‘Cornell popped his head over the top and saw the enemy sprinting away from the truck in teams of two.
‘We can’t stay here in open territory. They’ll outflank us,’ Cornell yelled to his men. He popped a white phosphorous grenade from his plate carrier and hurled it over the assorted boxes and containers. In seconds, the grenade spewed out a huge amount of smoke.
‘Split in pairs! Hunt them down!’ Cornell yelled. ‘Go!’
Cornell and Lampack sprinted off together under the cover of the smoke towards the nearest stone building; as they neared the corner wall, Cornell was hit in the back. He pitched forward onto the ground. Lampack spun, grabbed him, and pulled him behind a wall for cover.
‘Cavill, this is Lampack,’ he yelled into his radio. ‘We’re in heavy contact, over. Can you send anyone down?’
Cavill heard the message just as he popped up through the access hatch into the science offices.
He didn’t get to respond, as he was immediately pinned down by enemy fire from the pyramid entry room.
‘Negative,’ Cavill yelled back. ‘We’re on the defensive. Harcourt…Sansom, get back here now.’
‘Already running,’ Sansom said over the radio.
Cavill pulled out his pistol and fired off a few shots above the door for covering fire as he stuck his head above the hatch. He saw the gun firing out at him and beyond that, the second enemy slowly closing the huge metal entry door to the pyramid.
Sansom and Harcourt raced around the last corner only to see the light going from the door as it was sealed shut.
‘Shit, what do we do?’ Sansom said breathlessly.
‘Look for some way to open it from the inside,’ Harcourt said, playing his torch around the edges. ‘I can’t see anything…we don’t have enough explosives to blow it.’
‘Radio’s dead. I can’t hear a thing,’ Sansom said.
Harcourt’s torch went out.
‘Harcourt! Harcourt, respond!’ Cavill called into the radio. It was no good. He’d lost contact as soon as the heavy door was sealed, entombing his men inside.
Cavill fired another couple of shots and popped his head above the edge of the hatch again to look around. He saw Evron, wounded, behind some nearby boxes. He fired a couple more covering shots and rolled out of the hatch towards Evron as the return fire peppered the area around him.
‘That was close,’ Cavill said as he rolled up to Evron. ‘Where are you hit?’
‘Just the shoulder, affecting mobility,’ Evron replied, grimacing with pain. ‘He’s pretty well covered in there. Schalk’s dead, and he has access to his weapons.’
‘And all the civilians as hostages,’ Cavill said. ‘Harcourt and Sansom are out.’ He got back on the radio. ‘Cornell, what’s the situation down below?’
‘Not on top of it yet,’ Cornell replied. He had recovered from the burst of bullets into his back armour. There was a pause as a burst of automatic gunfire was heard. ‘Still engaging multiples. Could do with a hand.’
‘Copy, same here,’ Cavill said. ‘Anybody identify these guys yet?’
‘Nothing so far,’ Cornell said.
‘Okay, report when free to redeploy.’
He turned to Evron. ‘Just you and me to sort it out up here.’
‘That’s all we need,’ Evron said with a wan smile.
Cavill popped his head around the side of the boxes to loose off a couple more rounds but quickly pulled back. The enemy was advancing into the science offices, firing in two-second bursts, and using Chris Watkins as a human shield in front of him. Watkins’s face was a picture of pure, yellow terror.
‘We have to move,’ Cavill said. ‘He’s using them as shields. He’ll round on us here.’
Cavill pulled a flashbang and threw it over the box.
Evron and Cavill instinctively covered their ears, closed their eyes, and ducked down further behind the boxes.
The room lit up in a deafening bang, and Cavill immediately pulled Evron to his feet. They ran out of the science offices and into the adjoining science labs on the south side of the pyramid.
***
On the ground, Cornell was trying to rally his troops as he and Lampack traded fire with two of the enemy in a nearby house. ‘Fabrice, Rolleston, where are you?’
‘East of you,’ Rolleston replied. ‘We’ve clipped one and have the other pinned down.’
