‘Risky, but does seem the only option,’ Evron said.
Cavill got back on the radio. ‘Cornell—’
‘Still figuring it out,’ Cornell quickly said.
‘You’ve got something else as well now. You need to find another way out of there if you can and rendezvous at the backup point. Evron’s coming to join you as well. It’s going to get hot up here. We may be offline for a time.’
‘Roger. Good luck.’
‘You, too.’ He clicked off the radio.
Evron was looking at him with surprise.
‘You won’t defend this place for long with that wound,’ Cavill said. ‘It’s better you’re with the main team. Pack up the essentials, take your laptop, and follow the infrared signs to rejoin them.’
Evron didn’t look happy but started organising himself immediately. ‘I’ll leave the LAN network running to keep comms up,’ he said. ‘I’ll disguise the unit in some food boxes in a corner so they don’t immediately destroy it.’
‘Good. Do it. I’ll do a last check on the wounded,’ Cavill said as he ran through to the pyramid entry room.
Phil Cranmer was looking at Cavill groggily as he knelt down beside the three archaeologists. Dave and Tina were still out of it.
‘Phil, right?’ Cavill said.
‘Yeah,’ Phil replied with soft-focussed eyes.
‘We’ve got some bad guys coming in, Phil, so my team needs to go and deal with that. You seem in the best shape here, so I need you take care of the other two. Just make sure all of you move as little as possible so you don’t disturb the burns. If anyone is in too much pain, inject them with these,’ he said, handing him some small injection capsules of morphine from a medical kit.
‘Do you know how to inject someone?’
‘Yes,’ Phil murmured. ‘I’m a trained first-aider.’
‘Excellent. Now here’s the important bit,’ Cavill said. ‘If anyone else comes in here, raise your hands as high as you can and tell them you’re civilians. Understand?’
Phil nodded.
‘Good man,’ Cavill said.
Evron entered the room with a small backpack and his rifle slung over his good shoulder. The men exchanged a look, shook hands, and Evron ducked into the blackness of the pyramid entrance.
Cavill moved quickly through to the rung ladder to start climbing to ground level. As he descended, he got on the radio. ‘Rolleston, Lampack, Fabrice, form up at the bottom of the ladder. We’re going to take these Titan assholes out and give the away team time to finish the job.’
He hit the ground and ran to his men, who were already waiting by the collection of boxes and containers.
‘They’re coming in using six vehicles. Get the Javelins out, and we’ll set up a defensive box trap two hundred metres up the street from here.’
Each of them grabbed a long tube with a square attached to it from one the boxes. The Javelin was a US Army–made, shoulder-held, ‘fire and forget’ antitank missile. As they ran up the street, the wind picked up intensity, and sand stung their faces.
‘Split into two,’ Cavill called. ‘Rolleston’s with me on this side. Lampack and Fabrice, take the other side of the street.’
The two teams split off and then split off again as each man moved to a different building to complete the box.
Cavill moved behind a low wall that butted up against a stone building. He checked that there was enough room behind for the back blast of the weapon and then placed it out over the wall.
He could hear the distant sound of high-revving engines.
‘You hear that?’ Cavill said. ‘They’re coming. Everyone in position?’
‘Roger,’ they all reported.
He checked through his telescopic sight and could see dust plumes signalling the approaching cars.
‘They’re moving fast,’ he said. ‘Two are breaking away.’
‘I’ve got them in sniper scope,’ Lampack said over the radio. ‘The front two are two-seater, off-road dune buggies. Rear vehicles are standard four-by-fours.’
‘Also got them locked,’ Rolleston said. ‘Look at these buggies, kitted out like they think it’s Mad Max.’
‘Well, keep it tight,’ Cavill said. ‘These guys are 50 percent wannabes and 50 percent killers, but they are all 100 percent here to kill us. I’ll take the lead car on the left. Lampack, you got good sight on the other one?’
‘Roger that.’
‘Good. Wait till two hundred metres out to spring the box.’
There was only the wind and sound of the screaming engines, growing ever louder as the cars grew larger in their sights.
