘About two hundred metres.’

  ‘Get the thirty-sixes on them. Fire on my order,’ Cavill said.

  Four of the eight members of his team had short, stubby barrels attached underneath their assault rifles. They were H&K AG36 underslung grenade launchers. They all took aim with their modified weapons. They knew from years of training how to hit unsighted targets with the weapon. Besides, the grenades produced a ground burst that caused casualties within a 130-metre radius and had a kill radius of five metres, so it didn’t have to be perfect.

  ‘Fire,’ Cavill said.

  A loud thunk was heard as all four fired at once. A second later, there was mass of explosions, and all of the troopers popped up over the edge to put down rounds into the cloud of sand that was still coming out of the sky from the explosions over on the next dune.

  ‘They’re moving,’ Harcourt said over the radio. His statement was followed by bursts of automatic gunfire.

  ‘They’re down,’ Harcourt said after watching the enemy soldiers pitch forward into the sand.

  ‘Steve and I both tagged them. Ran straight into our forty-five degree fire.’

  The battle was over. Cavill had a few moments to collect his thoughts as they all stood up, adjusted themselves, and reloaded. People were still scattered all over the scene. They didn’t know where Chris Watkins or his man, Fabrice Guillaume, was. It could take Fabrice up to thirty minutes of running in the desert conditions to rejoin the unit once he had seen the smoke. They had also announced their position to anyone else in the vicinity or canvassing the sight via satellite. If the Chinese had managed to arrive at the same time as they did, there was no telling who else was already here or arriving imminently.

  Their equipment was also scattered wider than it should have been because of the angle of the plane when they exited. Worst of all, one of the team was already dead.

  Everything had already gone to hell.

  Chapter 14

  ‘Find the Land Rovers,’ Cavill ordered. ‘Check they’re still operational. Everybody spread out and start noting where all the kit is. Keep an eye out for any new hostiles or any we might have missed from before. Harcourt, search the bodies of the Chinese. Let me know if you find anything useful. Bill, you come with me.’

  The team immediately spread out in a search pattern. Cavill and Bill Sizemore walked down to where Kate Edwards and Matt Hayden were still sitting in the sand. He could see that Kate was going to speak. ‘Keep your mouths shut,’ Cavill said. He was still angry over the loss of Boulton, and the civilians quite possibly played a part in it all going wrong in the plane. He wasn’t going to talk to them till he had all three of them together.

  ‘This is Bill,’ he said, pointing at Sizemore. ‘Bill was a US Navy Seal. We all have a specialist weapon, and his is the Taser.’

  To prove the point, Bill pulled out an odd-looking pistol from his plate carrier and pointed it at them.

  ‘That’s right, a Taser, like you see in the cop films. Fires ten thousand volts into you that Bill can dial up or down. Now, judging by the confusion on your faces, you’re wondering why someone would bring a Taser to a battlefield. Well, it’s for two reasons. One is to take people out quietly if need be, and the second is that Bill is our resident expert on ‘enhanced interrogations’ using this particular tool. So, if you move or speak before I next speak to you, Bill is going Taser you. Nod if you understand.’

  Dumbstruck by the situation they found themselves in, both just nodded blankly.

  ‘Good,’ Cavill said. He turned away.

  ‘Harcourt here,’ a voice came over the radio. ‘These guys were definitely Chinese; I’ve searched two of them over. They’re sterile—no ID tags or wallets, nothing. They’re using Chinese QBZ-95 assault rifles and carry CF-98 pistols as backups.’

  ‘Well, that’s at least one party we know we’re dealing with,’ Cavill said.

  ‘Located the Land Rovers. They weren’t too far from each other,’ Thomas Rolleston said over the radio. ‘They’re both fine. Chutes and packaging worked perfectly.’

  ‘Good. We finally catch a break. If we’re on foot, we’re dead,’ Cavill said. ‘Get Boulton’s body and everybody else on board. Find that scientist, Chris Watkins—’

  ‘Got him,’ Lampack reported. ‘He did literally cover himself with sand to stay hidden. Found him walking towards the smoke.’

