Tenth Man Down

FIFTEEN

We tied the two Russians together with their hands behind them, hoisted them on to the front seat and jammed them in between myself and Jason. Then I started up and rolled the heavy truck forward. Black smoke from the burning Hind was billowing over the track, and I crawled through it in second gear until we reached the main drag. There I turned left, accelerating out through the wilderness.

‘Number twenty-one,’ I told Jason. ‘Keep your eyes skinned for a sign. That’s the branch we need.’

‘Yassir,’ he went, and I knew that if anybody could find the way, he would.

Soon, however, I began to be alarmed by the distance we were travelling. In the chopper, the journey had felt like nothing; in the lumbering seven-ton truck, the pitted dirt road seemed to stretch for ever.

Minutes flicked away. Five had gone before we reached the first junction. There, four minor tracks converged on the main route, but only one signpost was still standing: it pointed vaguely to the left and said ‘12’. Ours, I knew, would be to the right.

‘Is there a sign?’ I shouted above the noise of the engine. ‘Number twenty-one?’

‘Nyet,’ went Rasputin, but he nodded to the right.

Three more minutes brought us to the next junction. This time the markers were intact: Routes 16 and 18 went off to the left, 17 and 19 to the right.

‘Next crossroads,’ I told Jason. ‘It should have six side tracks.’

It was already 1342 when we reached the key junction: twelve minutes gone. I retained a mental picture of the intersection from flying over it, and I recognised it the moment I saw it from the ground. But where the hell were the sign posts? Not one survived.

On our right we had three possibilities. Without hesitation, Jason pointed to the first track, and said, ‘This one.’

‘Okay?’ I asked.

Rasputin nodded. I changed down into second, hauled the wheel over and accelerated up the overgrown dirt road.

Sweat was pouring down my face and torso. The cab of the truck was an oven on wheels, and the four of us were crammed tight together. Luckily I’d had the foresight to load up two full water-bottles. I got Jason to unscrew the cap of one and hand it to me. After I’d drunk, I unhooked the mike of the inter-vehicle radio from the dash, and called, ‘Green One. How’re you doing?’

‘Green Two.’ It was Stringer’s voice. ‘We’re in the OP with a good view of the road junction. Well cammed up.’

‘Roger. Nothing showing yet?’

‘Negative.’

‘What’s the range to the junction?’

‘About seven fifty.’

‘Brilliant.’

‘Where are you?’ he asked.

‘Approaching the cache. Wait out.’

I probably sounded quite cool, but in fact I was shitting bricks that we were on the wrong road and were going to have to turn back, wasting more time. The terrain looked too flat. Then at last we reached the beginning of a deep gully, and I recognised the ravine with big, smooth boulders along its flanks. At the point where the sides closed in, we came to a wooden pole-barrier carrying one of the blue-and-white danger signs. I didn’t even slow down to look at it, but drove straight through. Under the impact of our bullbar the flimsy pole exploded. Pieces flew into the air and landed among the rocks.

The time was 1347.

‘Nearly there,’ I said, half to myself, half to Jason. ‘But Jesus! It’s going to take twenty minutes just to get back as far as the OP.’

My stomach contracted as the battered grey doors of the cache came into sight. I pulled up opposite them, switched off, and said, ‘Okay, Jason. We’ll both get out. You cover these two while I separate them.’

I opened the driver’s door and slid to the ground.

‘Out!’ I told the two Russians.

They both began shifting and wriggling along the seat towards me. It had been awkward enough getting them in. I’d foreseen that getting them out was going to be worse, and I was expecting them both to tumble on to the deck before they got themselves sorted.

Far from it. Suddenly Rasputin was on the ground, free, and running. Somehow, during all the bumping of the journey, he’d worked himself loose. Before I could react he was well away down the approach road. The pilot was still on the seat. I gave a yell, dragged him forward out of the way and snatched my 203 from its clips. By then, Rasputin was fifty metres off.

‘Stop!’ I yelled.

But I knew he wasn’t going to. I was too hot, too worked up, too mad to piss about any longer. Instinctively I opened fire. The first short burst missed. The second knocked him down, head over heels, and he lay kicking violently in the road.

By then the pilot was also on the move, running as best he could with hands still tied behind his back, not making much progress. Dimly I realised that if I went after him I could catch him easily enough. But I wasn’t in the mood for running anywhere.

‘Stop!’ I yelled again.

He kept going a few more unsteady paces. I brought the rifle up and put the sight on the centre of his back. Suddenly he pulled up and started turning towards me, but it was too late. At that very instant I squeezed the trigger, and the burst caught him full in the chest. He crumpled to his knees, went down into the dust and lay there hardly moving.

I was trembling violently — hands, arms, knees. I glanced to my left and realised Jason was standing close to me. He didn’t speak, but his eyes said it loud and clear: I should never have mown down that defenceless man, at the very moment when he was surrendering.

‘Jason,’ I went. ‘I know. I know. But I’m out of my fucking mind with fright.’

All he said was ‘Yassir,’ but from the way he nodded, and from the expression on his face, I knew he wasn’t blaming me. He understood.

