‘I think going west rather than back the way we came will be the quickest route to a highway,’ Jared replied. ‘There’s one running parallel to the Egyptian border. We should get cell reception there.’ They clambered over the fallen rocks and continued along the narrow, winding ravine.
‘So what about it?’ Nina asked Dalton. ‘Your only chance of staying out of prison is to tell us where Cross plans to release the angels. If you help stop the attacks, you might just save your sorry ass.’
‘If I’m going to say anything,’ he replied with disdain, ‘it’ll be through my lawyer to the Attorney General. It sure as hell won’t be to the likes of you.’
She shook her head. ‘You really do think you’ll still be able to get back into the White House, don’t you? Jeez. I know politicians have an inflated sense of self-belief, but you’re outright delusional!’
‘We’ll see,’ was his reply.
‘Twat,’ said Eddie, turning sideways to pass through the tight clench. ‘All right, we’re almost at the cliff.’ The light ahead grew brighter as they neared the last twist in the chasm. ‘I’ll rig the rope, and…’
He trailed off as he rounded the last corner — and heard a rising noise. The others stopped behind him. ‘What’s that?’ Nina asked.
The answer came a moment later as an Apache helicopter gunship rose into view, its cannon swinging towards them.
30
Dalton pushed forward, waving at the helicopter’s pilot — Colonel Brik. ‘Hey! It’s me! Help me! I’m—’
Eddie seized him. ‘Back!’ he yelled, driving the others into cover around the corner—
The gunship opened fire, its thirty-millimetre chain gun blazing. Shells tore into the chasm’s walls, ripping out chunks of rock.
Eddie shoved Dalton away and grabbed Nina, shielding her with his body. Jared stumbled against a wall as he tried to run, while the politician fled before tripping in his panic.
Brik jinked the aircraft sideways to give his gunner a better angle down the narrow cleft. The curve of the walls still blocked their targets from view, but that didn’t ease the trigger finger of the man in the forward seat. More shells screamed against the cliffs, fractured stone spalling in all directions.
‘Move, move!’ Eddie screamed, barely audible over the gun’s thunder. A lump of rock smacked against his head as he pushed Nina onwards. Just ahead of them, Jared managed to hobble around the next bend before his leg gave way.
The cannon fire stopped, a few last pieces of debris ricocheting past. Then the only movement was the dust blown through the ravine by the rotor downwash. ‘What the hell was that?’ Nina demanded.
‘That was one of our Petens!’ Jared replied, shocked. The Apache — Peten, meaning ‘adder’, was the Hebrew name for the American aircraft — was painted in the brown and grey camouflage pattern of the Israeli Air Force. ‘Why’s it attacking us?’
‘I bet he knows,’ Eddie growled, going to Dalton. He dragged him upright. ‘Hey! Where did that fucking chopper come from?’
The politician was wide-eyed with fear. ‘It’s some old contact of Cross,’ he panted. ‘Colonel Brik, base commander at Ovda. Cross must have called him.’
‘Still think he’s on your side?’ said Nina angrily. ‘He just tried to kill us!’
‘He hasn’t stopped,’ Eddie warned. The Apache’s engine note changed, the gunship pulling back from the cliff and descending. ‘Get in further — go, go!’
They squeezed through the narrow clench, but Eddie knew they were still not safe. ‘Cover your ears!’ he cried.
‘Why, what’s happ—’ Dalton began, but the sight of the others pressing their palms firmly to their heads rapidly prompted him to do the same. Eddie hunched down, bracing himself against the wall as he again shielded Nina—
A sharp hiss — then the entire cliff shook with the impact of a rocket. Another whoosh, and a second missile struck just inside the cleft. A gritty shock wave blasted pulverised fragments of stone down the passage, the blast knocking those within to the ground.
The echoes faded. Eddie coughed, spitting out dust. ‘Is everyone okay?’
‘I… I think so,’ said Nina, wincing. Despite Eddie’s efforts to protect her, pain coursed through her hip where a flying rock had struck her. ‘We were lucky.’
‘They haven’t given up,’ Eddie said ominously. He stood, listening. Even with the ravine’s strange acoustics, it was easy to tell that the gunship was on the move. Seconds later, a hot wind stinking of burnt aviation fuel tore through their shelter as the gunship thundered directly overhead.
Dalton pushed himself back against the wall. ‘Oh God! They’re going to shoot us from above!’
‘They can’t lower the gun that far,’ Eddie told him. ‘And this place is too twisty for them to get a clear shot… Shit!’ Realisation hit him. ‘They’re going to the other end to seal us in!’
Nina looked after the aircraft with alarm. ‘How many rockets do they have?’
‘Too fucking many.’ He had seen rocket pods beneath the Apache’s stub wings; each could hold nineteen Hydra or CRV7 seventy-millimetre unguided missiles.
‘Do something, Chase!’ cried Dalton.
‘Like what?’ he snapped, drawing the Desert Eagle. ‘Shoot it down with this?’
‘Why not? It’s huge! I know those helicopters are armoured, but—’
‘The cockpit can take a hit from a fifty-cal round. I might get through the armour somewhere else, but I’ve only got a few bullets left. I fired an entire mag at Cross’s chopper and didn’t cause enough damage to bring it down — shit, incoming!’ He heard the Apache’s engine note change again and hurriedly put down the handgun to cover his ears. The others did the same— More rockets pounded the far end of the cleft. This time Brik ordered his gunner to keep firing, missile after missile exploding against the cliffs. The ground shook with the man-made earthquake, then a deeper, more fearsome vibration flung everyone to the floor again as rock gave way under the onslaught.
An entire section of the massif collapsed into the hollow, hundreds of tons of debris plunging down the sinkhole, and more blocking the narrow passage through the cliffs. Another blinding, choking wave of dust rolled over the fugitives.
Eddie checked that Nina had not suffered any more injuries, then looked through the haze to find Jared and Dalton. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah, but we’re trapped in here!’ the Israeli replied.
The dust swirled in the Apache’s downdraught as the gunship passed back overhead. Dalton watched it in dismay. ‘So… so what are they going to do? Hover at the end of the ravine and pick us off if we show our faces?’
‘Pretty much,’ Eddie told him, helping Nina up.
‘There must be something you can do!’
‘Oh, so now I’m the answer to all your problems? We can’t get back to the temple, and if we try to climb down the cliff, they’ll shoot us.’ The Englishman tipped his head, looking up between the sheer walls. ‘I could chimney-climb to the top, but there’s no cover, so they’d only have to gain a bit of height to take a shot—’
He broke off. He had still been in the SAS when the Apache entered British military service, and had taken the opportunity to get a close look at the new machine that would be providing his fellow servicemen with air support. Now a memory returned from when he had actually sat inside one. The gunship’s cockpit was indeed designed to resist bullets, but not from every angle. One part had been left unarmoured to save weight, on the grounds that it would never normally be exposed to an enemy…
Nina realised that he was forming a plan. ‘What is it?’ she asked.