Eddie looked back into the cavernous underground factory. His gaze fell upon the ranks of vehicles near the cargo elevator. ‘Come on,’ he said, hurrying to one.
‘You want to float out of here?’ Nina asked incredulously. ‘In that?’ Even with its military modifications, the four-seater hovercraft seemed almost toy-like.
‘I want to see how thick this armour is.’ He examined the wedge of plating covering the craft’s nose. ‘Everyone get back!’ He waved for the others to retreat, then raised his gun and fired a single shot. The round banged off the armour and screamed away into the depths of the hangar. The drab camouflage paint spalled away around the impact point to reveal dull grey metal beneath, but the surface itself had only a slight dent.
‘What was that for?’ Nina asked.
‘Miniguns use regular rifle ammo,’ he replied. ‘And a rifle round hardly scratched this.’ He knocked on the armour. ‘Looks like Chobham, or summat similar. They’ll have built these to charge through the demilitarised zone — the South Koreans won’t be able to hurt ’em with regular weapons until they’re already over the border.’
‘At which point they can just shoot them in the back as they go past,’ Nina pointed out, indicating the hovercraft’s open, unprotected body behind the plating. ‘And they’ll do the same to us if we try to get out in these!’
‘I wasn’t thinking of getting out in ’em.’ A glance at another vehicle, one of the microlight aircraft. ‘We’ve got to take out those turrets first, and I think I know how…’ He turned to look across the runway. Some of the giant fuel tanks were visible beyond the blockhouse. ‘Ock!’ he called. ‘Tell everyone I need help with some hover bovver!’
Bok stared intently down the runway. The dust from the miniguns’ assault had settled, nothing moving at the tunnel’s far end except the flames licking in the wrecked truck. He had glimpsed someone looking out around the corner, but they retreated before the guns could be brought to bear.
He was about to raise his radio to order some of the men along the barricade to move into the tunnel when a low growl reached him from the depths of the mountain. ‘They’ve started an engine,’ he announced instead. ‘They must be making a run for it. Whatever they’re driving, I don’t want it to reach the exit.’
Acknowledgements crackled through the ether. The man operating the turret pointed the minigun at the bullet-riddled corner. Bok watched as the distant engine roared, eagerly awaiting its appearance.
But nothing came into view. It sounded as though the vehicle was being driven across the facility behind the blockhouse. ‘They’re up to something! Everyone be ready!’
Ock stood in the hovercraft’s front passenger seat, looking over the armour as Eddie piloted the little vehicle across the factory floor. ‘Right, right!’ the Korean shouted as it drifted towards a stand of machinery on the missile production line. ‘Go right!’
The Englishman flicked the rudder, bringing the hovercraft around in a wide, slithering turn. The narrow viewing slits were practically useless, too low to give him a clear view even when hunched down in the uncomfortable fibreglass seat. ‘Are we clear?’ he asked as the obstacle slid past.
‘Yes, yes! Go forward!’
Eddie straightened out. He had driven similar vehicles before and knew how much of a handful they could be, but the nose-heavy North Korean example was even harder to control. He glanced back, seeing several prisoners following at a run. ‘How much further?’
‘Not far… Stop! Stop, now!’
Eddie closed the throttle. The hovercraft wallowed, skidding along on a residual cushion of air before its Kevlar-toughened rubber skirt deflated. The Korean grabbed the mounted gun to steady himself as the vehicle lurched to a stop. ‘You okay?’ Eddie asked.
Ock’s eyes still betrayed his grief-stricken rage. ‘Yes,’ was his curt reply. ‘What are we doing?’
The Yorkshireman climbed out. Before him were the fuel tanks, ranks of great metal cylinders rising above a rat’s nest of pipework. ‘There should be two different kinds of fuel. One’ll probably be kerosene — or paraffin, it’s called in Britain. The other’ll be a kind of nitric acid.’
Ock surveyed the tanks, spotting warning signs. He pointed at one of the larger vessels. ‘Yes, that is kerosene. And that’ — he turned to indicate a group of smaller, but still capacious, tanks about a hundred feet from the first set — ‘is acid.’ He gave Eddie an odd look. ‘You said you were a soldier, but you know this. Are you a scientist?’
The Englishman laughed. ‘Not even close! I don’t know if Nina’d find that funny or be offended.’
The other prisoners arrived. ‘Okay, we need a barrel of the stuff from those tanks,’ Eddie pointed at the kerosene store, ‘and another barrel from those.’ He turned to indicate the containers of augmented nitric acid as Ock translated his instructions. ‘Fill ’em about two thirds full. But whatever you do, do not fucking spill any. If they mix, if they even touch, they’ll explode — and the more there is, the bigger the explosion.’ Widening eyes told him that the danger had been successfully communicated. ‘It looks like you can drain stuff using those valves, so get a barrel of each and bring ’em back to the hovercraft. Really carefully,’ he added as the group split up.
‘What are you going to do?’ Ock asked.
‘If we load up the hovercraft with the barrels, we can send it down the runway to crash into those jeeps they’ve set up as a barricade. The barrels go flying, the stuff inside mixes — and boom. We’ve got our way out.’
The Korean was sceptical. ‘It is a very big runway.’
‘It’ll be a very big boom. Trust me.’ The metal drums he had seen stacked near the tanks were of a standard fifty-five-gallon size, over two hundred litres. If they were filled as he had asked, the combination of more than seventy gallons of hypergolic fuel and oxidiser would produce an extremely satisfying explosion.
The remaining prisoners, Nina with them, approached pushing one of the microlights. ‘Okay,’ she demanded, ‘why exactly did you want us to bring this?’
‘Because we need a way out of here.’
‘And the half-dozen jeeps back there aren’t suitable because…?’
‘Because A, they’ll never catch up with the missile convoy on that twisty road, and B, there’ll probably be a shitload of troops coming back up the road once they realise what we’ve done.’
‘Which is?’
‘Blow this place to fuck.’ He took out a stick of dynamite, then smiled and nodded towards the fuel tanks. ‘About fifty thousand gallons of rocket fuel ought to do it.’
‘Yeah, it might,’ she said with alarm.
‘And speaking of…’ Eddie watched as three straining men carefully carried a barrel of kerosene towards the hovercraft. A lid had been placed loosely over its top, but he could still hear its contents sloshing about. ‘Put it here,’ he said, pointing at one of the rear seats. Ock relayed the command, the trio carefully lowering it into position.
By the time they were done, the other group had returned from the more distant tanks. The noise from their drum was far more worrying: a frothing hiss as the nitric acid tried to eat through the metal. The lid had been pushed down more firmly to hold in the choking fumes, though one of the prisoners carrying it had a very sickly appearance from accidental exposure while filling the barrel. Eddie directed them to the other rear seat. ‘Careful, really careful,’ he warned as they lowered it. ‘Okay, that’s good.’ There was a rolled-up camouflage tarp in the rear; he used it to wedge the second container in place. ‘Let’s get this thing moving.’