Sienna and Malone frantically changed direction, angling to the left as they charged up the slope. Bellasar switched to the other stick, maneuvered it, pressed the button on it, and sent a burst of bullets into the slope above them, spraying dirt, shattering rocks, and disintegrating bushes. He redirected the stick, curving the bullets downward to the right, then up again, blocking the next route they tried. Sienna and Malone flinched, bent low, and reversed their direction, sprinting again to the left, heading back toward the wreckage.
Bellasar tracked them with the left machine gun. About to press its button and tear up the slope farther to their left, he had to jerk his hand from the stick and grip the steering wheel, needing both hands to veer around a boulder that loomed ahead of him. The instant he was safely around it, he gripped the stick again and refocused his gaze on the running figures.
Or tried to. In the few seconds it had taken him to avoid the boulder, Sienna and Malone had reached the smoke from the wreckage. His vision obscured, Bellasar steered to the left now, following them, speeding farther up the hill. Without warning, a gully blocked his way. He stomped on the brakes so hard that he lurched painfully forward, his shoulder harness cutting into him. The guards in the back slammed forward. As the brakes gripped, tires skidding, the gully got closer, wider, deeper. Bellasar didn’t realize he was holding his breath until the vehicle stopped, its front end tilting downward. He exhaled.
Immediately he grabbed the microphone from the dashboard’s two-way radio. “Keep after them! Block their route!”
The machine guns in the other vehicles began shooting into the smoke.
“Damn it, don’t shoot to kill! I want them alive! Use your bullets to block their route!” Instantly he changed to another frequency, contacting Potter at the château.
Potter’s voice crackled from the radio. “The second helicopter has arrived.”
“Bring it. I’ve found them.” Bellasar blurted directions to where he was. “I’m activating a homing signal. Follow it.”
Dropping the microphone, Bellasar drew his pistol and hurried from the vehicle. “Spread out!” he ordered the guards. “They’re hiding up there in the smoke! As far as I know, Malone isn’t armed! You don’t need to shoot to kill! Find them! Bring them to me!”
Preparing to hurry down into the gully and up the other side, Bellasar took a second to admire the two vehicles beyond it as they sped up the slope on his left, veering among bushes and boulders, easily handling the rough landscape. The sound of their engines was solid and powerful. Five minutes from now, Alex and the second helicopter would arrive. Bellasar would order the pilot to hover over the wreckage. The downdraft from its whirling blades would disperse the smoke, making it easy to find where Sienna and Malone were trying to hide among the rocks. It’s only a matter of time, Bellasar assured himself. Soon I’ll have them. In fact, for a moment a deep sound blended with that of the vehicles and made him think that the second helicopter had arrived more quickly than he expected. As the deep sound became a rumble, he realized how wrong he was.
13
Coughing so hard that he feared he might vomit, his eyes watering from the smoke that swirled around him, Malone heard the vehicles roaring up the slope toward Sienna and him. The burning wreckage and the smoke from it temporarily shielded them, but the relentless vehicles would soon burst into view.
Hunched next to him behind a boulder, Sienna coughed as hard as he did. “Let’s see if we can move this thing,” she said.
“What?”
“This boulder.”
As the vehicles charged closer up the hill, Malone suddenly understood. The smoke thinned enough for him to see a glint of hope in her raw, red, irritated eyes. They rose to a crouch and pressed both hands against the boulder, shoving against it.
Harder! Groaning with effort, Malone felt something in him thrill as the boulder shifted.
More! The boulder tilted, rolling, gaining momentum, rumbling out of sight through the smoke.
They raced toward another. Desperation fueling their strength, they got it rolling faster than the first one and immediately rushed to another and then another, crisscrossing the slope, protecting both sides of the flaming wreckage.
The combined rumble reminded Malone of thunder. But the thunder became distant. The boulders were taking too long. They must have passed the vehicles and continued toward the bottom. At once, a crash of rock, glass, and metal echoed from below. A second crash was even more violent. Before the engines died, Sienna was already in motion. She ran up the slope, coughing, straining to break free of the smoke. A third crash made Malone’s spirits soar as he hurried after her.
Gagging, he left the smoke, but he was too distracted to enjoy the sweet, clean air he sucked into his lungs. The crest of the slope was only thirty yards ahead, but it might as well have been a mile. He had no way of telling how damaged the vehicles were. He didn’t dare waste time looking behind him to check. If the machine guns haven’t been disabled, we don’t have a chance, he thought.
Indeed, he did hear gunshots, but they were single fire, not from automatic weapons, and the bullets were ricocheting off rocks below him. That meant the gunmen were aiming as if they were on level ground. To hit a target moving uphill, they had to aim slightly above what they were shooting at, letting the target rise into their sights. But they would soon make that adjustment. Of that, Malone had no doubt.
Sienna was so propelled by fear that he had trouble keeping up with her. The top of the slope seemed as far away as when he had started. The single-fire bullets whacked closer behind him, and he realized with alarm that the gunmen weren’t making a mistake. They’re aiming low on purpose, he thought. They don’t want to kill us. They’re shooting toward our legs. They want to cripple us so Bellasar can take us alive.
What sounded like superfast bumblebees sped past his legs. One of them nicked his jeans and stung his left calf. Racing harder, he stared toward the top. He swore his eyes were playing tricks. Everything seemed to become magnified, the crest suddenly close before him. He saw Sienna disappear over it, and a moment later, chased by bullets, he joined her, lurching onto a flat ridge that led to a gradual descent to olive trees in a valley. In the distance was a gray ribbon of concrete flanked by a handful of matchbox-looking buildings: the airfield.
14
The crunch of metal and the shatter of glass sent a wave of nausea through Bellasar. His sick feeling quickly changed to the most intense fury he had ever known. His engineers had assured him that these vehicles could withstand an attack from assault rifles, grenades, and even a glancing hit from a rocket. But the boulders had crushed the front of the cars and bounced up to strike the bullet-resistant windshields, smashing through and crushing the men in the front seats.
Bellasar screamed in outrage. With the men from his car and the survivors who lurched from the other cars, he fired toward Sienna and Malone. Determined more than ever to take them alive, aiming at their legs, he emptied his pistol, but before he could eject its magazine and shove in a new one, they disappeared over the crest.
Cursing, Bellasar leapt back into his vehicle. The men with him barely had a chance to jump in before he rammed the gearshift into reverse, tore up dirt backing away from the gully, spun the steering wheel, and sped up the slope.
But the incline steepened, and the ground became more uneven. The engine, strained to its limit, could no longer propel the weight of the reinforced body. The more it slowed, the more Bellasar pressed the accelerator, until, with a bang that shook the vehicle, the transmission failed, the vehicle rolling backward. Bellasar stomped the brake pedal, twisted the steering wheel, and yanked the lever of the emergency brake. Slamming a fresh magazine into his pistol, he charged out and ran for the top.