Fallen Star (Project Gauntlet Book 1) Read online

  “Yeah, good idea.”

  They had taken fewer than half a dozen steps from the bottom of the tower, when a dark shadow flew across the base.

  Grant looked up and blinked. He was sure he had just seen something resembling a helicopter, but this one didn’t make a sound. A fraction of a second later, the ground where the other allied soldiers had congregated to see what was going on seemed to boil, as thousands of tiny projectiles tore the hapless soldiers to shreds.

  Maclean grabbed Grant’s arm. “Come on, sir, we’ve got to take cover.”

  “Where?” asked Grant, watching the last of the doomed soldiers drop to the ground.

  “There,” said Maclean, pointing at one of the camp’s mobile generators.

  With his heart pounding away in his ears, Grant followed Maclean. They ran toward a nearby generator bolted onto on the back of a vehicle trailer. The two soldiers came to a sliding halt underneath the trailer.

  “Why the hell did we take cover under here?” whispered Grant.

  “Don’t say another word or move a muscle, sir,” warned Maclean.

  Grant glanced over and saw his colleague staring at the Hesco bastion wall just off to their right. He froze in place and watched as a couple of figures crawled over the wall and down onto the ground. In the silvery light of the moon, Grant could see the two intruders were wearing skintight outfits that covered their entire bodies. Even their faces were hidden behind a blackened glass faceplate. Each one carried a short rifle, with what looked to be a silencer built onto the muzzle. The two men moved with cat-like stealth from body to body, checking to see if they were still alive.

  Throughout the camp, the flimsy tents and office trailers were systematically shot to pieces by the circling helicopter. Anyone caught out in the open, running for their lives, was killed within seconds.

  “Buggers,” muttered Maclean, when the intruders shot and killed a wounded man trying to crawl away from them.

  The attackers took one last look for survivors before moving out of sight.

  “I don’t understand; why didn’t they see us?” whispered Grant.

  “Because whoever is attacking the camp is undoubtedly using thermal imaging to target our people,” replied Maclean. “If we had stayed out in the open, it wouldn’t take them long to see the heat coming from our bodies and pump a couple of hundred rounds into us. I was praying that the heat from the generator would mask our bodies from observation. Anyone looking in the direction of the generator would only have seen a glowing, white-hot blob, and not us.”

  Grant slid his M4 from his back and flipped off the safety. His mouth was dry with fear. He had been in combat on a number of occasions in Afghanistan, but nothing he had done in the past compared to what he had just witnessed. Grant took a couple of deep breaths to calm his speeding heart and shifted his weight, intending to poke his head out from under the generator and take a look around.

  “Don’t, sir,” Maclean whispered harshly. “We don’t know how many of them there are in the camp. If you fire your rifle, they’ll hear it, and come running. No matter what, we need to stay alive to report what happened here tonight.”

  Grant lowered his rifle and looked over at Maclean. “Who the hell were those bastards? I didn’t recognize a single piece of equipment on either of them.”

  “I don’t know, sir, but we can eliminate ISIS as the attacker. They don’t have that kind of equipment or training. One thing’s for sure; whoever they are, they mean business.”

  “But why attack us? We’re just a training establishment. We’re not a threat to anyone.”

  “Captain, someone out there doesn’t agree with you.”

  Grant clenched his carbine tight in his hands and listened to the absolute silence surrounding them. “Well, I don’t hear them anymore, and I, for one, am not going to sit here and wait for someone to come and help us. There were over one hundred people in the camp before we were attacked. I need to know why we were targeted for extermination.”

  “Okay, but I need a weapon,” said Maclean. “Mine’s still in my quarters.”

  “There’s one,” said Grant, pointing at a dead Iraqi’s AKM lying on the ground.

  Maclean crawled out from underneath the trailer, crept over to the dead body, and picked up the assault rifle. He made sure it was loaded before making his way back to Grant. “I say we climb back up in the tower and see what we can see.”

  Grant nodded.

