by Chris Ryan
Table of Contents
Cover
Meet the Team
Also available in the Alpha Force series
Alpha Force: Desert Pursuit
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chris Ryan's Top Ten Tips for Survival in a Desert
About the Author
Meet the team:
Alex – A quiet lad from Northumbria, Alex leads the team in survival skills. His dad is in the SAS and Alex is determined to follow in his footsteps, whatever it takes. He who dares . . .
Li – Expert in martial arts and free-climbing, Li can get to grips with most situations . . .
Paulo – The laid-back Argentinian is a mechanical genius, and with his medical skills he can patch up injuries as well as motors . . .
Hex – An ace hacker, Hex is first rate at code-breaking and can bypass most security systems . . .
Amber – Her top navigational skills mean the team are rarely lost. Rarely lost for words either, rich-girl Amber can show some serious attitude . . .
With plenty of hard work and training, together they are Alpha Force – an elite squad of young people dedicated to combating injustice throughout the world.
In Desert Pursuit Alpha Force track a violent gang of child-slavers across the hostile Sahara desert . . .
www.kidsatrandomhouse.co.uk/alphaforce
Also available in the Alpha Force series:
SURVIVAL
RAT-CATCHER
HOSTAGE
RED CENTRE
HUNTED
BLOOD MONEY
ALPHA FORCE: DESERT PURSUITChris Ryan
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Epub ISBN: 9781407049946
Version 1.0
www.randomhouse.co.uk
ALPHA FORCE: DESERT PURSUIT
A RED FOX BOOK 978 0 099 43926 4
First published in Great Britain by Red Fox, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, 2003
This edition published 2004
7 9 10 8 6
Copyright © Chris Ryan, 2003
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ONE
The jerboa stopped in the sand-burrow entrance and peered out across the moonlit dune. It was summer in the Sahara Desert, when daytime temperatures above ground could reach a blistering fifty degrees Celsius, and the little rodent had slept away the hottest hours in the darkness of its burrow. Now, in the relative cool of the desert night, it was awake and hungry.
A beetle scuttled across the sand towards the burrow. The jerboa held still, waiting until the insect was within striking distance before springing forward with a powerful thrust of its long hind legs. It snatched up the beetle, bit off the snapping jaws and then settled back on its haunches to enjoy the meal. In common with most desert dwellers, the jerboa required very little water and the juicy innards of the beetle would provide all the fluid it needed.
Suddenly the jerboa stopped eating in mid-bite and sat upright, using its tufted tail for balance. It had heard something. Under its snout, the beetle’s legs waved feebly, like a wind-blown moustache, but the jerboa remained frozen in place, listening intently. There were other things hunting in the dunes that night and survival meant staying alert. The sand began to vibrate as the sound grew louder, turning into a hum, then a high-pitched drone that seemed to come from everywhere at once.
The jerboa sprang for the safety of its burrow just as three quad bikes, each carrying two riders and pulling a small trailer, blasted over the crest of the dune. The combined engine noise briefly changed to a higher, whining note as the quads soared into the air, then gravity took over and the squat machines hit the downward slope with their heavily loaded trailers jouncing along behind them. The quads fish-tailed until the fat tyres got a grip, then they roared on down the dune slope in a shallow V formation, leaving three clouds of swirling sand in their wake. Alpha Force was in action.
They were travelling at night and off-road for a reason. Their mission was covert. They were in Western Sahara, a skinny little country wedged in next to Morocco on the Atlantic coast of north-western Africa. Western Sahara’s recent history had been full of violence. Morocco had invaded, claiming that the country belonged to them, and the land had become a war zone as the people of Western Sahara, known as Sahawaris, fought a long, fierce guerrilla battle against the might of the Moroccan army. Now, many years after an uneasy ceasefire had been declared, some areas of Western Sahara were still dangerous. Morocco remained in control of the little country while, just over the border in Algeria, thousands of displaced Sahawaris lived in huge refugee camps.
Earlier that evening Alpha Force had slipped across the border from Algeria and now they were pushing further and further into territory that was patrolled by Moroccan troops. If they were discovered by the soldiers, their mission would be blown. To help them to remain invisible, the headlights of the three quad bikes were covered by infra-red filters. The drivers wore night-vision goggles and the lenses glowed like green insect eyes in the moonlight.
Paulo, the most experienced off-roader of them all, was in the lead. He had been riding quad bikes since he was eight years old. Back in Argentina, on his family cattle ranch, horses, 4x4s or quads were the only way to cross the huge ex
panses of rough ground in order to check on the stock. He had never driven in desert conditions before but he was learning fast and his face was set in a fierce grin as he reached the base of the dune and sent the quad bike leaping forward over the open ground ahead.
