The Midas Legacy

42

The explosion vaporised everything within fifty feet and tore a crater in the concrete. The soldiers further away were no better off, the shock wave flipping the other jeeps in flames across the runway and pulverising bones and organs.

Even at the end of the tunnel, the noise of the detonation was overpowering. ‘Christ on a bike!’ said Eddie, wincing. He looked down the runway. The vehicles that had made up the barricade were scattered like unwanted toys, crumpled and burning. Both gun emplacements had been flattened. ‘I knew that stuff was dangerous, but I didn’t realise how dangerous.’

Nina regarded the smoking crater sadly. ‘Oh God. Ock…’

‘He didn’t die for nothing,’ Eddie assured her. He turned to the prisoners, who were staring in shock at the destruction. ‘This is your chance — go, go!’ When nobody responded immediately, he switched to communicating by gesture, shooing them away. ‘Vamos, go on, get out! Leg it!’ They finally got the message and hurried towards freedom.

‘What about us?’ Nina asked.

He looked back at the microlight. ‘We need to get that thing ready to fly, then I’ll rig the rocket fuel tanks to blow.’

They ran to the little plane, Nina eyeing it dubiously. ‘How long will that take?’

Eddie took out the dynamite and fuses. ‘Hopefully not as long as it takes for the Norks to send more men back to get us!’

Colonel Kang turned sharply in his seat at the sound of a powerful explosion higher up the mountain. A fiery glow was visible through the trees. ‘Bok!’ he snapped into the radio. ‘Bok, report! What was that?’

No answer came. ‘Rocket fuel,’ said Mikkelsson from the rear seat. ‘That is the only thing that could cause such a blast. It must be Wilde and Chase.’

The numbed Sarah looked around at him. ‘They… they’re still alive?’

‘They will not be for long,’ Kang growled, switching channels. ‘This is Kang! Send squads from the evacuation muster point back to the base. The spies have escaped, with the aid of criminals — find them and destroy them!’

Eddie and Nina moved the microlight on to the runway. ‘Okay,’ said the Englishman, taking hold of the trailing edge of one of the pusher propeller’s blades, ‘hope I can do this without chopping any fingers off!’ He checked that Nina was holding down the starter button, then sharply shoved the blade down, jerking his hands clear as the engine clattered into life. The prop buzzed up to speed, a snap of displaced air stinging his fingertips — and the plane immediately began to roll along the concrete. ‘Whoa, whoa! Pull back the throttle!’

‘It is pulled back!’ Nina protested as she jogged alongside it. Even at minimum revs, the propeller was still spinning fast enough to push the lightweight aircraft along.

‘Hit the kill switch!’ She pushed another button. The engine spluttered and cut out. The propeller abruptly stopped, the microlight trundling to a halt. ‘Okay, that’s not ideal,’ he said, catching up. There was nothing to hand that might serve as chocks for the wheels. ‘I’ll have to start it right before take-off.’

‘After you light the fuses?’ Nina said unhappily. He had already rigged the tanks with explosives, using the full lengths of both coils.

‘Yeah, I know. Help me move it back over there so I won’t have to run as far.’

They wheeled the little plane to the runway’s end. The microlight was basic in the extreme, the tandem seats bolted to a simple tubular frame coated in something resembling Teflon, presumably a radar-absorbing substance; Kang had claimed that the tiny craft had stealth capabilities. From outside, the faceted front bodywork shielding the pilot appeared quite high-tech, but beneath it was revealed as nothing more than wooden panels painted with the same material. ‘Yeah, this fills me with confidence,’ Nina said, holding up a safety belt — a simple lap strap of the kind found on airliners.

‘Could be worse,’ Eddie joked. ‘At least it’s got seat belts. Beats holding on with your bare hands!’ They brought the plane into position. ‘Okay, I’ll light the fuses.’

‘How long will we have before they blow?’ Nina asked as he ran off, rifle slung over a shoulder.

‘A minute. Maybe.’

She got into the rear seat. ‘Confidence? Still not filled with it!’

Eddie grinned, then continued to the fuel tanks. The gap between them was too wide for the fuses to meet, ruling out a simultaneous detonation; he figured instead that blowing the nitric acid tanks first, then spilling kerosene on to the flood, would give him the best chance of escape. ‘Let’s see how the big bang theory works in practice,’ he said, lighting a match and touching it to the first fuse.

A spark sizzled along the length of line. He checked his watch, then raced to the second fuse and ignited it before running at full pelt back to the microlight.

Another glance at his watch as he reached the plane. Only thirty seconds remaining. ‘Okay, let’s get this thing started!’

Nina leaned over the front seat to push the starter as he spun the propeller. It made a half-turn…

And stopped.

The microlight shuddered, the engine coughing briefly before falling silent. Eddie tried again, with the same result. ‘You pushing that button?’

