Matt Reilly Stories (17 page)

Haynes
and Breslin had never known, just as they would never know if the Visitor's
Stone could do all it was claimed.

But
Chase knew.

Because
of what she had seen during her brief glimpse of the interior of the pyramid,
when she had seen the Stone on its pedestal.

For
in that moment, she had also seen something else.

She'd
seen a trickle of condensation dripping down from the ceiling of the dark stone
room, a steady
drip-drip
that had been landing
right
on the
Visitor's Stone and which had formed a puddle on the floor around its pedestal.

A
puddle that any animal would drink from.

THE
END

For
now...

________________

___________________________

Fort
Bragg, North Carolina

27
December

The
taxi-cab lurched to a halt in front of the reinforced gates of Fort Bragg.

It
was sunset and the giant military complex lay bathed in the glow of a thousand
halogen lights.

Mitch
Raleigh stepped out of the cab, eyes wide. To write about this sort of stuff
was one thing.

To
see it up close was something else entirely.

A
young Army captain was waiting for him at the gatehouse.

‘Mr
Raleigh? Mr Mitchell Raleigh. The author?’

‘That’s
me. You must be Captain Daniels.’

‘That’s
correct, sir. And if I may say so, sir, it is a pleasure to have you here at
Bragg. Let me take your bag.’

THE
WRITER

Raleigh
was a novelist from Australia, in the US on a book tour promoting his latest
thriller.

Modestly
successful, he specialised in geopolitical thrillers that competed pretty well
with Tom Clancy.

It
was his third book,
Detachment-5
, that had brought him to Fort Bragg.

Set
in the Afghan mountains, it had featured a covert battle between three heroic
members of the famed Delta Detachment fighting against their American
compatriots, a rogue band of US Army Rangers who had been bribed by some Afghan
drug-runners into escorting a truckload of pure heroin out of Afghanistan.

The
book had been Raleigh’s biggest hit.

It
had also, however, seen him receive many emails—most of them complimentary. Of
course, some nasty ones came, too. It was always a danger when one wrote about
the military: some hardcore soldiers were very sensitive to their depiction as
villains in works of fiction.

One
of the nicer emails, however, had come from a Captain Dwight Daniels, a member
of the Delta detachment based at Fort Bragg who had so loved
Detachment-5
that he had invited Raleigh to visit the base and see some of the D-boys in
action.

It
wasn’t every day a novelist got invited to see the inner workings of Fort
Bragg, so Raleigh had gladly accepted.

Security,
naturally, had been tight.

As
requested, Raleigh had travelled to North Carolina by bus from D.C. under a
false name and told no-one he had been given such prized access. Even his
publisher in New York didn’t know he was taking this side trip from his book
tour.

INTO
THE JUNGLE

Once
through the gatehouse, Daniels and Raleigh climbed into a lowslung Light Strike
Vehicle—a small dune buggy that appeared to be made entirely of roll-bars.

They
whistled through the largely deserted compound.

‘Some
of the guys are doing a night-jumping exercise over at Camp MacKall tonight,’
Captain Daniels said. ‘Should be a sight. Thought you might like to see it.’

Within
minutes, the LSV had left the weatherboard buildings of the Main Post behind
and had entered a strange kind of wilderness.

Sandhills
to the left; tree-covered slopes straight ahead; and a wide, swampy river
bordering the right-hand side of the road.

‘This
is all brand new,’ Daniels explained. ‘The sandhills, the jungle, even the
river. Landscaped to match actual fighting conditions around the world.’

Raleigh
nodded. ‘Impressive.’

On
the opposite bank of the river, he saw some barracks houses with their
porch-lights on. Some men wearing straw cowboy hats lounged on the verandah.

‘The
Delta barracks,’ Daniels said. ‘That’s where we live when we’re on the base.
We’ll stop there on the way back.’

‘Excellent,’
Raleigh said.

They
took a fork to the left, headed for the sandhills. The Light Strike Vehicle
handled the sandy terrain with ease, winding through several dune valleys
before it arrived at a flat dirt clearing in front of a rocky hill.

Buried
into the base of the rocky hill was a squat concrete structure: a tunnel
entrance.

‘It’s
for cave-fighting practice,’ Daniels said, seeing the look on Raleigh’s face.
‘1.6 miles of underground tunnels. Based on actual tunnel systems we’ve found
in the mountains of Afghanistan.’

Raleigh
frowned. ‘Don’t your men get used to the layout, seeing it over and over
again?’

‘Several
key walls are set on hinges. You rotate a few of them, and it becomes a whole
new tunnel system. Fuse boxes for the lights are also moveable, so they’re
always placed in a different position.

No
man ever sees the system in the same configuration twice.’

There
came a loud throbbing noise from somewhere nearby.

Raleigh
looked up.

And
saw a Black Hawk helicopter swoop in low overhead, banking hard, zeroing in on
the clearing.

‘Here
they come,’ Daniels said. ‘Quickly, this way.’

SUBTERRANEAN

The
interior of the tunnel system was dark and cool, and composed almost entirely
of concrete.

Daniels
led Raleigh to a viewing balcony overlooking a large concrete-walled cavern
inside the system. No less than five separate tunnels intersected at this one
gigantic cavern. A cave junction.

