… and found the rail gun completely inoperative. It had power, but all of the electronic displays were blank. His suit's electronic visor-also blank. His defensive electronic bolts-powerless. He did a quick self-test of all his suit's systems and found everything dead. He tried to jetjump away-but the jets were deactivated as well. His suit still had power, but everything was in reset, as if it had shut itself down to prevent an overheat or overload. He thought it would all come back, but he didn't know when or if anything had sustained any damage.
Patrick took off his helmet before he suffocated to death-the suit's environmental system had shut down too- just as the Egyptians rolled over to him. The soldiers stripped his battle armor off, handcuffed him, and took him to a security building on the other side of the base, where he was thrown into a windowless, hot room a little larger than a closet. He tried to contact someone through his subcutaneous transceiver, but there was no response. Everything looked as if it was scrambled. What in hell was going on?
Vice Marshal Sayed Ouda met with Patrick a couple hours later. He was sweating profusely, almost as much as Patrick was. 'Where are your comrades?' Ouda asked through an interpreter.
'They've escaped and are probably being airlifted out of the country,' Patrick replied.
'Why did you remain behind?'
'Because I am still here to meet up with my comrades that were captured by the Libyans, the ones that were brought here,' Patrick said. 'But we suspected we were being held here to prevent us from meeting with them. Apparently I'm right. What's going on, sir?'
'No questions from you,' Ouda said. 'You will be turned over to the Supreme Judiciary for further interrogation.'
'Turned over to Khalid al-Khan?' No response-the soldier doing the interpreting didn't look very good either. 'Where are Madame Salaam and General Baris?'
'I said… I said no… questions,' the interpreter said-and then he vomited violently on the floor right in front of Patrick, with more blood than bile gushing out. The jailer had to drag the suddenly unconscious man out. Marshal Ouda dashed out of the room as well, in such a hurry that he didn't even bother to close or lock the door behind him.
The security office was in complete bedlam. Men were rushing around shouting and yelling, some in complete, very unsoldierlike panic. Some of them were hurriedly putting on gas masks. But it didn't seem as if they were under attack. 'What's happening?' Patrick asked. 'What's wrong? Does anyone speak English?' Everyone was ignoring him. Patrick was able to find his way through a maze of corridors and up one flight of stairs and finally emerge outside…
… where he found several dozen dead Egyptian soldiers, simply lying in the road. All of them had lost a significant amount of blood through their mouths and nostrils and in some cases through their ears and eye sockets.
Patrick went back inside the security building. There, at a reception desk, a pregnant female security officer was frantically dialing a telephone. Her hands were trembling so bad, she couldn't punch the buttons. 'Can you help me?' Patrick asked her. 'Do you speak English?' She looked at him, and she seemed to understand what he was saying, but she kept trying to dial the telephone. Once she did correctly dial, she cried out in frustration as she reached a busy number or one that didn't answer. 'You speak English, don't you?' he asked.
'Yes,' the officer replied. 'Please stand away from the door and do not panic. Do not…' And then she wiped a rivulet of blood from her eyes, and she started to bawl.
'It's all right,' Patrick said. He didn't know what else to say. He was standing in the lobby in long underwear, barefoot, with his hands cuffed behind his back, unable to do anything. 'Just relax.'
'I cannot find my husband,' she sobbed. 'I do not know what is happening.'
'It looks like the building is being evacuated,' Patrick said. 'Why don't you report to the base hospital? Your husband will find you there.' The woman nodded, got out of her chair, then noticed Patrick was handcuffed. She went back to her desk with a handcuff key and released him. 'Shukran gazilan,' Patrick said. 'Do you need me to drive you to the hospital?' She seemed to have trouble understanding him. He made a steering motion with his hands. 'Mustashfa?' Patrick asked, dredging up as many Arabic words as he could. 'El is'aef? Doktor? Haelan.'
The woman nodded, then retrieved a desert camouflage jacket someone had left on a coat hook and a set of keys from a wall keyholder. Patrick went over to open the door for her…
… and that's when he noticed the trail of blood coming from between her legs. The woman took Patrick's hand, nodded her thanks… and then her eyes rolled up into the back of her head, and she slumped to the floor, dead.
What was happening? Patrick cried to himself. Jesus, was it a chemical or biological weapon attack? He didn't have long himself if it was. He took the keys from the woman's dead fingers, slipped on the jacket, then went back inside the security building. After twenty minutes of searching, he found his battle armor, exoskeleton, backpack unit, and helmet, and headed outside. After a five-minute search of the parking lot, he found the right vehicle and drove off.
What he saw on that drive was unimaginable horrordead bodies everywhere. He saw vehicles overturned, corpses still in the driver's seats. He saw armored vehicles and tanks crashed into buildings and gates with corpses hanging out of them as if they tried to climb out just as they died. There were burning, crashed helicopters dotting the flight-line access road, fires everywhere-even dead vultures and other desert animals lying everywhere. It was like a scene in some kind of horror movie. As far as he could see, across the runway and toward the main base area, he could see signs of slow, painful death. He…
Patrick gasped. The base… the base where Wendy, the other Night Stalkers, and the other prisoners had been taken. My God!
He tried the car radio: It was working, but it was silentnot static, just a silence, as if the announcer's microphone was left open. But if the car and the radio worked, maybe his battle armor did too! He stopped the car and dragged all his gear out of the trunk. Sure enough, the outside status lights were green-the power pack and computer were working. As quickly as he could, Patrick climbed into the suit and powered it up. It was working again! He put on the helmet and secured the entire system…
… and then learned what had happened: Radiation alarms were going off. There had been an intense release of gamma and neutron radiation in the past several hours. Although the radiation levels now were high-he would have to get out of the area within thirty minutes of risk getting seriously sick-they had been a thousand times higher not long ago.
A neutron bomb. It had to be. Someone had set off a neutron bomb on the base. Everyone within a mile of the explosion would be dead within hours, and everyone within two miles would get sick from radiation poisoning. The neutron bomb-a conventional hydrogen bomb without its uranium-238 jacket-was designed to kill humans but leave vehicles and buildings intact.
Wendy..
So the Libyans couldn't release the prisoners, Patrick thought grimly. It was impossible. The news report said some of the prisoners were tortured. The Libyans couldn't allow the world to see that. So they planted a nuclear device into one of the buses and set it to go off just as the prisoners were being off-loaded. All of the evidence of what they had done would be wiped clean. They would of course deny they had anything to do with the nuclear detonation.
Wendy… my God, Wendy…
Zuwayy was going to pay for this, Patrick vowed. He was going to die, brutally and messily. He was going to rip his beating heart out of his chest and rub it in his face.
The air felt electrified, as if every movement of his body caused thousands of static electric shocks that were growing in intensity. Patrick knew that if he stuck around much longer, the shocks would eventually kill him.
Patrick reluctantly turned his back on what was once Egypt's largest military base outside Cairo and headed southwest, toward a rendezvous with his men. As he drove, he felt nothing-no anger, no weariness, no hatred, and no sadness. The battle had been fought, and he had lost.
CHAPTER 6
