The driver turned towards him with a shriek of rage, as though he was an animal who must at all costs protect his territory. As Bond turned slightly to pull the door closed, so the driver lunged out and downwards with his right hand, drawing a lethal-looking machete from a scabbard under the dash. His arm came up, then down in a heavy blow, the machete aimed straight at Bond’s head.
Bond’s arm instinctively came up and blocked the blow. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the prime-mover’s fire-extinguisher clipped in front of him. His hand moved like a striking snake, and, before the driver had a chance to aim a second blow, Bond banged down on the plunger, spraying the man’s face with foam.
With a cry, the driver dropped the machete and let go of the wheel, blinded by the foam. Bond caught hold of the wheel, leaning over the driver who was screaming in a mixture of pain, fear and frustration. As he took the wheel, Bond glimpsed Sanchez’s car in the big wing mirror, coming up on their left-hand side, almost level with the cab. In a reflex action, his hand went right across the driver, pulled down on the door handle, unclipped the man’s safety harness, and with a final burst of strength, pushed the driver from the vehicle.
The body stayed half-in and half-out of the cab, so he finally had to lift a foot and kick the man out into space. He went with much screaming and above the noise of both man and engine, Bond heard the nasty thump as the driver landed smack in the middle of the pursuing car’s bonnet.
By the time Bond had got into the driver’s seat, and hauled the heavy vehicle back on to course, the car was overtaking him. He saw the tanker driver’s body being thrown from the bonnet by a swerve, then ducked as Sanchez emptied an entire clip of bullets into the cab. The machine kept going. In front of him, Bond saw the next tanker, and Sanchez’s car, at full power, riding alongside to overtake it.
There was now panic and fury in Sanchez’s car. Truman-Lodge was reading from a map, breathlessly giving map references to Sanchez, while Sanchez himself was operating the window, in order to shout instructions. As they came alongside the tanker, Sanchez, half-leaning out of the car, ordered his chauffeur to get the tanker driver’s attention, which he did by a perpetual honking of the horn.
‘That mad gringo stole the tanker behind you,’ Sanchez roared above the noise. ‘Don’t let him pass you. If you do,’ he drew his hand over his throat in a gesture that left no doubts. The tanker driver nodded, allowing Sanchez’s car to surge ahead.
As it did so, Sanchez prepared for Bond’s final destruction. Grabbing a walkie-talkie, tuned to the frequency of a similar device in the jeep ahead of the convoy, he gave fast instructions. ‘Perez! Listen to me. Do you read? Over.’
In the jeep, which had been making steady, contented progress until now, Perez pressed the button on his walkie-talkie. ‘I read, strength five. Over.’
‘Bond has escaped,’ Sanchez told him, gesticulating to urge his own driver on. ‘Wait for us at Demon’s Cross. You’ll have the honour of finishing him once and for all.’
In the jeep, Perez smiled and passed the news on to the three heavily built thugs who rode with him.
Just over seven minutes later, Sanchez reached that part of the road which climbed in a series of loops and S-bends, up the most treacherous part of the mountain pass. Perez waited there, the men with him each carrying an Uzi at the ready.
Sanchez gave quick orders to his driver who went to the rear of the car and opened the boot. In it, Sanchez had stored the four missiles Dario had taken from Heller after skewering him to the wall with the fork-lift.
‘If this doesn’t stop him, nothing will.’ Sanchez showed Perez how to aim and fire the missile. ‘Easy as shooting fish in a barrel,’ he said.
‘And this is one fish that will not escape, patron. That I promise you.’ Perez was confident that he could use the missile with no problem. Once the thing was switched on, and sighted, all you had to do was press the trigger.
Truman-Lodge was less happy. ‘Each of these tankers is worth forty million bucks, chief . . .’ he began.
‘Then that’s a cheap price to pay for us to be rid of this bastard. I worry about him. He’s the kind that doesn’t give up until he’s dead.’
‘In a few minutes he’ll give up, patron.’ Perez leaned the missile against the jeep’s bonnet and pointed it directly up the road, as Sanchez and Truman-Lodge returned to their car, the chauffeur gunning the engine in a racing start, leaving a cloud of dust and the smell of rubber in their wake.
