The Midas Legacy

44

The soldier climbed along the side of the transporter towards Nina, murderous intent clear on his face as he swung around the hydraulic clamp. She hurriedly started back towards the missile’s tail, but not before turning the two levers on the control panel. Forcing the truck to stop by lowering the jacks would at least cause enough confusion to give her some slim chance of escape…

Confusion struck her as her handholds started to move.

The controls weren’t for the jacks, she realised with shock. They were for the missile’s erector system — which was now rising from its bed!

Mighty hydraulic rams whined, pushing the arms supporting the rocket upwards and lifting the great weapon out of its cradle. ‘Oh crap!’ she gasped.

She looked around at a shrill scream. The soldier’s expression was now one of terror: one arm was trapped in the mechanism, dragging him off the footplate as it rose. He squirmed and kicked, trying to free himself, but then a gush of red flowed down the ram’s smooth steel. His agonised shrieks became animalistic as his arm was sheared off with a snap of bone. He fell, thudding off the TEL’s side and cartwheeling into the black valley below.

Nina cringed, then looked back as the lights of the pursuing jeep grew brighter. The vehicle was catching up again. One of the soldiers shouted into a walkie-talkie; a moment later the transporter drifted towards the inside of the road, making room for the 4x4 to draw alongside. A man in the jeep’s rear reached out to pull himself on to the TEL.

A yelled threat in Korean, then he started towards Nina. She hastily reversed direction, starting back towards the cab — only to see a second soldier climb out of it.

Trapped—

Eddie slammed up through the gears as he accelerated in pursuit of the second transporter. He had seen the soldier make the transfer from the jeep behind Nina, and as the road curved, he now saw another man coming at her from the cab. ‘Don’t you bastards ever give up?’ he growled.

The speedometer only went up to seventy kilometres per hour, which with the weight of the missile and its erector crane was highly optimistic, but the needle was still creeping towards the sixty mark. About thirty-five miles per hour, hardly a blistering pace under normal conditions. On this narrow, twisting, precarious route, though, it felt almost supersonic.

He closed on the jeep as it dropped back behind the TEL. The men aboard it had been so focused on Nina that they hadn’t realised the third transporter was under new ownership. They were about to find out, though…

The 4x4’s driver tipped his head up at the mirror as he registered the bright headlights coming up quickly from behind — then looked back in alarm when he saw just how quickly. The jeep swung across the road. Eddie spun the wheel to follow it—

The impact barely shook the massive sixteen-wheeled transporter, but the jeep was almost dragged under its sloping steel prow before the driver managed to veer clear down its left side. Eddie swung after the 4x4 as it braked hard. It clipped one of the truck’s rear wheels and was thrown against the embankment, spinning to an abrupt stop.

The Yorkshireman checked his mirror. Both occupants were still alive, and the jeep had only taken superficial damage, quickly reversing and starting after him again. But the second transporter was his most immediate concern: specifically, the two men clambering along its flanks…

He did a double-take as he realised the missile was no longer lying flat. The erector arms were lifting it from its bed, the rocket about fifteen degrees from horizontal and steadily rising. ‘What the bloody hell have you done?’ he asked as he glimpsed Nina scooting along the truck’s side. The higher the missile got, the more top-heavy and unstable the TEL would become.

The road widened slightly — just enough for the two transporters to fit side by side. If he overtook the other truck, he could force it to stop. But first he had to help Nina.

He swept the transporter back to the outside of the road, its right wheels dangerously close to the crumbling edge. Down a gear, and he accelerated again, the cab’s front corner barely missing the other truck’s protruding launch stand as he swept past. The soldier pursuing Nina turned his head in alarm—

There was a muffled bang as Eddie hit him, followed by considerably wetter thumps as the Korean was ground between the two TELs. Blood spouted up on to the side window. What was left of the dead man disappeared under the juggernaut’s wheels.

The soldier advancing from the front froze in horror at the carnage. Nina looked back, her concern changing to unexpected hope and delight as she saw her husband waving from inside the cab.

