by Adam Baker
We left the road and drove into the dunes. A long, slow journey. Our trucks sank and stalled countless times. Slivers of frost-shattered rock punctured tyres.
We reached the contamination zone. We cut through the fence.
Some of the men did not want to proceed any further. There was no official record of the air-raid that saturated this stretch of desert in poison, but we had all heard rumours of the noxious chemicals that had wiped out the local population.
I urged the men to complete their mission. They had little alternative. Return to Baghdad and cower from bombs? Travel east to the Kuwaiti border and fight a futile war? None of us wished to die for Saddam. We feared him. We didn’t love him.
We drove into the toxic wilderness.
We reached our objective. Map coordinates in the middle of nowhere. Featureless dunes. An ocean of sand. It seemed hopeless. Whatever plunged to earth had been swallowed without trace.
I radioed Baghdad. Heavy encryption. I explained the situation. Very little hope of locating the mysterious aircraft. But they insisted I continue my search.
We made camp. The men smoked and ate from cans. I walked among the dunes as evening fell.
I sat and reviewed radar records. Military traffic control in Baghdad tracked the object’s descent. A long arc. A ballistic trajectory. A steepening dive as the UFO passed through Syrian air-space at hypersonic speed. The vehicle would have been subject to unimaginable G-force. It would have been seared by three-thousand-degree heat. Then, as it approached impact, the craft suddenly banked and levelled out, like a plane struggling to land. A further, sudden deceleration as the craft dropped out of radar coverage in a shallow dive and struck the ground.
I looked across the desert and tried to picture the moment of impact. The craft trailing drogue chutes, ripping through the dunes in an explosion of dust. It must have left a long trench and a trail of wreckage before coming to rest.
It must still be near the surface.
There was a village a few miles distant. Four adobe houses. Two cows. The place didn’t have a name, didn’t warrant a dot on the map.
The villagers were terrified. Soldiers in trucks. Mothers hid their children. Fathers lined up, expecting to beg for their lives.
Despite warnings, despite the terrible risk of disease and death, they had continued to live in the contaminated zone. They would rather watch their children grow sick and die than give up the only life they knew.
I gave them food. I explained we meant no harm. We sat and ate.
I gave them gold from the truck. You see, we had a strongroom in the presidential palace filled with jewellery taken from prisoners prior to torture and execution. Men would be seized from their homes. Stripped of their clothes, stripped of watches and rings. Our interrogation team would pull fingernails, burn genitals, until each prisoner confessed to imaginary crimes. That was my power. As a member of the OSS I could bestow fabulous wealth at whim or have a man executed on the spot.
I asked the villagers to describe the night, ten years ago, when something fell from the sky. One of the farmers said he saw the crash. He had walked a mile from the village in search of a lost goat. The sun had set. He climbed a boulder. He saw something in the sky, falling like a shooting star. The object grew larger. It was a fireball. He fell to his knees. He called on the mercy of God.
The thing passed overhead, so close intense heat scorched his face like sunburn. He glimpsed a strange craft, glowing like a hot coal.
I gave the man my notebook and pen. I asked him to draw what he saw that night. He drew a crude arrow. Some kind of delta-wing craft. He said it looked like a giant bat.
I asked the farmer to lead us to the spot he saw the crash. He refused. He was scared. He said the thing was a monster from hell. We should leave it undisturbed.
I bribed him with gold.
We walked from the village. He led us to a massive sandstone boulder protruding from the dunes. We climbed to the top.
‘There,’ he said, pointing south-west. ‘It passed overhead and crashed in the distance.’
‘How far?’ I asked.
‘Two miles, maybe three.’
We walked to the impact site. There was nothing to see. Featureless desert.
‘You are sure this is the spot?’
The farmer refused to answer. The memory of the crash reduced him to whimpering terror. He ran back to the village. No amount of gold would induce him to help us further.
I gave the order to dig.