Cavill watched the distance tick down in his rangefinder.
Three hundred…
Two fifty…
Two hundred…
He calmly depressed the trigger and braced himself as the force of the missile exiting the pipe tried to send him backwards. Lampack did the same across the road, and two plumes of white streaked down the ancient street.
Cavill’s missile made a direct hit first, and the effect was devastating. The small dune buggy exploded in a huge fireball and was stopped dead in its tracks.
The driver of the second buggy must have seen the missile being fired and at the last instant, wrenched the car to the left. The car’s low centre of gravity meant it didn’t flip; instead, it did a power slide and went behind a low wall in front of one of the buildings. The missile was still locked on. It went straight into the stone wall and detonated. Cavill’s men watched as the car was flipped into the air and rolled a couple of times by the force of the explosion.
‘Good start,’ Cavill said. ‘Second set, get ready to light up the main convoy.’
‘Their rear vehicle has stopped,’ Rolleston called in.
‘Get the sniper scope on it. Find out why,’ Cavill said.
Lampack was already focussing in. ‘The rear car was hidden by the others. I can see it now…shit, it’s a flatbed pickup with a mortar battery on the back!’
He watched in shock as puffs of white smoke started appearing out of the racks of tubes angled at the sky and towards them.
‘They’re firing. They’ve got our position.’
As if on cue, some of the buildings around them started exploding.
Cavill realised that he had been outplayed. He was furious with himself. ‘The front cars were just to draw us out,’ he yelled above the noise of explosions. ‘Move, move, move!’
He abandoned his position and ran back towards Rolleston, keeping low as possible as mortar rounds blew up the ground and walls nearby and peppered him with sand and bits of stone.
***
In the lead enemy vehicle, Jared Lockyer, the Titan commander, had a cold sneer plastered across his face.
‘Stupid pricks fell for it,’ he said to his number two. ‘They’re still playing by the old rules. I’m happy to sacrifice a couple of pawns to win the game early.’
‘Yeah, we’ll blast ’em to hell,’ his number two said while mashing his foot onto the accelerator pedal to get there faster.
‘We need to do it quickly,’ Lockyer said. ‘I don’t need this crap of these assholes being here. They’re outnumbered and way outgunned, so let’s finish it before any locals get here. I want to kill these fuckers as fast as possible and crack on to the prize—unless old Captain Righteous Cavill is in there. Then, I’ll take some time out to personally string him up with piano wire and gut him like a fish.’
***
Cavill hooked up with Rolleston as the wall behind them exploded, sending both men flying. They landed in a crumpled heap on the road.
Cavill shook his head groggily and looked for his teammate above the roaring in his ears.
Rolleston was on all fours, shakily trying to get to his feet again. Cavill moved all his limbs and was relieved to find that he was okay. He lifted his hand to the wet feeling on his face and pulled it away to see it smeared with blood from a cut on his right cheek.
‘Shit…that was close,
’ Rolleston said.
Cavill got up on unsteady legs and got on the radio. ‘If we’re left standing out here, we’re dead. We need to get moving and keep them away from the pyramid to buy the away team time. We’re going to head back and get in a Land Rover to take it mobile. Can you guys do the same?’
‘Got a better idea,’ Lampack said in his ear. ‘We moved to take cover in a forward building. There’s a dune buggy in front of us that looks operational.’
‘Okay, go,’ Cavill said as he started to move back down the main street towards the Land Rovers.
Lampack and Fabrice broke cover and sprinted to the dune buggy, which was on its side. They approached with weapons up, as it had had two enemies in it driving in.
‘They’re dead,’ Fabrice said, getting close. He lowered his rifle and unclipped their harnesses to drag the bodies out.
Both men crouched down on their knees to get a good grip under the vehicle.
‘Ready…heave!’ Lampack said. They grunted and strained; and the buggy lifted, tilted, and landed back on all four tyres with a slight bounce. They were immediately inside. Lampack was behind the wheel. Fabrice moved to the slightly elevated gunner’s seat behind him.