The missile had now risen high enough for a person to fit underneath it. ‘Get over!’ he shouted, gesturing. She rolled into the curving cradle beneath the huge cylinder.

Eddie accelerated at the second man, who snapped out of his fearful trance and darted on to the back of the truck. He was about to raise his gun when the driver of his own vehicle swerved sharply, trying to ram the chasing TEL off the road. The impact threw the soldier flat.

A second collision jolted both transporters. Eddie was about to shift his foot to the brake, then changed his mind and kept the accelerator down, making a turn of his own to sideswipe the other truck. His cab was just short of halfway along his target, knocking its rear end towards the embankment. The increasingly unsteady TEL lurched. The Korean driver hastily straightened out, deterred from any more attempts at vehicular combat.

Eddie kept up his speed, the two vehicles now side by side with the other ahead by a nose. He glanced back, seeing Nina beneath the missile — and the soldier recovering, snatching his pistol from its holster.

The Englishman ducked and groped for one of the dead men’s rifles, but before he could reach it, the side window cracked under bullet impacts. The glass was toughened to withstand a rocket launch — but wasn’t bulletproof, he discovered as more rounds shattered the pane beside him—

The gunfire stopped. Like most of the soldiers at the base, the Korean only had one magazine of ammunition. But it was not his only weapon. He scurried forward, shouting to his comrades in the cab, then snatched a hand grenade from his belt. Another man leaned out of the window in alarm, yelling for him to stop, but he had already pulled the pin.

He drew back his arm to lob the grenade through the broken window—

Eddie swung his transporter at its neighbour. The crash knocked the soldier on to his back, but he kept his grip on the explosive, the fuse not yet triggered. The other driver slowed, the Yorkshireman grinding past and slicing off both vehicles’ wing mirrors as he drew ahead.

The man in the cab raised his rifle and fired. Eddie dropped lower as bullets lanced over him. His windscreen burst apart.

Wind rushed in through the gaping hole. He squinted and saw the road curving away to the left, rounding a large bowl in the hillside. The lights of Kang’s SUV were visible in the distance on its far side, with nothing between them and Eddie’s transporter except empty space over the dark forests below.

The Korean driver made another aggressive move, pushing his vehicle against the side of the hijacked TEL and forcing it relentlessly towards the road’s edge. If Eddie didn’t brake, he would be forced into oblivion over the approaching curve — but slowing would bring him back into the soldier’s firing line—

A clunk of metal against metal behind him added a third, equally fatal outcome. The soldier had just thrown his grenade.

Nowhere to go — except out.

He flung open the driver’s door — and leapt on to the other transporter, catching the bull bars running across its flat front. The unstable TEL rolled like a ship on heavy seas as it entered the turn, the missile straining against its support arms.

The Englishman’s former ride continued onwards…

Over the edge of the road.

Engine roaring, the massive vehicle hurtled into the void. The grenade exploded, tearing off half the cab’s roof — then the missile was thrown free as the truck hit the steep slope, smashing into the trees.

It was indeed fully fuelled.

A monstrous explosion ripped through the woods, engulfing the hillside in flames. A blazing mushroom cloud rolled into the dark sky.

Eddie clung to the transporter’s nose, heart racing at his narrow escape — only to see astonished, then angry faces looking back at him through the windscreen.

Hunched in the cradle beneath the rising missile, Nina hadn’t seen the other transporter go over the cliff — but she certainly heard, and felt, its destruction. She raised her head as the deafening roar faded behind her.

The soldier had dropped flat to shield himself from his grenade detonation. Now he lifted his head and saw her. His gun was empty, but he still had a knife, which he drew as he rose and advanced.

The missile was now almost forty-five degrees from the horizontal. The microlight’s wing rattled and flapped, still caught on the clamp holding the rocket. No hiding places; Nina’s only escape route was to climb around the weapon itself. She ducked under the hydraulic arm and sidestepped back along the transporter’s flank.

The soldier followed, wielding the knife.

