Juggernaut

‘These agency guys don’t give a shit. They follow orders. We’re expendable assets. Hired guns. They’ve got no use for us. They won’t hesitate to drop the bomb. Probably relish the chance. Prove to their boss they are ideologically pure. True believers, loyal to the cause.’

‘I have to try,’ said Voss. He pressed transmit.

‘Incoming plane, do you copy, over? Angel Flight can you hear me?’

No response.

‘Forget it,’ said Gaunt. ‘They won’t answer.’

‘Angel Flight, this is fire support team Bravo Bravo Lima Two. There are men on the ground. Do you copy, over? Do not bomb this site. There are men on the ground requesting urgent assistance. We require immediate evacuation. Please respond.’

No response.

‘How much time do we have left?’

‘Two, three hours tops,’ said Gaunt. ‘They fly fucked-up old freighters, make a few runs, then sell them to a wrecker’s yard. Junkers. The kind of planes that won’t attract attention on the taxiway of a third-world airfield. Russian cargo lifters. Old twin-prop Providers. They’ll fly slow up the Saudi coast then swing through southern Iraq. I’d say we have a two-hour window to fuel the train. After that we haul ass, on foot if necessary. Hang around any longer, and we burn.’

They left the cab. They vaulted the rear knuckle coupling of the locomotive to the Pullman carriage behind.

The cobwebbed grandeur of Saddam’s salon. Their boots kicked up billowing clouds of dust from a Persian rug.

Voss emptied Lucy’s backpack on an antique desk, mahogany cracked and warped by dry desert air.

Grenades and magazines.

Gaunt slapped a fresh thirty-round clip into the receiver well of an assault rifle and stuffed mags in his jacket pockets.

Voss slotted shells into his shotgun and racked the slide. He looked out the window.

‘All right. Let’s go.’

Voss kicked open the carriage door. They jumped from the train and ran towards the convoy.

They jogged across open ground. They walked among wrecked vehicles, weapons raised, sweeping left and right.

‘Should be big,’ said Gaunt. ‘A ten wheeler.’

Voss checked his watch. He rubbed dust from the glass with a dirty thumb. Seven thirty. They had been in the desert less than twenty-four hours. It felt like a decade.

They picked their way through the avenue of burned-out vehicles. Crumpled sedans, trackless APCs, troop trucks burned down to a skeletal chassis.

Boots crunched on windshield glass. Blackened bones snapped like twigs.

Voss came to a sudden halt.

‘What the fuck is this shit?’

He backed away from a scorched bus. The bus lay bedded in sand. Arms clawed and clutched from beneath the vehicle. Hands scrabbled and slapped the bodywork. Soldiers must have crawled underneath the bus during the fire-fight and got crushed as tyres burst and the vehicle settled into the dust. They succumbed to infection as they lay pinned beneath the ten-ton hulk. Entombed, halfway between life and death.

He unhooked a grenade from his webbing.

‘Don’t,’ said Gaunt. ‘Leave them. We haven’t got time.’

They found the fuel truck between two shattered APCs. A heavy Russian Kraz in desert yellow. There was a boom arm at the top of the tank. A thick transfer hose terminated in a heavy coupling.

Voss checked the storage tank. Bullet holes high in the tank. Oil in the sand.

‘Lucky this thing didn’t blow sky-high. A single tracer hit would have been Game Over.’

He touched drip-streaks and sniffed his fingers. Diesel.

‘Sure this isn’t JP-8?’

Gaunt shook his head.

‘Locomotive grade. It took a tank of gas to get the locomotive to this valley. It will take another tank to get her home. That’s why they brought a reserve.’

Voss rapped the hull with his knuckles. A dull thud.

‘She’s three-quarters full. Intact below the bullet holes.’

Gaunt checked out the cab. It was burned out. Seats scorched down to springs. Dash-plastic hanging in petrified drips.

The hood had blown off. The engine was shot to hell.

‘It’s fucked,’ said Voss. ‘It’ll never move.’

‘Hold on. Let’s think this through.’

The quad raced down the narrow ravine. Lucy drove parallel with the track. The bike bucked over rough terrain. They drove through a haze of rock dust, slow-settling powder ejected by the collapsed mine tunnel.

Amanda slapped Lucy on the back. Lucy stopped the bike.

‘I got to patch my leg.’

Amanda lay on the ground. Lucy patched her leg with Kerlix dressing and gave her a shot of morphine.

‘Like it?’

‘Love it.’

‘We have to get out of this fucking valley,’ said Lucy. ‘We have to get deep in that rail tunnel. I mean real deep. Shelter from the blast wave and heat.’

‘How long do you think we have?’

‘Couple of hours, tops. We better burn rubber.’

‘I don’t think I can make it,’ said Amanda.

‘Don’t even start with that shit.’

‘What if my leg gives out? How am I going to make it across the fucking desert? Are you going to carry me on your back?’

‘If that’s what it takes. I’ll get you home, babe. I lost everything. Toon. Huang. Voss. I’m not losing you.

A Republican Guard stumbled along the track towards them, skin laced with metallic tendrils.

‘Give me the machete,’ said Lucy.