The Prisoner's Gold (The Hunters 3) (31 page)

Their ears were assaulted by rapid fire in sustained bursts.

‘Kunchen,’ Cobb said, a deep sadness in his voice, ‘I never would have come to Lhasa if I thought those men would be able to follow us here.’

The old monk started to accept his apology, but his eyes passed beyond Cobb, Sarah, and Maggie to the object behind them. His mouth hung open and he stuck out his tongue in a Tibetan gesture of shock or surprise, as automatic as Westerners widening their eyes.

Cobb turned to see what the fuss was about, and saw a Chinese armored vehicle racing up the road toward the palace. A blazing red star was painted on the front of the AFV, and a dead Chinese soldier was manning the machine gun.

Cobb smirked. ‘That’s something you don’t see every day.’

The vehicle screeched to a stop at the top of the hill, right in front of Sarah and Maggie. When it did, the dead soldier in the gun turret flopped forward. A moment later, the driver’s side door of the AFV opened, and McNutt stuck his head out.

‘You three need an invitation, or what?’ he asked.

Cobb turned to Kunchen. ‘Will you be okay?’

The man reached out and grabbed Cobb’s wrist. Then he pressed something into his hand. ‘This drive contains digital photographs of what you seek. I took them as you searched the library. I wasn’t sure I would give them to you, but I know that you are a good man. I can see it in your eyes and in your heart.’

‘Thank you,’ Cobb replied.

Kunchen tightened his grip. ‘Remember what I told you, Mister Jack. Already the cost of your journey is high. Ensure that you are traveling down your path for the correct reasons. If you are on the wrong road, find another, or walk over the mountain instead.’

Then the man released his grasp and bolted inside the building.

Cobb turned and grabbed Maggie by the upper arm, ushering her toward the vehicle. ‘You couldn’t find something stealthier, Josh?’

McNutt snorted. ‘I know, right? This thing is a pig to drive.’

Sarah climbed in next and Cobb piled in after her. He had no worries they might take a bullet inside the armored behemoth, but just to be safe, he pushed the dead soldier out of the turret and closed the top hatch. Only then did he spot another man in the rear of the passenger area. His wrists were bound with a zip tie, and he was bleeding in two places.

‘Who’s your friend?’ Cobb shouted.

‘I’ll tell you later,’ McNutt said as he backed up the vehicle quickly and cranked the wheel. ‘Better buckle up. I’m still getting the hang of the steering.’

‘The road is too narrow. You’re not going to make the turn,’ Maggie warned.

‘Road? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads,’ McNutt said with a laugh. ‘Hold on to your spleens. Things are about to get bouncy.’

Sarah quickly realized that McNutt intended to bypass the winding path and drive straight down the side of the mountain. ‘Oh, you crazy mother—’

Before she could finish, the AFV smashed into the retaining wall on the side of the road and plunged down the hillside. It mangled shrubs and saplings, crushing every obstacle in its path including small rises of soil and stone. When the AFV hit a solid patch of rock, it jounced and popped up and down, bouncing everyone violently in their restraints.

The side of the hill was a steep drop, and at times it felt like they were going straight down until the massive vehicle would buck toward the horizontal. Before they reached the lower switchback road, McNutt cranked hard on the controls, sending the vehicle into an impressive sideways drift. Sarah was certain the troop transport would flip and roll the rest of the way down the mountain, but McNutt whooped with joy.

The AFV demolished a white wall that marked the edge of the lower road. As it scrabbled across a field of basketball-sized stones, bouncing and jolting the entire time, McNutt stood on the accelerator. The vehicle suddenly finished its slide and gripped the asphalt of the road. An instant later, it lurched forward and started picking up speed.

‘Nice,’ Cobb said. ‘Now worry about them.’

McNutt looked ahead down the steep hill to a crowd of six PLA soldiers in tan uniforms, all pointing Kalashnikov rifles at some target in the distance. A few shots pinged off the rocks near the squad, throwing puffs of grit and dust into the air, but the soldiers suddenly lost focus on their fight with the Chinese criminals. The sight of the AFV careening down the mountainside and then skidding onto the road had captured their collective attention.

McNutt laughed at their wimpy rifles and drove even faster. ‘As long as they don’t have a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, we’re good.’

‘Not them,’ Cobb said as he pointed his finger. ‘
Them
.’