‘Good. Nathan, Sizemore?’
‘We’re pinned down behind a low wall north of the pyramid. They’re trying to move around us,’ Nathan said.
‘Okay, we’ll come to you,’ Cornell said. They threw smoke grenades for cover and ran out firing. An explosion was heard nearby as they found more cover further north of the pyramid.
‘What was that?’ Cornell said into the radio.
‘Grenade,’ Nathan said. ‘I’ve taken shrapnel. Sizemore’s dead.’
***
Cavill heard the radio report as he moved with Evron to the far end of the second science lab container and unlocked the door heading towards the workshop. His heart dropped when the news of Sizemore came in.
‘This was supposed to be a simple mission,’ he said to Evron. ‘And I’ve got my elite team dropping like flies.’
There was a rattling of metal on metal behind them, and they turned to see a grenade rolling to a stop. It had been tossed into the container from the far door. Both men calmly but quickly moved through the doorway, exiting the science labs. They just managed to shut the door as the grenade detonated inside. The gangway that connected the containers vibrated heavily under their feet.
They moved quickly through the container housing the workshop, and as they opened the door to the first storage container, another grenade was thrown into the workshop behind them. They closed the door just as it detonated. The container they were standing in shuddered.
‘This old structure may not take much more of these explosions,’ Evron said. ‘It’s just held up by scaffolding. The whole thing could come crashing down.’
He was clutching his shoulder as he moved and was starting to look a little grey around the face.
‘It’s worse than that,’ Cavill said as they headed towards the exit door of the first storage container. ‘I’ve just figured out the trap they’re trying to spring. It’s too hard for us to stand and fight if he’s just throwing grenades into a confined space with us. We can’t defend against that. He’s trying to keep pushing us forward all the way around the three sides of the pyramid into the waiting ambush of his mate, who’s probably set up in front of the second door in the pyramid access room—the one facing the generator room. So when we’re forced to exit the generator room, he’ll cut us down.’
‘Okay,’ Evron said as they entered the second storage unit on the north side. ‘We can figure something out. He can’t have more than five grenades from Schalk’s kit.’
The structure shuddered again as a grenade detonated in the storage container they had just exited.
‘That’ll be all he’ll need. We’ve got about thirty seconds to come up with something,’ Cavill said. ‘I’ve just remembered the next container is the generator room—’
‘If the generators are large enough, we can hide from the last grenade behind one and then ambush him,’ Evron suggested.
‘No,’ Cavill said as they reached the far end of the second storage unit and opened the door into the generator room. ‘From Harcourt’s description of the place, the container above the generator room on the second level was full of fuel tanks. Probably to gravity feed the fuel into the generators below. Who knows how much fuel is still in there?’
‘Right,’ Evron said, putting it all together. ‘If a grenade goes off in the generator room below it, even small amounts of different fuels in the pipes and generators could blow the whole place to hell.’
***
Cornell and Lampack were fighting their way towards the injured Nathan.
‘Keep low,’ Cornell said. ‘These guys are good.’
‘Clear,’ Lampack sa
id. ‘Good old urban fighting. Brings back some memories, doesn’t it?’ He lifted his pistol above the wall and fired off two shots in the direction of the enemy.
‘Yes, and none of them good,’ Cornell said.
The top of the closest wall rained stone chips on them as the enemy found their range. Both men stayed low and kept moving along the wall until they reached the next set of buildings. They twisted and turned around each building, snapping their weapons towards each corner. They rounded a corner to see Mike Nathan sprawled on the floor, covered in blood but still firing his rifle at a nearby target. They also saw Sizemore’s body. He had taken most of the grenade explosion and must have died instantly. As they dashed towards Nathan, Cornell saw a rifle rounding the far corner, in the direction in which Nathan was firing erratically. Cornell let off an automatic burst and grabbed Nathan’s plate carrier to drag him behind some cover. He felt Nathan’s body jerk just before he dragged him behind the nearest wall, and he turned to see blood spurting from Nathan’s neck where he had been shot. Cornell compressed the wound but knew it was too late. Nathan’s neck was ripped open.
