Adam Baker - Juggernaut

‘You must have heard the others talk.’

‘I want to hear it from you.’

‘Gold. Three tons. You get a cut. Raphael gets paid out of your share.’

‘So we fly back to Baghdad with the gold. Then what?’

‘I know a guy in the Tenth Airwing. He’ll take care of inspection paperwork. We stack the gold at the back of a couple of Conex containers. Label the boxes “engine parts” or some shit. Airlift to Turkey on a C130. Offload at Incirlik. Look for a buyer in Istanbul. We’ll take a twenty-five, thirty percent hit when we convert to cash. I can live with that.’

Lucy straddled the bike. Key turn. She gunned the throttle and headed down the processional way towards the temple entrance.

Gaunt watched her drive towards white halogen light shafting from the temple doorway. He looked around, made sure he was unobserved.

He opened the Bad Moon pilot door and reached beneath the webbed seat. His daypack.

He discreetly checked the silenced Sig Sauer. He twisted the suppressor, made sure it was locked tight. He re-seated the mag. Chambered. Safety off. He peeled Velcro and tucked the pistol beneath his ballistic vest.

He touched the crucifix hung round his neck and said a silent prayer.

The vast temple hall. Cavernous dark. The armoured car ringed by tripod lamps, an oasis of light in the centre of deep shadow.

Lucy unloaded the quad bike. A portable generator: a four-stroke, forty-amp Cutmaster in a sound-suppressing case. A coil of cable, and the pistol-grip head of a plasma torch.

Shuffling feet and grunts of exertion echoed round the vaulted chamber.

She set the generator running and wired the cable.

She stripped down to her T-shirt. She strapped herself into a leather welder’s jacket. She pulled on leather gauntlets and a welder’s mask, visor raised.

She took a swig of water, fumbled the bottle cap with a gloved finger.

She stood at the rear doors of the truck. She dropped the face plate and pulled the trigger of the hand unit. A shrill hiss, loud despite earplugs. An impossibly fierce cutting flame, brighter than the sun. She pressed the flame to the truck door. Blue arc-light reflected in the smoked visor of her helmet. Metal began to bubble, blister and drip.

Amanda found Huang asleep in the shadow of a guard tower. He was sat on a pillar base, leaning against brickwork. He looked pale. His lips were tinged blue.

She plucked an iPod bead from his ear. Faint hiss of drums. Jay Z. ‘99 Problems’ .

‘Hey. Hey, you okay?’

Huang woke and rubbed his eyes.

‘I feel fucked.’

She squirmed her hands into surgical gloves, and carefully peeled the bloody dressing from his neck. The bandage was red with blood, yellow with pus.

‘How does it look?’

Amanda took a survival pack from the utility pocket of her trousers. Fishing line. Flint. Compass. Signal mirror.

Huang examined his neck wound in the mirror. A big, weeping bite. Veins surrounding the wound were inflamed. Infection creeping outward like tendrils.

‘Least the fucker missed your jugular,’ said Amanda.

‘It’s turning bad. Hurts to swallow. Hurts to talk. I can barely move my head.’

‘Anything we can use in the WALK?’

‘Yeah. You got to patch me up. I’ll talk you through it.’

Huang’s backpack. The Warrior Aid and Litter Kit. A folded stretcher and trauma gear. Amanda unzipped the pockets and ripped open sterile plastic packets with her teeth.

‘Show me your neck.’

She swabbed the wound with Betadine solution and sprinkled QuikClot on the torn flesh. She threaded suture through a needle. Huang bit down on the nylon strap of his rifle as she stitched his flesh. She wadded the gouge with rolls of Kerlix dressing and taped them down.

‘Done this before?’

‘They made us practise on animals,’ said Amanda. ‘The survival course at sniper school. We each had to shoot a goat in the flank with our sidearm, then patch the wound. Good way to learn. Try to help a living thing while it screams and squirms and shits itself.’

‘A good paramedic is a priest.’

‘Anything you want to confess?’ asked Amanda.

‘It breaks my heart you were born gay.’

Huang took a hypodermic gun from the trauma kit. He loaded a tetracycline shot and fired into the crook of his elbow.

‘You got morphine?’ asked Amanda.

‘Plenty. But I don’t want to nod out. We need trigger men.’

The arc-flame burned a deep, circular groove in the truck door. Metal dripped like incandescent tears.

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.

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.