I realised I was hyperventilating, and made a deliberate effort to steady myself down. I was horrified by what I’d done, though more for practical reasons than for moral ones. Feelings of guilt came later. The immediate problem was that I’d killed both the men I was going to use as human shields. In committing a double murder, I’d reduced our options to two: either we had to cut and run for it — and allow a stockpile of nuclear warheads to drop straight into the lap of a mad silvery — or I had to load the weapons myself.

I took the decision in seconds, without conscious effort. No way was I going to quit now. I didn’t feel martyred or heroic or any shit like that; it was just the way things had turned out, this was something I had to do, no matter what the consequences might be.

‘I’ll handle the weapons,’ I told Jason. ‘But first I need that overall.’ I pointed at Rasputin’s body and set off towards it, expecting to find the torso perforated by bullet holes. In fact my rounds had gone high, and only one had hit him, in the back of the neck, so the suit was intact except for a single puncture in the collar.

I rolled the dead man on to his back. His black eyes were wide open, and I had to avoid their stare. There was one long zip down the front of the suit, and others up the inside of the legs, from ankle to knee. Limb by floppy limb, I worked the body out of it. Underneath, Rasputin had been wearing a green linen shirt and thin DPM trousers. All his garments were sodden with sweat. So was the lining of the protective suit, and its collar was sticky with warm blood.

The garment was made of cotton, with a rubberised finish on the outside. It looked far too flimsy to be capable of blocking radiation — and maybe, I thought, the manky thing was radioactive already, from when Rasputin inspected the weapons earlier. Did I really need to wear this filthy thing? I hesitated, then pulled it on. In a pouch on the front I found a pair of gloves and a floppy helmet made of the same material, which zipped on to the collar.

Back at the wagon, I said to Jason, ‘Whatever happens, you are not to enter the silo, you understand?’

‘Yassir.’

‘Equally, you’re not to help me load, or get into the back of the truck. Okay?’

He nodded.

‘Get back up in the cab. Monitor the radio. If any message comes, relay it to me. Watch out for anyone approaching the site. If you see anybody, drop him.’

Again Jason nodded.

My first task was to open the heavy doors. I knew it couldn’t be done by hand, so I started up, swung the wagon round and backed up right close. As I made to get out, Jason also started shifting his arse.

‘No!’ I said sharply. ‘I told you, stay put!’

My hands were shaking again as I brought out Rasputin’s key and fumbled it into the new padlock. With that open, I attached a tow-rope to the big hasps on the right-hand door, jumped back into the cab and drove forward in bottom gear, dragging the inner end of the heavy door round its track. Then I had to repeat the process: back up, unhook rope, re-hook it to second door, climb into cab, crawl forward again. All that took up what seemed desperate amounts of time.

At last, the entrance was clear. Cautiously, I backed in until the tail of the wagon was under the roof, within three metres of the racks. It was a relief — not much, but something — to find that the cab was still just outside the doorway. One last time I ordered Jason to keep still. Then I brought out the helmet and pulled it on over my head, zipping the bottom rim to the collar of the suit. Instantly, I was hit by a sense of claustrophobia. The thick plastic of the visor was so scratched and hazy that I could hardly see through it, and the primitive filter mask made every breath a labour. My instinct was to rip the damned thing off, but I told myself I had to try it. With my watch buried beneath the tight cuff of the protective suit, I couldn’t read the time, and I had to keep asking Jason what it was. As I pulled on the gauntlets, I held up my left wrist for another check.

‘Thirteen fifty-nine,’ Jason called.

Taking a deep breath, I slid to the ground and walked into the silo. The truck took up so much of the open doorway that little light could filter in round it. After the blazing sun outside, the interior of the cache seemed dim as night.

It must have been temporary madness that drove me on. On the road I’d been wondering how I could force Rasputin to close in on the weapons without getting too close to them myself. Now I seemed to have got a terrific psychological boost from Jason’s dose. For the time being, I felt impervious to harm.

I advanced on the rack of warheads and checked the number. As I thought, there were five in the top layer and ten in each of the four lower layers: forty-five all told. I grabbed the nose cone of the one on the left in the uppermost row. The white enamelled surface was so slippery that I couldn’t get a firm enough grip to pull the whole shell forward. Looking closer, leaning right over the stack, I realised that the thing was being held in place by a set of four stubby fins which sprouted from the fuselage a third of the way down. When I lifted the nose vertically, the fins came clear of the timber cradle in which they’d been laid. Chocks of wood, curved to match the diameter of the barrel, fell away, and the warhead was free.

At its rear end was another set of fins, long and slender, and round the centre Cyrillic letters were stencilled in black. I didn’t waste time trying to read the message. Drawing the missile forward, I held it in my arms, balanced across my chest, and moved crabwise to the tailboard of the truck. The weight was about what I’d estimated, and manageable: maybe seventy-five pounds. The length of the carry was only three metres, but Jesus Christ! The mental pressure of having that amount of warhead right up against my body!

