Adam Baker - Juggernaut

They stood at the threshold of the dead city, dwarfed by twin guard towers. They surveyed the column of vehicles parked in front of the towers, buckled and black like junkyard scrap.

‘Better ignore the trucks for now,’ said Lucy. ‘We’re probably alone out here, but let’s not get sloppy. Full sweep of the citadel. Then we look for the gold.’

Lucy turned to Toon.

‘Get up high. Give us some coverage, all right?’

‘Sure, boss.’

Toon approached one of the gate towers. An arched doorway. Stone steps. He adjusted his grip on the SAW. He crept inside, and was swallowed by shadow.

Lucy and Huang contemplated the compound ahead of them. An extinct city. Flagstone courtyards. Tumbled pillars. Roofless buildings. A labyrinth of jumbled masonry, dusted in sand.

A long, ramped processional causeway led to the facade of the main temple structure. A wide gateway flanked by monstrous bull colossi.

‘This is some spooky shit,’ muttered Huang.

Amanda and Jabril climbed the steep valley wall. Amanda jumped from boulder to boulder. Jabril scrambled across scree, wheezing for breath.

They found a ledge.

Jabril released the Velcro straps of his body armour and pulled it over his head. He wiped sweat from his brow.

Amanda swigged from her canteen. She adjusted her TASC earpiece. She sat cross-legged. She pulled a long plastic Hardigg case from her backpack. Lid sticker: ‘ Silent souls inflict 308 holes. ’ She flipped latches. A disassembled Remington M40, lying in a foam bed. A sleek, simple, bolt-action rifle with a scope.

She snapped and screwed each component together in a series of quick, precise movements. Receiver. Barrel. Scope. Bipod.

‘Do you enjoy killing?’ asked Jabril.

‘I’m a professional.’

Amanda slotted match-grade Winchester bullets into a five-round magazine, and slapped it home. She unfolded a vinyl mat. She lay prone, tipped back her hat, and positioned the rifle.

She put the butt to her shoulder and pressed her cheek to the fibreglass stock. She uncapped the dayscope. She focused eight hundred yards distant on the far valley wall. Crosshairs centred on a small stone resting on top of a boulder.

‘Be advised, firing for centre.’

‘ Ten-four. ’

She fired. Puff of rock dust. Missed by a foot.

She re-calibrated the Leupold scope. She fired. Off by two inches.

Minor realignment. She fired. The little stone exploded in a shower of rock shards.

‘Can I ask you something?’ said Jabril.

‘Sure.’

‘You and Lucy. The rings on your fingers.’

‘You Arabs think the West is one big orgy. Everyone getting laid but you.’

‘I don’t mean to judge.’

She shifted position and adjusted focus. She surveyed the citadel. She watched through the sniper scope as Lucy and Huang entered the precincts. She kept her crosshairs centred on the dirt between them. Lucy looked resolute. Huang looked jumpy.

Lucy’s voice:

‘ How’s it going, Mandy? ’

‘Don’t worry. I got you.’

Toon took a Maglite from his pocket. The beam lit ancient steps worn treacherously smooth. The tight spiral passage amplified his laboured breathing. He had to squeeze and crouch. He battled claustrophobia.

He emerged into sunlight. The guard tower was capped by a stone platform surrounded by a high rampart.

He unclipped his backpack and laid out three boxes of link ammunition.

He snapped open the SAW bipod. He checked a two-hundred-round chain was clipped firmly into the receiver.

He pulled the towel from his neck and dabbed sweat from his face. He sipped from his canteen. He examined the stone slab beneath his weapon. A crude daemonic face etched in stone. He looked around. The rampart walls were inscribed with strange glyphs. Each stone block etched with runes and symbols. The floor of the platform was a giant cosmological chart. Deep grooves plotted astral orbits. The sun. The moon. Five planets. Earth at the centre.

