Adam Baker - Juggernaut

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.

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.

‘I’ll stay with you,’ said Voss. ‘Too much weird shit going down. Someone ought to watch your back.’

‘Thanks.’

Lucy pulled on gloves and goggles. She twisted foam plugs into her ears and wrapped her shemagh scarf over her mouth and nose.

She pressed Start. Slow rotation. She turned the head wheel. The drill bit advanced and scoured steel. Metallic shriek. Coiled shavings. Mineral oil lubricant trickled down the vault door and pooled at her feet.

Huang collapsed. He was talking to Amanda. He swigged water and said:

‘Maybe we should string a couple of grenades—’

Then he dropped his canteen. His eyes rolled upward and his mouth fell open. He toppled backwards onto the flagstones and began to shake. He arched his spine. His boots danced. He pissed his pants. He whined and drooled. Amanda held him down and tried to check his airway.