Clive Cussler - The Tombs

Ahead of him, a group of six security men from the next buildings ran into the long drive. One of them raised a rifle to his shoulder, and Sam sidestepped behind the corner of the closest building and pulled out his pistol. He reached around the corner, exposing just his gun arm and one eye, and fired five shots into the group, saw two men go down, then three others begin to drag them to safety. The last man laid down covering fire with the AK-47, spraying the area where Sam had been with bullets. Sam was already running around the building to the next paved drive.

Squads of men were moving along the buildings to get to the Contagious Disease building. The stake truck that had brought the guards waited fifty yards ahead of Sam. He ran up behind it, dashed along the left side, and flung open the door, pointing his pistol in the driver’s face. He dragged the man out and pulled his sidearm from its holster. He knocked him to the ground, used the handcuffs on his belt to subdue him, then took his place behind the wheel.

Sam shifted the truck into first gear, turned left, then right, and saw Zoltán and Remi, János, Tibor, and Albrecht sprinting along the pavement. He shifted into second, gained a little speed, and then saw Tibor become aware of him. Tibor turned to face the truck and began to swing his rifle around. Sam switched his lights on and off, slowed, and waved his left arm wildly out the window. “It’s me!” he yelled. “Get in!”

Remi was at Tibor’s side in a second and Tibor lowered the rifle. The four ran hard to get to the truck as Sam drove to meet them. He stopped, and they clambered up onto the flatbed. He drove ahead.

Zoltán ran back and forth behind the truck, whimpering for Remi. The truck was too high for him to jump up. There was the sound of Remi pounding on the cab roof. “Stop, Sam!”

He stopped. Remi jumped down, ran around the truck, opened the passenger door, and stood on the step. She called, “Up, Zoltán!” The big dog ran and jumped up onto the truck seat, Remi spun herself around and sat, then slammed the door shut. “Hit it!” she said. She took out her pistol and rolled down her window as the truck gained speed.

Sam drove along the paved road between the buildings. They were now moving up the center of the complex, with rows on each side. A platoon of men ran out into the road ahead of them, knelt, and prepared to fire, but Sam switched on the headlights, and Tibor and János, standing up in the flatbed behind the cab, opened fire. They hit one of the men, and the others ran for cover.

Sam said, “We’ve got to crash the gate. Tell them to get ready.”

Remi got up on the seat, hung her torso out the window, and shouted to them: “We’ve got to crash the gate!”

Tibor and János stood, leaning forward on the cab, replaced the magazines on their rifles, and looked ahead. Remi held her pistol in both hands, also watching ahead.

Sam lifted his pistol from his belt with his left hand. “I’m going to go through as fast as I can. It would be best if we could make the guards keep their heads down until we’re out of their effective range.”

“Good plan . . . as plans go,” she said.

“I know you’re the only pistol champion we have, but I’d rather they not see enough of you to hit. You’re also the only wife I have . . .”

“You’re so sweet.”

“. . . at the moment.”

Zoltán looked at each of them in turn, not sure what to think.

Sam reached the last corner, slowed to make the turn, and drove past the van they had brought there. As they passed, two men hiding in the back of the van flung the rear door open. Sam, Remi, and the others were too far away to hit before the men jumped to the ground, pulled out pistols, and fired wildly in their direction.

“If one of us had opened that door, we’d be dead,” said Remi.

Sam shifted from third to fourth as he drove for the gate. The two men on duty had closed the chain-link barrier, and now there were five or six others standing in front to guard the exit. To Sam it looked as though they were overconfident, assuming that nobody would actually try to crash the gate, so they were not really ready. Their rifles were slung across their backs, and they had done nothing to reinforce the barrier, even though they had another stake truck parked beside the gate.

“Slight change of plan,” said Sam. He switched on the high-beam headlights. “Tell the guys to get down.”

“Get down!” she shouted.

The three men lay flat on the truck bed, the brothers facing the sides with their rifles ready, Albrecht, in the middle, facing backward.

Sam kept adding speed as he approached. When he and Remi were twenty-five yards out, Remi held her right elbow with her left hand and fired, dropping the man in the guard kiosk, then fired several rounds at the riflemen, who were unslinging their firearms. Sam fired eight shots into their midst, but he was not the shot with a pistol that Remi was and all he was sure he accomplished was to increase the men’s impulse to dive for cover.

Sam adjusted his course slightly, held the steering wheel steady, and passed just three feet to the right of the parked truck, missed the gate, and plowed into the chain-link fence. The fence was so high that as the cab ran straight into the mesh, it passed under the crossbar where the razor wire was coiled. The truck pushed a forty-foot section of the mesh ahead of it until the bottom links caught on the ground, the mesh was pulled flat, and the truck drove over it.

The guards fired their weapons on full auto but just managed to spray the kiosk, the parked stake truck as Sam passed behind it, and most of the nearby buildings. As soon as Sam’s truck was outside the fence and gaining distance, he steered it over the bumpy ground onto the road again. Albrecht and the Lazar brothers opened fire at the guards at the gate, pouring such a steady stream of bullets in their direction that not one of them dared to lift his head above whatever cover he was hiding behind.

Sam drove hard out the driveway. He slowed only enough to make the turn to the road, then sped up again. After a few minutes, Tibor rapped on the cab roof and leaned close to yell to Sam, “Let me drive now! We can’t take this truck into the city. I know where to go.”

Sam stopped the truck, climbed up onto the truck bed, and let Tibor take his place. He drove no slower than Sam had, but before they reached the outskirts of Szeged he went down a narrow back road, took several turns that Sam couldn’t even see, and arrived at the big garage where he had taken them earlier.

He pulled the truck into the garage, and the others all climbed down. Zoltán jumped from the cab to the ground and then sat calmly.

Albrecht said, “I thank you all sincerely. If you hadn’t risked your lives, I would have lost mine. I’m sure of it. I owe my life to you.”

“We had better do what we can to keep from being caught,” Remi said. “I must have seen five men hit tonight. Some of them could be dead.”

Sam said, “What about the van? Can they trace it?”

“It was borrowed.”

“From who?”

“From a parking lot,” Tibor said.

Sam called out, “Everyone change back into normal clothes in the shop.”

They took turns washing powder residue and dust from face, hands, and arms, and came out in street clothes and shoes. Albrecht put on clothes that Tibor lent him. Sam said, “Can we dump the truck in the river? I know it’s bad for the fish, but it could wash off any fingerprints.”

Tibor said, “János can drive it. We’ll pick him up and drop you three at your hotel.”

Remi, Sam, and Albrecht sat in the backseat of Tibor’s cab, and Zoltán lay across their laps. They followed the stolen truck until János turned off the road to a wooded hillside above the river. He set the truck in gear, let out the clutch, jumped out, and watched the truck’s momentum carry it forward a couple of yards, then over the crest of the hill. It picked up speed, went off an escarpment, and knifed into the river. It rolled onto its side, then took on water through the cab windows and disappeared.