The lads’ last action, before the parties split, had been to clear the rearmost seven or eight feet of cargo space in the back of the wagon. Non-urgent kit had been binned, and the rest piled up further forward. All I had to do, then, was slide the warhead in along the floor, tail first. The fins scraped over the bare steel, and I thought, shit: by the time we’ve driven them to the Mall, these things are going to end up bent and deformed. Then immediately I realised that if we got the weapons out of the country, nobody would want to use them anyway; they’d be scrapped in some safe location, so that minor damage was of no significance.

I got the first six warheads loaded without too much difficulty. But all the time my body temperature was rising; inside that damned suit I was being boiled alive. I could hardly breathe, and there came a point when the volume of sweat on the inside of the visor made it impossible to see what I was doing. There was no way I could continue with the helmet on, so I ripped it off and threw it to one side. My hair was plastered to my head, and rivulets were coursing down my neck and back, but the return of fresh air revived me, and I carried on.

The ninth warhead completed the first layer across the floor of the wagon. They didn’t fit together neatly, like pencils, but were held apart by their fins. At this rate, I could see, there were going to be five layers, the top one at the height of my head.

‘Time, Jason?’ I shouted.

‘Fourteen eleven.’

Christ! I ran back to the stack, snatched the warhead next in line, cradled it, scuttled across, decanted it, ran back. Some of the casings felt rough and puckered; brown spots showed where rust had pitted the surface. Three more like that, and I was panting desperately. The chemical smell in the air seemed to be accumulating in my mouth, producing an acid taste and making my throat sore.

With the score at fifteen, there came a sudden shout from the cab.

‘What is it?’

‘Radio, sah. They seen the convoy.’

I ran out into the open, stood on the step below the open driver’s door and reached up for the mike.

‘Green One, say again.’

‘Green Two.’ Now it was Pav on the other end. ‘The fuckers are in sight.’

‘How many?’

‘Two Gaz jeeps at the front. Then three big wagons — four- or five-tonners. Another jeep at the back.’

‘What are you planning?’

‘We’re going to let them come nearly to the junction, then hit the lead vehicle.’

‘Roger. Who’s on the five-oh?’

‘Phil.’

‘Great.’

‘How are things your end?’

‘Tough. But we’re winning. Loaded a third already. Done in twenty minutes.’

‘Roger. Wait out.’

I wasn’t going to tell him about the Russians’ death. That could wait.

Jason pulled the mike back up on its springy, coiled lead.

‘Water!’ I croaked. ‘Throw me a bottle.’

He lobbed one out. I filled my mouth, swilled the water round and spat it out, then drained the rest at a single swallow. The liquid revived me and I tore back to work, pulling, lifting, carrying, loading, shoving.

I’d just shifted the twenty-fifth warhead, clearing the third row down, when Jason shouted again. This time, when I emerged, he yelled just one word: ‘Shooting!’

I stood by the cab door and listened. Even without a commentary I could tell what was happening from the noise exploding over the open radio link. The .50 was firing in short bursts, four or five rounds at a time, its heavy hammer roaring out of our loudspeaker. In my mind I could see the green tracer, every fifth round, looping away into the distance, to curl in and smack the target.

My first call went unanswered, but at the second Stringer came on the air.

‘What’s on?’ I demanded.

‘Phil’s taken out the first jeep. It’s on fire in the middle of the road. There are guys deploying into the bush.’

‘Any incoming?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Keep at it.’ I ran back to work and pitched into the fourth layer. The heat was threatening to finish me. I was sweating as I’d never sweated in my life.

With nearly the whole of that layer on board, and only twelve warheads to go, I heard another yell from Jason. The cry caught me in mid-carry. I didn’t dare drop my burden on the ground, and I took several seconds to slide it into place before I could hustle outside. Seconds before I hit the open air, there came a burst of fire — not over the radio, but live, from close at hand.

‘What the hell’s that?’

I rushed into the open and called again. Jason didn’t answer. The blaze of sun made me screw up my eyes. When I opened them again, the first thing I saw was a third body lying in the open some fifty yards off, a black body, clad in DPMs, dead or dying, but still twitching, with a weapon on the deck beside it. The guy’s legs were moving as he tried to run. For a horrible moment I thought it was Jason. Just as I realised the DPMs were the wrong colour, lighter than his, another burst clattered out from above my head.

My 203 was in the cab of the vehicle. With rounds going down, I wasn’t going to expose myself by climbing up to get it. Instead, I dropped flat on the ground, wriggled inside one of the wagon’s big wheels and lay still in a pool of sweat, eyeballing the approach to the site. How in hell had somebody managed to bypass the pinkie and penetrate this far into the training area?

At the other end of the radio link the battle was still raging. At our end the body in my view stopped moving. Then, from somewhere high above me, came Jason’s voice: ‘Geordie, sah!’

‘Here!’ I called. ‘Under the wagon. Where are you?’

‘I come down.’

I waited a few moments, then heard scuffling noises as he slithered off the rocks above the doorway.

‘Who was it?’ I asked from my prone position.

‘Two men. Coming for truck. I kill both.’

‘Brilliant. Where’s number two?’

