by Baker, Adam
Broken vehicles beneath the dunes. Corroded Soviet hulks. T62 turrets. Artillery pieces. APCs. Jeeps. Trucks. All of them sunk in sand.
A pale scorpion basked on a turret hatch. Lucy stabbed the creature with her bayonet. She watched the impaled creature wriggle and curl.
‘What’s all this junk?’ she asked.
‘There is an army beneath our feet. The second Al-Masina Armoured Division. They were massed in the desert during the first Gulf War, ready to defend Baghdad if the Americans decided to invade. The formation was picked up by a surveillance satellite. A series of B52 sorties pounded vehicles to scrap iron. “Whispering Death”, they called it. Five-hundred-pound bombs dropped from high altitude. The concussions were so intense Turkish seismologists recorded the impacts as a massive earthquake. The bones, the wreckage, have been smothered by dunes.’
‘Jesus.’
‘This desert has been a battleground since the dawn of humanity. A fault line between east and west. Countless kings have led men into the wilderness, chasing imperial dreams. Legions swallowed without trace.’
‘Sound like you love the place.’
‘Once you have experienced absolute desolation, it never leaves your soul.’
Gaunt and Voss stood beneath the dappled shade of the camouflage nets.
Voss took off his baseball cap and wiped his brow.
‘Soon be fifty in the shade.’
Gaunt looked out across the dunes.
‘All those armies. One empire after another, fighting over dust.’
‘The mercenary life,’ said Voss. ‘One pointless shitstorm after another. Better get used to it.’
‘I’m not a merc. I’m a businessman.’
‘Whatever you say,’ said Voss.
‘A man should have a code. Some kind of honour.’
‘I’m older than you, kid,’ said Voss. ‘I’ve seen plenty of friends die for nothing. Patriots, idealists. No one remembers their names.’
‘I don’t know why you’re here,’ said Gaunt. ‘You and your friends. Whatever you find, whatever the big score, you’ll head to the nearest casino and piss it away. Problem with you guys? You got nothing in your lives beyond money. No cause. Deadbeat privateers. This is all you will ever be.’
‘Been more places, been more alive, than most guys dragging their brats round the mall on a weekend.’ Voss pointed at Raphael.‘What’s his story?’
‘You are two of a kind. He’s from some stinking LA slum. War is his home.’
Raphael had unzipped his flight suit and tied the arms round his waist. A big Virgin Mary tattoo etched across his back.
Voss cleaned his nails with a knife.
Gaunt returned to Bad Moon and grabbed his daypack from beneath the pilot’s seat.
‘I’m going to take a shit.’
He headed into the desert.
Voss watched Raphael place a mineral water bottle at the crest of a dune and take shots with his Colt. Puffs of sand each time he missed.
Voss unholstered his Glock. Quick aim/fire. The bottle burst. Water soaked into the sand and dried in moments.
Raphael mouthed, ‘Fuck you.’
Gaunt walked a hundred yards into the desert and knelt on the lee side of a dune.
He looked up. Something circling in the far distance. A dove-grey fleck, wheeling like a vulture. He took binoculars from his pocket. A drone. They were under constant surveillance. The UAV’s Ratheon sensor suite relaying real-time footage to Koell in Baghdad. The guy must have knocked heads and called in a lifetime of favours.
He checked his watch, unzipped the side pocket of his daypack and took out the sat phone. He keyed a four-digit code. Transmission scrambled through a Citadel algorithm.
He dialled.
‘Brimstone to Carnival, over.’
Koell’s voice:
‘Authenticate.’
‘Authentication is Oscar, Sierra, Yankee, Bravo.’
‘Go ahead, Brimstone.’
‘We are at the drop zone, approximately seven kilometres from the target. The advance team are proceeding to the objective site. Nothing hinky. Next sitrep at eighteen hundred, over.’
‘Ten-four. Roger and out.’
A farmstead. Five sun-blasted hovels. Concrete and cinder block. Two-room dwellings. Sand-choked doorways. Nothing inside each house but scattered cooking pots and a few smashed sticks of furniture.
The team crouched and ran. Cover/fire formation. They hooked left and right. They took blocking positions.
