Juggernaut

‘This is my rifle,’ she murmured. ‘There are many like it, but this one is mine…’

Skull face. Black eyes. A walking cadaver. A skeletal soldier creeping between the broken statues like a giant arachnid.

Amanda backed away. She kept her rifle raised. The creature boosted ethereal green by the nightscope. A man locked halfway between life and death. Ragged uniform. Dog tags hung over a desiccated ribcage. Parchment skin stretched taut over bone. Flesh broken by metallic, cancerous knots.

The creature snarled and reached for her.

Yellow canine teeth.

She lowered her rifle. She pulled Raphael’s machete from her belt. She swung, slammed the blade down, and split the creature’s head in two. It fell twitching.

Amanda placed a foot on the soldier’s chest. She jerked the machete free and wiped it clean on her trousers.

Boot prints on the sand-dusted flagstones. Chevron tread marks quickly blurring in the wind. Precise foot-falls. Not the drag and scuff of infected soldiers.

Gaunt.

She followed the boot prints, nightscope trained on ground. She crossed courtyards and colonnades.

The trail of fast-fading prints led her to the rear of the temple.

The crypt entrance. A slab pulled aside. Steps heading downwards into darkness.

She slung her rifle. She pulled one of the chopper signal flares from her pocket and struck the cap. It spat sparks, then fizzed crimson fire. She drew her pistol. She advanced down the ancient stone steps into deep shadow.

Gaunt crouched behind a broken pillar. He watched Lucy search the choppers. Sand swirled like smoke. He could see the dancing beam of her barrel-light, the silhouette of her prairie coat.

She examined each cab. Gaunt figured she was checking the chopper radios. Each bird had been equipped with UHF and VHF. Too deep in the desert to raise a signal.

He watched Lucy kneel and examine the emaciated body that lay beside Talon. She rolled the cadaver with her boot and examined the fresh head wound.

He saw her hand rise to the transmit button on her chest rig.

‘Gaunt? Gaunt, you out here?’ Lucy’s voice over the radio. ‘Can you hear me?’

Gaunt turned his back on her, huddled to keep out of earshot.

‘Yes, I can hear you.’

‘It’s been a long, cold night. Better enjoy it while it lasts. Twelve hours’ time the sun will be overhead and the desert will be a furnace.’

‘Yeah.’

‘So how about we fix up one these Hueys and get the fuck out of Dodge?’

‘Your friends will blow my brains out. I can’t trust them.’

‘They’ll keep their word.’

‘Voss? Your girlfriend? They won’t let me live. They’ll put a bullet in my head, whatever the cost.’

‘They’ll do what I say.’

‘Wish I could believe you.’

‘I swear, if you fly us home, you get to walk away. We’ll give you a full twenty-four hours to run. You could cover a lot of ground in a day. Get on a plane, put yourself halfway round the world.’

‘I’ll let you into a secret, Lucy. The choppers are fucked. Both of them. They’ll never fly again.’

Gaunt unhooked his earpiece. He raised his silenced pistol, held it steady with both hands. Lucy’s silhouette obscured by a curtain of driving sand. He waited for a clear shot.

Lucy crouched in front of the wrecked chopper and scanned the courtyard around her. Nothing but gusting sand. Particles blurred in the beam of her barrel light like monsoon rain.

A figure in deep shadow. She raised the rifle to her shoulder.

‘Gaunt? Hands above your fucking head.’

Nothing. Just the swirling sandstorm.

She hurried down the processional avenue back towards the temple.

She paused. Plenty of equipment piled beside the choppers. Tools. Arab phrase books. Salt tablets. Life rafts and dye markers in case the helos came down in water. Lucy didn’t want to leave anything that might be of use to Gaunt.

She dropped the magazine from her rifle and slapped a fresh clip into the receiver. Armour piercing rounds replaced with red-tip tracer.

She raised her rifle. A momentary lull in the sandstorm. The twin hulks of the helicopters lit by weak moonlight.

A single shot aimed at Talon. The bullet streaked like a laser and punched through the aluminium fuselage in a burst of sparks.

Ignition. A wash of blue flame. Fire rippled across the fuel-soaked courtyard. The wrecked chopper quickly became a blazing pyre. Raphael was cooked, still strapped in the pilot seat. The ruptured fuel tank jetted fire like a plume of dragon’s breath.

Flames reached Bad Moon and it too started to burn.

One week earlier. Koell’s hotel suite.

Gaunt drained his whisky tumbler, held it out for fresh ice and a refill.