“Faisal’s got over a thousand men up there. I asked him to give me half of them for an assault on the spaceship’s tower.”
“What’d he say?”
“After he stopped laughing, he said no. He wasn’t taking me seriously at all until I played my trump card.” He broke off and looked at Fadeela. “I told him who came up with the idea of raiding the ship. And I told him we were going ahead with it whether he helped us or not. That got his attention. Suddenly, he couldn’t help me enough. He started pulling out maps, ordering supplies, calling soldiers into his tent to give us scouting reports. And he promised we’d have air cover. A group of Saudi jets will be waiting for us when we get to the city destroyer.”
“But no troops?” Fadeela asked.
“No troops,” Reg said.
“In other words, he refused to help us.”
Reg shrugged. “He gave us these supplies,” he said, gesturing to the cargo bed of the truck, “and he didn’t kill me. Didn’t even send anyone to follow me.”
“What do you make of it?” Edward asked.
“He wants us to go to the tower,” Ali said. “He doesn’t think we’ll survive.”
“Exactly,” Reg said. “The only reason he gave me these weapons and let me go was so we’d all go into the destroyer.” He shot another look at Fadeela for her reaction before asking, “Who knows what time it is?”
“Two a.m.,” Yossi said, “which leaves only about three hours until dawn.”
“Then we’ve got to hurry,” Reg said. “Everyone pull these supplies off the truck and pick out a weapon or two. The more the merrier. We can discuss the rest along the way.”
But before Reg could contemplate loading himself down with firearms, there was a pressing piece of business. He grabbed Fadeela and pulled her to the front of the truck. “Take off those clothes,” he said. “This uniform is too tight. It’s killing me.” He leaned against the battering ram that extended off the front of the chassis, pulled off his shoes, then began unbuttoning his shirt.
“What else did Faisal say?” she asked, beginning to unlace her own boots.
“He had a message for you.”
“What was it?”
“He said for you to be careful. Isn’t that a classic? After I explained what we’re proposing to do, he turns to me with a perfectly serious expression on his face and says, ‘Tell her to be careful.’”
“We are going to be married soon. Naturally, he is concerned,” she said facetiously, trying to laugh it off. But not concerned enough to try to stop me, she thought. As much as she despised Faisal, the fact that he hadn’t tried to keep her away from the spacecraft hurt her. By giving Reg the weapons, he was actually encouraging her to go and probably get killed.
“Hurry up with those pants,” Reg said, slipping out of the ones she had lent him. “Faisal also said he wouldn’t have given me any help at all if it hadn’t been your plan. He said you were a brave woman, and he’s looking forward to seeing you again soon. Or something along those lines. I don’t think he meant a word of it.” Waiting for Fadeela to get undressed, Reg stood there in nothing but his jockey shorts and a pair of dirty white socks as easily and unselfconsciously as if he were in a preflight locker room talking with a fellow pilot. Earlier, when he and Fadeela had exchanged uniforms in the back of the moving truck, they’d modestly turned their backs to one another. But now he stood in plain view of her, too focused on the details of the plan and the danger that lay ahead to feel the slightest twinge of embarrassment.
Fadeela hesitated. “Please turn around.”
He did, and changed the subject. “I spoke to your father. He seems fine, in better spirits. That chauffeur of yours, Abdul, is taking good care of him. Your father had a message for you, too: ‘Tell my daughter I’ve joined the fight.’”
“What about Khalid?”
“I wasn’t able to talk to him, but I think he’s fine. Faisal’s got him posted to a gunnery battalion on the canyon cliffs. Ah, that’s a thousand times better,” Reg said as he zipped himself into his own trousers again. “I don’t know where you found that uniform, but it rides awfully high in the crotch.”
“I plan on having it altered as soon as I can make an appointment with my family’s tailor,” she shot back.
