La Cabeza, Spanish Morocco
Merciful night fell upon the painted wastelands that composed the jagged fringe of the Sahara. Sierras of marbled yellow-brown sandstone eclipsed the descending sun, casting their long and wicked shadows across orange dune fields between the mountains. The cool silhouette of a ridge to the East rose up the craggy facets of a giant mesa situated betwixt the mountains and ridges - the mass of stone the Spanish colonizers had named La Cabeza. And in the shadows of this mighty head, Julio Zuraban made his move.
Julio, clad in one of the spare fatigues recovered from the commandeered gunship they had arrived in, drew no suspicion when he went to fetch one of the flatbed cargo buggy beneath a parking awning nearby. Five such vehicles were neatly parked underneath a roof of corrugated aluminum, sheltered from the sun and wind-driven sand. Julio selected one buggy with a number of large wooden crates and pallets strewn about the bed, and was thankful indeed to find a set of keys laying on the driver's seat. Armenian fighters had shown Julio how to hotwire vehicles during his years in self-exile as a war correspondent; but the first time he attempted it without the guidance of those crack guerrillas was what had gotten Julio into this mess in the first place. He turned the key over and breathed a sigh of relief as the buggy started without issue.
The senator-in-exile returned to the helipad and parked alongside the stolen Barracuda, its rotors still winding down from flight. Graciela, Joaquin, and the other Spaniards leapt out of the chopper and set about prying open the crates and removing their contents so that a handful of armed stowaways could hide within the crates.
"Hurry," Dejene commanded as he peered out cautiously from within the helicopter. "I have no doubt that our arrival here was noticed by air traffic control. I would not be surprised if they have sent someone to investigate why we almost had a collision with one of those airplanes." The Ethiopian's eyes darted all around, ensuring that they had not drawn any attention. If the forces in command of La Cabeza saw the African, the cover for their rescue mission would certainly be blown, and so Dejene took every precaution to keep himself out of sight of passing vehicles.
Graciela dug fistfuls of wadding material out of the largest crate while Joaquin and another Spanish collaborator whose name Julio had not yet committed to memory hefted he crate's contents - a large pump mechanism - into the Barracuda and out of sight. With the large crate empty, Dejene crawled inside with three commandeered assault rifles in his arms while Graciela replaced the top behind him.
"Cozy in there?" she teased.
"Don't worry about me," the humorless Ethiopian commando's muffled voice replied, "so long as no one saw me, all is well."
Soon thereafter, the other Spanish collaborators found cramped hiding spots nestled within large crates just as Dejene had. Graciela spent a few moments ensuring the contents of the buggy's bed did not look suspicious before taking the front seat beside Julio while Joaquin took one of the back seats.
"Everyone comfortable?" Graciela asked. A chorus of disembodied 'no's grumbled from within the crates.
"That's unfortunate, but you must be still and quiet anyway. We're in the viper's pit now, and if we attract attention at the wrong moment, it'll be the end of us."
"Now that makes me feel comfortable." Joaquin added snarkily.
"Consider it motivation to not botch this thing." Graciela responded. "Let's not waste any more time, get us in there, Julio." With that, Julio eased off the helipad and onto a gravel driveway before falling in behind a string of tanker trucks that rumbled past while merging onto a paved road that looped around the base of the mesa.
Stretching beyond the right shoulder of the road, the cool shadows of the mountains were settling quickly over the land. The brightest of the twilight stars came out of hiding now that the sun had departed the sky. Julio was glad for the cover of night; he hoped that the suspicious eyes of La Cabeza's security forces would miss unusual things about him and his companions that would give them pause in broad daylight. And beyond this expansive facility, in the deserts and shadowy ranges to the northeast, Julio knew that the Amghar and his rebel army of Tuaregs moved now against the facility as well.
The indigenous Tuareg of North Africa had been dealt more than their fair share of misfortune at the hands of the Spanish who had come to rule their land. For a decade, Spanish oil companies incited tribal warfare among the various Bedouin tribes of the region to distract them from the prospectors and exploratory oil wells spreading across the deserts. When Spanish oil interests found themselves dissatisfied with the results of engineered fratricide, they elicited mercenaries and soldiers to quietly dispose of the bothersome Saracens - but apparently not quietly enough to keep the Ethiopian spy network from noticing. Sensing a potential to incite unrest in North Africa, the Ethiopians had been sending agent-provocateurs like Dejene to advise and arm the indigenous populations for some time. Dejene himself had been in the region long enough to sense something remarkably nefarious was at work when Spanish forces began capturing the remaining Bedouin and transporting them to La Cabeza instead of simply dispatching them. Those Tuareg under the command of the Amghar, fueled by vengeance and armed with the most dangerous weaponry the Ethiopians could smuggle through the unguarded Saharan frontier, would do bloody work tonight.
But it would never be enough.
Julio happened to glance up the sheer face of the mesa. Red sandstone rose hundreds of feet into a sky pocked with dim twilight stars. Nestled within fissures in the stone, Julio saw the tri-barreled cannon batteries aiming out across the basin. Even from such distance and height, their size was manifest. If La Cabeza were an island and the surrounding desert a sea, these guns could sink an invading fleet with ease. What could a handful of disguised fighters with little combat experience and a few hundred nomads armed with mismatched hand-me-down weapons hope to do against firepower of that magnitude?
