Dark Rising (20 page)

From under the sand, the creature had inserted its feeding spike up into the sleeping animal and injected it with a natural sedative designed to immobilise it. It also injected a substance to liquefy the organic matter it found within the soft outer casing. The absence of a hard exoskeleton meant the creature was quickly able to penetrate the body and soften the muscle, cartilage and even most of the bone. Abu Tayib was literally being liquefied and drawn down the feeding spike into the belly of the monster below the sand.

Yusuf Ayyub and Tawbah Siluf entered the tent to wake their sleeping Takavaran brothers. After a long boring shift they were looking forward to taking their turn on the sleeping rolls. At first, they didn’t comprehend what they were seeing. Abu Tayib seemed smaller somehow.

Yusuf pulled back the bedroll covering and blinked; it looked like a shrivelled monkey had been placed inside his comrade’s robes – stick-like arms and legs attached to a mottled, collapsing diaphragm. Yusuf nudged the thing with his foot and the head slowly turned towards him. A withered black tongue came out of its mouth – the thing was still alive and trying to speak to him.

‘
Al-Muhaimin
.’ Yusuf spoke one of Allah’s secret names as the Protector of Men, and stuck his knuckles in his mouth. He had seen men blown to pieces, or tortured in ways that would cause normal men to loosen their bowels from fright. But this was something else, so horrifying that it tore at his consciousness.

Tawbah pulled back the covers on the second bedroll and found the other agent in a worse state. He was even more desiccated if possible, just a small sack of bones and tendons. Even the orbs of his eyes had been drained of all their fluids.

Both men were about to flee when Abu Tayib’s collapsed body was thrown to the side. What rose from the ground froze the two soldiers in terror. Yusuf thought perhaps they were already dead and had been cast into Jahannam, for this was surely one of the foul beasts of the pit sent to torment the souls of the unbelievers.

In a sinuous motion, the creature lifted itself from the hole below Abu’s bedroll and stood on powerful, segmented legs bristling with insectoid hairs. A rain of sand fell from it as its cuticular exoskeleton front flared open, exposing many smaller legs. It was far quicker than a creature of its size and bulk should have been, and immediately enveloped Yusuf. While holding him close to its body with its many legs, it shot out a long curved claw to cleave the head of Tawbah.

The creature lowered itself and its struggling prey to the ground, its eyestalks swivelling around to fix black, glass-like bulbs on the terrified man. Its pointed head broke open at the front and its gristly mandible apparatus spread wide to allow the feeding spike to extend slowly into Yusuf’s chest. The Takavaran vomited as he realised what had happened to the sleeping men – and what was about to happen to him.

TWENTY-EIGHT

A
fter jogging for just three miles, Zach collapsed. The temperature in the open Markazi desert had been known to reach over 170 degrees. It was nowhere near that yet, but for the untrained Israeli scientist it was still far too hot and dry to stop exhaustion and dehydration from knocking his legs out from under him. Alex took a quick look at the thin, young man, gave him a sip of water, then lifted him onto his back as if he weighed no more than a child.

Sam didn’t even bother offering – he knew Alex had far more stamina and strength than him. If need be, Alex could have carried them both. Both HAWCs increased their pace now that they didn’t need to keep it in second gear due to the young scientist.

They still had a long way to go.

After about twenty minutes, Zach felt a little better. His eyesight had stopped swimming and he was less nauseous, but bouncing along on Alex’s back didn’t make for a comfortable ride. His head throbbed every time the armoured plates of his own suit banged into Alex’s shoulder shielding as the HAWC pounded across the sand.

Sam was taking his turn out in front again, and Zach marvelled at how effortless he and Alex made the desert crossing look. In between the armour plating, the HAWCs’ suits stuck to their bodies, probably drenched in perspiration.
They’ll need to stop soon to drink
, Zach thought. But as yet both men looked powerful and relentless.

