by James Phelan
On the western horizon a pinprick emerged, not discernible to the naked eye and hardly visible with the most powerful of binoculars. It was a dust cloud, four kilometres across at its epicentre, using the darkening horizon to its advantage. It surged on at full speed, like an act of God heading directly for the hills that held the theterium. Its direction was no coincidence—within the clouds of sand were mechanical beasts being pushed to their limits in a race to the victory line.
The Chechen airborne armoured battalion. At this pace, their missiles would be in range within minutes.
56
THE WHITE HOUSE
McCorkell turned to the video conference screen where the face of Peter Larter came into clear focus.
“Bill, a half-time update,” Larter began.
“Thanks, Pete. I’m listening.” McCorkell rubbed the weariness out of his eyes.
“The resourcers are on schedule, despite the initial delay, as the theterium is proving easier to remove than expected.”
“That’s great,” McCorkell said, a little flatly. “What’s happening with the survivors of the defensive force?”
“That’s up to Scot’s discretion. He’s operational commander down there,” Larter replied. “It’s probably easier to leave the EU force in the desert than bring them out with us and have to explain—”
“EU?” McCorkell sat up straight and alert, as though one of his kidneys had just kicked in with an extra boost of energy.
“That’s what he reported. You assumed they were the Chechens?”
“Well, I don’t know what I assumed,” McCorkell said, turning his gaze to the carpet in thought. When he looked up to the screen again, after a long moment of silence, he saw Larter was on a phone call, listening intently. “I’ll be right down,” McCorkell heard him say.
“Bill, I’m moving down to the Ops Centre. Vanzet has just informed me the Chechens have left the camp in Iraq. They’re already crossing the border,” Larter said as he stood.
“You’ll pull the resourcers early?” McCorkell asked.
“Our marines can’t hold the position against a force that size.”
“Do we have a visual of the site?” McCorkell asked, hoping for a satellite image.
Larter shook his head in response. “Nothing great. Like everyone else in the world, they know our bird movements. We could have a real-time sat overhead in an hour or so if we re-task, but I’ll have to run that by the boss. Either way it’ll be too late. I’ll keep you posted,” he promised as he moved out the door.
McCorkell motioned to an aide to switch off the link and picked up his coffee. It was his lucky mug, chipped but cherished over the past twenty-five years since he’d completed his doctorate in International Studies. It showed a blue picture of a four-seated rowboat, along with the year he had won the race between international universities. “Oxford—again!” was stencilled under the image, and the names of those in the team. For McCorkell, it seemed like a lifetime ago: he’d lived through so much since those happy, carefree days. He sipped at the black liquid, enjoying its warmth.
57
IRAN
Geiger knew the marines were close, knew they would be using hand gestures to communicate and coordinate their movements. Whilst the position he knelt in was safe from a distance, he did not harbour any illusions that he and the EU men could remain hidden for long.
He flicked the safety off the pump-action shotgun and waited for the inevitable, hoping that Beasley was not too far away.
Scot switched the dial on his personal radio headset to communicate with his command. The message he’d just received from the Pentagon came as no big surprise, as one of his spotters had reported a growing dust cloud on the ever-darkening western horizon.
“Listen up, marines, this is Scot. We have under fifteen minutes to bug out of here. When the resourcers are all packed up, we fall back to the boat in defensive formation,” he ordered. He stopped at the cave entrance where the big female sergeant was standing. “Squad leaders, acknowledge.”
One by one the leaders of each squad, mostly sergeants of various ranks, called in affirmative.
“Team two. Copy that, Scot,” Geiger heard a marine say, right outside his position.
Beasley could see how close the four marines were to his comrades, but smiled regardless. For the first time since the American force had arrived, he felt the adrenaline of having the upper hand. After a brief hesitation he yelled in his most commanding voice, “Don’t move!”
Every marine in the squad heard the yelled order, especially the two who sat in the idling Roadrunner. The M16 was levelled inches away from the driver’s head and the pair raised their hands.
The lieutenant spun around and took in the situation—and also smiled. The figure holding the rifle to the driver’s head did not display the drilled stance of a confident soldier, and he assumed the man to be alone in his foolish caper. If there were more, he and his men would have either found them or been attacked by now.
Leaving his M16 with the rest of his team, the lieutenant walked over to assess the unidentified figure.
Geiger could not see what was happening at the Roadrunner, but heard Beasley’s shout. He saw one of the marines directly in front of him walk away and the backs of the others were now turned to him. He seized the opportunity.
The lieutenant walked towards the defiant man in fatigues and face paint. Over the radio headsets, he whispered for his men to hang tight. From ten metres away, he put his hand on his hip holster, resting on the butt of his pistol.
“Don’t be a fool. You are heavily outnumbered!” he called to the man.
Beasley took a quick glance at the man advancing, then kept his eyes steady on the marines in front of him.
“Don’t come closer or I’ll shoot!” he said, unconvincingly.
