Juggernaut

Amanda adjusted her grip on the rifle and lined up the shot. She whispered beneath her breath. First drill they taught her during basic, straight after they issued bedding and uniform:

‘This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. Without me, my rifle is nothing. Without my rifle, I am nothing…’

A snarling face, looking right at her. Cross-hairs centred at the bridge of its nose. Gun shot. Skull-burst. Cranium blown out. The thing flopped dead.

Lucy’s voice over the radio:

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

Lucy and Amanda walked from the citadel. They crossed moonlit waste ground towards the convoy. Lucy shouldered her assault rifle. Amanda held her pistol in a double-grip.

‘How many did you see?’ asked Lucy.

‘Three, hiding under trucks. Better watch out. Might be a bunch more.’

Lucy hit the pressel switch of her radio.

‘Hey. Huang.’

‘Yeah, boss.’

‘Give us some light.’

A pyro streaked skyward. A star-shell launched from Huang’s rifle. It burned brilliant white. It cast crazy, shifting shadows.

They walked between vehicles. A smouldering battle-space.

They shone flashlights into burned-out cars. Seat springs and steering columns, twisted and carbonised. They inspected the underside of each vehicle.

Amanda found a skeletal arm protruding from beneath a sedan.

‘First body count.’

Lucy found a ribcage. She kicked it with her boot. Fragments of olive uniform smoked and burned.

‘Got the second guy.’

Amanda found a third body slumped against the fender of a truck.

‘Hey,’ she shouted. ‘Third guy. Back here.’

They stood over the body.

An Iraqi soldier, entry wound between his eyes. His uniform hung around him in folds. His skin dried out like jerky.

Lucy crouched. She trained her barrel light on his skeletal face.

‘Something in his mouth.’

She unsheathed her push-knife, pressed the tip between yellow teeth and parted his jaws.

A mouthful of metal spines like needles.

‘Christ.’

‘Look at his hand,’ said Amanda.

Fine needles protruded from dry flesh.

Lucy tapped a couple of spines with her knife.

‘Looks metal, but it seems to be anchored in bone, like some kind of growth.’

‘Radiation? Some kind of mutation? Weird-ass cancer?’

‘Jabril has been talking about bio-weapons. Anthrax. Stuff like that. But half the armour-piercing shells fired in this war were tipped with depleted uranium. The desert is full of dust from old fuel rods. I don’t know. Maybe these guys breathed it in.’

‘Blood,’ said Amanda. A crimson trickle from the bullet wound. It dripped from his chin. ‘Guy looks like he has been dead a long while, but there was a beating heart, a functioning brain in that skull.’

Lucy wiped her knife on the dead man’s jacket.

‘Then I guess we did him a favour.’

Gaunt and Raphael watched from the barricade. The star-shell drifted to earth and burned out. They watched the distant light-cone of Lucy’s torch move between vehicles.

Raphael spoke low, so no one could overhear.

‘We have to think this through. Better if we don’t hit them all at once.’

‘Like I said, we wait until she opens the truck. They’ll start loading gold onto the choppers. They’ll split up, start moving around. We can take them one by one. They’ll be dead before they realise anything is going down.’

‘Cool.’

‘Just hold back,’ said Gaunt. ‘Use your knife, if you can. Soon as they catch a glimpse of gold their discipline will fly to hell. They’ll drop their guard. Start whooping and hollering. Big back-slapping frenzy. Whole thing will be over in seconds.’

Gaunt turned up the collar of his leather jacket. A cold night breeze sighed through the monumental ruins.

‘We should spill some gas,’ said Raphael. ‘Burn the bodies. Hard to imagine a forensic team out here, dusting for prints, but you never know.’

‘Their sorry asses will not be missed.’

‘Amen.’

Lucy beckoned Voss.

‘Give me a hand with the drill.’

They each gripped a rope handle and hefted it from Talon, then dumped it in the quad trailer.

Lucy rode the bike back to the temple at a walking pace. Voss strode beside her, shotgun at the ready. He turned and walked backward every few paces, squinting into the moonlit warren of forecourts and collapsed buildings that lined the processional way.

Lucy drove into the temple and killed the engine.

The truck door. A ragged, circular cut next to each combination lock.

‘I’ve burned through the first layer,’ explained Lucy. ‘Now we drill steel to access each lock drum.’

She prised open the wooden crate with a screwdriver. A DeWalt magnetic drill press wrapped in a blanket. She hooked it to the four-stroke generator. Green power light.

Lucy and Voss held the unit at head height and positioned it beside the upper combination lock. She engaged the magnets. Deep hum. Heavy clank as the drill clamped to the vault door.

Lucy locked the diamond drill bit in place with a hex key. She filled the coolant reservoir from a plastic gallon bottle.