‘Up top.’ He pointed.

‘Are you sure that was all?’

‘Don’t know, sah. I saw two. Nobody more.’

‘I bet they came in the chopper on its first run,’ I said. ‘Probably left to guard the site. Let’s hope no more of the bastards are lurking about.’

I eased myself out from under the truck and took a quick look round. I wasn’t going to waste time checking the bodies.

‘Go back up where you were,’ I said. ‘You’ll be safer hidden in the rocks than sitting in the cab. There’s only a dozen warheads to go. Ten minutes, and we’ll be on our way.’

I never got through that last dozen. I shifted another five, gasping with the effort, but the task took me to the point of collapse. My stack in the back of the wagon had risen to head height, and I only just managed to lift the fifth missile on to the top. The strain left me totally drained, hardly able to walk.

Mental pressure was increased by the sounds of battle pouring from the radio loudspeaker. Even from inside the cavern I could hear heavy firing and the occasional loud explosion. The racket made me desperate to get moving. Further pressure derived from the fact that the last shell I had loaded was slippery with the clear liquid I’d noticed when I first saw the cache. The remaining seven were coated in transparent crystals. It looked as though the casings had cracked when the wooden shelves crumbled, and some of the contents had leaked. No way was I going to touch those faulty specimens. I told myself that they couldn’t be serviceable, so it wouldn’t matter if Muende did get his hands on them. He’d never be able to use them.

I slammed up the tail-board, and tried to shout, ‘Jason!’ All that came out was a squeak. I cleared my throat, and called again. ‘That’s it! Let’s go!’

I didn’t bother closing the door of the silo. Instead, I threw the padlock away into thick bush, scrambled up into the driving seat and started the engine. The moment Jason slipped into the other seat, I let out the clutch and set off.

‘Okay, sah?’ He shot me an apprehensive look.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ I lied. ‘No problem.’

Big black flies had already swarmed on to the bodies lying in the open; a cloud of them burst off Rasputin’s as I drove past. With every movement of the wagon, every bump or hole in the track, our cargo clanked horrendously. I was gripped by fear that more casings would split, even that one of the warheads would be detonated by concussion. Was that possible? I just didn’t know, and cursed the fact that our training in nuclear matters had been so perfunctory.

By then, I was in a horrible state, soaked to the skin inside the suit, dehydrated, shaking with exhaustion and reaction. I longed to rip the clammy overall off and throw it away, but fear of the possible consequences stopped me. The trouble was, I was so damned ignorant. Would the suit give me adequate protection? Or was wearing it even more dangerous than removing it, now that the front and arms were smeared with leaked chemicals? Would the suit itself contaminate Jason, sitting beside me? And would the steel of the cab protect him from the deadly load a few feet behind him?

‘Time?’ I demanded.

‘Fourteen thirty-six.’

Jesus! We had less than half an hour to reach the LZ. We’d never make it in time. With my right hand I grabbed the mike, pressed the switch and called, ‘Green One.’

There was quite a pause before Pav answered, ‘Green Two.’

‘We’re rolling,’ I told him. ‘But we’re going to be late. Any news of the Herc?’

‘Affirmative. Stringer just spoke to the pilot. He’s ahead of schedule.’

‘Warn him we may be late to the LZ.’

‘Roger. Shift your arse, though.’

‘I’m doing that. How are things your end?’

‘Plenty of incoming, but it’s all over the place. Some RPGs as well, but they’re falling short.’

‘Has the convoy moved?’

‘Negative. One of the big wagons is on fire as well. The only snag is, the Gaz that was at the back has detached itself from the rest of the column and headed off across country. For the moment it’s disappeared into dead ground. It could be trying a flanker, to cut off our retreat.’

‘Which way?’

‘Going to our left.’

‘Shit,’ I went. ‘That’s towards our exit road.’

‘Exactly.’

‘How’s your ammo?’

‘The five-oh’s getting low.’

‘For fuck’s sake keep some to give us covering fire when we get out on that road.’

‘Roger. Wait one. Stringer’s got something.’ There was a pause, then, ‘He says the Herc’s already approaching the LZ. He’s come in low-level, two fifty feet, to keep below any radars on the border. He’s going to pop up to a thousand feet to get a look at the terrain.’

‘Tell him I’m on my way.’

I was driving as fast as I dared, inhibited by the rough surface and by the rattling and clanking from our load. I kept glancing over my shoulder through the rear window of the cab, as though I could settle the warheads by glowering at them. I winced at every lurch and nursed the big wagon along, swerving continuously to avoid rocks and potholes.

Pav came back on. ‘The pilot’s seen the LZ. He reckons he can hack it. He could do with some smoke before he lands, though. How soon can you make it?’

‘Ten minutes.’

Another pause as my message was relayed.

‘Roger. He’s willing to lose ten minutes in a circuit. Get your foot down.’

‘It’s down. I’m closing on you.’

‘Roger. We’ll give you max covering fire when you hit the road.’

