by Adam Baker
‘I’m going after Gaunt,’ said Amanda. ‘The dumb fuck is out there somewhere. No food, no water. He’s crouched behind a wall right now, pissing his pants. I’m going to bring him in. If he can’t get the chopper in the air, we blow his fucking brains out.’
‘He might have left the valley,’ said Voss. ‘He might be walking home.’
‘I strung a wire between the guard towers this afternoon. Rigged a trip-flare. It hasn’t popped. He’s probably still here.’
Amanda checked her rifle chamber. She checked the magazine. She tied her hair in a ponytail and pulled sand goggles over her head.
‘Wear this.’ Voss handed her Toon’s blue do-rag. She tied it over her face and mouth. She put on her Stetson and pulled the brim low.
Lucy gave her Raphael’s machete. She tucked it in her belt.
‘Sure you don’t want me to come along?’ asked Lucy.
‘I’ve got night-vision. You haven’t.’
Brief embrace.
‘See you later, babe.’
Amanda headed into darkness.
Lucy buttoned her prairie coat to the neck and turned up the collar. She tied a shemagh scarf round her face.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Voss.
‘The choppers. They each had an emergency radio. A UHF beacon. Probably fucked but I have to know for sure.’
‘Be okay on your own?’
‘Sit tight. Someone has to stay with Jabril. Easy on the trigger, okay? Don’t shoot us coming back in.’
‘Catch you later, boss.’
Gaunt stood at the foot of the crypt stairwell. He looked up. Furls of sand blown like squalling rain.
They used to call him Cherry Boy. No combat experience. The squad under his command treated him with contempt.
Sitting on the double bench seats of an oven-hot APC, jolting through the streets of Fallujah. Gaunt reiterated the mission.
‘Ali Hassan. Possible links with Iranian intelligence. Wife. Five daughters. Standard knock and announce. We do not expect resistance.’
Private Larsen, blond, ex-quarterback, leaned forward and grabbed Gaunt by the neck of his ballistic vest.
‘You just hang back and let us do our thing, all right, Lieutenant? You fuck up, you get any of us killed, I will personally frag your fucking ass, understand?’
A humiliating memory.
Gaunt twisted the West Point cadet ring round his finger.
Koell offered him meaning. The man was little more than a distorted, metallic sat-com voice, but he held the promise of world-shaping intrigue. He could lead Gaunt through the looking-glass into a clandestine realm.
It wasn’t about the money.
Gaunt wanted to be a player. He needed to earn Koell’s trust. Get on the Agency payroll. Maybe get hired for real. Be part of the fraternity. Two years at The Farm. Camp Peary, Virginia. Teach him how to run agents and handle covert communication. Teach him how to organise rolling surveillance, sabotage operations and targeted killings. He would finally belong.
He had to prove his worth. He had to find the virus.
He kissed the silver crucifix hung round his neck. He pulled on sand goggles.
He climbed from the crypt. Cold night wind. Swirling sand pricked his skin like needles. He switched on his Maglite. He narrowed the beam and trained it at the ground. He didn’t want to betray his location.
He looked around. The moonlit ruins were fogged with broiling dust plumes. Citadel buildings were monstrous shadows glimpsed through a veil of driving sand.
He headed for the choppers. Maybe there was equipment he could salvage. Ammunition. Water.
He walked headlong into a blizzard of sand. His flashlight illuminated swirling particles. He cupped a hand over his mouth and nose.
The central courtyard. The wrecked helicopters.
His feet gummed down in a viscous substance like treacle. He crouched and sniffed. Kerosene mixed with sand.
The ghost shape of Talon. The smashed hulk of the chopper, lying on its side.
He checked the cargo compartment. He checked bags and wall-nets. Nothing. No water, no ammunition. The Huey had been stripped.
He checked the pilot cabin. His flashlight caught Raphael in its beam, hanging upside down like a carcass on an abattoir hook. Throat slit. Bled white.
He checked Raphael’s pockets. The man was cold and stiff. His pockets had already been emptied. Nothing, not even cigars.
A scratching sound. Gaunt pulled the silenced Sig from behind his ballistic vest and turned round. One of Jabril’s lost battalion stumbling across flagstones, dragging its feet through thick diesel slurry.