“Smart aleck.” Reg grinned. “Let’s go pick you out a weapon. Maybe a rolling pin.” He led the way to the back of the truck, where the others were outfitting themselves. Ali had found a five-foot-long field gun that fired rounds the size of Cuban cigars. It was designed as a stationary weapon, but the broad-chested soldier took his keffiyeh back from Reg and tied it around the gun to create a shoulder sling. Edward strapped a flamethrower harness onto his back. A far cry from the antique weapon he had used the previous afternoon, this new flamethrower featured a lightweight ceramic canister that carried double the fuel, had adjustable settings, and didn’t require a constantly burning pilot—a major asset during a sneak attack. Remi, who along with Sutton was going to stay outside and guard the entrance while the others entered the ship, had chosen a bazooka-style, shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. Reg picked up a fully automatic machine gun and offered it to Fadeela. “Think you can handle one of these, or would you rather help Tye operate the alien pulse gun?”
She accepted the machine gun, but then muscled past Reg and picked up the only remaining flamethrower. “I’ll take this one, too. Fire is what they hate the most. Fire is what I’m going to give them.” She slipped her arms into the harness assembly, then moved off to discuss the weapon with Edward.
“I don’t like it,” Ali whispered to Reg. “She’s not a soldier; she’s a woman, and she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
Reg glanced over his shoulder. “I’d be careful about saying that to her face,” he told Ali. “She’s liable to barbecue you.”
Fadeela must have heard them talking. “Is there a problem?” she asked, moving closer and holding the nozzle of her weapon menacingly in Reg and Ali’s direction.
Ali glared at her for a minute before backing down. “No, there is no problem.”
“Good.” She turned around and fired a test shot at a set of nearby rocks. Night turned to bright day as the powerful jet of fire shot fifty feet and splattered against the stones. Because the fuel was laced with generous amounts of napalm, the fire continued to burn long after it hit the ground.
Ali’s anger flared as hotly as the flames. “What are you doing, stupid woman? You’re showing the aliens where we are.”
Fadeela mocked him. “Why are you so afraid? Don’t worry. If the big bad aliens come, I’ll protect you.” Edward laughed at her joke, but Ali was far from amused.
As the napalm-enhanced fire burned and dripped down the rocks, Reg called everyone together for a final strategy session. “Listen up. Even with Faisal’s help, this isn’t going to be easy. Everything within ten miles of the ship is heavily patrolled. The aliens move in pairs on their chariots. Hopefully, we’ll see them before they see us. But according to Faisal, they’ve got another trick: They bury themselves in the sand like land mines and pop up when humans come too close. Keep your eyes open. Faisal will be sending jets to bomb the northern edge of the ship. We’ll approach from the south and slip into the tower during the distraction.”
“If we can get past the patrols,” said Ali.
“Right. We won’t know if we can do that until we’re out there. We may have to turn back.”
“No turning back,” Fadeela said matter-of-factly.
“She’s right,” Yossi said. “If they release those weapons into the air at dawn, we’re dead just the same. Better to go down fighting.”
Reg squatted and drew a picture of the tower in the dirt. “I’ve been told there’s no way to enter the tower directly from the outside, so we’ll have to enter here, where the right side of the tower meets the front of the ship. The Saudi army was exploring this opening when the aliens began their attack.”
“What did they find out?” Remi asked.
Reg shrugged. “There weren’t any survivors.” He looked at the anxious faces around him. “Hopefully, we’ll have better luck.”
*
“Let’s climb to the top of those rocks so we can have a look around.”
Tye and Yossi, who were riding next to Reg in the chariot, looked at the almost vertical stone cliff in front of them, then at one another, then finally at Reg. It would have been safer to dismount and climb up the slope under their own power, but neither of them objected. Instead they concentrated on moving toward the top of the stone wall and, through the magic of alien bioengineering, the chariot began to pick its way up the craggy cliff. The angle was so steep that they would have slid off the back of the chariot if it hadn’t been for the ingenious harness Tye had made by fastening several lengths of nylon rope around the body of the sled-shaped alien construct to keep them in.
“Don’t try to steer,” Reg insisted. “Don’t tell it which way to go; just focus on getting to the top. It’s like a horse—it knows the best way.”
