by James Phelan
While the structure of power had changed much since the 1980s, weapons and machines did not know the Cold War was over. Most had been reprogrammed, but many still pointed ominously towards their old nemeses. The Dragon was so secret, no one in its former mother country even knew of its existence, let alone the need to change the input commands.
There was only one target programmed into the Dragon in such circumstances; one dot on the globe that it had long ago been designed to destroy if it was itself attacked.
The capital city of its old enemy.
53
IRAN
Colonel Pugh’s resourcer troops had set up their mining equipment by the time Major Mitchell Scot and his squad landed their Falcons at the site.
Watching the whole scene unfold from the air, Scot had commanded his forward deployed troops to victory, whilst giving thanks for the added firepower and versatility the Roadrunners had provided. Now, the leader of the marines force walked over to his second-in-command, who had led the men through the firefight on the ground.
“Lieutenant, there is a boat tied ashore about a click to the east,” Scot said. “Take a squad in one of those Roadrunners and comb the area for any threats. Then destroy the boat.”
“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant replied and rounded up a squad of marines for the task.
Scot took a brisk walk around the campsite to observe the remainder of his men setting up a defensive perimeter. Six hours had been scheduled for the mining operation and the major knew his men would have no problem holding the position for that long. He had two platoons of his marines in the field, just over sixty battle-hardened warriors. That number had been reduced to an even fifty due to the unexpected resistance at the site.
Standing five eleven and with hair shaved down to his skull, Scot often drew a second glance because of his eyes. They were the lightest and most piercing grey imaginable, like the sheer brilliance of an Antarctic ice shelf. There was not a person alive who could match the major’s harshness, his innate ability to strip someone down to their frailties with his icy glare.
Satisfied the area was secure, Scot moved off to check on the forces at the cave.
Fox and Gammaldi were the last to be pushed into the small cave.
The marine doing the pushing was a huge black woman, at least six foot two and close to a hundred kilos. Her head—or what they could see of it under the Kevlar helmet—was clean-shaven, and when she walked she had a limp. With a heavy boot, she aided Gammaldi through the small opening he had been freed from only thirty minutes before.
“Sleep tight,” she barked, before motioning a pair of marines to seal off the small hole made during the cave-in earlier.
“Well, Sergeant?” Scot asked, moving up the hill towards his trusted subordinate.
“They’re a fuckin’ EU outfit, sir,” the woman answered. “And wait until you see what they’ve left us.”
The marine led her commander across to the main cave, which was swarming with Colonel Pugh’s resourcer troops, several of whom were disconnecting the GSR plastic explosives.
“Scot. Take a look at this little beauty.” Colonel Pugh motioned over his shoulder to where a couple of beefy engineers were crouched around an explosive.
“What is it?” Scot asked of the experts, noting that there was a digital timer counting down, currently reading:
00:09:43
“We are not exactly sure, sir,” one of the resourcer engineers replied. “But if I had to bet a month’s pay, it’s either a fuel air device or possibly…” The engineer looked to his colleague crouched next to him, who shrugged in agreement.
“Or possibly even nuclear,” the engineer admitted.
“Either way, this baby will leave a real mess of the site,” Pugh said.
“Can you shut it down?” Scot asked. If anyone was going to blow the site, it would be him. His means, his way.
Pugh looked down at his troops, then up again at Scot with a devilish smile.
“Give ’em two minutes,” he said confidently.
Ten minutes later, with all explosive material disarmed and removed, the resourcers’ mining operation was underway. Although nearly an hour behind schedule, the engineers were pleasantly surprised by two things: the theterium deposit was easily accessible and close to the surface; and the element was easily extracted from the ground using their specialised diamond-cutting tools.
Spanning the short distance between the cave and the boat tied to shore was a carbon fibre structure that would not have been out of place attached to the International Space Station. Made of chopstick-sized pieces that clicked together like a child’s toy, the structure supported a series of fibreglass and Kevlar bins that were filled with the mined theterium. The bins each held a hundred litres and, when loaded, were pulled by an electric motor at the receiving end—in this case, the boat—where a team of resourcers stacked the bins in various areas, to even out the load.
The size of the boat limited the amount of theterium they could carry, but this was a planned constraint to fit in with the time frame. There was simply not enough time to mine all of the theterium and destroy the site before the pending battle of Iranian and Chechen forces.
They had just under five hours remaining.
Geiger and Beasley were satisfied with their hiding place. Nestled within a field of large rocks and boulders, they had found a small space that was covered with ages of rubble on three sides. At the front, they formed a fourth wall from plant foliage and smaller rocks, creating a den that concealed them from all but the closest inspection. The three wounded EU men lay propped against the rear of their enclosure, where Beasley tended to them. Geiger pointed his M16 through an opening at a possible point of advance. They were almost a kilometre from the shore and a similar distance from the theterium site.
“I’m going to go out and find cover, to act as a forward point of defence,” Geiger said, getting up.
“No, wait,” Beasley called after him, making Geiger turn in his tracks. “I’ll go out. You have a much better chance of defending these men here,” he said.