  ‘Everybody reconvene at my position. We’re going to drive to the pyramid. Then, Thomas is going drive back out to pick up Fabrice and the rest of the kit to bring it back to us.’

  Within minutes, they had the cars loaded and were heading on the coordinates for the ancient city.

  The city soon came into view, and they were stunned at the scale of it. As they drove down into the valley, it was clear that the satellite pictures didn’t do it any justice. The residential buildings made of stone stretched for miles and were still very well preserved. They were driving through suburbs, with family houses and what were clearly stores fronting the road. It reminded Cavill of Pompeii, a similar situation where a city had been sealed over by nature. The silver pyramid was getting larger as they headed straight towards it. The sheer sides gleamed in the morning sun. The modern scaffolding around it was definitely out of place. Cavill was more intrigued by what he would find in the transport containers than by what was inside the pyramid. He made a circling motion with his hand above his head as they approached the base of the structure, and the cars continued to drive in a circle around it. Everybody was looking at the layout of the future battlefield and thinking about how to get inside. The pyramid looked the same from every angle except for the east side, where there was a rung ladder attached to the scaffolding. It led all the way up to the containers. The cars skidded to a halt near the ladder. Cavill’s team piled out and started stacking the boxes they already had with them. As soon as one car was clear, Thomas Rolleston sped off in a cloud of dust to find the missing team member and the rest of the equipment.

  ‘Bring me the civilians,’ Cavill said.

  Jerry Cornell and Bill Sizemore had the civilians under gunpoint and marched them to stand in front of Cavill. Jerry kicked in the backs of their legs, so all three went down on their knees.

  ‘Hey, what is this?’ Matt Hayden said.

  ‘Shut up,’ Cavill said. Cornell put his rifle into Hayden’s face to emphasise the point.

  ‘Needless to say, our infiltration of the site did not go as planned. One of my men is dead. Best case, you people were not helping in the whole situation. Worst case, you were actively sabotaging.’ He was looking straight at Chris Watkins. ‘There was an explosion on the plane that didn’t come from outside. What were you doing up in that part of the plane when I found you, Chris?’

  ‘What? Nothing.’ Watkins looked shocked. ‘I just walked up there when you came around the corner. You should be asking these two,’ he said, jerking his head towards the people next to him. ‘They were also walking all around the plane for a lot longer than I was.’

  Cavill looked at Cornell and Sizemore. They both had annoyed looks on their faces as they looked back at him. It was true. They knew the team had dropped the ball on this one.

  ‘And are you two going to explain what you were doing?’ Cavill asked Edwards and Hayden.

  ‘Looking for the bloody toilet,’ Hayden said.

  ‘Nobody said we had to stay strapped in our seats like prisoners on a transfer
,’ Edwards said.

  ‘Clearly, none of you can be trusted,’ Cavill said. ‘So here’s how it’s going to work from now on. The three of you stay together with one of my men at all times, until called on to do otherwise. I have orders to keep you alive, but I’m putting you on notice that we’ll put a bullet in your leg if we’re suspicious of anything else. If you actively try to screw this up and endanger my team, the Caretaker here,’ he said, motioning at Cornell, ‘will have no qualms about putting a bullet through your brain and leaving your body in the sand. We’ll chalk it up to our friends, the Chinese, when we get back. Clear?’

  They nodded dumbly.

  ‘Good. Now go and sort the scientific stuff you need to get up to the containers, under the supervision of Mr. Sizemore here.’

  They all stood and shuffled off, shaking their heads and muttering.

  ‘What’s next?’ Cornell said.

  Cavill turned and looked up at the containers held against the outside of the pyramid. ‘Well, we’ve been here about ten minutes. Where the hell’s the archaeologist welcoming party?’