Bond was fighting it out with the other tanker. The first time he had tried to pass, a country bus, loaded with people inside and crates of chickens and assorted livestock on top, had almost ploughed straight into him, head on.
At the second attempt, the tanker swerved violently, cutting off Bond so that he had to brake hard. But, at the third attempt, Bond brought his vehicle almost abreast of the other rig’s cab, before yanking at the wheel. The two great road monsters crunched together, showering sparks as they hit, parted and then hit again. At each hit, Bond brought his juggernaut a little further ahead. Finally the other rig was forced to give way, sliding on to the verge as Bond lumbered past him.
The second tanker driver shouted into his walkie-talkie, hoping someone would pick up his calls of distress. ‘He’s passed me! The gringo’s ahead!’
Hearing it, a mile further on, Perez pushed on the transmit button. ‘Don’t worry,’ he almost whispered. ‘This one won’t trouble you any further.’
The driver of the tanker that had just been overtaken, was not convinced. He had racing instincts, and was on the road again, right behind Bond, drawing out to pass him. The long hard bend ahead came nearer. Now there was another distraction, for the crop duster had caught up with them. Pam flew almost level with the tankers, giving the aircraft little bursts of speed as she came up on Bond’s wing. For a moment Bond’s concentration went and the other tanker, with a burst of speed came up and passed him.
Bond pulled out, determined to overtake the other rig again. The long bend came up, and both Bond and the other driver saw the immediate dangers. There was a steep drop off the left side of the road. The lead driver began to brake as he went into the turn, and Bond put his foot down, coming abreast of him once more just as they rolled out of the turn and saw, three hundred yards ahead, a jeep at an angle across the road.
Through the sights of the missile, Perez saw two targets, then only one as Bond’s tanker passed and moved ahead of the other.
In the cab, Bond glanced over to Pam’s airplane and saw her gesticulating violently. He could not understand what was wrong, looking from her to the road ahead. Only then did he see a figure crouched behind the jeep. A picture of the small missiles sprang into his head.
The tanker was right in the sights now. ‘Goodbye James Bond!’ Perez whispered as he squeezed the trigger.
17
MAN OF FIRE
A whole series of images went through Bond’s mind in that split second. He heard Pam first telling him about the attempted deal with Heller over the missiles, and the colonel’s final rejection of the plan; his sight of Heller with the deadly things on the fork-lift truck; then Heller stapled to the wall in the Temple, the missiles gone . . .
Missile gone . . . ! Missile gone . . . ! He saw the flash just as the full horror imprinted itself on his mind.
Bond wrenched the wheel over and felt the tanker hit a large mound on the verge. One moment he was travelling in a straight line, the next the whole vehicle was rolling over, two of the cab’s wheels still holding the road, the other two angled high in the air, pulling the tanker with it so that the entire rig was tilted to one side.
Later, he swore that he actually heard the thing pass underneath the cab and the tanker, but in his heart he knew this might be an exaggeration, and that he only thought he heard it. It mattered little because that was what happened. For some obscure reason – the Pentagon never would provide the full facts – these hand-held missiles had no target-lock, nor were they heat-seeking. The bi
g dark-shaped projectile just followed the track on which Perez had set it as he squeezed the trigger. It shot under the cab and tank, scoring the road in its fiery wake, and hit the following tanker head on.
Bond did feel the heat in his cab. There was no doubt about that. Behind him the other tanker simply turned into molten metal and a great fireball from the explosives and the cocaine-spiked gasoline. Even Pam’s crop duster was lifted on the thermal produced by the explosion.
For Bond it did not end there, he was desperately trying to control his rig, which still travelled, tilted to one side. The jeep lay in his path and he gave the wheel a slight touch, accompanied by a short jab at the brakes. Perez leapt clear and the other three men flung themselves to one side. With a merciless grinding sound the entire tanker rig righted itself – on top of the jeep.
