Shadows Out of Time

Moonlight Over Mauritania ADRIAN COLE

Luke Phillips sat in the shadows. This joint was a real dump and he’d had his fill of dumps. He’d made enough hard cash to live a better life these days, and had no plans to go back to the kind of deals and contracts he’d taken in the gray old past. And he’d become used to the good life, even if it had softened him up some. He’d been on the point of heading back to England, his homeland, when New York had made this last attempt to embroil him.

He sipped the cold beer. It was okay. He scanned the paper, though it didn’t offer much of a read. It served as a shield from prying eyes, although the guy who’d arranged to meet him here had chosen the place precisely because it was hidden away among the other wharf dens where a man could be conveniently inconspicuous. Phillips was used to secrecy in his dealings with his various employers. He knew the drill.

Morgan was half an hour late. Phillips recognized him from the cheap photograph he’d been given. A hunched man, ashcolored, stringy hair tucked under a homburg, a thick, dark scarf and a heavy tweed coat. Pinched face, sunken eyes, a long jaw — yeah, this was Morgan.

Phillips caught his eye and nodded. Morgan collected a drink and joined the Englishman at the table, his back to the cramped room and its few scattered drinkers.

“Thanks for coming,” he said in a low growl. Up close he looked haunted, like dark angels were scouring the streets for him. For all Phillips knew, they were.

“Let’s get this straight,” said Phillips. “I’m not sold on this yet. If you want to employ me, you’ve got your work cut out.”

“Yes, I understand,” said Morgan. He clutched his glass but made no effort to drink from it.

“When you contacted me and said I was one of the few men who had the kind of desert experience you wanted, my initial reaction was to walk away.” Phillips had promised himself he’d never go near a sand pit again, never mind a desert. The things he’d experienced in Egypt a few years back had scared the hell out of him, and he didn’t care who knew.

“You did a good job in the Sahara. You put a stop to something very terrible. Few people know about it. You know how close things came to a disaster.” Morgan leaned nearer, his voice a low rasp. “The Chaos Blade and the gate it went back into.”

Phillips nodded. “So? If whoever’s running you is after the Blade, you’re wasting your time with me. Believe me, you have no idea how dangerous it is.”

“We do, Mr Phillips, that’s the problem. We don’t want the Blade released back into the world. Nor do we want that gate— or any other — opened.” Morgan wiped beads of sweat from his brow and took a tentative sip of his drink.

Phillips studied him uneasily. “The gate is buried deep. No one is ever going to find it. It’s sealed.” He pushed back the images of the desert that tried to squeeze into his mind, and the cloying darkness that came with them. It had taken him a long time to rid himself of his nightmares after he’d returned from Egypt.

Morgan nodded. “We’re less concerned about it. There’s something new. Do you know Sir Conrad Alvington, the archaeological explorer?”

“Only what I read or see on television. He’s always on the hunt for the last place God made, that kind of thing. I don’t know him personally.”

“He’s been in Mauritania for the last six months. Western Sahara.”

Phillips suppressed a shudder. “That may not be the last place God made, but it would be close to it.”

“A month ago, Sir Conrad and the last of his party were arrested and are being held in a jail in Nouakchott, the capital. He managed to get a message out to a friend here in New York. Terrance Carnadine. They’d shared a coupla digs together. It’s Carnadine who wants to hire you.”

Phillips sat back, mentally groaning. He knew Terrance Carnadine. The man had been a loose cannon, a seeker of relics and a hell-raiser to boot. He’d more than once got himself into a tight corner, before he’d finally settled down to a more sensible life as part of the huge Carnadine Industries, run by his sister. These days, she kept him on a tight leash. If he was looking to go back to his old ways, Phillips wasn’t ready to sign up, not by a long chalk.

Morgan continued. “Terrance Carnadine wants to get Sir Conrad out of Mauritania. His own adventuring days are over, but he can fund an expedition.”

“Expedition? You mean extradition?”

“Both. Sir Conrad found something out there in the desert. Something akin to what you found in southwest Egypt. He has no chance of going back to it and dealing with it. The Mauritanians don’t want anyone poking around in those desert wastes. But someone has to do it.”

“You mean me?”

“Do you know the country?”

Phillips let out a short, dry laugh. “ Know it? For God’s sake, man, its own people hardly know it. Almost the entire country is Saharan desert. There’s nothing there. Sand, sand and more sand. You’re talking about one of the most extreme environments on the planet. And you want me to go digging there? I don’t think so.”

“You’d be paid very well.”

“I don’t need the money, or a trip to that kind of madness.”

“You don’t understand,” said Morgan, his face creased in pain. “The gate cannot be allowed to open. The consequences would be too horrific.”

“Gate? Like the one we found?”

“It is potentially linked to others. The one under Mauritania is the prime. The spokes of the wheel turn on it. Open it and the power travels down the spokes, opening more gates. In Europe, Asia, Australia, Antarctica.”

“Then you need a small army to deal with it. It’s way above my skill set. And how the blazes are you going to get anyone in? It’s a Sunni Muslim country and from what I know, Al-Qaeda is very active there. Be like entering a hornet’s nest naked and covered in honey.”

