Fox Hunt

by James Phelan

  “Yeah, what’s your time?” prodded Fox.

  “Ten-oh-three.” The numbers rolled off Geiger’s tongue with deserved pride.

  “Ha!” bellowed Sefreid as he came over to the group, a wide toothy smile under his moustache. “That was before you started enjoying the good life and taking girls to every fancy shmancy restaurant in New York—and still he doesn’t get any, I might add.”

  Fox could tell Sefreid was turning on the army/marine corps rivalry for his sake—to take his mind off Gammaldi. It worked; everybody laughed—especially Gibbs, the only female member on board and a good friend of Geiger’s.

  “Oh, look at him…” Gibbs chided as she tried to grab one of the non-existent love handles under Geiger’s Kevlar armour. Truth be told, every member of the GSR security force—Fox included— was as fit as ever and damn proud of it.

  “Okay, okay,” said Geiger, putting his hands in the air as if surrendering. “You’re right, I’m a slow, old has-been who can’t get it up.”

  And with that he lunged to his right and tackled Gibbs around the waist, taking them both flying to the floor.

  Fox was surprised to see how even the good-natured wrestling match turned out to be. Emma Gibbs had a small advantage in height, but was slight of frame, and Geiger managed to knock off the Yankees hat that was keeping her hair in place. He turned his attention away from the tangle of limbs after a few seconds—just as Gibbs had Geiger pinned down in a half-nelson manoeuvre—to find Sefreid standing next to him.

  Sefreid produced a thermos and a couple of tin cups. “Hot, strong coffee—the only way to plan an op.”

  20

  ITALY

  A giant of a man, using his bare hands, had been pummelling the life out of Gammaldi for the past half hour. Dressed only in baggy pants and an eye patch, the giant looked just like a pirate, and his heavily stubbled face and huge naked torso glistening with sweat added to the perception. It was this small piece of humour in an otherwise painful situation that kept Gammaldi conscious throughout the bashing.

  “What the…” Gammaldi tried to catch the breath that had been beaten out of him. “What the hell do you want?”

  In answer, the pirate sent his bare foot deep into Gammaldi’s ribs while he was down on his hands and knees spitting out blood. Whilst a kick with a bare foot may not be thought of as painful, Gammaldi could confirm that when the foot is the size and weight of a Thanksgiving turkey, it hurt. He was sent a metre through the air and crashed into the stone wall with bone-jarring impact.

  The cruellest part of this whole ordeal, Gammaldi had quickly realised, was that the pirate allowed him to regain his breath after every blow. With the short break came the registering of pain—a torrent that sent his vision into a blur.

  Then it stopped.

  Another figure entered the dungeon-like room. Gammaldi rolled onto his aching back to look up at the new arrival through swollen eyes. He was a much smaller man, of average height, with a dark tan and thin greying hair. He spoke to the pirate in the same Russian dialect Gammaldi had heard before from his kidnappers.

  Gammaldi smiled, baring bloodied teeth, when he saw the pirate—who had to duck and walk sideways to fit through the doorframe—leaving the room. He lifted his head to call after the leaving hulk, “Thanks, Bluebeard—it’s been real.” With that, he lay back and caught his breath once again.

  The new arrival looked down at Gammaldi with a rueful smile.

  “Hello, my friend, I trust you are having a pleasant stay?” he asked in heavily accented English.

  “I must admit,” Gammaldi groaned as he sat up and leaned his back against the cold stone wall, “I always thought the Ritz had better rooms than this. And I’m a bit dubious about the look of your staff’s uniforms—somewhat dated.” He spat out some more blood onto the floor in front of the man’s boots.

  “Very amusing. Allow me to introduce myself, Mr…” The man looked at the licence in Gammaldi’s wallet. “Gammaldi. Your name is Italian, no?”

  “It is Italian, yes,” Gammaldi managed, whilst inspecting a loose molar with his tongue in his pain-filled mouth.

