luxurious by comparison.
The Black Hole …
That’s what Hadari’s nephew had called it.
At first, though, Nolan thought the place was empty, only because he couldn’t believe anyone could actually live in a place like this.
But then he started seeing faces in the blackness. They looked especially eerie through his nightscope. They seemed to be floating in space at first. Initially a few pairs, then a few more. Then a dozen, then several dozen.
Gunner was the first to take out his flashlight and shine it into the center of the camp. What they saw was revolting.
There were about a hundred people here, staring out from the crates.
Auschwitz …
That was the first word that came to Nolan’s mind. These weren’t humans looking back at him as much as they were collections of bones wrapped in loose skin. They were emaciated beyond belief. Sunken eyes, sunken stomachs. Loose teeth. Many had lost their hair.
More grisly, though, many also bore the marks of being beaten—with fists or sticks, and maybe even slashed with machetes. Their wounds were infected and some still running with blood. It was also apparent that just about all these people were women and girls, with only a handful of males mixed in.
That’s when another word came to Nolan: Untouchables. Those people at the bottom of India’s caste system, people traditionally forced into the lowest kind of labor and rigidly demonized on the subcontinent.
Just what they were doing here at Gottabang also became apparent. There was a mountain of twisted pipes at one end of the Black Hole, barrels of sickly yellow powder at the other. All of the pipes had been taken from the broken ships, all of them were coated with the yellow insulation material. These people scraped the insulation from the pipes and then separated the two.
The problem was that many of the ships broken here were so old, their insulation materials almost always contained asbestos or some other equally hazardous substance.
So these people weren’t just hungry and mistreated by having the worst jobs at Gottabang, they were ghastly sick as well.
“I can’t take this,” Gunner cried out. It was too much for all of them. “We gotta get out of here.…”
But at that moment Alpha heard another sound. One that was all too familiar.
Gunfire.
Suddenly tracer bullets were flying all around them, coming from all directions.
Then came the sound of explosions, and bright flashes lighting up the appallingly smoky night.
Alpha Squad hit the dirt, dragging Emma Simms down with them. Nolan looked up to see the trails of high-caliber tracer ammunition going right over his head. And with each second those streaks of light were coming closer to them. It was clear. Gottabang’s notorious security forces had found them.
But everyone kept their cool—or at least the experienced members of the squad did. All her bullshit and bravado gone, Emma Simms was screaming through her battle helmet, absolutely terrified to suddenly be in the middle of yet another gunfight.
Nolan took stock of the situation. The incoming fire was unfocused and random, so he knew that whoever was shooting at them didn’t have them locked in, at least not yet.
On the far side of the Black Hole was a high sand dune, and beyond that was the sea. Even if the squad were unable to retrieve the RIB, if they reached the water, they would be able to summon the waiting Shin close to shore and get out that way. So, Nolan started the squad moving again.
They splashed their way through the center of the Black Hole, the sullen lifeless eyes seeming to burn right through them. Most of the gunfire was going by right over their heads, yet none of the Untouchables even flinched. To be shot, or not shot, didn’t seem to make a difference to them. They were dead to it all.
Nolan tried not to look at them as he rushed by, once again bringing up the rear, but it was impossible. He’d been to a lot of bizarre places in his career—but he’d never seen anything like this.
The squad finally made it to the top of the dune, the Senegals depositing the still-screaming Emma Simms face first in the sand and holding her there.
But then came something else.
Another noise. Mechanical. Whirring, yet also like a great gust of wind.
Was that a helicopter?
Nolan had heard that the goons who guarded this awful place might have a couple civilian copters converted to gunships. But this didn’t sound exactly like a helicopter. It seemed like something else.
But whatever it was,