“But you’re our team’s medic. You’re needed here.” Geiger looked down at the wounded men, who were lying quietly, doped up with painkillers.
“Look, Eyal, I’ve done all I can for these men. They need a hospital—and soon.” Beasley stood in the small confines of their hideout and faced Geiger. “Give them more morphine on the hour and hang tight with this,” he ordered, swapping his Franchi shotgun for Geiger’s M16.
“I suppose that’s an order,” Geiger said resignedly. Although he had much more combat experience than the ex-FBI man, Beasley ranked higher within the GSR force. Given the situation, Geiger could see the sense in the plan, but he was surprised by the former lawman’s courage, a man whom he had pegged as prioritising self-preservation.
“If I see an opportunity to get us out of here, or any sign of the others, I’ll let you know,” Beasley said and the pair locked hands in a friendly grip.
“Have fun,” Geiger said as Beasley dashed through the cover foliage and into the afternoon sun.
The SAS soldiers broke the darkness of the small cave with a few small flares. They had to speak loudly to be heard over the mining equipment blaring in the main cave opposite.
“If I could only tell you how handy these have been over the years,” Farrell said, holding his flare up to look about the cavern. It was long and narrow, barely high enough to stand at the highest point, and came to a small end almost a hundred metres from the covered entrance.
“I don’t doubt it,” Sefreid replied in a grim voice.
While the pair spoke with Antinov, Fox took the offered mini-flare from Jenkins and began searching the cave.
“Did you have much of a look around here before?” Fox asked Gammaldi, who was following close behind.
“It was kind of dark for sightseeing,” Gammaldi replied, pausing to wipe a thick spider-web from his face.
“Seems like our hosts want us to stay here for good,” Gammaldi said. He watched Fox’s torso disappear into the tail end of the cave.
“Not exactly how I wanted to go out,” Fox said casually, his voice echoing comically in the narrow chamber. He emerged, his broad shoulders covered in silty dust.
“Well, we sure as hell can’t excavate the cave-in again. Those marines wouldn’t give us a second chance,” Gammaldi said, rubbing his buttocks from where the American woman had booted him into the cave.
Fox noticed his friend’s actions. “You know, you must have really done something wrong in a past life to have the biggest, meanest mother of a marine kick the only part of your body not already black and blue.”
Gammaldi gave his friend a mock smile.
“We’ll find a way out. I know my fate isn’t to die in the desert with the likes of you,” Fox said with a grin.
“I think I’m going to cry,” Gammaldi sniffed.
“Hey, look at that,” Fox said and motioned behind them. There was a hole in the base of the wall, probably just big enough to scramble through if you lay flat to the floor. Fox held the flare at arm’s length for a closer inspection.
“See this?” he said, motioning to the fine silt on the floor of the opening.
“What am I seeing?” Gammaldi asked.
“There are drag marks here.” Fox waved his hand above the ground.
“And look… footprints!” he added, discovering the marks of several different sole patterns in the silt.
54
VENICE
“What!” Ivanovich screamed, spittle spraying Popov’s face.
“The Dragon is altering course, sir, and is not responding to any commands. We must assume it has been attacked,” a shaky Popov repeated.
Ivanovich thought for a while, struggling to recall the day in the Kremlin when the Politburo had been briefed by Pushkin on the details of the coilgun. He faintly recalled something about the control systems of the Dragon being on a suspended tether, drawing an anti-satellite strike away from the main body of the weapon. The briefing came back to him, slowly but with increasing clarity.
“It can still be fired,” Ivanovich said, more a statement than a question.
“I believe so, yes,” Popov replied, raising an eyebrow at his commander’s tone.
“How far off are we from building a second Dragon?” Ivanovich asked, again with a rhetorical air.
“Comrade President, we are still several months off. And we need to gain the fissionable material for the reactor, then launch…” Popov paused. “It will probably take a year, maybe more. And that is if we take the theterium site,” he admitted.
“Do not worry about the theterium. We can take the site—if only for long enough to mine the element and retreat.”
Ivanovich walked to the balcony overlooking the Venetian lagoon and gazed at the sun lowering on the horizon. Things weren’t going to plan. First his security leader, Orakov, had told him a force had defeated his soldiers at the farmhouse and rescued the captured Australian who could have led them to the second pod. And now this.
“Tell that imbecile Orakov to have my boat ready to sail at first light. We’ll go to a more secure location, from where we can fire the Dragon if necessary.”
“But, sir, the weapon is altering course to the west at what may be a pre-programmed re-entry path over the Atlantic,” Popov said.
“Do not worry, Popov. I know exactly where the Dragon is heading,” Ivanovich said with a cryptic smile. “It’s not preparing for re-entry, merely retasking to a default target. And I think you will find it shall buy us the time necessary to launch another coilgun into orbit.”
55
IRAN
Gammaldi, with his stocky frame, had more trouble than Fox squeezing through the opening in the cave wall. The first thing they noticed in the chamber was that it was much noisier, because it backed right against the wall of the main cave.
