The Age of Ra Read online

  David's breath caught.

  Mummies.

  He and his paratroopers skidded to a halt. The dead creatures in front of them advanced with a grim, swaying purposefulness, arms outstretched. They were wrapped from head to foot in cerecloths and linen bandages, which rustled as they walked. Their joints creaked, and their jaws worked, opening and closing with a terrible, empty clicking sound.

  David felt nothing but a weary dread.

  Mummies. He loathed mummies.

  His men began firing. Fear - the innate, visceral fear of the undead - disrupted their aim. Shots went wild or else only clipped their targets. The mummies lumbered closer, little perturbed to have small chunks blown off them. Even the occasional direct hit in the body didn't faze them. They staggered, then resumed their advance, lacy fireglow chasing across the singed parts of bandage.

  ''Knees!'' David yelled. It was elementary tactics. ''Wide beam setting! Cut them off at the knees!''

  He demonstrated with a blast that sheared a mummy's leg in two. The creature toppled onto its face. Even downed, it kept going, crawling along with its arms and one good leg.

  The nearest of the mummies reached the paratroopers. It lunged for Private Carey, enfolding him in an embrace of hideous strength. Carey barely had time to cry out as the mummy crushed him to its chest, shattering his ribs and spine and bursting his heart.

  Then Wilkins's voice rang out. A one-word command in Arabic halted the mummies in their tracks. Then, in English, he said, ''Put down your weapons, Osirisiacs. Surrender. There's no way out of this. We have you pinned down. Surrender, or go to meet Anubis like dogs.''

  David glanced at McAllister and the other three.

  He saw it in their eyes. They didn't want to die here, now, like this. They would if he asked them to. If that was his decision. But they didn't want to.

  Neither did he.

  He laid down his lance and raised his hands.

  Within moments, he and his men were having their wrists bound tightly behind them. Colonel Wilkins strode up and looked David in the eye.

  ''Interesting,'' he said smugly. ''I had you pegged as the go-down-fighting type. Clearly there's a streak of cowardice in the supposedly fearless British soldier.''

  ''No,'' David replied. ''It's just that, as long as I'm alive, I can still kill you.''

  ''Ah,'' said Wilkins, as if musing on this. ''Ah ha.''

  He gut-punched David, then kicked his legs out from under him.

  ''Kill me?'' he spat, as David writhed in the dust. ''I doubt it, Lieutenant Westwynter. But I'll tell you this. By the time I'm done with you, you'll be begging me to kill you.''

  2. Epoxy

  Wherever Private Martineau had been taken to be tortured, it was near enough for his agony to be heard easily. Every sob, every howl, every plea for mercy. Even, at the end, his soft imploring moans as he called for his mother.

  The torture lasted half an hour, although seemed longer. When it finally stopped, the remaining four paratroopers could only look at one another and wonder which of them would be next.

  All four - David, Sergeant McAllister, and Privates Henderson and Gibbs - were in bad shape. The Nephthysians had worked them over thoroughly before chucking them into this cave. David had suffered a particularly severe beating at the hands of the Nephthysian whose ear he had ripped off with his crook. Fair dos, he supposed, although every time he moved, the pain went from tolerable to excruciating and he was inclined to think far less charitable thoughts about the man.

  Outside the cave entrance, daylight burned, too bright to look at. Three Nephthysians were on guard duty out there. They talked in low voices and smoked acrid-smelling cigarettes incessantly. Every so often one of them would come in to check on the captives and deliver the odd kick.

  David wished there was something he could say to lift his men's spirits and give them hope. But there was nothing he could think of. It was all very well to believe that you would be brave in a situation like this, that you'd tap into some hidden reservoir of courage which would enable you to tough it out. But the truth was, a bunch of strangers intended to hurt them as cruelly as possible then kill them, and no amount of bravery could counterweigh that. Nor did it make any difference that David and his men had undergone capture scenarios as part of basic training. A capture scenario was an unpleasant experience, but was, all said and done, just theatre. Sitting there blindfolded while members of your own regiment yelled at you and battered you with sticks - it was like hard-boiling an egg in the hope that it might survive a hammer blow.

