Chapter One: Into the Sand

Matt fingered the pistol as if it weighed a ton. Ever since his father’s death, anything that could be used to kill felt this way, even if it was as light as a feather. A bump from the old, rusty jeep, snapped him out of his trance as he looked up towards his comrades. Brady sat across from him, looking down at the cold, bloodstained floor. He looked up, “hello, Hawk.”

Crap, thought Matt, who had forgotten that Brady no longer existed. “Hello, Snake.” Even though his happiness was sincere, the words dropped from his mouth like lead, nothing like the weight of war to dampen the mood, and the fact that it was his platoon’s first mission didn’t help.

The last few months had been a blur, being recruited into the military, 5 hard months of training, even though he already had arms and legs stronger than most his age. Strong arms and legs: that’s all that mattered in the military, if you had that, and you’re in, everyone else who applied got menial jobs, cooking or cleaning for the troops. Some didn’t even apply, the Government had grown desperate over the years of war against the rest of the world.
It had been only 8 years since his father’s death. He was only 14, although he had already been recruited into part of an advanced special operations team known as “X”, because the people in the team were supposedly dead. Matt had been killed during a conference between senators on who would succeed the current leader of Alona, who was in old age and sure to die in the next five years. He was the target of a now dead sniper and had been killed in the audience, dead before he hit the floor. That was one year ago.

Snake had accidentally tripped when he was 12 while in one of Alona’s many junkyards searching for anything of use, and was severely cut by the scrap metal around him. He had been pronounced dead several hours later.

Matt glanced towards the other two occupants of the jeep, Blade and Shadow, who were identical twins, and were constantly annoyed by the rest of the team’s inability to remember who was who, and as a result, usually stayed to themselves. Their entire being was shrouded in mystery, Snake and Matt knew nothing about either of them other than they both had dark black hair, angled facial features, and that they were both in their mid-twenties, making them both at least a decade older than both Matt and Brady.

The jeep bumped again, this time, making Matt hit his head on something hard. Annoyed, he shifted his pistol into his left hand and reached back and grasped what felt like metal pole, and to his horror, it came loose. How can this thing move if it can’t stay together? Hawk pulled again and was surprised to find himself flat on the floor, his pistol slid into a corner and bullets rattled around the vehicle, bouncing and clinging with every jolt.

Matt looked back and glanced at what he had grabbed: the barrel of his own gun. Matt had forgotten that he had anything else besides a pistol and spare ammunition on him, so out of curiosity, he swung the gun off his back and into his lap as Snake gathered up Matt’s bullets, piling them in his own lap.

The gun was a shiny new sniper rifle with a two foot barrel and four ten bullet clips inside a small compartment in the stock. A thermal scope was attached to the top and covered on both ends with plastic caps. A silencer was fastened to the end of the barrel. Matt frowned and twisted off the silencer, throwing it to the ground, where he was going, was no need for it.

“There you are,” said Snake as he dumped the bullets into Hawk’s lap, the bullets clinking as they fell into a lazy pile.

“Thanks,” murmured Matt, who was barely aware of the bullets in his lap, too lost in thought to pay attention to reality. With trancelike movements, he started pushing the bullets back into a clips with his thumb, and each time he was rewarded with a small click as each bullet fell into place.

“Hawk,” came the voice too close and too high pitched to be someone from X, and it took Hawk a moment to realize that it was the driver.

“Yes?”

“We’re approaching the destination, visual is available, check the front flank for bogeys.”

With a small sigh, Hawk tried to stand up in the cramped compartment, and bent back down with a bump on his head.

“There’s a opening,” said Snake, pointing to a small hatch in the ceiling. Hawk reached from a crouching position upwards towards the hatch, and unlatched, it flew open with a squeak, and landed with a thump as it hit the roof of the jeep.

Hoisting the gun through the opening, Matt removed the caps and tossed them back into the jeep, and took aim at the structure.

