Anaz-Voohri (20 page)

The General nodded and smiled at the comment. “We have several. Is a Mujhehadin or Al-Qaeda, or Hezbollah faction helping the Anaz-voohri in exchange for weapons? Are the Anaz-voohri recruiting and arming human sympathizers in preparation for a takeover? Or are the weapons intended for Anaz-voohri warriors when they launch a ground attack? Whichever the case, we cannot allow these weapons to be distributed.”

A CIA agent raised his hand. Zack had met him once on his initial briefing. It seemed eons ago. “How long have the weapons been there?"

“Less than twenty-four hours.
We called this meeting as soon as we learned of them." The General in charge surveyed the faces around the table. “We must seize them immediately and secure them before they fall into enemy hands.”

“Any unusual activity in the area recently?” asked a General with a battery of medals on his uniform.

“The reports mention only a few Touaregs in Land Rovers driving groups of tourists to and from the canyons. The terrain is difficult, so the weapons must have been flown in. This is an Algerian national park guarded by rangers. We observed nothing out of the ordinary. No military activity of any kind.”

Zack didn’t trust all information coming from the military brass. During his years of duty among Special Forces, he’d learned that everyone had an agenda. Even Zack, whose main reason for being in this fight was to rescue his sister. As he saw it, any ranger, guide, or tourist in that specific area at that particular time must be considered suspect.

*****

Zack met Tia and ten select members of his team aboard an Air Force carrier ship in the Persian Gulf. He briefed them on the HALO jump, high altitude, low opening maneuver they would have to perform to avoid radar detection. After nightfall, in full commando gear, they boarded a stealth Nighthawk bound toward the Sahara desert. On his epad GPS, the weapon hoard appeared as a pulsing red dot. His team, tagged with specific trace pulse devices, showed as blue dots on the satellite locator.

Zack checked the straps of his parachute. “Get ready!”

“I love this." Tia sounded thrilled about the dangerous jump.

“Eighteen thousand feet,” Zack said in his com system to test it. “We’ve done it before, but
be
careful. That’s a long way in free fall.”

A soldier close to him smiled in anticipation.

“Sorry guys,” Zack said as a joke, knowing they all enjoyed that kind of stunt. “The pilot has orders not to attract attention. So, you open your chutes only when you reach one thousand feet." That was risky, but necessary. “Even black parachutes can be seen against a clear starry sky."

A murmur of assent answered him. All waited for the signal from the pilot, including Zack.

When the pilot flew directly above the target, he announced, “Clear to jump."

Tia dropped first, followed by the team in rapid succession. Zack jumped last. In free fall, at a thousand feet per second, the high velocity restricted his breathing, and the flapping of his clothes in the wind sounded deafening. The cold bit his ears and the swift loss of altitude stabbed his eardrums painfully. In the moonless night, he could vaguely see the ground but focused on the dim glow of the altimeter at his wrist.

When he reached a thousand feet, he pulled the cord and the sudden tug of his parachute straps left him swinging as if he’d snagged himself on a cloud. Now floating in surreal silence, as his eyes adjusted to the faint starlight, he peered in the shadows at the strange mix of white sand and rock below. A few scattered camp fires burned their last embers.
Touaregs?
Tourists?
Rangers?
Or sentinels?

Switching on his com system, Zack whispered, “Stay clear of these camp fires. We don’t want any witnesses. Even a dumb tourist with a cell phone could alert the park rangers." He directed his chute slightly to the left. “The widest canyon is our landing target. See you there.”

Zack worried about what they would find defending the hoard.
Local Touaregs?
Rebels?
Anaz-voohri warriors?
It could be worse. It could be his sister. But Zack didn’t want to think like that. Most likely the Anaz-voohri had set up some energy shields or sophisticated automated defenses. Although Zack had briefed his team as best he could, he knew that no amount of training or real combat had prepared them for so many unknown factors.

After landing smoothly on open sand, Zack gathered his parachute and concealed it at the foot of a jutting rock. He consulted the satellite locator on his epad. Their target still
pulsed
red, and he could see that the members of his team had landed close together in the same canyon. Good job. He switched his readings to heat signature and detected no visitors in their immediate vicinity.

“Let’s regroup as we move toward the target,” Zack whispered in his com system. “Stay close to the rock. Follow the ridge to the left." Adjusting his night goggles for the level of darkness, he started toward the pulsing red spot on his map, each step made sluggish by the fine sand shifting underfoot.

 
Soon the whole team gathered in the recess of a cliff.

“Keep your eyes peeled." Zack kept his voice low. “Although the satellite detects no body heat anywhere between us and the target, sentinels could be hiding in caves and surprise us at any time.”

Zack motioned to Tia. “Take five and follow the far side of the canyon. It’s narrow enough that we can keep sight of each other. From here on, we maintain silence and communicate only by signs.”

All nodded and while Tia crossed the canyon with half the team, Zack stuck to the left ridge with the other half, proceeding toward the pulsing red dot.

It was too quiet. No bird calls, no insects buzzing. During his years in the Middle East, Zack had learned that even in the worst desert, life thrived at night. Where had the animals gone? There should be desert mice and snakes. Zack didn’t like it.

As they progressed steadily along the canyon, the map told him they were almost there. He stopped his team to scrutinize the area.
Still no movement and nothing on the satellite guidance system.
Could it be a trap?

With the ridge high above their heads, he wondered whether they had been detected. He couldn’t see any cave opening on ground level. When the satellite showed his team in the same spot as the red pulsing dot, he looked up toward a prominent overhang thirty feet up the cliff. Could it be the entrance to a cave? He motioned to Tia and her team to cross back and position
themselves
on the opposite side of the overhang.

