The Assault - By Brian Falkner Page 0,11

would be no hiding it from the observers back at ACOG. But there was more at stake here than his embarrassment. Their lives were at stake—and depending on what they found inside Uluru, the fate of the Free Territories could be at stake too.

Three hours later, the satellites were made useless.

The sandstorm arrived not as a solid wall, the way sandstorms appeared in movies, but as gentle fingers of sand that tugged at their ankles in the dark. Within half an hour, the swirling coils of dust were up to their knees, and less than an hour after it started, they were pulling down their visors against the blustery, grainy winds.

“Everybody down,” Chisnall said as the force of the sandstorm crept up from mild buffeting to hard thrashing. “Interlock camo sheets.”

Every member of the team carried a camouflage sheet for concealment. As the winds whipped up further and further, a thousand knives of dust and sand slashing against their body armor, they interlocked the sheets and crawled underneath, using their body weight to hold down the edges against the desert fury above.

Their low profile gave them good protection from the storm, but even so, it was as though claws were tearing at the fabric. Sand trickled inside through any tiny opening, a gap under the edge of the sheets, a missed Velcro joint, a pinhole spy-hole. Brogan had turned on her flashlight and they could see the wild undulations of the sheets under the power of the storm above.

Chisnall checked the time. Every minute spent under the shelter, waiting for the storm to subside, was a further delay in reaching their destination. And these storms could go on for days. The only upside was the perfect concealment it gave them from enemy eyes. No alien patrols would be wandering around in this, and their aircraft could only fly above it, unable to peer down through the hurricane of sand.

A ripping sound filled the space under the blanket, followed by the pungent smell of putrefied eggs. There was a chorus of groans from the team.

“Monster, that’s awful,” Wilton said.

“That’s a weapon of mass destruction,” Hunter said.

“Nothing ever changes, bro,” Price said amid the laughter.

“The Monster’s bottom is barking today,” Monster said.

“Howling like a wolf, if you ask me,” Chisnall said.

“I think I’d rather take my chances with the sandstorm,” Wilton said.

“You’d better pray it doesn’t last much longer,” Brogan said. “We could be stuck here for days.”

“With Monster farting,” Hunter said. “God help us.”

“That’s what you need to pray for,” Chisnall said. “God to help us.”

“No use me praying,” Monster said. “The Monster is big sinner. If God hears Monster pray, he’ll say, ‘Whatever Monster prays for, I’ll do opposite.’ ”

“How about you, Price?” Chisnall asked. “You want to pray for us?”

“Wouldn’t know where to start, bro,” Price said. “Let Wilton do it. He’s all religious.”

“The hell I am,” Wilton said.

“Then why do you keep that Bible and that cross and everything in your bunk back in Fort Carson?” Price asked.

“My family sent them to me,” Wilton said. “Seems wrong to chuck stuff like that.”

“But you ain’t religious?” Hunter asked.

“Nope. My family is,” Wilton said. “All of them. Parents, sisters, uncles, cousins, the whole damn tribe. I always wanted to be. When I was young, I used to pray to God every night and ask him to make me a Christian. But he never did.”

“Angel Five, you are one weird dude,” Price said.

[0430 hours]

[Officers’ Quarters, Republican Guard HQ, Uluru Military Base]

Lieutenant Yozi Gonzale woke, feeling the subtle shift in the air pressure in the room as the sandstorm howled outside. Sandstorms always woke him. On Bzadia, such storms were more frequent, almost an everyday event, but they were also shorter and much milder—a soft cloud of blanketing dust, compared to the vicious whorls of abrasive sand that scoured the deserts of New Bzadia.

He lay awake and listened to the storm. Many of his comrades had no trouble getting used to the long Earth days and even longer nights. Half as long again as the days and nights on Bzadia. For some reason, Yozi had never managed to adjust. Fortunately, he had never needed much sleep, and apart from the boredom, the long Earth nights did not worry him, even in winter when the nights went on forever here in New Bzadia. Australia, the humans had called it, when they had owned the country.

“Os-trail-yuh.” He sounded out the word. No matter how hard he tried, the sibilant S sound of the humans