Issue 21 – Onwards
- Cairo, July 15, 2039
They landed after sunset. The blaze of the Egyptian sun in July gave way to stifling, humid heat. Below them, Cairo sparkled like a million jewels scattered across the land – the cradle of many civilizations shining undiminished into the night.
The journey, to their surprise, was completely uneventful. There were few organized air forces left operational in the world and they did not stray eastward enough to provoke the anger of one of the last nations left standing in the region – Israel. Nobody was foolish enough to mess with the Israelis, an unwritten rule of the mercenary and corporate world.
Egypt too, still formally existed as a sovereign nation, but the droughts and subsequent famine of the early 2030s made it nearly completely dependent on food imports, for which the once proud country was forced to pay with land, freedoms and produce. Even now, Cairo was the seat of several large north-African corporation branches, the chief amongst them being Suez Incorporated, one of the major Clayburn Industries trade partners.
Seagrove sighed at the thought. If Clayburn hadn’t known that they escaped him from Istanbul, he surely knew by now.
In the end, Ibrahim came through and managed to convince the leader of the Black Eagles, the company that owned a number of C-17 planes, to carry them across the sea, but the price was steep and left the already struggling Seahawks with dangerously low reserves. Food and fuel were to be had in Cairo, but one must have Credits for that and Credits were one thing that the Seahawks currently lacked.
To solve the unfavorable situation, an equally difficult decision was made by Adrian Blackwood to ditch the unit’s remaining Leopards tanks and all support vehicles. A considerable portion of Seahawk men chose to remain in Istanbul as free mercenaries and with the Seahawk strength reduced to less than 300 men, there was nobody to operate that many trucks and combat vehicles anyway. The Leopard 2 tanks bore the brunt of the battle during the escape from the Balkans and were worn out with little prospect of finding the needed amount of spare parts south or west of Europe.
The American vehicles, however, were still in use in northern Africa after the massive sales of the late 2010s before the economic collapse in the region. The plan, therefore, was to take the Stryker fire support vehicles, Bradleys, and the Abrams tanks to Cairo with the hope of purchasing spare parts, trucks, and supplies after the whole operation.
They realized the plan failed after the planes had landed under the cover of the night only to be immediately attacked on the ground by the Cairo airport security – the same security Ibrahim had assured them could be bribed to look away while the whole unit mustered and headed out. They must want them really badly, Seagrove thought grimly. The trap was well-prepared too – the C-17s had to make several trips to haul the entire unit across the sea and the security forces, bolstered with several heavy vehicles, waited until everyone was on the ground. Luckily for the Seahawks, the level of training the security forces had was far below their own and the assault was repelled, although not without losses.
The C-17 pilots immediately bolted – in fact not a single shot was fired at them during their take-off. Perhaps this whole thing was a complicated set-up by Clayburn? Or perhaps Ibrahim had double-crossed them? After all, staying in Istanbul as a designated corporate enemy was not good for business, or health. Seagrove shook his head as he watched the men and women huddled around a table in one of the airport hangars. The wrecks of the security force vehicles were smoldering outside and the bodies of the men were being piled up by the bloodied and dirty Seahawks. Everyone around the table bore some kind of light wound, a testament of the battle’s ferocity. Blackwood, seemingly unfazed by the whole ordeal, just started to explain the next phase of the operations. Numb from the tiredness, Seagrove forced himself to focus.
“....and after this warm welcome, we can’t stay in Cairo for long. We’re leaving a few men under the command of commander Sokolov,” he nodded at the man next to him who had the same air of calmness as him, “to gather as many supplies as we can and get the lay of the land. The rest of us will head out east. The tanks won’t last long in the sand, don’t push them too hard. “
The others nodded, but Kathryn Grey asked what seemed to have been on everyone’s mind.
To be continued...
