Hard Rain (36 page)

‘Vin, you’ll strike China any time now,’ she called out. ‘It’s a dead end.’

I thought, no one bothers hiding stuff that doesn’t need to be hidden. And we were given these coordinates for a reason. I gave her the shorthand version: ‘Give it another ten.’

Masters shrugged. I shifted the digging site a little and went to work. Five loads later, something came up with the earth. Masters stood, then walked down the road for a better look. I hung out of the cabin doorway.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘Looks like a piece of steel.’ It was six inches long, slightly concave, and one side appeared to have a rusted iron liner. It exuded that unusual chemical smell. I coughed. ‘There’s corrosion of some type on it.’

‘Bring up some more,’ Masters suggested.

‘Now, there’s an idea,’ I said, giving her suggestion the smile it deserved.

I hopped back behind the controls, deposited the load off to one side, and went back for another. The bucket sunk into the trench, the tines
bit and the machine began to baulk and tug at something with a lot less give than the earth. The arm shook and jolted, and whatever was causing the resistance suddenly broke free. I pulled it up. Another chunk of steel similar to the last piece, only much larger. And from what I could see, this stuff had numbers – a code – stencilled on it. I set the throttle to idle and climbed down for a closer inspection. I wiped the earth away from the stencilling while Masters trotted down the road again and picked her way across the tailings.

The flat snarl of a big chopper suddenly filled the sky overhead. I looked up and wondered why Robear and his Lynx had returned.

‘What have we got?’ she asked.

More corroded concave steel with an unidentified smell. And then a thought hit me. I jumped up onto the backhoe and pulled down my backpack. I dug around until I found what I was looking for and wrenched it out – a yellow box the size of a house brick.

‘Oh, shit.’ It suddenly hit Masters, too. ‘That smell – it has to be uranyl fluoride and hydrogen fluoride. That’s a HEX storage cylinder down here.’

I flicked the on switch and the little yellow box borrowed from the old guy back in the Grand Bazaar went nuts. I tossed Masters my pack and said, ‘The camera. We need a record of that serial number.’

I walked the floor of the pit like it was a crime scene, looking for the hot spots.

Masters’ camera flashed half-a-dozen times.

The hottest spot in the entire area turned out to be the soles of my boots. ‘We need a sample of this mud,’ I told her.

‘Use your camelback,’ Masters suggested.

It was nearly out of water anyway. I unscrewed the lid and used it to ladle a few pounds of wet earth into the bladder. ‘How radioactive is this stuff?’ I asked.

‘It’s not the radioactivity we have to worry about. It’s the toxicity. We’re okay, but we’ll need to shower.’

‘Together?’

BANG!

Masters and I ducked. A chunk of the sky had fallen and hit the backhoe’s steel roof. It slid off, bumped into the backhoe’s arm and slumped into the fresh hole I’d just dug.

‘
Jesus! What –’ Masters exclaimed, shocked.

‘Shit!’ I added.

‘Who . . .? That’s, that’s the guy!’

Masters was right. It was the guy – the one who’d palmed us the coords for this place. He looked a lot better the last time I saw him, when both sides of his head were where they should be. In the interim, he’d apparently taken a soft-nosed round through his left earhole, not to mention a half twist with pike off a 160-foot diving board onto a plate of rigid quarter-inch steel.

The helicopter hovered overhead and slowly manoeuvred to one side of the hole. I got a good look at it this time. It wasn’t a Lynx. It banked hard over and suddenly the world was full of .50-calibre slugs sparking and ricocheting off the rock walls. Hot brass casings rained down around us and steamed on the moist earth.

The burst of fire stopped as the chopper repositioned itself for another crack at us.

‘That’s Tawal’s,’ Masters yelled as she went for cover behind the backhoe’s meaty, water-filled tyre. ‘It’s the helo we saw parked on the ramp, the Eurocopter.’

The sun flashing off its sparkling, virgin-white fuselage eliminated any doubt. Examining its profile, I noticed what appeared to be a large bulk attached to the machine gun’s barrel.

‘Oh, shit – there’s a CROWS system up there,’ I said, pulling out my side-arm and checking the magazine.

‘That’s bad,’ Masters said.

‘Could be worse.’

‘How?’

‘Looks like whoever’s operating the gun can’t get the angle on the barrel depressed far enough. That Browning can’t get a clean shot at us.’

‘Jesus, Vin. What’s the difference between dying from a hit with a ricochet or a clean shot?’

‘Hell of a time for riddles, lady,’ I replied as we ran for cover beside the John Deere.