This was the first time that Matt had gotten a good look at the landscape that he had been thrust into: a flat, sandy desert stretched out infinitely in all directions around him. The black night sky was speckled with many softly glowing stars, alerting Matt that it would be a cold night. Matt focused back in on the compound and was surprised by what greeted him.

The Great Pyramids of Giza sat in the middle of nowhere, their 3 points pointed towards the stars, the three most famous building of a civilization, Matt knew all of this and more from his childhood, when it was expected that he would fill his father’s position as representative. The job, however, did not fit Matt at all, as if life had created them to be exact opposites, so he was gladdened when Brittany, who was now 25, took up the position for him.

Matt looked through the thermal scope, his eye was immediately barraged with a wall of white, as soon as he looked through the sight. the pyramids were completely surrounded.

“Status?” chirped Snake, who was donning himself with a black skintight suit, and black goggles, which had lenses that glowed softly in the twilight.

“I could shoot blind and hit ten of ‘em.”

“S***.”

Snake threw down his pistol and pulled out an assault rifle and extra clips out from underneath his bench, sliding the clips into various compartments inside his suit, places that Matt knew were not comfortable.

Blade and Shadow were also both in suits identical to Brady’s, otherwise Matt would have been able to notice them in the shadows without the tap on his shoulder.

Matt whirled around, and saw both Blade and Shadow standing next to each other, both holding a small pistol, no bigger than one of their hands with a silencer, and one of the two holding a small knife, dripping with some sort of clear liquid, droplets from the knife hit the floor with a rhythmic beat, which although on accident, happened to lighten the mood just the slightest, enough for the driver to bark out commands in a hushed tone, his eyes still focused on the sandy terrain ahead.

“Snake, your job is to act as a distraction for the rest of the group, Hawk, you’ll provide overwatch from the jeep, do not let him die! We need his...” The driver pauses and for a few seconds, an unnatural quiet fell over the group before the driver, who had found the words and the courage to complete his speech spoke, “...his unique ability.”

The driver glanced to Blade and Shadow, “you two,” he said, pointing a finger that bounce up and down as the jeep rumbled across the dunes, “will take advantage of Snake’s distraction and infiltrate the center pyramid, locate the United Confederacy’s Database, located somewhere inside the pyramid.”

The driver leans down, continuing to drive with his right hand, searching for something with his left, and pulls out a suitcase and tosses it to the twins, along with two pairs of sunglasses. “Everything you need to know is in that briefcase, and as for those glasses, I was told you’re familiar with them. Good luck, you’ve got 5 minutes before the only two ways you can get back in this jeep are on the way back to Alona for a debriefing, or in a body bag when Alona comes to pick you up.”

The jeep stops suddenly, or tries to stop, the tires sliding and slipping over the desert sand. In a vain, and somewhat stupid attempt to stop the uncontrollable jeep, stomped on the brake with the force that could have cracked a man’s skull open. The front of the jeep stopped dead, bucking the rest of the jeep head-over-heels into a massive sand dune, which was obliterated by the vehicle.

As the sand settled, and a very frightened lizard scampered away from the demolished dune, the jeep, which was now peacefully lying on its roof with wheels still frantically turning, propelling the car over imaginary terrain.

Muffled gunfire from inside the jeep burst through the bottom of the jeep, ripping through the metal with ease and soaring into the heavens above, leaving small, circular holes in the jeep. The injured section of the jeep was replaced with a foot and an open hole as the roughly circular slab of metal gave way, tumbling down the dune until it came to a rest at the foot of the small hill.

Matt clambered out first, trying vainly not to cut himself on the jagged edges of the makeshift door. The others had no such luck exiting the mangled vehicle. By the time everyone was out, each had various cuts and bruises, streams of red blood flowed down all of their limbs.

Snake followed Matt’s march from the jeep, followed by Blade and Shadow, the driver, who was too injured to walk, sat at the foot of the jeep with a loaded pistol and enough ammunition to last him for at least half a day. Half a day, Matt hoped that was all it would take for their mission to end and to go back home, arriving as war heroes, and able to tell his sister and mother that he was not dead, but very alive.