Lampack had followed up behind by laying down sustained fire. Then he threw a grenade into the vicinity of the enemy. The grenade detonated, and Lampack charged forward firing. The firing soon stopped.
‘Got them. Both of them,’ Lampack said on the radio.
‘I’m sorry,’ Cornell said to Nathan as he cradled his head and watched the light leave his eyes.
Cornell gently lowered Nathan’s head onto the ground and called it in on the radio.
‘Nathan’s gone. Cornell and Lampack still in the fight. Report.’
‘Rolleston and Fabrice still in it,’ Rolleston said. ‘We’re still trading punches but neither making much headway.’
‘So they’re down to three and we’re down to four.’
Cornell went off the radio. He punched the wall repeatedly in front of him in frustration at losing two men. ‘Fucking urban fighting!’ he yelled.
***
In the pyramid entry room, the second enemy soldier was indeed setting up his weapons to face out the northern door and cover the gangway. As soon as someone rounded the corner from the generator room and the eastern gangway, a hail of automatic gunfire would meet him.
The civilians were clustered around the wounded archaeologists on the other side of the container. The soldier occasionally flicked his eyes back to them to make sure that no one had moved.
As he made his final preparations, he stepped back, and the heel of his boot caught a protruding bolt in the floor. He lost his balance, and his momentum carried him backwards to land heavily on his back on the metal floor. His MFG9 submachine gun clattered a few feet away from his grasp.
Kate Edwards leapt to her feet on the other side of the container and dived through the door into the science offices. She was running as the soldier rolled towards his gun. Chris Watkins’s eyes widened, and he sprang up and sprinted through the open door. Kate was already disappearing through the far door into the science labs as the enemy reached his weapon. He rolled over and brought the gun up, firing a burst. The bullets ricocheted off the bulkhead of the door to stop anyone else trying to run. By the time he got line of sight through the doorway into the science offices, Watkins was also gone from that container. The soldier growled in anger. He would have to let them go to keep his position and the rest of the hostages.
‘Anybody else thinks of doing anything cute,’ he said, ‘I’ll machine gun all of you. Understand?’
Rebecca Grainger and the rest of the civilians nodded in wide-eyed terror.
***
‘This is bad,’ Cavill said. ‘It stinks of all kind of fuel.’
‘There are pools of it all over the floor,’ Evron said.
They were moving quickly through the generator room to the exit on the east side. Cavill carefully opened the door without making any undue noise to alert the enemy waiting by the pyramid entry door. The desert wind blew in, and both men were grateful for it.
‘Right,’ Cavill said quietly after gulping a few breaths of the clean air. ‘We can’t go around the corner on the gangway—they’ve got a pincer movement on us—but we have to get away from this container. Get on my back.’
Evron looked surprised but quickly did as he was told, hooking his uninjured arm over Cavill’s shoulder, latching onto the front of his plate carrier, and then jumping up and wrapping his legs around Cavill’s waist. Cavill shuffled to the edge of the gangway, clipped his rifle to his chest, and climbed up onto the scaffolding. He quickly began climbing up and away from the generator room. It was hard going with Evron on his back.
He climbed up to the second level of the structure, next to the container housing the fuel tanks. He then shuffled across the scaffolding and around the corner to head for the next block of container units facing the east side.
‘This should be the armoury container,’ he said as he clambered as softly as he could onto the roof of the container on the top level on the east side. ‘The pyramid entry room is below it.’
Evron was making small grunts of pain through gritted teeth. All the moving was jarring his wound.
‘Let’s try and hook you to something,’ Cavill said as they separated. Both sat down. ‘Things are about to get hairy.’
Evron pulled out the strap and clip normally used to attach his rifle to his plate carrier and clipped it to a hole in the scaffolding.