McNutt looked to where Cobb was pointing. Across from the massive concrete plaza at the base of the Potala was the main road out of town where there were three more AFVs – and each of them had their cannons intact. They sat side by side, waiting for anyone to try to escape.

‘Oh,’ McNutt grunted. ‘I was wondering where they went.’

‘I think you should slow down,’ Cobb said.

‘I think you’re right.’

The vehicle shuddered to a full stop.

‘Now what?’ McNutt asked.

Cobb stared at him. ‘Tell me about your friend.’

‘Remember the dead guy in the turret? That
wasn’t
my handiwork. The dude in the back shot him with this.’ He handed the bullpup-style rifle to Cobb. ‘I’m assuming he’s one of the gunmen from Guangzhou. There’s a few of them running around out there, and they opened fire on the soldiers without provocation. I popped the AFV driver in the jaw and left him behind. Kid was so young he still had diapers. The soldiers on foot must be from inside the palace.’

‘Maggie,’ Cobb called. ‘Start asking that guy who he is and who he works for.’

‘On it, Jack,’ she said from the back.

Cobb waited until the questioning started in Mandarin before he turned his attention to Sarah. ‘Do me a favor: make sure he doesn’t die before I have a chance to talk to him.’

Sarah nodded and rushed to tend to their injured captive.

McNutt continued to stare at the roadblock ahead. ‘Chief?’

‘Yeah, Josh.’

‘Sorry to bother you, but I’d feel a lot safer if we were moving.’

‘I don’t know about you, but I didn’t feel real safe falling down that mountain.’

‘That hurts, chief. It really does. I thought I stuck the landing.’

Cobb glanced at him. ‘Where do you want to go?’

‘Anywhere but here,’ McNutt admitted. ‘As far as I can tell, the only guns in the area that we need to worry about are the three cannons pointing at us. Based on the youth of the soldiers and their obvious inexperience, I’d feel a lot better if we were a moving target.’

‘You raise a valid point.’

‘Thank you, chief.’

Cobb pointed to the left. ‘Drive over there. I want to see what they do.’

McNutt swung the wheel in that direction and pushed on the accelerator. The AFV chugged slowly toward ground level, well to the side of the waiting roadblock in the plaza. Suddenly one of the parked AFVs roared to life. It turned abruptly, then started on a course to intercept McNutt’s AFV at the bottom of the hill.

‘Interesting,’ Cobb said. ‘Jean-Marc, you listening?’

‘I’m here,’ Papineau assured him.

‘Once we make it past the reception committee, we’ll head south toward the airport.’ He said it calmly, as if getting past the three AFVs would be a breeze. ‘Obviously, we’ll need a ride. It would be great if you could swing back around and pick us up.’

‘No problem, Jack. Just tell us when.’

‘Actually,’ Cobb said, ‘I’ll need to tell you
where –
because we can’t make it to the airport. There’s an entire battalion headed our way. We’ll need to be picked up on the highway.’

‘You’ve got to be joking!’

‘Do I sound like I’m joking?’ Cobb growled. ‘Trust me, the Gulfstream can land on the main road. I studied it on the way to Lhasa, and there’s more than enough room. Seriously, why do you think I wanted you in the air so soon?’

The line went silent as Papineau panicked.

‘Hector,’ Cobb said, ‘are you still there?’

‘I sure am.’

‘Did he pass out?’

Garcia smiled. ‘Not yet.’

‘Before he does, make sure he convinces the pilot to land on the road. In the meantime, I was hoping you could find us a different route out of town. Doesn’t even have to be paved.’

‘Sure, give me a second.’ Garcia’s fingers went to work on his ever-present keyboard. ‘Okay, I think I found something that will work. Head northwest at the bottom of the hill. Go a little over a mile, then turn left. It’ll give your pursuers the idea that you’re making for the west, and they won’t have a chance to cut you off from crossing the river at the south of the city.’

‘Noted,’ Cobb said.

‘Once you’re down there, let me know, and I’ll talk you through the rest.’

‘Just tell us now,’ McNutt complained.

‘Sure, Josh, grab a pen. All the road signs are in Tibetan.’

Before McNutt had a chance to reply, the hard-charging AFV fired its 30 mm cannon with a loud
boom
! McNutt cut the wheel sharply to the left, and their vehicle launched off the road again, tearing its way across rock and greenery. The fired shell passed them harmlessly and hit the side of a small ticket building beside an auxiliary parking lot at the bottom of the road. The force of the impact blew the tiny shed into smithereens.

