"Extraction time," Tony ordered, his voice cracking. "Dig out the truck now."
The Heavy Lifter's massive tires had sunk nearly ten inches into the fine, loose basalt silt during the sandstorm and the five hour wait and the weight of the fully loaded cargo bed pressing the rubber steadily downward through the surface layer until it found resistance in the denser material below.
For an entire hour, the team worked with tactical shovels in the fading evening light, their movements sluggish and grim, each swing of a shovel handle costing more than it should have by returning the full price in muscle burn. They cleared the loose sand from around the chassis and from under the carriage, they worked in the cramped space between the truck bed and the loose sandy desert with the methodical, head down focus of people who have moved past motivation and into pure mechanical function. The sound of metal scraping stone rang across the plateau, the only music that was left in the void of the surrounding region.
Once the truck bed was clear and the truck can be moved forward, Tony ordered, "Kael, Mutt, both of you go and properly tie the two SUVs with the heavy lifter truck using those heavy steel cables. Jax, Nadia, you both go and help them tie the SUVs properly."
Kael and Mutt rigged the heavy steel cables with the help from Jax and Nadia, the metal thick and stiff in their hands, working from the anchor points under the chassis of the two dead SUVs and running the lines back to the truck's rear tow points with the grim efficiency of men who understood that the work had to be correct from the first time and here in this case, mistakes under any conditions is not acceptable as they are not in a situation to afford even a single mistake. A single mistake might make them cost the lives of the entire team.
Once both the ends are tied to each other and are ready to move, "Grind, you are at the wheel," Tony ordered and started adjusting his 30kg combat load. The weight of the gears felt like a mountain on his shoulders after the mentally tormenting hot day and the
physical hard labour of the entire evening, but he continued, "The rest of you on the truck can pack your gear because we are moving on foot and we will lean into the convoy as currently every force of Newton counts. Leo, Koji, you both also carry your own gears and let the truck relax a little by carrying the least weight that we can't on ourselves."
No one complained about the order as everyone knows their current situation very well but the 40 kilometer long journey was not a drive; it was a nightmarish pilgrimage.
The Heavy Lifter groaned under its compound burden, the turbochargers whistling a scream of protest as the engine worked against the combined weight of its own stocked resources at its back and the weight of the two four ton SUVs trailing behind it with heavy steel cables, the rear of the truck squatting low on the desert as it strained against the load. The basalt surface under the tires offered only friction but no stability, the fine silt layer shifting and compacting in ways that changed the resistance unpredictably from one meter to the next. The team lined up along the sides and rear of the convoy, spread across the vehicle's flanks and the heavy steel cables, their bodies angled forward. They didn't just walk in the desert; they leaned their entire body weight into the vehicles, hands on metal, boots finding purchase in the grit, every muscle on their bodies recruited for the single purpose of adding mass and momentum to the slow crawling machine.
"Push forward!" Tony roared, his voice dry and cracked, his boots slipping in the grit.
The collective strength of the entire team added that critical sliver of momentum the engine needed to stay under the red line. It was a brutal, inefficient and primitive way of display of force, where human bodies were used as counterweights against the physics of the loaded trucks on the soft sandy desert ground, the kind of effort that strips away everything except the immediate demand. Their hands grew raw from gripping the vibrating metal of the truck's body, the constant fine vibration of the labouring engine transmitting itself through each and every surface and into the palms and fingers wrapped around them. They marched in a rhythmic, agonizing trance, each step placed with the mechanical automaticity of bodies that had run out of willingness and were operating purely on the deeper circuitry beneath it. Every thirty minutes, the convoy would grind to a halt, the engine dropping back to idle, and the team would collapse into the sand, chests heaving, their faces masked in a thick paste of sweat and basalt dust that had dried and cracked and dried again across the course of the few agonizing hours.
Ten minutes of rest on the now cold desert with a mouthful of warm, plastic tasting water from containers that had absorbed the heat of the day and surrendered nothing of it in the colder desert night. Then the whistle blew again.
"Up! Move!" Tony continued to order the team in fear that the team might lose patience and gave up moving further so he kept ordering them to move incase they lose hope and the entire convoy gets grounded, that too at a time when they were just kilometres before reaching their final destination.
They continued to march for seven grueling hours. The basalt flats under the moonlight looked like a sea of jagged glass, the lunar light catching every fractured surface and throwing it back at a low angle that made the ground glitter coldly in every direction. The shadows the moonlight cast were long and hard edged, and they moved in the peripheral vision of tired eyes in ways that suggested shapes and depth that were not there. The dunes at the margins of the flat ground looked like shifting giants in the uncertain light, their crests dissolving and reforming as the wind moved across them and the eye refused to hold them steady. By the time the moon reached its zenith, the team was moving on pure adrenaline and simmering, toxic resentment, the kind of resentment that builds up when the body has nothing left to burn and starts consuming itself from inside. They were broken, exhausted, dehydrated, and covered in grime, their tactical boots worn down to the soles, their clothing dark with dried sweat and the pale, fine dust of the basalt flats.
But the agonizing journey finally came to an end which left the team baffled and betrayed with what they saw further ahead but ignoring them all, Tony checked his watch for the time and the watch showed.
45 hours and 50 minutes remaining.