“There are some places even they dare not set foot. There is a way in, though. It follows the market in meteorites.” Morgan reached into his pocket and pulled out a small bundle of cloth. He unwrapped it to reveal a gray lump of stone, and handed it to Phillips.

Phillips weighed it. It was unduly heavy for its size.

“There have been many reports over the years of a large meteor fall in the Mauritanian desert,” said Morgan. “Several abortive attempts have been made to find a so-called mountain of iron. Those seeking it these days are dismissed as dreamers. There are small meteorites in most parts of the desert, from the northwest to the southeast. In the city of Nouadhibou there’s a thriving market. It would not be too difficult to mount a small expedition. The British Embassy would secretly provide the cover.”

“Where, exactly, is the place Sir Conrad found?”

“To the northeast of central Mauritania. Well beyond any villages, roads or the railway. Completely remote and shunned by every living soul. Except a few local Haratin Arabs who are prepared to take any risks for good money. They are waiting.”

Phillips sat back, picturing the endless dunes and scarred desert crags, the extremely hostile, inhospitable landscape, the greatest challenge to human survival. “Getting there would be bad enough,” he said softly. “Then what? How is the problem to be dealt with? You’re not talking about something that can simply be de-activated.”

Morgan shook his head. “There are two engineers, soldiers. They have the means.”

Phillips grunted skeptically. “You’re sure about that? Meddling with these things is very bad news.”

“I can’t give you the details, but yes, they have sufficient power.” Morgan leaned forward, his face bathed in sweat. “You saw what was under the Egyptian sands. What could have been unleashed. This is far worse. Ten times — a hundred — more so. The risk has to be taken.”

Phillips scowled deeply. He found it hard to imagine anything worse than the horrors that had been uncovered in Egypt. “So why me?”

“They need someone they can trust. You’ve proved your worth.” Morgan pulled something else out of his pocket, a narrow envelope. He slid it cautiously across the table, screening it with his body.

Phillips took it and opened it discreetly below the table, pulling out a single sheet and scanning it. It was from Terrance Carnadine.

To Luke Phillips:

I know you won’t like this, and will doubtless associate my name with a lot of negative things, but we need the help of a man like you. You’re an exMarine, you know about the Egyptian affair, what it means. The desert people will follow you. This is a Government mission. No expense spared, especially in the weapons to be used. If we don’t act soon, the consequences are going to be unthinkable. The only way in to the place Morgan will have described is shrouded in strict secrecy. We can’t risk an international incident. You’ll have every protection, before and after. And whatever else you want. Destroy this note.

T C

Phillips took a Zippo from his pocket and ignited the sheet, watching in silence as it burned away to nothing. Morgan watched, fascinated, his face soaked in sweat, his hands shaking.

“I guess I don’t have much choice,” said Phillips. A Government mission, it had said. CIA. Of all the organizations, they had the power to wind him up and put him away for good if he didn’t feel like complying. Always better to keep on the right side of them.

Morgan looked relieved, as though his own neck was on the line. “I’ll get things moving.”

“I take it we fly out? Helicopter?”

“No — far too conspicuous. The Mauritanians would likely shoot you out of the sky. You go by road to Chinguetti. After that there are no roads, just the desert. You’ll go on by camel. A small company, the best fighting force we can gather, posing as archaeologists and meteorologists. You’ll have two engineers, a few guides and desert tribesmen to protect you. They are the best. They won’t let you down. No one will know you are there.”

Phillips studied the crumbling buildings of the big township of Chinguetti. The place sprawled, though the desert on its eastern flank was closing in inexorably, smothering older, cramped buildings where the people had given up the fight against the sand tides. The heat was almost unbearable, the sunlight searing, hotter if that were possible than the Egyptian deserts. Although there seemed to be few, if any, white people here, none of the natives paid Phillips much heed as he trudged along the narrow street to his rendezvous, a squat, brick hotel, its walls gouged by sandstorms, its roof flat as though an upper floor had been sliced off it.

It had taken a week to get here after his flight had landed in the busy capital, Nouakchott. He’d been contacted and directed to the transport that had carried him here over the anonymous, dusty roads, a battered bus barely kept moving by a team of Arab mechanics. In the city, Phillips had made discreet enquiries at the offices of the British Consul, wanting to set up a meeting with Sir Conrad Alvington. At first he met with a brick wall, but then he was told by a nervous, unconvincing clerk that Sir Conrad had been sent back to England. That was all. No further information. The Mauritanians didn’t want anyone nosing about in their desert, other than genuine archaeologists. And they didn’t want them conferring either.

Phillips wasn’t too concerned. Freeing Alvington was one less task to deal with, but a closed avenue of information.

Inside the hotel the overhead fans whirred, churning the thick, humid air. Several men, not necessarily guests, clothed in desert robes, sat around the large foyer, talking quietly. Phillips knew they were weighing him very carefully. His presence here would be no secret, though his assumed identity as an archaeologist ought to be credible. A room had been reserved for him: he was given its key and he went through the back to a corridor. The door was not locked. He nudged the door open with his knee and leaned back. Sunlight slatted into the room from a grilled window beyond its single bed.