I immediately faced a near mutiny. The dunes presented a double threat. Not only was sand likely to be contaminated with the residue of chemical warfare but, in his attempts to subdue local guerrillas, Saddam had ordered the region pounded by cluster-bombs and artillery fire. There was every chance we could unearth unexploded munitions.
My men simply wanted to hide from the war. They were Republican Guard, elite troops, chosen for their fanatical loyalty to Saddam. They had taken a solemn oath to lay down their lives at his command. But they were also realistic men concerned for the welfare of their wives and children back home. They had no interest in our Quixotic mission. They were happy to camp in the desert, listen to the war unfold over the BBC World Service, then return to Baghdad when the shooting had stopped. I could sympathise.
Four of the men tore the badges from their uniforms. They climbed in a Jeep, replaced the Iraqi pennant clipped to the radio antenna with a white rag of surrender and headed for their homes in Fallujah. I could have ordered them shot as they drove away but there was little point.
I explained to the remaining troops that American satellites and drones would be watching the highways. If they took to the road in a military convoy they might be targeted and bombed.
I also explained that whatever was taking place elsewhere in the world, I was still their commander and I intended to complete my mission.
They men could have mutinied, simply walked away, but they had lived in fear of Saddam’s intelligence agencies all their lives. They were obedient as dogs.
I organised a grid search. We had brought Vallon mine-clearance metal detectors, sensitive enough to locate a bullet casing buried feet beneath the ground. We drove stakes into the desert to mark our path.
We must have covered acres of dunes. We trudged morning until late afternoon, walking in a line. We swung the mine detectors in sequential, one-eighty arcs.
A detector sang out. A small hit at the edge of the search field. The soldiers gathered round as I crouched and brushed away sand.
A buckled scrap of metal little bigger than my palm. A lightweight alloy. Aluminium, or maybe zinc.
We continued our search. Two hours later we scored a big hit. An object six feet long. The men dug with spades. Then I crouched in the crater and probed the sand with my knife until I struck metal.
I ordered the men to stand at a safe distance. I brushed away sand with my hand, gradually exposing hydraulic rams, ropes of frayed cable, shreds of rubber. Thick tread. Fragments of a steel-ribbed tyre. We had discovered part of the under-carriage of an aircraft. The remains of a large double wheel attached to a hydraulic shock-absorber.
I took pictures. I had a soldier stand next to the wreckage for scale.
Minutes later we found more scraps of metal hidden beneath the dunes. Tubular titanium spars. Scraps of aluminium fairing. Black hexagonal blocks that appeared to be carbon-fibre heat tiles.
It quickly became apparent we had found the debris trench, the trail of wreckage left by this strange vehicle as it fell to earth and gouged into the sand.
The sun began to set. We slowly walked across the dunes in a wide line, sweeping the spade-heads of our metal detectors left and right. Then, in unison, our detectors began to sing. A rising chorus of clicks and whoops like whale song.
We surveyed the ground around us. A strong and constant signal. We had found the body of the craft. Whatever had fallen from the sky, years ago, was directly beneath our feet.
We drove stakes into the sa
nd to chart the dimensions of the object. An aerofoil shaped like a giant arrowhead. Sixty feet long, thirty feet wide.
I summoned the trucks and had them parked in a ring surrounding the crash site. I gave the men shovels and told them to dig.
They threw spadefuls of sand. I paced, and watched their progress. They dug for hours. Then they scraped metal. I jumped into the hole and pushed the soldiers aside.
I scooped with my hand and exposed a metal blade. Scorched hexagonal tiles, like snakeskin. I dug some more. I quickly realised we had exposed the tip of a big tailfin.
Night fell. We ran the truck engines. Head beams gave light while the men continued to excavate the craft.
Two teams. They dug for thirty-minute shifts. Downtime gave them a chance to smoke and rehydrate.
Midnight. The soldiers were exhausted. I ordered them to cease work. We ate, we drank. The night turned cold. We had no wood for fire. The men wrapped themselves in blankets, huddled together in the trucks and slept.
I pulled my blanket round my shoulders and stood at the edge of the crater. I couldn’t sleep. I trained the beam of my flashlight on the strange tail fin.