  Chapter 15

  The Sahara is not a country; it is a harsh, ruthless environment nearly ten million square kilometres in size, covering most of North Africa from the coast of the Atlantic Ocean to parts of the Mediterranean, all the way to the Red Sea, making it almost as large as the United States or China. Formed by climate change and wind over thousands of years, the central area of the desert is hyperarid. Sand dunes can form up to one hundred eighty metres in height.

  It covers large parts of eleven countries that divide its mass between themselves, though the desert shows no sign of the arbitrary lines drawn on maps by temporary cultures. It has always been largely inaccessible to people, apart from small settlements around the aquifer-fed oases and travel through it for trade.

  Borders have shifted frequently over the years, and there are no clear demarcations between most of the modern countries that theoretically administer the region. In reality, there are many semi-autonomous regions, and people of various tribes and cultures move freely. With no real control over vast swathes of the territory, there are endless illegal commercial activities, skirmishes, shifting alliances, and betrayals between warlords, nationalist and religious fundamentalists, tribes, and governments.

  There was no feasible way to prevent many powerful armed forces from racing into this environment, destroying poor governments and their ill-equipped armed forces in their wake.

  It was into this environment, with good intentions, that James Cavill had led his troop and was now setting up positions in the Erg of Bilma, near the heart of the Sahara.

  Chapter 16

  ‘I want a sweep done of the surrounding buildings out to two hundred metres and then a perimeter of fifty metres set up. Apart from the Professor, Harcourt, and Lampack,’ Cavill said.

  ‘Harcourt, you help out the Professor, and I’ll be with Lampack getting the MK19 up. Everybody go.’ Cavill motioned to his surrounding troop. ‘Professor,’ he said, singling out Gil Evron as the rest of the team dispersed. ‘Get our constant data feeds running with Bramwell at GCHQ for any more inbound. And do your drone thing.’

  Evron nodded and immediately scampered over to the collection of containers that had been unloaded from the Land Rovers, flipped open the lids, and began pulling a series of metal boxes out of them.

  ‘All right, Ninja,’ Evron said to Nathan Harcourt when he joined him. ‘Get your ginger paws unpacking these boxes.’

  Harcourt smiled as he got to work. He was one of the youngest on the team, ex-SAS, and was the team medic. He had been called Ninja throughout his military career on account of his ginger hair—it rhymed.

  Evron had a large case open and was clipping together the parts of a hand-launched drone.

  ‘Start pulling these parts out of the other boxes and lay them on top,’ Evron said.

  ‘What are we doing here?’ Harcourt asked.

  ‘Wouldn’t you love to know,’ Evron replied, clipping the final wing on and firing up the motor. ‘It’s actually quite simple. This drone is going to be our roving eye in the sky for the next few hours. It’ll give us local radar and early warning on any fleets of pricks coming our way.’

  He turned and threw the drone into the air. It was the size of a shoebox with wings attached and a propeller at the back. The drone lurched in mid-air as the propeller pulled it forward and then took off upwards. The two men watched it recede into the distance.

  ‘It’s going to run a circular pattern a set distance around us to give us eyes in the sky, sending it all back to this.’ He opened his hard-case laptop on one of the boxes and checked to see that it was communicating with the drone.

  ‘Success.’ He turned back to the rest of the boxes and pieces of unassembled drones. ‘Hand me whichever piece I point to so we can get this done quickly. We’ve got eight more to make in a short space of time.’

  He started clipping parts together at a rapid rate.

  ‘Why so many?’ Harcourt asked, while dutifully handing parts over at speed.

  ‘Again, wouldn’t you love to know,’ Evron said with a smile. ‘It’s part of a new defensive plot I’ve cooked up. Be careful handing me the main body unit. Most of these are set up as bombs linked to transmitters. Each drone links back to a master transmitter, which will launch the drone and fly it into the transmitting source or another designated target.’

  ‘Wow,’ Harcourt said. ‘You really are an evil genius.’

