by Ted Bell
“Hey, chief,” Harry said, blinking his eyes in the harsh sunlight and smiling through the pain up at his friend Hawke. Blood was trickling from the corners of his mouth. He seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness from loss of blood.
“You okay, Harry?”
“Couple of holes, that’s all. We beat those bastards?”
“Yeah, we beat ’em, Harry.”
“We don’t pick fights, we finish ’em. Ain’t that right, boss?”
“That’s right, Harry.”
Hawke knelt in the sand, slid his hands under the man, rose to his feet, and started down the wide face of the dune with Brock in his arms. Harry was clearly in pain and, mercifully, he’d passed out again.
“The cavalry showed up, Harry,” Hawke said to his unconscious friend. “You did your duty. I hope to God you make it, old friend.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
THEY CLIMBED HIGHER INTO THE MOUNTAINS. Fewer men, fewer horses, fewer supplies. The Rat Patrol they’d called themselves. Now, hair stringy, their beards coarse and foul, they’d been reduced to brushing their teeth with their fingers; all of them had begun to reek. The riding, if you could call it that, was nightmarish on the narrow, icy mountain trails. Snow, wind-whipped off the mountains, made visibility poor to nil. The fact that the horses could even keep their footing was miraculous. The cold at this altitude, nearly ten thousand feet, was deadening. Hawke hadn’t felt the reins in his hands in hours.
The four Humvees had provided a reassuring escort through the tribal badlands to the foothills of the very mountains where Osama bin Laden was rumored to be hiding. The U.S. Army had also secretly entered Pakistani airspace, sending in a big Chinook helicopter to evacuate the dead and wounded in the tiny compound where they’d made their stand. Hawke had held a brief prayer service for Patoo and the others who had died as the chopper descended out of the red haze of early evening in the desert.
When it came time for Harry Brock’s stretcher to be loaded aboard the helo, Brock had insisted he was fit to fight, but Hawke had insisted he clearly was not. Hawke had won that round, mainly because Brock was so weak from loss of blood that he couldn’t sustain the argument. He and Stoke had been there when Harry’s stretcher went aboard. Both men shook his hand, expressing deep gratitude for all he had done to save so many lives.
“I can’t stay and fight?” Brock asked weakly.
“No, Harry,” Hawke said.
“Cuss,” Harry said and disappeared inside the big helo.
THEY’D LOCATED THE MOUNTAIN CALLED Wazizabad using the crude hand-drawn map Stokely had extracted out of the diminutive prison imam. The one who’d waived his legal rights sixteen miles out in the Atlantic off Miami.
The distinct features of the formerly mythical mountain’s peak on the map exactly matched what they were all looking at. It was a majestic, threatening thing, a jagged pyramid of rock that scratched the sky, clad in ice and snow, its upper reaches swathed in dull grey clouds and whirlwinds of blown snow.
This, Hawke wanted to believe, meant they were looking in the right place. But the Pakistani imam Stoke had busted in the Glades Prison wasn’t stupid. If he’d spent a lot of time in this region, he could have easily drawn the shape of the mountain he remembered most clearly.
He was not a man to give up hope. But they’d been climbing the mountain since daybreak and were now nearing the pinnacle. So far, they’d seen nothing that would indicate the rabbit warren of tunnels supposedly inside this mountain.
An hour later, as the sun was setting, the western skies were turning purple and gold. But just as the temperatures began plummeting, hope rose. They had finally reached something that might be the entrance to a tunnel. They’d almost missed it in the growing darkness. The entrance had been cleverly disguised with boulders, but a ray of sharp sunlight pierced a small fissure in the rock and illuminated what looked to Hawke like the inside of a tunnel.
Hawke raised a hand for the long line of men and horses in his wake to halt. He dismounted, and, with the help of Stoke and Dakkon, began pulling away the heavy boulders that blocked whatever lay beyond. Hawke watched Stoke shoving a huge boulder aside and realized that without his enormous strength, this effort would have been impossible. Soon they’d created a hole large enough for a man to squirm his way through. Abdul was the obvious choice as he was the smallest of the three. Hawke handed him his SureFire flashlight and Dakkon climbed up and disappeared.
