Stephen Molstad - [ID4- Independence Day 03]

by War in the Desert (epub)

  He led them up a set of steel stairs and entered a numerical code into the keypad next to the door. It opened, and Ali shoved the man through the doorway. Tye, Fadeela, and Remi followed him.

  “What about the case?” Edward asked. “We have to get these biological weapons out of the area.”

  “We’ll bum them,” Reg said, “along with everything else.”

  “That’s too dangerous. There’s still time to get them out of here.”

  Reg tossed the keys to Yossi. “Go with him.” And after wishing both men luck, he entered the control room.

  At first, the technicians inside resisted. They said it was impossible to spill the oil intentionally, that the computers weren’t designed to do such things. The only way to accomplish what the team was asking would be to physically destroy the pipelines one by one. The whole time they talked, Tye leaned over the main routing screen, studying it. When Reg came to look over his shoulder, he saw a complicated diagram showing a tangle of lines and a confusing galaxy of blinking lights. The display was no more comprehensible to him than the designs he’d seen on the tops of the black tables inside the tower.

  “It looks simple enough,” Tye said. “This board controls the movement of oil through the entire refinery. It allows them to pump it out of one tank and into another. See how the pipelines are all numbered to correspond with the switches here at the bottom. Then you’ve got your pressure gauges and automatic shut-offs at intervals along each pipe.” He pointed to various spots on the schematic, assuming Reg was following along.

  “So how do we spill the oil?”

  “Easy. We close down all the lines and start all the pumps at the same time. Then we sit back and wait for the pipes to burst under the pressure.” He started throwing switches with both hands, activating some and deactivating others, while Reg looked on skeptically. It couldn’t be that easy, could it? For a minute, it seemed to work. Red lights started flashing and warning buzzers sounded. But then everything returned to normal. Tye scratched his chin, thinking. “The system senses the pressure buildup and shuts down the pumps.”

  “How do we circumvent the shutoff system?” he asked the technicians.

  “Mish mumkin," one of them said. “We cannot override the fail-safe. It’s all automatic.”

  “Yossi and Edward are coming back. And they’ve got company,” Fadeela announced, looking out a window. Reg knew what she was talking about and dragged one of the technicians across the room to show him. The man looked outside and couldn’t believe his eyes. Less than a hundred yards from him, a pair of ugly gray creatures with heads that looked rather like overgrown oyster shells were riding a walking sled and firing blasts of white light out of their fingertips. He stared at this startling scene for a moment or two, then ran to the switchboard and began pulling wires from the underside of the console. He shouted to his colleagues, who joined him at the control boards. Within seconds, the red lights and warning buzzers came back to life. The muffled sound of explosions came through the walls. All around the refinery, pipes began splitting open. Oil sprayed high into the air in some places and flowed out in dark rivers in others.

  “We have done what you asked,” said the man who had tom out the wires. “Now let us leave. We have helicopters. You can go with us.”

  “Wait. We’re not finished. How can we light the oil? We have to set it on fire.”

  The man tossed Reg a book of matches and turned for the door. Almost as soon as it sealed behind him, something slammed against the outside wall on the opposite side of the room. Four armored aliens, sensing the presence of the amber organism, were trying to break in to retrieve it.

  “Everybody outside!” Leaving the brain inside, the team raced out the door and made sure it was sealed behind them. They ran to take cover behind the next building and saw the Ford parked there. Ali found his field gun in the backseat and strapped it over his shoulder. A moment later, Edward came around the comer carrying the silver case. Yossi was right behind him.

  “What happened?”

  “We couldn’t find our way back to the front gates until it was loo late. They’re all crossing the highway,” Yossi said. “More than a thousand of them.”

  “We should have destroyed the weapons before,” Edward said. “I’m going to do it now.”

  “How?”

  “Give me those matches and I’ll climb up there.” He pointed to the ladder rising up the side of one of the ten-story-tall storage tanks. “When I’m inside, I’ll set the whole thing on fire.”

  “My God,” Tye said, impressed with the man’s conviction.