“Well, I’ll be…” said Fox, looking about the chamber. It was almost high enough for him to stand in and eight or so metres in diameter, with a smooth domed ceiling that danced with crude engravings visible in the dim red blaze of the mini-flare.
Gammaldi joined his friend to inspect the carvings up close—figures of running men etched into the soft stone. The figures came alive in the light, chasing after huge beasts that resembled long-extinct woolly mammoths.
“How old do you think they are?” Gammaldi asked.
“Pretty damn old,” Fox replied, letting his light shine in other areas of the cave. He took a step forward and something tripped him up.
His fall was broken by a string grid, like those he had seen countless times in National Geographic magazines in photographs of excavations. But he couldn’t make out what he had fallen on. Gammaldi was helping him back to his feet when an object caught his eye. He rushed over to the edge of the grid and picked it up. It was a torch, the kind that doubled as a lantern. With a silent praise of fortune, Fox flicked the switch and the room lit up.
From his forward position, Beasley saw the Roadrunner park by their vacant boat. Four marines jumped from the steel frame and boarded her. After five minutes, they emerged and Beasley saw them give their leader an all-clear sign.
Then the Roadrunner came straight for him.
Beasley flattened himself against the rocky ground and the vehicle turned within a stone’s throw of his position. It drove slowly back to the hill, out of consideration for the four marines clinging to the chassis, then turned again and drove out to the south.
They were driving a search pattern, Beasley realised. After fifteen minutes of watching, he thought he had the pattern down pat when a sudden change of course sent the vehicle straight at him again.
He sank deeper into his covered outpost, nestled among some tumbleweed to the south of where Geiger watched over the injured EU men.
Almost the entire group of captured EU and GSR forces had crowded into the small chamber, which they now knew to be a tomb. They gazed at the exposed skeleton set into the floor, painstakingly exposed not so long ago by a very patient person.
Fox knew who that person was, thanks to a leather-bound notebook found next to the excavation, which he’d tucked into the thigh pocket of his cargo pants. It was the plastic toolbox nearby, containing a pair of pointed hammers and various other small digging implements, that held everybody else’s interest.
Using the lantern, they searched the chamber for another way to freedom, keeping as quiet as possible so the engineers next door wouldn’t hear them.
In the wall adjoining the main cave, almost directly opposite the small hole they’d come through, was the dim outline of another gap, which, if excavated, would be big enough to crawl through.
After fifteen minutes of hushed silence and careful digging, Gammaldi and Sefreid had opened a hole the size of a small coin into the main cave.
Sefreid peered through and saw the US engineers methodically mining the theterium. He was astounded to see how far they had progressed in two hours. He gave up his position to allow Antinov to take in the sight, returning to help Fox and Gammaldi chip away at the opening.
“I count at least twelve in the cave,” Antinov said quietly, an unnecessary precaution as the sound of cutting and drilling was deafening now.
“They have already mined much of the element, enough to make many weapons,” Zimmermann added as he peered through the opening himself. The German commander had been silent since being sealed in the cave. Of his original command, only one GSG-9 member and an army engineer remained; the other had been crushed by falling stone when the Roadrunner attacked the main cave entrance earlier.
“Okay. We wait for an opportunity to break free and try to stop the bastards on the way out,” Farrell said, rejuvenated.
&
nbsp; “Sounds good to me,” Sefreid concurred.
The stale air in the tomb chamber took on a new dimension as the Special Forces members rallied their resolve.
The Roadrunner sped past Beasley’s position and literally brushed against his coverings, leaving him squinting through the dust cloud in the vehicle’s wake. He watched in alarm as the craft entered the small field of boulders and circled the denser cluster in the centre. When it stopped and the four marines dismounted from the side pillions, he knew he had to do something.
Not wanting to fire and draw the heavy fire-power of the Roadrunner’s formidable armament, he knew he had to move.
Closer.
Geiger heard the big two-stroke engine of the Roadrunner long before he saw it.
One of the EU men, a Russian soldier shot in the neck by Gibbs, began making a sickly gargling sound. Geiger left his guard position and, with the aid of another, lesser-wounded Russian, tilted the soldier’s head so that his mouth and throat drained of blood. He injected the man with another disposable phial of morphine and the pain in the soldier’s face visibly subsided. His comrade applied more pressure onto the wound, thanking the ex-marine for his support.
“Just hang tight. We’ll be home in no time,” Geiger reassured the soldiers.
The wounded GSG-9 trooper was less optismistic. “We are all going to die here,” he said matter-of-factly.
Geiger could have knocked him cold for his untimely remarks. “I was a marine once,” he retorted quietly, wary of being overheard by the hunting party. “They certainly aren’t in the business of killing helpless wounded men or leaving prisoners-of-war to die in the desert.”
“And there you have it, my American friend,” the German said, looking Geiger square in the eye. “We are not at war. We are seen as terrorists, people in the way of their gain. And all the world knows where the Americans stand on that viewpoint.” He paused. “And since none of us are meant to be here in the first place, no one will question our failure to return home.”