A moment later they saw his smiling face looking down at them. He crawled out and dropped to the trail.
“A tunnel, sir! Maybe the mother of all tunnels!”
Hawke ordered more men to dismount and remove all obstacles to the entrance. When the work was finally done, he entered the tunnel alone, his weapon in hand, his finger on the trigger, his SureFire mounted to the bottom rail of his M4. He walked about twenty yards into the darkness, looking at the ground for any signs of activity, recent or otherwise. Hawke knew this was simply the first of many such tunnels they would expect to encounter, since his map indicated the entire top of the mountain was honeycombed with tunnels and caverns both natural and man-made.
But this one would certainly do. Night was falling rapidly and so was the temperature. It had been a very long day, and shelter from the wind and cold beat the hell out of a night outside on the trail.
The nearly frozen, saddle-sore riders were indifferent about where this hole in the side of the mountain might lead. If it took them into the heart of the enemy lair, fine. But all they cared about at this moment was getting off the damned horses and out of the frigid blasts of air that had buffeted them every painful step of the way up.
The tunnel entrance, thank God, was also large enough to accommodate the horses. Hawke had a couple of his men lead them inside, tether them together, then water and feed them an abundant meal of the hay they carried. Hawke saw to it that the shivering steeds were also covered with heavy woolen blankets. He wanted them rested and strong in the highly likely event the team might need to beat a hasty retreat down the mountain.
They all squatted around a small fire and ate, gulping great draughts of warm tea as soon as the animals had been cared for. Then they unrolled the three-part sleeping bags and prepared to bed down on hard rock for the night, with hopes of getting some much needed rest. Having survived the Taliban attack, and climbing ten thousand grueling feet up a frozen rockpile on horseback, they were nearing the point of exhaustion.
So were Stokely and Hawke, but they could not responsibly bed down without a more complete recon of the tunnel to make sure their squad was safe, at least for the night. Stoke had the powerful SureFire lighting system mounted on the bottom rail of his weapon, too, and they used the powerful beams to make their way cautiously, deeper and deeper into the mountain called Wazizabad.
After about a mile without incident, they came to a fork. The tunnel to the left led downward, while the one to the right angled up. They decided to place guards here on four-hour shifts. The team would return the next morning and see where the upward-leading right-hand tunnel might lead them.
“I’m feeling we’re close,” Stoke said to Hawke, as they trudged back to the mouth of the tunnel. “You feel close, boss?”
“I will. When I’m staring at this murderous bastard over the sights of my gun.”
“I don’t see how the Rat Patrol will ever find this baby-killing a-hole Rashad, boss. This damn mountain is just one big maze. You took science class just like me. You put rats in a maze, they get all disoriented and shit trying to find the cheese. I hope you’ve got an idea how we’re going to navigate this maze because I sure as hell don’t.”
“Yeah. I do have an idea, Stoke.”
“You plan to share it with the grunts?”
“Sahira will lead us right to him, Stoke. Trust me.”
“Sahira? How does she know any more about this place than we do?”
“She doesn’t.”
“Oh. Well, that clears that up. I guess I can just relax n
ow. About finding a damn needle-nosed prick in a haystack, I mean.”
“Yeah, Stoke, actually you can.”
Stoke couldn’t see Hawke’s face in the darkness, but he knew the man had a big grin plastered on his kisser.
“Stoke, do me a favor. Find two good militiamen and post them on guard back at the fork. They’ll be relieved in four hours by two more. Tell them my radio will be on all night if they see or hear anything out of the ordinary.”
“Aye-aye, skipper.”
Weary of bloodshed, wind, and weather, Hawke climbed into his military sleeping bag and was instantly asleep. Peace on earth, at least until tomorrow.
HAWKE, SAHIRA, AND STOKELY WERE up at first light. The rising sun flooded the cave mouth with rose-gold light. The three began unloading weapons and equipment chosen by a very accommodating Special Forces weapons specialist at Shamsi AFB. The first item they uncrated was Sahira’s tracked UGV. This unmanned, remote-controlled ground vehicle, about the size and shape of a child’s pedal car, was essentially guns, cameras, and sensors on tank tracks.