  David was shit-scared. That was all there was to it. He was shit-scared and he knew it and he didn't mind admitting it to himself, and this was the only thing that made him feel the slightest bit less miserable. No false bravado. No illusions. He was man enough to acknowledge that most unmanning of emotions, plain terror.

  Two Nephthysians came for Private Henderson.

  Henderson's suffering went on for longer than Martineau's, perhaps three-quarters of an hour all told. At some point during that period, Private Gibbs pissed himself.

  An hour after that it was David's turn. He was dragged out of the cave, hauled down some stone steps carved into the hillside, and deposited in a larger cave. This one had been hollowed out to form two adjoining chambers, a larger outer one and a smaller inner one, linked by a low doorway. The outer chamber had slit-like windows, several alcoves, and what had clearly once been a cooking area, with a flue for the fire smoke and a recessed hearth framed by the remains of a tiled surround.

  Now, for additional homeliness, it had been furnished with a collapsible table and a pair of canvas chairs, in one of which sat the man who called himself Colonel Wilkins. He looked hot and bothered. Sweat sheened his forehead and his cheeks. Dried blood stippled the front of his fatigues.

  David was made to sit in the other chair. The Nephthysians who had brought him took up position on either side of him, but Wilkins dismissed them with a flick of his fingers.

  ''The lieutenant and I are both civilised men,'' he said. ''I am sure we can work things out through amicable discussion and nothing more.''

  Wilkins was now talking with a faint Middle Eastern inflection, no longer having to pretend to be American.

  ''Date?'' he asked, proffering a plate of the fruits. They looked deliciously fat and plump, and David could imagine crushing one between his teeth, bursting open its sweetly fibrous flesh, gulping it down.

  But he shook his head. ''Under the...'' he began. His voice was a papery rasp. He ran his tongue around his mouth and tried again. ''Under the terms of the Global Convention for the Proper Treatment of Prisoners of War-''

  ''Let me stop you right there, lieutenant,'' said Wilkins, holding up a hand like a traffic policeman. ''One, I know the wording of the Convention as well as you do. Two, I don't care about your name, rank, and serial number. Three, you and your men have been taken captive after illegally entering our territory, rather than in the course of battle, which renders the Convention null and void in this instance. You are not prisoners of war. You are my prisoners, and I will treat you however I wish.''

  David tried another tack. ''Where are Martineau and Henderson? I want to see them. What have you done with them?''

  ''Take a look for yourself.'' Wilkins pointed to the doorway to the next chamber.

  David glimpsed two bodies under blankets on the floor. Bloodstains had soaked through the material.

  His stomach lurched with horror and disgust.

  The disgust was good. Disgust contained anger. Anger gave strength.

  He turned back to Wilkins and said, simply, ''Cunt.''

  Wilkins sighed and rolled his eyes. ''So free with the insults, Lieutenant Westwynter. It diminishes you in my eyes. A man who feels the need to belittle others all the time must have a very low opinion of himself.''

  ''You're right,'' David said. ''I take it back. You're not a cunt. You're a sanctimonious cunt.''

  Wilkins blinked slowly, looking for all the wor
ld like the aggrieved parent of a badly behaving child.

  Then, in one swift movement, he stood and slapped David across the cheek, backhand.

  His knuckles split open a bruise that the minus-an-ear Nephthysian had put there earlier. David hissed as warm blood trickled down his face and onto his neck.

  Wilkins reseated himself. His two subordinates outside, glancing in, chuckled.

  ''I trust I won't have to do any more of that,'' he said. ''I would much rather you co-operated. That was basically why I did what I did to your men. To let you know that I am someone who means business but would much prefer to do business, if you see what I mean.''

  ''You could have left them alone,'' David said thickly. ''They didn't know anything.''

  ''Precisely. Whereas you, I am sure, do know something.''

  ''What are you after? What the fuck do you want from me?''

  ''Information,'' said Wilkins. ''Merely information. As much of it as possible. About troops. Locations. Numbers. Fortified positions. Plans. Anything and everything you can tell me.''