Gaunt aimed and fired. He blew out the creature’s left eye. It slumped dead.
Three bullets left in the pistol.
He checked Bad Moon. Nothing of use in the cargo compartment.
He pulled open the cab door. He brushed windshield glass from the pilot seat and climbed inside. He flicked a couple of power switches. He flinched as the wrecked console popped and sparked. He shone his flashlight over the instrumentation panel. Trashed avionics. Frayed wires. Split circuit boards.
‘Fuck.’
A dim light approaching across the courtyard. The cone of a torch beam glimpsed through swirling sand.
Gaunt quickly switched off his Maglite, slid from the pilot seat and ran from the chopper.
Amanda crept through the temple ruins. She kept her rifle raised, cheek pressed to the synthetic stock. Luminescent rubble. Swirling sand transformed to evil green mist.
A courtyard of statues. Loathsome mongrel creatures on pedestals. Limbs and faces scoured to wind-worn stumps. Sinister deformities. Aborted, misshapen things. A pantheon of terrible gods arranged in a ring to observe whatever abominable rites had been conducted in their name.
Amanda walked through the forest of plinths and idols, sweeping her rifle left and right.
‘This is my rifle,’ she murmured. ‘There are many like it, but this one is mine . . .’
Skull face. Black eyes. A walking cadaver. A skeletal soldier creeping between the broken statues like a giant arachnid.
Amanda backed away. She kept her rifle raised. The creature boosted ethereal green by the nightscope. A man locked halfway between life and death. Ragged uniform. Dog tags hung over a desiccated ribcage. Parchment skin stretched taut over bone. Flesh broken by metallic, cancerous knots.
The creature snarled and reached for her.
Yellow canine teeth.
She lowered her rifle. She pulled Raphael’s machete from her belt. She swung, slammed the blade down, and split the creature’s head in two. It fell twitching.
Amanda placed a foot on the soldier’s chest. She jerked the machete free and wiped it clean on her trousers.
Boot prints on the sand-dusted flagstones. Chevron tread marks quickly blurring in the wind. Precise foot-falls. Not the drag and scuff of infected soldiers.
Gaunt.
She followed the boot prints, nightscope trained on ground. She crossed courtyards and colonnades.
The trail of fast-fading prints led her to the rear of the temple.
The crypt entrance. A slab pulled aside. Steps heading downwards into darkness.
She slung her rifle. She pulled one of the chopper signal flares from her pocket and struck the cap. It spat sparks, then fizzed crimson fire. She drew her pistol. She advanced down the ancient stone steps into deep shadow.
Gaunt crouched behind a broken pillar. He watched Lucy search the choppers. Sand swirled like smoke. He could see the dancing beam of her barrel-light, the silhouette of her prairie coat.
She examined each cab. Gaunt figured she was checking the chopper radios. Each bird had been equipped with UHF and VHF. Too deep in the desert to raise a signal.
He watched Lucy kneel and examine the emaciated body that lay beside Talon. She rolled the cadaver with her boot and examined the fresh head wound.
He saw her hand rise to the transmit button on her chest rig.
‘Ga
unt? Gaunt, you out here?’ Lucy’s voice over the radio. ‘Can you hear me?’
Gaunt turned his back on her, huddled to keep out of earshot.
‘Yes, I can hear you.’
‘It’s been a long, cold night. Better enjoy it while it lasts. Twelve hours’ time the sun will be overhead and the desert will be a furnace.’
‘Yeah.’
‘So how about we fix up one these Hueys and get the fuck out of Dodge?’
‘Your friends will blow my brains out. I can’t trust them.’
‘They’ll keep their word.’
‘Voss? Your girlfriend? They won’t let me live. They’ll put a bullet in my head, whatever the cost.’
‘They’ll do what I say.’
‘Wish I could believe you.’
‘I swear, if you fly us home, you get to walk away. We’ll give you a full twenty-four hours to run. You could cover a lot of ground in a day. Get on a plane, put yourself halfway round the world.’
‘I’ll let you into a secret, Lucy. The choppers are fucked. Both of them. They’ll never fly again.’