‘Yes, I’m pushing the damn button!’ Nina snapped.

‘Okay, okay! Let’s give it another shot.’ A third attempt. The engine wheezed mockingly at him as the blades juddered once more.

He looked at the fuel tanks. The spark was almost at the dynamite he had planted on the nitric acid containers. ‘Oh arse.’

‘Still pressing the button!’ his wife said with rising alarm.

Eddie swung the propeller again, and again, glaring at the portraits of the North Korean dictators smirking down at him from the blockhouse. ‘You can… fuck right off, Kim… Nob-head!’ he growled between pushes.

The engine stuttered and caught. The prop whirled—

The fizzing spark reached the dynamite.

Sharp blasts ripped open two of the tanks, a sizzling hiss echoing through the cavern as a tsunami of acid burst out and swept across the floor. To Nina’s dismay, part of the wavefront was heading for them. ‘Time to go!’

The aircraft was already moving. Eddie caught up and jumped into the front seat. Too late, he realised he was sitting on his seat-belt buckle, but there was no time to pull it out and secure himself. ‘Great, I am gonna have to hold on with my bare hands!’ he complained as he pushed the throttle lever fully forward. The engine noise rose to a screech, the microlight shimmying on its little tricycle wheels before straightening out.

He looked along the runway. In the distance, debris from the explosion littered the concrete, along with the burning wrecks of the vehicles that had formed the barricade.

More explosions behind them — and the huge cavern filled with flame as the spraying kerosene met its oxidiser.

A massive chain reaction tore through the facility, the ranks of fuel tanks detonating like hundred-ton bombs and smashing support pillars. The ceiling collapsed on to the missile production line with earthquake force, forcing the fireball through the tunnel.

A gunpowder explosion down a rifle barrel — and the microlight was the bullet.

A fragile, flammable bullet.

‘Eddie!’ shrieked Nina, feeling rising heat as a wall of fire rushed after them.

‘Yeah, I know!’ Eddie yelled back. The wing’s fabric snapped taut as the airflow started to generate lift. He pulled back the joystick to raise the nose. The front wheel left the ground… then dropped back again. ‘Shit! Come on, take off, you piece of crap!’

They were rapidly approaching the tunnel mouth — but the fireball was gaining, pushing a wave of searing air before it. Eddie angled to avoid the largest pieces of debris from Ock’s suicide attack, but there were so many that a collision seemed inevitable.

He pulled back the stick again. The nose strained upwards, but they still hadn’t reached take-off speed. The rear wheels skipped and hopped over the concrete.

The rubble field rushed at them—

Eddie swerved to avoid a football-sized lump of stone. The front wheel cleared it by inches, only to hit one of the rears, snapping off the outrigger supporting it. The plane tipped sideways. He pushed the stick to level out, but in doing so the front wheel thumped back on to the runway.

A blazing jeep loomed. Flames ahead and behind as the inferno swept towards open air—

Eddie yanked the joystick again. This time the little plane left the ground — and remained airborne.

Heading straight for the jeep.

He yelled and veered away, the fuselage barely missing the wreck — only for the other outrigger to be clipped off. He fought to keep control as the plane burst out into the night—

The tunnel mouth erupted like a volcano.

An enormous gush of flame blasted from the entrance, lighting up the surrounding landscape with a hellfire glow. Debris arced across the plateau, the blast hurling metal and stone for hundreds of metres as Facility 17 was consumed by an explosion powerful enough to shake the entire mountain.

The dazzling flare faded… revealing the microlight straining skywards.

‘Oh my God!’ shrieked Nina. The heat of the explosion had singed her hair, exposed skin feeling as if she had leaned into an oven, but she was still alive. She looked up to check that the wing had not caught fire, and was thankful to see that the fabric was intact.

Her relief was short-lived as she realised their situation. They were far from safe. The plateau spread out below as they gained height. Lights stood out on the winding road descending the mountainside: the missile convoy making its way down… and trucks coming back up. Soldiers sent to reclaim the base — or what was left of it — and hunt down the escaped prisoners. Beyond was nothing but dark forest all the way to the airbase far below. Even from this distance, the enormous Antonov freighter stood out clearly at one end of the long runway.

Eddie brought the microlight around in pursuit of the TELs. The plane had reached its top speed, which he estimated to be only around fifty miles per hour; there was no speed indicator, or for that matter any instruments beyond a crude artificial horizon and a couple of gauges. ‘We should be able to catch up.’

Nina had to raise her voice over the wind and the buzzing engine. ‘We’re really going after them?’

‘It’s all we can do. Well, apart from letting a bunch of pissed-off North Koreans torture and kill us. I know this thing’s supposed to be stealthy, but I don’t fancy our chances of crossing the border without getting flak shot up our arses. And that’s if we can even reach it.’

