Fox Hunt

by James Phelan

  “It seems a couple of your team see no need to stand on ceremony,” Gunther replied with a laugh, motioning towards Fox and Gammaldi. The pair had loaded a couple of the fine porcelain plates to the brim and a waitress was already in the process of pouring them a beer each.

  “They are mission specialists on this op. I’ll introduce you,” Sefreid said, taking Gunther over to the two men.

  Fox was busy eating and watching the activity below through the floor-to-ceiling windows, whilst Gammaldi was chatting up the pretty Iranian waitress.

  “Dr Eric Gunther, this is Lachlan Fox, and that man over there is his partner in crime, Alister Gammaldi,” Sefreid said, then excused himself to attend to the buffet.

  “Mr Fox.” Gunther shook Fox’s hand.

  Gammaldi gave a wave in acknowledgement of the introduction, then turned his attention back to the waitress, who he already had in fits of suppressed laughter.

  “Lachlan is fine, Dr Gunther,” Fox replied, sizing up the man.

  “In that case, it’s Eric.” Gunther took a tall glass of gin and tonic from a nearby waitress.

  “What is this facility for?” Fox asked between mouthfuls of food.

  “It is the world’s latest research centre into nuclear fusion. No doubt you were told that GSR has played a large part in funding the project,” Gunther offered, sipping at his drink. “The operation is financed and run by my own company and staff, but the good Dr Wallace helped organise the building of the facility by lobbying some powerful people. And what you see with the eye, Lachlan, is just the staff work areas. We have almost ten kilometres of accelerators running under the sands here, making it the largest complex of its kind in the world.”

  “That’s impressive. You seem to have a good backer in Tasman Wallace.”

  “We became friends when we were doing our doctorates at Oxford together,” Gunther said candidly. “We always agreed that whichever one of us made it first, we would help the other in his quest.”

  “So Wallace wants to change the world by reporting the real facts from places no one else will go, and you want to change the world by providing clean, sustainable energy,” Fox surmised.

  Eric Gunther laughed. “That was about it when we were young, idealising what we wanted to achieve—and I might say Tasman almost has.”

  “And are you far from achieving your goal?” Fox asked with genuine interest.

  “In the two years this facility has been operational, we have come a long way.” Gunther pointed to a large opening in a far wall that resembled a subway tunnel. “We have just started testing in a kilometre-long vacuum tunnel, firing a hydrogen pellet along electronic rails into the core of a reactor, which, at great enough speed, should turn out favourably.”

  “Can you achieve the speeds required?” Fox asked as he finished off his plate.

  “We are still finding that out, but our best estimates indicate that with existing propulsion and power technologies it will take several years to reach the speeds required—then there is the hurdle of harnessing the resultant power. That, or we find an alternative to the hydrogen pellet to trigger the fusion process,” he finished.

  A waitress approached and whispered in his ear. He nodded in acknowledgement.

  “If you will excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,” Gunther said to the room. “I must depart to conduct an interview on the facility.”

  Sefreid walked over and shook Gunther’s hand again.

  “Good luck on whatever clandestine operation that old dog Wallace has sent you on this time. I am counting on seeing you all back in one piece.” Gunther spoke to Sefreid like a fond parent.

  “We will scrape through. Thank you again, Dr Gunther.”

  With that, Gunther left the room. Gammaldi joined Fox at the window overlooking the work area, where his friend had returned his attention to the scientists milling around below.

  “I really do believe my taste in organising dates is better than yours,” Gammaldi said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I think Anita will be much more enjoyable company over dinner than your good doctor,” Gammaldi said through a mouthful.

  “You made a date with her?” Fox looked disbelievingly into the bruised and battered face of his friend.

  “Yep. The next time we are in Iran,” Gammaldi replied, holding up a paper napkin with Anita’s name and phone number scribbled across it.

  “You’re incredible,” Fox said, shaking his head.

  “I thought that’s why we joined the navy in the first place. A girl in every port, remember?” Gammaldi said deadpan, stuffing a large pickled gherkin in his mouth.