“Welcome.” The voice was accented, that of a native. The man had been seated and stood slowly, his hands spread so that he offered no visible threat. “I am Mamoudou Sidibe, your guide.” Phillips closed the door and set down his holdall. The man was of Berber descent, aged perhaps fifty, face partially hidden behind a black beard, eyes like flints. He’s trustworthy, they’d told Phillips. A rare ally, who won’t betray you. The two men bowed to each other.

“I won’t ask you if you had a pleasant journey.”

Phillips grunted. “I could never get used to the dust. Or the heat.”

“Wait until you go out across the dunes. That is heat.”

Phillips shook his head. “We travel by night. I know it’ll be cold, but we’ll be less exposed.”

“As you wish. There is food and drink waiting for you — and one of the engineers. The other is elsewhere, with their packs, waiting to begin the journey.”

Mamoudou took Phillips to a room where Phillips gratefully chewed the dry meat and drank cold water. Presently he was joined by another man, Garner, a hard-looking thirty-something westerner, who was dressed in a poorly fitting light suit: obviously he was a soldier, used to a uniform — they were all going to be playing parts on this trip.

“I’m Doctor Garner, and O’Reilly, my mate, is also a doctor.” He grinned. “Not sure how many mugs we’ll fool, but they won’t necessarily realize we’re the military. We’ve been told to take orders from you. We will do. We’ve got our special orders, and we’ll follow them, but apart from that, you’re running this show.”

“Does that bother you?”

Garner shook his head. “Nah. I’m not paid to get bothered.”

“You and O’Reilly are sappers? You know what we’re dealing with out there?”

“We’ve been briefed by the US and our own Army.”

Phillips finished his meal. “Okay. I want to leave before dawn and rendezvous with the rest of our party. We’ll set off by the early light. We’ll be watched, so we’ll behave like any other archaeological party. Mad dogs and Englishmen. Once the sun’s getting up, we’ll camp. After that we go by night. Less chance of being seen.”

“They told me you know about desert travel. And about this place we’re heading for.”

“It isn’t going to be a picnic, especially when we get there.”

“O’Reilly and me have both done tours in Iran, Afghanistan and Syria. We’re used to people trying to kill us.”

“We’re not welcome here. The Government doesn’t want to provoke what’s out there. They don’t understand what it is, or what it can do.”

“Yeah, we’ve been told. You just get us there, okay?”

Phillips and the two engineers rode by camel to the outer edge of Chinguetti by bright starlight, led by Mamoudou. Phillips had been provided with a sub-machine gun. He knew how to use it. The sappers were similarly armed, and both had a fat bag strapped to their camels. Phillips guessed they’d be guarding those bags with their lives. Explosives, mines, whatever the military had come up with.

Mamoudou guided them to a remote spot out in the shifting sands, and under a low ridge they met up with a dozen more Arabs, armed desert tribesmen. Mamoudou introduced Phillips and at once the warriors bowed to him and prepared to receive instructions.

“These are good men,” said Mamoudou. “They will die before failing you. They know something of what is out in the wilderness, and they fear it greatly. It speaks much for their bravery that they will go there with you and serve you.”

“I am honored by their company.” Phillips spoke to the men in their own tongue, praising them softly and again they bowed. Only their eyes showed any emotion. They were like hawks, eager for the hunt.

For most of the day the party nestled under the shadow of another vast dune, waiting for moonrise. Mamoudou came to Phillips and drew him aside, speaking softly.

“I should warn you. Though I know these men and trust them implicitly, there will be one whose mind is not fully open to me.”

“Then you’d better get rid of him.”

“It is not possible. I cannot say which man it is. I only know that Al-Qaeda has its spies everywhere. For certain one of them will be among our men, and his identity will be a deep secret. I suspect he will only be here to watch and report. Al-Qaeda shuns the remote desert as much as we do. I suggest we say nothing, but be vigilant.”

Phillips nodded. “Maybe you’re right. The last thing we want to do is stir them up. I’ll warn the engineers.”

Garner and O’Reilly received the news with ill-disguised horror. “This changes everything,” said Garner. “I’m going to have to contact base. We may have to pull the plug on this.”

Phillips shook his head. “There’s too much at stake.”

The two engineers exchanged glances, clearly deeply disturbed. They seemed to Phillips to be weighing something in their minds, facts he hadn’t been provided with. “If there’s something you’re not telling me,” he said, “you’d better spit it out.”

Garner cleared his throat, lowering his voice. “I told you we have the means to destroy the target. It’s a powerful weapon.”

“How powerful?” said Phillips.

“It’s not the sort of thing you want falling into the wrong hands. If Al-Qaeda got hold of it, that would be very bad. It can’t happen.”

“If they knew we’re carrying it,” added O’Reilly, “they’d send half an army to get it.”

“What, exactly, is it?”

“It’s in two parts,” said Garner. “We’ve got one section each. Individually they’re harmless. They can only be activated when they’re fitted together. There’s a variable timer. You can set it on a short fuse or a longer one, maximum one day. That’s how long we’ve got to get clear, and we’ll need the fastest camels we’ve got to escape the blast.”