A month ago, Julio might have balked at such terrifying odds, but not tonight. As a senator, Julio had earned Alfonso Sotelo's wrath by opposing the Prime Minister's yes-men in the Spanish Senate. Fabricated claims of Julio's communist leanings forced him to leave the nation in self-exile. He had spent the past three years trying to evade capture and death, running away from the Sotelo until he could run no more. He had been disgraced, beaten, and interrogated at Sotelo's whim. After all of it, part of him wanted to run farther still from Sotelo's reach. But tonight, he had realized fate had granted him the opportunity to exact some tiny revenge for the misdeeds brought upon him and his countrymen. Julio resigned himself to a bloody death tonight, finding comfort in the fact he would take some of his would-be tormentors with him.
The convoy of tank trucks ahead of them slowed to a halt, a pressurized hiss from the brakes sounded from underneath the nondescript tanker in front of their buggy. Nondescript was an understatement - the entire truck had been painted enamel white. There were no identifying marks of any kind on the vehicle, blinking caution lights bathed the rear of the truck in intermittent pink light as it crept forward bit by bit. Graciela craned her head out beyond the buggy to see what had caused traffic to halt.
"What's going on up ahead?" asked Joaquin.
"I think we've found our entrance into the actual facility. But there's some sort of gate or checkpoint first, and they're inspecting everyone going in."
"Shit." Joaquin groaned.
Julio leaned out on his side and saw a line of tanker trucks idling as they waited for instruction from armed soldiers to proceed. Harsh fluorescent light beamed down on a checkpoint straddling a double-perimeter of chainlink fencing crowned in razorwire surrounding a tunnel leading inside the mountain. On a pad of concrete positioned before the gatehouse, Julio could see a flatbed-style truck carrying six or eight yellow forklifts nearly-mummified in ratchet straps. A soldier led a lithe, attentive Doberman on a short leash around the truck, allowing it time to sniff around the vehicle.
Julio swallowed a gulp as he gathered himself back in his seat. Another stint of self-exile suddenly seemed like an attractive option.
"There is no way we are getting through that," Julio affirmed.
"Then what the Hell do we do?" asked Joaquin.
"I only see four guards manning the checkpoint," Graciela noted. "If we kill them, gun it down that tunnel..."
"What about that blast door?" Joaquin pointed out a massive slab of concrete suspended above the roof of the tunnel into the mesa. "First sign of trouble, they're going to close that door down on us. If that happens, we're stuck between every Ejercito soldier in North Africa a hard-ass place."
Despite the inspections, the vehicles ahead were filtering through with surprising speed. As the truck directly ahead of theirs was beckoned forward, Graciela decided a contingency plan would be necessary.
"If you hear two stamps, like this..." Graciela loudly stamped her boots against the metal floorboard in quick succession, "then our cover is blown and we'll have to go in with guns blazing." Graciela explained to the stowaways hidden behind her in the crates.
"Understood." Dejene's voice came from within his pinewood sarcophagus.
After a few short minutes, the truck ahead of them was cleared to pass into the bowels of La Cabeza, and Julio's cargo buggy was beckoned forward. He gulped and eased slowly into the inspection area, into the focus of the fluorescent mast lamps, and stopped when a stoic-faced soldier armed with an assault rifle extended his open palm and signaled for him to stop.
Once Julio had brought the vehicle to a stop, the soldier approached the back of the buggy. He gave a bored look to the haphazardly placed crates in the bed and made his way to Julio. "I'll need the manifest for all these items," the guard stated, drawing a circle around the crates with a finger.
"Ah yes... the manifest. Right, of course," Julio stalled as he dug between the seats desperately for any sheet of paper that might be the one the guarded wanted.
"You either have it or you don't. Where is it?"
Before the guard could call over the dog's handler, another soldier emerged from the gatehouse, this one armed with a clipboard and pen rather than a FE-74.
"Excuse me, ma'am." The new soldier said to Graciela. "You are Capitana Sandoval, correct? Here for the audit process?"
Captain Sandoval? Audit? Julio's instinctual reaction was to express that he knew nothing about these things, but Graciela knew to take advantage of this most unlikely reprieve.
"I am her." Graciela lied without a moment's hesitation.
"My apologies, Captain. I didn't mean to delay you. I understand you're already running late." The new soldier turned to the guard busy accosting Julio about the manifest documents. "Let them through, they're here for the audit."
"Hell, why didn't you say so?" the armed soldier asked, suddenly becoming almost friendly with with Julio. "Go ahead it's fine. We don't need to be holding Dr. Guijon up any longer."
Not about the question the circumstances by which they had avoided the vehicle inspection, Julio drove through the perimeter fence as quickly as he could without drawing suspicion. As their buggy passed through into the cavernous tunnel leading downward into the the earth beneath La Cabeza, Joaquin spoke up once they were out of earshot of any soldiers.
"How the Hell did you know what they were talking about?"
"I don't." Graciela admitted. "They mistook me for someone else, but I'm glad they did because we came very close to being found out. Now, we need to make our way somewhere secluded, get out, and find out where they've taken the prisoners.
"I disagree," Julio asserted. "The prisoners can wait. But from the way those soldiers let us through without a second thought, Dr. Guijon can't. We need to see what he wants from us and find out what he knows about this place."
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