‘Well?’ snapped Kang after the co-pilot had gabbled a report.
Petrov gave him a disbelieving look. ‘We are . . . pulling it behind us.’
‘Pulling what?’
‘The truck, the truck that was chasing us! They must have got a cable around the landing gear.’
‘Then close it, cut the cable!’
‘The landing gear is damaged,’ the Russian repeated with impatient contempt. ‘It won’t close. We have to turn back and land again – it is too dangerous to fly like this.’
‘No!’ said Kang. ‘We do not go back, we must—’
‘Are you a pilot? Can you fly a plane? No? Then shut up and let me fly this one!’ The pilot turned back angrily to the controls, leaving the colonel fuming impotently.
A voice came through the crew’s headsets: the control tower at the airbase. Even without being able to hear the exchange, Kang could tell from its urgency that the situation was about to get worse. Both men in the front seats peered down at the ground, regarding the runway with growing concern as the Antonov made a wide circle over the airfield. ‘We . . . we can’t land,’ Petrov told the Korean. ‘The runway is blocked, there is wreckage on it. But we can’t reach another airfield if we are pulling the truck; it will make the plane too hard to fly.’
‘Then we stop pulling it,’ Kang snapped. He glanced at a monitor screen at one of the crew stations, which showed CCTV images of the huge hold below them. The lone missile rocked uneasily in its cradle, only a few of the straps meant to secure it actually in place. But it was the other items of cargo that caught his interest. ‘Can the plane fly with the rear ramp down?’
‘Yes, it was designed so paratroopers could jump from it. But—’
‘Then open it. Now!’ He reverted to his native language as he addressed Sek. ‘The weapons you were assigned – they’re all in the hold, yes?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Sek replied.
‘Good. Then we’ll break out a rocket launcher – and blow up the transporter!’
Nina braced herself in the footwell, holding on to the now-useless steering wheel and one of the door handles as the transporter swayed through the sky behind the Antonov. The freighter still had its landing gear extended as it circled the military base. Was it going to land again? If the plane returned to the ground, she and Eddie would be killed. There was no way the broken-backed TEL would touch down neatly on its remaining wheels . . .
Movement on the plane – the clamshell doors cracking apart. Light flooded through the widening gap, spotlights inside illuminating the bare ribbed framework of the fuselage and the giant loading ramp blocking the rear of the hold. What were they doing?
She shouted to Eddie, pointing to alert him of the new development. He twisted painfully to look. ‘Shit!’ he shouted, the glass muffling his voice. ‘The winch – wind it in!’
‘Why?’
‘The only reason they’d open the back door in flight is to jump out from it – or shoot at us!’
She hurriedly shifted position to push the larger lever forward. She was almost surprised when the winch started, convinced that the punishment it had endured would have destroyed the mechanism. But it began to take up the steel cable again, albeit with a protesting whine.
Eddie looked back at the Antonov. The clamshell doors opened fully. A moment later, the ramp laboriously began to lower. He knew what – or rather who – would be waiting behind it. ‘Get a gun!’ he called to Nina. ‘Soon as that ramp comes down, they’ll start shooting – you need to get ’em first!’
‘I can’t open the door!’ she protested as she retrieved a rifle from the footwell, where it had ended up during the truck’s wild ride.
‘Then shoot out the window!’
Nina reluctantly pointed the Type 58 at the driver’s door, turning the fire selector to what she hoped was single-shot mode. ‘I’d normally say this is a terrible idea,’ she muttered, ‘but compared to every other one we’ve had today, it barely moves the needle . . .’
She cringed – and pulled the trigger.
The noise of the gunshot was excruciating in the cab’s confines – but it was nothing against the sudden roar from outside. The bullet itself had only made a coin-sized hole in the glass, but a fraction of a second later the entire pane disintegrated, to be sucked out into the void. The cabin turned into a whirlwind as loose items were snatched up by the vortex.
Eddie stared at her with a what the hell? expression. ‘I meant shoot out of the window – after you wind it down!’