  “An Australian citizen of Italian descent. How apt that you shall die in your motherland.”

  The man gave a chuckle at his own display of humour. Gammaldi did not let his surprise at being in Italy show.

  “My name is Dimitry Orakov,” continued the man, “and I am the Chief of Security here.” He seemed very pleased to be relating his importance to Gammaldi. “You have a few hours to relax until your next visitor arrives. He is a specialist in the field of obtaining information from…” Another snigger “… our guests. He jumps at the chance to practise his craft.”

  “I’d be happy to have a chat now,” Gammaldi prompted, in the hope of saving himself from another episode of pain.

  “There is no hurry, and I wouldn’t want to spoil the Doctor’s fun. I hear his favourite technique is to attach electrodes to our guests’ testicles.” Orakov laughed again as he made for the door.

  He turned, his face red with anger, when he heard Gammaldi chuckling. “Something funny?” he asked through pursed lips.

  “Yeah,” Gammaldi said, and spat the tooth at Orakov. It flew through the air with a glob of blood and slid down the man’s cheek. “Would you mind cancelling the Doctor and making an appointment with the dentist for me?”

  21

  HIGH OVER EUROPE

  Fox sat on a large box with his back against the rear bulkhead, looking out at the starry night. There was intermittent cloud cover below their flight path and it reflected back the dim light of the quarter moon. They were now passing over Belgium and Fox recalled that it was the only landmass discernible at night from space as it was so densely lit up—some sort of fetish with street lights, he mused to himself. It was especially bright when compared to the dark blanket of the Atlantic—a sight he had been looking at for the past half hour with nothing but a few ships’ navigational lights to break the monotony.

  Nearby, most of the GSR team were cleaning their weapons, more to keep themselves busy than to remove any dust particles, as Fox could see their weapons were positively gleaming. Beasley was deeply involved in a Game Boy, occasionally swearing when the small handheld computer game beat him at tennis. Remarkably, Sefreid was sleeping in the far corner amid the pile of parachute packs, a trickle of drool from the corner of his mouth just visible against the black face paint he had already applied.

  Again Fox looked out the window and into the night. The lights of Belgium were vanishing below and it was darker again. In his peripheral vision he saw a slow shooting star, just a tiny speck going upwards into the black sky. He watched it for a couple of seconds before it disappeared into the cosmos—and made a wish.

  22

  SPACE

  The Legion VI carrying the pod jettisoned its external fuel tanks and continued on main rocket for another few seconds. Two more stages of separation occurred before the coned head of the rocket was all that was left orbiting the Earth.

  The cone was the size of a station wagon and had a small booster rocket at its rear. The computer inside registered that it was time for a slight directional change to deliver its payload on the correct orbit, and twelve circular discs the size of CDs popped out and flew into space, leaving small dark holes. Within an instant a seemingly chaotic series of hissing vapours jetted out of these holes and brought the craft to a virtual standstill.

  Eleven seconds elapsed and then the nose cone opened up like a blooming flower bud. With another series of hissing vapours this, too, was sent plummeting back down to Earth, where it would disintegrate upon re-entry.

  The pod, bearing the stencilled flag of Chechnya, drifted slowly towards its destiny only fifty metres away. The huge magnetic force of the Dragon coilgun drew the pod towards it on a mating course. The long protruding rails, which carried the electrical circuit and directed the theterium cartridge to pinpoint accuracy, fa
nned outwards, as if mimicking the earlier space dance of the Legion VI’s nose cone. The scene took place in the incredible slow motion and silence that only the vacuum of space could provide.

  The Dragon was armed and charging.

  23

  NATIONAL RECONNAISSANCE OFFICE

  LANGLEY

  Paul Kopec’s night was a welcome change from the monotonous routine of the past few months’ work. The graveyard shift leader at the National Reconnaissance Office’s Department of Orbital Data: Grid 3 had just started on his sixth coffee. His five-member team had been doubled tonight as they put the Middle East Warfighter II satellite through its paces.

