Andy McDermott - The Midas Legacy

He shouted down the hold to the soldier. ‘The spies, they’re on the truck! Get over here, quick — we can blow the bastards apart!’

The transporter shook and rolled sickeningly as it drew ever closer to the Antonov’s tail, caught in its wake turbulence. The ramp was now three quarters lowered, and Nina saw movement behind it, someone wearing a peaked military cap. The figure looked back out through the widening gap, the spotlights inside the doors illuminating his face.

Kang.

Eddie saw him too. ‘Shoot him!’

‘I can’t!’ she protested. The Type 58 was almost a yard long, and there wasn’t enough room between the seat back and the window frame for her to look down the ungainly weapon’s sights at the hold without pushing the barrel out into the hurricane-force wind — which would make it almost impossible to aim.

The ramp kept dropping, the whale-belly hold and the missile inside coming into full view. Another soldier ran past it towards the open doors, carrying a tubular object.

‘ RPG! ’ Eddie shouted. ‘He’s got a fucking rocket launcher! Nina, shoot him!’

She had already identified the weapon from unwelcome past experience. But even squeezing as far over as she could, she still couldn’t line up the gun on the hold.

The soldier reached Kang. The ramp finally drew level with the floor, then tipped downwards past it. The second Korean gawped at the flying truck, then at a bellowed order from his commander knelt and inserted the warhead’s cylindrical rocket motor into the launch tube.

‘Nina!’ Eddie shouted again, almost pleading. The TEL started to sweep from side to side, pinballing between the fuselage’s slipstream and the jet blast from the inboard engine. Each outward swing gave Nina just enough of an angle to aim at the hold. She turned the selector to full-auto, waiting for the North Koreans to slide back through her sights…

The soldier stood and raised his own launcher. He flipped up the sights, fixing them on the transporter—

Nina fired first. A spray of bullets scythed through the gaping doorway. Most clanged against the hold’s far wall — but a couple found their target.

Kang jerked behind a fuselage rib as two rounds thudded into the soldier’s upper body. The man crumpled and fell forwards, sliding down the ramp. He and his weapon slithered off its end and were snatched away by the thunderous wind to vanish into the night.

The rifle’s last shot punched through the aluminium hull just behind Kang. The colonel flinched. The loadmaster fled to the ladder, clambering up it for the safety of the upper deck.

Nina dropped the empty gun. ‘Okay, now what? We’re still not exactly in a great position!’

Eddie looked back at the plane as the straining winch drew them ever closer. With the cable shortening, the transporter’s sidelong swings were becoming faster and more forceful, carrying them almost behind the ramp before sweeping back out beneath the engine’s churning exhaust plume. ‘When we’re level with the ramp,’ he shouted, ‘stop the winch! I’ll jump on to it!’

‘You’ll what ?’

‘Just do it! I can make it!’ He shifted towards the corner of the cab.

‘Okay, now you’re trying to get killed!’ said Nina, but she still slid back over to reach the winch controls. The transporter swung behind the plane, just a few metres from the foot of the ramp. She briefly glimpsed Kang, then the North Korean disappeared from view as she and Eddie were swept back in the other direction. The next pass brought them almost close enough to touch the ramp’s end. Back out towards the engine — and she pulled the lever to brake the winch.

Eddie braced himself, ready to jump.

Kang glanced out from behind the pillar. The woman in the swinging truck had put down her rifle. No more bullets were coming his way.

But he had some of his own to send back at them. He unholstered his pistol and stepped out of cover, raising the gun as he waited for his targets to come back into sight—

The transporter rushed at the ramp. Eddie leapt—

He crossed the terrifying void between the two vehicles in a split second, landing on metal with a bang. He had aimed to grab one of the sets of hydraulic jacks…

But missed.

He skidded across the ramp. Its surface was dotted with recessed hooks for attaching chains and cargo straps. He clawed at them as he slid past, catching one with curled fingertips and jerking to a painful stop—

A pounding impact knocked him loose again as the TEL slammed into the plane behind him.

He rolled diagonally down the ramp, snatching at the rearmost jack — and again missed. The black sky opened out hungrily below—

A hefty steel eyelet protruded from the ramp’s edge. Eddie thumped hard against it, a fierce pain cutting deep into his chest as a rib cracked — but he grabbed the obstruction to halt his fall just as his legs went over the side. The wind swirling around the Antonov’s stern tore at him. He battled to haul his legs back on to the ramp, then looked up.

The transporter was wedged under the An-124’s tail, its cab partly crushed between the lower edge of the fuselage and the ramp, and the starboard clamshell door buckled inwards. He couldn’t see Nina inside — but he spotted Kang sprawled halfway across the hold where he had been thrown by the collision.

The colonel shook his head dizzily, startled by the sight of the truck half buried in the aircraft’s side — then he saw Eddie hanging from the ramp.

His pistol had ended up near the hold’s port side. He scrambled up and ran for it.

Eddie realised what he was doing and dragged himself higher, lunging to grab the hydraulic jack. This time he caught it, pulling himself to his feet and swinging around it, using its hinge as a starting block to propel himself up the slope—

Kang snatched up his gun and spun to point it at the Englishman.

‘What the hell was that?’ cried the pilot as the aircraft lurched sideways. ‘Something hit us!’

One of the aircrew behind him spotted the cause. ‘Look!’ he said, pointing at one of the hold’s CCTV feeds. The image was of the open rear doors — into which was wedged the truck.

Petrov hurriedly turned back to his controls. ‘We’ve got to shake it loose,’ he said. ‘If we try to land with that thing stuck there, it’ll tear us in half! Everyone hold on!’

He threw the enormous aircraft into a hard bank to starboard.

Kang staggered as the deck tipped beneath him. He fired — but missed, the bullet whipping past Eddie’s head. The Antonov’s roll continued, its nose dropping as the wings lost lift.

What had foiled the Korean was helping the Yorkshireman. The change in the plane’s attitude both angled him away from the ramp’s treacherous edge and shallowed the gradient he had to climb. He pounded up it, charging at Kang—

The colonel realised he was losing his footing and hurled himself at the hold’s port wall. A dangling strap flapped madly in the wind; he seized it with his free hand and turned to face his foe — just as Eddie dived at him. Both men slammed against the fuselage ribs, grappling for the gun.

Nina fought through a blinding headache and opened her eyes, finding herself sprawled across the seats. Sitting up, she got two shocks: the first discovering the transporter jammed against the ramp; the second the fact that previously clear headroom was now filled with crumpled metal. The cab’s ceiling had been crushed by the clamshell door. If she had still been sitting upright, she would have been decapitated.