Phillips met the steady gaze of the engineer, the eyes of a dedicated soldier, no less fanatic than the Al-Qaeda he fought. “It’s a nuclear device?”

“Now you understand why we can’t risk it being stolen. It could take out a small city.”

Phillips nodded slowly. “What we’re facing,” he said, “could take out a lot more than that.”

“Once we begin the trek,” said Garner, “we’re on our own. No air cover to call up. Nothing.”

“Who knows about the device?” said Phillips.

“No one else,” said Garner.

“So there’s no reason to think Al-Qaeda are aware? As far as they know, you’ve got something, enough to deal with the target. Explosives, but nothing special. No more than they already have access to.”

“Why are they here?”

“They watch everything that happens in this country. It’s one of their safest bases. As I see it, they fear the place we’re heading for, and the only reason they’ve turned a blind eye to our little sortie is they’re happy to have it destroyed, especially with someone else taking all the risks.”

“I don’t like it,” said O’Reilly.

“Look,” Phillips told them, “if we turn back now, there’s a good chance they’ll kill us all and take what they can. They’ve nothing to lose. While we’re on the mission, we’re potentially useful to them. They want the target eliminated.”

Garner looked at O’Reilly. “The target is Priority One. That’s the instruction.”

“What’s Priority Two?” said Phillips.

“Destroy the device,” said Garner. “If we go on, we’ll set it off rather than let it fall into the wrong hands. We’ll die doing it. How about you, Mr Phillips? You sign up to that? If not, we go back.”

Phillips grinned sardonically. “Not the best deal I’ve ever signed up to, but okay. It’ll soon be dark. Let’s go.”

They traveled across the endless sands by night, the dunes silvered by moonlight, each one indistinguishable from the next, although their guides knew the terrain as well as a city-dweller knew the alleys and side streets of his home town. Days turned into a week, two, and the slow, monotonous trek morphed all of the travelers into silent ghosts. They ate and drank sparingly, surrounded by utter silence, broken only by a brief desert wind. Phillips knew they were as far from civilization as they would have been traversing the Antarctic, their target hidden away deliberately in this dead, empty zone.

“We are close,” Mamoudou told Phillips at last. “We are on the edge of one of the ergs, a very great expanse of sand and rock. If we rest for the day, by nightfall we will see the place.”

Later Phillips sat with the two engineers outside their pitched tent. “Over the next long ridge,” he told them. “Tonight we arrive.”

“What’s the plan?” said Garner.

“If this place is anything like the one I entered in Egypt, it won’t necessarily be guarded. But be prepared anyway. It’ll seem like a heap of very old ruins. That’s part of its disguise. Deep down in the heart of it is where we’ll find our target. I’ll know when we see it.” He watched the rest of the party settling for its last sleep under the blazing sun. In the haze of the journey, the desert people had become indistinguishable, their private thoughts inscrutable.

An hour after nightfall they crested a low ridge and the moonlight deftly painted another ridge beyond them, a high scarp, its rocks exposed, leaving tall, jagged stumps of rock, sheer and glassy, apparently impenetrable. Mamoudou pointed to a cleft in the rock surface, a long, tall gash, like the slash of a giant’s scimitar. “There,” he said, his voice dropping. “It leads to the place of stars below the sands.”

The company quickly crossed the dust bowl, the camels picking their way through a field of small, sharp boulders, dangerous as mines. The moon rode high, a brilliant light, when they came before the tall crevice. Darkness seemed to bleed from it, together with a cold breeze, permeating the surrounding rocks with an aura of deep unease. The camels tried to shy away, but Mamoudou had two of his men prepare a place for them to rest. Everyone dismounted. From now on they must journey on foot.

“You’ve been beyond here?” Phillips asked him.

Mamoudou shook his head. “Not I. But one who ventured within came back to Chinguetti. He spoke of a decaying city and its passageways. At home, he sat in a stone room, without food or water, and did not stop speaking for five days. In that time his body shrank until only the bones and a little skin remained, sucked dry by the madness that claimed him.”

Overhead, night had swallowed the skies and countless stars gleamed in their myriad clusters. Silence, more extreme than any Phillips had ever experienced, closed around them and the camels snorted in renewed fear. They could have been on a distant world.

“My two men will remain with the beasts until we return. The rest of us may enter, if it is still your desire.”

Phillips nodded. Garner and O’Reilly had already unloaded their packs and strapped them to their backs. They looked unwieldy, but both men were built like oxen and grinned at the effort. They said nothing, ready for the final trek beyond the wall of stone. Mamoudou and his ten remaining Arabs got into line. Their faces were devoid of expression, but Phillips could read the fear in their eyes. He hid his own misgivings. Where they were going would be festering with an evil beyond time.

Several of the men carried flashlights, while Garner and O’Reilly had lamps fitted to their helmets. Their beams prodded the bulging wall of darkness within the cleft as the party entered. Slowly the body of men wriggled onward, twisting and turning into the gut of the rock, heading downwards, the dusty path’s inclination increasing. The walls opened out around them and by the lights they carried they could see they had come into a jumble of low buildings, their walls leaning into one another, broken, some in ruins, others like spires, alleys choked with several feet of dust. Windows gaped, twisted, and everything dropped away into the lower darkness. Age draped everything like a shroud, a remnant of another time.