The whole earth seemed to shudder underneath them, and they were both floored by the noise and force of a huge explosion on the north side of the pyramid. They saw a golden fireball billow out into the desert sky along with black fireballs of debris. The chasing grenade had indeed ignited the liquid and vapour in the generators, making them explode. This, in turn, ignited the fuel tanks above them, causing the violent explosion.
‘Hang on,’ Cavill yelled. The entire structure at the top of the pyramid was shaking roughly. Above the shaking, they could hear the sound of metal breaking and snapping. Cavill could see scaffolding poles flying away from the north side of the pyramid.
‘The scaffolding structure on that side is broken,’ Cavill said. ‘We need to—’
The containers underneath them lurched violently and dropped about a foot before the scaffolding structure caught them again. From the floor disappearing below them, they hit the container hard. Cavill was winded as the impact on his plate carrier forced the air from his lungs.
Evron lost grip with his good arm and slipped over the edge of the container into the void.
***
The huge explosion distracted everyone on the ground. Debris started raining on them from the containers that had been launched in the fireball.
‘Take cover,’ Cornell called over the radio. ‘Get low behind the thickest wall you can find.’
He signalled to Lampack. They quickly moved to huddle behind one of the two-storey buildings as the debris started landing nearby in small explosions.
‘Geez, it’s like small-calibre mortar coming down,’ Lampack said. ‘You think the enemy will be moving around in this?’
As he spoke, large scaffolding poles coming in at tremendous speed lanced through nearby walls. The noise and dust kicked up was huge.
‘Not now,’ Cornell said. ‘But get ready to move again. Every bad guy we’ve met so far seems highly committed.’
***
Cavill pulled himself across the roof of the container to where Evron had gone over the edge. He stuck his head over the threshold.
Evron was dangling in the air, held only by his rifle strap attached to a scaffold pole, which had moved position away from the container.
Evron raised his good arm. ‘You want to pull me back in, please?’ he said, ‘I’ve had enough time here to give myself a morphine shot.’
‘Thought you looked much better. This sun must be doing you some good,’ Cavill said as he offered his arm out. They gripped hands. With a grimace, Evron pulled his combat knife out with the
arm on his wounded side. He reached up and cut the strap to swing down and land heavily against the side of the container. Cavill took the impact easily and then pulled Evron back up onto the roof of the container.
‘Thanks,’ Evron said. ‘What now?’
Both men were breathing heavily from the exertion.
‘It seems like the containers on the other three sides of the pyramid are holding. Otherwise, we’d be stains in the sand below by now,’ Cavill said. ‘Let’s see what’s happening on the north side.’
They both crawled to the northern edge of the armoury container to survey the damage and the battlefield below.
The fuel tank and generator containers were in tatters, and the remainder of the other two containers on the north side were creaking heavily on the scaffolding that remained.
‘Cornell,’ Cavill said into the radio. ‘The containers on the north side are going to come down on you. I’ve got a bird’s-eye view of the field here. Where are you?’
‘Scattered around the little conurbation you see before you,’ Cornell replied. ‘Everybody taking cover.’
‘You’re going to have to move now,’ Cavill said.
‘We’ve lost sight of the enemy, so can’t move too fast,’ Cornell said.
‘We’ll have to draw them out,’ Cavill said. ‘All teams on the ground, throw your helmets high into the air a few times.’
Cornell and Rolleston quickly obliged. Cavill soon saw two helmets spinning up into the air and going back down. He unclipped his rifle and brought it to bear on the buildings below, focussing through his optical sight.
‘They’ve clocked it. We’ve got movement,’ Cavill said. He could see three men moving out of buildings and along walls in the direction of his men.
‘Right. Listen up,’ Cavill said into the radio. ‘I can see the targets. Prep grenades. I’ll tell you where to throw. As soon as you’ve thrown, run directly north as far from the pyramid as you can. I’ll provide cover fire. Cornell, twenty metres to your eleven o’clock. Rolleston, ten to your two. In three…’
A mass of snapping noises was heard as the containers on the north side destroyed the last of their broken scaffolding. The containers started falling and bouncing down the pyramid in a shriek of tortured metal.
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