The driver shouted commands to the other man in the cab, who grabbed his rifle and leaned out of the window, trying to curl his gun arm around the transporter’s front.

Eddie flattened himself against the bull bars as a bullet cracked past him. The soldier stretched further out. The Yorkshireman hurriedly climbed sideways. There was a gap in the middle of the hefty metal bumper to accommodate a winch. He dropped into the space as another round whipped by. A third shot clanged against the bumper just above him. He tried to squeeze deeper into the recess, a protruding lever jabbing painfully against his chest—

It moved — and the winch whirred, a hefty hook lowering on a heavy-duty steel cable. It hit the road and was immediately snatched backwards to bang noisily against the cab’s underside. Eddie considered replicating a famous stunt from Raiders of the Lost Ark by grabbing the cable and letting himself be dragged along beneath the transporter, but instantly dismissed the idea as suicide; on the curving road, he would be crushed by the massive wheels.

Instead he shoved the lever back to the stop position before taking hold of the winch assembly itself and dangling from it. His position was precarious in the extreme, but he was as shielded as he could possibly be from the soldier’s bullets.

As if to make the point, another round ricocheted off the bumper above him. The North Korean shouted angrily, then withdrew.

Eddie was about to pull himself back up when he heard a bang. The soldier had climbed out on to the cab’s ladder-like steps, slamming the door behind him so he could reach the truck’s front… for a clear shot.

A long dangling line from the microlight’s wrecked wing flicked at Nina’s face. She ducked away from it, continuing towards the transporter’s rear. The rocket rattled and squealed against its restraints above her.

Her wounded arm was slowing her. The Korean soldier closed in, thrusting the knife. She tried to dodge — but the blade slashed the back of her shoulder.

She screamed, almost losing her grip. The soldier smiled, the headlights of the jeep approaching from behind revealing dirty, crooked teeth. He waved the knife at her, taunting, enjoying the moment before he got the rare privilege of killing a foreign spy…

The hanging line slapped against the back of his head. Startled by the unexpected touch, he jerked around to see if someone was behind him. Nobody there. He looked back—

Nina seized the line and snapped it like a lasso to loop it around his throat.

The man let out a choked yelp as she pulled it as hard as she could, swinging the wing outwards from the clamp above. It caught the slipstream — and broke free.

The wing acted like a braking parachute. The soldier was about to hack the line with his knife when he was abruptly yanked from the transporter by his neck. He landed in front of the jeep, taking the 4x4’s solid metal bumper to his face with a gruesome smack.

Nina regained her hold and climbed back on to the cradle. The missile juddered alarmingly above her, rivets straining and tearing—

The TEL lurched sideways. There was a nauseating moment as it teetered on the brink, then wallowed back upright. With the rocket drawing ever closer to the vertical, the transporter was now massively top-heavy… and threatening to tip over at any second.

The driver realised the danger and stamped on the brake pedal. Kang had ordered the convoy not to stop out of fear of American saboteurs, but the threat of the transporter capsizing was infinitely more tangible. The speedometer needle plunged.

The sudden deceleration swung Eddie outwards from his cover. One hand lost its grip on the winch. The other held, but he twisted uncontrollably as he dropped back, the jutting lever hitting his ribs.

He cried out, looking up — to see the soldier lean around the cab and take aim.

Nina had been thrown off her feet as the TEL braked, sliding forward and hitting the hydraulic ram. She grabbed it to save herself from falling over the side, only to face a new threat. The jeep started to overtake the transporter as it went around a right-hand bend, the passengers bringing up their rifles. With the missile elevated, they were free to shoot without the risk of hitting it—

More rivets tore free with gunshot snaps, panels buckling as the rocket ground against the clamp — then with a screech of shearing metal the claws broke apart…

And the weapon toppled like a felled tree.

Nina screamed—

The missile clashed against the erector arm above her as the TEL turned, rolling over it — on to the jeep.