The company followed the main street, descending in a long spiral until presently the walls on one side fell away to reveal a gulf, a huge cave, like the empty maw of an extinct volcano. Phillips knew, however, this was no natural chasm. Some other power had scooped it out of the desert floor, or bored down to the distant bowels of the earth. The party came beyond the crumpled city and examination of the inner walls of the huge cavern revealed chiseled bands of stone, the work of unimaginable beings, from a time hidden by centuries. The slope broadened and soon the company had come to the first step of a stairway. It had not been created for human feet, being far too wide and deep.

Phillips shone his flashlight out into the vault and it was as though he had aimed it at the night sky, revealing an infinite, starless void, though within it something curdled, invisible, remote shapes writhing in silence more unnerving than any sound. Phillips turned the beam aside, again watching the stone descent. The magnitude of the place gripped the company like a fist, making each of them dizzy with uncertainty, their senses reeling at this exposure to immensity beyond normal human comprehension. Far, far below them, a rising wind swirled, with its threat of desert storms and stinging sand blasts, and yet this was a tunnel down into the utter heart of the stone, not an exit back to the world the party had left.

“Hear the song of the underworld,” Mamoudou whispered to Phillips. “Close up your ears, for it will drive your reason from you.”

They were all wrapping their neckerchiefs around their ears and turning up jackets and clothing to muffle the sounds. Shrieks tore at the air, invisible sirens sweeping to and fro, shadows coalescing, making the hell-wind a solid reality, though mercifully human eyes could not decipher details. Gradually the walls became less shrouded in mystery, glowing faintly, spotted with lichen and larger globules of fungus, the phosphorescent light strengthening as the descent continued. This weird glow distorted the shadows of the intruders, throwing them upon the twisted inner wall, making of them bizarre shapes, mocking throwbacks to a more primitive man-thing that barely stood on two legs. Other shadows writhed on the measureless wall, arachnid and crustacean, as if a time-lost sea had cast up in its silent waves a slurry of crawling life.

Deeper down went the party, the steps thrusting out into the void away from the wall until they wove their way between immense columns that themselves twisted and knotted as though, spewed up from molten lava, they had cooled into these fantastical shapes, a forest of unimaginable contortions. The fungus clung to them in fat clusters, hanging like vile fruit, glowing and in some places pulsing, as though about to burst and give forth a terrible stream of spores, which the men on the path knew instinctively would bring a choking death if once inhaled. Carved into the columns were the faces and limbs of unrecognizable beasts and demonic creatures, so convoluted as to seem alive, on the point of raking with claws their puny human prey.

Phillips marveled at the resolve of the Arabs. They were terrified, yet held to the downward trek. He exchanged brief glances with the engineers, and they, too, were almost unnerved, but nevertheless resolved. It was a relief to come to a flat plateau of rock, providing a way off the stairway to those hellish depths to which it must lead. Phillips led the way across it, seeing ahead of him another wall, though this was comprised of blocks, each one weighing countless tons, shifted into place by incomprehensible powers. A roughly triangular doorway, taller than a man, had been set into this wall, with archaic lettering around it, though in no language recognizable to man. Phillips, however, had seen such a doorway before, under the Egyptian desert.

“What we seek will be beyond there,” he said, pointing, as the company clustered about him. All of them held their weapons at the ready, expecting hostile action from an unseen enemy at any moment.

Phillips led the way, the two soldiers close to him. There was more light beyond, where huge mounds of mushrooms and saprophytes were piled up at the walls of what the men could see was a colossal chamber, a tomb, perhaps, or a temple. Yet it was on a scale beyond any human construction known, as if the men had walked out on to an alien world’s surface, a place beyond their own stars, raised and shaped by beings from gulfs beyond the knowledge of men. Column after column rose up, as though a forest of them supported the very desert high above, each of them wrought into the body of a leviathan, a god wrought in stone, massive and intimidating. They seemed no more than a breath away from coming to life.

Cold terror groped at them all as, insect-like, they went across the floor of this gargantuan temple. High up in vaulted darkness, stranger winds sang and swooping shapes flitted among the vaults, huge, bat-like things that stirred the dust of aeons. Phillips felt himself edging nearer to a kind of madness, his nerves threatening to snap. He forced himself onward.

The floor became a wide stone bridge, recognizable now in the growing light of the all-pervasive saprophytes as the spoke of a colossal wheel. The party was heading along it to where it sloped down to meet an enormous central hub. As the men went on, the cavern opened out and they saw more of these immense spokes, radiating inward from the circumference of the cavern, the far side lost in distances so vast the light could not penetrate them. The hub was the goal, the place they sought, the key to the mysteries of this whispering underworld. For a while the company paused, each man gathering what courage he could in the face of the terrors now besetting them all. They knew they were not alone. Like creatures caught in a seething jungle, they were surrounded by feral, hungry beasts.