Gaunt unhooked his earpiece. He raised his silenced pistol, held it steady with both hands. Lucy’s silhouette obscured by a curtain of driving sand. He waited for a clear shot.
Lucy crouched in front of the wrecked chopper and scanned the courtyard around her. Nothing but gusting sand. Particles blurred in the beam of her barrel light like monsoon rain.
A figure in deep shadow. She raised the rifle to her shoulder.
‘Gaunt? Hands above your fucking head.’
Nothing. Just the swirling sandstorm.
She hurried down the processional avenue back towards the temple.
She paused. Plenty of equipment piled beside the choppers. Tools. Arab phrase books. Salt tablets. Life rafts and dye markers in case the helos came down in water. Lucy didn’t want to leave anything that might be of use to Gaunt.
She dropped the magazine from her rifle and slapped a fresh clip into the receiver. Armour piercing rounds replaced with red-tip tracer.
She raised her rifle. A momentary lull in the sandstorm. The twin hulks of the helicopters lit by weak moonlight.
A single shot aimed at Talon. The bullet streaked like a laser and punched through the aluminium fuselage in a burst of sparks.
Ignition. A wash of blue flame. Fire rippled across the fuel-soaked courtyard. The wrecked chopper quickly became a blazing pyre. Raphael was cooked, still strapped in the pilot seat. The ruptured fuel tank jetted fire like a plume of dragon’s breath.
Flames reached Bad Moon and it too started to burn.
One week earlier. Koell’s hotel suite.
Gaunt drained his whisky tumbler, held it out for fresh ice and a refill.
‘I had a long and constructive chat with Doctor Ignatiev,’ said Koell. ‘He ran the Spektr project. I was the bagman, provided finance and logistic support. But Doctor Ignatiev and his crew were onsite calling the shots.
‘Bio-Medical Unit 403. Ex-Vektor. Ex-Biopreperat. Fifteenth Directorate of the Soviet Army. They were based in an asylum. A mansion by the Moskva. Used to be owned by the Smirnoff vodka family. Got seized and turned into a sanatorium during the revolution.
‘Ignatiev and his men had a basement lab during the eighties. Military project. The psycho-pharmacology of violence. They researched hypnosis, shock treatment, psycho-surgery, any means of exerting behavioural control. They’d get mental patients, dribblers, real headbangers. People sectioned for impulsive aggression. They would get them amped on speed and psychotropic drugs. Shoot them full of Phenobarbital then put them in a room together. Set cameras running while they tore each other apart. They were trying to create super-soldiers. Killing machines.
‘We scooped Ignatiev and his boys from Moscow, years back. Now they work for us.
‘Ignatiev oversaw the construction of the Spektr research laboratory. He used the phosphate mine tunnels. A logical choice. Safe from surveillance. Safe from sandstorms and extreme temperature fluctuation. That is where the virus flask is likely to be found. If it cannot be located at the citadel, if it isn’t hidden in the crypt, you will find it in the lab.’
Gaunt shouldered his backpack. He picked his way through the citadel ruins. Courtyards and pillared avenues lit infernal red by the burning choppers.
A rising wind. Moonlight and flickering flame dimmed by swirling vortices of sand.
He drew his pistol. He checked darkened doorways. Nothing.
No sign of Lucy.
Gaunt hurried towards the guard towers that flanked the citadel entrance.
He reached the monumental propylaea gateway.
He paused as he passed between the two great towers.
He knelt. He brushed the ground with the loop-string of his compass. The string snagged an obstruction.
He crouched on his hands and knees. He switched on his Maglite. A strand of monofilament, thinner than a human hair. He traced the wisp of thread to a rock pile at the base of a guard tower. He gently lifted fist-sized lumps of rubble aside. Filament tied to the pin of a trip-flare.
Gaunt flicked open his knife and cut the wire.
He checked his map. He checked his compass. He aimed to strike north across the valley floor to the abandoned mine.
‘Watch your back. Those mine tunnels are likely to be crawling with infected soldiers. Could be hundreds of them down there.’
A last glance at the citadel ruins. Domes and arches. Broken walls and toppled pillars. The ancient necropolis lit by rippling flame-light.
He headed out into the valley and was lost in swirling sand.
