Nelson turned back to the radio to relay the message. He knew the men were already moving as fast as they could. He also knew not to question Lockyer.
‘Right, let’s get ready for the boom,’ Lockyer said, pulling multiple cubes of C4 plastic explosive out of a backpack they had carried up.
‘Nelson, help me wire this up. I want one block in each container on this level, then a few spaced into the tunnels in the pyramid. Drag those civilians and chuck them in the pyramid, too,’ Lockyer said.
‘Timers or detonators?’ Nelson asked.
‘Remote detonator, passed back to me. Here’s the plan: once we get the payday, we shove all the prisoners into the pyramid, close it, and then blow the whole place sky high as we exit - the “Hans Gruber Play” if you like.’
‘Making it look like the energy source was unstable and detonated?’ Nelson said.
‘Correct. It’s feasible it happened when it was disturbed. The outside world will buy it, as no one knows what the energy source is—or was. And we’ll have no witnesses or evidence. We were never here,’ Lockyer said, grinning.
Chapter 34
‘If I wasn’t seeing it, I wouldn’t believe it,’ Cornell said.
They were all standing in the room where they’d found the object. They had re-entered once the poisonous dust had settled from the explosions.
‘The other two demolitions did nothing,’ Sansom said. ‘Solid rock on either side.’
‘Lucky number three really pulled through for us,’ Cornell said.
They were looking, wide-eyed, into an adjoining room.
‘It must be a treasure room,’ Rebecca said in awe.
The room was brimming with gold and silver objects.
‘It would take me years to catalogue this,’ Rebecca said.
‘I’m only interested in what I can see on the other side,’ Cornell said. ‘Another doorway—our way out of here.’
Chapter 35
‘James, you there?’ Bramwell broke the silence.
‘I’m here, Christian. I’ve reached the exit point. It’s another hole with debris. Just pulling it off now.’
‘Great. Good news,’ Bramwell said through the radio. ‘Listen, I’ve intercepted some more comms coming out of the Titan team. One of them slipped up and mentioned their commander’s name. You know a guy called Lockyer?’
Cavill stopped throwing small rocks to the side. ‘Lockyer…Jared Lockyer?’
‘Yes, that’s him.’
‘Yes, I know the bastard. Now it suddenly makes sense.’
‘What does?’
Cavill resumed uncovering the exit. ‘Why they kept chasing us into the desert when they’d won the city. It was tactical lunacy, but they had such a hard-on to kill us. It was just Lockyer trying to kill me.’
‘You guys have history?’
‘Oh yes,’ Cavill said. ‘We tangled in the forces. He’s the type of commander only in it for personal glory. He was running a US Army ranger unit in western Iraq, where it was relatively quiet during the second Gulf War. When the invasion went much better than anticipated, it looked like Lockyer’s boys weren’t going to see much action. So acting on flimsy intelligence, Lockyer and his men took out an entire village—including women and children.’
‘Wow,’ Bramwell said.
‘My SAS unit was sent to verify the situation and the reported torture and execution of civilians. Verify we did. He was dishonourably discharged. Thing is…argh…almost through on the rocks, here; the thing is, the twisted asshole blames me for it. Swore he would kill me when he got the chance. Seeing how he’s out to wipe out my entire team, would say I’m now inclined to return the favour.’
Light poured into the ancient tunnel as Cavill tossed the last of the rocks aside.
‘I’m in another basement. I’ll soon be topside and back in the game.’
‘Good. Another thing, James; we’re tracking four planes heading towards your coordinates, and two more teams coming in on the ground.’
‘Great,’ Cavill said, heading for the front door of the house. ‘Just what we need. Any idea who they are?’
‘No. They’re running on radio silence. But the first lot will get there within the hour. You don’t have much time.’
Chapter 36
Cornell took the backpack with the prize in it and slowly placed it on the floor in the room full of precious metal artefacts. ‘This thing’s heavy,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to switch around with different people carrying it. It’s too much weight for one person.’
