Adam Baker - Juggernaut

‘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.’

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.’

‘Couple of bullet holes in his jacket. Old blood. Walking wounded. And no flashlight. He stumbled through this tunnel in pitch dark then bled out. Poor fucker.’

A shrivelled scalp. Skin like leather. Mummified fingers dug into sleeper ballast.

‘Jesus,’ muttered Toon. ‘This whole desert is an ocean of bone. Anyone comes out here gets eaten up.’

Lucy rolled the corpse. The body was a dried husk. Empty eye sockets. Rictus grin.

‘Miserable place to croak,’ she said.

‘Does it make a difference?’ asked Jabril. ‘When the time comes?’

‘I want to die in a bed,’ said Toon. ‘I want the last thing I see to be a smiling face. I don’t want to die screaming in the dark.’

Lucy searched the man’s pockets.

‘Give me some light.’

Toon stood over her with a torch.

She found a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Sobranie. Premium Russian. She found a cheap lighter.

‘No phone. No wallet.’

She took a black automatic pistol from the dead man’s jacket pocket.

‘Makarov.’

She ejected a cartridge. She held it in the beam of the flashlight and examined the stamp.

‘That’s a Spetsnaz round. Russian black ops. US. “Umenshennaya Skorost”. Low velocity. Silenced for wetwork. Sure you don’t know anything about this, Jabril? Looks like we’re not the first bunch of contractors to make the trip.’

‘No.’

‘My gut is telling me to turn tail right now. What’s a Tier One Muscovite doing out here? This guy is a long way from home.’

Toon crouched by the cadaver.

‘A dead Russian doesn’t bother me.’

‘No?’

‘I’m more concerned about the thing he was running from.’ Toon examined the Makarov pistol. He examined the corpse. ‘Look at his hands. See those tattoos? This goon has been through the fucking gulags. You know what these Russian mobsters are like. Hardcore. Meanest motherfuckers on God’s green earth. So why was he running in terror?’

‘Fuck it,’ said Lucy. She got to her feet. ‘We’re badder than anything we are likely to meet. Let’s keep going.’

A pinprick of daylight in the far distance. Lucy switched off her flashlight and blinked. A glimmer like a distant star.