‘Back off, bitch.’ He had his Ingram half-out but was fighting a strap that had fouled itself around the barrel. In this cold, these layers of clothing, everyone was equally clumsy. It was life and death, yet they were stumbling around like drunks.
‘You,’ Zuiden’s sidekick yelled at Raul. ‘Get back here.’
Raul turned, saw the gun, stopped, held out his hands in a stagy way.
Why haven’t they shot us? Cain wondered. Then he knew. Noise carried in this land like a shout across a glassy lake. So they took their victims to the strip and shot them during takeoffs when full thrust and the JATO drowned fire.
The surgeons were staring at the plane — at a man in khaki gear who was staggering down its ramp as if shoved. The man waved a desperate warning.
Gunfire.
His body tumbled into snow.
The sound galvanised Zuiden. ‘Who was that?’
‘Looked like Bowman,’ his sidekick said, ‘a loadie. Must’ve shot him from inside the hold.’
‘What the…?’
The man at the crew door, who’d briefly disappeared, was now aiming a rifle with a scope.
The yellow ventiles of the Hagg driver blushed darker with a laser dot.
Zuiden shoved him — but too late.
A single crack — high velocity.
The driver pitched back, hit the snow.
‘Take cover,’ Zuiden yelled.
Hunt and Cain, four paces behind the vehicle and exposed like bunnies on a rug, dropped flat.
She shouted across to him, ‘What’s going on? Who are they?’
‘God knows. Stay down.’
The three remaining surgeons huddled behind the tracks of the Hagg. One let off a burst toward the plane.
Zuiden yelled, ‘Fuck. Not at the plane.’
‘But some mob’s hijacked it,’ the shooter complained.
‘Tough. You fuck our planes, we die here. Who’ll fucking come and get us?’
Cain knew he was right. Without the planes, all at Alpha would die. No one, on or off the continent, would dare lift a finger to help.
The sniper in the plane waited. Cain was exposed enough to be shot, but assumed the man was after armed troopers — the perceived threat to Raul.
Raul, halfway between the two camps, sank to his knees, lay flat, then looked back with a strictured smile. Headcase, Cain thought.
More engine noises joined the racket as two quads shot down the ramp. The ramp extensions weren’t in place so the converted four-wheel ag-bikes bucked and slewed as they kissed snow. Cain didn’t believe it. A man with a burp gun sat behind each driver.
The surgeons were shocked. They scurried as one of the fast, erratic quads circled wide to attack their rear.
Zuiden’s men were now fighting on two fronts with cover only from one side. The Hagg sat lower than a snow-cat, with a towing point at the back of the rear cab, hydraulic steering linkage the other end, so there was no way, in bulky gear, to wriggle between the tracks.
Bullets pinged off wheels and splintered cold-hardened rubber as the circling bike strafed them. Then the second bike attacked from the plane side, its overlarge soft tyres mashing the snow-crust, kicking up crystalline white cloud.
Cain craned to look back at the open rear door of the cab — saw the dark head of the old general and the pale face of the pope peering just above the sill like startled cats.
The air sang with firing. Zuiden was pinned every way. The sharpshooter from the plane still methodically targeted movement. And he was good.
A cry.
One surgeon down.
Zuiden used the body as a bunker.
Cain called to Hunt, ‘You set?’
The quad that had gone around the back did a 360, spraying snow, flipped. Zuiden had shot the driver and both riders were rolling in snow.
The two remaining surgeons now concentrated fire on the quad and took out the man with the gun.
Zuiden dragged out a two-way, was calling the base.
‘Go.’ Cain was up and running along the plane-side of the Hagg. He wrenched the driver’s door open, leaped into the seat, felt under the dash, pulled the release catch on the park brake.
As the vehicle jerked ahead, it left the two surviving surgeons totally exposed. In the external rear-view mirror he saw Zuiden’s last man, one knee up and firing, pitch over.
Zuiden lunged for the upended bike, took cover behind it, aimed.
Cain ducked as the right-hand side window filled with spider patterns, disintegrated. He dragged the wheel around, glad the thing was left-hand-drive.
A flapping rear nearside door. Hunt behind him on the floor.
The remaining quad was ahead of them, racing for the plane. Two men still on it. But the man with the gun was gone. Shot? He’d been replaced by Raul. The driver had picked him up.
Hunt, now leaning on the engine cover next to him, yelled, ‘What are you doing?’
‘You want to stay and play tag with Alpha?’
‘That’s Bell!’ She pointed ahead. ‘They’re from The Square. If they get to me, I’m dead.’
‘Deader here.’
Now he saw it. The cult had tortured facts out of Murchison, got the info on EXIT flights, done an insurgent strike the other end and…
Raul, on the back of the bike, turned around to wave them on as if leading a cavalry charge.
I’m onto you, bastard, Cain thought. You want Zia and the pope. You want to fly them back as evidence and feed them to the networks.
Cain half-jackknifed the Hagg, followed the spraying snow from the quad as it raced ahead toward the ramp.
Hunt yelled, ‘This is mad.’
‘Got a better idea?’
The quad was four-wheel-drive but too small to climb the lip of the ramp. The driver ditched it and ran inside with Raul. But the lack of loading ramp extensions didn’t bother the four-tracked Hagg. It could climb steep angles, high obstacles, cross wide ditches. Its nose pitched up and it churned into the empty hold. From above them came the crunch of the radar and GPS antennae wrecking themselves on the overhead.
Two exhausted-looking crewmen — the engineer and second loadie — stood near the forward bulkhead gaping at the approaching cargo.
The loadie bellowed, ‘Jesus! Back that bastard out.’
Cain, no genius at reversing articulated vehicles, shouted through the shattered side window. ‘You bloody do it.’
Bell, the man he’d seen in the TV interview, was flat against the hull with Raul. ‘Leave it there. No time.’
The loadie moved forward as if functioning on automatic, glanced at the deck and beckoned the vehicle on with both arms. Cain inched it to where he wanted, then depressed the pedal that worked the park brake. He shut down, jumped out and searched around for straps. The engineer checked load-positioning before climbing the flight deck steps.
The frantic loadie recognised him. ‘Aren’t you Cain?’
Bell ordered, ‘Shut the arse, lash this thing down and get us out of here.’ He swung around to Raul. ‘They’ll block the skiway next.’
The loadie trotted back to the ramp, still looking at Cain as if the famed Grade Four would countermand the order.
‘Do what he says,’ Cain yelled.
The man hit buttons on the aft control panel. The door lowered and the ramp moved up. The crewman stumbled back like an automaton, started grabbing for chains, tensioners, strops. Hunt and Cain pitched in, attaching links to anchor points.
The sound of engines running up. The crack of the sniper’s rifle from the crew door behind them.
Cain called to the loadie, ‘How many of them?’
The man tried to think, mind in meltdown, ‘How many shot outside?’