The pit filled with the roar of high-velocity lead smacking off the walls. The cabin above us exploded in a quick succession of bangs, showering us with granules of safety glass. A couple of ricochets tumbled too close for comfort past my head, warbling on their merry yet deadly way. The brass casings followed, tinkling musically as they bounced off the backhoe’s roof. A regular symphony. What to do? We could just wait this out, hope for Christie to turn up. But, for all we knew, the helo was merely the advance guard. Now that the thought occurred to me, I was sure Tawal would have a few Humvees on hand, manned by Jarred and his flunkies, itching to do something other than slope around air-conditioned corridors smiling at cameras.

Overhead, the helicopter moved in a lazy circle, hovering around the rim of the pit. It had to be difficult for the pilot and gunner to coordinate with each other and get the craft positioned just right for the kill. And we were presenting a static target. If we were mobile, keeping a bead on us might prove beyond pilot and gunner – at least until the barrel didn’t have to be depressed almost vertically downwards. Once we were clear of the pit, and within the CROWS’s operational limits, its advanced sensors and tracking would take over. I considered the options: stay put or go. On the move, we were ducks. But at least we weren’t sitting ducks.

I leapt back up into the driver’s seat and goosed the throttle. ‘C’mon. Time to go,’ I shouted. I retracted the backhoe’s support posts and secured the rear bucket as Masters climbed up and crouched in the space between the driver’s seat and the wheel guard.

‘By the way,’ she said, ‘I concur.’

‘What?’

‘I agree. We’re better off making a run for it. I’m just pleased you weren’t going to argue about it.’

‘Right . . .’

‘What about him?’ Masters asked, gesturing at the remains of the guy whose name we didn’t even know, who’d risked his life to blow the lid off Tawal’s multi-billion-dollar scam, and lost.

‘We’ll worry about him if we don’t end up joining him,’ I said, raising the machine’s bucket high overhead.

Fifty-calibre rounds zinged and fizzed around us, holing the guards and sparking off the engine’s crankcases. Water sprayed from the punctured rear tyres. Masters made herself as small as possible and buried her head under an arm. A round that missed my face by inches made a noise like a door buzzer. I tried not to think about what would happen if either of us was hit by a tumbling, misshapen .50-calibre round moving at close to the speed of sound.

I retracted the stabilisers, put the machine into second gear, gunned the throttle and dropped the clutch. The backhoe did a massive wheelie, the front axle pawing at the air, and accelerated towards the stone wall of the pit.

‘Shiiiit!’ Masters yelled.

With the engine revs nudging the red line, the beast was a handful to control. The rear bucket bounced off the dirt with a jarring crash and brought the front wheels back down into contact with the ground. Just in time. I wrenched the steering wheel, the front tyres bit into the dirt and the machine turned, following the road as it took us clockwise up towards the light. And the prowling spectre of Tawal’s gun platform.

I stamped on the gas again and the rear wheels lost traction with the massive torque pumped into them by the turbocharged diesel. I fed in the opposite lock and wrestled back some control. I checked the sky. As I’d hoped, the pilot was having trouble positioning the chopper and the Browning was on the wrong side to get off a burst, angled away from us. The helo pivoted in the air to bring the M2 around, but by then we’d moved to the far side of the pit and out of the gun’s sights. In fact, the Browning had not been fired since we started moving.

‘It’s working,’ Masters shouted.

I relaxed a little. Bad move. The rear wheels suddenly gained some extra unexpected traction, catching me by surprise. We were headed for the pit’s vertical rock wall. I swerved. The rear wheel came around like a pendulum and smashed into the rock, which bounced us towards the edge of the road and a drop-away that was now more than seventy feet.
I swerved again in the opposite direction and somehow managed to avoid the edge of the road and a drop to certain death.

‘You want me to drive?’ Masters yelled.

I ignored her, fed in more throttle, and the backhoe stormed up the hill, gathering speed. ‘When we reach the lip of the pit, speed’s going to be our best friend,’ I said, thinking aloud. From the corner of my eye, I saw Masters’ knuckles whiten further as she renewed her grip on the machine.

The exit to the pit was fifty yards ahead. The road steepened and straightened a little. I red-lined the engine and shifted up a gear. The backhoe surged forward, water spraying from the tyres as if they were giant showerheads. I lowered the bucket to give the machine a little better balance. The helicopter passed low overhead as we roared out of the pit, launched into midair by the ramp. Ahead and below, a white Humvee with a roof-mounted CROWS had been positioned to block our escape. Through its windshield I caught a glimpse of Jarred’s eyes, wide and startled, a moment before we landed on the vehicle, crushing it.

The backhoe bounced off it and the thing bucked and skidded left and right as I fought the steering wheel. Jarred’s Humvee suddenly exploded in our wake, the heat and the blast wave rolling over us. No time to look.

