Andy McDermott - The Midas Legacy

‘Could be worse,’ Eddie joked. ‘At least it’s got seat belts. Beats holding on with your bare hands!’ They brought the plane into position. ‘Okay, I’ll light the fuses.’

‘How long will we have before they blow?’ Nina asked as he ran off, rifle slung over a shoulder.

‘A minute. Maybe.’

She got into the rear seat. ‘Confidence? Still not filled with it!’

Eddie grinned, then continued to the fuel tanks. The gap between them was too wide for the fuses to meet, ruling out a simultaneous detonation; he figured instead that blowing the nitric acid tanks first, then spilling kerosene on to the flood, would give him the best chance of escape. ‘Let’s see how the big bang theory works in practice,’ he said, lighting a match and touching it to the first fuse.

A spark sizzled along the length of line. He checked his watch, then raced to the second fuse and ignited it before running at full pelt back to the microlight.

Another glance at his watch as he reached the plane. Only thirty seconds remaining. ‘Okay, let’s get this thing started!’

Nina leaned over the front seat to push the starter as he spun the propeller. It made a half-turn…

And stopped.

The microlight shuddered, the engine coughing briefly before falling silent. Eddie tried again, with the same result. ‘You pushing that button?’

‘Yes, I’m pushing the damn button!’ Nina snapped.

‘Okay, okay! Let’s give it another shot.’ A third attempt. The engine wheezed mockingly at him as the blades juddered once more.

He looked at the fuel tanks. The spark was almost at the dynamite he had planted on the nitric acid containers. ‘Oh arse .’

‘Still pressing the button!’ his wife said with rising alarm.

Eddie swung the propeller again, and again, glaring at the portraits of the North Korean dictators smirking down at him from the blockhouse. ‘You can… fuck right off, Kim… Nob-head!’ he growled between pushes.

The engine stuttered and caught. The prop whirled—

The fizzing spark reached the dynamite.

Sharp blasts ripped open two of the tanks, a sizzling hiss echoing through the cavern as a tsunami of acid burst out and swept across the floor. To Nina’s dismay, part of the wavefront was heading for them. ‘Time to go!’

The aircraft was already moving. Eddie caught up and jumped into the front seat. Too late, he realised he was sitting on his seat-belt buckle, but there was no time to pull it out and secure himself. ‘Great, I am gonna have to hold on with my bare hands!’ he complained as he pushed the throttle lever fully forward. The engine noise rose to a screech, the microlight shimmying on its little tricycle wheels before straightening out.

He looked along the runway. In the distance, debris from the explosion littered the concrete, along with the burning wrecks of the vehicles that had formed the barricade.

More explosions behind them — and the huge cavern filled with flame as the spraying kerosene met its oxidiser.

A massive chain reaction tore through the facility, the ranks of fuel tanks detonating like hundred-ton bombs and smashing support pillars. The ceiling collapsed on to the missile production line with earthquake force, forcing the fireball through the tunnel.

A gunpowder explosion down a rifle barrel — and the microlight was the bullet.

A fragile, flammable bullet.

‘Eddie!’ shrieked Nina, feeling rising heat as a wall of fire rushed after them.

‘Yeah, I know!’ Eddie yelled back. The wing’s fabric snapped taut as the airflow started to generate lift. He pulled back the joystick to raise the nose. The front wheel left the ground… then dropped back again. ‘Shit! Come on, take off, you piece of crap!’

They were rapidly approaching the tunnel mouth — but the fireball was gaining, pushing a wave of searing air before it. Eddie angled to avoid the largest pieces of debris from Ock’s suicide attack, but there were so many that a collision seemed inevitable.

He pulled back the stick again. The nose strained upwards, but they still hadn’t reached take-off speed. The rear wheels skipped and hopped over the concrete.

The rubble field rushed at them—

Eddie swerved to avoid a football-sized lump of stone. The front wheel cleared it by inches, only to hit one of the rears, snapping off the outrigger supporting it. The plane tipped sideways. He pushed the stick to level out, but in doing so the front wheel thumped back on to the runway.

A blazing jeep loomed. Flames ahead and behind as the inferno swept towards open air—

Eddie yanked the joystick again. This time the little plane left the ground — and remained airborne.

Heading straight for the jeep.

He yelled and veered away, the fuselage barely missing the wreck — only for the other outrigger to be clipped off. He fought to keep control as the plane burst out into the night—

The tunnel mouth erupted like a volcano.

An enormous gush of flame blasted from the entrance, lighting up the surrounding landscape with a hellfire glow. Debris arced across the plateau, the blast hurling metal and stone for hundreds of metres as Facility 17 was consumed by an explosion powerful enough to shake the entire mountain.

The dazzling flare faded… revealing the microlight straining skywards.

‘Oh my God!’ shrieked Nina. The heat of the explosion had singed her hair, exposed skin feeling as if she had leaned into an oven, but she was still alive. She looked up to check that the wing had not caught fire, and was thankful to see that the fabric was intact.

Her relief was short-lived as she realised their situation. They were far from safe. The plateau spread out below as they gained height. Lights stood out on the winding road descending the mountainside: the missile convoy making its way down… and trucks coming back up. Soldiers sent to reclaim the base — or what was left of it — and hunt down the escaped prisoners. Beyond was nothing but dark forest all the way to the airbase far below. Even from this distance, the enormous Antonov freighter stood out clearly at one end of the long runway.

Eddie brought the microlight around in pursuit of the TELs. The plane had reached its top speed, which he estimated to be only around fifty miles per hour; there was no speed indicator, or for that matter any instruments beyond a crude artificial horizon and a couple of gauges. ‘We should be able to catch up.’

Nina had to raise her voice over the wind and the buzzing engine. ‘We’re really going after them?’

‘It’s all we can do. Well, apart from letting a bunch of pissed-off North Koreans torture and kill us. I know this thing’s supposed to be stealthy, but I don’t fancy our chances of crossing the border without getting flak shot up our arses. And that’s if we can even reach it.’

‘So our choices are get killed, or try to stop them escaping with a set of nuclear missiles — and then get killed?’

He looked back at her, downcast. ‘Afraid so, love. We’re stuck in North Korea with no backup, and we’ve just made ’em really, really mad at us. And it’s not like we can blend in with the locals — the red hair’s a bit of a giveaway.’

‘Just a little. But what can we do to stop them?’

‘I’ve still got one stick of dynamite. We can fly over the first transporter and bomb it. If we get lucky, it’ll block the road — the other trucks might even crash into it.’

‘And after that?’

‘No idea. But I don’t think… I don’t think we’re going to get home to Macy.’ The name was abruptly choked off by emotion.

Nina felt the same overwhelming sense of loss and grief. ‘We shouldn’t have come here,’ she said, tears blurring her vision. ‘We shouldn’t have done this! Oh God, Eddie, why the fuck did we do this? We’re going to die and we’re… we’re going to leave Macy all alone!’