‘Here,’
Daniels gave Raleigh a pair of NVGs—Night Vision Goggles. ‘You’ll need them
when they blow the lights. Right then. Excuse me a moment, sir. I’ll just go
see where they are.’

Daniels
left the alcove.

Raleigh
stood there, alone, holding his NVGs.

LIVE
FIRE

Silence.

A
minute passed. Raleigh fingered his NVGs, waiting in tense anticipation for
what was to come.

Excited.

Waiting…

He
noticed a master light lever on the wall to his right—for use no doubt when the
exercise was over. Plus a wind-up wall-phone for communication with—

Bang!

Blackness.

Without
any warning whatsoever, every single light in the cave system abruptly went
out.

Guess
they found the fuse box
, Raleigh thought.

He
whipped on his Night Vision Goggles…

…and
the world changed. He saw the cave junction once again, only now it was bathed
in ghostly green-and-black.

It
was then that Raleigh saw the first wraith-like figure enter the cave, gun up.
Raleigh recognized it as an Heckler & Koch MP-5. The man wore black
fatigues, black webbing, black ski mask and mantis-like NVGs.

The
soldier gave the signal…

…and
suddenly the whole cave junction was alive with muzzle flashes as a dozen
D-boys charged in from each of the cavern’s five entrances, guns blazing.

Cardboard
cut-outs of Afghan terrorists popped up from slits in the floor and the D-boys
razed them with brutal efficiency.

Raleigh
coudn’t believe his luck.

This
was a
live fire
exercise.

The
only people in the world who had seen this were other D-boys, high-ranking
Special Forces officers, and now-dead bad guys.

The
bullet-noise petered out. Acrid gunsmoke filled the junction. Then voices:

‘Fire
Team One! Clear!’

‘Fire
Team Two! Clear!’

It
was then that Raleigh saw one of the mantis-like Delta men emerge from the haze
and look directly up at him…

Raleigh
smiled, nodded.

The
man responded by raising his MP-5 sub-machine gun and firing it right at
Raleigh’s head.

TEACH
YOU A LESSON

Raleigh
ducked.

The
concrete wall above him was shredded to crumbs.

What
the…?

And
suddenly, Raleigh heard a voice.

Captain
Daniels’ voice, coming in over the cave’s PA system.

‘Welcome
to the kill zone, Mister Raleigh. You think you know the military, you
candy-ass pussy? It’s time you learned the difference between book smarts and
battle smarts. We’re gonna teach you a lesson.’

Another
burst of gunfire sizzled over Raleigh’s head.

His
mind kicked into overdrive:
Twelve armed soldiers are trying to kill you.
Why? Doesn’t matter. Figure that out later. Right now, you have to get off this
viewing platform.

Raleigh
turned, saw the doorway at the rear of the viewing platform.

No.

Too
easy. They’d be expecting him to panic and bolt that way.

He’d
have to go the other way: over the concrete balcony’s railing and down into the
cave

junction.
But to do that, he’d need a distraction…

The
master light lever caught his eye.

Raleigh
shut his eyes and jammed it upwards. The lights in the cavern blazed to life.

The
Night Vision-wearing D-boys were momentarily blinded. They reeled, yanked off
their goggles, and as they did so, Raleigh switched the light switch
off
again.

More
darkness, but he’d got the moment he needed.

And
with that, Mitch Raleigh leapt over the balcony and dropped onto the killing
floor of the cave junction.

TUNNEL
RUNNING

Into
the nearest tunnel. World all green. Walls flashing by on either side. Heart
pounding inside his head…

…and
heavy footfalls thundering down the tunnel behind him, bullets pinging off the
walls.

‘Run,
run, run, Book-Boy!’

‘We’s
coming to getcha, you Australian pansy!’

Raleigh
rushed into the tunnel maze—left, right, left, right—breathless.

‘Fire
Team One!’ Daniels’ voice called out. ‘Left turn ahead! Fan out in formation
Echelon Left!’

Echelon
Left.

As
he ran, Raleigh remembered his research. Echelon fire formations were pretty
basic combat formations. Four men would form together in a diagonal line to
cover a threat coming from the left.

Excellent
for close-quarters tunnel fighting.

Raleigh
found a heavy wooden box on the floor. Waited around a corner. A second later,
a Delta man poked his head around the concrete corner and caught the box square
in the face.

Raleigh
grabbed his gun, just as the Delta net closed and three more D-boys entered his
tunnel from the other end.

Time
slowed.

Raleigh
somersauts over the fallen man as the gunfire begins—lifts him up as a
shield—real bullets smacking into flesh—but Raleigh was safe.

Shouts.
Returning fire. Running. Into another tunnel.

Have
to get out of this maze. Have to get to the outside world and get help. And why
the hell am I still alive. These guys should have nailed me by now…

Now
armed, Raleigh worked his way back to the cave junction, arrived there just as
two D-boys did.

Quick
draw.

And
Raleight cut them down with a short burst of the MP-5. The men hit the ground,
groaning.

Nine
D-boys left now.

Raleigh
saw the balcony—remembered the wall-phone up there.

The
outside world
…

Up
the wall he climbed, moving like a kid on a jungle gym, hurling himself over
the balcony’s stone railing and landing with a desperate, clumsy thump.