Juggernaut

Lucy shut off the torch and lifted her visor. She pulled foam plugs from her ears. She jammed a screwdriver into the burn-groove and twisted like she was shucking an oyster. A circular chunk of steel plate flipped free and clattered on flagstones.

‘You plan to cut through the door? That might take a while.’

Jabril stood in shadow, watching Lucy work.

‘I’m going to cut a couple of chunks out of this cobalt layer so I can reach the steel beneath. Then I’m going to drill the locks.’

Lucy stripped out of her welder’s smock. She was soaked in sweat. She drank a litre of Highland Spring and tossed the bottle. She emptied a second bottle over her head. She shook water from her hair.

‘So I guess in a couple of hours we will know whether you are lying about the gold. My advice? If there is nothing beyond these doors but thin air, then you better take my gun and put a bullet in your head right now. The boys expect to fly home rich. They won’t care to hear excuses.’

Lucy pulled on the leather welder’s jacket. She pulled on gauntlets.

‘There’s food in the choppers,’ she said. ‘Feed the guys. Make yourself useful.’

She dropped her visor, triggered the plasma arc and began to cut.

Jabril split open a couple of MRE pouches. He distributed crackers and tube cheese.

‘I’m not hungry,’ said Toon.

‘Eat,’ said Amanda. ‘You need salt.’

‘If I eat, then I’ll shit. And there is no fucking way I’m fumbling around in the dark trying to dig a straddle-trench. I’m not taking my hands off this fucking weapon until sunrise.’

Amanda scanned the convoy through her nightscope. The darkness of the moonlit valley boosted bright as day. Cross-hairs roved over buckled hoods, blown-out tyres, seats burned down to springs. The junkyard wreckage glowed with residual heat from the day.

A flicker of movement. Brief shadow beneath the fender of a truck.

‘Reckon there are any snakes out here?’ asked Toon.

‘Coral snakes,’ said Voss. He took a pouch of Red Man from his pocket and folded a wad of tobacco into his mouth. ‘That’s what you have to look out for in a desert. Venomous as a motherfucker.’

‘Camel spiders. Ever seen one? Big as a dinner plate. Hate them.’

Amanda refocused her sight. A leering skull-face glimpsed between cars.

‘Contact,’ she shouted. She opened fire.

Toon swung the SAW and fired blind into the darkness. Huang and Raphael shouldered their rifles and let rip, full auto. Voss pumped his shotgun.

The gatehouse walls were lit by flickering muzzle-flare. Smoke and roar. Tracer rounds streaked across the valley floor, slamming into corroded hulks with a shower of sparks.

Huang took a 40mm pepper-pot grenade from his ammo pouch. Gold tip. High explosive. He slotted the shell into the barrel-launcher of his rifle and fired. Pop. Recoil. Vehicles flipped and burned.

Into the Vault

Lucy stood at the truck door, enveloped in smoke and the stink of hot metal. The brilliant needle-flame of the plasma arc blazed white. Cobalt liquefied and trickled like tears. Drips hit the granite flagstones between her boots and instantly solidified into a smooth mirror-sheet puddle.

She blinked sweat. Perspiration trickled down her back, her legs. She ignored the discomfort and concentrated on the incandescent flame slicing metal.

She completed a circular cut. A saucer disk of cobalt plate fell away from the door and clattered to the floor.

She shut off the plasma arc and threw it aside. She tore off her mask and jacket. She plucked foam plugs from her ears.

She poured water over her head and sluiced her eyes. She lifted the hem of her T-shirt and towelled her face.

Distant gunfire. She snatched her radio from the floor.

‘Sitrep. What the fuck is going on, people?’

Toon strafed the convoy. The SAW ejected a steady stream of chain-links and smoking brass. The machine gun spat bullets at two hundred rounds a minute. Every fifth round was tracer. A needle-fine streak of light. The corroded hulks of the convoy shrieked and sang as bullets punched through metal and kicked up a storm of frag, dust and debris.

Amanda worked her rifle bolt. She fired at shadows.

Huang slapped a clip into his AR-15 and emptied it in a sustained four-second burst.

‘Break contact,’ shouted Amanda. ‘Cease fire. Cease fucking fire.’

Sudden silence.

They crouched behind the rubble barricade, breathing cordite stink from the smouldering cartridges scattered at their feet.

Toon opened a box of ammo and clipped a fresh belt into the receiver of the SAW. He cranked the charging handle. He sipped mineral water. He splashed Highland Spring over the red-hot gun barrel. Water fizzed and steamed like spit on a hot plate.

Amanda loaded a fresh mag of .308 and scanned the wrecked convoy with her nightscope. Sedans peeled open by 40mm grenade detonations. Hot metal glowed luminescent green. Bullet holes burned like coals.

Movement at the back of the convoy. Something broken and skeletal dragging itself between trucks.