  ''I'm just a soldier, doing a job,'' David said. ''Just 'a dumb grunt on the ground', to coin a phrase.''

  ''No. You are an officer and you are obviously an intelligent man. Someone who pays heed to what is going on around him; someone who considers the bigger picture.''

  ''I'm flattered. But if I'm really so intelligent, how come I got myself and my men into a mess like this?''

  ''The trap was, if I say so myself, beautifully laid.''

  ''You had all the right radio codes.''

  ''Correct.''

  ''Which you got from the Horusites whose uniforms and weapons you took.''

  ''Correct again.''

  ''By torture?''

  A twitch of the eyebrows: naturally.

  ''And,'' David went on, ''you then took those Horusites and had them embalmed and turned into mummies.''

  ''What else does one do with dead foes?'' said Wilkins. ''We have a base camp nearby, and a Mobile Mummification Suite parked there, complete with priest. It seemed expedient. Although 'mummies' isn't the accepted term for them nowadays, is it? It's regarded in polite circles as somewhat coarse and dismissive. What must we call them? 'Reanimates'. Is that the word?''

  ''I'm a traditionalist,'' said David. ''Mummies.''

  ''Well, either way, as we're discussing mummies, perhaps that's where we can start. I'd be interested to know how many you have stockpiled at your garrison on Cyprus.''

  ''And I'd be interested to know what your real name is. I don't want to keep thinking of you as Colonel Wilkins. Nice touch, by the way. Who'd be suspicious of a man with the same surname as the Pastor-President?''

  ''Indeed. If you must know - not that it's going to make any difference in the long run - I am Hasan Maradi, a captain in the Persian Tenth Infantry Brigade, Special Services Division.''

  ''Nice. You gave yourself a promotion.''

  ''Trying it on for size. It felt like a good fit.''

  ''Well, Captain Maradi,'' David said, ''as we're being candid with each other, perhaps I should tell you that because my squad has failed to radio back to base with a mission status by now, and missed its exfil window, alarm bells will have rung and a recovery team will be on its way to find out what's become of us. They're probably looking for us even as we speak. Your best bet is to up sticks and run while you can. The recovery team will be coming in gunships and you won't stand a chance.''

  Wilkins - Maradi - regarded David with frank scepticism. ''Is that so? My understanding is that a mission like yours, a covert foray across enemy borders, carries full deniability. No one is coming to your aid. If your mission goes awry, your top brass will deny you were ever here or that you even existed.''

  ''The army isn't going to leave twenty good soldiers stranded in the desert without mounting at least one rescue attempt.''

  ''In that case,'' said Maradi wryly, ''time is of the essence and we must hurry. I am going to give you one last opportunity to agree to answer my questions freely, without coercion. Then, I'm afraid, I will have to start being more persuasive. Let me show you what I mean.''

  He picked up what appeared to be a small tube of some kind of paste.

  ''What is this?'' he said, holding it up for David to inspect.

  David squinted. The markings on the tube were in Arabic script, but it could only be one thing.

  ''Glue.''

  ''A very strong epoxy adhesive,'' said Maradi, nodding. ''The kind used by hobbyists to assemble plastic aeroplane kits and the like. The kind that you are not supposed to bring into contact with your skin. See, there's a little warning notice here on the side. It says, 'Caustic. Severe irritant.' Now think how it might feel to have some of this glue squeezed into your ear canal. Think how it might feel if your eyelids were to be cemented together with it. Not painful. Well, not very. But the damage would, I fear, be considerable. Irreparable, in fact. Permanent deafness and blindness. And were I to apply some to your nostrils and mouth, sealing them shut with just a tiny hole left between the lips to breathe through - can you see how disagreeable an experience that might be? To be almost incapable of breathing? To feel slow suffocation, and the panic that comes with that? The awful, dizzying sensation of slow death? And I can slit your lips apart with this'' - he held up a scalpel, the type with a replaceable blade; like the glue, something an artist or modeller might use - ''to let the air in, and then reseal them as I please. Slit, reseal. Slit, reseal. After a while it would get messy but I suspect I will have made my point by then. Unlike your subordinates over there, you, Lieutenant Westwynter, have an imagination. For them, crude methods sufficed. For you, the ability to foresee the results of torture may be just as effective as torture itself. Am I not right?''