When the chariot stopped at the top of the rocks, Reg lifted himself out of the layer of foul-smelling ooze that coated the seating area and surveyed the valley ahead through a pair of binoculars. He looked nothing like the unassuming man who had entered Faisal’s camp earlier that night. Now he was heavily armed with an automatic machine gun on his back, a belt of grenades slung over his shoulder, and a holster on each hip. One holster held a .357 Magnum loaded with armor-piercing shells. In the other was a flare gun.
Only a couple of miles ahead, the mountain-sized remains of the alien city destroyer loomed in the darkness. The light of the moon glimmered across what remained of the domed roof, and there was just enough light for them to see their objective: the tower rising from the front of the ruined spacecraft. Far to his right, Reg looked out on the plateau that was to have been the site of Faisal’s wedding. It was littered with destroyed and abandoned vehicles. The flags and bunting decorating the photo platform fluttered in a warm breeze blowing across the desert from the south. Everything was perfectly quiet except for the idling engines of the two trucks nearby.
“Something is very wrong with this picture,” Reg said as he searched for signs of alien activity through the binoculars. At the base of the tower, he spotted the large opening Faisal’s men had told him about. It was big enough to drive a truck through. “We should have run into some resistance by now. We should have seen them at least.”
“Don’t sound so disappointed,” Yossi said. “After all, we’re trying to avoid them, remember?”
The agreement Reg had made with Faisal was simple enough. It called for the team to elude as many of the alien patrols as possible until they were within ten miles of the fallen ship. At that point, they would send up flares to signal the Saudi Air Force to begin bombing the far side of the ship as a diversionary tactic. Despite the high loss rates the Saudis had sustained each time they had tried to make bombing runs on the remains of the destroyer, Faisal had assured Reg that air cover would be waiting for him by the time he arrived at the ten-mile perimeter. Since the aliens were mysteriously absent, it didn’t appear they needed any help to make it inside. But what about on the way out, assuming they lived that long? If they managed to find and recapture the case of biological pathogens, the aliens weren’t likely to let them escape without sending chariots to chase them. In that scenario, a few well-placed bombs dropped in the path of their pursuers would make a world of difference.
“You think those Saudi jets will show up?”
Reg shrugged and came back to the chariot. When he sat down, the conductive goop accepted him with a slurping noise. “Faisal promised they would, but obviously that’s no guarantee. If we’re going in, we have to assume there won’t be any help.”
Yossi nodded and thought the situation over. “Who needs them? The aliens have gone away and left the front door wide-open. Maybe we can sneak in and out before they come back.”
Tye couldn’t believe it was going to be that easy. “Maybe they’re not gone,” he said. “Maybe they’re hiding just inside that opening waiting to zap us when we step through. Or maybe they’re sleeping and when they hear us—”
Reg interrupted him. “That’s the risk we have to take.”
“And we better do it soon,” Yossi said. “Only a couple of hours until dawn.”
Tye unwrapped a couple of the amber-colored medallions and laid them on his forearm. He fiddled with them for a moment, but could find none of the black diamonds that signaled alien proximity. “The coast is clear,” he said. “In fact, it’s empty.”
“Let’s get back to the trucks,” Reg said.
The chariot obeyed immediately and bolted down the steep, uneven slope. The skinny, bone white legs took them bouncing, bucking, and stumbling forward until they reached the desert floor once again, then whisked them smoothly up to the driver’s side window of the lead truck, where Sutton was behind the wheel. Edward sat next to him in the cab, monitoring the reports coming over the radio in Arabic. Remi and Fadeela were in the cargo area, keeping their eyes peeled for the enemy, while Ali drove the other, older truck.
“You smell that?” Sutton asked, sniffing the air with ferretlike intensity. “Something smells funny, like mildew or something.” Like the rest of them, he was hyperalert to signs that the biological weapons had already been released. In addition to noticing odd smells in the air, they’d imagined burning sensations in their noses and lungs and spotted ominous-looking clouds on the horizon, only to have them turn out to be bushes or stands of rock.