Zach could feel a rash beginning on his neck where the material met his bare skin. His suit didn’t fit right – it bagged on him and made him look like a skinny kid playing dress-ups in his father’s work clothes. He remembered what his Uncle Mosh, Aunt Dodah’s squat husband, used to say to him almost every week:
You need more muscle, Zachie
. Uncle Mosh was forever trying to encourage Zach to get his head out of the books and do more exercise.
You’ll need muscles as well as brains when you grow up
, he used to tell him. Uncle Mosh had played football at high school and got around in a white singlet in even the coldest weather. Though he only owned a carpet-laying business, he used to waggle his finger in Zach’s face and say, ‘The brainy kids never get to do anything interesting. They just sit at a desk all day and write boring papers.’

Zach watched the hard-packed desert earth pass rapidly beneath Alex’s feet and his mind travelled back to the Persepolis ruins and the unbelievable physical distortion evidence he had seen. He had hoped the first gamma release was just some form of accident, but he had overheard Captain Hunter talking to Adira about a further radiation pulse. He hadn’t really believed anyone would actually try to harness the strange forces involved in black holes and dark matter – everything was so theoretical, so dangerous. They just didn’t know what they were dealing with. It was a little like looking for a landmine in the dark by banging the ground with a hammer.

Zach liked to think he was equalitarian when it came to politics, race and religion. Everyone was equal; everyone had the right to be heard. But what if Adira was right? What if it was possible to turn the power generated by a black hole into a weapon? Would he want Israel to have that weapon? America? Worse, someone like Moshaddam?

You’re right, Uncle Mosh
, he thought.
We brainy kids never get to do anything interesting.

He contemplated asking Alex to let him down so he could try again to keep up with the HAWCs. But Alex accelerated to take the lead from Sam, and after a few more seconds of watching the speed with which the HAWC leader travelled across the dry desert, Zach decided another few minutes’ rest wouldn’t hurt.

Both HAWC teams were closing in on the Sassanid Dynasty cave. Hex’s Red team was less than four miles out, and the Blue team about double that as Alex had to travel in a slight loop to skirt the city. Night was closing in and the temperature was falling. The cooler air was easier on the straining soldiers, but they were all exhausted. They planned to rendezvous and rest about a mile out from the cave.

Twilight was turning to night as O’Riordan slow-jogged at forward point in the line. He should have been taking sensor readings every few hundred feet, but instead his mind kept travelling back to the woman kneeling on his chest and pinching his windpipe.
Try that again, you bitch, and you’ll wake up in fucking traction.
He spat dry, sticky saliva out into the desert.

Behrouz called to his Takavaran partner – there was motion on the sensor. The other Takavaran positions were logged into the grid so they knew immediately that it wasn’t their own people. This was an unidentified incursion. It was as their Commander had said:
They will come
.

Behrouz woke his two other team members, and communicated the presence of the unidentified contact to headquarters so the nearest teams could be immediately dispatched as backup. They were under instructions to take the intruders alive, or at least one of them. Behrouz knew that didn’t mean they couldn’t have a little fun first. He hoped they were tough – Mossad or any enemy Special Forces soldiers were best. He loved it when they held out for a long time, giving him the pleasure of inflicting more and more pain and degradation before they finally broke or their hearts gave out.

He checked the motion sensors again against the updated grid – at the rate of approach, the intruders would arrive only minutes before the next Takavaran team –
perfect
. Behrouz sent the information to the other teams so they could approach from behind and squeeze the enemy in a pincer movement. There would be no escape.

As O’Riordan approached a tumble of boulders, his mind continued to work on his team’s failings instead of his environment. He cursed Rocky Lagudi for doing nothing to help him against Adira. He swore revenge on Hex for making him look bad with that fucking space gun. Even Captain Hunter had managed to get himself bitten by a fucking snake – some great leader he’d turned out to be.

He looked up and noticed it was now night-dark and the boulders were closer than he expected. He ignored them, turning his mind to the young Israeli professor and what was annoying about him.

The first high-calibre bullet took him in the chest and the second in the gut. The powerful impacts kicked him backwards off his feet and he sprawled groggily on the rocky ground. His ceramic plating had defrayed and absorbed much of the force, but two of his ribs were painfully smashed. He shook his head to clear it and rolled fast.