Although it was not widely known, there were currently more than six thousand combat robots in use in Iraq and Afghanistan. The model Sahira had requested was one she had helped to design. It was a British combat-bot, one specifically for tunnel warfare. It had sensors that could detect and analyze poison gas and bacterial agents. It was also designed to detect radioactive materials, which was the reason she needed it for this mission.
The UGV was also equipped with turret-mounted twin M249 light machine guns and multiple night-vision cameras, fore and aft. In the tunnels, “Ugg”—as Sahira had dubbed it—would be used to peek around corners and send a live video feed of hostile areas and investigate suspected bombs without needless exposure of personnel. It had the ability to locate or bypass threat obstacles in buildings, bunkers, and tunnels.
It could also identify and neutralize improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Ugg was basically a robot soldier, packing serious heat, just like the ground troops. And, as Hawke had once heard a Royal Marine commando in combat say, “A robot can shoot second.”
Ugg was able to follow inserted GPS waypoints, breach ditches, climb stairs, and navigate the most cramped conditions on its own. Robots were fearless. But Ugg was not an autonomous killer. Only a human could make it kill another human. If and when deadly autonomy ever came to robots, it would come on little cat’s feet. Still, Ugg could take small-arms fire and survive to fight again. And it could be repaired easily, unlike a soldier or a Marine.
Hawke now had under his command twelve men, one woman, and the very sophisticated robot she’d designed. It was the minimum he would go in with, but he felt it was sufficient. He was sure this Sheik al-Rashad would have his primary stronghold well guarded. Hawke’s team would have, he still hoped, some small advantage of surprise. In addition to Ugg, his fighters would be in full Kevlar body armor, with flip-down NVGs on their helmets to pierce the darkness of the tunnels. They would be carrying weapons vastly superior to the Kalashnikovs of the enemy.
And, unlike the Sheik’s bunch of presumptively bored “Imperial Guards,” they hadn’t been sitting around idle, watching DVDs and playing pinochle for months on end. Hawke’s team had been out there killing and getting killed; and that kind of thing had a way of sharpening your warrior senses.
“All right,” Hawke said to the gathered assault team, “we’re going to take this mountain today. Everyone knows what to do. Let’s go do it.”
The team moved forward, following Alex Hawke into the absolute darkness of the tunnel.
Hawke felt good. But to describe him as “overconfident” at this point would be a vast overstatement. He knew he was once again taking these people into harm’s way and that mortal danger could be lurking around every corner. When the team came to the first fork in the underground stronghold, Hawke signaled the team to follow him into the right-hand tunnel.
THE TUNNEL ANGLED UPWARD, SOMETIMES steeply. Hawke, with Sahira and Abdul Dakkon immediately behind him, stayed in the lead. The militia fighters behind him, sensing a day of reckoning with the supreme Taliban leadership, were alert, composed, and spoiling for vengeance, eager for a fight. Stokely Jones, who brought up the rear, was constantly looking over his shoulder for any stealthy hostiles who might approach from behind.
Sahira had her primary weapon slung over her shoulder. In her hands was the remote controller for the armed UGV. A single joystick controlled Ugg’s direction, forward, backward, left or right. The machine could also pivot 360 degrees on its axis. A second toggle rotated the turrets and elevated the barrels on the twin machine guns. In the center of the controller was a four-inch black-and-white screen displaying what the small, matte-black war-bot was seeing.
When the tunnel curved blindly in any direction, Hawke would halt the team and Sahira would send Ugg ahead to ascertain that no enemy guards, bombs, or IEDs lay in wait for them. Not to mention poison gas or airborne bacterial agents.
They trudged on endlessly in the cramped and fetid blackness, taking only the tunnels that seemed to lead toward the mountaintop, expecting enemy gunfire to erupt at any second within the deadly confines of the narrow tunnels. At least they were climbing toward their target, Hawke thought. Common sense told him the Sheik’s stronghold would be higher, not lower. Sooner or later, they would encounter resistance and he was ready for—
Contact.