  The boat Dr Gunther had organised had seen better days. It chugged along Lake Urmia as fast as the old diesel engine would take it. Pepper, who rebuilt engine blocks for kicks, had given it a tweak and three extra knots of speed were added to the twelve it had struggled to do since leaving port. Fox was at the helm in the small pilothouse, with Gammaldi alongside familiarising himself with an MP5. The GSR team were in the hold below, getting their respective equipment ready.

  “Let me see you load it again,” Fox said, watching his friend’s actions with the submachine gun.

  “Yes, sir!” Gammaldi ejected the magazine, inserted another and pulled back on the cocking slide, chambering the first round.

  “Excellent. I know you can use a pistol so I won’t ask for a demo,” Fox said.

  They watched a small wooden boat holding two fishermen float by, the pair drawing near-empty nets aboard. Their craft was left bobbing in the larger vessel’s wake.

  “Hell of a way to make a living,” Gammaldi commented. He waved at the local fishermen, who were shaking their fists in fury at nearly being capsized.

  “Yeah, you’re right. It’s a hell of a lot easier saving the world with a ticking deadline of certain death and destruction,” Fox said theatrically. “And against unknown odds to boot.”

  “Looking forward to it,” Gammaldi said deadpan, slinging the MP5 across his shoulder by the strap. The desert pattern fatigues he wore were a spare pair of Geiger’s, too tight across the chest.

  “Let me guess—this is what holidays are for,” Fox said, scanning ahead for any other craft. There was nothing but choppy, cloudy water.

  “Something like that,” Gammaldi answered with a smile.

  Sefreid joined the pair in the pilothouse fifteen minutes later, as the southern coast was growing closer on the horizon. It was a barren coastline, with no sign of habitation in either direction; a mixture of crumbling sandstone and thickly crusted salt flats left from the receding water over the ages. A handheld GPS monitor let Fox know he was almost dead on course, and soon the low sandy humps that held the theterium deposits popped up on the horizon.

  “There she is,” Sefreid said, magnifying the scene with a pair of binoculars.

  “See a good spot to tie ashore?” Fox asked, picking what seemed an okay spot with the naked eye.

  Sefreid looked along the coastline: most of it was a two-metre rock face with a slight gradient. The water in the lake had been kept at a fairly constant level for the past thirty years, as it was a vital irrigation resource for the pistachio plantations to the northeast, as well as supporting coastal communities with a dwindling fish supply and a general-purpose water source.

  “To the left a little. Over there,” Sefreid pointed. “There’s no sign of movement from the site, but better to keep a distance and we’ll cover the ground on foot.”

  “Couldn’t agree more,” Fox said. He killed the engine and let the battered old boat drift the eight hundred or so metres to shore under its own momentum. Sefreid handed the field glasses to Gammaldi and went down the steep timber stairs to the hold, which was thick with diesel fumes.

  “Are you sure about these guys?” Gammaldi asked under his breath as he examined the coastline and sand dunes himself.

  “They proved their worth when they helped me rescue you,” Fox said quietly.
“And their intentions in this theterium matter seem clear.”

  Fox looked at his friend, glad to have him back. He allowed himself a chuckle.

  “What? You just got the last joke I told you?” Gammaldi said.

  “Nah,” Fox said, turning back to the task. “Hey, if you think these characters are a bit iffy, wait until you meet their boss.”

  “The Wallace guy? I thought you liked him?” Gammaldi put the binoculars down. Through the window he could see they were about to drift ever so gently against the shore.

  “A clever guy, no doubt about it.” Fox’s gaze ahead was vacant, deep in thought. His big strong hands kept the wheel in a tight lock, so the boat would meet the edge of land portside in a wide, slow manoeuvre. “I just find it hard to believe a private company would operate on this scale in this sort of matter.”

  Gammaldi looked at his friend’s expressionless features; it was a rare sight to see the learned and worldly Lachlan Fox locked deep in puzzled thought. He decided to go in for the knock-out blow.

  “Things just aren’t black and white any more,” he quoted with a sigh of helplessness.