The lieutenant slowed his advance, but kept edging forward. “And then what?” he asked.
“And then I’ll shoot!” Geiger boomed, emerging from the foliage behind the three marines. He pumped a shell into the shotgun breech to accentuate his point.
The lieutenant turned to assess the new threat, then drew his pistol and turned back to Beasley, raising the weapon with a straight arm only a metre from his face.
“Then it seems we are in quite the predicament, amigo,” the lieutenant said.
Beasley turned his head in slow motion and stared down the barrel of the pistol levelled at his head. He looked at the face of the man behind the pistol sights, which was as well camouflaged as his netting-covered outline. The two of them were the same size, shared the same body language. Their eyes were almost identical.
“Chris?”
Colonel Pugh helped load the last tub of theterium aboard the boat. A dozen of his men began efficiently dismantling the incredible conveyer system, while the rest were packing up the mining equipment in the cave. The colonel had never mined anything as dense as the theterium; in just over two hours they’d mined over nine tonnes. The boat rode low in the water, the flat deck barely a metre from the surface, and he thanked his lucky stars there was no wind to contend with. Otherwise the lake could get dangerously choppy on the return voyage.
He had just stepped back ashore to expedite his miners when a warning call came over his radio headset. He turned to the west and saw a dozen smoking orange flames streaking through the sky towards him.
“Ben!” the lieutenant exclaimed.
The pair lowered their weapons and embraced tightly, then stepped back and looked each other over critically.
The Beasley brothers had shared but a few brief words when the warning call came over the marines’ radios.
In the tomb there was deathly silence. Farrell whispered commentary to the others as he watched the miners packing up their gear.
He observed them pause briefly, some of them holding their radio earpieces closer in their ears, then they dropped their semi-disassembled power tools and scrambled to the c
ave exit.
“Okay, they’re pulling out—in a hurry!” he said. Together, he and Jenkins quickly kicked out the remainder of the ancient mud wall connecting them to the main cave.
“Must be lunch break,” Gammaldi said to Fox from the corner of his mouth, as the pair readied themselves.
“I think some unexpected visitors are dropping in,” Fox replied.
The SAS men moved through the opening, followed by Antinov and the Germans. After the GSR team, Fox and Gammaldi were the last to exit.
“After you,” Fox gestured with a slight bow.
“I’m never one to stand on ceremony,” Gammaldi replied as he ferreted through the opening.
Scot ignored the cacophony of calls over the radio from his marines as the missiles started striking the site. With the last of the theterium loaded on board and the remaining resourcers running to the relative safety of the boat, he quietly moved himself in the same direction, confident his marines could put up a fight long enough for the boat to be out of harm’s way.
On his way, he picked up his signalman by the back of his flak jacket from where a near miss had thrown him to the ground.
“Order the strike now!” he boomed.
The shell-shocked corporal nodded in comprehension and fumbled the controls of the radio set as he raced after his commander, who was running towards the boat.
58
IRAN
The first wave of Chechen missiles struck forward of the perimeter established by the marines, spraying the area with debris and shrapnel.
The sudden explosions thundering outside took the EU/GSR alliance by surprise. There were no weapons in sight for them to use, so they decided to flee for their lives in the direction of the lake, hoping that the ensuing battle would distract the other forces from their move and that their boat would still be there, intact.
The three SAS men and Antinov were first to exit, dashing to the north along an unobstructed path around the mountain. The surviving Germans were next, making a run for it as more missiles tore up the encampment. That left just the GSR force, with Fox and Gammaldi behind, still working their way along the deep troughs that had been cut into the ground to remove the theterium.
“Okay, it’s now or never!” called Sefreid as he surveyed the scene below. Two marines lay motion-less in the centre of the camp by a crater where the water tanker had been. A few other bodies were visible in the seconds he allowed himself to scan the battleground, but the attacking force was blatant.
The box shapes trailing dust clouds were Chechen BMP armoured personnel carriers, surging towards the scene at full speed armed with seventy-three millimetre cannons. Four rocket-launching vehicles set up much further behind were bombarding the site, but fortunately none of the shells or missiles came too near the cave entrance.
Gibbs, Goldsmith and Pepper followed Sefreid out of the cave, running low to the ground to use what little cover was available.
Gammaldi gave Fox a helping hand out of the deep trench.
“Let’s go!” he said, but Fox pulled him back into the trench. Bullets sprayed the air where they had been standing.
Gammaldi looked up to see a huge marine staring down at him, M16 raised. In a lightning move, Fox wrapped himself around the attacker’s legs and pulled, bringing them both sprawling on top of Gammaldi in a life-or-death wrestling match.
Gammaldi, crushed, looked through squinting eyes at the face in front of his. He was shocked to see it was the huge black woman who had booted him into his early grave.
Fox gained enough balance to swing down in a judo chop on the woman’s neck—a blow that would have momentarily paralysed a normal person, but it bounced off a rock hard muscular exoskeleton and seemed to inflame the marine’s anger.
