After five minutes of searching, Alex gave up. Naturally, the GPS and its wrist brace were tan coloured to camouflage them against the sandy backdrop. Of course, no one had accounted for the need to find a yellow bracelet in a sand dune.
The wind had really picked up, and the sand whipped against Alex's pants as he considered his next move. Without his GPS or earpiece, he had no idea whether mission control knew where he was or had even realised that he was in trouble.
For all he knew, his indicator could still be producing a signal, and it probably was, given that it was intended for rugged terrain such as this, while bouncing along in the wind, suggesting that he was moving further and further away.
No, what he needed to do was to rendezvous with K-Unit, and get extracted with them too. He wasn't going to risk being stuck in the Tunisian desert for the rest of his probably short life.
Once he had made the decision to move, Alex did so quickly. Tacking East so as not to approach from the same direction he had departed in, he then began to move towards the fort, which he could still see over the crests of the dunes.
He paused at the border between the end of the sand dunes and the plateau upon which the fort was set, wondering quite how he was going to cover the distance without being spotted. His question was answered for him.
There was a serious of deafening detonations from inside the walls of the fort, but no discernible damage. Alex knew what was happening though, and he only had to wait a few seconds for the massive plumes of grey smoke to appear, rising over the walls and enveloping the entire structure.
K-Unit had been given newly developed flash canisters that were prototype hostage rescue equipment. This was their operational debut, and Alex didn't think it was hasty to suggest they'd be very successful.
From his vantage point, he saw four shapes descend on parachutes into the structure, unseen by the forts occupants. K-Unit had arrived.
The men on the walls were facing outwards, trying to avoid inhaling any of the smoke, when Alex saw one of them glance in his direction and point.
Alex made his decision, and suddenly he was up and running, unhooking the AK-47 from his shoulder, and bringing the sights up to his eye, lining up the shot. Safety disengaged, he pulled the trigger, only to be met with resistance.
The stupid thing was jammed which would never have happened with the old Kalashnikov models, clearly the sand having got the better of the cheap imitation. Alex cursed the mercenaries for not taking better care of their weapons, and tossed it aside as he ran.
The men on the walls had spotted him, but the smoke was severely inhibiting their ability to react to the threat. Alex heard the unmistakeable noise of suppressed gunfire, and realised that he was being provided with the perfect cover; the SAS were doing their job from the inside out.
He sprinted across the sand, removing his Beretta from his pants pocket as he did. The SAS unit may have lost the element of subtlety, but Alex was still an unknown quantity in the fight, and he intended to make use of that fact.
The only entrance available to him, however, was the ruined front gate, and as soon as he reached the vertical sight-line cover of the forts walls, ensuring that no one would look out and see him unless they happened to lean over and stare straight down, he headed for the front entrance.
The smoke was billowing out the front entrance, but it was dissipating quickly enough that Alex could bearably enter the sandstone structure.
He knew that the block that had been designed for housing prisoners during the Second World War lay just to the right of him, and moving under the arch of the gatehouse, he made for it.
All the fort's occupants were decidedly preoccupied with the goings-on that were resulting in several of their peers dying, and so no one was watching the proverbial front door.
The sound of gunfire was deafening now, as the mercenaries emptied their assault rifle rounds into thin air, or so Alex hoped. He was a little worried though; just from the sheer number of weapons going off, K-Unit was heavily outnumbered.
The wooden door to the prison bunker was closed, but Alex had no intention of trying his luck through another front door. Instead he skirted around the building, and using a rubbish pile at the rear of the building, clambered onto the roof.
Dimly, through the evaporating smoke, he could see a figure on the roof, firing wildly into the distance, clearly panicked. Alex stole up upon him, and quickly and quietly put him out of his misery.
Ignoring the corpse completely, he set about hunting, until he located what he was searching for; an air vent. Saharan buildings needed constant airflow, and as a result, usually had large rectangular holes just below the roof line to stop the hot air pooling on the ceiling.
Alex swung himself down, and slid feet first into the building. He straightened almost immediately, and raised his Beretta, squeezing off a shot into the back of the head of the man who he had guessed was covering the doorway. The thud was muffled as the body slumped to the stone floor.
It was extremely dark inside the prison block, the only light available being that provided by the slits that had been cut into the roof. The building was all one room, and clearly anyone else who had been in there had departed at the first signs of trouble. Alex spied the cells at the back of the room, and made for them.
"What's going on?"
Jeremy Mendelssohn's voice was weak, but there was no mistaking the British lilt; Alex had found the cargo.
Grabbing a filthy rag from the table opposite the cell, he made himself a cowboy bandana to cover the lower part of his face and mask his voice. He didn't want to give himself away as a 17 year old boy rather than a man, because what he needed in that moment were for his instructions to be followed without question.
"Stand back," advised the muffled voice of Alex Rider, as he drew his pistol, and fired a single shot vertically down through the rusty lock on the cell door. Then it was a simple matter of a firm kick to shatter the half blown off bolt.