  “I’ll go with you,” Yossi said, “I’ve got a lighter. And besides, you can’t trust a Palestinian with a big job.” It was Yossi's idea of a joke. For the first time since they’d known him, he smiled.

  Edward shook his head and appealed to the others. “Now do you see why we can’t stand the Jews?” But he returned Yossi’s grin, and said, “Come on, madman, let’s go.” The two men ran toward the nearest storage tank and began climbing the vertical sleel ladder as fast as they could, bickering as they went.

  Remi tipped over a trash can and found a discarded newspaper to use as kindling. “Let’s get started,” he said, and led the way toward the nearest lake of freshly spilled oil. They lit the newspaper and dropped it onto the oil, expecting it to erupt immediately into flames. Instead, the oil soaked into the paper until the fire went out. They tried again, this time using more paper to make a hotter fire.

  “It’s supposed to bum,” Reg said.

  A car came speeding around a comer not far away and turned toward the main gate. Before it got very far, a pulse blast ripped into its side. The vehicle flipped over and burst into flame. When they saw this, the team turned toward Tye.

  “One step ahead of you,” he said, pulling out the alien weapon and unfolding the cloth he used to cany it. He let the flipperlike protrusions wind themselves around his forearm, then invited Reg to help him. “What do we hit?”

  “Anything that will blow up.”

  But the pulse weapon proved no more useful than the burning newspapers. They used it to blow open the side of an oil tank, to tear a gaping hole in the side of a building, and to dig craters in the ground where the oil was pooling. But they couldn’t start a fire.

  They did, however, attract the attention of a squad of aliens, who came away from the control room to investigate. Ali knocked them backwards with a few blasts from his field gun while Reg and Tye picked them off one by one with the pulse gun. But more of them started coming around the comer. They came by the dozens, fearless behind their armor, and advanced on the four troublesome earthlings.

  “We have to fall back,” Ali said.

  But Reg disagreed. He pointed to Edward and Yossi, who were only halfway to the top of the ladder. They were shielded from view of the aliens by the curve of the tank. “We’ve got to hold them here until those two are inside. Then we’ll fall back.”

  “By then it will be too late,” Fadeela said. “They’re surrounding us.”

  There was no choice but to stay and defend their position. The best they could hope for was a fiery death, that once the two men were inside the tank, they would be successful in blowing it up and that the fire would spread. If not, all they would have accomplished was leading the aliens out of the desert and into the more densely populated coastal plain. And there was still a chance of the anthrax spores and ebola virus being spread.

  When Edward reached the top, he handed the case to Yossi, lifted the cap door at the side of the roof, and lowered himself inside. After taking the case back, he started down the ladder that ran along the inside of the tank. Then, as Yossi was climbing in after him, a series of loud explosions came from the far end of the refinery.

  “Sounds like bombs,” Remi remarked.

  “Yes, and helicopters,” Ali added.

  “It must be the men from the control room,” Fadeela said. “They said they had helicopters.”

  But a moment la
ter, they saw a squadron of Apache helicopters rising over the oil field, firing missiles down at the alien army and starting a massive fire in the oil, a fire which quickly began rolling toward them. When pulse blasts began zipping toward the helicopters, they ducked behind the outlying buildings. Then another group of the fearsome gunships appeared on the opposite horizon and fired another volley of shells down onto the oil-soaked grounds.

  “They’re starting fires around the perimeter,” Reg observed. “Smart boys.”

  As soon as the aliens turned to fire on the second group of helicopters, the Apaches lowered out of view, and a third group lifted from the direction of the highway. When their shells slammed into the ground, a wall of fire cut off the team’s only means of escape. They were boxed in.

  Reg looked around and nodded approvingly, thinking, Now that’s the way you run an aerial assault. He didn’t know if any of the men piloting the helicopters had been his students, but that didn’t stop him from feeling proud of the way they were conducting the operation. They were achieving their objectives without taking unnecessary risks and were displaying extraordinary teamwork.