  David tried a last desperate ploy, the only arrow he had left in his quiver. ''Nephthys, Mistress of the House and Castle, Daughter of Earth and Sky, Mother of the Dead, may be married to Set but she is closer to Isis and Osiris than she is to him. We all know that. She helped Isis embalm Osiris's body after her husband slew him. She bore Osiris's child!''

  ''Indeed,'' said Maradi, smiling, ''and you could likewise remind me that there have long been political and economic ties between her domain and that of her older brother and sister.'' His face hardened. ''But it is all history. Now is now. We are at war. You and I are enemies. This is the only truth that matters. You cannot win me over by trying to appeal to a sense of commonality that I do not feel. I am not the sort to give much thought to the past - not when I have more pressing concerns in the present. So, one very final time, will you help me willingly, or must I summon Yusuf and Amal back in here to hold you down?''

  David was out of answers, out of hope. He looked ahead to an hour or more of torment from which death would be the only release. The worst of it could all be avoided if he simply gave Maradi everything he asked for. David wasn't naïve. He realised he would be killed even if he did co-operate. But his death would at least be a quick, clean one.

  This was the moment. This was the test that all soldiers knew they might one day have to face. Honour versus self-interest. Were you a dutiful servant of your country's armed forces or were you, when it came to the crunch, just a helpless, fallible human being?

  If, David thought, he held out against Maradi and told him nothing, it was unlikely that this courageous stance would ever become known to the wider world. No one back home would ever be aware of what he had done. And the reverse was also true. If he sang like a canary, would anyone back home be any the wiser? Probably not.

  Besides, it wasn't as if he knew anything vital. He had no information that the Nephthysians or the Setics couldn't have found out through their spy networks. Most likely he knew nothing they didn't know already. All he'd be doing was confirming their own observations.

  ''If I tell you as much as I can,'' he said, ''will you agree to let the other two of my men go, unharmed? Anything I don't know, they definitely won't know.''

  ''How noble. But alas...'' Ma
radi shook his head, with what seemed like genuine regret. ''That is not something I can offer.''

  ''At the very least, you'll finish them off as painlessly as you can?''

  ''Now this, yes, I think I can manage.''

  ''Promise?''

  ''You have my word.''

  It was better than nothing. By complying with Maradi, David would gain mercy for McAllister and Gibbs. He wasn't selling himself completely for free.

  ''So?'' said the Nephthysian, cocking his head to one side. ''Shall we begin?''

  Before David could reply, he heard a rumbling. Maradi heard it too. It was low and distant, like a continuous peal of thunder several miles away. It rapidly grew louder, going from faint to ominous. Now it had a distinctive droning, whirring undertone. Maradi got up and went to the cave entrance to peer out. He muttered something to the two men outside.

  David got up too, carefully, stealthily. Keeping an eye on Maradi, he began backing towards the inner chamber.

  He knew what the sound was, what was making it.

  RAF Eagles.

  Two of them, he reckoned. Coming in low. Hedge-jumping. Under the radar.

  There could be only one reason for that.

  The noise had risen to near deafening now. Maradi turned to speak to David. He saw him ducking through the doorway in the inner chamber. A look of understanding dawned on his face. He began to shout out a warning to his men.

  Then the jets roared by, skimming the valley's rim.

  Then there was light. Milky jade-green brilliance. Blinding. Filling the world. And a detonation that punched the eardrums like knitting needles.

  The cave convulsed. David was flung against the rear wall by a pressure wave. He fetched up sprawled across the corpses of his fellow paratroopers.

  For a time, he couldn't move. Think. Feel.

  He staggered to his feet. The air was dense with dust. The inner chamber was more or less intact, but the cave's outer wall had been reduced to rubble. A ragged aperture remained, large enough to clamber through. David made for it. On the way he stumbled across something on the floor. Captain Maradi. The Nephthysian was lying on his back. His clothing was charred and tattered. Most of the skin had been burned off him.