It had been slowed to almost a crawl, which gave Perez and the other three their last opportunity. Uzis performed a choral chattering requiem and Bond felt the bullets hitting the metal, then three of the tanker’s tyres. They blew one after another, the tanker itself going out of control.
The rig swung violently across the road, swerving first one way and then the next. To Bond it was like being on some demoniac roller-coaster ride. The road tilted and the tyres squealed, and his stomach turned over. Maybe it was reaction following the missile shot. Bond knew he would have to stop. This hunk of metal just would not go on with three of the tanker’s tyres blown out. Any moment it would jack-knife, and with the road twisting and turning, beginning a downward sweep, he just could not hold it.
Bond braked, glancing in the mirror to see the four men begin moving as though to chase after him. There was one chance in a million: try to blow this tanker in their faces. He braked again and drew the rig on to the side of the road, where the verge ended in a steep drop.
His hand was on the door lever when he saw something else in the long mirror. Way behind the men was the silhouette of the crop duster, edging down, lower and lower, like a fighter plane about to machine gun a road – which, in a manner, Pam was about to do.
As the crop duster came in over the group’s heads, so she fired off another canister of chemical spray, dumping what must have been a nauseating cloud on the entire group. All four dropped their weapons, and went down, clutching their faces and rolling around in pain as though they had received a truck-load of Mace full on the face.
Silently, Bond thanked her for good common sense. He was out of the cab by now, groping underneath and uncoupling the tanker. He went to the edge of the road and looked down. Below him the road corkscrewed in a series of S-bends as it would down the far side of the mountains.
The other tankers would only be a short distance in front of him, in fact he could see the lead rig already approaching the road below. He ran back to the cab, turning on the engine, slammed the cab into reverse and started to back up, gently pushing the tanker towards the edge of the cliff, which was the road’s verge. One final touch on the accelerator and he heard the grind and crunch as the tanker went over. Banging the cab into neutral and cutting the engine, Bond was out and looking over the edge again.
Below he saw the first two tankers pass harmlessly, but his tank was falling, hitting an outcrop of rock, turning like a rogue satellite coming out of orbit, before plummeting down, smack on to the third tanker in line.
The reaction was even worse than the missile hit. The two big cylinders, full of gasoline made a spectacular fireball which shot outwards and upwards, so high that Bond had to step back to avoid being singed.
‘Three down,’ he said. ‘Two to go.’ He ran back to the cab and went screaming off in pursuit of the last two tankers and the revenge, which he now knew he would achieve.
Below, on the flaming road, it looked like a battlefield. Sanchez’s car had pulled up just in time and he was still feeling a little unsteady at the near miss. Beyond the fire he could see the first two tankers had stopped as though awaiting instructions.
‘Okay. We’ll ride in the other two. Have to go around this.’ Sanchez was taut with frustration and something he had never felt before, so could not recognise – fear.
Truman-Lodge had a tight hold on the briefcase, and Sanchez, holding the Uzi, ordered the chauffeur to get the three remaining missiles from the boot. As the man went to carry out the order, so Truman-Lodge gave an officious grunt. ‘Well, you’ve certainly messed this up, Franz. Another eighty-million write-off.’
In his current humour, it was the last straw. Sanchez turned on his Wall Street wizard. His eyes turned into tiny slits filled with Lapis Lazuli. ‘Then I’d best start cutting down on overheads,’ he said. He only pulled the trigger twice to cut away the best part of Truman-Lodge’s chest.
The driver acted as though nothing had happened, for he was a man who had seen much worse than this, having fought for one side or another in all the trouble spots of Central America. ‘Got the missiles, boss.’
Sanchez walked over to the body of Truman-Lodge and prised the briefcase from his hand. He noticed that the young man hung on to it even in death. When he dragged it clear, Sanchez wiped the blood off with some earth, muttering something about this having been an expensive case – oxblood Gucci.
He signalled to the driver and they skirted the fire and walked quickly towards the two last waiting tankers.
Sanchez nodded at the driver of the lead rig. ‘Missiles in your cab,’ he said, then turned to his chauffeur, ‘You go in the second one, and take the Uzi with you.’