Ugg had picked up something.
Just around a bend up ahead, some kind of light. Hawke signaled a halt. Sahira brought the robot to a quick, silent stop just before it entered a large cavern that seemed full of misty red light. She looked closely at the tiny monitor, using the digital zoom as the war-bot went into target acquisition mode. Then she toggled Ugg forward very slowly until it was just far enough inside the lighted area for a recon.
The forward camera did a 360. It was a huge, natural cavern. Massive stalactites, glistening with shiny black obsidian, hung down from the dark heights above. Their sharp tips, steadily dripping water, were maybe thirty feet overhead. As were the tiny red lights up in the mist. Stalagmites reached up from the rocky ground, a small forest of them, through which ran a swiftly flowing stream of clear water, about two feet wide, the water level exactly that of the cavern floor.
The cavern was empty, save for two very alert, armed, and uniformed guards on the far right. Because Ugg remained in semi-darkness, the tiny camera lens extended before him on a long, telescoping rod, the guards had not spotted the war-bot. The guards stood at attention to either side of what appeared from this angle to be a round, steel vault built into a wall of solid natural stone.
The two men had their weapons at shoulder arms. Ugg had its sights on them now and was flashing a “Fire?” icon at the top of the screen. The battle-bot’s twin machine guns could easily take them out, but Sahira knew Hawke didn’t want the sound of automatic weapons echoing down the tunnels.
Hawke drew his sidearm from his thigh holster. He always kept a parabellum round chambered at times like this, and a full mag. He fitted the noise suppressor to his weapon, stepped silently out from the darkness at the edge of the cavern, raised his pistol and fired twice, phut-phut, two head shots.
The guards crumpled to the ground, and he motioned the team forward into the cavern.
“Maybe this is the Sheik’s back door,” Sahira said.
“Let’s hope so,” Hawke replied. “We certainly wouldn’t want to come in through the front.”
It was a vault. A massive round titanium door stood between them and whatever was on the other side. Hawke put the radius of the vault door at about fifteen feet. “Same handprint recognition pad,” Abdul said, staring at the print screener mounted on the right.
“May I offer you a hand, sir?” Abdul said, looking up at Hawke and taking one of the newly dead guards by the wrist.
“Please,” Alex said, and Abdul lifted the right hand of one of the corpses and placed it against the screen, activating it. Digital light
s in the center of the round door began flashing. The large stainless-steel wheel at the center instantly spun through any number of combinations. A second later, the door suddenly swung open with a hiss, perhaps four inches.
The moment the door opened, Ugg’s radiation detector began to beep softly for the first time. Sahira looked closely at Ugg’s controller and studied the readouts the bot was analyzing, saying softly to herself, “This door has a lead shield.”
“Talk to me, Sahira,” Hawke said.
“Gamma rays,” Sahira said. “We’re on it. The nuclear device has got to be somewhere inside this vault. Although this is a very weak signal. The weapon may be shielded. Or located somewhere well beyond this location.”
Abdul and Stokely swung the perfectly balanced one-ton door open just enough to allow the bot inside. Sahira used Ugg’s joystick and tank treads to send it climbing up and over the rounded threshold of the vault’s entrance. Once inside, she stopped it and looked at the readouts. “No human thermal heat, no gas, no bacteria,” she said. “Trace radiation.”
“What’s in there, Sahira?” Hawke asked.
“Gold,” she said, matter-of-factly.
“Go,” Hawke said to his team, standing back and waiting as they entered before stepping inside.
Gold. An Egyptian pharaoh’s fantasy hoard of gold. Endless gold, row after endless row of gold ingots and bars neatly stacked upon endless metal shelves, shelves that stretched off into the darkness and rose up to the dimly lit twenty-foot ceiling. Hawke made a quick calculation and estimated he was standing within six feet of many billions of dollars. Now he knew how al-Rashad funded his worldwide jihad, blowing up airports, schools, hospitals. He literally had limitless resources.
And that was just what he could see through his NVG goggles. He saw a dim rectangle of light at the end of one of the golden corridors and signaled his team to follow. The rectangle looked like an exit.