‘So our choices are get killed, or try to stop them escaping with a set of nuclear missiles — and then get killed?’

He looked back at her, downcast. ‘Afraid so, love. We’re stuck in North Korea with no backup, and we’ve just made ’em really, really mad at us. And it’s not like we can blend in with the locals — the red hair’s a bit of a giveaway.’

‘Just a little. But what can we do to stop them?’

‘I’ve still got one stick of dynamite. We can fly over the first transporter and bomb it. If we get lucky, it’ll block the road — the other trucks might even crash into it.’

‘And after that?’

‘No idea. But I don’t think… I don’t think we’re going to get home to Macy.’ The name was abruptly choked off by emotion.

Nina felt the same overwhelming sense of loss and grief. ‘We shouldn’t have come here,’ she said, tears blurring her vision. ‘We shouldn’t have done this! Oh God, Eddie, why the fuck did we do this? We’re going to die and we’re… we’re going to leave Macy all alone!’

‘She won’t be alone. She—’

‘She won’t have us! Eddie, she’s going to have her parents taken from her — she’s going to go through the same thing as I did! Why did we… Why?’

Her husband was silent for a long moment as she sobbed. Finally he spoke. ‘If we hadn’t come here, they’d still be shipping out the missiles and they’d be knocking out even more plutonium from the Crucible. At least we stopped them making any more nukes, and we’ve still got a chance of keeping those down there from leaving the country.’

‘I’m sure that’ll make Macy feel so much better,’ she said bitterly.

‘Yeah, I know. But even if Mikkelsson thinks that if everyone has nukes nobody’ll dare use ’em, he’s full of shit. It only takes one psycho megalomaniac and it’ll all kick off, and it’s not like there’s any shortage of them in the world.’ He made a course adjustment, then looked at Nina again. ‘I don’t want Macy to have to face that. So if we’re going to die either way, then at least we can do like Ock and make it count for something.’

‘Fight to the end, as you like to say?’

‘I say it because I believe it. We can still make a difference. I’d prefer to do that without fucking dying, but, well…’

She wiped her eyes, then squeezed his shoulder lovingly. ‘You know something, Edward J. Chase? Probably nobody else but me would think so, but you are actually kind of noble. In your own special, sweary way.’

‘I try my best. All I can do, really.’ He leaned over to regard the vehicles below. ‘Okay. Let’s do this.’

The convoy had just emerged from a zigzagging series of hairpins on to a relatively straight section of road. The SUV carrying Kang and the Mikkelssons was in the lead, the truck bearing Captain Sek and his team — and the warheads — following. Behind that was a jeep, then the three TELs and their deadly loads, the missiles lying flat in their hydraulic cradles. Bringing up the rear was a second jeep.

Eddie fumbled the dynamite and matchbook from his pocket and passed them to Nina. ‘Get ready to light it when I say.’ The convoy was picking up speed, going faster than seemed safe considering the state of the road and the sheer size of the trucks. Kang was presumably in a rush to reach the airbase. The Yorkshireman looked ahead. ‘Bollocks.’

‘What?’ asked Nina.

‘Power lines in the way.’ He peered into the moonlit darkness. ‘I’ll have to come in from the valley to avoid the wires.’ He changed course, swinging out over the steep-sided gorge below. ‘You ready with the dynamite?’

‘Yeah — if I can light a match in this wind.’

He looked over at the road, now to their right. The leading vehicles were still picking up speed, though the driver of the first TEL was apparently having second thoughts, allowing a gap to open up. That was good — a slower target would be easier to hit. Eddie judged the speeds and distances again. ‘Okay — light it!’

The rearguard jeep had three soldiers aboard. They were in the dark about what was happening: all they knew was that Facility 17 had been attacked, and their job was to protect the missile transporters at all costs. The brutal discipline of North Korea’s military had been drummed into them, hard; taking actions or even asking questions about anything beyond the scope of their orders was an invitation for punishment.

So when the man in the rear seat heard a buzzing noise in the dark sky, he did not immediately open fire upon it. Since their instructions had been to stop anyone pursuing them by road, he merely tapped the shoulder of the driver, his immediate superior. ‘Sir! There’s something up there — I think it’s one of our little planes!’

The driver, his rank the Korean equivalent of a lowly private, first class, was no more ready to take risks than his subordinate — especially when said risk would involve shooting at a secret aircraft of the People’s Army. ‘Get on the radio to Colonel Kang,’ he ordered the other passenger. ‘Tell him about the plane, and ask what we should do.’

The soldier made the call, twitching in fear when Kang’s voice roared back at him. ‘What do you think you should do, you idiot? Shoot it down — kill them!’

The two privates hurriedly raised their rifles. A small flickering light appeared on the aircraft, giving them a target…

It took Nina three attempts to light a match, and another two before the fuse caught. ‘Okay, it’s fizzling!’