‘Clear.’
‘Clear. Go.’
They kicked in doors.
Lucy had worked sweep-and-search operations in villages surrounding Kandahar, Afghanistan. Special Recon patrols. Two roofless Land Rovers with a .50 cal mounted in the rear. A snatch squad taking down intel targets. She led the breaching team. Gave the nod and was first in the door. Iron gates blasted open with shok-lok rounds. Quick room-to-room. Tables kicked over, beds upturned. A zip-cuff and head-bag for villagers scared paralytic by stun grenades.
Jabril and Huang sheltered behind a dirt culvert while the team searched each house.
Lucy’s voice over the short-range TASC comms:
‘Okay. We’re done.’
They met at the patch of dirt that served as a village square. Empty windows, empty doorways. Ghost-town desolation.
‘The place is dead.’
‘Must we waste time playing soldiers?’ asked Jabril.
‘The day we get sloppy is the day we get killed,’ said Lucy. ‘Let’s make use of the shade. Rest stop. Meet back here in fifteen.’
Lucy climbed a ladder and stood on a flat roof. She looked north and surveyed the hills through binos. Boulders and crags. Barren as the moon.
A slight breeze. The tails of her prairie coat billowed around her.
Jabril climbed and stood by her side.
‘Not far,’ said Lucy.
‘No,’ said Jabril. ‘Not long now.’
He took a pack of Salems from the chest pocket of his flak jacket. He struck a match, lit a cigarette and savoured it.
He offered the pack to Lucy. She took a cigarette. She smoked half, stubbed and tucked the unsmoked butt in her pocket.
‘Poor-girl habit,’ she explained. ‘Can’t abide waste.’
She looked around.
‘Why the fuck would anyone try to scratch a living out here?’
‘Because it’s all they have ever known,’ said Jabril.
‘What do locals call this stretch of desert?’
‘Something dramatic. I forget. What do Americans call it?’
‘The Motherfucker.’
Jabril smiled and shook his head.
‘And yet they think we are the barbarian culture.’
‘No point acting all sly and superior,’ said Lucy. ‘Those dumb yanks kicked your arse. That whole contest-of-civilisations thing didn’t exactly work out for you.’
Toon picked up a rock and dropped it down a well. Brief clatter. No splash.
Amanda sipped warm water from the shoulder pipe of her hydration pack.
Scattered shoes and clothing.
‘Must be nice,’ said Amanda. ‘A simple life. No bullshit. Straightforward.’
She fanned herself with her Stetson.
‘Easy for you to say. Little Miss Trust Fund. Little Miss Finishing School. I was born poor. Nothing romantic about poverty. I used to work as a grill man. Flipped eggs for truck drivers and construction workers. Had to ask permission for bathroom breaks. Fuck that shit. And I was living like a king compared to these guys.’
‘Hey. I worked. I had summer jobs. I wore a name badge.’
‘Answer me this. When did Daddy buy your first car?’
‘Just before he broke two of my ribs and kicked me out the house. That was the last parental dollar I ever saw.’
Toon looked around.
‘Imagine playing out your whole life in a place like this. Poor bastards. Sitting in dirt watching their teeth fall out. No wonder the
y need God and the promise of something better.’
They pushed open a door.
Bare rooms. No plumbing. No electricity. A couple of beds. Some cushions and rugs. Everything dusted in sand fine as flour.
A back room. Scattered shoes. Broken tea glasses. An old, black bloodstain on the carpet. Cushions stuffed in the windows.
‘Looks like a bunch of them died in here,’ said Amanda. ‘They tried to block the windows, keep out the gas. Plug every gap. Didn’t do them much good.’
‘Might have been best if they stepped outside and took a deep breath.’
She picked up a playing card from the sand-dusted floor. She blew it clean. Ace of spades. Saddam’s portrait on the back.
‘Death card,’ said Toon. ‘The clean-up crew. I’m guessing they sent in a bunch of guys in NBC suits to take pictures and police up the bodies. They left a message in case any camel jockeys tried to resettle the place.’
‘How does a guy do that? Saddam. How can he sit at his desk and sign the order? Live his life? Kick off his shoes, eat a meal, laugh at the TV, while all this shit goes down in his name?’