‘Where’s the chopper?’ I shouted.

‘Coming up on our six o’clock. Don’t drive in a straight line.’

‘Thanks for the advice.’

‘Vin, there’s another Humvee . . . Two of them – up there.’ She released a handhold long enough to point them out.

They were tracking the edge of the wadi, heading in the opposite direction to us. At this point, the wadi’s sides were too steep and rocky for them to attempt a descent without the risk of a roll-over. The Humvees would have to go further down towards the pit and turn in there.

‘Are we going back to the cave?’ Masters screamed over the roar of our engine and the thump of the Eurocopter’s blades.

‘Unless you’ve got a better idea . . .’

More .50-calibre slugs began clanging into the backhoe’s trenching arm, which protected our backs. The gun platform was in a sideslip, coming up directly behind us, now with a clear line of sight.

‘I’ll hit the brakes and it’ll fly right by,’ I said. I stomped on the pedal and the whole machine shuddered. The wheels locked and slipped as the tyres fought for traction. At the last instant, I turned into the cave, the backhoe teetering on two wheels for a frightening instant before righting itself with a thump. It rolled forward slowly and came to a stop between the Caterpillars and the smaller backhoe. The rear tyres oozed water and the motor steamed. Hydraulic fluid dripped steadily onto the floor. It was like a half-dead animal.

‘I
’ll hit the brakes and it’ll fly right by?’ Masters yelled – pissed – climbing down.

‘Worked in the movie.’

‘That was a
movie
, Vin! Jesus, you could’ve killed us.’

‘We’re still breathing, aren’t we?’ I hopped across to the nearest bulldozer, jumped onto the ground beyond it and picked up a couple of empty plastic water bottles. ‘Hey,’ I called out, ‘if you see another one of these, I need it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because a couple of Berettas up against three Brownings, and who knows what else, won’t cut it. The odds require a little evening up.’

We didn’t have much time, not enough to explain. Tawal’s chopper was close; from the hard grind of its turbines and the dirt-filled wind blast from the main rotor blades filling the cave, it was hovering just outside, no doubt covering the entrance, attempting to keep us bottled up inside. In a minute, two at the most, the Humvees would arrive, the cave would be stormed, and no corny lines from
Top Gun
would save us.

I handed Masters my M9, exchanging it for an old Evian bottle. ‘Might be worth taking a few shots at the bird, just to show them we’re not completely toothless.’

Masters nodded. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To make a few surprises. You got spare mags?’ I asked.

‘Two,’ she called out at my back, as I ran for the room with the red door busted off the wall. I cut up one of the bottles with my knife, made a funnel, and used it to fill the other bottle with ammonium nitrate prills, almost to the top. From memory, the ideal ratio of prills to fuel oil was around fifteen to one. I tipped in about the right amount of fuel oil. Outside, I heard Masters firing off the handguns.

‘Vin!’ I heard her call out. ‘Need help here!’

The box containing the fuses was open. Damn: most were of the ISFE variety – igniter safety electric fuses. I lifted out the tray. Beneath it was a roll of Primacord plus a few non-electric delay detonators.

‘Smokin’,’ I said aloud, and went to work quickly.
Carefully
.

The big backhoe went out first, heading west, still spraying water, bucket raised high in defiance. The vehicle had hit twenty miles an hour by the time it reached the sloping sides of the wadi and turned, veering back and heading in the direction of the pit. The weight I’d attached to the bottom of its steering wheel was doing its job, keeping the vehicle behaving in a generally controlled fashion so it appeared that the dummy made up of drums and wearing my ABU was in control.

One of the Humvees accelerated off to run it down, the roof-mounted CROWS Browning hurling several hundred rounds at it. The helo took the bait too and hovered off to one side to join the Humvee in pumping as much copper-sheathed lead as possible into the dummy propped up behind the wheel. I kept my eyes glued to my watch and prayed that those non-electric delay detonators were as accurate as the explosives folks I knew said they were.

My heart raced. ‘In three . . . two . . . one . . .’

Masters stood on the gas pedal and the tyres on the small John Deere squealed and spun momentarily on the concrete floor. We shot out of the cave and into the sunlight, heading to the right. Masters hit the brakes almost immediately, broadsiding into the second Humvee
before it could get out of the way. We skidded around and the trenching bucket smashed into its windshield.

‘Go, go, go!’ I said.

As we separated from the Humvee, I pitched one of the water bottles through the hole in its windshield, throwing it hard. Five seconds, four, three . . .

A hand appeared through the hole, clutching the bottle, about to throw it. And then,
BOOOM!
Bits of Humvee and human clanked and thudded into the Deere, the tremendous blast wave blowing us sideways.