On that rough track, at the speed we were doing, the mother wagon took some holding. The jolting was diabolical, and my arms ached from wrestling with the wheel. We passed the OP without seeing the pinkie or any of our lads — they were all up on a ledge above us — and dived down the channel that cut through the escarpment, then diagonally through the derelict camp and out on to the road.

The battle had cleared the highway of pedestrians; there wasn’t a man, woman or child in sight. I held my foot on the deck until the engine was screaming in third, then crashed into top and forced the speed up to ninety kilometres an hour. The first half-minute was the danger time. We were broadside on to the enemy, but every second we managed to survive increased the range, and after about thirty seconds we’d be out of reach.

‘Keep down!’ I shouted at Jason. ‘Keep below the window!’

He was on the right, our vulnerable side. He doubled himself down so that he was half lying across the bench seat, with the top of his head near my hip and his bony arse to the door. On the driver’s side I had no option but to stay upright. I pressed myself as far back into the squab as I could go, trying to keep the door pillar and the rest of the cab between me and the enemy.

With a quick glance to my right, I took in the stranded convoy, no more than three hundred metres away. Columns of black smoke were rising from the wagons set on fire, but flashes of gunfire were spurting from improvised positions round the others. Until we appeared on the road, the enemy had been firing in the direction of the pinkie, up on the ledge. Now they had a beautiful new target, lumbering across their front in easy range.

Within seconds I saw something that looked like a big black dot whip across in front of us, right to left. It went so fast that for an instant I couldn’t identify it properly. I just had time to shout, ‘Eh! Look at that!’ when an explosion cracked off a couple of hundred metres to our left.

‘Rocket!’ I yelled.

One of them into our cargo, and we’d be well stitched. I grabbed the radio mike, and shouted, ‘Incoming RPGs! Keep their heads down!’

My right boot was flat on the steel floor. The speedometer needle was hovering on the hundred mark. The truck bucked and bounced like a speedboat in rough water, jumping bodily from one side of the track to the other. Less than thirty metres ahead dust-puffs erupted in a line across the road as a burst of small-arms fire raked the surface. Instinctively I hit the brakes. There was somebody out there who could shoot. Like a shotgunner swinging ahead of a distant pheasant, he was giving us a long lead, and nearly getting it right.

I was fighting the wheel too hard to count seconds, but I knew near enough when thirty had gone. I eased the speed down to eighty. We were already at extreme range, and in as much danger of crashing as of getting hit.

‘Coming clear,’ I reported.

‘Roger,’ answered Pav, coolly. Then suddenly, in a sharper voice, he said, ‘Stand by. The Herc pilot’s seen something he doesn’t like.’

What the hell was this? All I could do was keep going. Thirty seconds more, and we were out of range.

‘You’re okay,’ I told Jason.

He came up off the floor with a big grin.

Then Pav reported: ‘He’s seen military vehicles approaching from the east. At least a dozen.’

‘Joss!’ I shouted. ‘It’s Joss, and Alpha. How far out are they?’

‘He estimates fifteen ks. He’s turned away to the north to come back round and land.’

Fifteen kilometres. The enemy must have seen the plane, but for the moment there was nothing they could do to harm it. If the convoy was managing forty, that gave us twenty minutes to reach the Mall, guide the plane in, load the weapons and get airborne.

‘Hear that, Jason?’ I yelled. ‘It’s your old friends, following up our tracks, on collision course.’

‘Yassir.’

Pav was on the air again. ‘Closing down the show here!’ he shouted. ‘As soon as everyone’s on board, we’re coming after you.’

‘Roger,’ I went. ‘Estimating one k to the start of the Mall.’

I became aware of a disturbance beside me. I glanced across and saw Jason twisting round to pull down his 203 from the clips behind his head.

‘Eh!’ I went. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Car coming, sah!’

He nodded forward. A single vehicle was streaking through the bush, coming in at an angle from our right front, aiming to intercept us. A plume of dust trailed behind it.

‘Contact!’ I shouted to Pav. ‘That fucking breakaway Gaz, it’s trying to head us and block the road.’

‘Your pigeon,’ Pav answered. ‘We’re rolling.’

Somehow Jason had got his head and shoulders out of the window and twisted them forward with his weapon levelled. It was an amazing gymnastic feat. Only someone as thin as he was could have managed it. I saw that his right-side ribs must be getting hammered on the door frame, but he seemed impervious to the pain.

‘Wait!’ I roared. ‘Too far!’

The jeep was being thrown about by the rough terrain, jumping and twisting. As we converged I could see it had no canopy, but there were two men standing in the back, clinging to the tubular framework.

My right foot was flat down. We were doing ninety again — a crazy speed on that surface. It wasn’t safe to take my eyes off the road for more than a second at a time. In spite of our pace, the jeep was going to reach the road first, before we passed the point where its line intersected ours, unless the driver suddenly stopped so that his crew could open up on us broadside as we went past. In the final seconds of convergence I realised he wasn’t going to. He’d committed himself to blocking our path. Along that stretch the road was built up on a low causeway, maybe a couple of feet high, with sandy banks sloping down into the scrub on either side. We were less than a hundred metres from convergence when the jeep reached the right-hand bank, bounced up it and slithered to a halt at an angle across the carriageway. The driver must have thought the block would make me slow down. Some chance.