  ‘Yes.’ Evron sighed. ‘Just making my way in this complex world and employing my talents for some good along the way.’

  As each drone was completed, Evron’s final act was to attach a small coloured sticker to the drone and put a corresponding sticker on what looked like a television remote control.

  ‘You nearly done?’ Cavill asked as he approached with Steve Lampack. They were carrying a large plastic box between them, which they set down. The box had ‘MK19’ written across it in black stencil.

  ‘Yes,’ Evron replied. ‘Got a special gift for you.’

  He pointed out the coloured buttons on the remote before placing it in a slim plastic container to protect it and handing it over to Cavill. Evron pointed at the drones, each with a coloured sticker on it.

  ‘As discussed,’ Evron said.

  ‘Excellent.’ Cavill smiled and put the remote in a zipped pocket on the side of his battle fatigues. ‘Now, let’s get everybody together and get up there.’

  He turned to look out over the ruined stone city and touched his throat mic. ‘Everyone rally back to me.’

  Within a minute, all of his troops had run back from various directions and clustered around him again.

  ‘Any signs of recent movement or the archaeologists?’ Cavill asked.

  Nobody had seen anything.

  ‘Okay, we’ve not had any contact since their initial calls twelve hours ago, and they’re not down here. So, we must assume they all went up into the containers or the pyramid and are still there—either alive but unable to communicate or dead.’

  The team nodded in general agreement.

  ‘So we’re taking the rung ladder up. Everybody’s going except Nathan and Sizemore. You two will stay on guard down here and be boosted by Fabrice and Rolleston when they return from the desert. Lampack will get on the roof as sniper and for the MK19. That’s initial defence against ground incursions.’

  The three men singled out nodded again and stepped back to separate themselves from the group.

  ‘Everybody else line up for the climb. I’ll lead. The three civilians will go at the back, with Sizemore in front of them and Cornell bringing up the rear. Evron, how are we getting the drones up there?’

  ‘Hook them onto people’s backs,’ Evron replied.

  ‘Do it,’ Cavill said. ‘We need to do the same with the parts of the MK19. Whatever doesn’t get lifted initially, the ground team can bring up afterwards.’

  ***

  They were soon a
scending the rung ladder towards the containers surrounding the pyramid. When Cavill reached the underside of the containers, he swung onto a metal platform leading off the ladder. The platform was beneath a closed entry hatch. He quickly brought out his pistol to cover the hatch while motioning for the required crew to get onto the roof. The rest continued upwards until Lampack heaved himself onto the roof of the second container at the top level with the heavy MK19 grenade machine-gun part on his back.

  The rest of the team quickly and efficiently passed up the rest of the machine-gun parts and the drones for Lampack to set up. Once done, Evron, Harcourt, and Sansom crawled onto the platform with Cavill.

  A circular wheel on either side sealed the hatch they were all looking at. Cavill motioned for Harcourt to turn the wheel. They heard a grinding noise as the latches moved. Harcourt slowly lowered it on its hinge to reveal the inside of the container.

  No sound came from within.

  It was light enough. On the way up, they had noticed that small, Plexiglas portholes had been installed on the outside of the containers, so the inside was flooded by natural light.

  ‘Hello. Anybody in there?’ Cavill called.

  No response.

  ‘This is James Cavill. We are a response team sent at the request of Rebecca Grainger. Please answer if you can.’

  Silence.

  Cavill and Evron looked at each other. This was the moment of truth. Even with their years of training, they were still nervous and wary.

  They could be walking into a trap. The whole complex could be full of radiation or something equally deadly coming off the energy source.

  Cavill nodded and slowly moved towards the hole. He stood up to raise his eyes and his gun over the edge.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ he said.

  He motioned for his team to follow him and then hoisted himself inside.

  Chapter 17

  Cavill had come up into a room that looked like an administration office. There were two small desks and a row of bookshelves down each side of the container. A large table with six chairs around it took up the lower part of the room.