Alex was on Paulo’s left flank. His shoulders were hunched and his thick, fair hair was dark with sweat as he struggled to match the speed of the lead quad. He had spent a few summers helping with the harvest on a farm near his home village in Northumberland, so he had some experience with tractors and quads, but he was nowhere near as expert as Paulo. They had been travelling for a good ten hours and his muscles were aching from the effort of keeping the quad on a steady course over the uneven ground, but the South American handled his machine with a casual ease, as though it were a part of him.
As he watched Paulo roar ahead, Alex clenched his jaw at the thought of coaxing even more speed out of his quad. Night-driving in the Sahara was tough on the nerves. The moonlight cast harsh, black shadows which played tricks with perspective. A shallow rut in the sand could look like a deep crevasse, but an axle-breaking trench might not show up until the last second. The night-vision goggles helped a lot, but Alex was still half-expecting to crash down into a hidden dry creek bed, known locally as a wadi, at any moment.
He sighed and took a firmer grip on the handlebars of the quad, preparing to go for maximum speed. He knew Paulo was right to set such a demanding pace. There were only two hours left before dawn and Alpha Force had to reach their target zone before the sun was up. The sigh turned into a grunt as his passenger jabbed him sharply in the ribs.
‘We’re losing them, you idiot!’ yelled Amber, her mouth five centimetres from his ear. ‘C’mon! Put the pedal to the metal!’
Alex did the opposite. He slowed the quad to a stop, flipped up his night-vision goggles and turned to glare at Amber. His grey eyes were steely with annoyance but Amber did not flinch. She simply stared back, looking down her nose at him in her usual arrogant fashion as though he were an unsatisfactory chauffeur. Amber was in the habit of giving orders – and usually they were obeyed. She was a beautiful black American girl, the sole heir to a fortune which had come from a software empire worth billions of dollars. Her parents had died in a plane crash two years earlier and she now spent most of her days surrounded by people who were paid to look after her.
Alex was not one of those people. He and the rest of Alpha Force never allowed Amber to get away with rich-girl behaviour when she was with them.
‘You think you can drive this thing faster than me?’ asked Alex.
‘Hell, yeah,’ sniffed Amber.
‘All right, then. You take over.’
Amber blinked in shock. She knew how to operate the quad, but she was uneasy around anything that had an engine. Yachts or horses were much more her style. ‘I can’t drive!’ she spluttered. ‘I – I mean, I’m the navigator. I have to keep track of our route on the GPS system—’
‘Then why don’t you do that,’ grated Alex, slamming the night-vision goggles back down over his eyes. ‘And leave the driving to me?’
Amber looked solemnly into the round, green lenses of his goggles. ‘OK, Kermit.’
Alex grinned despite himself, and Amber grinned back. Then the smile left her face as she glanced over Alex’s shoulder. ‘Quick!’ she warned. ‘They’re changing direction!’
Alex turned to see the other two quads swinging right, towards a formation of dunes on the horizon. He realized that if he cut diagonally across the flat expanse of pebbly desert, he could gain some ground and catch up with them. Gritting his teeth, he opened up the throttle and the quad bike shot forward again.
It was Khalid who had told Paulo to turn east. Khalid was a twelve-year-old Sahawari boy from the refugee camp in Algeria, where they were based. He was acting as a guide for the mission and was riding behind Paulo on the lead quad. As soon as the dunes came into sight on the eastern horizon, he had tapped Paulo on the shoulder and indicated that they should head towards them. Paulo nodded to show that he understood and glanced over at the right-flanking quad to make sure Li had seen the signal too.
Li gave a thumbs-up sign, then peeled away in a turn so tight, it made her quad bike tip up on to the two right-side wheels. Smoothly, Li rose to her feet and leaned out to the left to provide counterbalance. Her long black hair feathered out behind her as she held the quad poised on two wheels, the trailer bouncing crazily along behind. Hex, her passenger and the fifth member of Alpha Force, grabbed at the edges of his seat and hung on grimly.
‘What the hell, Li!’ he yelled.
