With shocking suddenness, a bearded Arab terrorist had burst forth from a gap in the Al-Qaeda barricade on a motorcycle, firing an AK-47 one-handed and yelling to Allah.
Strapped to his chest were four wads of C4.
Three SAS soldiers nailed him with their automatic rifles, blasting
the suicide bomber from his saddle, sending him crashing to theground behind his speeding motorbike.
The Arab hit the ground in a clumsy puff of dust— —and then he exploded.
One second he was there. The next he was simply gone. Gant's eyes widened. Madness . . .
The SAS leader, Ashcroft, turned to her. 'It's absolute bedlam, darlin'! Every now and then, the bastards launch a suicide run and we have to cut them down before they reach our barricade! The problem is they must have a supply cave somewhere back there! Generators, gasoline and enough ammo, food and water to see them through to the year 3000! It's a stand-off!'
'What if we went around?' Gant said, indicating the series of tunnels off to their right.
'No. It's booby-trapped! Trip-wires. Landmines. I've already lost two good men going that way! These ragheads have been waiting for a fight in this place for a long time! This is going to take a frontal assault. What I need is more men!'
At that moment, as if on cue, a collection of about twenty more barrel-mounted flashlights appeared in the tunnel that led back to the mine's entrance.
'Ah, reinforcements,' Ashcroft said, heading down the tunnel to
meet them. '
Gant watched him go, saw him meet the leader of this new squad
and shake the man's hand.
Funny, she thought. Colonel Walker had said that the next team wouldn't be coming in for at least another twenty minutes. How did these guys get in so quickly —
She watched Ashcroft wave his hand toward the barricade, explaining the situation, turning his back on his new acquaintance for a split second, during which moment the leader of this new group of soldiers smoothly and fluidly drew something from his belt and swiped it hard across Ashcroft's neck region.
At first Gant didn't know what had happened.
Ashcroft didn't move.
Then, to her absolute horror, Gant saw Ashcroft's head tilt at an impossible angle and just drop off his body.
Her eyes went wide with disbelief.
What— ?
But she didn't have time for shock, for no sooner was Ashcroft down than the submachine-guns of this new force of men burst to life, raining fire on the Allied troops gathered behind their barricade.
Quick as a flash, Gant dived over and into one of the steel mini-skips that formed her barricade, just as bullets impacted all around her. She was joined a second later by Mother and her other two Marines.
The rest of the Allied troops weren't so lucky.
Most of them were caught out in the open . . . and they were pummelled mercilessly by this unexpected storm of bullets from behind. Their bodies exploded with bloody holes, convulsed horribly.
'Goddamnit! What the hell is this!' Gant pressed herself close to a mini-skip's rusty steel walls.
Now they were caught between two sets of enemies: one in front of their barricade, one behind.
A lethal sandwich.
'What do we do, Chickadee?' Mother yelled.
Gant's face set into a determined expression. 'We stay alive. Come on, this way!'
And with that, Gant led her team in the only direction they could go—she leapt over the forward side of the mini-skip and landed, cat-like, on the dusty section of open ground in between the two facing barricades.
At that very same moment, Schofield and Book's Light Strike Vehicle skidded to a halt in the upper entrance cave of the mine.
Schofield saw the roller-coaster-like tracks of the drift diving down into the mine, took a step toward them, just as two figures burst out from a nearby side-tunnel.
Schofield and Book whipped around together, MP-7s up. The two dark figures did the same and—
'Pokey?' Schofield said, squinting. 'Pokey de Villiers?'
'Scarecrow?' one of the figures lowered his gun. 'Man, I almost shot you dead.'
It was Corporal Paul 'Pokey' de Villiers, just returned from cleaning out the Al-Qaeda sniper holes on the mountainside with his partner, a lance-corporal nicknamed Freddy.
'I need to find Gant,' Schofield said. 'Where is she?'
'Down there,' Pokey said.
Thirty seconds later, Schofield was sliding down the steep drift tunnel at the wheel of the Light Strike Vehicle with Book II riding shotgun and the two extra Marines, Pokey and Freddy, sharing the rear gunner's seat.
The LSV's headlights blazed as it rocketed down the 30-degree slope, straddling the train tracks that ran down the centre of the tunnel.
Nearing the bottom, Schofield jammed the LSV into reverse, causing its wheels to spin wildly backwards as the speeding car skidded forwards down the tunnel.
The strategy worked: they slowed, if only slightly. But it was enough and with a few yards to go, Schofield slipped the dune
buggy out of reverse and the LSV blasted out of the bottom of the drift tunnel and shot into the maze, swinging left past the dead body of the SAS messenger who had been stationed there.
Gant was completely exposed.
Out on the forward side of the Allied barricade—with only thirty yards of open ground between her and about 200 murderous holy warriors.
If the terrorist forces wanted to kill her and her three Marines, then this was their chance. Gant waited for the hail of bullets that would end her life.
But it never came.
Instead she heard gunfire—from somewhere behind the Al-Qaeda blockade.
Gant frowned. It was a type of gunfire that she had never heard before. It sounded too fast, way too fast, like the whirring of a six-barrelled mini-gun . . .
And then she saw something that took her completely by surprise.
She saw the Al-Qaeda blockade get absolutely raked with internal gunfire—its walls blew out, assaulted by a million hypervelocity bullets—and suddenly a whole crowd of terrorists were leaping over their own barricade out into no-man's-land, fleeing some unseen force behind their own blockade . . . exactly as Gant had done herself.
Another thing was clear.
The terrorists were fleeing something far worse than Gant was.
As they leapt desperately over their barricade, they were shot in mid-air—from behind—and all but ripped apart, their limbs exploding from their bodies.
A split-second before one such Al-Qaeda warrior was ripped to pieces as he clambered over the barricade, Gant caught a glimpse of a green targeting laser zeroing in on him.
A green laser . . .
'Er, Lieutenant!' Mother yelled from beside her. 'What the hell
happened to this fight! I thought wars were supposed to be fought between two competing forces!'
'I know!' Gant called. 'There are more than two forces down here! Come on, follow me!'
'Where!'
'There's only one way to solve this problem, and that's to do
what we came here to do!'
With that, Gant made a break across no-man's-land, ducking underneath the overhead conveyor belt that ran up its left-hand side, and headed towards the left-hand air vent.
Gant came to the northern end of the elevated conveyor belt just as four Al-Qaeda terrorists came running out from behind their barricade, chased by gunfire.
The first three holy warriors scrambled up some boxes that had been arranged like stairs and jumped up onto the conveyor belt while the fourth hit a fat green button on a console. The conveyor belt roared to life—
—and the three men on it were instantly whisked out of sight at tremendous speed, heading towards the Allied barricade. The fourth man jumped onto the belt after them and— whoosh —he was swept southward as well.
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