The Covenant of Genesis Read Free

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. ‘ Jesus! ’
    ‘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. ‘ What? ’
    ‘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.
    The second Tornado—
    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