Eventually, at the heart of the wheel, they reached a curving, waist-high parapet. They leaned over, gazing at a view that punched the breath from them. Beyond was a well, seemingly miles across, though its surface was not of water, but of a night sky, as though the open heavens were mirrored here. Points of light — possibly stars, possibly something far more ominous — winked and flashed in those unfathomable deeps that would have made the oceans seem shallow. The Arabs in the party drew back in horror, their eyes brilliant with fear. Phillips glanced at the two soldiers, who seemed mesmerized.

“What the hell is this?” said O’Reilly.

Phillips looked about him. He saw the nearest spokes, arrowing back into the gargantuan chamber. “If you listen,” he said, “and if you feel the stones, you’ll know that this hub is turning, possibly in time to the Earth’s rotation about the sun, linked to the stars.”

“Yeah,” said Garner. “Vibrations. So what the hell is it?”

Phillips gazed down one of the other long stone spokes, his mind filling with churning images. He found himself looking down a telescopic tunnel, the remote images at its end brought vividly into focus. He saw cities, or strange building complexes that could have been cities, incredibly ancient places, reeking with age, bizarre architectural piles, twisted towers, monuments and blasphemous statues hundreds of feet high. Among these titanic ruins crawled beasts and beings of hideously alien aspect, wanderers from unknown stellar systems, voyagers from the uncharted depths of some other insane universe. And they could transcend time, Phillips realized. To them, time was simply another dimension, to be crossed as easily as they navigated the gulf of space.

He saw the buried citadel he had visited under the Egyptian desert, and the haunted Plateau of Leng in the Himalayas, Antarctic citadels, with their sleeping creatures, abominable but pulsing with slumbering life. He saw too a city in the deepest of African jungles, the fabled Oparra, remnant of long-lost Atlantis, where even now the warped children of its exodus crawled like lice around crumbling temples. In Australia’s Western desert, he saw aeon-old citadels deep under the world. Everywhere he looked down the spokes, he saw the seething, blasphemous life. Stirring, hungry for release — into this world, this time.

“We’re at the heart of a colossal web,” said Phillips. “The power of these spokes radiates across the entire world, linking very old centers of alien life. As this wheel turns, it moves towards a correlation point, a conjunction at which a cosmic door will unlock and open wide. If that happens, power will flood along the spokes into the old citadels, pouring energy into them. They will all come to new life. Time will become meaningless.”

“What power?” said O’Reilly.

Phillips pointed out into the depthless void. Out in its black heart, the winds of time and space whispered and swirled, masking movements beyond human understanding. Something vast and inconceivable was rising from the gulfs.

“How long have we got?” said Garner.

“I don’t know,” said Phillips. “Time enough, I think. Set your device here. We have to prevent the conjunction.”

Mamoudou, who had gathered his wits with difficulty, watched as the two soldiers unslung their packs and unwrapped the two components of the nuclear weapon. These seemed surprisingly small, each no bigger than a computer drive. The other Arabs stared, realizing at once what the device was. They murmured to each other, and Phillips wondered if they’d be prepared to allow this unholy instrument to be used, even in the face of the monstrous images they’d seen here in the lost regions of their country.

It was little more than a matter of minutes before the two engineers had connected the two sections of the bomb and undertaken the necessary checks.

“It’ll be on a timer,” said O’Reilly. “How long?” he asked Phillips.

“As long as it takes us all to get clear of the blast.”

“Maximum — twenty-four hours. What about — the things out in that gulf?”

“I don’t think they’ll be here before then. The wheel needs longer to end its cycle.” Although I’m guessing, he thought. A risk we have to take.

O’Reilly prodded a small keypad on the side of the cylindrical device. He nodded. The company wasted no time in starting back along the wide spoke. As they all broke into a steady trot, their nerves were tormented by the fear of what they had seen, as if by its very nature it would realize what had happened and accelerate the process of completing the cycle. Around them the air quivered with a new energy, suggesting whatever spirits and demons infested these huge hallways had come to life, enraged and engorged with the desire for retribution. Climbing back on to the wide stairway, the company made its way upwards, knowing instinctively that something pursued it. Twisted sounds came up from below, sounds that grated along the very bones of the puny humans, in a realm where gods must once have walked.

Almost exhausted to a man, they came again to the apex of the spiral stairway, to the ruins of the citadel near to the mouth of the cleft leading back out into the desert. They paused briefly, Mamoudou warning them against rushing outside. Although something was rising from the deeps, and other, strange sounds welled up from the meandering streets around them, he had sensed further perils outside. One of the Arabs spoke to him and he nodded.

“What is it?” said Phillips.

“One of my men, Razak, will scout ahead. There are but two hours before dawn. Razak will find the two men we left behind with the camels and bring them close to the exit. Then we can ride like the wind.”

It took all Mamoudou’s persuasive powers to keep his men here in the street, knowing that something came ever closer from below. They could hear a huge, ponderous thudding and the cracking of stone, as though a colossal worm thrust itself upwards on that wide stair. In the buildings, shadows shifted as something else woke from an age-old sleep.

Mamoudou’s man had come back to them and waved them forward. Relieved, the Arabs dashed past the last buildings to the high cleft, Phillips and the engineers bringing up the rear. Phillips trained both his flashlight and his weapon on the darkness behind him. He had an impression of something huge and slick. Gunfire ahead snapped his head round.