  As silently as possible, the two men made their way to the tower. At the top, they found the guards’ bodies. Both had been shot with a single round to the side of the head.

  Grant got up on his knees and peered out into the darkness but couldn’t see a thing.

  “Here, try using these,” said Maclean, handing him a pair of binoculars taken from one of the dead guards.

  Grant brought the binoculars up to his eyes and looked around. Although nowhere as good as a pair of night vision goggles, at night, binoculars were the next best thing. The camp was deathly quiet. Grant ground his teeth together when he saw the unknown attackers had not only murdered every human being in the vicinity, but also the camp’s guard dogs.

  “Sir, I thought I saw something,” whispered Maclean. “Take a look out to the northeast.”

  Grant turned around and adjusted his binoculars. In the silvery light of the moon, he saw a group of men dressed like the intruders standing out in the open. One of the men pointed at a dry riverbed which ran behind the camp. As one, the assailants nodded and ran toward the wadi.

  “Sir, you gotta take a look at this,” said Maclean.

  Grant lowered his glasses and turned around. He froze as a large, dark shape flew over the camp. Like the other craft, it had been modified to barely make a noise. Instead of a thunderous sound from the rotor blades slicing through the air, the helicopter was no louder than a finely-tuned car’s engine. It slowed down and then began to descend to the ground. Dust and debris kicked up by the helicopter’s powerful rotor blades’ down blast swirled up and around the ship as it landed.

  “That looks like a Russian Mi-26 heavy transport helicopter to me,” said Grant. “But I’ve never heard of one that can fly nearly silent.” He handed back the binoculars. “Here, take a look.”

  Maclean adjusted the eyepieces. “Yeah, it’s a Mi-26. But why the hell would the Russians attack us?”

  “I don’t know. Lots of other countries own Mi-26s, so it might not be the Russians.”

  “Hey, sir, look! They’re off-loading a couple of backhoes.”

  Grant shook his head. “Say again?”

  “Whoever they are, they’re going to dig something up.”

  Grant took back the binoculars and watched, as the two digging machines were led over to the top of the riverbed before driving out of sight.

  “None of this makes any sense,” said Grant. “I have to see what they’re after.”

  “Yeah, me too,” agreed Maclean. “There’s an old goat path that runs by the eastern wall. We should be able to use that to sneak our way over to the wadi without being seen.”

  Grant nodded. “Lead on.”

  Like a pair of ghosts in the night, the two soldiers used the shadows to hide in as they crept through the camp. Everywhere they looked, there were dead bodies. Most had died right outside of their tents. Grant fought to block the images of his friends lying facedown on the sand from his mind. He silently swore when they had to step over the dead body of their commanding officer. Payback is going to be a bitch, he thought to himself.

  They slipped outside of the camp and waited a moment to make sure they weren’t being followed before pushing on. Maclean pointed at a trail which led past an old abandoned home. Grant trailed behind the Aussie. It was when he stepped on a sharp rock that he remembered he was dressed in shorts, runners, and a T-shirt; hardly the best attire to wear when sneaking around in the dark, but he didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.

  Maclean stopped in his tracks and raised a hand.

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nbsp; Grant froze and held his breath. Had they been spotted?

  A couple of seconds later, Maclean lowered his hand and carried on to the edge of the wadi.

  Grant let out his breath. Both men climbed down onto the rock-strewn, dry riverbed. The sound of the backhoes’ excavators clawing at the ground filled the air.

  “Thankfully, that noise will drown out everything else,” said Maclean over his shoulder. “It should help us get real close to whoever these bastards are.”

  Grant nodded. “I agree. Let’s see what they’re up to.”

  Just as they were about to move, an ear-shattering explosion tore through the night. Less than fifty meters away, rocks and dirt shot straight up into the night sky. Grant and Maclean dove for cover as the debris began to rain back down onto the ground. A rock as large as a volleyball struck the sand right next to Grant’s head, startling him.