Voss lit a cigar. He blew a smoke ring. He could see the fuel fire from the temple entrance. The chopper airframes cooking in kerosene. A baleful red glow in the distance, a crimson smudge glimpsed through the sandstorm haze.
An approaching silhouette. He stepped back and raised his shotgun.
Muffled voice:
‘It’s me.’
Lucy climbed over the quad bike. She took off her goggles. She pulled the shemagh from her face. She shook sand from her coat.
She sipped from her canteen, swilled and spat.
‘Mandy?’
‘Still out there,’ said Voss. ‘She’ll be all right. What’s the deal with the choppers?’
‘I burned them. Didn’t want to leave anything Gaunt might find useful. The fuel tanks should blow any second. Thousand pounds of aviation fuel. Should be quite a bang.’
‘Guess that’s the last we’ll hear from the guy.’
‘He’ll die out there among the ruins. Get ripped apart. Or go mad with thirst. Eat a bullet, if he has any sense. Fuck him.’
‘When do you want to move out?
‘Get your shit together. Anything you can carry on your back. We’ll take turns riding the quad until it runs out of gas.’
‘Want to wait for sunrise?’
‘No. Soon as the wind starts to ease up, we should get going.’
Lucy tried her radio.
‘Mandy, do you copy?’
No response.
‘Atmospherics,’ said Voss. ‘The sandstorm. She’ll be back soon.’
Lucy sat by the fire. She ripped Toon’s Eldridge Cleaver paperback in half and threw it into the flames. She warmed her hands as paper curled and blackened.
‘How about it, Jabril? Looks like we are walking home. Want to tag along?’
‘No. The journey is hell.’
‘You’re sure? You want us to leave you behind?’
‘Endless dunes. Nightmare heat. It drove me near insane. Wild hallucinations. I ate sand. I clawed my eyes. I screamed at God. I couldn’t endure that torment a second time. I would rather die.’
‘But you made it. You survived.’
‘No. I died out there in that desert. It broke me.’
A sharp flash of light outside the temple, like a lightning strike. The darkness beyond the doorway lit by a wash of liquid fireball light.
A deep boom. A tremor ran thro
ugh the temple floor. Campfire wood crumbled to ash, releasing a last puff of flame. Embers spiralled upward like fireflies.
‘There go the choppers,’ said Voss.
Amanda crouched beneath low vaulted archways. The flare in her hand fizzed and spat red fire. It filled the catacombs with a fine smoke haze and the stink of cordite.
She was deep within the crypt.
She found herself picking her way through a carpet of emaciated bodies.
Republican Guard. Olive uniforms shredded and burned by heavily calibre rounds. They’d been dead a long while. Fractured bones protruded from taut skin. No flies or maggots to consume their flesh. They had dried like jerky.
Broken bodies. Twisted, skeletal limbs. Rictus screams. Death-camp horror.
A tremor ran through the ancient edifice. A deep rumble. The vaulted ceiling shook. She heard the crack and grind of shifting stones. Trickles of dust from the brickwork above her head.
Amanda hit the transmit button on her chest rig.
‘Lucy? What the fuck was that?’
No response.
‘Lucy, can you hear me?’
Dead channel static. The signal from her TASC unit too weak to penetrate thick granite.
She unhooked the earpiece.
She continued her exploration of the vaulted catacombs. She ducked low. She raised the burning flare and squinted into deep shadow.
Clay pots jumbled with bone and funerary offerings.
Row upon row of squat pillars receding into gloom.
She examined the gargantuan cylindrical blocks that propped the roof. A sinister cosmology. Constellations and planetary movements. Celestial calendars plotting every equinox and eclipse.
Hieroglyphs etched into stonework. Serpentine, hybrid creatures. Phantasmagoric ranks of sculpted monsters that had stared into the subterranean dark, faces locked in a blank-eyed snarl, since the dawn of humanity.
Amanda reached out and touched granite cobra fangs. She shivered.
‘Gaunt?’ she shouted. Her voice echoed harsh, metallic. ‘Gaunt, you down here?’
She listened for movement. At first she could hear nothing but the hiss of the burning flare, and the constant whine of battle tinnitus.