‘This thing’s a copy of US Desert Patrol Vehicle,’ Fabrice said, checking the offensive weapons. ‘We’ve got an M2 heavy machine gun forward facing and an M60 medium facing back.’
‘Driver’s also got an M60 here,’ Lampack said as he fired up the engine, which emitted a low growl. He hit the accelerator and twisted the wheel so the back end of the buggy slid around to turn the car ninety degrees and face the main road again.
‘Also, zero armour, so keep it fast—hit and move,’ Fabrice said, taking the safety off the M2 and aiming it at the street as the enemy vehicles came screaming by in a cloud of dust. Fabrice didn’t hesitate. He opened up with the heavy machine gun. The first two vehicles just made it past his line of fire with their speed, but the third drove straight into it. The hail of 12.7-mm bullets flying in at twelve hundred rounds per minute tore into the car, shredding one side and sending the vehicle sideways. The driver of the car behind it slammed on the brakes and punched it into reverse to get out of there.
In the lead car, Lockyer and his men saw the explosions of metal and glass in their mirrors.
‘Do you go back and help?’ his second in command asked.
‘No,’ Lockyer said. ‘Car four can clean it up. Get me to the pyramid.’
The fourth car skidded to a stop behind the safety of buildings, and a soldier immediately leapt out the back carrying a long tube over his shoulder.
Fabrice kept a sustained rate of fire on the first car until he was sure that it was out of action. He started to swing the huge barrel to the street corner, expecting the last car to poke its nose into the danger zone. His eye caught movement at the edge of the building on the corner of the street. There was a puff of smoke as an object was launched into the air.
‘RPG!’ he yelled.
Lampack crunched the buggy into reverse and slammed the accelerator into the floor. The small vehicle leapt backwards and started tearing down the street. The rocket-propelled grenade flew past the spot where they had been stationary only moments before. It continued on its trajectory and smashed into a building on the side of the street. The wall exploded outwards, and both men in the buggy were buffeted by the force and pelted with bits of debris as they drove away. The large four-by-four was already around the corner, with men hanging out the windows, firing automatic weapons.
They were skidding all over the place, and Fabrice couldn’t get the weighty barrel of the machine gun under control in the shifting momentum. Bullets were starting to impact around them as the small-arms fire from the enemy was finding its range.
‘We’re running out of road,’ Lampack yelled. ‘Hold on!’
The road ended in a T-junction with another road, and if they stopped, they’d be caught.
Lampack pulled the handbrake and wrenched the steering wheel hard right. The buggy slewed around one hundred eighty degrees so that they were driving forward again. ‘Get us out of here!’ Fabrice yelled. ‘Away from the pyramid!’
Lampack pulled a hard left into the next street and accelerated again. The enemy four-by-four came skidding around the corner in hot pursuit. Lampack turned right on the next available street. ‘I’ll try to put some space between us till we can figure something out,’ he said.
‘Make it quick,’ Fabrice called, while trying to find the swivel mechanism on his chair so he could spin around and get on the M60 gun facing out the back of the buggy as rifle fire erupted behind them again.
***
Cavill and Rolleston leapt into their Land Rover as the two enemy vehicles burst into the main square behind them. ‘Lay down some rounds,’ he called to Rolleston as he wasted no time in firing up the engine. ‘I’ll get us out of here as quickly as possible.’
Rolleston already had his HK416 rifle up and was firing strategic shots at the windshields of the oncoming cars. At the same time, he was trying to move towards the vehicle’s rotating 7.62-mm medium machine gun.
The armoured glass in Lockyer’s vehicle made pinging and cracking noises as bullets deflected off it.
‘Where’s that coming from?’ the driver asked.
‘I’m on it,’ Lockyer said, scanning ahead with binoculars. ‘Got ’em. That car at two o’clock.’
‘Do we go for them?’
‘No, charge on to the entrance. Where that rung ladder is. We’ll form a defensive wall behind the cars and blast them with rockets. Wait, they’re moving off anyway.’