Even though the high-powered rifles had silenced muzzles, the Red team knew where the fire was coming from and spread in a standard defensive formation. Rocky Lagudi pulled a small thermal scope from a slot in his belt and held it to his eye. He’d just caught some of the phosphorescent movement of a warm body in the dark when a bullet splintered the rock in front of his face.

‘Takavaran,’ Adira whispered.

Hex nodded; they had just walked into an ambush. The Iranians would already be calling in backup. Not good, not good at all. And no time to be pinned down.

Irish had managed to drag himself back behind a rock – he would have to pull his weight regardless of his injuries. Hex made rapid hand signals to the HAWCs and Adira to prepare for an offensive spike-and-spread attack – two go up the centre and fan out, leaving a cleared tunnel for the next two to come up the middle and fan again.

Hex held up one finger –
hold one minute
– and pulled the M24 A3 from over his shoulder. He quickly slotted a nightscope down the rail and leaned around the rock. One of the Takavaran noticed the slight movement and brought his own sighted sniper rifle down and focused. It only took him 1.7 seconds – too long. The large slug entered his forehead and removed the entire back of his skull, spraying blood, bone and grey-green brain matter over the sand behind him.

One less bad guy.
Hex replaced the gun over his shoulder and drew a shortened M9 pistol, then held up five fingers:
four, three, two . . . go!

The bullet took him in the back of the shoulder, just under a ceramic plate, and passed up through the flesh to shatter his clavicle. A stun grenade went off next to Rocky Lagudi and knocked him to the ground. His helmet and armour plating protected him from most of the blast, but he probably felt like a man swimming to the surface from under fifty feet of water. The second Takavaran squad had arrived – the Red team were now sandwiched, exposed and outnumbered.

‘Call it,’ Hex yelled to Adira.

She fired twice more into the dark, then pressed her back against a sheltering rock and pulled her SFPDA from her belt. ‘Ambush, three dents,’ she said quickly into the tiny flat device and immediately sent the squirt. The device would code it and attach the coordinates. She let the comm device drop and pulled her other sidearm from its holster.

She whispered something to the sand, sucked in a deep breath and then stood up between the two Takavaran squads, one Barak held out at twelve o’clock and the other at six. The two guns barked loudly in the dark.

Alex lowered Zach to the ground and motioned for Sam to do a 360-degree scan as he knelt to decode and read the unexpected signal. As he listened to the brief message and absorbed its meaning, a pain started to bloom in his head. He listened again to the three words, hoping that he’d misheard them . . . he hadn’t.

‘Shit. Red Team’s been engaged – three injured already.’

Three down out of four was an unacceptable loss when they hadn’t even reached their primary objective. He should have been with them; he shouldn’t have split the team up again. The knot of pain in his head unfurled and started to grow.
They’re lost in the dark again
, he thought as a red mist rolled across his consciousness.

Zach came closer. ‘Is Adira okay?’

Alex didn’t hear him. His hand curled into a fist on his knee as another wave of blinding pain washed across the inside of his head. He grunted, crushed his eyes shut and banged his thigh.

‘Are
you
okay, Captain Hunter?’

Zach reached out to touch Alex’s shoulder. Alex’s hand came up quickly, grasping Zach by the wrist and lifting him off the ground. He shouted into Zach’s face, ‘I wasn’t there! I wasn’t there again!’

He dropped Zach and pressed a fist into his temple. Zach stepped back, visibly terrified, and Sam pulled the young Israeli behind him.

‘Boss? Alex?’ he said evenly, keeping a few paces back from his friend and senior officer. He tried again. ‘Alex?’

This time Alex heard Sam’s voice. He turned to look at the large HAWC, and saw him shielding a white-faced Zachariah. He blinked and handed Sam the communication device so he could see and hear the information for himself. ‘Three dents, Sam. I should have been with them.’

Sam ignored the self-recrimination and pain in Alex’s voice. He looked at the coordinates delivered with the message. ‘They’re not far from here . . . not for you.’

Alex looked at Sam, and then shook his head. ‘I’d be leaving you and Zach exposed.’

Sam handed back the device, ‘We’re clear, they’re not. From a strategic perspective, if they’re all wiped out, our chances of success on this mission decrease by sixty per cent. If any of them are captured . . . well.’