  Three of the large screens that lined the viewing wall were dedicated to the task of showing heat signatures in the targeted area, starting from Azerbaijan’s border with Iran and working to the right in an eighty-kilometre square search grid pattern. After every image was taken, analysts would study it on the large screens, put filters on it, zoom in and out of different areas and double-check anything that looked like a possibility. By the time one team of three had analysed their grid, it would be their turn to pull down another image from the satellite. The process slowed every now and then when a heat signature was picked up and needed further investigation—but each time they came up with the same result: nothing.

  24

  ITALY

  “Fifteen minutes to drop,” Sefreid bellowed as he emerged from the cockpit. Each member of the GSR team was making final preparations to their equipment, readying for the assault. The air of excitement and humour had left the cabin, replaced by the serious faces of highly trained professionals dedicated to the task. Fox was going through a few military rucksacks and Geiger came over.

  “Need a hand?” asked the ex-Marine.

  “I think I’m okay. I’m taking an MP5 and a Sig,” Fox said as he holstered the pistol.

  “You chose the MP over this?” Geiger asked incredulously, brandishing his M16 assault rifle complete with M203 grenade launcher slung under the barrel.

  “I prefer the quieter approach,” Fox said, screwing a long black silencer into the barrel of his sub-machine gun.

  “That’s why I carry this.” Geiger unsheathed a wicked-looking knife. It was a K-Bar standard-issue combat knife for all marines since the Vietnam War, long and razor sharp along one edge and jagged along the other. Geiger’s was as shiny as the day it had received its factory polish.

  “Again our preferences differ—if I have to kill someone, I prefer to be further than arm’s length away,” Fox said, and began sighting his weapons.

  “On my mark: three, two, one—go, go, go!”

  At Sefreid’s command, his three team members jumped out of the Gulfstream, followed by their leader. Whilst the Gulfstream was not designed for paratrooper drops, it served this purpose well.

  Fox sent his team out, then followed the last out the door, which was then closed by the copilot, who was wearing the same breathing sets as the parachutists to prevent asphyxiation at high altitude.

  Each member of the GSR team peeled off in their respective attack groups and free fell the first three thousand metres, before deploying their parachutes.

  It was the first time Fox had used a Falcon parachute, although he had heard rumours about them in his navy days and knew they were used only by small elements of the US and British Special Forces, due to their enormous cost. They were the same black and charcoal camouflage as all the team’s combat gear, and their rectangular design was virtually invisible in the night sky. Fox looked about him and saw a couple of vague silhouettes against the sky. His legs vanished into pure black, and he kept his arms loose by his sides. He could feel how the honeycombed layers of the Falcon made it so easy to manoeuvre; it was almost like hang-gliding.

  The best part, though, was how little he had to do to keep the Falcon on course. The eight-kilogram backpack he was wearing contained GPS coordinates, including the exact height of the target landing area. All he had to do was select from several modes of operation—in this case, a quick glide into position and then a slow, quiet landing. An electric motor made up to six adjustments per second through the descent, an array of gears pulling at the thirty-six strands of Neolite cord that suspended him from the silent canopy above.

  As he was blanketed in a cloud of mist, a chime sounded in Fox’s earpiece. He knew it to be a warning that the ground was closing.

  Sefreid’s no-nonsense voice came crystal clear over the small headset each team member was wearing. “Ten seconds to the deck. Weapons ready. Good hunting.”

  The MP5 was hanging from a strap around Fox’s neck. He squeezed the pistol grip with his right hand and the forward horizontal grip with his left. The butterflies that always came when a planned mission became reality turned in his stomach.

  At eight seconds the sea mist cleared and the landing area came into view through the artificial light of his night goggles. Unlike ordinary night-vision devices, which brightened the viewing field with a stark green haze, the small wraparound goggles provided a light blue hue that was easier on the eyes and much more realistic. A custom-added feature of the goggles was a translucent film on the lenses, which caused the black tape securing each team member’s throat mike to fluoresce.