  “Where in the hell did these guys come from?” Tye wondered.

  “They must be Faisal’s men,” Reg said.

  The aliens panicked when they found themselves surrounded by fire. They ran in crazed circles, firing their weapons into the flames. Some of them opened their shells and jumped out. The ones who had been firing at the team forgot about them and rushed off to join the mayhem.

  Yossi climbed back to the opening in the top of the tank. Reg noticed him because he was waving his arms and shouting, but he wasn’t shouting to Reg or the others. A helicopter came from the direction of the highway, broke through the wall of flame, and hovered over the tower long enough to allow Yossi and Edward to climb in. It wasn’t one of the Apaches, but a civilian helicopter.

  “Hey, what about us?” Tye shouted. He and Remi ran to the nearest ladder and began to climb. Ali slung his gun over his back and followed them. Reg and Fadeela found another ladder, and they, too, began to climb. The helicopter disappeared only moments after they started up the ladders, but they all continued climbing. The steel rungs were hard on their hands, especially Fadeela’s. The harsh metal rubbed through the skin on her palms, and she was bleeding before they were halfway up. At the three-quarters mark, her arms were so tired they began to shake.

  “I know you’re going to think I’m a princess, but I don’t know if I can make it to the top. Let me stay here and rest. You can go around me.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  “No. Let me do it myself. I just need to rest for a while.”

  Reg stared up at her, watching to make sure she didn’t lose her grip when he noticed something strange. Although neither of them was moving, he could feel movement in the ladder. He looked down and saw an armored alien climbing up behind them. It was moving fast, taking the rungs two at a time and using all twelve of its limbs to pull itself upward.

  “I hope you’re ready for this,” Reg said. He climbed another step and shocked Fadeela by wedging his head between her legs and lifting her backside onto his shoulders. Before she could protest, he started climbing as fast as he could. There was no need to look down to see if the alien was getting closer. Reg could feel it gaining on them through the vibrations in the ladder. When they got to the top, Reg fired his last bullet at their pursuer, then he and Fadeela ran onto the curving roof of the tank. From their new vantage point, they could see the Apache helicopters surrounding the refinery. They were keeping low to the ground, well away from the fires they’d started. The civilian helicopter they’d seen pick up their comrades was coming in for another pass, but the alien was already at the top of the ladder. It stepped onto the roof and let the humans regard it in all its horrible glory. The tentacles sprouting from its back waved in the air like a gruesome peacock spreading its tail feathers. As the helicopter came closer, the creature ignored it and marched toward Reg and Fadeela. As it stepped onto the crest of the roof, a pulse blast whizzed past Reg’s ear and struck the exoskeleton square in the face, shattering the armor and knocking it over the side of the tank. When Reg spun around, he saw Tye and Remi waving to him, the alien tube gun sandwiched between their arms.

  “I don’t believe it,” Fadeela muttered when she saw the royal crest painted on the door of the helicopter. “It’s the king’s private helicopter.” But that surprise was nothing compared to the one she got a moment later when a disheveled old man leaned his head out of the cargo door and waved them inside. It was her father, Karmal Yamani.

  Fadeela allowed Reg to help lift her over the landing bars, then reached back to help pull him inside. She sprang into her father’s arms as the chopper began to lift away. The old man winked at Reg over his daughter’s shoulder.

  “1 told you I had joined the fight.”

  “You did this? I thought it must be Faisal.”

  King Ibrahim turned around to face them from the copilot’s seat. “Faisal is still driving in circles in the desert wondering where the aliens went.”