Jeremy Mendelssohn showed all the signs of having spent a month as a hostage. He was wearing the ragged remains of a suit, but the jacket was nowhere to be seen and the shirt, pants and shoes were torn and scuffed almost beyond recognition.
His skin was sallow and pale, as four weeks without any sunlight will do, and he had clearly lost a lot of weight. The members of his entourage were huddled at the back of the cell, and Alex could only see bright eyes shining back at him. They were clearly all very weak.
"Is anyone seriously injured? To the extent where they cannot walk?" Alex asked loudly, worried that his job was about to get a lot more difficult. To his credit, Jeremy Mendelssohn seemed to be holding it together and he shook his head weakly.
Mendelssohn had been assigned priority one status, meaning his survival was paramount to that of all the rest of his entourage put together, but Alex had no desire to leave any of them behind.
"Alright, everybody on their feet!" Alex commanded, as the group of six individuals struggled to stand. "There is going to be no limousine waiting at the door to take you home ladies and gentlemen! We are heading for the cover of the dunes directly opposite the front entrance to this fortress. You will move in single file, and you will make every effort to minimise your footprints. Understood?"
Alex knew that physical exertion would be a struggle for many of them given how little movement they had been allowed in the past month, but he wasn't going to allow them to stop and feel sorry for themselves. He couldn't afford to, their lives depended on it.
"Alright, Mr. Mendelssohn, you will take the front end of this line, I will bring up the rear. Concentrate on staying an arm's length away from the person in front of you, keep your head down, and watch those footprints!"
The minimization of footprints was an old tracking trick, albeit an extremely basic one, the idea being that any search party would be looking for evidence of six people, not one or two like Alex hoped it would appear. However basic it was, anything that would buy them some time could potentially be the difference between getting hunted down or collected by the chopper.
Alex rushed to the door, and opened it just a crack. Seeing no one around he opened it fully, and ordered the group to acclimatise their eyes to the bright light. He gave them only thirty seconds, because it was all they could afford. He pointed to the main gate, and pushed Jeremy Mendelssohn towards it.
Every step seemed to take an eternity for Alex, as the civilians seemly shuffled their way towards the entrance. The pace was glacial in Alex's mind, and his eyes swivelled constantly, willing all the people with guns to concentrate of K-Unit for the time being.
His luck was holding, and they made it out of the entrance, as the gunfire from the ramparts failed to lessen. K-Unit were both giving and receiving an absolute shit-storm of live fire from everywhere it seemed, but Alex couldn't afford to worry about them. He had enough on his plate already.
They were only yards outside the wall when the woman in front of Alex tripped and tumbled into the sand. She was wearing a torn blouse and a pencil skirt, with high heeled shoes that had been snapped at the heel so they were virtually impossible to move in. She lay face down in the sand, desperately trying to raise herself, forlornly scrabbling as the lack of a solid surface betrayed her.
Alex cursed, and bent down, and in a fluid motion he had her in a fireman's hold and was rushing to catch the back of the line of escapees that were slowly approaching the perimeter of sand dunes. The woman knocked uncomfortably against his side, and he could hear her moans of pain as he ran, but Alex soldiered on.
It had taken forever, but the cover of the dunes was suddenly at their toes, and Alex shouted at them to move deeper, further away from the fortress. At this point he took to the front, pushing through the treacherous sand while carrying the extra weight.
He would not let them rest until they had put some more distance between themselves and the walls of their place of captivity, striking out into the desert. Eventually, when another member of the entourage collapsed, Alex stopped the group. He could only carry one person at a time.
Alex found a relatively flat spot, and instructed those who could still move to scour it for any notable hazards in preparation for the helicopter extract. Under the sweltering heat however, he found that he was the only one who could force himself to slowly move across the plateau to make it safe to land upon. The rest were either unconscious, or on the path towards blacking out.
The thudding of rotor wings in the sky is deafening when it comes close, and Alex heard them coming a mile off. Waving his hands in the air, he was worried that they wouldn't spy him, standing on the tallest dune he could locate. It wasn't long though, before the seven black specks were registered by the helicopters pilots, and Alex sprinted down the dune, and waved them onto the safe landing spot.
The RAF Chinook that had been selected for the operation had been stripped down to its bare bones to give it the maximum range possible. There were no interior fixtures, the equipment crane and racks had all been removed, the sensory relays had been stripped down, and only the only personnel onboard were the two pilots.
The helicopter had refuelled just before it had entered Tunisian airspace on a US aircraft carrier that was enforcing the no fly zone in Libyan airspace in response to the revolution that was occurring, but there was no chance of a repeat performance on the return journey. The US would not risk in international incident in a situation it stood to gain nothing from. Especially since they had signed a UN resolution forbidding the utilization of ground forces.
Alex shielded his eyes as the sand was whipped up by the propellers, and he located the body of Jeremy Mendelssohn and hauled his dazed form into the cargo hold. The second pilot helped Alex move all of the now collapsed escapees into the helicopter one by one as the blades continued to whip up the sand dunes into a fierce and stinging storm.
If either of the pilots register that Alex was a 17 year old boy, they didn't show it. Instead Alex rushed to the cockpit of the helicopter.