  Fox touched the ground in such a feathered landing it was as if he were suspended from stage wires. Geiger landed exactly ten metres to his left. Ten metres behind them Beasley and Gibbs landed to form a perfect square.

  At the other end of the farmhouse, Sefreid and his team touched down in the exact same pattern. The four of them released their parachutes, which were amassed by Ridge for later retrieval. Goldsmith and Pepper disappeared into the tall pine trees that forested the surrounding area of the compound, as their first objective was two hundred metres off to their left. Sefreid and Ridge moved to a vantage point near the road that led in through the high cyclone wire fence, where a solitary guard was meant to be in the gatehouse.

  At the southern end, Fox’s team ran a gradual uphill course parallel to the dirt landing strip, using a thicket of spindly trees for cover. Once they reached the small transmission building, Gibbs was boosted up to the roof and Beasley prised open an aged window with his combat knife. Satisfied the room was empty save for some generating equipment and radio sets, he scrambled in through the small opening.

  Peering around the corner in the direction of the guard box, Fox and Geiger got ready for their dash to the hangar.

  Gibbs watched as Fox and Geiger moved quickly to the hangar building. She was lying flat on her stomach with the long, silenced Accuracy International sniper rifle resting on its titanium stand. The crouching figures of her comrades disappeared into the hangar and she switched the sight on the half-a-million dollar rifle to infrared. Immediately she picked up the hot-bodied outlines of Fox and the shorter Geiger through the corrugated steel walls of the hangar. The lens of the scope had the same film that, even on infrared setting, showed the bright fluorescent collars of the team members.

  “Fox, Geiger, I have you clear in the hangar,” Gibbs said through their small radio earpieces. She then moved her rifle around the grounds and looked through the scope for any threats. The only other figures within the five-hundred-metre range of the infrared scope were the two targets in the guard box.

  “Roger that, Gibbs, clear in the hangar,” Fox responded as he and Geiger visually checked the hangar for any threats. The large open space contained no plane, and had several engines, including aquatic outboard motors, in various states of repair on long benches. Having confirmed the all-clear call from Gibbs, the two men moved back to the hangar door.

  “Sefreid, this is Fox,” Fox called from the open doorway. He could just make out the guard box in the dim blue light of the night-vision goggles.

  “Roger, Fox,” Sefreid replied.

  “We have the hangar secured and report that it is empty; repeat, the hangar is empty—no aircraft to be found.”

&nbs
p; Fox was a little disappointed at the thought that perhaps Gammaldi had been transferred from the compound—but he put it out of his mind and concentrated on the planned task.

  “Roger that. Hangar secured and empty,” Sefreid acknowledged in a whisper. He and Ridge were only metres away from the rear of the gatehouse now and stealthily moving closer.

  “All positions ready?” he called through his mike. Every member of the two teams quickly responded in the affirmative.

  “Execute first objective and report in,” he ordered.

  Sefreid rose from his position in the tall grass and moved towards the small timber gatehouse. It had windows looking out along the road and was open to the elements on the gate side.

  Ridge took aim at the greasy old lamp post that lit the area. With a single shot of his silenced pistol, all was smothered in darkness. The guard, who had been watching a movie on a small television set, came out to inspect the lamp post. He threw a cigarette stub into the brush ahead and turned back to the relative comfort of his old chair and movie, apparently unbothered by the broken light.

  Ridge’s pistol coughed softly twice more, drilling into the guard’s head.

  Gibbs zoomed in on the guard box, using the night-vision mode as it allowed her to get a much tighter focus than the infrared. The box was a squat building made of brick with a flat roof. Long skinny windows gave it a bunker-like appearance. She targeted the head of one of the assailants, focusing on his left eye; she knew that even with all her experience she still squeezed the trigger a few millimetres per hundred metres to the left.