He suppressed a shiver as he contemplated the awful antiquity of the building. Robed priests and acolytes must have stood on this platform and chanted in veneration of their tyrannical god.

‘Was this some kind of fucking death cult?’

Jabril’s voice:

‘ Hilprecht attributes the temple to the worship of Marduk. But Marduk was a benevolent creator god. Whatever devotional rites took place here seem dedicated to an older, darker deity. Hieroglyphs throughout the complex show scenes from an imminent apocalypse, and demonstrate a preoccupation with the movement of the planets, specifically Jupiter. ’

Lucy’s voice:

‘ You got to remember, they didn’t have TV .’

Lucy and Huang explored the ruined necropolis. A succession of courtyards filled with tumbled blocks of rubble. Broken arches. Toppled colonnades.

‘Place is a fucking maze,’ murmured Huang.

Empty storerooms. Lucy switched on the barrel lamp of her rifle and scanned darkened interiors. Sand-choked doorways. Stone debris. Empty wall niches.

She checked dusty flagstones for signs of recent disturbance. She examined each entrance, looking for the needle-fine gossamer thread of a monofilament tripwire.

Kandahar. A whitewashed farmhouse. Home to a known bomb maker. Paid informants suggested the man kept a stockpile of old tank shells buried under his chicken coop. He gave local kids 1.5v batteries and improvised firing circuits. Twenty dollars a pop to lay IEDs along the nearby airport highway. Three of Lucy’s Special Recon platoon were killed when a pressure-plate mine reduced their Snatch to whirling shrapnel in a millisecond pulse of white light.

‘Got to watch ourselves, all right?’ said Lucy’s commanding officer. ‘This guy’s a fanatic. He knows, sooner or later, he is going to get taken down. He’ll lay on a surprise, take a bunch of us with him, if he can.’

They kicked in the door. The guy was eating dinner. He was sitting at his table, spoon in hand. Lucy shot him in the face and he nodded head-first into his stew.

She pulled back a curtain door. A side room. She saw rugs and cushions.

A wad of papers in the middle of the floor. Possible intel. Lucy moved to enter room but the CO shouted ‘Stop.’

She moved aside. The CO took a can of party shop Silly String from a mag pouch. He shook it. He sprayed. The can spat webs of yellow foam string at head height. The string drifted to the floor. A single tendril hung suspended at knee level. They crouched. Fine fishing line stretched taut across the doorway.

‘Shit,’ said Lucy.

‘Everyone out,’ shouted the CO.

They retreated two hundred yards into a poppy field and fired a couple of shoulder-launched LASM rockets into the farmhouse. Walls collapsed and a series of secondary explosions reduced the place to dust.

Lucy and Huang picked their way across a rubble-strewn chamber. Sunlight shafted through a hole in the domed roof.

‘Any idea what these buildings used to be?’

Jabril’s voice:

‘ Part of the temple economy. Storerooms, perhaps. Built to contain grain, dried fruits, spices. There are no settlements or farms nearby. This was not a self-sustaining community. Someone with god-like authority picked this site, ordered the construction of a temple out here in the hinterland and kept it supplied with food and water. Despite the arid location, there are ceremonial pools, baths and fountains within the complex. A demonstration of unimaginable wealth and power.

‘ Can you picture how this site must have looked, thousands of years ago? Elaborate frescos painted on every wall. Rugs, silks, brass, perfumes. Yet the citadel is too remote to be erected for earthly prestige. It is a secret priest city. Lifelong home of soothsayers and astrologers. They would chant their incantations and sacrifice ritual offerings. They would study forbidden texts, transcribe opium dreams, dance themselves to a delirium. This was a serious place. A power-house of daemonic energy. The inner sanctum of the temple approached with the same trepidation as the plutonium core of a nuclear reactor. A great warlord wanted to draw down the power of the gods and blast his foes. When armies met on the sand he wanted his cavalry to sweep through barbarian ranks and lay them waste like a cyclone. Maybe he got his wish. Who knows? ’