  “Hey!” Fox snapped out of his thoughts with a rueful smile and punched his friend in the arm. “I was pissed off when I said that,” he said, “and I’ve since come to realise that things never were black and white. There are always grey areas, where basic ideologies get confused and rarely play out a fair deal. That’s life.”

  “You know what?” Gammaldi said, his chestnut eyes open wide as if he was finally coming to a revelation. “I do believe you’re having another mid-life crisis.”

  It earned him another hit in the arm, this one harder, which aggravated a bruise from his session in Italy with the pirate.

  “Again, I wonder why I saved your bacon,” Fox said with a laugh. “Go on the deck and get ready to tie the boat to, you clown.”

  Gammaldi exited the pilothouse with a good-humoured grunt. Fox watched as he got into position on the deck, picking up a rope that was tied to a heavy brass eyelet. The stocky little man shook his head at the chore and waited for the pending soft impact, little more than twenty metres away.

  Something in the last conversation flicked a switch in Fox’s mind, illuminating a dark corner he had been trying to shed light on for the past day. GSR and Wallace’s motives, however philanthropic, began to clear. Is what Wallace is doing so different from my ill-fated mission into Timor? Who else would intervene here? The UN? Fat chance.

  He left the deep thoughts for another time and called down to Sefreid that the landing was only seconds away. With a tingling of pride, Fox knew the action he was about to take was for all the right reasons, even if it meant the lives of a couple of local toughs guarding the site.

  The white Airbus A400M touched down on a dirt airstrip outside Tabriz in a gigantic cloud of dust. The wide dirt runway was a joint effort of the Red Cross and the United Nations three years earlier, enclosed in a fenced-in compound. A sprawling cluster of temporary buildings housed a medical centre for the local region, as well as supporting UN personnel who used Tabriz as one of the Middle East logistic centres.

  The commander of the UN force was a brigadier with the British Medical Corps. He greeted the aircraft along with the six armed members of the Gurkha Regiment that provided security for the compound. The brigadier stood tall and broad-shouldered, dressed in desert fatigues that hung from his frame and flapped in the stiff breeze.

  “Captain Farrell.” The brigadier offered his hand.

  “Thank you for having us, sir,” Farrell replied, sizing up his countryman.

  “Nonsense, Queen and country, lad,” replied the brigadier with seriousness.

  “Sir, this is Major Antinov of the KRV, and Captain Zimmermann of GSG-9.” Farrell introduced the other members of the semi-EU Special Forces teams as they disembarked from the Airbus. They all shook hands and the brigadier led them to a long truck that had pulled up near the plane’s cargo doors.

  “Lieutenant Paulson of the Gurkhas here will take you to the outskirts of town.” The brigadier introduced the wiry little dark-skinned man with eyes like coal. “There we have arranged a helicopter from the northern militia group to transport you to the site. You understand why I can’t let you use our UN bird.”

  “Of course, sir.” Farrell knew the arrangements would have been made by request of military command back home—this was certainly not a mission representing the UN. “These northern militia are up to the task?”

  “They are well equipped and backed, so don’t worry about the reliability of the helicopter—a big MI-8 Hip. And the price we dished out means they will give you up to twenty-four hours and ask no questions.”

  “I take it we can have faith in this group?” Antinov asked after he had ordered the men to move all equipment into the truck.

  “Faith, Major Antinov, is all these people know,” the brigadier answered.

  “And they have no idea who we are?” Zimmermann asked.

  “These people ask few questions. Lieutenant Paulson has built up a rapport with this group and delivered a truckload of medical supplies to them last night—something far harder for them to obtain in this country than money or arms.”

  The brigadier spoke a few words to Paulson before walking away. He turned back again with an afterthought. “Good luck… with whatever it is you are doing,” he said with no trace of a smile.

  “Thank you again, sir,” Farrell said with a casual salute. He climbed into the cargo hold of the truck with the rest of his team and pulled the back canvas down to hide their presence as they exited the compound and the city.