We were both groggy from the concussion. I tapped Masters on the shoulder and shouted, ‘Let’s go!’ My ears rang from the explosion. I turned to see how the big John Deere was faring. How long was it going to take before a hot .50-calibre round hit the Primacord and detonated the ANFO dummy?

Answering my question, the backhoe suddenly and completely blew apart on the edge of the pit. A massive fireball engulfed it as it rolled in and was swallowed by the hole in the wadi floor. More explosions followed, sending black smoke rings into the sky. I noticed that the Humvee following it was slowing, turning away. Its roofline had a deep gouge through it. A large piece of backhoe shrapnel had ripped into the CROWS, tearing through the roof and probably disabling or killing the driver. The vehicle straightened again and kept going until it too disappeared from sight, tipping over the edge of the pit.

The white helo carved a wide circle around the smoking carnage.

Time to move. I jumped from the cabin and clambered up the side of the wadi, the undersize chemical suit grabbing at my crotch. After a few moments of disorientation, I found what I was looking for and shoved the bottle in the fissure, leaving most of it exposed. I hoped for its sake that the shiny black snake living here was off visiting a buddy somewhere.

I scrambled back down the wadi and ran for the backhoe. The Eurocopter had climbed well out of harm’s way. Maybe the pilot, or whoever was in command – Tawal, perhaps – was having second thoughts about trying to corner us. Or more likely it had gained some altitude to get a better tactical overview of the situation.

I squeezed Masters’ shoulder and nodded towards the rear of the wadi where the walls were steep. She crunched through the gears and reversed us into the shadows. The chopper descended, moving from side to side, looking for the safest approach. Those steep walls of the wadi were providing us with protection on three sides.

There was only one approach available. The helo hovered sideways, cautiously edging towards us and no doubt using the CROWS sensors to check for surprises. And then it stopped and suddenly backed away. The pilot must have seen me scramble up to the snake hole and figured some kind of trick was in store.

The Eurocopter came towards us again, this time from the opposite side. I felt sweat breaking out in places it had never broke out in before. That flying gun was lining us up good and proper, and this time the pilot was making no mistakes. Except for maybe one.

Just behind him, the whole side of the wadi suddenly burst towards the sky in a massive geyser of rock, dust and flame. Masters and I dived beneath the John Deere for what little cover it afforded. I glanced up in time to see the helo’s tail rotor destroy itself amongst a shower of rock. The aircraft started to spin, slowly at first, and then it picked up speed. I watched it climb before turning on its side and descending in an uncontrolled death spiral. It hit the ground with a
whump
, the main rotor blades whirling and shattering against the floor of the wadi, causing the wreckage to spin, twist and writhe. And then its fuel tanks exploded, a final defiance, flinging shards of metal across a 200-yard range.

We stayed under the backhoe until well after the secondary explosions stopped. Eventually we crawled out, stood and brushed the dirt out of our clothes. My throat was dry. Grit crunched between my teeth. I checked that the bladder was still tucked under the backhoe’s seat, then picked my way up the side of the wadi, taking it slow, no longer in a hurry. The bottle was easy to find. It caught the sunlight and flashed like a navigation strobe, as I’d hoped it would. I bent down, plucked it from the fissure, and drank the warm water inside.

Four columns of black smoke rose into the sky, accounting for three
Humvees and one Eurocopter. The shock waves from the main explosion had caused the hole in the ground to collapse, burying the HEX storage cylinder beneath thousands of tons of rubble. Hanging over everything was a mushroom cloud of dirt and dust from the destroyed cave, the larger particles blown skywards now sprinkling down in a sand shower. ANFO sure had a kick to it.

‘So, Special Agent Cooper. You’ve been busy.’

I looked over my shoulder. It was Lieutenant Christie. With the ringing still in my ears, I hadn’t heard his unit approach. Six or so vehicles were lined up behind him, his men already moving out to reconnoitre the area.

‘So, Lieutenant Christie. You’re late. Got a shower in one of those trucks?’

The steel gate protecting Kawthar al Deen from truck and car bombs swung open to admit the convoy, a wise decision given that a Warrior, the British equivalent of our Bradley Fighting Vehicle, headed it. Not quite a main battle tank, but not to be argued with nonetheless. Lynx gunships hovered overhead. Christie’s CO, a lieutenant colonel, headed the op. There was no resistance to our show of force, which made everyone feel a little overdressed for the occasion.

Tawal had apparently left the country that morning, as soon as the storm lifted. His security force had been reduced to five personnel. The Brits disarmed and detained them. No authority had been granted to us to search and occupy the facility, and the Iraqi parliament was indignant on Tawal’s behalf. There was nothing to do but withdraw. Masters and I withdrew all the way to Istanbul.