Toon shrugged.
‘I’ve lost count of the men I’ve killed. I can’t say they haunt my dreams.’
‘But mothers? Children?’
‘Never killed a woman.’
‘Guy must be a psychopath. A proper, strap-him-down, throw-the-switch psychopath.’
‘Evil. Some people are just plain evil.’
Huang was asleep by a wall. Lucy kicked him awake.
‘All set?’
The team headed into the desert. They climbed dunes.
‘Hold on,’ said Amanda.
Something beneath her boot. Something white.
Lucy crouched.
‘Sheep skull.’
‘Take a look at this,’ said Amanda.
A skeletal human hand. Amanda brushed away more sand. A child’s skull.
‘The villagers,’ said Lucy. ‘A mass grave. Poor bastards.’
Amanda dug out the skull. Sand poured from empty eye sockets. She brushed dust from the cracked cranium with a gloved hand.
‘Part burned. They doused them in gasoline. Humans and cattle, piled together.’
Lucy kicked sand to cover the remains.
‘Leave them be. That’s the best we can do for them.’
Amanda scooped sand and reburied the skull.
‘Sorry, kid.’
They headed north.
They entered the shade of the hills. A ridge of jagged crags high above them, like the ramparts of an impenetrable fortress.
Lucy uncapped her compass and checked the azimuth.
‘Sure there’s no one up there?’ asked Lucy. ‘Feels like we are being watched.’
‘No one,’ said Jabril. ‘Kurdish militia might have used some caves for munitions storage, years ago. But they are long gone. Nobody dares come here now.’
Lucy spat grit. Toon pulled off his do-rag and dabbed sweat from his neck and face.
‘People got no business living in a country like this.’
They watched a serpentine dust devil dance across the dunes ahead of them. A mini tornado riding the thermals where shadow met the sun.
‘Not far now.’
They kept walking. The team adopted full combat formation. They spread out and kept three-sixty coverage of the terrain.
‘Stay loose, all right? No bunching.’
Lucy took point.
Amanda held their left flank. She scanned the high valley walls above them.
Huang buddied with Jabril and checked dunes to their right.
Toon brought up the rear. He turned round every ten paces and walked backwards for a couple of steps, surveying the dunes behind them, SAW at the ready.
Railroad tracks half covered in sand.
‘Follow the tracks,’ said Jabril. ‘They will take us to our destination.’
‘Everyone all right?’ asked Lucy, checking her team. ‘Keep sipping water, yeah? Shout if you feel light-headed.’
They strode parallel with the tracks. Jabril walked beside Lucy.
‘Why did you leave the army, may I ask?’
‘I got tired of guys staring at my tits. Seriously. Eyes on me all the time. Another day, another butt-grabbing jackass. It wears you down. They have a saying: “Every chick in a war zone is a perfect ten.” Even the guys with rings on their fingers consider themselves operationally single. A woman has two options when she puts on a uniform. She can either be a bitch or a whore. I don’t want to be either. I’d rather be me.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Fucking military. Suck you dry and spit you out.’
Jabril pointed to an outcrop ahead of them.
‘We are almost at the entrance. It is on the other side of this escarpment.’
‘The valley?’
‘A tunnel. Formed by natural erosion. Possibly an ancient underground stream. It was widened to accommodate the railroad track.’
The team came to a sudden halt.
‘Holy shit,’ said Toon.
‘Whoa,’ said Huang.
They stood looking at the cliff high above them.
The crude tunnel mouth was flanked by two colossal statues carved out of the rock face. Bearded men with the bodies of bulls and the wings of eagles. Blank eyes. Mouths set in a sneer of cold command. They stared, Sphinx-like, across miles of empty desert.
‘Got to be three hundred feet,’ murmured Toon. ‘Maybe more.’
‘Must have taken generations to carve,’ said Amanda.
‘Who are they? asked Lucy.
‘Gatekeepers of the underworld,’ said Jabril. ‘No one knows their names.’
‘Jesus.’
