Ted Bell - Warlord

"What's in there, Sahira?" Hawke asked.

"Gold," she said, matter-of-factly.

"Go," Hawke said to his team, standing back and waiting as they entered before stepping inside.

Gold. An Egyptian pharaoh's fantasy hoard of gold. Endless gold, row after endless row of gold ingots and bars neatly stacked upon endless metal shelves, shelves that stretched off into the darkness and rose up to the dimly lit twenty-foot ceiling. Hawke made a quick calculation and estimated he was standing within six feet of many billions of dollars. Now he knew how al-Rashad funded his worldwide jihad, blowing up airports, schools, hospitals. He literally had limitless resources.

And that was just what he could see through his NVG goggles. He saw a dim rectangle of light at the end of one of the golden corridors and signaled his team to follow. The rectangle looked like an exit.

Ugg was first to exit the gold vault and looked both ways, the radioactivity sensor beeping noticeably louder now. A second later, Sahira, studying her monitor for hostiles, called out to the team stacked up at the door, "Clear! Go!"

NEAR THE END OF THIS NEW TUNNEL they came to a barrier. Not a physical barrier, but an ever-shifting spiderweb of red laser beams, constantly in motion. There was simply no way a human being could penetrate this barrier without causing every alarm inside the mountain to start screaming.

Sahira touched Alex's forearm. "Look all the way through the web. The beams are emanating from some kind of device mounted on the wall at the end of this tunnel. Take the device out, and we're clear."

"Right. But we can't get to it to disarm it."

"No, we can't. But Ugg can."

"Ugg can't get under the lowest beam. The turrets are too high."

"Maybe not. Watch this."

Sahira pressed a toggle switch on the controller and the bot instantly lowered itself until its underside was less than a half inch off the ground.

"How the hell?" Hawke said.

"Air suspension. I designed him with bladders that raise or lower him twelve inches."

"Wizard."

"Heartbreaker."

"Let's see what your little Ugg can do, shall we?"

"As you wish," she replied and pushed the joystick forward. The bot moved swiftly and silently beneath the lowest of the brilliant red beams, clearing by perhaps half an inch. Hawke and Sahira peered at the screen as the wall-mounted device came into view. "Now what?" Hawke said.

"Two options. I can use his robotic arm to open the device and sever the laser's power supply. Or I can fire a quick burst of automatic fire and destroy the whole thing."

"The former. The less noise we make, the better."

Hawke watched Ugg's mechanical arm extend, pry open the metal lid exposing the inner workings of the laser device, and use its finely articulated claw to carefully separate and disconnect the tangled myriad of wires. It clipped several with its wire cutters. Then it reconnected one red-coated wire to a new terminal before cutting one final connection.

"What's it doing now?" Hawke asked. "I mean you. What are you doing now?"

"Preventing any disruption of the status alert signal from going to the alarm systems when the power is cut off. Watch."

Ugg's pincers found the power cable and cut it cleanly. The laser beams disappeared instantaneously. The tunnel was clear. And there were no alarms.

"Good work. Let's go," Hawke said, moving rapidly to catch up with Ugg, the machine already disappearing around the next bend. Sahira suddenly clutched his arm.

"Alex! Stop!"

"What?"

"Look." She held up the controller. On the screen was another unmanned robot coming rapidly toward Ugg.

"That looks identical to the one you designed!" Hawke said.

"It is one of the ones I designed," Sahira said in utter disbelief.

"How many were manufactured?"

"Only a handful."

"So how the hell does this Sheik of Araby end up with one of our highly classified British robots in his personal arsenal?"

"I have absolutely no idea. Only someone who has access to the highest-"

She was interrupted by the resounding rattle of machine-gun fire.

"The other one is shooting at Ugg! Shoot back!" Hawke said.

Sahira's fingers flew all over the controls, blindingly fast, sending Ugg careening all over the tunnel while managing to keep both barrels of the machine guns pouring lead into its twin. The enemy bot tried to reverse away but Ugg accelerated, chasing down the evil twin and giving it both barrels, blasting it to pieces until almost nothing but the tracks remained, grinding to a smoking, sparking, frazzled halt.

Hawke smiled at the ridiculous sensation he was experiencing. He suddenly found himself wanting to cheer for a bloody machine!

THE SMILE DIDN'T LAST LONG. After an hour of climbing, always upward in the dark, the team entered a new stretch of tunnel, trailing along behind the wounded but victorious Ugg. Ugg's radioactive warning beeps had become much louder now, especially when it had passed the opening of a fresh tunnel leading off to the left. Sahira desperately wanted to explore it, but Hawke insisted they keep moving until they engaged the enemy.

He knew his men were tired and hungry. They'd been inside this bloody beehive for almost five hours without a break. But he knew better than to pause; he'd learned that the hard way once in Cuba. It had cost lives and he'd never forgiven himself.

This was the first lighted stretch of tunnel they'd encountered, and Hawke was proceeding with extreme caution. After the robotic battle, there was no chance the enemy was still unaware of their presence inside the mountain stronghold. It was only a matter of time before they would run up against some form of armed resistance. And, lacking any intel at all about the number and quality of troops guarding al-Rashad, he simply had no idea of what magnitude of force he was up against.

Just then Hawke caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Above and to the right. He looked up and saw a small security camera pivoting back and forth. He could even see the iris of the lens closing and opening as it paused and stared at him and his small assault force. This tunnel section was illuminated, and the rock walls appeared to be weeping water, two small ditches to either side carrying the water downward. Hawke was trying to figure out where all this water was coming from. It had to be snowmelt, runoff caused by the sun as it rose in the sky.

It was now only a matter of minutes before they'd meet the enemy, whoever the devil they were.

Hawke raised a hand and halted the team as Sahira sent the machine out for a peek around another blind corner. She stared at the small screen in shock.

"Oh my God, Alex, look."

It was a large phalanx of guards, Imperial Guards by the look of their splendid gold-braided epaulets and uniforms. Gold braid and scarlet sashes, turbans of silk the same shade of red. There had to be at least fifty of them. Quite possibly more. They were marching in tight formation toward Hawke's position, so many men that they were filling the tunnel, advancing shoulder to shoulder toward where Hawke's men were holding, awaiting orders.

Hawke turned toward his men, speaking quickly and clearly.

"Enemy soldiers coming down the tunnel. Roughly fifty. We've got maybe four minutes until they reach us. Sahira, you and Abdul, go back and check the tunnel we passed where Ugg got excited. But Ugg has to stay with us, I need him. Can you manage without his detection capabilities?"

"No problem. I brought a backup handheld device in case he was destroyed. Here's his primary controller. Are you comfortable operating it?"

"Yes. Go back to that tunnel, Sahira. Now. Find that bloody nuke. Stoke, I know your great god of war, Sun Tzu, would disapprove, but I say we attack, not stand and defend. They now know how small a force we are and will not be expecting aggression from us."