"Are you in contact with K-Unit?" he demanded.
"Yessir. They are pinned down apparently, inside the structure. Here's a spare commlink," he offered, holding out a headset.
Alex took the head set and rammed it onto his head desperately.
"This is Cub, speak to me, this is Cub, come in!"
"Cub, this is Mary Poppins, reading you loud and clear. Well done on securing the cargo, extraction will commence immediately. Over."
Anger coursed through Alex's veins. His fury was uncontrollable.
They were suggesting that K-Unit should be left to fend for themselves. In the middle of the desert. In a country where they weren't supposed to be, without transport, food or water. It was a death sentence.
"No!" shouted Alex, yelling into his microphone, "I will not leave them behind. Do you hear me? I will not let this helicopter leave without K-Unit!"
"That's a negative Cub; tier one cargo takes priority, that's regulation."
"I will shoot anyone who tries to make this helicopter take off!" Alex shouted at the pilots, who were suddenly looking nervous.
"Cub, this is the army protocol, as designated in the mission op! Insubordination will not be tolerated! Mendelssohn has been designated tier one priority by the National Securities Advisor who is overseeing this operation himself!"
Alex was sure he was going to commit murder if he ever got back to London. The National Securities Advisor had raced to the top of his shit list in the space of a week.
"Fuck Matthews-Prosser!" screamed Alex furiously, looking slight deranged, "I'll kill him if I make it out of this shit hole! I'll tear his limbs off and then skin him alive. You never leave a man behind!"
And then for the second time today, Alex destroyed a radio system. Except this time it was because he threw it on the floor and stomped on it until it was almost powder.
Turning to the pilots, he demanded that he was given a direct channel to K-Unit, the emergency only channel. They did as he said, the pilot's hand shaking uncharacteristically. They must have thought he was completely mental he mused slightly more lucidly as he was assaulted through the earpiece with the sounds of explosions and gunfire.
"Wolf, Wolf! Do you read me? Come in, it's Cub!" he tried to shout over the din.
Even over the thud of the rotor blades, the sounds of the battle that was occurring inside the fortress walls was clear for all to hear, with or without the headset.
"Cub? Where the fuck are you?"
"Taxi's here Wolf, and I've got the girls. Time to get them home!" he shouted back, and he thought he heard a characteristic chuckle from Bear.
"Alright they're pulling back slightly; now that you've extracted the hostages, give us 10 minutes to get out of this mess! Bear, hostages are clear; we're a go with the explosives!" Wolf cried as Alex heard Bear cheer in the background
Alex smirked before he replied.
"I'll keep the champagne on ice lads, don't worry."
The image of three members of K-Unit, with Bear carrying Eagle over his massive shoulders, sprinting away from the sandstone structure as a series of massive explosions ripped through the desert air was a sight for sore eyes.
Alex couldn't help but feel relieved as he saw that Eagle was still lucid, having taken a couple of stray shots to the leg, nothing that couldn't be fixed. Similarly, Wolf had a bullet lodged in his shoulder that he'd failed to mention to anybody, and Snake had been the luckiest of the lot of them, with an ugly looking gash where a ricochet had apparently grazed his neck, taking a chunk with it. All of them had shrapnel wounds and scrapes and lacerations all over their bodies, but as the chopper lifted off, the pain was numbed by the sensation of triumph and no small portion of relief.
Like the professionals they were, Alex and K-Unit set about tending to the civilians first, handing them bottles of water with the instruction to the lucid ones to drink them in dribbles despite the temptation to pour it down their parched throats. Their bodies were weak from their captivity and malnourishment and mistreatment had to be undone carefully.
When it was established that none of the civilians had suffered serious injury, Alex and Bear strapped each one onto one of the six gurneys that had been bolted to the floor of the chopper to transport the exhausted hostages in a manner that would best allow them to rest and recuperate.
Wolf, Snake and Eagle were sitting at the rear of the chopper, tending to their own far more serious wounds with tweezers for the shrapnel, and bottles of extremely painful disinfectant for their more serious wounds.
Outside, the special long-range Boeing CH-47 Chinook was thundering across the Tunisian desert, heading straight for the coast, barely a quarter of an hour into its almost 10 hour, 1168 mile journey back to Gibraltar.
The entire operation had seemed like it had taken a lifetime to Alex, but in reality it had only just clicked over the half an hour mark by the time the chopper had lifted off. It had been an unreserved success, and although the Tunisian air force would scramble their own jets, it would make no difference; no one would register the unmarked helicopter, flying below radar level, exiting Tunisian airspace until it was far too late.
Don't know what to say really... bet you were surprised though, if you're still following this story. Depending on whether you are, I may very well get another chapter out sometime this week. Although I may have said that before and been wrong, but I'm about 2000 words in so it's looking good. Also I know a few of you expressed a distaste for all this army stuff, but this is the end of it I promise. I just wanted to involve K-Unit because they're not going to appear in his main mission. As always, leave me a review, probably telling me how much you hate me for not updating :)