“Nate, find that light and take it out,” yelled Mitchell over his shoulder.
Jackson spun the .50 cal around, aimed it in the general area of the searchlight and opened fire. A deadly swath of bullets raced toward a tall guard tower on the fence.
Within seconds, the sentry station and its powerful light atop the tower were no more.
Mitchell drove like a madman, his foot jammed down on the accelerator. Like a large, metal, charging bull elephant, the ATV struck the metal gate, ripping it from its hinges. He left the vehicle’s lights off. Mitchell gripped the steering wheel and turned it slightly, taking them off the road and out into the desert.
Driving fast cross-country took skill. Doing so in the dark was reckless.
Mitchell had no choice. He wasn’t worried about the people back at the complex anymore. It would take them some time to get organized and come after them. He was more worried about the couple of hundred Mongolian soldiers ringing the factory. They undoubtedly had orders to shoot to kill.
It was now a race to link up with Yuri before the Mongolian Army found them driving around in the dark.
Without a GPS to guide him, Mitchell turned his head and looked up into the night sky. He found the North Star and steered toward it. He prayed that his luck would hold and pressed down hard on the accelerator.
Sergeant Batzorig listened to the order as it came over his radio headset. He turned his head, looked out into the desert and saw nothing but rocks and darkness.
Stationed on a dirt track north of the factory, Batzorig — and his detachment of two Russian-made, BTR-80 eight-wheeled armored personnel carriers — had been sitting idle overlooking the barren desert for days. He had been playing cards with a few of his men in the back of his carrier when the call came in. He stood on top of his carrier, brought up a set of NVGs to his eyes and looked out into the desert. At first, he saw nothing, when from out of a gully raced a 6x6 vehicle without its lights on.
His heart raced. The saboteurs were coming his way.
He yelled at his men to get into their vehicles and to get ready.
Drilled incessantly by the sergeant, his men knew what to do. Within seconds, both vehicle crews stood ready to engage the enemy. Their vehicles were armed with 14.5mm heavy machine guns. Batzorig grinned to himself. The saboteurs didn’t stand a chance against the firepower from his two armored vehicles.
Like a panther waiting in the dark to strike, Batzorig watched through his NVGs as the vehicle sped toward his trap, unaware that the lives of its passengers were now his to take.
In the dark, Jackson regretted leaving their NVGs behind. He had good eyesight, but would have felt better if he could see what was in front of them. A second later, Jackson felt a tug on his pants leg. Looking down he saw Sam.
“Tell Ryan to slow down,” yelled Sam. “All these bumps are killing Gordon.”
Jackson keyed his throat-mic. “Ryan, Sam says you need to slow down a little. All these bumps are hurting Gordon.”
Mitchell slowed down. Turning the wheel, Mitchell steered the big 6x6 into a long, dry riverbed that meandered around a couple of small hills in the near distance.
“See anything?” asked Jackson.
“Nope… not a thing,” answered Mitchell. “By my estimation we are at least six or seven kilometers from the factory. We should hopefully see Yuri soon enough.”
“That would be good. I think Cardinal is really busted up inside.”
Mitchell clenched his jaw. The beating Cardinal had taken at the hands of his jailers had been brutal and sadistic. There was no need to have tortured him. It was done for the sheer pleasure of it. Mitchell hoped one day to return the favor to Cypher.
“Did you notice Miss Satomi in the hangar during our escape?” said Mitchell.
“No, I didn’t,” said Jackson. “I was kinda too focused on getting us out of there alive to see her.”
With a wicked grin on his face, Sergeant Batzorig told his machine gunner in the vehicle turret to lay his weapons’ sights on the approaching vehicle and to await his order to open fire. Radioing his other crew, Batzorig told them to hold their fire until his vehicle had opened up on the saboteurs.
There would be no escape from his ambush. With the vision of a promotion or a big fat reward for killing the enemy in his mind, Batzorig began to grow nervous. He had never fired a shot in anger before and was eagerly looking forward to the chance to prove himself in combat.
A bright light reached down from the night sky, illuminating a rocky hill.
Flying low over the ground, Yuri jammed his AK out of the cockpit window and fired on the closest BTR-80.
Tracers streaked down at the armored vehicle.
It was a one in one million chance to hit anything firing one-handed out the window of a moving helicopter, but Yuri had to do something to warn his friends that they were driving into a trap.
Batzorig saw the world turn bright, blinding him. He ripped off his NVGs and looked up, trying to see where the light was coming from. Barely a second later, a helicopter flew over their positions no more than twenty meters off the ground, firing at the BTR-80 parked just off to the left of his own vehicle.
Panic paralyzed his mind. Who was firing on them?
Before he could order his gunner to open fire, disaster struck. His second vehicle began to back up. His eyes widened when he saw that it was on a collision course with his vehicle.
He tried to warn his driver to move out of the way, but he was too slow. With a loud crunch of metal compacting from the sudden impact, Batzorig felt his vehicle, hit dead center, begin to lift up off the ground and then slowly roll over. He tried to grab onto something but instead was sent flying out of his seat. He landed hard on the side of the rocky hill with two shattered ribs. Barely, a second later, with the sound of metal being smashed filling his mind, the last thing he ever saw was the night sky blackened out as his vehicle rolled over on top of him, crushing the life out of him.
Yuri’s chopper raced right over Mitchell’s ATV and then banked off into the night.
Mitchell swore, jammed his foot down on the accelerator, and then steered the ATV up and out of the riverbed. They had come too close to being ambushed and killed; blind luck and Yuri’s sharp eyes had saved them. He had no doubt in his mind that within minutes, Mongolian army units would be making their way over to see what had happened. And he wanted to be long gone when they arrived.
Yuri’s voice broke the silence. “Ryan, you’re welcome.”
“I was going to thank you when you landed,” replied Mitchell.
“Da, of course you were,” said Yuri. “Turn slight right and go for another couple of hundred meters and then stop. I’ll meet you there.”
No sooner had Mitchell parked when Yuri’s chopper dropped out of the night sky and landed barely fifty meters away, sending a dust cloud swirling up and around the helicopter, obscuring it from sight.
Jackson took one last look around. Satisfied that no one was following them, he jumped down and helped Sam carry Cardinal to the waiting helicopter.
Climbing into the co-pilot’s seat, Mitchell saw Yuri sitting there with night-vision gear on his head, looking like a being from outer space. He looked over his shoulder and watched as Cardinal was strapped into a stretcher in the back of the chopper.
A minute later, Yuri applied power to the helicopter’s engine. Slowly, the chopper began to rise up from the ground. Effortlessly, pivoting in the air, Yuri turned the helicopter south and then gunned the engine. He flew nap-of-the-earth, barely missing the rocky hills, Yuri headed straight for the border with China.
Mitchell saw they were heading in the exact opposite direction of what he had expected. Reaching over, he grabbed a headset. “Yuri, what’s going on?”