Beside me, Jason hammered off three short bursts from his 203. Dust spurted on our side of the jeep.

‘Get in!’ I roared. ‘Get back in!’

He saw that impact was imminent, and wriggled back inside the cab. Just in time he dropped the weapon and braced himself, hands and feet. I did the same, gripping the wheel with all my strength and forcing myself against the backrest.

We went in at the jeep with terrifying velocity. I felt I was looking through a zoom lens, so fast did the target grow. Thank God for our bullbar, I thought. I just had time to see the guys in the back of the Gaz struggling to sort themselves and bring their weapons to bear on us when, WHAM!, we hit them broadside with shattering force. The impact lifted the jeep clean off its wheels and flung it away to our left like a toy. I caught a glimpse of the standing guys being jackknifed over the bars they’d been holding on to. Their vehicle was whipped sideways with such colossal energy that the bars drove into their chests and stomachs, doubling them forward. As for us, we took a terrific jolt, but the mother wagon’s weight and impetus were such that it hardly slowed. We came out of the crash still doing seventy. In the mirror I saw flames and smoke rising from the wreck.

‘Fucking take that!’ I yelled in triumph. Then I shot a glance at Jason and saw blood running down his cheek. ‘Hey!’ I went. ‘You okay?’

‘Sure, sah!’ He was grinning and patting his left temple, showing where he’d nicked it against the roof of the cab.

I snatched the radio mike, and called, ‘Green One. We’ve disabled that rogue jeep you saw go cross-country. It’s on fire. But watch yourselves when you pass it. There could be survivors.’

‘Roger,’ went Pav. ‘We can see the smoke ahead of us.’

For nearly half a minute after the smash I thought we’d got clean away with it, that our truck was intact. The engine hadn’t faltered, and the steering felt fine. Then I noticed the temperature gauge, creeping up.

‘Shit!’ I yelled. ‘We’ve holed the radiator!’

At that moment, Pav came on with, ‘The Herc’s nearly round its circuit. Looking to land in figures two minutes.’

‘Roger,’ I went. ‘Which way’s he coming in?’

‘West to east, from behind you.’

‘Roger. I’m almost at the end of the Mall. Tell the pilot I’ll try to give him smoke at both ends of a good strip. Got a problem, though. Truck’s overheating. Stand by.’

Eyeballing frantically to my left, I recognised the start of the Mall and swung left-handed off the road towards the flat ground. On the temperature gauge the needle was up into the red. Before we reached the level area we had to cross an old river bed. Over the bumps I changed down into second. Steam began pouring from under the bonnet. Fifty yards short of the flat, the needle went off the dial. I sensed that if I gunned the engine for another few seconds, it would seize. Somehow I’d got to get the truck on to the flat ground so that the Herc could pull up beside it. No way would the incoming crew be able to carry every missile a hundred metres or more.

I switched off, and said to Jason, ‘Got to get some water into it. Here, take these.’ I pulled out two smoke grenades which I’d had stowed in my Bergen, down beside my feet. ‘The plane’s coming in this way.’ I made a sweeping movement, indicating an approach from behind us and to the left. ‘Run! Crack one off over there, on the flat. Then run again. Minimum five hundred metres straight along. Six hundred if you can make it before you see the Herc coming. Okay?’

‘Yassir!’ Jason’s face was all lit up. He slipped the grenades into his pouches, jumped down, and ran like a grey spider, stumbling over the tussocks.

‘Green One,’ I went on the radio. ‘Tell the Herc he’ll have one lot of smoke anyway, maybe two. If it’s only one, that’s his touch-down point; if it’s two, they’ll mark both ends of the strip. Stand by.’

I leapt to the ground. Steam was still pouring from the bonnet. With the catch released, the damage was obvious: some sharp edge driven into the front of the radiator. The whole engine was dangerously hot. I was still wearing Rasputin’s protective gloves, but first I smothered the radiator cap with a piece of sacking as well, then turned it. Jets of steam spurted sideways. I ran round to the back of the wagon, unhooked the cage that held the jerricans under the false floor, dragged a can out and lugged it to the front. The first few pints of water exploded in steam, but the rest took the temperature down and the system began to fill.

As I stood there holding the heavy can level, I heard the engines of the Herc. I glanced behind me towards the beginning of the Mall. Green smoke was billowing, going almost straight up, and in the distance Jason was running.

Fresh water started to dribble from the hole in the honeycomb of metal on the radiator front. I stopped pouring, flung the can away, stuffed sacking into the puncture, replaced the cap, slammed the bonnet down and hauled myself into the driving seat. The engine fired. I went into first, crawled forward, and changed into second.

With my own engine running, I could no longer hear the plane. How far out was it? Jason had cracked off the first grenade well out on the flat ground. Fifty yards short of it, I stopped at right angles to the line of approach and craned forward in the cab, peering to my left. Nothing in sight.