‘No, you said— Oh Goddamn it!’ Nina shielded her eyes as grit and papers and even the spent bullet cartridge swatted at her face, then squinted past her husband. The Antonov was drawing closer, running lights illuminating its operator’s logo on the towering tailfin. Beneath it were the gaping rear doors, the ramp slowly unfolding to reveal the hold beyond.
Kang left Sek in the cockpit to watch the pilots, not trusting the Russians not to lock him and his men out should they be left unattended, while he went with the other soldier and the aircraft’s loadmaster to deal with the transporter.
Even though only one missile had been loaded aboard, cradles were in place for all three, so the forward ladder to the hold couldn’t be lowered. Instead, the men had to go back down the length of the upper deck, past the little crew cabins and galley and through a small passenger section where the other soldiers anxiously awaited news of what was happening. Their commander didn’t deign to inform them, instead continuing onwards until they reached the steep rear ladder. A cold wind gusted up from below.
‘Get an RPG, quick,’ Kang ordered the soldier. ‘Meet me at the ramp.’ The young man saluted and scurried down the ladder. The colonel turned to the loadmaster. ‘You, come down with me. I want to see what is happening.’
‘This very bad idea, you know?’ protested the Russian as he descended into the hold. ‘Rocket not secure, plane not steady – many bad things can happen! If ramp open, then if plane go up, we all fall out!’
‘Then hold on,’ Kang growled as he followed him down. By the time he reached the bottom, the soldier had run to the front of the hold and was opening a case containing an RPG-7 rocket launcher. Looking the other way, he saw that the ramp was still only about halfway down. He glared at the loadmaster. ‘Make it go faster!’
‘I . . . I can’t,’ the startled man replied.
‘Idiot,’ Kang snarled. He stalked to the rear of the hold, pausing to maintain his footing as the plane swayed. It had its flaps fully extended for maximum lift at the low speed that was all Petrov dared risk, but even an aircraft as large as the An-124 was susceptible to turbulence, and the pendulous weight of the truck swinging behind it only made the movement more unpredictable. He took hold of one of the ribs running up the hold’s wall and peered out through the slowly widening gap.
At first he saw nothing but darkness, but then a flash from one of the Antonov’s navigation lights picked out something nearby. He waited a few seconds until it came again. A line in the sky, running back from the plane’s starboard underside . . .
He tilted his head, looking around the obstructive ramp – and was startled to see headlights shining back at him. The missile transporter was indeed being hauled behind the An-124, bobbing and weaving like a kite.
Wait – it was getting closer! It took him a moment to realise how: the TELs were fitted with a winch in case they became stuck in muddy ground. But it couldn’t be operated remotely, which meant . . .
Astonishment was followed by a sadistic smile as he saw that the man and woman who had destroyed Facility 17 – and almost certainly his career with it – were still in the vehicle. No, not in: on! The bald man, Chase, was clinging to the front of the cab, his clothing flapping madly in the wind. Behind him, interior lights picked out the red hair of his wife.
He shouted down the hold to th
e soldier. ‘The spies, they’re on the truck! Get over here, quick – we can blow the bastards apart!’
The transporter shook and rolled sickeningly as it drew ever closer to the Antonov’s tail, caught in its wake turbulence. The ramp was now three quarters lowered, and Nina saw movement behind it, someone wearing a peaked military cap. The figure looked back out through the widening gap, the spotlights inside the doors illuminating his face.
Kang.
Eddie saw him too. ‘Shoot him!’
‘I can’t!’ she protested. The Type 58 was almost a yard long, and there wasn’t enough room between the seat back and the window frame for her to look down the ungainly weapon’s sights at the hold without pushing the barrel out into the hurricane-force wind – which would make it almost impossible to aim.
The ramp kept dropping, the whale-belly hold and the missile inside coming into full view. Another soldier ran past it towards the open doors, carrying a tubular object.
‘RPG!’ Eddie shouted. ‘He’s got a fucking rocket launcher! Nina, shoot him!’
