Part 7 (2/2)

The Tiger didn't hang around-it shot off after the other Apache, the one with the Piece of the Capstone in it.

But its missile shot had done enough for West.

Princ.i.p.ally, it allowed Princess Zoe to leap clear of Kallis and dive to the floor of her swamprunner just as West started it up and yelled: 'Everybody out! Now!'

His team didn't need to be told twice.

While the Delta men around them clambered back to their feet and fired vainly after them, West's two swamprunners burst off the mark and disappeared at speed into the high reeds of the swamp.

Kallis and his men jumped into their nearby swampboats-four of them-and gunned the engines.

Kallis keyed his radio, reported what had happened to his bosses, finis.h.i.+ng with: 'What about West?'

The voice at the other end was cold and hard, and the instructions it gave were exceedingly odd: 'You may do whatever you want with the others, sergeant, but Jack West and the girl must be allowed to escape.'

'Escape?' Kallis frowned.

'Yes, sergeant. Escape. Is that clear?'

'Crystal clear, sir. Whatever you say,' Kallis replied.

His boats roared into action.

West's two swamprunners skimmed across the swamp at phenomenal speed, banking and weaving, propelled by their huge turbofans.

West drove the lead one; Stretch drove the second one.

Behind them raced Kallis's four swampboats, bigger and heavier, but tougher-the men on their bows firing hard.

West was making for the far southern end of the swamp, 20 kilometres away, where a crumbling old road had been built along the sh.o.r.e of the vast waterfield.

It wasn't a big road, just two lanes, but it was made of asphalt, which was crucial.

'Sky Monster!' West shouted into his radio mike. 'Where are you!'

'Still in a holding pattern behind the mountains, Huntsman. What can I do for you?' came the reply.

'We need exfil, Sky Monster! Now!'

'Hot?'

'As always. You know that paved road we pinpointed earlier as a possible extraction point?'

'The really tiny potholed piece-of-s.h.i.+t road? Big enough to fit two Mini Coopers side-by-side?'

'Yeah, that one. We're also going to need the pick-up hook. What do you say, Sky Monster?'

'Give me something hard next time, Huntsman. How long till you get there?'

'Give us ten minutes.'

'Done. The Halicarna.s.sus Halicarna.s.sus is on its way. is on its way.'

The two swamprunners blasted across the waterfield, ducking the constant fire from the four pursuing CIEF swampboats.

Then suddenly, geyser-explosions of water began erupting all around West's boats.

Kallis and his team had started using mortars.

Bending and banking, West's swamprunners weaved away from the explosions-which actually all fell a fraction short-until suddenly the road came into view.

It ran in an east-to-west direction across the southern edge of the swamp, an old blacktop that led inland to Khartoum. Like many of the roads in eastern Sudan, it actually wasn't that bad, having been built by the Saudi terrorists who had once called these mountains home, among them a civil engineer named Bin Laden.

West saw the road, and risked a smile. They were going to make it ...

At which moment, three more American Apache helicopters arrived, roaring across his path, shredding the water all around his boats with blazing minigun fire.

The Apaches rained h.e.l.l on West's two boats.

Bullets ripped up the water all round them as the boats sped through the swamp.

'Keep going! Keep going!' West yelled to his people. 'Sky Monster is on the way!'

But then fire from one of the Apaches. .h.i.t Stretch's turbofan. Smoke billowed, the fan clattered, and the second swamprunner slowed.

West saw it instantly-and knew what he had to do.

He pulled in alongside Stretch's boat and called: 'Jump over!'

A quick transfer took place, with Stretch, Pooh Bear, Fuzzy and Wizard all leaping over onto West's swamprunner-the last of them, Wizard, leaping across a split second before one of the Apaches let fly with a h.e.l.lfire missile and the second swamprunner was blown out of the water, disappearing in a towering geyser of spray.

Amid all this mayhem, West kept scanning the sky above the mountains-and suddenly he saw it.

Saw the black dot descending toward the little road.

A black dot that morphed into a bird-like shape, then a plane-like shape, then finally it came into focus and was revealed to be a huge black plane.

It was a Boeing 747, but the most bizarre 747 you would ever see.

Once upon a time, it had been a cargo plane of some sort, with a rear loading ramp and no side windows.

Now, it was painted entirely in black, dull black, and it bristled with irregular protrusions that had been added to it: radar domes, missile pods, and most irregularly of all: revolving gun turrets.

There were four of them-one on its domed roof, one on its underbelly, and two nestled on its flanks, where the plane's wings met its fuselage-each turret armed with a fearsome six-barrelled Gatling minigun.

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