Rebecca Grainger had convinced him to stop for thirty seconds to take pictures of the room and walls. Cornell agreed. He would have done so anyway. He instructed Sansom to inspect the door leading out of the room for a booby trap.
Everybody else was wandering around the room in amazement.
‘Get back here,’ Cornell called. ‘We’re leaving in a few seconds, so don’t wander off.’
There was a yell from behind them. Harcourt was bringing up the rear with a defensive position in the previous room. ‘Contact! We’ve got contact! Everybody ready!’ Harcourt called.
Cornell and Evron raced to support Harcourt, each taking up position on either side of the entry to the hole in the wall they had blown.
‘Sansom, how’s that exit looking?’ Cornell called.
‘Good,’ Sansom responded. ‘All clear.’
‘Go inside and wait for us on point. Watkins, you’re on the swag bag for the next move,’ Cornell said over his shoulder.
Watkins had one of his instruments out and was analysing an artefact. ‘What?’ he said, surprised. ‘Oh, okay…’
Kate Edwards was already standing near the backpack with the artefact in it. She undid the straps on her own backpack.
Rebecca Grainger was frantically running to every section of wall she could reach to take pictures.
The sound of automatic gunfire snapped everybody’s head towards the entry hole they had come through.
With everybody fixated on the battle, Kate swung her backpack off her shoulders, placed it on the ground, and lifted the backpack with the artefact in it onto her back.
‘Everybody, move towards the next door,’ Cornell called, still facing into the hole.
The civilians were electrified by the sound of more gunfire, closer this time. Watkins hurried over, dropped his backpack, and picked up the one left on the floor. Rebecca headed straight for the next exit, and Kate followed her.
Harcourt came diving through the hole in the wall, and Evron and Cornell immediately jammed their guns in the void and released bursts of fully automatic fire. Harcourt rolled to one side, pulled out two grenades, flicked the pins off, and threw them back through the hole.
‘Go!’ Cornell yelled.
The three soldiers turned and sprinted for the next exit. Cornell scooped up the backpack Watkins had put down as he ran past it and was the last to the exit. As he crossed the threshold into the new tunnel, he turned and threw two phosphorous grenades back into the previous room.
‘That should slow them down,’ he said while putting the backpack on. ‘That room will be so full of smoke, they won’t know if we’re in there or if we laid traps.’
‘That’s even if they make it through the poison dust,’ Harcourt said. ‘Those grenades should have stirred it up again nicely.’
‘Good thinking,’ Cornell said. ‘We’ll wait till we get outside to take the breathing masks off, in case there’s any more of the stuff around. Let’s go.’
They turned and followed the disappearing lights of the civilians up the tunnel.
Chapter 37
Cavill headed for the front door of the building he was in. ‘What side of the pyramid has this brought me out on, Christian? Sorry, it’s quicker to ask you than to get my compass out.’
‘No problem,’ Bramwell replied. ‘You’re coming out on the west side.’
‘That’s bad—it’s the opposite side to where my guys are being held. But it’s good in that they’ll ha
ve fewer guards this side,’ Cavill said. ‘I’m going to stick my head out and get closer. See if I can get the drop on them quietly.’
‘Got it,’ Bramwell said.
Cavill slowly looked around the front door.
The building was one of the last in a row before the empty ground around the pyramid.
‘I can see two on guard,’ Cavill said. ‘One at each corner of the pyramid—each has two sides to cover. If there’s anyone else, they’re hidden.’
He waited a minute, watching the movement of the guards. With such a large area to cover, both were walking back and forth, scanning one side of the city, and then walking around the corner to the other side. Like anyone who must repeat the same task, the guards had fallen into a routine.
‘There’s a twenty-second gap when I’m in their blind spot. I’m closer to the guy on the right. I’m going to move up a couple of buildings to shorten the distance to him.’
‘Okay. I’ll stay on silent mode,’ Bramwell said.