  “I guess they’re in a bit of a hurry,” said Maclean, standing up from behind a tall boulder. He brushed the dirt off his uniform and looked down the riverbed. “The coast looks clear.”

  With the sound of the blast still ringing in his ears, Grant flipped his weapon’s safety off and brought it up to his shoulder. As quiet as a pair of mice, they crept forward until they could see the backhoes. The two soldiers took cover behind a jagged boulder that jutted out from the ground.

  To Grant, it looked like the intruders were busy digging out what looked to be a crashed airplane. He could only see half of it sticking up out of the sand, but it was unlike any plane he had seen before. Instead of being long and narrow, like most craft, this one appeared to be circular and had what Grant took to be its cockpit in the center of the craft. Grant’s fear subsided somewhat and gave way to curiosity. As the backhoes removed more earth from the craft, it was clear the plane, or whatever it was, was still in fairly good condition.

  “Ever see anything like that before in your life?” Grant whispered.

  “No, sir, not unless you include the movies,” replied Maclean. “Looks like they’re going to lift it out of here using the chopper.”

  Grant brought up the binos and examined the craft. The backhoes pulled back as several men crawled up onto the ship and attached steel cables to it. The heavy transport chopper took off and maneuvered itself over the top of the craft, and slowly descended until one of the men fed a heavy metal hook attached to the cables into a sturdy shackle on the belly of the helicopter. The man jumped down and waved over at another man, standing at the top of the wadi. Right away, the chopper began to take up the slack. As soon as the line went taut, the helicopter pilot applied more power to help lift the craft out of the ground. For a few seconds, nothing happened, and then ever so slowly, the ship began to move. It didn’t take long for the rest of the craft to escape its resting place. The pilot brought the helicopter and its cargo high in the sky before banking over silently and heading east toward the Iranian border.

  Grant popped his head up and watched as the rest of the intruders crawled up out of the wadi and ran to a smaller helicopter waiting for them in the open field. Within seconds, the darkened craft lifted up into the air and flew after the larger helicopter.

  “If I hadn’t seen with my own eyes what had just happened, I wouldn’t have believed it,” said Maclean.

  Grant nodded. “I doubt those bastards will be back. It looks like they’ve got what they came for. Sergeant, we’ve got to get back to the camp and look for survivors.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m with you. The scent of blood carried on these winds will bring the wild dogs down from the hills, and I’ll be damned if any of them are getting near any of our mates. We can build a couple of really big bonfires near the camps’ entrances. That should keep them at bay until the sun comes up, or help arrives.”

  With that, the two soldiers jogged back to their devastated camp, lost in their thoughts about what had just happened and what was to follow.

  Chapter 3

  Ali Al Salem Air Base – Kuwait

  Grant pushed the plate of food away from himself, stared up at the clock on the wall, and saw that time was creeping by slowly. He let out a dejected sigh and drummed his fingers on the table. The thought of yet another pointless interview with some nameless individual in a dark suit had driven away his meager appetite.

  It had been a week since the attack. They had been found the next day by a U.S. Army Special Forces team, who arrived to look for survivors. The two soldiers had been flown directly from Iraq to the sprawling allied air base in Kuwait, where they were summarily locked up in an old maintenance hangar far away from the rest of the station’s personnel. All of their dirty clothes had been taken from them the moment they landed at the base, by soldiers in full decontamination gear. After showering, they were examined by a team of doctors before being separated and interviewed by a seemingly never-ending stream of experts. Some of them were in uniform, and some not, but all of them asked the same question: what happened that night out in the desert? Grant had not seen or heard from Sergeant Maclean for over four days, and was beginning to wonder if he had been released to the Australian authorities on the base.

  The door to the room opened, and Maclean stepped inside. Like Grant, he was wearing a set of tan coveralls. The man didn’t look any worse for wear. He stood as tall as Grant but had broad muscular shoulders. His blond hair was cut short on his head. He had bluish-green eyes, and a nose slightly askew, likely from the numerous fights he’d had in his youth as a private in Australian Army.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” said Maclean, after looking for his watch, which he’d forgotten wasn’t on his wrist, then checking the time on the clock.