The microlight was now level with the second TEL, passing over the line of pylons. Eddie got ready to turn for his bombing run. ‘Give it to me!’

She reached out to put it into his upraised hand—

Gunfire sounded from behind. Bullets whipped past, a couple punching holes through the fabric wing and another striking the engine block just behind Nina. She shrieked, flinching just as Eddie threw the aircraft into a hard bank away from the road, snapping his hand back to grab the dashboard. The dynamite tumbled into the forest.

‘Shit!’ he yelled as a loud detonation came from below. ‘So much for stealth!’

The firing stopped. Nina looked back through the propeller at the retreating lights. ‘Great, now what do we do? That was the last stick!’

Her husband curved the plane around, gaining altitude. ‘We either give up and see how far this thing can take us before we run out of fuel… or we do something crazy.’

‘Crazy, or stupid?’

‘Usually the same thing with us, isn’t it?’ The convoy came back into view. ‘If I can get on to one of the transporters, I can take out the crew, then go full Mad Max and use it to ram the others off the road.’

‘You’re right,’ Nina exclaimed. ‘That’s crazy and stupid. And what would I be doing while all this was going on?’

‘You’d be flying the plane, obviously.’

‘Well obviously!’ she hooted.

‘It’s pretty easy. Like playing a video game.’

‘I hate video games!’

‘Except for when you were obsessed with Candy Crush! You’ll get the hang of it long before you hit the ground.’

‘I’m not reassured. And how am I supposed to take the controls when you’re in the front seat?’

‘You’ll have to wait till I’ve jumped out!’ He twisted to give her a small smile. ‘You can do it, trust me.’

‘It’s you I’m worried about,’ she replied unhappily. ‘Once you jump… that’s it. We’ll never see each other again.’

The smile disappeared. ‘Yeah, when you put it like that, it really does seem like a shit idea.’ He sighed. ‘But I’m not just going to give up and run until they shoot me.’ He altered course to cross behind the convoy and take the plane over the trees above the road. ‘And I’ve got this,’ he added, nodding at the rifle on his shoulder. ‘So at least I’ve got a fighting chance.’

‘But I don’t. Eddie, what am I supposed to do without you?’ It was a question that went beyond the immediate future.

A long pause. ‘What you always do,’ he said. ‘You survive. Somehow.’

‘Not this time.’ Her voice quavered. ‘Not without you.’

‘Hey, you never know — maybe we’ll both survive. I dunno how, but…’ His smile returned, warm even through sadness. ‘But I’ll only get one shot at this, so I’ve got to take it. I love you.’

‘I love you,’ she replied, wrapping both arms around his chest. ‘I love you so much.’

‘Enough not to think I’m insane for doing what I’m about to do?’

‘I wouldn’t go that far.’ She wiped away tears. ‘Go on then, you damn fool. Go and save the world. Again.’

‘We really need to start charging for it, don’t we?’ The convoy was now out of sight behind the trees, though occasional flickers of light through the foliage gave away its position. He turned the plane towards it, pulling back the throttle lever. The engine slowed, the propeller noise dropping considerably. ‘Huh. Okay, maybe it’s stealthier than I thought. I did think that trying to cross the border in a squad of lawnmowers probably wouldn’t work.’

‘So what’s the plan?’

‘They won’t be able to see us until we come over the trees. I’ll bring it as low and slow as I can, then jump out. The second I go, you climb over the seat and grab the controls. You’ll be heading out over the valley, so that should give you enough time to sort yourself out before you hit anything.’

‘And then what?’

‘I’d tell you to fly this thing as far away as you can, but…’ Both knew full well that she had no intention of leaving him. ‘Just make sure you get clear.’ One last loving look back at her, then: ‘All right, here we go.’

He brought the microlight lower over the moonlit treetops, angling to cut across the road. The leading vehicles came into sight, Kang’s SUV and the troop truck now some distance ahead of the rest of the convoy. ‘Okay, get ready, get ready…’ He tensed, swinging both legs over the side. ‘Get ready…’

The transporters swept into view below, the aircraft crossing above the rearmost—

‘Now!’

Eddie jumped.

The drop on to the missile was not great, only around eight feet — but there was no purchase on the smooth, curved surface. He slithered off, hitting the rocket’s hydraulic crane arm, hard, and rolling off it towards the ground below—

One hand caught the transporter’s side as he fell. He swung from it, dangling with the huge wheels churning just inches away. ‘Arsing cockery!’ he gasped as his gun bounced off the road and disappeared over the edge of the gorge.

He flailed his free arm, managing to get a secure hold. Relieved, he pulled himself higher, glancing forward to check the road ahead.

Startled eyes stared back at him in the truck’s wing mirror.

The transporter’s driver barked a hurried command to the other men in the cab — as the chatter of gunfire resumed from behind.