Adam Baker - Juggernaut

The Fairchild banked hard starboard. Turboprops laboured to carry the plane clear of the blast field.

The thermobaric device drifted for twenty-three seconds. The point of release calculated to bring the device over the citadel complex.

Soldiers lay among the ruins. Too decomposed, too far gone to move. Sprawled among the ancient rubble, struggling to look up at the strange object floating in the clear blue sky.

Nine hundred feet. The bomb directly above the high roof of the temple.

The altimeter fuse sent the detonation impulse.

Airburst.

The high explosive core of the device split the bomb case and triggered the main charge. Ten tons of H6. A potent mix of RDX plastic explosive and aluminium powder.

Blinding light. A cataclysmic sunburst over the temple complex. A radiant shock wave expanding at eight thousand feet per second.

Crushing blast pressure flattened the temple. The roof instantly pulverised. Slabs of granite tumbled into the vast hall. Pillars sheared and fell. The sinister altar-god smashed by a wave of fire.

The temple floor collapsed. Subterranean chambers flooded with flame. Boxes of gold liquefied by ten-thousand-degree heat. Catacombs buried beneath countless tons of rubble.

The temple facade crumbled in a cascade of tumbling blocks. Monstrous hieroglyphs instantly obliterated. Sardonic stone colossi imploding in an avalanche of granite rubble.

The blast spread through the citadel precincts. A tsunami of flame rushed down colonnades and processional avenues. Pillars and arches smashed and scattered like building blocks. Flagstones seared black. Walls and domes shattered to stone chips. Ramparts and gate towers punched flat.

The infernal energy wave washed across open ground. Sand melted to glass by the stellar heat of detonation.

The wrecked vehicles of the convoy tossed like toys, punctured by bullet-velocity rock shards. Tumbling chassis swept in a maelstrom of debris.

A horde of Republican Guard, caught on sun-blasted terrain halfway between the citadel and the locomotive, turned and snarled at the oncoming firestorm. They were enveloped in a supersonic wall of flame. Suppurating flesh seared from their bones in a moment of blow-torch heat.

The nova-blast of detonation sucked air like a hurricane. Gouts of sand drawn upward into the blast cloud. Republican Guard snatched skyward like they were raptured into heaven.

The concussive wave tore across the valley floor in a furious cyclone of fire.

The train entered the rail tunnel, just as the blast wave hit.

The tunnel. Sudden darkness and screaming engine noise. The cab lit by a single bulb.

An inspection hatch at the back of the cab hung ajar. Lucy and Amanda threw themselves inside the engine bay and slammed the door.

Impact.

Flame rushed down the tunnel like floodwater and engulfed the train. The pressure wave blew out the remaining windows and filled the cab with fire

Lucy and Amanda lay beside the massive generator. Lucy spread her prairie coat over them both as flames jetted through intake fans in the locomotive roof.

The blast was so loud, so overwhelming, it became a strange kind of silence.

Lucy pulled back her smouldering prairie coat. She looked around the tight engine bay. The smoke-filled compartment dimly lit by winking function lights. The power plant hummed with motive power.

‘You all right?’

‘Yeah,’ said Amanda.

They got to their feet and kicked open the engine compartment door.

The interior of the cab was burned black. The foam padding of the engineer’s chair spewed smoke. A melted mineral water bottle lay fused with the deck plate. The sat phone was reduced to scattered circuit boards.

Amanda checked the controls. The console was dusted with broken dial glass.

Wind-roar. Tunnel darkness beyond the windows.

‘Mean old beast. She’s fucked up, but she’ll keep trucking.’

Lucy checked the locomotive controls. A tool box propped on the cut-out brake. The throttle roped to Run 2.

The cab reverberated with a deep turbo rumble.

She checked the map.

‘We should pass out of the tunnel in a few minutes. Then it’s a straight run across the desert.’

Amanda leaned against the cab wall. She slid to the floor and sat, head in her hands. Lucy uncapped her canteen and helped Amanda drain it dry.

The cab slide door was half open. An incinerated Republican Guard wedged in the aperture. Skin and muscle burned with a flickering blue flame. Stink of cooking flesh.

Lucy wrenched the door fully opened and kicked the body from the train.

‘I’ll be back soon.’

‘Where are you going?’ asked Amanda.

‘To make sure we aren’t hauling any passengers.’

Lucy inched along the walkway to the rear platform of the locomotive, coat whipped by the fierce airstream.

The carriages behind the locomotive were burning. Flame rippled across the coachwork like liquid. Tunnel concrete lit blood red as it streamed past.

Lucy jumped the knuckle coupling and stumbled through the carriage doorway.

Gaunt was waiting for her. He lolled in a blackened chair, legs stretched out. He was stripped to the waist. He was badly burned. His arms were blistered and weeping. Half his face was red-raw, hair seared away. Deep wounds at his hip, shoulder and neck. Metallic spines bristled through flesh and fabric.

‘Jesus,’ said Lucy. ‘I watched you die.’

Gaunt smiled.

‘Not dead. Transfigured.’

He held up the virus cylinder. The glass had cracked, frosted opaque by a fine web of fissures. The cylinder glowed ethereal blue.

‘Behold, I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of hell and of death.’ Flame licked at the window frames. The wreckage of Saddam’s salon lit flickering orange. Thick smoke rose between floorboards. The interior of the carriage seared carbon-black. Delicate marquetry panels destroyed by blow-torch heat.

‘Give me the virus,’ said Lucy. ‘The money is no good to you now.’

‘Been taking it up the ass my whole damn life. Used. Shut out. Maybe I don’t want to be the good guy. Maybe I want some fucking payback.’

‘You’re dying. But you could make a difference. Destroy the virus. Save the entire human race. No one will remember your name. But you could do something heroic. Vindicate your life.’

Gaunt thought it over. He stared into the blue glowing liquid.

‘Yeah. I’m dying. But I’ll live long enough to make it back to Baghdad. All I have to do is make it through the doors of the conference centre. Smuggle the cylinder under my jacket. Delegates of fifty nations carving up reconstruction contracts. Smash the flask on the chamber floor and the virus will spread round the globe in hours.’

‘Scream Allahu Akbar as you do it?’

‘New York. Moscow. Tokyo. Panic in the streets. The world wiped clean in a matter of weeks. A silent earth. Peaceful. Pure.’

‘You’re out of your fucking mind.’

Gaunt got to his feet. He placed the virus cylinder on the floor.

‘Don’t you want to be part of a new breed?’

Lucy grabbed a broken chair and threw at Gaunt. He snatched it out the air and dashed it against the wall.

Lucy unsheathed her bayonet and lunged. She aimed for his neck. Gaunt deflected the blow. The knife imbedded in the carriage wall.

He punched Lucy in the face.

She reeled. Blood sprayed from her nose.

She drove her fist into Gaunt’s chest, delivered a deathblow that should have stopped his heart. He snarled and kicked her across the carriage. She skidded across the floor and slammed into the wall.

Lucy tried to clear her head. She crouched against the carriage wall. She blinked, struggled to clear her vision. The floor beneath her smouldered, hot to the touch.