The Templar Heresy

19

Bronson slammed his foot on to the brake pedal and simultaneously swung the steering wheel hard around to the left. The Land Cruiser rocked and lurched with the sudden change of direction, then surged forward as Bronson shifted his foot to the accelerator.

‘What’s happening?’ Stephen demanded.

‘That,’ Bronson snapped, nodding his head at the ground over to the right of the vehicle, but not taking his hands off the steering wheel.

Stephen and Angela glanced in the direction he was indicating, but neither saw anything. Then, looking deceptively innocent in the harsh midday sun, a puff of sand seemed to erupt from the top of a nearby dune, followed immediately by two other flurries of dust and sand.

‘What is it?’ Stephen asked.

‘They’re shooting at us,’ Bronson replied shortly. ‘I saw a kind of flicker from the back of that truck a few seconds ago.’

Stephen twisted round in his seat to stare over at the now stationary lorry. Then he shook his head.

‘We must be at least a mile away by now. Surely they haven’t got a hope of hitting us at that distance.’

‘Not with a Kalashnikov,’ Bronson replied grimly. ‘But plenty of other things have the range.’

‘Like what?’

‘The Ma Deuce. That’s what the American troops call the Browning M2 half-inch heavy machine gun. I don’t know exactly what weapons those guys had mounted on the trucks, but quite often out here you’ll find that anything much bigger than a jeep will carry a half-inch machine gun of some sort, and the Browning is pretty much the best of the bunch, so it’s a really popular choice.’

‘And that could hit us from over a mile away?’ Stephen still sounded incredulous.

‘Definitely. Its effective range is two thousand yards, but it’s still dangerous at well over four miles. It fires between five hundred and six hundred rounds a minute, and that’s about ten shells every second. Any single half-inch bullet hitting this Toyota could easily take out something vital — a tyre or the engine, say — and if that happens we’re dead.’

‘Jesus,’ Stephen exhaled, and again turned to look towards the lorry.

The bigger the clouds of dust and sand Bronson managed to create the better, because that would obscure the 4x4 from view, and travelling in a straight line would be the height of stupidity, so he swung the Toyota left, away from the threat posed by the heavy weapon that was firing short bursts towards them. They couldn’t hear the shots over the roar of the diesel in the Land Cruiser, but puffs of sand were erupting from the dunes near them, so it was clear they were still under attack.

Bronson dropped down a gear and pressed his foot hard on the accelerator pedal, sending the big Toyota barrelling down the side of a dune, the suspension bottoming as he reached the rocky level ground at its base.

On the firmer surface he could increase speed still more, which is precisely what he did, causing Stephen to seize the grab handle above his door with one hand and his seat belt with the other.

‘If those bullets they’re firing hit us, that’ll be the end of us,’ he yelled over the commotion. ‘But the same applies if you crash this jeep.’

‘I do know that,’ Bronson replied, but didn’t noticeably slow down.

He crested another dune, and for a split second all four wheels of the Toyota were turning in the air as it left the ground. It landed back on the slope on the far side of the dune with a crash that bounced all three of them around in their seats, but he continued to keep the power on, forcing the big vehicle to travel as fast down the slope as the conditions permitted.

‘This isn’t as dangerous as you might think,’ Bronson said, turning the steering wheel slightly to avoid a rocky outcrop that projected from the sand about fifty yards ahead of the Toyota. ‘Sand dunes are formed by the action of the wind, and that usually means that the slopes on both sides are relatively gentle.’

Stephen didn’t look convinced when Bronson glanced at his face in the rear-view mirror.

‘And the chances of the bullets hitting us now are pretty much nil.’

‘We haven’t come that far,’ Stephen said. ‘We must still be in range of that machine gun.’

‘We are, obviously,’ Angela said, ‘but what Chris means is that we’re travelling away from them, and we were already close to the maximum accurate range of the weapon when they started firing. So they have to move, they have to follow us, if they’re going to have any chance of hitting this vehicle. And one of the few things I do know about weapons is that trying to hit a moving target from another moving target is virtually impossible.’

She gasped for breath as the Land Cruiser again lifted off the ground and then crashed down once more.

‘That is what you meant, isn’t it?’ she asked.

Bronson nodded. ‘Got it in one.’

A couple of minutes later, Bronson began to back off the speed. He hadn’t seen any signs of further firing from the lorry, and the vehicle itself was now at least two miles behind them, maybe three or more. They were safe, at least for the moment.

And then, off to the left, Bronson saw an almost identical dark shape, and in that instant he realized he was facing a clever ambush. The reason the pursuing lorry had fired at them — apart from trying to stop the Toyota and kill them, obviously, which would have been a bonus — was to force them over to the north, and within range of the other heavy machine gun he had no doubt was mounted on the second truck.

The vehicle appeared to be stationary, or at least it did when he first saw it, but within a few seconds it was clear that either it had been moving very slowly or the driver had just started off. Which deduction was correct was irrelevant, because almost immediately the vehicle came to a stop on the crest of a dune, and seconds later Bronson saw a sudden flicker from above the cab.

Somebody on the lorry was firing a weapon at them, and this time there was no doubt at all: at 600 yards, the Toyota was well within range of the Browning.