She had already identified the weapon from unwelcome past experience. But even squeezing as far over as she could, she still couldn’t line up the gun on the hold.
The soldier reached Kang. The ramp finally drew level with the floor, then tipped downwards past it. The second Korean gawped at the flying truck, then at a bellowed order from his commander knelt and inserted the warhead’s cylindrical rocket motor into the launch tube.
‘Nina!’ Eddie shouted again, almost pleading. The TEL started to sweep from side to side, pinballing between the fuselage’s slipstream and the jet blast from the inboard engine. Each outward swing gave Nina just enough of an angle to aim at the hold. She turned the selector to full-auto, waiting for the North Koreans to slide back through her sights . . .
The soldier stood and raised his own launcher. He flipped up the sights, fixing them on the transporter—
Nina fired first. A spray of bullets scythed through the gaping doorway. Most clanged against the hold’s far wall – but a couple found their target.
Kang jerked behind a fuselage rib as two rounds thudded into the soldier’s upper body. The man crumpled and fell forwards, sliding down the ramp. He and his weapon slithered off its end and were snatched away by the thunderous wind to vanish into the night.
The rifle’s last shot punched through the aluminium hull just behind Kang. The colonel flinched. The loadmaster fled to the ladder, clambering up it for the safety of the upper deck.
Nina dropped the empty gun. ‘Okay, now what? We’re still not exactly in a great position!’
Eddie looked back at the plane as the straining winch drew them ever closer. With the cable shortening, the transporter’s sidelong swings were becoming faster and more forceful, carrying them almost behind the ramp before sweeping back out beneath the engine’s churning exhaust plume. ‘When we’re level with the ramp,’ he shouted, ‘stop the winch! I’ll jump on to it!’
‘You’ll what?’
‘Just do it! I can make it!’ He shifted towards the corner of the cab.
‘Okay, now you’re trying to get killed!’ said Nina, but she still slid back over to reach the winch controls. The transporter swung behind the plane, just a few metres from the foot of the ramp. She briefly glimpsed Kang, then the North Korean disappeared from view as she and Eddie were swept back in the other direction. The next pass brought them almost close enough to touch the ramp’s end. Back out towards the engine – and she pulled the lever to brake the winch.
Eddie braced himself, ready to jump.
Kang glanced out from behind the pillar. The woman in the swinging truck had put down her rifle. No more bullets were coming his way.
But he had some of his own to send back at them. He unholstered his pistol and stepped out of cover, raising the gun as he waited for his targets to come back into sight—
The transporter rushed at the ramp. Eddie leapt—
He crossed the terrifying void between the two vehicles in a split second, landing on metal with a bang. He had aimed to grab one of the sets of hydraulic jacks . . .
But missed.
He skidded across the ramp. Its surface was dotted with recessed hooks for attaching chains and cargo straps. He clawed at them as he slid past, catching one with curled fingertips and jerking to a painful stop—
A pounding impact knocked him loose again as the TEL slammed into the plane behind him.
He rolled diagonally down the ramp, snatching at the rearmost jack – and again missed. The black sky opened out hungrily below—
A hefty steel eyelet protruded from the ramp’s edge. Eddie thumped hard against it, a fierce pain cutting deep into his chest as a rib cracked – but he grabbed the obstruction to halt his fall just as his legs went over the side. The wind swirling around the Antonov’s stern tore at him. He battled to haul his legs back on to the ramp, then looked up.
The transporter was wedged under the An-124’s tail, its cab partly crushed between the lower edge of the fuselage and the ramp, and the starboard clamshell door buckled inwards. He couldn’t see Nina inside – but he spotted Kang sprawled halfway across the hold where he had been thrown by the collision.
The colonel shook his head dizzily, startled by the sight of the truck half buried in the aircraft’s side – then he saw Eddie hanging from the ramp.
His pistol had ended up near the hold’s port side. He scrambled up and ran for it.
