Juggernaut

‘Wear this.’ Voss handed her Toon’s blue do-rag. She tied it over her face and mouth. She put on her Stetson and pulled the brim low.

Lucy gave her Raphael’s machete. She tucked it in her belt.

‘Sure you don’t want me to come along?’ asked Lucy.

‘I’ve got night-vision. You haven’t.’

Brief embrace.

‘See you later, babe.’

Amanda headed into darkness.

Lucy buttoned her prairie coat to the neck and turned up the collar. She tied a shemagh scarf round her face.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Voss.

‘The choppers. They each had an emergency radio. A UHF beacon. Probably fucked but I have to know for sure.’

‘Be okay on your own?’

‘Sit tight. Someone has to stay with Jabril. Easy on the trigger, okay? Don’t shoot us coming back in.’

‘Catch you later, boss.’

Gaunt stood at the foot of the crypt stairwell. He looked up. Furls of sand blown like squalling rain.

They used to call him Cherry Boy. No combat experience. The squad under his command treated him with contempt.

Sitting on the double bench seats of an oven-hot APC, jolting through the streets of Fallujah. Gaunt reiterated the mission.

‘Ali Hassan. Possible links with Iranian intelligence. Wife. Five daughters. Standard knock and announce. We do not expect resistance.’

Private Larsen, blond, ex-quarterback, leaned forward and grabbed Gaunt by the neck of his ballistic vest.

‘You just hang back and let us do our thing, all right, Lieutenant? You fuck up, you get any of us killed, I will personally frag your fucking ass, understand?’

A humiliating memory.

Gaunt twisted the West Point cadet ring round his finger.

Koell offered him meaning. The man was little more than a distorted, metallic sat-com voice, but he held the promise of world-shaping intrigue. He could lead Gaunt through the looking-glass into a clandestine realm.

It wasn’t about the money.

Gaunt wanted to be a player. He needed to earn Koell’s trust. Get on the Agency payroll. Maybe get hired for real. Be part of the fraternity. Two years at The Farm. Camp Peary, Virginia. Teach him how to run agents and handle covert communication. Teach him how to organise rolling surveillance, sabotage operations and targeted killings. He would finally belong.

He had to prove his worth. He had to find the virus.

He kissed the silver crucifix hung round his neck. He pulled on sand goggles.

He climbed from the crypt. Cold night wind. Swirling sand pricked his skin like needles. He switched on his Maglite. He narrowed the beam and trained it at the ground. He didn’t want to betray his location.

He looked around. The moonlit ruins were fogged with broiling dust plumes. Citadel buildings were monstrous shadows glimpsed through a veil of driving sand.

He headed for the choppers. Maybe there was equipment he could salvage. Ammunition. Water.

He walked headlong into a blizzard of sand. His flashlight illuminated swirling particles. He cupped a hand over his mouth and nose.

The central courtyard. The wrecked helicopters.

His feet gummed down in a viscous substance like treacle. He crouched and sniffed. Kerosene mixed with sand.

The ghost shape of Talon. The smashed hulk of the chopper, lying on its side.

He checked the cargo compartment. He checked bags and wall-nets. Nothing. No water, no ammunition. The Huey had been stripped.

He checked the pilot cabin. His flashlight caught Raphael in its beam, hanging upside down like a carcass on an abattoir hook. Throat slit. Bled white.

He checked Raphael’s pockets. The man was cold and stiff. His pockets had already been emptied. Nothing, not even cigars.

A scratching sound. Gaunt pulled the silenced Sig from behind his ballistic vest and turned round. One of Jabril’s lost battalion stumbling across flagstones, dragging its feet through thick diesel slurry.

Gaunt aimed and fired. He blew out the creature’s left eye. It slumped dead.

Three bullets left in the pistol.

He checked Bad Moon. Nothing of use in the cargo compartment.

He pulled open the cab door. He brushed windshield glass from the pilot seat and climbed inside. He flicked a couple of power switches. He flinched as the wrecked console popped and sparked. He shone his flashlight over the instrumentation panel. Trashed avionics. Frayed wires. Split circuit boards.

‘Fuck.’

A dim light approaching across the courtyard. The cone of a torch beam glimpsed through swirling sand.

Gaunt quickly switched off his Maglite, slid from the pilot seat and ran from the chopper.

Amanda crept through the temple ruins. She kept her rifle raised, cheek pressed to the synthetic stock. Luminescent rubble. Swirling sand transformed to evil green mist.

A courtyard of statues. Loathsome mongrel creatures on pedestals. Limbs and faces scoured to wind-worn stumps. Sinister deformities. Aborted, misshapen things. A pantheon of terrible gods arranged in a ring to observe whatever abominable rites had been conducted in their name.

Amanda walked through the forest of plinths and idols, sweeping her rifle left and right.