The tunnel mouth erupted like a volcano.
An enormous gush of flame blasted from the entrance, lighting up the surrounding landscape with a hellfire glow. Debris arced across the plateau, the blast hurling metal and stone for hundreds of metres as Facility 17 was consumed by an explosion powerful enough to shake the entire mountain.
The dazzling flare faded… revealing the microlight straining skywards.
‘Oh my God!’ shrieked Nina. The heat of the explosion had singed her hair, exposed skin feeling as if she had leaned into an oven, but she was still alive. She looked up to check that the wing had not caught fire, and was thankful to see that the fabric was intact.
Her relief was short-lived as she realised their situation. They were far from safe. The plateau spread out below as they gained height. Lights stood out on the winding road descending the mountainside: the missile convoy making its way down… and trucks coming back up. Soldiers sent to reclaim the base — or what was left of it — and hunt down the escaped prisoners. Beyond was nothing but dark forest all the way to the airbase far below. Even from this distance, the enormous Antonov freighter stood out clearly at one end of the long runway.
Eddie brought the microlight around in pursuit of the TELs. The plane had reached its top speed, which he estimated to be only around fifty miles per hour; there was no speed indicator, or for that matter any instruments beyond a crude artificial horizon and a couple of gauges. ‘We should be able to catch up.’
Nina had to raise her voice over the wind and the buzzing engine. ‘We’re really going after them?’
‘It’s all we can do. Well, apart from letting a bunch of pissed-off North Koreans torture and kill us. I know this thing’s supposed to be stealthy, but I don’t fancy our chances of crossing the border without getting flak shot up our arses. And that’s if we can even reach it.’
‘So our choices are get killed, or try to stop them escaping with a set of nuclear missiles — and then get killed?’
He looked back at her, downcast. ‘Afraid so, love. We’re stuck in North Korea with no backup, and we’ve just made ’em really, really mad at us. And it’s not like we can blend in with the locals — the red hair’s a bit of a giveaway.’
‘Just a little. But what can we do to stop them?’
‘I’ve still got one stick of dynamite. We can fly over the first transporter and bomb it. If we get lucky, it’ll block the road — the other trucks might even crash into it.’
‘And after that?’
‘No idea. But I don’t think… I don’t think we’re going to get home to Macy.’ The name was abruptly choked off by emotion.
Nina felt the same overwhelming sense of loss and grief. ‘We shouldn’t have come here,’ she said, tears blurring her vision. ‘We shouldn’t have done this! Oh God, Eddie, why the fuck did we do this? We’re going to die and we’re… we’re going to leave Macy all alone!’
‘She won’t be alone. She—’
‘She won’t have us! Eddie, she’s going to have her parents taken from her — she’s going to go through the same thing as I did! Why did we… Why?’
Her husband was silent for a long moment as she sobbed. Finally he spoke. ‘If we hadn’t come here, they’d still be shipping out the missiles and they’d be knocking out even more plutonium from the Crucible. At least we stopped them making any more nukes, and we’ve still got a chance of keeping those down there from leaving the country.’
‘I’m sure that’ll make Macy feel so much better,’ she said bitterly.
‘Yeah, I know. But even if Mikkelsson thinks that if everyone has nukes nobody’ll dare use ’em, he’s full of shit. It only takes one psycho megalomaniac and it’ll all kick off, and it’s not like there’s any shortage of them in the world.’ He made a course adjustment, then looked at Nina again. ‘I don’t want Macy to have to face that. So if we’re going to die either way, then at least we can do like Ock and make it count for something.’
‘Fight to the end, as you like to say?’
‘I say it because I believe it. We can still make a difference. I’d prefer to do that without fucking dying, but, well…’
She wiped her eyes, then squeezed his shoulder lovingly. ‘You know something, Edward J. Chase? Probably nobody else but me would think so, but you are actually kind of noble. In your own special, sweary way.’
‘I try my best. All I can do, really.’ He leaned over to regard the vehicles below. ‘Okay. Let’s do this.’
The convoy had just emerged from a zigzagging series of hairpins on to a relatively straight section of road. The SUV carrying Kang and the Mikkelssons was in the lead, the truck bearing Captain Sek and his team — and the warheads — following. Behind that was a jeep, then the three TELs and their deadly loads, the missiles lying flat in their hydraulic cradles. Bringing up the rear was a second jeep.
Eddie fumbled the dynamite and matchbook from his pocket and passed them to Nina. ‘Get ready to light it when I say.’ The convoy was picking up speed, going faster than seemed safe considering the state of the road and the sheer size of the trucks. Kang was presumably in a rush to reach the airbase. The Yorkshireman looked ahead. ‘Bollocks.’
‘What?’ asked Nina.
‘Power lines in the way.’ He peered into the moonlit darkness. ‘I’ll have to come in from the valley to avoid the wires.’ He changed course, swinging out over the steep-sided gorge below. ‘You ready with the dynamite?’
‘Yeah — if I can light a match in this wind.’
He looked over at the road, now to their right. The leading vehicles were still picking up speed, though the driver of the first TEL was apparently having second thoughts, allowing a gap to open up. That was good — a slower target would be easier to hit. Eddie judged the speeds and distances again. ‘Okay — light it!’
The rearguard jeep had three soldiers aboard. They were in the dark about what was happening: all they knew was that Facility 17 had been attacked, and their job was to protect the missile transporters at all costs. The brutal discipline of North Korea’s military had been drummed into them, hard; taking actions or even asking questions about anything beyond the scope of their orders was an invitation for punishment.
So when the man in the rear seat heard a buzzing noise in the dark sky, he did not immediately open fire upon it. Since their instructions had been to stop anyone pursuing them by road, he merely tapped the shoulder of the driver, his immediate superior. ‘Sir! There’s something up there — I think it’s one of our little planes!’
The driver, his rank the Korean equivalent of a lowly private, first class, was no more ready to take risks than his subordinate — especially when said risk would involve shooting at a secret aircraft of the People’s Army. ‘Get on the radio to Colonel Kang,’ he ordered the other passenger. ‘Tell him about the plane, and ask what we should do.’
The soldier made the call, twitching in fear when Kang’s voice roared back at him. ‘What do you think you should do, you idiot? Shoot it down — kill them!’
The two privates hurriedly raised their rifles. A small flickering light appeared on the aircraft, giving them a target…
It took Nina three attempts to light a match, and another two before the fuse caught. ‘Okay, it’s fizzling!’
The microlight was now level with the second TEL, passing over the line of pylons. Eddie got ready to turn for his bombing run. ‘Give it to me!’
She reached out to put it into his upraised hand—