When Tia started climbing, the sizzle of weapon fire erupted from above and the whole team took refuge under the overhang. So they had sentinels after all. Zack moved away from the protruding rock to return fire when two men leapt down from above, landing on their feet like super Ninjas.

Zack dove and threw a grenade. One man fell. The other showered the scattering team with a laser-like beam that whizzed all around. From the cover of standing rocks, the team fired non-stop, but the man still stood, as if he were immune. Did he wear a special armor? Aiming for the head, Zack finally brought the man down.

“Cease fire!" Zack wondered how many more of these crazy sentinels he’d find inside the cave. They seemed to have superhuman abilities and no regard for their own lives whatsoever.
“Casualties?”

“Three wounded, Captain,” Tia reported. “Laser burns. They’ll live.”

“Thank God." Zack carefully approached the two sentinels and checked their pulse. Finding none, he retrieved their laser weapons. “Two stay here with the wounded and watch our backs. The rest of us go up.”

He gave one of the laser guns to Tia. “Maybe they are not immune to those.”

During the ascent, Zack expected to be fired upon at anytime, but no attack came.

They reached the overhang. It led to a wide opening in the rock and the reduced team proceeded carefully inside. No guards, no protective measures of any kind. Zack didn’t like this at all. It smelled more and more like a trap.

Tia turned on her flashlight, flooding the cavern with light. Zack lifted his night goggles. Several oblong trunks, dull gold with Anaz-voohri markings, occupied the center, surrounded by smaller metal crates.

The cave looked almost natural, except for the perfect symmetry of the dome. On the other hand, it seemed old and eroded. Primitive earth-tone designs of impalas and snakes on the walls attested to the various tribes that had occupied it over the last centuries, if not millennia.

This seemed too easy. Warning signals screamed in the back of Zack’s mind.

When he turned and saw Tia studying the electronic pad locking one of the larger trunks, he rushed toward her. “Tia, No!”

Too late.
The lock flashed. Zack shoved Tia out of the way and threw himself upon her as an explosion rocked the cave. Flung like a dislocated puppet into a burning breath, pelted by rock and debris, Zack desperately held on to Tia, shielding her with his body. Then he felt his head swirl, the sounds around him faded and he lost consciousness.

*****

Tia coughed up dust and disengaged herself from Zack's limp body. She checked his pulse. He still breathed, but feebly.
Dear God, please let him live through this.
She couldn’t stand the thought of losing him. “We’ve got a man down,” she whispered in her com system.
“Any other casualties?”

A few feeble responses echoed her call. But the sound of gunfire outside told her they had more company. She dragged Zack behind the protection of the trunk that seemed undamaged by the explosion. Taking cover behind the trunk as well, she reached for her gun as two men rushed into the cavern.
The same two that attacked them before?
It seemed impossible. Weren’t they dead?

Tia dodged a knife flying at her head. Armed with long, curved swords, the men kept coming despite heavy fire from Tia’s decimated team. She could see the marks of the mortal injuries the two aggressors had suffered less than ten minutes ago, yet they lived.

Fueled by anger and fear, Tia emptied her clip on them without results. She threw three grenades and the men barely slowed down. Who were these guys? Or rather, what were they?

Then she remembered the alien weapons Zack had taken from them. She seized hers, snatched the other from Zack’s belt. One laser gun in each hand, she pushed the trigger button as she’d seen the enemy do earlier. The sizzling of flesh and the awful burning stench told her they worked. The first man fell without a sound and the other screamed, then collapsed. But Tia wouldn’t take their death for granted this time. Although they looked like men, these beings were obviously not human. Prying the long curved blade from one of the dead men’s hands, she hacked off both their heads, just to be sure.

Of the original twelve in the team, only she and one other soldier still stood. She sent him to check on the others. She needed to evacuate Zack immediately to a hospital with the wounded. Running to the overhang, she checked the reception on her epad and sent a coded message. Target recovered, ready for transport. Heavy casualties... “How many casualties?” she called in her com system.

“Four dead, six gravely wounded, Lieutenant,” came the other soldier’s voice.

“Damn!" Tia finished her message with the count and added a request for emergency medical transport.

Dawn lightened the eastern sky when the large transport came to pick up the load with a special team to carry the alien trunks and the crates. They’d have to work fast, before the park authorities showed up, but they were the experts. The hoard would be taken to a military facility where specialists would open them with all the safety precautions humanely possible.

Soon after, the Medevac helicopter landed on the canyon floor. Tia and her only uninjured soldier had lined up the wounded on the sand, ready for departure. Tia feared for Zack’s life and caught herself praying for him. His back looked horribly charred, and the fact that he did not move or regain consciousness boded ill for his chances of survival.

A third helicopter landed and started loading the dead bodies, but Tia could only think of Zack. Struggling to hide her emotional turmoil, she left the specialists to take care of everything else and she hopped on the Medevac chopper as it lifted off. Sitting next to Zack, she squeezed his hand, hoping he couldn’t see her tears. “Don’t you dare die on me, damn it! Don’t even think of it!”

Chapter Fourteen

The Medevac chopper transported the wounded to a hospital ship in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Italy. Shortly after admitting her team, Tia asked about their status. The medical officer seemed optimistic for most of them.

When it came to Zack’s prognosis, however, the surgeon shook his head. “The helmet protected his head, but there’s no skin left on his back.”

“No skin?" Tia couldn’t imagine a back with no skin. She cringed for Zack at the thought of the painful surgeries to come.

“We dressed his burns and prolonged his coma artificially, so he doesn’t have to deal with the pain. But most importantly, there could be internal damage, and given the severity of his injuries, we do not have the right equipment to fully assess his condition. I’m having him transferred to the best military hospital I know. It’s in Landstuhl, Germany.”