‘Check the satellite uplink,’ Mark suggested. ‘There might be a connection glitch.’
Lewis toggled to another program. ‘That explains it. No connection.’
Mark raised a puzzled eyebrow. ‘Wait,
‘You kidding? Soon as we get an answer, I want to read it!’
‘Weird. As long as we’re logged into the Braxoil network, we should be getting
Lewis gave up his seat to the computer scientist. After a minute Mark leaned back, more puzzled than ever. ‘Everything’s fine at our end; we’re still transmitting. But we’re not getting anything back. Either the satellite’s down, which is pretty unlikely . . . or someone at the other end’s blocked us.’
Muldoon frowned. ‘What do you mean, blocked us?’
‘I mean, cancelled our access. Nothing we’re sending’s getting through, and nobody can send anything to us.’
‘The hell they can’t.’ Muldoon picked up the satellite phone’s handset. He entered a number, listened for several seconds, then jabbed with increasing anger at the buttons. ‘Not a goddamn thing!’
‘Try the radio,’ suggested an American, Brightstone. ‘Call Salalah. The guys there can patch us through to Houston.’
Muldoon nodded and moved to the radio, donning a pair of headphones. He switched the set on - and yanked off the headphones with a startled yelp, making everyone jump. ‘
‘What?’ Mark asked, worried.
‘Beats the hell out of me. Listen.’ He unplugged the headphones. An electronic squeal came from the radio’s speaker, the unearthly sound making Mark’s skin crawl.
‘Oh, shit,’ said Spence quietly. Everyone turned to him.
‘You know what it is?’ Mark asked.
‘I used to be in the Royal Signals. That’s a jammer.’
Muldoon’s eyes widened. ‘
‘Electronic warfare. Someone’s cutting us off.’
That prompted a minor panic, until Muldoon shouted everyone down. ‘You’re sure about this, Spence?’
The Welshman nodded. ‘It’s airborne. The pitch is changing too fast for it to be on the ground.’
There was a sudden rush for the door, the eight men spreading out to squint into the achingly blue sky. ‘I see something!’ yelled Brightstone, pointing north. Mark saw a tiny grey speck in the far distance. ‘Is that what’s jamming us?’
‘Where are the binocs?’ Muldoon asked. ‘Someone—’
An ear-splitting roar hit them from nowhere. Mark had just enough time to see a pair of sleek, sand-brown shapes rush at him before the two aircraft shot less than a hundred feet overhead, sand whirling round the men in their barely subsonic slipstream. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, the two planes had shrunk to dots, peeling off in different directions.
‘What the fuck was that?’ Muldoon yelled.
Spence stared after the retreating aircraft. ‘Tornados! Those were Saudi Tornados!’
‘But we’re forty miles from the border!’
‘I tell you, they were Saudi!’ They watched as the two fighters came about. One them appeared to be turning back towards the camp. The other . . .
Mark realised where it was heading. ‘The cave!’ he cried, pointing at the distant bluff. ‘It’s going for the cave!’
Even as he spoke, something detached from the fighter, two dark objects falling away. Then another, and another, arcing down at the bluff—
The hillside was obliterated, the explosions so closely spaced that they seemed to have been caused by a single giant bomb.
‘Jesus!’ someone shouted behind Mark as a churning black cloud swelled cancerously across the face of the bluff. The sound of the bombs hit them, shaking the ground even from over a mile away.
The Tornado banked sharply north, afterburners flaring to blast it back into Saudi airspace at Mach 2.
Mark whirled to find it.
He didn’t have to look far. It was coming straight at him, bombs falling from its wings—
The encampment vanished from the earth in a storm of fire and shrapnel.
Black smoke was still coiling from the bluff the next morning.
The four thousand-pound bombs dropped by the Saudi Tornado ADV had caused a good part of the hillside to collapse into the cave beneath it. But the opening remained, a dark hole rendered more sinister by the soot streaking the surrounding rock.
Men stood round it.
Though they were all armed and in desert battle fatigues, none wore the insignia of any military force. In fact, they wore no insignia at all. Despite the identical dress, however, there were divisions within the team. Whether by order or by instinct, the soldiers had formed into three distinct groups, touching at their edges but never quite mixing: oil and water beneath the desert sun.
The intersection point of all three groups was marked by a trio of men, all watching the sky to the south. Even without rank insignia, it was obvious they were the leaders, experience evident in every line on their faces. One was an Arab wearing a black military-style beret, a dark moustache forming a hard line above his mouth. The others were both Caucasian, but even so the differences in their backgrounds were clear at a glance. The younger, a tanned, black-haired man with a cigar jammed in the corner of his mouth, was Jewish; the oldest of the three had thinning blond hair and eyes of as intense a blue as the sky.
The blond man raised a pair of binoculars. ‘Here he comes,’ he said in English.
The Arab frowned. ‘About time. But I don’t see why we need him at all. Our airstrike destroyed the site - bury it and be done.’
‘The Triumvirate voted, two to one. Majority rules. You know that.’
The Arab’s expressive face clearly revealed his displeasure at the decision, but he nodded. The blond man turned back to watch the approaching helicopter.
It landed beside the choppers that had brought the soldiers to the site. Visible in the cockpit were two people: a man in his early forties wearing a pristine white suit, and a young woman in sunglasses.
‘What is this?’ snarled the Arab on seeing her. ‘He was supposed to come alone!’
The blond man’s face briefly betrayed exasperation at the new arrival’s indiscretion. ‘I’ll handle it,’ he said. They waited as the suited man emerged from the helicopter and strolled towards them. At least his passenger was remaining in the cockpit.
They wouldn’t have to kill her.
Once clear of the rotor blades, the pilot donned a white Panama hat, then approached the trio, smiling broadly. ‘Ah, Jonas!’ he said to the blond man. ‘Jonas di Bonaventura, as I live and breathe. Marvellous to see you again.’ Though his accent seemed at first a precise upper-class English, there was a faintly guttural undercurrent that revealed his Rhodesian origins.
‘Gabriel,’ replied di Bonaventura as they shook hands. ‘You flew here yourself ?’
‘As you know, I prefer to be in control.’
They shared a small laugh, then di Bonaventura looked pointedly towards the helicopter. ‘I see you brought a . . . guest. That was not something we were expecting.’
‘A life without surprises would be terribly dull.’ He smiled over his shoulder; the woman smiled back. ‘She’s a former student of mine. Her father hired me to take her on a tour of various African anthropological sites. We were in Sudan when I got your call for my help.’
‘You shouldn’t have brought her here,’ said the Arab, scowling.
A Cheshire cat smirk spread across the new arrival’s face. ‘Oh, I couldn’t leave her behind. She gives me much more than just money.’ It took a moment for the Arab to get his meaning; when he did, he looked disgusted. ‘So, Jonas, are you going to introduce me to your compatriots?’