According to records, the first radar trace of the craft had been detected high above the operating altitude of military or commercial jets. There seemed little doubt this vehicle had fallen from space. There was no insignia, no marking of any kind.
I stood staring up into the night sky for a long while, contemplating the stars.
Next morning, I ordered the men to continue excavating the spacecraft. I drove to the airbase at Samarra. I tried to requisition a heavy crane and a large flatbed truck. The commanding officer initially refused my request. His men had been ordered to the eastern front. But I gave him gold. He was grateful for the gift. The man was also from Saddam’s home town of Tikrit. He had prospered during the long and bloody war with Iran. He had risen to the rank of general. He also ran a construction company and had been given lucrative building contracts. But the regime was about to fall and men like him would have to reinvent themselves. Burn their uniforms. Convince an occupying power they had taken no part in Ba’ath Party oppression. He probably had a strongbox somewhere in his home full of dinar bound with rubber bands. Kickbacks and blood money. Saddam’s smiling face on every note stamped red, blue and green. All of it about to become worthless. A bag of jewellery and Krugerrands striped from the homes of purged party members could be an invaluable asset in the uncertain weeks and months ahead.
We returned back to the crash site. The craft was half exposed. A thick fuselage. Torn batwings. Scorched rocket-vents at the tail.
One of the men showed me a brittle shard of crystal. The craft had been so hot when it came to rest, years ago, that sand surrounding the airframe fused to glass, coating the entire surface like ice.
I radioed Baghdad. I told them what we had found. Then the strangest thing occurred. My immediate superior at the OSS was General Assad. I rarely spoke to anyone but him. But an hour after I contacted Baghdad and told them we had found an unusual vehicle buried in the sand, I received fresh instructions. I didn’t recognise the voice. The man spoke Arabic. But he sounded American.
‘My name is Koell.’
‘What happened to General Assad?’
‘I’m in charge of this project. From now on, you talk to me.’
He asked me to describe the craft in detail.
‘Is the hull intact? Tell me about structural damage. Is the cabin still sealed?’
I told him the wings were badly damaged. The under-carriage was destroyed. The turbojet engine pods were burned out.
‘What about the crew compartment? Boot up your laptop. Send me pictures.’
‘My men are excavating the cockpit as we speak.’
‘I’m going to mail you a schematic of the craft.’
I sat in the back of a truck with our communications gear. The file came through. I clicked print. Multiple views of the vehicle. Top and bottom. Front, side and back. It looked like a mini-shuttle. A sleek space fighter. The text was in Russian.
We continued the excavation. Koell demanded hourly bulletins.
We unearthed the snubbed nose of the vehicle. The side-hatch was still sealed. The cockpit glass was pitted and cracked but intact. We shone flashlights through the scorched glass but couldn’t see inside.
I told Koell the shuttle had sustained considerable damage during re-entry and landing but the crew compartment appeared to be sealed. I asked how many occupants we could expect to find. He said he didn’t know.
I drew up a plan. The vehicle was buried twenty feet beneath the surface. The sand was too unstable to allow a detailed inspection of the craft. Anyone who climbed into the crater risked being buried alive by shifting dunes. We needed to extract the craft and transport it to a sheltered, secure location where it could be examined in more detail.
I consulted our maps, and decided to exploit the rail network spread across the Western Desert like a web.
The railroad was built by European contractors during the nineteen eighties. The main phosphate production facility was in Akashat, linked to a processing plant at Al Qa’im, but there were satellite mining facilities dotted throughout the desert, all linked by rail. Organic phosphate compounds make good fertiliser, but can also act as a major precursor ingredient of chemical weapons such as Sarin and Tabun.
The railroad passed within two miles of the crash site. If we could lift the wrecked vehicle onto a truck, and nurse it across the desert, we could load it onto a rail car.
I decided to bring the shuttle here, to the Valley of Tears.