He knew that Cavill did not have to keep him informed but was talking to himself. Bramwell had been in this situation before. It helped a lone operator not to feel alone on the mission.
‘Moving,’ Cavill said.
There was silence for a few seconds, and then gunfire erupted.
‘Shit, shit!’ Cavill said.
‘What is it?’ Bramwell said.
‘I’ve dived back into a house. There was a third out of sight. I’ve been spotted.’
Cavill heard yelling and automatic gunfire from three different points ripping into the stone doorway he had dived through.
‘I can hear them yelling for reinforcements. I might be in a spot of bother here, Christian. Any other snappy tricks in your magic bag?’
Bramwell was looking at his multitude of screens and at one screen in particular.
‘Actually, yes. It’s something we’ve never done before; may get us into deep shit with our American friends, but it’s the only option. Can you hold them off for five minutes?’
‘Maybe. If I’m lucky. What’s the plan?’
‘I’m going get al-Qaeda to kill them using the drones.’
‘You’re going to do what?’
‘I’m going to spoof the drone,’ Bramwell said, flicking open the screen of an unused laptop at the end of his desk. ‘We’ve recently hacked an al-Qaeda operative’s laptop in Mombasa. We’ve cleaned out all the information we can from it. Now I’m going to take control of it, locate the drone from its GPS signal, decrypt it, and take control of it.’
‘Has that—’ Cavill broke off to fire his weapon. ‘Has that even been done before?’
‘Yes, American researchers recently discovered the flaw in the drones. They send back continuous GPS coordinates to navigate by satellite. Once I’m in, I use a technique called “spoofing,” where the drone mistakes my hacking signal for the one sent from GPS satellites.’
Bramwell’s fingers were flying over the keyboard of the new laptop. He watched characters scrolling down the screen at a rapid rate as he activated his programs.
‘Can you hurry? I don’t have much time here.’
Bramwell heard more gunfire, followed by an explosion. ‘James, you there?’
‘Yes, one them tried to fire an RPG through the door. He missed; the wall held.’
‘Almost there,’ Bramwell said.
‘Surely, they’ve encrypted these things,’ Cavill said.
‘Yes, impervious to civilian decryption technology. I’m using military-grade. This is GC bloody HQ, may I remind you. Though it will shit the Yanks up in a big way—the source will Mr. al-Qaeda’s IP address and location, and they’ll think terrorists are now able to take control of them…wait…Got it! It worked!’
‘You had doubts?’ Cavill said.
‘Tell you later.’
The screen in front of Bramwell changed to a series of windows. Two of them showed the desert floor disappearing rapidly under the camera of the drone. On a second camera screen, he could see the silver pyramid getting larger as the drone approached it.
‘Christian,’ Cavill said, firing, ‘I’m almost out of ammo.’
‘Ten seconds,’ Bramwell said.
‘I’m throwing my last grenade out to make them take stock and hold off from a building breach.’
‘I can see the site,’ Bramwell said. He heard another muffled explosion over the radio.
The drone cleared the last line of buildings, and Bramwell wheeled it over to the west side.
He typed in a series of commands and switched to seeing the ground through the drone’s infrared camera. He saw three moving figures and one stationary.
‘They’ve stopped firing,’ Cavill said.
‘They’ve heard or seen the drone,’ Bramwell said. ‘They’re running for cover. I’m targeting them as best I can. As soon as the missiles loose, that’s your chance.’
‘Got it.’
Bramwell tried to lock onto the heat sources and target them with the Hellfire missiles the drones carried.
‘I can’t get this exact,’ Bramwell said. ‘I am doing it through a bloody laptop.’
‘Just give me a chance to get out of here,’ Cavill said.
Bramwell had approximate locks on the heat sources and slammed his index finger three times on the ‘enter’ button of his keyboard.
He watched as three missiles streaked away on the screen.
‘Go, go, go!’ Bramwell called as he watched the missiles plummeting into the ground.