A thought struck me. If I could get the wagon to the far end of our makeshift runway, the Herc could load up from it there, without having to taxi back the length of the strip. Because there was zero wind, the pilot could take off again in the opposite direction, and not overfly the convoy approaching from the east.

I revved up, rolled forward and turned right along the designated runway. Up ahead Jason had vanished into the heat haze. Too late, I glanced down at the temperature gauge. Once more the needle was high in the red. A second later I was getting steam again — a big cloud of it this time, spurting up in front.

No chance of stopping now. I had to keep going. I was maybe halfway along the strip when I heard what I’d been dreading: a horrendous, grinding scream from the engine, followed by a noise like chains being pulled fast through iron railings, then a single, devastating crack.

The wagon hiccuped to a halt. I grabbed the radio. ‘Green One,’ I shouted. ‘I’m fucked! Where are you?’

‘Right behind you,’ came the answer. ‘We have you visual. What’s your problem?’

‘Engine’s seized. Can’t move.’

‘Stand by. We’ll get a towline on you.’

Within seconds, the pinkie came up with a rush on my right and scorched to a halt a few metres ahead. Dust swirled up round it. Pav was driving, with Stringer beside him. The rest of the guys — I noted with relief that we’d suffered no casualties in the shoot-out — jumped off the open back and ran out a rope. Above the noise of the jeep’s engine idling I could hear Stringer shouting over the satcom. I caught a glimpse of Danny with blood on his face. Holding the rope in place, he waved the jeep forward. Pav twisted round in his seat, then turned back and eased his vehicle forward to take up the strain. In the distance ahead a second column of green smoke was rising.

I already had my gear shift in neutral, and to minimise resistance I held the clutch pedal down on the floor. Still spouting steam, the mother wagon rolled forward, slow as a crippled elephant. Suddenly, from behind, from right above our heads, came an almighty roar and a blast of hot air as the Herc thundered over, not fifty feet up. Its undercarriage was down, but even as it cleared us I saw the flaps come up and heard the pilot increase power as he lifted away.

‘What’s he doing?’ I shouted.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Pav shouted back. ‘How can he land with you in the middle of the fucking runway?’

I felt faint, as though I was going to pass out. My left leg was shaking violently with the effort of holding the clutch pedal down. I let the pressure off, and we continued to roll. Without any power the steering had gone heavy as lead. We were doing only eight or nine kilometres an hour. At that speed I had time to reach out for a water-bottle and get the contents down my neck. Far out in front, the Herc was lifting away in a hard turn to the left, with black exhaust trails streaming behind its engines.

The liquid gave me new heart.

‘Tell him we’ll be ready for him next time round,’ I said to Pav. ‘And tell him the black guy on the runway’s one of ours.’

‘Roger,’ Pav answered. ‘We’re in the shit already. The plane’s just taken fire from the enemy column. The pilot reckons they’re within three ks of the strip.’

I measured the distance from us to Jason’s second smoke grenade. Two hundred metres. For another few seconds I held on. ‘Keep going,’ I called. ‘Keep going… This’ll do. Pull off! Pull away to the right.’

Pav turned. He had the sense to keep going until he’d towed the mother wagon well off the strip, at right angles to it, tail-on. The moment he stopped, Danny leapt off and slashed through the rope with a knife. Then Pav drove off twenty or thirty metres.

I jumped to the ground, ran to the back of the wagon and unhooked the fastenings of the tail-board. At a glance I could tell that several of the warhead casings had cracked during our violent transit. The whole load seemed to be coated in transparent slime.

The roar of aircraft engines made me look behind. There was the Herc, coming round in a hard turn, almost at zero feet, banked like a huge, heavy fighter, with the tip of its port wing flicking over the bush.

‘Shit hot!’ I shouted. ‘That’s some flying!’ But when I moved towards the pinkie and the other guys, to get the crack, they edged rapidly away, staring at me as if I were a lunatic.

‘What’s the matter?’ I called.

‘Keep your fucking distance, Geordie!’ Mart shouted. ‘There’s NBC suits for us all on board the Herc. Until we’ve got them on, just stay clear of us and the wagon.’

The Herc was already coming in. Having made the tightest possible circuit, the pilot straightened up and banged his big aircraft down just past the first smoke grenade. Smoke and dust exploded as the tyres bit. So hard was the first impact that the plane bounced and flew another fifty metres before it smacked down again. There was a terrific roar as the pilot reversed the thrust of the props, and the aircraft disappeared in a whirling cloud of dust, sand and debris.

By the time it trundled level with us it had slowed to a walking pace, and it swung hard round, right-handed, turning back to face the way it had come, before rolling to a halt no more than thirty metres from the mother wagon. Already the tail ramp was on its way down. From the side door burst a team of men in sand-coloured NBC suits, complete with helmets, masks and respirators. The two guys in the lead carried armfuls of spare suits. Ignoring me, they ran for the pinkie and threw the garments at the rest of the lads, who immediately started struggling into them.

The remainder of the NBC team came in my direction. The leader shouted something in my face, but the combination of his mask and the scream of the Herc’s engines deadened his voice, and I didn’t get what he said.

