Juggernaut

The explosives blew with a gunshot crack. Puff of dust and stone chips. The pillar slowly toppled like a tree felled by an axe. Toon plugged his ears.

The pillar smashed across the courtyard flagstones with an infernal roar. Toon was pelted with rock shards.

He stood. Dust cleared. He brushed grit from his head and shoulders. The shattered pillar formed a waist-high barrier across the citadel entrance. He set up the SAW and stacked boxes of ammunition.

Amanda joined him.

‘Only way in and out of this place, said Toon. ‘Anything comes prowling, I’ll light the fucker up like the Fourth of July.’

Amanda flipped open the latches of her Hardigg rifle case. She pulled the SIMRAD night scope from its foam bed and clipped it to the picatinny rail of her rifle. A black lens the size of a saucer. She powered it up and flipped the cap. The view through her dayscope now boosted infra-red by a high-powered photocathode.

She lay out her mat, tipped the brim of her hat and took position. She unfolded the stubby legs of the rifle bipod and lay the weapon across a cylinder of fallen masonry.

The wrecked vehicles a quarter-mile distant were shadows in the gathering dusk. Viewed through the nightscope they became a strange luminescent landscape of sand-scoured, bullet-pocked metal. Hard to judge distance. The infra-red optics foreshortened perspective.

‘Going to be a cold fucking night.’

Toon looked around at moonlit hieroglyphs gouged in every rock surface. Crude cuneiform letters. Men with the heads of dogs, bulls and snakes.

‘I wasn’t planning to sleep.’

Distant sound of rotors.

Toon stood at the centre of the courtyard, popped a signal flare and held it above his head.

The choppers circled the valley at two hundred feet. They hovered over the necropolis then settled into the courtyard. Toon tossed the flare. He and Amanda hid their faces from downwash and dazzling nose-lights.

The rotors slowly decelerated. Motor-whine died away.

Gaunt, Raphael and Voss climbed out of the choppers. They unlaced bales of camouflage netting and threw them over the main rotors and tail boom. They tented the nets with poles, and pegged them down with stones. Gaunt sat in the Talon cockpit and checked avionics.

‘How are we doing for fuel?’ asked Raphael, looking round to make sure he was not overheard.

Gaunt checked a gauge.

‘Burned almost half a tank. About a thousand pounds left. Should get us home okay as long as we don’t make any detours.’

‘Ready to do this?’

‘Take care of this sorry crew? Heck, yeah. They aren’t leaving here alive.’

He took a handset from his backpack. ChemPro. He examined the read-out.

‘What’s that?’

‘Spectrum analyser. Scans for contamination. Chemical agents.’

‘Anything?’

‘Trace chlorine, way below the toxic threshold. Valley was doused with some kind of blistering agent, a long time ago.’

‘So we should be okay, right?’

‘Best if we don’t hang around.’

Gaunt hid the unit as Lucy approached.

‘Everything all right?’ she asked.

‘Gleaming.’

She climbed into the Talon cargo compartment. She released ropes and pulled back a cargo net. She balanced three folded tripod lamps on her shoulder.

‘Need a hand with that?’

‘I’m okay. Help man the perimeter.’

She hefted a heavy Vulcan battery with her free hand and headed back to the temple.

‘Did you see the chink?’ asked Raphael. ‘See his neck? Said there were things, creatures, hiding out there in those fucked-up cars.’

‘Yeah,’ said Gaunt.

‘You don’t seem surprised.’

‘Like I said. Best if we don’t hang around.’

Gaunt and Raphael joined the barricade. They sat on flagstones, their backs to the toppled pillar.

Jabril slit open a foil soft-pack of Salems with his hook and offered cigarettes. Raphael lit with trembling hands.

‘Place creeps me out,’ said Raphael. He looked around at the deepening shadows of the extinct city. Moonlight outlined the megalithic ruins with gentle phosphorescence. ‘Bad fucking hoodoo.’

‘Don’t wander off,’ said Amanda. ‘This place is a labyrinth. Cloisters. Courtyards. Avenues and alleys. If we hold this ground, we’ll be safe until sunrise.’

‘We got to wrap this shit up and get out of here,’ said Toon. ‘Hear what Huang said? Some kind of walking corpse.’

‘He doesn’t know what he saw.’

‘That wound in his neck is pretty fucking real.’

Jabril savoured his cigarette.

‘I made no secret this region was poisoned. The army tested munitions in the desert. Tethered cattle. Fired artillery shells packed with chemical and biological payloads. There were dark rumours that they also conducted human trials. Sacrificed some of their own troops to help refine the weapons. Here, in a sheltered valley, a place of cool shadows, a weaponised virus might lie dormant for decades waiting for a host. You need to collect your prize then leave here as quickly as you can.’

‘Why the fuck did you pick this place to hide your shit?’

‘Because no one in their right mind would come here.’