  “Afternoon, Sergeant,” replied Grant, nodding.

  Maclean took a seat at the table. “I don’t know why, but I always feel naked without my watch.”

  Grant chuckled. “I know how you feel. I thought they’d let you go.”

  “No such luck. I guess they’re tired of talking to us separately. You gonna eat that?” said Maclean, pointing at Grant’s uneaten BLT sandwich.

  “No. Help yourself.”

  Maclean picked up the sandwich and took a bite. “Have you been interviewed yet by the slender woman with short, black hair and pale, white skin?”

  “Yes. She came in dressed in a dark suit, so I asked to see her ID.”

  “And?”

  “She smiled and said I didn’t need to see it.”

  “Same thing happened to me. I don’t know why, but that woman creeped me out.” Maclean devoured the rest of the sandwich.

  “Sergeant, I was wondering, have you been in contact with anyone from your armed forces?”

  Maclean shook his head. “No, not a one.”

  “Don’t you think that’s a bit odd? There were over a dozen Australian officers and NCOs in the camp when it was attacked. You’d think your government would want to hear what happened there. Especially from one of its own people.”

  “Yeah, I thought about that, too. But I assumed your government was keeping mine in the loop. At least, I hope they are.”

  The door swung open. A military policeman stood to one side as a small man with curly red hair walked in, carrying a stack of file folders in his arms. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, and wore a rumpled blue suit with a white shirt and a red bowtie. Freckles covered his round face. He placed his folders down on the table and removed his glasses so he could clean them with a handkerchief.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” said the man with a strong English accent. “My name is Doctor Jeremy Hayes, and I work for the British Ministry of Defense.”

  “Have they run out of Americans to interview us?” quipped Maclean.

  Hayes shook his head. “Sorry? I don’t follow what you’re saying. I’m here as a representative of Her Majesty’s government. To save time, I’m going to debrief the two of you together.”

  Maclean let an exasperated sigh. “For the love of God! Haven’t the Americans shared the information we’ve already provided with you people?”r />
  “Oh yes, very much so,” replied Hayes, lifting up his pile of folders. “That’s why I’m here. May I sit down?”

  Grant smiled and pointed to the nearest chair. “If it’ll speed things along, please join us at the table.”

  Hayes sat. “I’ve read all of your testimonial evidence and only have one or two questions for the two of you.”

  “What would you like to know?”

  Hayes opened two files, pulled out two pieces of paper, and placed both down on the table. “These are the drawings you both made of the object that was extracted from the riverbed in Iraq.”

  Grant glanced down at his picture and nodded, as did Maclean.

  “They’re remarkably similar,” said Hayes. “You both captured the scale of the unidentified object with impressive detail.”

  “It was hard to miss, when it was hanging from the underneath a modified Mi-26 helicopter,” said Maclean.

  “Yes, of course. Now, when asked to identify the type of craft you think you saw, you had startlingly different answers. Captain Grant, you wrote that you believed it was either a Russian or Iranian experimental stealth UAV which had inadvertently crossed into Iraqi airspace before crashing. Sergeant Maclean, however, wrote that he thought it could possibly be a UFO.”

  Grant looked at his colleague and shook his head. “Really, Sergeant, a UFO?”

  “Hey, why not?” replied Maclean. “I’ve never seen a UAV that’s disc-shaped. Have you, Captain?”

  “Just because you haven’t seen one doesn’t mean they don’t exist,” said Hayes. “There are dozens of highly experimental prototypes of aircraft and drones being flown and tested by the NATO powers that the public has no knowledge of. It only stands to reason if we’re doing it, so are the Russians, Iranians, Chinese…etc.”

  “Yeah, but they had to dig it out of the ground,” countered Maclean. “If it were some type of experimental drone it would have crashed recently, and would surely have been found by the farmers living around the base. No, sir, this plane, or whatever you want people to call it, crashed there a long time ago. A bloody long time ago.”