Armed with his SCAR Assault Rifle, fitted with a 40mm FN40GL grenade launcher which had fallen beside him, he had drawn a bead on the nearest soldier and fired.
The grenade ripped through whatever armour the man had been wearing and made light work of his flesh, literally blasting his body to pieces. The blast also consumed the second soldier, hurling him over the balcony and down to a grisly death upon a jagged shard of glass on the ground floor.
The Team Leader slammed into what remained of the far wall, the concussion blast of the grenade having hurled him a good ten feet. He felt as though he had been hit by an arsenal of sledge hammers and his lungs burned with the heated chemical residue of the blast. He coughed, glanced across at the American. He began to stir and outside on the balcony shadows which he knew could not be his men shifted.
It was time to go. He turned and clambered through the shattered remains of the window and out into the Caribbean air.
Escaping from the maelstrom within the museum, Sid crashed down upon the dry grass. The noises of the fire fight were muted by the building and drowned out almost totally by the thunder of the hovering helicopter. But she ignored it all as she rolled King over. His head lolled back. Eyes closed.
Was he dead.
“No,” she gasped, checking for a pulse. She found one, however weak.
“Ben,” she shook him. “Ben!” she tried more rigorously. Met with failure again, she tapped her throat mike. “Nadia, its Sid, I need help. It’s Ben—”
Out of the darkness burst four black motorcycles, each carrying a black clad soldier. Their engines drowned out by the din of the helicopter and their headlights off, they had been all but invisible but now they surrounded her like a flock of hungry vultures, driving in a tight circle around and around. They acted more like a brutish biker gang, taunting her, rather than the trained professionals she knew them to be.
She cradled King’s prone body protectively, flinching at the movements of the soldiers, desperately searching the grounds for any sign of Gibbs or Raine or the others but she was alone.
Then one of the riders lashed out with a boot and smashed it into her face. Her vision exploded and she screamed in agony. She tasted blood. She saw stars and then realised she was on her back, gazing up at the heavens. She tried to move but a heavy boot, perhaps the same one, stood on her chest, pressing her down. Rough hands grasped King.
“No!” she tried to cry out but her breath was squashed away from her. Then she heard a voice, speaking into a radio.
“We have King and Siddiqa. King’s hurt. I’m not sure if he’ll make it.” A pause, then; “Shall I kill the woman?”
Sid felt her heart leap at his words. She struggled but the soldier’s weight on her chest was too great. She saw two of the soldiers haul King onto the back of one of the bikes and use plastic cuffs to secure him upright behind the rider.
Then the voice returned. One side of a conversation.
“Understood.”
The soldier standing on her chest looked down at her, gun in hand. She felt a prayer form on her lips, mumbled the words in Hindi. And then the soldier leaned down, leering at her, gun pointed at her head.
There was a moment of excruciating pain and then her world went black.
29:
Party Crashers
Raine jolted awake just in time to see the team leader wriggle through the open window and haul himself up onto the building’s roof.
He struggled to his feet, his entire body aching from the gunshot. His ribs felt as though a ten-ton boulder had been dropped repeatedly on them.
Seconds later, Rudy O’Rourke stumbled into the room, his face smeared with blood. He glanced significantly at Raine, sizing him up but Raine knew they didn’t have time for any of the SOG team’s misgivings about him.
“He’s on the roof,” he said, tearing off the shattered body armour and staggering to the window. He scrambled out, used the plastic guttering for support and heaved onto the roof. O’Rourke followed seconds behind, speaking into his com unit.
“This is O’Rourke. One hostile is on the roof. He has the book. I repeat, he has the book.”
In response, Sykes and Lake spun the enormous helicopter two hundred degrees, its powerful search light spearing across the roof top and silhouetting the black shape of the fleeing soldier.
“We’ve got him,” Lake’s voice crackled over Raine’s ear piece and an instant later the mighty chopper powered forward, coming down low, Lake at the gun controls.
The fleeing figure never wavered under the scrutiny of the search light nor the prospect of his doom. He ran hell for leather down the length of the roof, towards the ‘knuckles’ of the fist-shaped building, weaving around air-ducts and ventilation shafts.
“Got you,” Lake’s voice continued through his radio as she settled her sights on the hostile. Raine guessed she was balancing some sort of rifle on single shot mode. If she used the helicopter’s powerful cannons both the hostile and the book would be mulched.
“What in the name of—” O’Rourke’s comment was cut off when Raine saw what he had just seen.
A blur of motion in the night sky above Eagle Eye One seemed to manifest into the silhouette of a plane, black as the void between the stars. It unleashed a barrage of tracer bullets at the pursuing helicopter and forced David Sykes, at the controls, to pull up hard.
As Eagle Eye One twisted on its axis and screamed out of harm’s way, the black airplane swooped on down, hammering the rooftop with bullets, tracing a line across it, all the way to the north face where Raine and O’Rourke stood.
“Move!” Raine ordered, leaping to the left while O’Rourke threw himself to the right. The barrage of bullets narrowly missed both of them as the plane thundered on overhead and climbed back into the sky.
“Raine, what the hell are you doing up there?!” Gibbs bellowed into his radio as he led West and Murray back outside—
Bullets slammed into the doorframe and he only just managed to scramble back inside for cover.
“God damn!” he cursed. Outside, he saw four more black-clad soldiers on motorcycles. Two maintained their sustained barrage on the building’s main exit while two more were tying the limp forms of King and Sid to two of the bikes.
With bullets shattering the windows and walls all around, Gibbs’ team was pinned down.
“Come on,” Raine yelled to O’Rourke once the plane had passed overhead.
As if it were the old days, Nathan Raine led Rudy O’Rourke across the rooftop, in pursuit of the fleeing team leader. They dodged the air vents that littered the building and avoided the now shattered skylights. O’Rourke took a few distance shots at the soldier but he was too far away.
“He’s trapped.”
Raine instantly regretted his words as he watched the hostile reach the end of the Hand of Freedom building and simply drop off it, vanishing from view. Raine closed the distance in seconds and skidded to a halt, peering over the edge just in time to see the enemy soldier disconnect himself from the grappling hook and rope he’d used to abseil down to earth. He bolted onto one of four bikes and barked orders at another two. Raine quickly shook off the surprise and horror of seeing King and Sid strapped, unconscious, to the bikes’ riders and watched as the three vehicles shot off the mark and flew into the night.
The remaining two soldiers, laying down covering fire and keeping Gibbs trapped inside the building, began their retreat, moving backwards towards the fourth and final bike. One picked it up and mounted it while the other covered him, then he took over firing while the first laid down covering fire. The driver twisted the throttle, kicked back the stand and skidded in a 270 degree circle.