There is an abandoned mine to the north of the valley, at the end of a deep ravine. A series of exploratory shafts and galleries. A sheltered, remote location. We could hide the craft in the tunnels. We could drape camouflage nets over any of our vehicles left in the open to mask them from aerial surveillance. The war would rage down south. Young men would squander their lives battling an invader they couldn’t hope to defeat. But we would be safe. History would pass us by. We could work without interruption.
I radioed Samarra. I demanded the loan of winch gear, an additional crane truck and a flatbed rail car. An absurd request. The country was in chaos. Most people couldn’t locate bread, let alone heavy-duty excavation equipment. Nevertheless, Koell told me the equipment would arrive in hours. I suppose, in a time of chaos, a man with briefcase full of US dollars can get anything he wants.
I asked Koell about the spacecraft.
I knew the Russians built their own shuttle. I saw it on television, years ago. It was called Borun Snowstorm. Pretty much identical to the American craft. It made a single, unmanned flight. Then the programme was cancelled. The vehicles were scraped. One of the decommissioned shuttles became a fairground attraction in Gorky Park.
The craft at the bottom of the crater was much smaller than a space shuttle. It was sleek, streamlined, little bigger than jet fighter. The wings were torn and blunted. Ailerons ripped away. Stripped heat tiles. Wing membranes peeled back revealing twisted titanium-alloy spars.
‘What is it?’ I asked Koell. ‘This thing. This spacecraft. Where is it from?’
‘It’s Russian,’ said Koell. ‘A trans-orbital vehicle. Military prototype. They call it Spektr.’
The Body
Lucy sat beside Jabril and fed him mouthfuls of cereal bar.
‘Spektr.’
‘That’s right,’ said Jabril.
‘It’s here, in this valley?’
‘Yes. If you follow the railroad track across the valley floor it brings you to a mine.’
Voss joined them by the fire. He crouched, shook sand from the folds of a map, and spread it on flagstones. He and Lucy examined the terrain by flickering flame light.
‘I’ve been mulling our options,’ said Voss. ‘Plenty of towns closer than Baghdad. If we walk out of here we could head north to Mosul. Or east to Ramadi or Fallujah.’
‘Taliban strongholds. They would happily cut our
throats.’
‘We could jack a car soon as we reached habitation.’
‘After a couple of days in the sun? We’d be in no state for a fire-fight. Our best bet is to head south-east for Baghdad. Turn ourselves in at a coalition checkpoint.’
‘Some hard miles of desert.’
‘Got any other ideas?’
‘No.’
‘You’re a survivor,’ said Lucy. ‘A cockroach, just like me. You’ll make it. You’re not the quitting kind.’
‘There has to be some way to summon help. How about we write a big SOS in the sand? Someone will see it. A satellite. A plane.’
‘No guarantee,’ said Lucy. ‘We could sit here for days hoping for rescue, getting thirsty, getting weak, watching Huang die. I prefer to make my own luck. I’ll try to raise Gaunt again on the radio in a while. Maybe I can reason with the guy. If he has any sense, he will cut a deal. He’s marooned out here, just like us. But I reckon he’s too scared to think straight. It’ll be sunrise in a few hours. We should get our shit together. Be ready to head out at first light. We should carry water and basic weapons. Ditch everything else. How many bottles do we have left?’
‘Enough to fill our canteens one more time.’
‘All right.’
‘What about the gold?’ asked Voss.
‘Fuck the gold.’
‘It’s ours. I’m not giving it up.’
‘We hide it. Bury it. You want to come back here with some buddies and retrieve the stuff, be my guest. Me? I don’t want to drive a Cadillac knowing I bought it with some poor bastard’s gold teeth.’
‘And Toon?’
‘Yeah,’ said Lucy. ‘That’s a bitch. The guy wouldn’t want to be left in a godforsaken place like this. But what else can we do? We could load his body onto the quad, but it’s only good for a few miles. What do we do after the fuel tank runs dry? We can’t dump him in the sand. The man deserves a proper grave.’
‘Yeah.’
‘We bring Jabril along for the ride. He’s an old fuck with one arm but he made it out this desert once before. Tougher than he looks.’