With surreal nimbleness that belied her bulk, the marine pounced at Fox, grabbing him by the ears and smashing her bulbous head into his face with incredible force. Leaving Fox to fall to the ground with a broken nose, the marine turned her attention to Gammaldi, who had managed to get to his feet behind her.
Again with feline reflexes she pounced, wrapping her mighty paws around Gammaldi’s throat and pinning him against the wall of the trench, lifting him a foot clear of the ground. Like a vice slowly turning tighter and tighter, she squeezed his thick neck in an action that would soon crush his wind-pipe and turn his flesh to pulp.
With what energy remained in him, Gammaldi turned his hands away from the futile task of peeling the paws from his neck and reached to strangle the marine, only to find his arms falling pitifully short for the task. He improvised by digging his strong fingers into her bulging biceps. The move relaxed the death grip around his neck ever so slightly, buying him a few more seconds of air.
Zimmermann had halted in a nook not far from the cave entrance with his two remaining men and had let the GSR team pass their position. Now they doubled back to the other side of the cave entrance. There, partially covered by sandy rubble, was his explosive: a ten-kiloton nuclear bomb, one of a secret stockpile his nation had built up.
Following Zimmermann’s orders, the German engineer reset the timer on the device:
00:30:00
00:29:59
00:29:58
Fox retched blood as he regained his composure. He saw the dire predicament of his best friend and looked about for the marine’s M16 but couldn’t find the slender black weapon on the trench floor. There were much bigger objects though.
The weight of the colossal battery-powered circular saw was staggering, but he hefted it in the air nonetheless. With a grunt, he charged at the beast that was literally squeezing the life out of his friend. As he moved, he depressed the switch that set the blade humming into action.
The marine turned her head at the noise and dropped Gammaldi to the floor like a rag doll. She swung her arm to fend off the attack and the diamond-edged cutting disc, designed to slice the hardest of elements, severed her arm just below the elbow in a clean cut. Screaming like an animal, she tried to reach her pistol with her good arm.
Not stopping his charging advance, Fox pushed the marine against the wall where she’d pinned Gammaldi only moments before. He drove the huge electric saw with all his force into her bulk, barely noticing the contact, the blade slicing through the Kevlar body armour and her torso as if it were made of plastic kitchen wrap. Only the cutting sound of the blade hitting the wall behind the marine made him release his grip and step back. With a dying grimace of defiance, the marine slid down the wall to the floor, the power saw still connected to her deflated carcass.
Fox helped his spluttering friend to his feet. “Jesus!” Gammaldi gasped.
“No time for wisecracks. Let’s go!”
Fox dragged Gammaldi out of the trench and they stumbled to the cave mouth to face the battle raging outside.
When the SAS men reached the boat, not only were they thankful to see it afloat and undamaged but they were delighted to be greeted by the exuberant faces of Ben Beasley and Eyal Geiger.
“Welcome aboard,” Beasley said as he helped the three men onto the already running craft.
“My men?” Antinov immediately asked upon setting foot on deck.
“In the hold below,” replied Geiger, and watched the Russian leader disappear down the forward hatch.
“Hold the boat!” Sefreid called as he neared, smiling like the Cheshire Cat at seeing his team unharmed.
The GSR members aboard, Jenkins turned his attention to shore. “Where are the Germans?”
“They can’t be far behind,” Sefreid replied. He moved to the pilothouse of the boat and stopped still at the door—an armed marine was standing before him.
“Richard Sefreid, may I introduce Lieutenant Chris Beasley, United States Marine Corps, my younger brother,” Ben Beasley said.
Sefreid stared at the pair incredulously.
The Chechen rockets stopped raining down on the campsite as the BMPs neared the target area.
&
nbsp; The Roadrunner that had formed part of Lieutenant Beasley’s squad fired two of its four Hellfire anti-tank missiles at the lead pair of Chechen BMPs, disintegrating both on impact. The northern Roadrunner fired three shots, destroying one target and crippling two others, prompting the remaining Chechen personnel carriers to scatter and disembark their troops to cover the last kilometre on foot.
The Chechen attackers used the cover of their BMPs to advance, their superior numbers and heavy firepower evening the battle against the well-positioned and well-equipped defending force.
A squad of marines ran past the cave entrance, heading north towards their own boat. Fox and Gammaldi hid in the same nook the Germans had occupied moments before and managed to go unnoticed.
“Come on. We’re going this way!” Fox said, heading south away from the advancing Chechens.
“But the boat’s that way!” Gammaldi said in protest, following anyway.
“So are a hundred marines in heavy battle,” Fox replied. “We’ll round the hill and take our chances.”
Major Scot stood on the deck of the boat watching the battle. The Roadrunners’ anti-tank missiles and mini-guns were wreaking havoc on the Chechens’ attacking ranks, but his men were heavily depleted and running out of ammunition.
The resourcer members were almost all accounted for, most taking cover in the cramped hold below, while a few manned the sparse collection of weapons they carried into the field for defence.