  As the pilot lifted the chopper away from the roof of the storage tank and turned to head away, the ship listed violently toward the copilot’s side. Something heavy had grabbed onto the landing gear, and everyone inside knew immediately what it had to be. Before anyone had a chance to reach for a gun, a tentacle reached into the rear passenger area and began to slash through the air. Reg, closest to the door, picked up the first heavy object he could lay his hands on, a fire extinguisher. Ignoring the tentacle, he rushed toward the open door and leaned outside. The mangled exoskeleton was only a few feet below him. Its huge head-thorax shell had been shattered, but its many limbs were wrapped tightly around the landing bars. Reg used the extinguisher to deliver a hard blow to the center of the cracked shell, knocking a large section of it away. The alien hidden below the shell was now exposed to view, but before Reg could deliver a second blow, the tentacle clipped him hard on the back of the head. He felt himself go light-headed, then collapse. The fleshy arm wound itself around his neck and began pulling him outside. Fadeela caught him by the feet and struggled for a moment against the more powerful alien. Her resistance bought just enough time for the king to open the copilot’s door and peer down into the hideous confusion of limbs and broken shell. Staring up at him were a pair of bulging, reflective eyes. He drew a pistol from the folds of his robes and put a single bullet into the alien’s head. As it died, all the life went out of the biomechanical suit of armor. The tentacles, including the one around Reg’s neck, went limp, and the creature plunged to the ground.

  “Allah-u akbar," cried the king, shaking a fist at the alien as it fell away. “You see? Finally, I got my wish to kill one of them! I did it! I killed him.” The aging monarch continued to celebrate as his pilot swooped to the next storage tanker and set down long enough for Ali, Remi, and Tye to climb aboard. Reg was beginning to recover his senses by the time they all stepped inside. “Did you see?” King Ibrahim asked the new passengers. “I killed one of them!”

  As the helicopter lifted away from the refinery, there was a series of powerful explosions that sent fire roaring high into the air. The intense heat began exploding the holding tanks, feeding the already-raging fire with ton after ton of additional fuel. Soon, every square inch of the refinery was fully engulfed. The helicopter gunships patrolled the perimeter of the blaze in case any of the aliens escaped, but none did.

  The king ordered the helicopter to hover nearby as the inferno consumed the enemy forces, then told his pilot to take them to Jeddah.

  Ali leaned forward and spoke bluntly to the king. “We cannot leave without our friends, the two men who were picked up first.”

  King Ibrahim turned around in his chair and arched an eyebrow. “One of them is a Palestinian masquerading as a Jordanian, and the other is a Jew. You call these men your friends?”

  “Yes,” Ali answered without hesitation. “Good friends.”

&nbs
p; Mr. Yamani assured the muscular captain there was no reason to worry about Yossi and Edward. “They are in good hands. My son, Khalid, is with them. He will escort them back to At-Ta‘if, where the biological weapons will be destroyed.”

  “Khalid has been released?” Fadeela asked her father. She was on the floor of the helicopter, sitting next to the still-woozy Reg.

  “Yes, Faisal let him go this morning before he retreated from the mountains. I think he expected your brother to die at the hands of the aliens.”

  “Speaking of Ghalil Faisal,” said the king, unbuckling himself from his chair and moving aft to join the others, “I spoke to him by radio earlier today. He had many interesting things to say about you, Major Cummins. Not very positive things, I am afraid.” “That doesn’t really surprise me,” Reg said. “Faisal and I haven’t really hit it off during the past few days.”

  “In fact,” the king continued, “he would like to see you arrested. According to him, you have committed several criminal acts since the invasion began.” Fadeela sat bolt upright, ready to defend Reg against Faisal’s accusations. Before she could say a word, both her father and the king spoke to her sternly, telling her to let Reg answer for himself.

  The king outlined the most serious of Faisal’s allegations: that Reg had shot down an Egyptian pilot over whom he had no authority because the man had refused to obey his orders; that he had urged Saudi pilots to disobey their orders during an engagement with the enemy; that he had kidnapped a Saudi woman, Fadeela, on what should have been her wedding day; that he had trespassed on the grounds of the Saudi military facility at Al-Sayyid; and that he had stolen weapons and ammunition from that same facility. Considering that all these acts had been committed within a span of less than four days, it was quite an impressive list. When the king was finished, he asked Reg to answer the charges.

  “They’re all true,” Reg said without batting an eyelid. “And if

  I had to do it all again, I’d make the exactly the same decisions.”