Adam Baker - Juggernaut

‘I wouldn’t last too long in my line of work if I relied on luck. It’s always the routine jobs that get you killed. Assume heavy opposition every step of the way, and hope to be pleasantly surprised. Sure you don’t want a gun?’

He held up his hook.

‘My skills as a marksman have diminished since I lost my right hand.’

Toon tied a black do-rag round his head and draped a sweat towel round his shoulders to pad the SAW sling. He carried a heavy backpack full of box ammunition on his back.

Huang strapped on a medipac and unfurled a boonie hat.

Amanda shouldered her sniper rifle case and adjusted her straw Stetson. She dipped her fingers in a tub of zinc cream and painted the bridge of her nose and her cheekbones.

Gaunt sat in the shade of the Bad Moon cargo compartment. He watched Lucy put her foot on the door-lip and tie her boot.

‘Assholes. All of them.’

‘What the fuck do you know about soldiering?’ said Lucy. ‘Most of your combat hours were logged on a fucking PlayStation.’

‘Bunch of losers. I asked around. Your girl spent her last tour amped on meth. Lucky to get detox instead of jail time. Voss did a long stretch for assault in Krugersdorp Prison. Another stretch at Zonderwater for robbery. Looks like you found your level.’

‘They’re good people. They just need someone to believe in them.’

‘Toon. Got to be mid-forties. In the regular army he would be flying a desk. He wouldn’t be front line.’

‘Saved my arse more times than I can count. Laugh all you want, but one day soon you’ll be old and begging for a break. Happens to us all.’

Lucy approached Voss.

‘Hey, boss.’

‘Stay here with Gaunt and Raphael, all right?’ said Lucy. ‘Keep a bead on them. I trust these guys about as far as I can spit.’

‘You got it.’

‘Seriously. Keep them alive. We need a ride home. But on a short leash. If they give you any shit, fuck them up.’

‘Be a pleasure.’

Lucy stood with Amanda and surveyed the vista of sand ahead of them, the distant ridgeline rippling in mirage heat.

Lucy buttoned her prairie coat. Amanda adjusted the brim of her Stetson.

‘Like it?’

‘Love it.’

The team set off.

They waded across dunes. They left a winding trail of footprints through the virgin sand. Their boots sunk ankle-deep.

The sun got high. The hills rose out of shimmering thermal distortion.

‘Don’t walk too fast,’ advised Lucy. ‘First rule of desert travel. Conserve sweat, not water. Guard against heat exhaustion.’

Amanda glanced back. The chopper netting merged with the landscape. They were alone in vast nothing.

Lucy strode ahead. She lifted her tinted goggles for a moment to wipe perspiration from her eyes. Blinding sun. Sand reflecting heat and light like a polished mirror. A decade spent in Middle East battlefields had left her skin tanned rich mahogany. She wished she brought moisturiser, then smiled to be worrying about her complexion while traversing one of Earth’s hell zones.

Huang tripped and stumbled. A metal tube. A tank barrel protruding from a dune. They kept walking.

Toon stubbed his toe on a section of armour plate.

Amanda found a length of caterpillar track snaking across the sand like the interlocked vertebrae of an ox that succumbed to drought.

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.