  At the theterium site, Fox and Gammaldi were the last ashore. As with the incursion in Italy, Fox led one team, Sefreid another. The groups were identical to last time, but with one change: Geiger stayed on the boat because of his wounded arm and Gammaldi took his spot in Fox’s team.

  As before, the two teams kept in communication with encrypted radios, the throat mikes taped around their necks. Each member carried a twenty-kilogram backpack as well, except for Ridge who had the job of carrying a Stinger missile launcher and three rockets.

  “Meet you in the middle,” Sefreid said, and charged off at a run with his team in tow.

  “We’ll be waiting for you,” Fox said, leadig his troops off at a fast-paced jog over the two-kilometre distance.

  “You coping there, Fatso?” he asked of his friend, who was running beside him, with Gibbs and Beasley behind.

  “I’ll get by,” Gammaldi replied with a grin, even though pain registered in his joints at every stride over the rocky terrain.

  The site of the theterium was a low double hill. The ground underfoot was barren from the high salinity near the lake and consisted of crumbling sedimentary rock and windswept sand. To the south were endless rolling hills, much like the one they were running around, and much smaller than the mountains that climbed to the north of the lake and stretched to Iran’s northern border.

  After five minutes, Fox’s team reached some wide tyre tracks that marked the road leading to the encampment. Following the tracks, they came to a thicket of prickly shrubs and ducked behind them for cover. The sun was shining through intermittent cloud cover, but whilst its rays were bright and golden in patches, it failed to warm the winter’s day.

  “Sefreid, we have cover at the south end of the camp but no fix on any targets. Repeat, zero visual targets,” Fox called over the throat mike.

  “Roger that. I have Ridge covering the area up here. We are moving in for a closer look,” Sefreid replied.

  “Copy that. We’re closing in too,” Fox said, then ordered Beasley to stay behind to guard the track.

  “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Gammaldi said as they continued running, carrying their MP5s ready for action.

  “I miss the life a little,” Fox said with a sideways smile.

  “Give me the comfort of a cockpit any day. I’m not fond of this grunt
work.” Gammaldi came to a stop next to his friend as they closed on the last section of cover. There was an open expanse of about a hundred metres to the campsite, and to the right the mouth of a large cave opened up the western side of the hill.

  Fox studied the scene, comparing it with the image he had memorised on the flight earlier. Two canvas tents stood opposite each other, joined by shadecloth; a water tanker sat close to one of the tents with an old Korean War-era Jeep beyond it. Three men sat in the shade between the tents, playing cards and eating lunch, oblivious to any pending threat.

  “Fox to Sefreid. I have three figures between the tents.”

  “Copy that, Fox, we have them too. We are almost at the water tanker,” Sefreid replied quietly.

  Fox watched as Gibbs and Gammaldi climbed up the sloping rock of the hillside to cover the campsite and check the cave for any threats not visible from below. Sefreid’s voice came over the radio as the pair disappeared from view.

  “We have position at the north. Ready when you are, Fox.”

  “Copy that, Sefreid. Waiting on Gibbs,” Fox replied.

  “Don’t you boys hold back on account of me,” Gibbs replied in her hammed-up southern drawl. “I’m ready to play and can confirm that there are three targets in view.” Her voice was short of breath as she scrambled to the nearest vantage point looking over the campsite.

  “This is Fox. I’m moving in.”

  Fox sprang up from his position and ran straight towards the lunching guards with no concern for concealment. It took him five seconds to run half the distance before the guards noticed the armed figure charging at them. It took another two seconds for them to respond, staggering up from the table and reaching for their AK-47s leaning up against the tents. By the time they’d picked up the weapons, Fox was nearly upon them and Sefreid, Goldsmith and Pepper had emerged from behind the tanker a few paces behind the group.

  “Drop your weapons!” Sefreid said in scratchy Arabic.

  The three guards looked behind them and saw their equal number of armed men, weapons raised at head level. Pepper was waving his big M60 across the three guards, as if daring them to give him an excuse to fire. His wide grin and menacing stare showed he meant business. The guards dropped their rifles and raised their hands high in the air.