The 4x4 and the men inside were pounded into the road as the missile landed on top of them. It rolled crazily back across the road behind the transporter, tumbling over the edge into the trees below. The fuel tanks burst open, kerosene and chemical-laced nitric acid splashing together—

Another colossal fireball lit up the night as the missile blew apart. The blast shredded trees into splinters and tore a crater out of the hillside, a stretch of road a hundred feet long sliding into the inferno in the transporter’s wake.

The rocket’s fall threw the already unstable TEL wildly off balance, slamming the soldier clinging to its front against the cab. He dropped his rifle, the Type 58 bouncing along the road — then the transporter lurched violently back upright. The Korean was flung into the blazing forest. Toppling trees smashed down on top of him.

The driver’s foot was still jammed on the brake. The reeling transporter skidded, slewing sideways before juddering to a halt just short of another bend.

The lurch finally cost Eddie his hold on the winch. He fell, landing hard and bowling towards the drop—

He caught a white marker stone, stopping with his legs hanging over the precipice. Aching, winded, he lay still for several seconds as his dizziness subsided.

The crackle of burning trees and the thrum of the transporter’s idling engine masked another sound until it was almost upon him. He looked up at a crunch of grit — to see a pair of combat boots just a few feet away.

One of them swung at him—

He jerked up an arm to protect his head. The kick caught his elbow with punishing force, knocking him backwards over the edge. He clawed at the dirty ground, fingers closing around a stone embedded in the earth just before he fell.

The TEL’s driver loomed over him, silhouetted by the truck’s lights. He had a pistol in one hand, but although he could have simply shot the defenceless Englishman, he had a more sadistic fate in mind.

His foot came down upon Eddie’s knuckles.

Eddie gasped at the pain, the driver shifting ever more weight on to his hand. Then suddenly it was gone, but he knew the relief was just the briefest prelude before the man’s boot stamped down again—

‘Hey! Drop it!’

The shout came from behind the soldier. Nina had jumped from the transporter and retrieved the rifle, aiming it at the Korean.

The man whirled—

She shot him before he could even raise his gun. He fell past Eddie and disappeared down the hillside below.

‘Eddie!’ Nina ran to him, dropping the gun and pulling him up. ‘Oh God, oh my God! I thought I’d lost you.’ She held him tightly, tears running down her cheeks with the sudden release of emotion. ‘Idiot! Jumping from a plane…’

Eddie managed a strained laugh as he hugged her. ‘Yeah, okay, it could’ve gone better. But you weren’t exactly Mrs Sensible either.’ He looked over her shoulder at the TEL, the empty crane now fully elevated. Beyond it, the night sky was aglow with the light of the burning forest. ‘Why did you raise the missile? That’s insane!’

‘It was an accident! I was trying to lower those jacks to stop the truck.’

‘That’s only a bit less insane! But it worked, I suppose.’

‘And we’re both still alive.’ She stood, helping him to his feet. ‘The explosion took out the road behind us, so nobody can follow.’

Eddie looked across the valley. The SUV, troop truck and last remaining TEL were distant sparks in the blackness as they approached the airbase. ‘There’s only one way we can go, though — down there.’

‘I know.’ Nina sighed grimly. ‘Great. So we’ve got another kamikaze mission, then?’

‘The first one’s always the hardest,’ he said with a wry, tired grin. ‘The next one’s a doddle.’ He faced the transporter again. ‘It won’t be safe to drive like that. How did you lift the crane?’

‘There’s a control panel at the back.’

‘Okay, do the opposite of whatever you did and bring it back down again. I’ll get it ready to go.’ He collected the rifle, then they went to the two ends of the TEL.

Without the huge weight of the missile upon them, the erector arms lowered considerably faster than they had risen. One had been buckled by the falling rocket, preventing it from returning to its bed. ‘That’ll have to do,’ Eddie called to Nina as it ground against the transporter’s side. She shut it down, then ran to join him as he put the truck back into gear and revved the engine. ‘You ready?’

She looked down at the airfield. The remnants of Kang’s convoy had arrived at the great white cross of the Antonov, ready to load the last missile aboard the giant aircraft. A nod, with a confidence she didn’t feel. ‘Let’s finish this.’