At the first detonation, Cavill burst out of the doorway and ran at full tilt over the open ground. The second and third missiles hit nearby. He staggered slightly from the blast waves.
‘Shit, that was close,’ he said. In front of him, the scaffolding loomed large. There was a closer explosion behind him, and pieces of metal showered the area around him.
‘What the hell was that?’ he yelled as he continued running.
‘They sent a separate signal for the drone to self-destruct,’ Bramwell said. ‘We’ve lost it.’
‘Damn it!’ Cavill said. ‘That means you can’t check how many there are or take them out on the east side.’
‘Sorry,’ Bramwell said.
‘I can’t get caught in the same situation over there,’ Cavill said. ‘I don’t have the ammo. I can’t help my guys there. Fuck! Only option is to go up.’
He was already at the scaffolding. His plan was to skirt around the outside to the east side, but Titan clearly had more men than he thought.
He was furious that he had to leave Lampack and Fabrice captured, but the best tactical decision was to take out the Titan command in the containers and support the bigger team inside the pyramid—if any of them were still alive.
He leapt at the scaffolding and started climbing as fast as he could, half expecting to feel a bullet in his back from someone they had missed on the ground.
He soon approached the containers from underneath and racked his brain to remember the layout. He saw it before he remembered. He was coming up underneath what they had called storage unit one; he knew because he saw the twisted metal where the containers on the north side had been sheared off.
Then it hit him. ‘That’s the one we flew the bomb drone into—it’s open!’
‘What?’ Bramwell said, still on the open radio line.
‘I’ve got a way back into the containers,’ Cavill said, pulling himself into the open doorway of storage unit one. ‘It’s where the first Titan guy sealed himself in, and we took him out with a minidrone. It’s safe for me to get into—it’s locked from the inside.’
‘Okay. Good news,’ Bramwell said.
Cavill stood up and looked around the storage container.
‘Geez, it sure made a mess of the guy,’ he said as he gingerly stepped over and around the debris created by detonating grenades inside the confined space of a forty-foot shipping container. The Titan envoy was nothing but a blood-splattered mess in the middle of the room.
Cavill rea
ched the other side and slowly lifted the latch on the closed door, careful not to make any noise. The door swung open easily enough.
‘I’m through to the second container on the west side,’ Cavill said. ‘The rest of them are open from here. I’m going to go silent while I move around the containers and then get reacquainted with my old friend, Mr. Lockyer.’
‘Got it,’ Bramwell said. ‘I’ll stay here till you need me.’
‘Thanks, Christian. With the number of beers we owe you, you’re going to get quite drunk when we get back.’
‘Okay…thanks.’
Cavill smiled as he clicked off the open line and focussed on moving quietly through the next three containers to get back to where he knew Lockyer would be located: on the east side.
He checked his plate carrier. There were no more grenades or flashbangs. He only had a white phosphorous grenade left. This was no good, as burning phosphorous in an enclosed space would probably damage him as much as them. Standard operating procedure would be for him to throw a stun grenade into the room and then charge in, taking out hostiles. But this option was now closed to him. He unclipped his rifle from his chest, carefully placed it against the wall in the science lab container that had the access hatch between levels, and pulled out his pistol. It was better for close-quarter combat. The door ahead of him leading from the science labs was open and unguarded. He could see through to the metal gangway heading around the corner, and there was no sign of activity on it. He was hoping that they planned to be in and out so fast that they didn’t plant any sensors in the unguarded areas; he hadn’t seen any so far.
He moved cautiously through the door and around the corner on the gangway back to the command centre. He poked his head and pistol around the corner. The door to the science office and their command centre was closed.
His hand was soon on the door. The danger was that if he tried to open it slowly and it creaked, they would know he was there and have time to get their weapons on him. There was only one course of action left: rip the door open, burst into the room, and take them out with quick pistol shots before they could bring weapons to bear.
Sub-Sahara Page 16