‘Contact!’ I shouted to Pav. ‘That fucking breakaway Gaz, it’s trying to head us and block the road.’
‘Your pigeon,’ Pav answered. ‘We’re rolling.’
Somehow Jason had got his head and shoulders out of the window and twisted them forward with his weapon levelled. It was an amazing gymnastic feat. Only someone as thin as he was could have managed it. I saw that his right-side ribs must be getting hammered on the door frame, but he seemed impervious to the pain.
‘Wait!’ I roared. ‘Too far!’
The jeep was being thrown about by the rough terrain, jumping and twisting. As we converged I could see it had no canopy, but there were two men standing in the back, clinging to the tubular framework.
My right foot was flat down. We were doing ninety again — a crazy speed on that surface. It wasn’t safe to take my eyes off the road for more than a second at a time. In spite of our pace, the jeep was going to reach the road first, before we passed the point where its line intersected ours, unless the driver suddenly stopped so that his crew could open up on us broadside as we went past. In the final seconds of convergence I realised he wasn’t going to. He’d committed himself to blocking our path. Along that stretch the road was built up on a low causeway, maybe a couple of feet high, with sandy banks sloping down into the scrub on either side. We were less than a hundred metres from convergence when the jeep reached the right-hand bank, bounced up it and slithered to a halt at an angle across the carriageway. The driver must have thought the block would make me slow down. Some chance.
Beside me, Jason hammered off three short bursts from his 203. Dust spurted on our side of the jeep.
‘Get in!’ I roared. ‘Get back in!’
He saw that impact was imminent, and wriggled back inside the cab. Just in time he dropped the weapon and braced himself, hands and feet. I did the same, gripping the wheel with all my strength and forcing myself against the backrest.
We went in at the jeep with terrifying velocity. I felt I was looking through a zoom lens, so fast did the target grow. Thank God for our bullbar, I thought. I just had time to see the guys in the back of the Gaz struggling to sort themselves and bring their weapons to bear on us when, WHAM!, we hit them broadside with shattering force. The impact lifted the jeep clean off its wheels and flung it away to our left like a toy. I caught a glimpse of the standing guys being jackknifed over the bars they’d been holding on to. Their vehicle was whipped sideways with such colossal energy that the bars drove into their chests and stomachs, doubling them forward. As for us, we took a terrific jolt, but the mother wagon’s weight and impetus were such that it hardly slowed. We came out of the crash still doing seventy. In the mirror I saw flames and smoke rising from the wreck.
‘Fucking take that!’ I yelled in triumph. Then I shot a glance at Jason and saw blood running down his cheek. ‘Hey!’ I went. ‘You okay?’
‘Sure, sah!’ He was grinning and patting his left temple, showing where he’d nicked it against the roof of the cab.
I snatched the radio mike, and called, ‘Green One. We’ve disabled that rogue jeep you saw go cross-country. It’s on fire. But watch yourselves when you pass it. There could be survivors.’
‘Roger,’ went Pav. ‘We can see the smoke ahead of us.’
For nearly half a minute after the smash I thought we’d got clean away with it, that our truck was intact. The engine hadn’t faltered, and the steering felt fine. Then I noticed the temperature gauge, creeping up.
‘Shit!’ I yelled. ‘We’ve holed the radiator!’
At that moment, Pav came on with, ‘The Herc’s nearly round its circuit. Looking to land in figures two minutes.’
‘Roger,’ I went. ‘Which way’s he coming in?’
‘West to east, from behind you.’
‘Roger. I’m almost at the end of the Mall. Tell the pilot I’ll try to give him smoke at both ends of a good strip. Got a problem, though. Truck’s overheating. Stand by.’
Eyeballing frantically to my left, I recognised the start of the Mall and swung left-handed off the road towards the flat ground. On the temperature gauge the needle was up into the red. Before we reached the level area we had to cross an old river bed. Over the bumps I changed down into second. Steam began pouring from under the bonnet. Fifty yards short of the flat, the needle went off the dial. I sensed that if I gunned the engine for another few seconds, it would seize. Somehow I’d got to get the truck on to the flat ground so that the Herc could pull up beside it. No way would the incoming crew be able to carry every missile a hundred metres or more.
I switched off, and said to Jason, ‘Got to get some water into it. Here, take these.’ I pulled out two smoke grenades which I’d had stowed in my Bergen, down beside my feet. ‘The plane’s coming in this way.’ I made a sweeping movement, indicating an approach from behind us and to the left. ‘Run! Crack one off over there, on the flat. Then run again. Minimum five hundred metres straight along. Six hundred if you can make it before you see the Herc coming. Okay?’
‘Yassir!’ Jason’s face was all lit up. He slipped the grenades into his pouches, jumped down, and ran like a grey spider, stumbling over the tussocks.
‘Green One,’ I went on the radio. ‘Tell the Herc he’ll have one lot of smoke anyway, maybe two. If it’s only one, that’s his touch-down point; if it’s two, they’ll mark both ends of the strip. Stand by.’
I leapt to the ground. Steam was still pouring from the bonnet. With the catch released, the damage was obvious: some sharp edge driven into the front of the radiator. The whole engine was dangerously hot. I was still wearing Rasputin’s protective gloves, but first I smothered the radiator cap with a piece of sacking as well, then turned it. Jets of steam spurted sideways. I ran round to the back of the wagon, unhooked the cage that held the jerricans under the false floor, dragged a can out and lugged it to the front. The first few pints of water exploded in steam, but the rest took the temperature down and the system began to fill.
As I stood there holding the heavy can level, I heard the engines of the Herc. I glanced behind me towards the beginning of the Mall. Green smoke was billowing, going almost straight up, and in the distance Jason was running.
Fresh water started to dribble from the hole in the honeycomb of metal on the radiator front. I stopped pouring, flung the can away, stuffed sacking into the puncture, replaced the cap, slammed the bonnet down and hauled myself into the driving seat. The engine fired. I went into first, crawled forward, and changed into second.
With my own engine running, I could no longer hear the plane. How far out was it? Jason had cracked off the first grenade well out on the flat ground. Fifty yards short of it, I stopped at right angles to the line of approach and craned forward in the cab, peering to my left. Nothing in sight.
A thought struck me. If I could get the wagon to the far end of our makeshift runway, the Herc could load up from it there, without having to taxi back the length of the strip. Because there was zero wind, the pilot could take off again in the opposite direction, and not overfly the convoy approaching from the east.
I revved up, rolled forward and turned right along the designated runway. Up ahead Jason had vanished into the heat haze. Too late, I glanced down at the temperature gauge. Once more the needle was high in the red. A second later I was getting steam again — a big cloud of it this time, spurting up in front.
No chance of stopping now. I had to keep going. I was maybe halfway along the strip when I heard what I’d been dreading: a horrendous, grinding scream from the engine, followed by a noise like chains being pulled fast through iron railings, then a single, devastating crack.