‘Heading back for the plaza,’ McNutt announced.

‘Veer right of it,’ Garcia said in his ear. ‘From there head for the park. It’s a straight shot to the road north of the river.’

McNutt guided the AFV onto the road that ran in front of the Potala. Traffic had ceased at each end because of the gunfight on the hill. He angled across it, making for the park adjacent to the wide concrete plaza where McNutt steered around the large trees but went through smaller obstacles like benches and a shallow pond. The water didn’t even slow the armored vehicle down.

The pursuing AFV lost precious time turning around after missing the opportunity to intercept McNutt. The drivers in the other AFVs noticed his escape attempt and decided to abandon their roadblock to give chase. They maneuvered the cumbersome vehicles around and came racing back down the road for the park.

‘You should see a smaller building to your right and a larger one to the left behind a row of trees,’ Garcia advised. ‘Angle between them, then head for the center of the next large building on the left. There’s a gateway through it.’

McNutt could see the trees Garcia had mentioned, and the smaller building to the right of the line of greenery, but the last tree, a stout oak with a gnarled, split trunk, was massive and way too close to the building to allow passage. Ironically, the tree had been planted there by the military for that very purpose: to prevent civilian vehicles from entering the park. It was a crowd and riot control tactic from fifty years ago that had finally come to fruition now.

In his gut, McNutt felt he could probably plow the huge tree down, but he doubted the vehicle would be drivable afterward.

With nowhere else to go, he made a risky choice.

‘Hang on!’ he shouted.

Cobb said nothing but his eyes doubled in size.

‘Shit!’ Sarah screamed from the back.

McNutt swerved the vehicle sharply to the right, bringing the armored vehicle into a perpendicular line with the front of the building. As he did, one of the pursuing AFVs fired its cannon. The shell missed its target but blasted the front façade of the building that McNutt was aiming for. The impact shattered the front wall as he hit the brakes in order to avoid the explosion. The blast sprayed concrete and glass in a maelstrom of smoke and debris.

Then McNutt sped up and smashed the AFV into the damaged structure.

He could only hope that no one was inside.

Brilliant spears of daylight pierced the white cloud of plaster dust as the AFV plowed through the far wall of the building. Debris slid away from the vehicle’s clogged viewports as concrete ruptured all around it. When the haze cleared, they found themselves on a wide concrete walkway that led to a glassed-in breezeway between two much larger buildings.

The structures looked far too stout for the powerful AFV, but McNutt knew the glass breezeway would yield like tissue paper. He pulled a lever just before they hit, activating steel shields that dropped over the viewports. The sound of tinkling glass reverberated throughout the cabin as broken shards pinged off the vehicle’s metal skin.

A second later, McNutt raised the viewport shields again and saw nothing but a straight concrete path for a thousand feet with a busy road at the end of it. He tramped on the accelerator, and the AFV charged ahead at full steam.

Maggie popped her head into the cockpit. ‘Our guest won’t talk.’

‘No worries,’ Cobb said. ‘I figured he wouldn’t.’

‘Are we going to smash into more things? If so, I’d like to strap into a chair.’

‘No, ma’am,’ McNutt said. ‘I’m done smashing things for now.’

A moment later, they heard a loud
thunk
sound behind them. One of the pursuing AFVs had fired its cannon. The shell smashed into a huge tree, just as they passed it. The top of the tree fell over on the roof of their AFV with a massive crunch, but it didn’t stop them.

‘For the record, that wasn’t me,’ McNutt said with a smile.

‘Drive erratic,’ Cobb ordered.

‘I thought I was!’

‘No,’ Cobb stressed, ‘remember the helicopter in Loulan?’

McNutt grinned at the memory. ‘Gotcha, chief.’

Cobb hustled back into the passenger area then climbed the ladder up the gun turret, just as McNutt jerked the wheel again, swerving the AFV left and right in unpredictable patterns.

Cobb flung open the hatch, reached out for the handles on the machine gun, and quickly pulled himself halfway out. He hooked an ankle around the upright of the metal ladder for support and then swung around, leveling the machine gun back at the pursuing AFVs. He immediately realized that only two of their pursuers were behind him, and wondered if the third had taken a different route, attempting to cut them off.