‘Dios,’ muttered Paulo, watching Li’s acrobatics with a mixture of worry and pride. He was more fond of the lively Anglo-Chinese girl than he cared to admit. This was her first time off-roading but she had taken to it like a natural. Years of training in martial arts and free climbing had given her a wiry strength, snake-fast reactions and a superb sense of balance, all of which came in very handy when driving a quad at full speed through the desert. On the down side, Li was also an adrenalin junkie, always looking for the next fix of excitement and with a bad habit of acting first and thinking later. If the quad bike tipped over, both she and Hex could be crushed under the heavy machine. Paulo turned his own quad and drew alongside her, shaking his head. Li grinned and deliberately kept her quad precariously balanced for a few more seconds before letting it settle back on to all four wheels.
As soon as the quad was stable again, Hex turned to make sure that a vital piece of equipment was still inside the trailer in its padded, hard-shelled case. He had wedged it in securely enough when they were loading up, but Li’s extreme driving could dislodge an elephant. He spotted a corner of the polished steel container poking out under the covering tarpaulin and gave a relieved sigh. That piece of equipment was his responsibility and without it, the whole mission would fail.
Hex settled back into his seat and automatically checked the soft leather pouch that was strapped across his chest, inside his shirt. Tucked into the pouch was a hand-sized portable PC so technologically advanced it was not yet available on the open market. Hex grinned as he patted the leather pouch. Having a software billionaire as a friend did have some advantages. Hex was an expert hacker and code-breaker and the tiny PC was precious to him. After all, it contained most of his life. He lived in London, but the Net was his real home, and other hackers from the furthest corners of the world were closer to him than his own family.
As Hex felt the familiar shape of the palmtop under his hand, his fingers started jumping, tapping imaginary keys. When he was not on assignment with Alpha Force, Hex spent most of his spare time on the Net and now he was suffering withdrawal symptoms. His green eyes narrowed into disgusted slits as he scanned the Saharan landscape. Other people saw a stark beauty in the desert but Hex saw only millions of grains of sand, any one of which might work its gritty way into his state-of-the-art palmtop and cripple the delicate electronics. Hex was no couch potato – his body was firm and muscled as a result of regular trips to the gym – but he had never understood why some people loved the great outdoors.
‘I hate it,’ he said, without realizing he had spoken aloud.
‘What?’ called Li over her shoulder.
‘Outside,’ shouted Hex, putting a protective hand over his palmtop as Alex and Amber caught up and cut across their path, sending a stinging spray of pebbly grit into the air. ‘I hate it!’
Alex took up his original position on Paulo’s left flank and Alpha Force continued on their way, speeding through the night, racing to beat the sun. Ahead of them loomed the black silhouettes of the dunes, their mission destination.
TWO
The dune towered above Alpha Force as they stood in a tired huddle, stretching their aching muscles. They had reached the target zone. It had been a hard journey and they were glad to be off the quads at last. The machines and their trailers were parked neatly in a row at the base of the dune and the ticking of their cooling engines was loud in the si
lence of the desert.
Alex moved around the group, pouring water from the jerry can he had unloaded from one of the trailers. For a moment no-one spoke as they all drank thirstily and then held out their beakers for refills. Travelling at night meant that they had not been faced with the roasting desert sun, or the drying wind that always started up at sunrise. In fact, the night-time temperature had been a reasonable thirty degrees Celsius, but still they were all feeling dehydrated. They were dressed properly for the desert in gandourah and sirwal, and the flowing shirts and baggy trousers gave some protection against water loss through evaporation, but their bodies were still adapting to the arid conditions and at the end of the journey only Khalid had seemed unaffected by thirst. Alex shook his head in admiration as he remembered how the Sahawari boy had casually turned down the offered water before loping off into the darkness to scout the area.
‘We made it,’ sighed Paulo, once he had drained his second cup of water.
‘Only just,’ said Li, nodding at the sky. Behind the top of the dune, the first streaks of crimson were beginning to show in the east.
‘Hex, how much light are you going to need for the next phase of the mission?’ asked Alex.
‘It has to be full daylight for the best results,’ said Hex.
‘That’s still a few hours away,’ judged Li.
‘Until then, we shall be well hidden here, yes?’ asked Paulo.
Amber nodded. ‘Khalid told me the army patrols keep to the road unless they see anything suspicious. As long as we stay on the western side of the dune, we’re out of sight of the road.’
‘We should still pitch the camouflage awnings,’ said Alex. ‘Just in case they have helicopters or something. The awnings’ll give us shade, too. This hollow is going to turn into an oven once the sun climbs above the dune.’
He glanced around at the others, waiting for their agreement. In the red light of dawn, they looked as tired as he felt and he knew they must be tempted to simply curl up in the warm sand and go to sleep. He certainly was. His muscles felt as though they had been put through a shredding machine and his head was still full of the whining drone of quad engines.