Eddie realised what he was doing and dragged himself higher, lunging to grab the hydraulic jack. This time he caught it, pulling himself to his feet and swinging around it, using its hinge as a starting block to propel himself up the slope—
Kang snatched up his gun and spun to point it at the Englishman.
47
‘What the hell was that?’ cried the pilot as the aircraft lurched sideways. ‘Something hit us!’
One of the aircrew behind him spotted the cause. ‘Look!’ he said, pointing at one of the hold’s CCTV feeds. The image was of the open rear doors – into which was wedged the truck.
Petrov hurriedly turned back to his controls. ‘We’ve got to shake it loose,’ he said. ‘If we try to land with that thing stuck there, it’ll tear us in half! Everyone hold on!’
He threw the enormous aircraft into a hard bank to starboard.
Kang staggered as the deck tipped beneath him. He fired – but missed, the bullet whipping past Eddie’s head. The Antonov’s roll continued, its nose dropping as the wings lost lift.
What had foiled the Korean was helping the Yorkshireman. The change in the plane’s attitude both angled him away from the ramp’s treacherous edge and shallowed the gradient he had to climb. He pounded up it, charging at Kang—
The colonel realised he was losing his footing and hurled himself at the hold’s port wall. A dangling strap flapped madly in the wind; he seized it with his free hand and turned to face his foe – just as Eddie dived at him. Both men slammed against the fuselage ribs, grappling for the gun.
Nina fought through a blinding headache and opened her eyes, finding herself sprawled across the seats. Sitting up, she got two shocks: the first discovering the transporter jammed against the ramp; the second the fact that previously clear headroom was now filled with crumpled metal. The cab’s ceiling had been crushed by the clamshell door. If she had still been sitting upright, she would have been decapitated.
There was no time to reflect on her lucky escape. The Antonov was banking steeply to the right, and the weight of the transporter’s chassis hanging out over nothingness was causing its back end to swing outwards as overstressed steel gave way.
A squeal from the windscreen. Cracks spread down the wide pane as the unyielding fuselage ground down on it—
The window exploded.
A gale blasted into the cab.
Instinctual reflex saved her eyesight, but with a hundred-knot slipstream behind it, even laminated safety glass was enough to slash her face. She was thrown backwards, barely able to breathe.
The transporter jolted, twisting out from the tailcone as the An-124’s bank steepened . . .
A new alarm shrilled in the cockpit, accompanied by an incongruously calm synthesised female voice. ‘Stall warning. Level out. Stall warning. Level out . . .’
‘Shit!’ gasped Petrov, straining to stay upright in his chair as the artificial horizon banked past forty-five degrees. Increasing power would stop the plane from falling out of the sky, but going any faster with a huge truck jammed into the fuselage ran the risk of losing control. All he could do was obey the robotic instruction and hope the vehicle fell away of its own accord. The Antonov responded sluggishly, nausea rising in its occupants’ stomachs.
Sek, clinging to one of the rear seats, looked at the monitor. The transporter was still there, its battered nose slewing around. But his eyes snapped to something on the other side of the ramp – Colonel Kang, clinging to a strap as he fought with the bald spy.
He knew he had to help his commander, but his lack of either Russian or English meant that getting the aircrew to put him on the plane’s loudspeaker system would take too long. Instead he rushed from the cockpit to give orders to the other soldiers in person.
‘Lock that fucking door!’ Petrov shouted as the plane levelled out. One of the crew slammed the bulletproof hatch and bolted it. ‘Don’t let any of the little bastards back in!’
The stall warning shut off. He watched the airspeed indicator until it climbed back to its previous mark, then tipped the Antonov into another sharp bank.
Eddie grappled with Kang, one hand clamped around the Korean’s gun arm as he drove punches into his stomach with the other. As long as the squat officer was holding the strap, there was little he could do to fight back . . .
The deck rolled beneath him, one sole slipping on the metal. The moment it took to stabilise himself left him open to attack. Kang drove an elbow against his damaged rib.