‘Yes. Run, little piggies,’ his number two said.
‘Hang on…’ Lockyer said, still looking through the binoculars. He sat bolt upright in his chair. ‘Fuck me, it’s Cavill!’ He slapped his leg in delight. ‘Get after him.’
‘But the entrance?’
Lockyer lowered the glasses and turned to the driver. His black eyes burned with hatred. ‘Get after that bastard now. I’ve been waiting years for this, and if you fuck this up, I’ll kill you instead.’
His eyes narrowed, and from nowhere, he had his pistol in his hand.
‘Got it, boss,’ the driver said as he quickly changed direction after the Land Rover.
Lockyer picked up a handheld radio. ‘Car two, we are terminating all occupants in that Land Rover. Move on to nothing else till this is done.’
‘Copy, car one.’
***
‘There are two of them,’ Rolleston said above the wind in the open-top car. ‘They’re both following us.’
‘Weird,’ Cavill said as he navigated into the first tiny stone street off the square. ‘They outnumber us, so one of them should carry on to their target. Whatever…we’ll take it.’
He started making turns left and right up adjoining streets, but always generally keeping them heading in the same direction.
‘You trying to lose them?’ Rolleston asked.
‘No. I want them following us out of the city.’
‘They’re staying with us,’ Rolleston said, finally getting a grip on the machine gun.
The two chasing vehicles turned into the same street and immediately opened fire, with men hanging out the windows.
Cavill pulled another hard right into a new street to get out of their line of fire. He saw up ahead that the buildings were ending.
‘We’re running out of city,’ he said. ‘Drop a grenade to slow them down.’
Rolleston immediately threw a grenade and sighted the machine gun back down the road. They burst out of the city in the Land Rover and started climbing straight up a hill at the edge of the valley. The chasing cars came skidding around the corner and accelerated down the final straight. The grenade went off in front of the lead car at the same time Rolleston opened up with the machine gun.
The cars slewed off in different directions in reaction to the offensive force and turned into further side streets to find another way through. The Land Rov
er reached the top of the hill and ramped off it to land heavily on the other side.
‘Oomph,’ Cavill said as the wind went rushing from his lungs. The car was barrelling down the hill back towards standard desert terrain.
‘You okay?’ Cavill called out, once his breath was back.
‘Yes,’ Rolleston said. ‘But we’ve lost sight of them…no, wait, here they come.’
The two chasing vehicles had also crested the hill.
‘They’ve got superior speed on the open ground,’ Rolleston said. ‘They’re chasing us down.’
Chapter 27
Lampack and Fabrice had been twisting and turning their dune buggy through the narrow streets, trying to stay a street ahead of the large chasing vehicle.
‘We’re at the city limits,’ Lampack called to his colleague behind him.
‘Keep driving around the edge of the city,’ Fabrice said. ‘When they get too close, we’ll dive back into the rat’s nest of streets.’
‘Good idea,’ Lampack said. ‘Any ideas on how we actually take them out, rather than play hide-and-seek all day?’
‘Nothing yet,’ Fabrice said.
‘Well…think faster.’
***
Cavill and Rolleston were hitting the bottom of the hill. The enemy was gaining fast.
‘I’ll head for that belt of dunes over there,’ Cavill said, pointing. ‘This thing’s a better off-roader, so we’ll look to bog them down in the sand. What else have we got on board? Any rockets?’
Rolleston looked around frantically. ‘No, nothing. It got stripped out. This was our extraction vehicle. We took the wrong car!’
‘Improvise, then,’ Cavill said.
The car had reached the change in terrain and hit the first dune. Cavill switched gears and carried on climbing. Halfway up the dune, the enemy cars behind them started drifting sideways, getting bogged down in the fine sand. Rolleston followed up by laying down rounds all over them with the machine gun. Exposed, the cars soon peeled away in both directions to return to solid earth.
***
Jared Lockyer was punching the dashboard in front of him. ‘Dammit! Fuck!’ he yelled.
Things were not going according to plan.
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