C18 Chapter Eighteen

Commander Williams’ self-imposed deadline had come and gone. Convinced that the men of Echo had met an untimely demise, Mason had no choice but to move on to the next phase of the plan that he and the commander had agreed upon before the other’s departure.

He gave the necessary orders and fifteen minutes later all five of his squads were suited up and assembled outside the command center, ready for action. He intended to lead them into the base himself, descending into the tunnels that Echo had uncovered below, and mount a frontal assault on whatever they found there. Summaries of what they had discovered were already on their way to headquarters by high speed courier, so in the event they failed the next unit wouldn’t have to start over from the beginning, but Mason was convinced that if he waited any longer whatever it was inside that base would only grow stronger and that was a chance he couldn’t afford to take.

The men mounted the waiting HWMMVs, weapons at the ready, and Mason gave the order to move out. One by one, the armored vehicles turned and headed in the direction of the gates.

But it was not to be.

As Mason’s men drew close to the entrance of the base, the strange storm that they had been watching for hours moved to intercept them. Mason had no other words for it; it was as if the storm had a living presence of its own, that it moved with intelligent forethought and intention. The black funnel cloud roared down the main thoroughfare toward them, kicking up waves of dust and dirt that mimicked a haboob, the powerful sandstorms of the Arabian desert. In seconds, visibility was reduced to a few feet and then down to nothing. Radio communication between the vehicles died and each unit found itself on its own, unable to see and as a result, unable to move forward at any decent rate of speed without endangering those in the vehicle before them.

Mason ordered his driver to leave the road and try to go around the storm, but the howling wind and blowing sand made that next to impossible. While the HWMMVs were designed for strenuous off-road travel, the land around them was crisscrossed with steep ravines and treacherous sinkholes. If they couldn’t see, they couldn’t maneuver and driving blindly into such an obstacle would ruin their day for certain.

In the end, Mason had no choice but to give the order for his driver to turn around and do his best to get the back to base, hoping that the drivers of the other vehicles would have the initiative to do the same. They had no defense against the power of the storm and pushing forward would just result in the useless deaths of his men. He would regroup at the command center and wait for the storm to die down before making another attempt.

If they were still alive, Echo was on their own.