The Assault - By Brian Falkner Page 0,49

glanced at him. There was no choice but to be honest.

“My fault. Sorry,” he said. “You remember Yozi and his team, who picked us up in the desert?”

“Yes,” Fleming said.

“We left them out there. Alive. I just couldn’t bring myself to execute them in cold blood.”

Fleming and Bennett looked at each other but said nothing.

“How long do you need to remove the warhead?” Chisnall asked.

“Ten to fifteen mikes,” Bennett said. “If all goes well.”

“You’re removing the warhead?” Price asked, arriving on the mezzanine level.

“You haven’t told your team yet?” Bennett asked.

“My orders were not to, until we were actually inside the rock,” Chisnall said.

“Maybe it’s time,” Fleming said.

12. THE ATTACK

[1200 hours]

[Uluru Secure Facility, New Bzadia]

CHISNALL STARED AT THE BANK OF SCREENS THAT COVERED the wall of the control room. Cameras covered every angle outside the building. Some showed the surrounding area and the fence lines. Others, presumably mounted in the monorail track, showed the view back toward the building they were in.

This place was a fortress, but no fortress could withstand what the aliens were about to throw at them for long.

Brogan lay in the middle of the room. She had not yet regained consciousness. That worried him more than he liked to admit. Was she just unconscious, or comatose?

He said, “It’s time you knew why we are here.”

“No argument from me,” Price said.

Chisnall nodded. “I wanted to tell you earlier, but my orders were for total secrecy.”

“So what’s it all about, dude?” Wilton asked. “What’s really, like, going on inside this rock?”

“That we don’t know. But with all the secrecy and security surrounding it, you don’t have to be a genius to work out that it’s vital to the Pukes. And if it’s that important to them, then it’s probably just as important for us to stop it. But how? Uluru is so big, and so solid, that we knew we couldn’t touch it, not even with a nuclear attack. So we crash-landed the Tomahawk here, right at the entrance. It’s a CL-22 warhead.”

Wilton whistled. “China Lake Two Two. Powerful stuff.”

CL-22 was the latest derivative of the immensely powerful CL-20 explosive invented back in the twentieth century. CL-20 had been developed as a propellant, but CL-22 was created for use in nuclear warheads. It was the most powerful conventional explosive on Earth.

“I thought our mission was to find out what’s going on inside the rock,” Price said.

“Partly,” Chisnall said. “But the other part is to get Fleming, Bennett, and that warhead inside the rock so they can destroy it. Whatever it is.”

“This is starting to sound like a suicide mission,” Wilton said.

“Only if we’re still here when the warhead goes off,” Chisnall said. “And I’m not planning on hanging around for that party.”

“The Monster hope you have other way out,” Monster said, “because the Monster doesn’t think we’re coming back this way.”

“There’s another exit from this tunnel,” Chisnall said. “The monorail track runs right through the rock and comes out the other side. But we’ve never seen them use it. We think it’s an emergency exit. According to our satellite imagery and ground-penetrating radar, it is blocked by two, maybe three sets of blast doors.”

“And you’re betting our lives on this?” Price said.

“Pretty much,” Chisnall said. “But it’s a good bet. The monorail runs from there out into the desert, to some kind of safety bunker. That’s our extraction point.”

“Sounds pretty hairy to me,” Wilton said.

“Did you sign up for the easy mission, Wilton?” Price said. “Sorry, that’s next week.”

“Right now we need to make sure we can hold off the Pukes long enough for Fleming and Bennett to extract the warhead,” Chisnall said.

“What’s taking them so long?” Wilton asked.

It had already been ten minutes since they had shown them where the missile lay entangled with the monorail car.

Chisnall keyed his comm. “Fleming, sit rep, over?”

Fleming came back immediately. “It’s slow going. The way the car crushed around the nose of the missile has made extraction difficult.”

“Anything we can do to help?” Chisnall asked.

“No. We’re working through it. What are our friends up to?”

Chisnall ran his eyes over the bank of monitors one more time. The area was still clear, although the Bzadians had occupied all the surrounding buildings.

“All quiet on the eastern front,” Chisnall said.

“What’s keeping them?” Price asked.

“They’re preparing for the assault,” Chisnall said.

“We’ve got movement,” Monster said, pointing to one of the monitors.

Chisnall stared. Something was crawling past a gap between two of the buildings. Something big. It emerged onto the roadway by the side of