“Smells like you’re imagining something,” Remi called down to the driver.
Reg said, “It doesn’t look like Faisal’s boys are going to show. But we don’t need them. Actually, it’s better this way; gives us the element of surprise.”
“Yeah, but on the way out?”
“That’s a lifetime from now,” Fadeela said.
Reg grinned at her choice of words.
Then Sutton surprised them all by yelling, “If we meet any damned resistance on the way out, we’ll blow their bloody heads off! Let’s go. Let’s rock and roll.”
“Wait a second. Listen to this.” Edward, who had been listening to radio reports, leaned past Sutton so he could make eye contact with Reg, sitting in the alien chariot outside. “I think I found out where our spacemen are. They’ve sent an army to At-Ta‘if. Right now, they’re attacking the southern outskirts of the city.” Sutton asked, “So they’re gone?”
“If they are,” Reg said, grinning, “that would make it a whole lot easier to sneak in, wouldn’t it? Turn toward the ship,” he said aloud. When he, Yossi, and Tye simultaneously willed it to happen, it did. The chariot turned sharply and began trotting forward, awkwardly at first, until the men mentally agreed on the speed they wanted. With a clear set of mental commands steering it, the chariot moved across the sand smoothly and gracefully.
“It’s like a magic carpet,” Tye said, as they picked up speed. The pace they settled on was fast—as fast as the bioengineered dune buggy would carry them, which turned out to be forty miles per hour. They slowed down only once, as they came to the last earthen barrier and looked across the wide-open no-man’s-land in front of them. Ali parked the battered old truck there, leaving it as an emergency backup, then jumped into the back of the Mercedes. Now the only obstacles standing between them and the unbelievably large mass of the city destroyer were the destroyed vehicles left behind by the Saudi army. Once they were out in the open terrain, the Mercedes quickly outpaced the chariot. Sutton kept the pedal to the metal and shot ahead, literally leaving Reg and his fellow drivers in the dust.
As they raced closer, the staggeringly large tower seemed poised to topple over and crush them like fleas, its great height creating the optical illusion that it was about to fall forward. The three men crouched behind the front wall of the chariot expected pulse blasts to begin raining down at them at any moment. Sensing their fear, the chariot veered sharply away from the tow
er and started across the open desert.
Reg choked down the fear that was rising in his chest and sounded an order. “Concentrate on following the truck!” And a moment later, the vehicle did exactly that. But it wasn’t the last misstep. Each time one of the men glanced up at the darkened, blank face of the tower, the chariot responded to his terror and tried to steer away. Then, to add to their problems, they noticed something new and truly alarming. There was a massive tubular form crawling down the front face of the tower, like a ten-foot-diameter snake, something that definitely hadn’t been there during the daylight hours. The chariot balked under the confusion of conflicting mental signals it received from its drivers, then came to a dead halt.
“What the hell is that?”
Switching on their flashlights, they saw what appeared to be an enormous root or section of pipe. Growing up the wall of the tower, it rose beyond the limits of their vision and appeared to be growing right before their eyes, causing the tower to undulate and move.
“I don’t like the looks of that,” Tye said, his voice full of jitters. “They’ve planted their magic beans, and this is the beanstalk we’re supposed to climb up, right?” But as they watched the slow movements, they realized that it wasn’t growing out of the ground. It was growing down, burrowing deeper by the moment.
“Better to take our chances on the inside,” Yossi said, and the chariot moved off. They turned the corner of the tower and raced to where the others were preparing to enter the break in the destroyer’s wall. Ali had already broken open several flares and tossed them inside the ground-level opening, determining that the first few yards at least were safe. He and Fadeela stood at the ragged opening, impatient to slip inside.
“Did you see that thing climbing up the tower?” Edward asked in a harsh whisper, bringing a pair of lightweight thermal blankets to the chariot.
“It’s not climbing,” Tye answered him. “It’s digging itself into the ground.”
Complete Independence Day Omnibus, The Page 77