Instead of replying, I pointed at the back of the mother wagon. The guy ran towards it, stopped a couple of metres short, took one look at the load and made a colossal ‘no way’ gesture with his gloved hands, flinging his arms out wide to either side, on a level with his shoulders, like a member of a ground crew telling a pilot to shut down his engines. Then he turned and did the same towards the flight-deck of the aircraft.

He must have given a radio order to his mates. Three men ran forward with a hold-all and began rigging explosive charges on the noses of the weapons in the top layer. As they worked, the leader made violent gestures towards our team, pumping his right hand up and down and pointing at the plane. ‘Get in!’ his signals were saying. ‘Move! On the double! All aboard!’

The lads stumbled towards the pinkie, half in and half out of their sandy suits, to grab their weapons. Pav must have realised that he wasn’t going to need any protection after all, because he ripped his kit off and threw it on the ground with an angry gesture before he seized the .50 from its mount, then snatched his own 203 and ran for the plane, clutching both weapons. Stringer was already fully dressed, but Danny and Chalky moved awkwardly, with their legs encased, holding the upper halves of the suits around their waists. The Herc sat there, big and heavy, with all four props spinning.

As for me, I felt zombiefied. I couldn’t move. I stood and watched the demolition guys taping their det cord into position and setting a timer. Stringer was right: we should have blown the missiles in the cache, without ever bothering to move them.

One of the demo team gave me five fingers: five minutes to get clear. Still I was rooted to the spot. I watched him, and all the NBC team, sprint for the tailgate of the Herc and up the ramp. I seemed to be caught in a dream. Everyone else could move, but I was frozen. Through the swirling dust I saw Pav and Chalky come out on to the ramp and make frantic gestures, ordering me, begging me, willing me, to go aboard. Their mouths were wide open, yelling. Another guy, unrecognisable in his NBC kit, was giving a similar performance from the side door. But something made it impossible for me to do what they wanted.

At last I came to life. I grabbed my 203 from the front of the doomed mother wagon and ran — not for the Herc, but for the pinkie. I slotted my weapon into the clips above the dash and jumped into the driving seat. The ignition key was in place. I switched on, started up and scorched off towards the far smoke pillar. As I accelerated away, the note of the Herc’s engines rose and it started to move in the opposite direction. The side door had been closed; the tail ramp was going up.

I found Jason flat on his face, in a firing position, with his 203 levelled towards the east. Great guy — he was preparing to take on the Alpha column single-handed. I pulled up beside him with a yell of ‘All aboard!’, and hardly gave him time to scramble into the passenger seat before I shot forward again, hell bent on getting out of sight before the rebel convoy came into view. Instinct sent me due north, into a patch of dense bush, where thickets of thorn grew two or three times the height of the vehicle.

As soon as we were out of sight of the road, I stopped and switched off.

‘If they’ve seen us, we’re fucked,’ I said. ‘But I think we’re okay.’

We grabbed our 203s, jumped out and scuttled to the edge of the thicket, at a point where a gap in the bushes gave a view of the open ground.

The roar of the Herc’s engines under full power rumbled back at us. The aircraft was taxiing straight away into the far distance, trailing dust. Then it lifted off, leaving all the debris behind it. Seconds later a brilliant flash spurted from the mother wagon, and the BOOM! of a big explosion buffeted past us. Pieces of metal erupted into the air, falling back over a wide area. A grey, mushroom-shaped cloud soared upwards, and beneath it the wreck of the truck was enveloped by flames.

‘The buggers won’t fancy that,’ I said, half to myself, half to Jason. ‘Now they see the aircraft’s away, and there’s nothing left for grabs on the strip, they’ll keep going, to check the cache. They’ve nothing else to go for.’

My hunch was immediately put to the test. Within a minute the first vehicle appeared, a Gaz jeep, proceeding quite fast along the road, with two guys standing in the open back. Obviously a scout — it was well ahead of the rest. Before it came level with the burning remains of the wagon, it stopped.

‘They’re radioing back,’ I said. ‘Reporting the situation, asking for orders.’

After a pause, the jeep went forward again. When I saw it wasn’t deviating from the road, but heading on for the town, I breathed deep with relief. A minute behind it, the rest of the convoy lumbered into view: two more jeeps, four heavy trucks with their open backs full of troops, four closed lorries, a tanker and two more jeeps bringing up the rear — quite a force. Which vehicle was Joss in, I wondered? I dearly wanted to launch a 203 grenade and take the bastard out.

All Jason and I had to do was keep still until they’d disappeared, then slip away to the east. I felt momentary exultation at the thought that this lot of pricks was about to run head-on into the survivors of Muende’s convoy, but then, with the abrupt release of tension, exhaustion hit me. Lying flat out, with my face on the backs of my hands, I closed my eyes and let out a deep sigh.

‘Okay, sah?’

I opened my eyes, to see Jason staring at me with a worried expression.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ I went. ‘A bit tired, that’s all. And Mabonzo, you know what we’re going to do now, don’t you?’

‘Yassir. Go get the diamond.’