The chauffeur did as he was told, checking the Uzi as he climbed into the second cab and waited until his chief, holding on to the briefcase, had settled himself into the first tanker’s cab.
They slowly moved out.
Above them the pick-up truck, being driven by Braun as the rearguard of the convoy, came to a halt, after having gone straight through the debris and flames that littered the road. He had been going at speed and only braked when he saw Perez and his men trying to get themselves together, wiping their eyes and coughing.
The pick-up stopped right by Perez. The two men merely looked at each other, their faces heavy with anger. The three other men, who had been under Perez’s command did not look at anyone. Braun gunned the engine and they went hurtling down the road. They were not far behind Bond, who got his first glimpse of the pick-up as he approached the wreckage and pool of fire across the road. There was no time to stop. Bond slewed the wheel to avoid Sanchez’s car, then went straight through the fire, putting his foot down. He could just make out the two tankers ahead as they came to straighter roads and the terrain began to flatten out.
The two tankers were taking it easy, doing a steady sixty-five. Soon they would reach towns and villages, before turning back towards Isthmus and the airport. He pressed the accelerator harder, and saw the pick-up, minus Perez’s three men, who had not found the stomach to go through the flames and gasoline in such a comparatively open and slower vehicle. Even from the mirror, Bond could see the pick-up’s tyres were smoking badly. He was still looking in the mirror when the first burst of fire, from Sanchez’s chauffeur’s Uzi rattled across the bonnet of the cab.
A moment later, as Bond was going for broke in an attempt to overtake the tanker now in front of him, another burst shattered the windshield. He punched out a hole with his fist, and made up his mind quickly. Setting the cab’s cruise control to seventy mph, Bond smashed the remainder of the windshield and steered so that it faced immediately behind the rear of the tanker in front of him.
This was no time to hang around. He pulled himself out of the cab on to the bonnet, crawling forward until the radiator was only feet from the growing circle which was the rear of the tanker. A short inspection ladder went up the back, at the bottom of which was the main valve. Twice, Bond almost had the valve in his hand. Then again, but this time he grasped the lower rung of the inspection ladder. As he did so, the tanker went into a turn, accelerating as its driver took it around.
Bond found himself stretched between cab
and the tanker. It was the tanker that won, picking up Bond and pulling him from the bonnet. The tanker continued around the bend, the cab went in a straight line, off the road and across the stretch of parched earth on the far side of the verge.
Two bullets clanged into the back of the tanker, inches from Bond’s head. The pick-up with Perez and Braun was gaining. He reached out and finally got a grasp on the main valve. It turned easily, and gasoline started to flood out onto the road.
Bond continued up the ladder just in time to see the pick-up, its tyres still smoking from the pass it had made through the earlier wreckage, hit the gas on the road.
Flames lit up all around the pick-up. It stayed on a straight course for around thirty seconds, the two occupants screaming and struggling to get out. Then the fire took hold and appeared to turn in on the pick-up which disappeared for a fraction of a second in a red bloom of flame before it left the road.
By now, Bond was atop the tanker and realising the situation in which he had placed himself. As the tanker moved forward, so more gasoline pumped out of the valve, and the flames, begun by the pick-up were now racing towards the tanker.
Pam, who had been wheeling and banking in an attempt to find Bond, saw the cab leave the road, and then felt the airplane rock to the next fireball. She turned in its direction and took in the situation in a second.
There was practically no time, she realised, as she lowered her flaps and began to make an approach above the running flames. She was beating the flames by less than seconds now, cutting her engine and gliding down to less than four feet above the tanker, holding her line of flight until she felt Bond’s weight on the undercarriage. She opened the throttle and put the nose up, turning hard left as soon as there was enough airspeed. The plane was starting to bank when the tanker exploded.
‘One to go,’ Pam said it aloud, and knew instinctively what Bond would want. It was not her idea of Saturday afternoon fun, but she wanted vengeance as well. She opened the throttle, turning back, low towards the road and the last tanker. Flaps down again and approaching from the rear, Pam kept the airplane level, losing height slowly.