Lucy took an involuntary step backwards. She was daunted by the scale of the rock carvings, overwhelmed by a sudden rush of time-vertigo as she struggled to comprehend the antiquity of the gargantuan statues.
‘Some suppose they are a twin image of Sargon, greatest of the Akkadian warrior-chieftans. King of the Southern Cities and Northern Plains, The Fist of God.’
‘What’s that inscription round the pedestal?’
Chiselled hieroglyphs taller than a man, deeper than an arm’s length.
‘A lost language.’
They looked into the impenetrable shadow of the tunnel mouth. Lucy stepped forward and stood at the threshold. She half-expected the light and wind-rush of an oncoming subway train. Sudden chill made her skin prickle.
‘It’s cold as a meat locker in here.’
Her breath fogged the air.
‘Hell of a welcome mat,’ murmured Toon, looking up at the gargantuan effigies.
‘It’s not a welcome,’ said Jabril. ‘It’s a warning to travellers to turn back.’
The Valley
They walked through the tunnel darkness. Their flashlights lit an arched, concrete roof. The crunch of boots on ballast echoed from the walls.
‘How long is this thing?’ asked Lucy.
‘Approximately eight or nine kilometres.’
‘What’s that? Six, seven miles? This tunnel? You’re fucking kidding me.’
‘It’s an old water course. An underground stream, cut through limestone sediment. Ancients must have explored the tunnel by torchlight, discovered it was the route to a secluded valley.’
‘Why widen it for a railroad?’
‘There were phosphate deposits in the valley. A Belgian mining company called Clyberta were contracted to develop the site. They drove a boring machine through this passageway. A massive thing. A huge, rotating cutting wheel. Slave labour cleared rubble and helped truck it south. The tunnel walls were reinforced with steel arches and coated with shotcrete to guard against rock falls.’
‘So there’s a mine?’
‘Some tunnels and galleries. Clyberta abandoned the project when Saddam invaded Kuwait.’
‘Freezing my arse off,’ said Lucy. She turned up the collar of her prairie coat. ‘This is crazy shit. I’m going to die
of hypothermia in the middle of a desert.’
‘It can happen,’ said Jabril. ‘There is a dramatic drop in temperature after sundown. The night wind can be lethal.’
‘I don’t intend to stay that long.’
They trudged in silence.
‘Hold it,’ said Toon. ‘I got to stop a while.’
‘In this cold?’
‘I got to rest my knee.’
‘All right,’ said Lucy. ‘Take five.’
They sat with their backs to the tunnel wall. Jabril lit a cigarette. His match flared in darkness.
‘You know,’ said Lucy, ‘I’ve got a sister back in England. Christine. Lives in Oxford. Each time we meet I can’t think of a fucking thing to say to her. Childcare, decor, gardening. Shit, I’ve watched cities burn.’
‘Yeah,’ said Huang. ‘I was back in Clarksville last year. Everyone was so damn fat. Big Gulps and fried chicken. Made me want to puke.’
‘I don’t like it,’ said Toon. ‘This tunnel. Perfect place for an IED. Couple of old artillery shells. Pressure plate under the shingle. Anybody wanted to fuck us up, we’d walk right into it.’
Basic training, Fort Leonardwood, Missouri. Instructors hard-schooled by Vietnamese jungle terrain. Their advice: collude with the landscape. String tripwires across easy routes. Natural paths, forest clearings, river banks. Help your enemy betray themselves out of habit and lethargy.
‘Quit whining,’ said Huang.
‘Fuck that. Regular army wouldn’t set foot in this fucking place until a bomb crew gave the all-clear. They’d send robots, they’d do a mine sweep.’
‘Why do you think we are all walking behind you?’
Lucy got to her feet.
‘Okay. Let’s get going.’
Toon walked next to Jabril.
‘Hey. Jabril. How come we never see you pray to Mecca? Not the religious type?’
‘I don’t think God wants to hear from me.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Amanda.
Something on the ground up ahead. A skeletal figure face down on the railroad track.
Lucy crouched over the body.
‘Western clothes. Lowa boots. Fresh tread. A year’s wages for a guy round here. How about it, Jabril? This guy sure as shit isn’t Republican Guard.’
‘I’ve no idea who he might be.’