O’Reilly and Garner were both swearing, urging Phillips to take cover. They ducked behind a low wall. Mamoudou appeared, holding his arm to his side. He was leaking blood, his teeth clamped against the pain.

“A trap!” he snarled. “And my men were caught in it, like rats.”

“Al-Qaeda?” said Phillips.

Mamoudou nodded. “Razak was the spy I feared. He has led them to us. They have killed the men we left behind and scattered the camels. The devils are coming for us. The last of my men will fight them off, but there are too many of them. It is only a matter of time before they are killed.”

Phillips cursed. “Even if we can hold them off, whatever is behind us will be here soon. We’ll be lucky to see this out to daylight.”

“They have come for the weapon,” said Mamoudou. “Razak must have told them of it. He must have a cell phone. Can the bomb be stopped?”

O’Reilly grunted. “It’s a simple enough device. Easily deactivated. Can we hold them off for twenty-four hours? If it is Al-Qaeda, we can’t let them get their hands on that bomb.”

“I’m more concerned about whatever is back in the passageway,” said Phillips.

“There is said to be another passage, leading upwards to an old observation tower,” said Mamoudou. “You must go through these ruins and climb it, up to the crest of the escarpment. I will provide cover.”

Phillips and the others knew their guide would not survive.

“Whatever is coming,” he said, “whatever these unspeakable gods have unleashed — it will feed on these devils. It will be worth giving up my life to see this!” He gasped out instructions as to where the second passageway would be.

The gunfire beyond intensified. Phillips led the engineers through the maze of collapsed buildings. From all sides they could hear things rising up from the debris, creatures roused by the noise of gunfire and the scent of human intrusion. The men all loosed off bursts of fire at the darkness, barely one step ahead of terror, but they made it to the secondary passage Mamoudou had spoken of. Its stair was cluttered and choked with rubble, but they managed to climb upwards. Below, beyond the buildings on the wide stair to the deeps, something broke from the darkness and Phillips caught a glimpse of numerous shapes, the size of large dogs. Barrel-like, their numerous legs writhed like the cilia of centipedes, their front ends a wide mouth like that of a lamprey. Behind them the larger creature clawed at the stone, bringing down low stone buildings in its enraged determination to break upward.

Mamoudou flattened himself against the stone wall, allowing the gunmen from outside to push forward, their own submachine guns blazing. In moments they came racing along the main route and met unexpectedly head-on with the first of the things from below. A dreadful conflict ensued as those terrible lamprey mouths fixed on the leading gunmen, shredding them in a bloody cloud. They seemed impervious to bullets and crushed the weapons to useless, mangled metal. Mamoudou watched in horror as the old city spewed forth even more creatures, their attention snared now by the noise of battle. They poured and slid from every crevice, things whose genera had been hidden by the darkness of centuries. For each of them ripped apart by gunfire, another dozen emerged. It was an impossibly unequal conflict and there could be no retreat. Every man from outside was slaughtered. When it was over, the creatures turned to Mamoudou, but his eyes had already closed for the last time.

Phillips moved as swiftly as he could in the confined space of the higher cleft, at last reaching a point where it debouched on to a small plateau of flat rock outside, under the stars. Ancient bricks ringed it, a former tower and a high place affording a unique view of the surrounding desert. Phillips wondered what long-dead tribe had built and used it. He and the engineers wriggled out, the last hour of darkness greeting them with its eerie desert silence. Cautiously the three men wriggled across the rock to a point where they could look down to the foot of the escarpment. Moonlight flooded the valley floor and among the broken rocks and scree they saw the dunes rising up gently beyond. On the nearest of them a great black shape sat in the sands.

“That’s how they got here,” said O’Reilly. It was a helicopter. “It’s a Lynx, Mark 9. The Brits recently de-commissioned them. Looks like Al-Qaeda have done some deals on the black market.”

Garner trained a small pair of binoculars on it. “Two guards,” he said. “Can’t see any others.”

“Any sign of the camels?” said Phillips.

Garner swept the immediate terrain below. “No. There are bodies down there. Our own Arab guards. I reckon the camels were chased off.”

“What about the bird?” O’Reilly asked him. “I’m a bit rusty.”

Garner smiled. “I can fly it. But you’ll need to get shot of the two guards. We don’t have a lot of time.”

“I’ll take them from here,” said O’Reilly. “You guys go and flush ’em out into the moonlight.” He lifted his weapon and settled it gently on a natural vee in the rocks in front of him, fitting and adjusting a telescopic sight.

Garner gripped Phillips’s arm and led him to the edge of the escarpment. Together they wound their way downward, slowly and mindful not to disturb anything loose. In the deep silence they could hear voices below, amplified by the rocks. Phillips glanced toward the shadows under the edge of the dune and saw cigarette smoke. The two guards were relaxing, oblivious to the chaos within the tunnel.

At the foot of the escarpment, some distance from the helicopter, Garner dropped into a low crouch and motioned Phillips to follow him. They got to within fifty feet of the two guards and saw them, stretched out casually on the sand as if they were loafing on a beach. Garner took a small rock and tossed it among bigger rocks at the bottom of the dune. It clattered noisily and the two guards sat up, grabbing their weapons. One of the men rolled over and pointed his gun down at the rocks. The other got to his feet, ducked down and scrambled forward like a spider across the sand. He went from shadow to moonlight, studying the rocks, ready to fire at anything that moved. Several minutes passed. The silence was absolute.

Gradually the man unbent himself, lifting his head to get a better view. Abruptly he fell backwards, his gun falling, his body hitting the sand with a puff of dust. Up in his rocky eyrie, O’Reilly had picked him off with a single shot.

Garner grinned at Phillips. “No one does it better than O’Reilly.”

Phillips was watching the other Arab guard. He’d seen his companion collapse and knew something was wrong. Immediately he got up and ran back under the shadow of the helicopter, meaning to board it. Garner raced after him, firing as he went. The Arab dropped for cover, but wasn’t hit. Instead he fired back so that Garner had to drop to his belly. It was still too dark for a clear view.

“He’s under cover,” Garner called softly. “O’Reilly can’t see him. I’ll have to go in.”

Phillips didn’t argue. Garner got to his feet and ran in a zigzag. Immediately the guard opened fire. Sand spurted as the bullets hit and Garner’s own weapon was pouring a stream of bullets into the darkness. Phillips wove his way around to the side of the helicopter. Silence fell again. Phillips waited. He heard something at the escarpment, the crumbling of rock, as if a large buttress had collapsed. That thing in the tunnel, was it breaking free?

He inched forward, craning his neck. The guard was sprawled in the sand, clearly wounded, though he held his gun ready, waiting to see if Garner would come for him. There was only the soft whisper of sand shifting in a light breeze. Soon it would be dawn.

Phillips watched as the wounded man tried to swing around, back to the safety of the machine, but he must be badly injured. Phillips ran forward and the man saw him, but too late. A quick stutter of bullets finished him. Phillips went down the dune face. He saw Garner, face-down in the sand that was already starting to cover him. A quick inspection showed him that the engineer was dead. The pilot! Phillips was thinking. But he knew that to Garner, escape had never been more important than the mission. He and O’Reilly had known from the outset their chances of getting out alive had been slim.

There were more rumblings from the escarpment and Phillips saw to his horror that the thing from the underworld had pushed itself out of the cleft, raising its upper body, a grotesque fusion of bloated limbs and claws, limned in moonlight. Around it, scores of smaller creatures hopped and slithered, a nightmare host. They began the ascent of the dune and Phillips knew that he was their target. And the machine — they would tear it apart. He opened fire, shouting like a madman as the rain of bullets tore into the front rank of the monsters, shredding them like so much paper. But it was like trying to hold back the sea.

Behind him, he heard the sudden roar of the helicopter’s engine. He swung round. From the pilot’s cabin he saw a hand waving at him. O’Reilly! He’d made it down the escarpment and slipped into the helicopter while the gunfight was ensuing.

Phillips shouldered the empty weapon and raced up the sand. He swung up into the body of the craft and O’Reilly lifted it, like a huge, fat insect, into the dawn skies. Phillips clambered through to join O’Reilly.

“Jake was the expert, but I trained on these birds,” said the engineer. His face was set, a terrible mask in the poor light. “I reckon the Mauritanians know Al-Qaeda is using them, otherwise they’d have sent jets in to blow this one out of the sky. Which suits us for the time being.”

“I’m sorry about Garner.”

O’Reilly nodded grimly, masking what he must have been feeling. Phillips knew he and his buddy must have had any number of brushes with death. It would have welded a particular bond between them, strong as any pair of twins.

“Comes to us all in this game,” said O’Reilly. Whatever regrets he had, he was going to face them later. Not now, not while the job had to be finished. He looked back at the escarpment. “Let’s give these bastards a farewell present. These machines usually carry a heavy payload.”

He swung the helicopter around in a wide circle and came back to face the things that had burst from the tall cleft. The central colossus, now a dark green, splotched worm, with row upon row of serrated teeth ringing its open mouth, lifted itself higher as if it would challenge the machine and snatch it from the sky. O’Reilly knew how the firepower of the machine operated, though. He fired off two missiles and swung the nose of the helicopter up and away. The thundering blast of the explosions buffeted the aerial machine, but O’Reilly wrestled control back and swung around again.

Phillips saw the huge worm writhing on the sand, smashing rocks this way and that. Most of its head had been blasted to pulp. Around it the smaller creatures gathered and then, as one, plunged into the dying monster, feeding avidly like sharks ripping apart an injured whale.

“We’ll head east to Mali,” said O’Reilly. “They won’t like it, but we can sell them this bird and head for home down the Niger river. I’ve got friends in Niamey, the capital.”

Phillips nodded. He knew the place, which would be as safe as any in this otherwise hostile terrain.

The helicopter had long crossed Mali’s western border by the time the explosion deep in the desert of Mauritania had detonated. If anyone saw the small mushroom cloud that plumed up into the night sky, they kept it to themselves. The desert was full of storms. One more was of no concern.